The Rich Kid

In the summer after second grade, with my mom no longer living in the same house and custody battles in full swing, I began attending day care at Abercrombie Academy. It was a horribly snooty little private school in Spring that my aunt insisted I attend, claiming I'd receive a better education at a private school. I expressed a tentative preference for the larger and less intimidating-looking Theiss Elementary School. No matter.

I loathed the new school the moment I set foot in it. It was tiny, it smelled too new, and the other kids looked at me funny and wouldn't talk to me. The summer wore on without me making any friends. I took piano lessons, swimming lessons, and art lessons. I didn't want any of them, but learning piano at least was something for which I was forever grateful.

The first day of school arrived, and I was five minutes late (of course). The whole class stared at me. Right in the center front row, the first person I saw—and indeed, the only person I saw—was him. Wavy brown hair, chocolate brown eyes, and a dark complexion. He contrasted perfectly with my reddish brown hair, blue eyes, and freckled fair skin. Oh yes, opposites attract. Or. I was attracted. He, I think, was repelled. After all, I was obviously poor—wearing slightly scruffy clothing devoid of prominent labels, my hair loose and unadorned, my backpack slightly tattered from being dragged around Landolt—and he was obviously not poor, what with his pressed clothing, natural confidence, and suspicious stare. I saw him and knew I was doomed.

I soon learned who he was. His father was a local celebrity, and he was the oldest child and only son. He was the prince, the Heir to a kingdom of so-so furniture and tacky advertising. I had seen the Rich Kid (RK) before, I realized, on TV a year or so previously when I lived in Friendswood. I never mentioned it. Not that I had the opportunity.

I settled in at the new school—or rather, I settled into my role as the awkward new kid. The others all knew each other from previous years and ignored me fairly universally. Imagine my outrage when there was another new girl later that year, whom the others immediately surrounded and befriended at recess. She was better dressed than I, after all. She was horrible to me, leading the other girls in juvenile cattiness. Sometimes I got a break when they turned on each other, making me grateful I had already decided that guys made better friends.

Once one of the other girls condescended to speak to me. I expressed my bitter disappointment in their behavior.

"Well, maybe we'd talk to you more if you dressed more like us," she said.

"What!"

"Well— You know, wear stuff like that more often," she said, indicating the lime green shorts and shirt I had on. It was something my mom had bought, cutesy and not my style at all. Something in me snapped.

"If clothes are that important to you, I don't want to talk to you anyway," I huffed. She frowned.

The pitched social battle resumed.

I did consider that RK might possibly notice if I changed my style of dress, but it couldn't really be helped. Besides, I thought, if I don't want girls basing their opinions of me on my clothes, I certainly don't want boys doing the same thing. I did briefly succeed in getting RK's attention when I wore a kilt to school one day. He asked if it were a blanket. I irritably said no. I did wear it more often after that, though.

By this time, I had discovered that RK was good at math, at which I was terrible. It figured. The class where we spent the most time showing what we'd learned, and I couldn't show off. I did eventually discover that he was bad at English. I marveled. How could anyone be bad at English? It was English. I secretly delighted in upstaging the whole class with my superior spelling and grammar skills. I don't think he was impressed.

Finally, one day in fifth grade, I succeeded in impressing or at least surprising him. We were packing up to go home (or to after school day care, in my case), and he noticed my little case full of sheet music for my piano lessons.

"What's that?" he asked.

"My piano music," I said.

"You're in piano?" he asked, sounding genuinely surprised. I nodded. The conversation ended. I wondered why he was so surprised. I had brought my music every Tuesday for the last three years, and I had piano lessons first thing after school ended, sometimes beginning before the other kids had been picked up. I irritably reflected that this showed exactly how visible I was to him.

Once, in Social Studies, we were assigned to work in pairs on a worksheet. Imagine my delight when we were assigned to work together. He was less than enthusiastic and kept glancing around at his friends and the popular girl who was so horrible to me. I was a four foot three block of solid Awkward, complete with sweaty palms and shaky voice. I tried to force myself to relax and smile. I think I made him giggle once. I don't remember whether whatever I'd said was genuinely funny or just stupid. Probably the latter. The tension was too awful, and I quickly wanted it to end. Thankfully I was smart, and the work went quickly.

Some time later, we studied North and South American Indian tribes for Social Studies. We were assigned a project: Select a tribe, write a paper, and create a visual aid in the form of a small house like the ones in which the given tribe lived. I wanted to do the tribe that had the easiest-looking house, but someone else had already taken it. No one was supposed to do the same tribe, which should have been easy with only nine students in the class. I wondered why, then, the teacher had not given us at least nine options. I knew there were dozens and dozens of tribes. Oh well. I selected the Incas instead. The teacher was not pleased that more than one person was doing the same tribe. She was even less pleased when I pointed out that it was her own damn fault.

It transpired that RK was also doing the Incas, and he was apparently somewhat displeased to note that he was not alone.

"Who else is doing the Incas?" he asked suspiciously. I perked up and piped up.

"I am."

"Oh," he said, no longer interested. I was annoyed. Later, I crowed to myself when my Inca house gloriously upstaged his. It was built of a brick my dad found in our back yard and dropped on the driveway several times to smash into bits. Then we hot glued the chunks together to resemble the rocks the Incas carefully sculpted together. We built a little roof of pine needles. It was quite an impressive little house. I saved it for years and recycled it for a tenth grade English project, receiving an A. Eventually it crumbled and I threw it away. But in fifth grade, it was new and impressive, and not for the first or last time, my classmates stared in surprise.

Not long after, I had another encounter with him. We were getting ready to go home for the day, and we had to move past each other as we collected our bags. We nearly bumped into each other. He moved to his left; I moved to my right. He moved to his right; I moved to my left. He moved to his left again; I moved to my right again. We giggled; I stayed put; he moved around me. I longed to say something funny but couldn't think of anything. I told my mom about the incident later, expressing my wish for a repeat of the episode. She suggested that the next time it happened, I laugh and say "Wanna dance?" I tried to imagine myself doing so and failed. It would be so uncharacteristic of me that he likely wouldn't laugh but just stare. But, I knew, the likelihood of it ever happening again was remote.

A couple of times that year I ran into his celebrity dad. His father appeared on field trips from time to time, throwing his celebrity status around with the sycophantic teachers. To my utter horror, he took a liking to me. My class posed for a picture with him, and he stood right by me and put his arm around me. I was too stunned to look offended. I think his son was equally befuddled. My dad saw the picture later and said, "It looks like he has his arm around you." "He did." I never did figure out why the hell he was so friendly to me. Perhaps he knew my aunt and uncle.

It was in the spring of fifth grade now, and I knew the time was soon coming when I would not see RK again. Since this also meant I would not see any of the others again, and I knew nothing was going to happen anyway, I didn't mind so much. I was getting the hell out of that shithole Abercrombie and going to Doerre for sixth grade. The relief and sense of escape overshadowed any regrets I might have had.

Near the end of the year, all the parents came to school for an assembly. I somehow ended up sitting near RK. My dad, to my extreme embarrassment, struck up a light conversation with him. They introduced themselves. "Oh, I've heard all about you," my dad said. RK glanced at me. I winced and looked away, mortified. He never asked me about it, to my immense relief.

Soon afterwards, I left Abercrombie forever. Those three hellish years instilled in me a deep seated loathing of the wealthy and privatization. Forever afterwards, I was intensely distrustful of rich people and people obsessed with clothing. In that one respect, my old classmates probably did me a favor. From then on, I based crushes on personality alone.