chapter one school not my favorite thing especially the first week back after a glorious summer off i always dread the first assignment the teachers always have us right what i did over summer vacation seriously teachers this to us students is the kiss of death when you assign that paper and you always do we have to hide that fact that most of us did nothing that most kids can't afford to go anywhere and even if i won the nobel prize for world peace hey it could happen why am i going to spill my personal life to a teacher i don't even know i can't help but compare my life to a giant game of keep away with me always being in the middle running back and forth between two things never quite catching anything i call it the ping pong effect because you're the ball and nobody ever wants you in their space have you ever felt like that never really belonging anywhere but trying your darndest to run between two lives only to find you're always stuck in the middle well that's the reader's digest summary of my life apple in the middle did i tell you that i'm apple yes my name is the same as a fruit how i got that name is coming later i promise i'll get to the how i spent my summer vacation story later and the story behind my name i promise i will i'm nothing if not honest first you should know that i tend to have some minor odd habits for one and some might call it a phobia but i call it common sense that i will not step foot into a cemetery there's just something about stepping and hovering above decomposing bodies nope won't do it what if a bony skeleton hand reaches up and pulls me under it's really all about staying on this side of the turf cemeteries smell kind of funky too uday decay plus i'm afraid that a dearly departed may want to exact a little revenge another peculiar habit of mine is that i love asking people odd questions it's not that i need to or want to ask the questions but it's a tick it's almost like i get a thought in my head and it can't stay in there quietly the questions just pop into my head and when they do i just blurt them out it may sound weird but sometimes when i talk to people i get this hazy vision of them in my head usually it's some image of them doing things i don't have any reference about them and can't figure out why i get these visions and they usually get me in trouble of course once i was talking to my high school english teacher ms catterwall and an image of her popped in my mind miss catterwall is one of those teachers who are book snobs book snobs can list every title they've ever read they know every author from a to z they also love to make you feel inferior if they see you reading your horoscope in the newspaper hey i need to read the horoscopes i'm an aquarius by the way to see if i'll meet my dream man today or if i should wait before making big decisions as i'm asking her about an english assignment i start to get a vision or mental image of her in a bathtub don't worry she has bubbles up to her bulbous nose and she's reading a book and laughing to herself so in the middle of english class while all the normal kids are working on a writing assignment btw i really hate to write i blurt out and ask her do you always read comic books in the bathtub ms catterwall let's just say that didn't go over well a book snob would never be caught dead reading calvin and hobbes i told you i have odd habits but i can't help myself it's like i have no filter on my mouth whenever these pictures or images pop in my head some stupid comment pops out it's like having a really bad case of diarrhea of the mouth i wonder if there's a pepto-bismol for loose junk escaping my mouth this quirk of mine does nothing to fill my social calendar just for interest sometimes when i talk to people an english accent stammers out or maybe an australian shrimp on the bobby may come out of nowhere i wish i could say that my friends think i'm the weird but lovable goof i can't say that because i have no friends that's right sob sniff teardrop maybe people are afraid of my exuberance odd questions and spotty russian accent so they stare at me whenever i pass them by i'm pretty sure i see sympathy looks too i do this because it's better to be singled out as the weird foreign kid than to be known for being the weird freaky local kid i don't have to worry about losing any friends by acting odd because i well always feel out of place never have really had friends and am even shunned by my little brother i use my talents for speaking with accents and take on the pretend role of foreign exchange student my high school is so big that it's impossible to know everyone in your grade this solves my problems and gives a reason for my lackluster personal life if i'm in fourth hour lunch making my way to the lunch line i may accidentally bump into people preferably juniors or seniors who don't know of my existence and say oops sorry i'd better check my shrimp and back at the boats mate the bewildered looks they shoot back at me read hello too weird wait i detect an accent maybe there's a reason for her bizarreness with my brown hair moussey black and brown mud eyes i can slide into numerous identities maybe during the monday meatloaf lunch hour i'll be a whispery wafe from ukraine or on tuesday with tacos toxic smell lunch day i'll be a latina from an obscure spanish-speaking country i feel sort of bad because one poor sap i tried my spanish accent on actually believed that i was from a country called el burrito and these are the kids that will lead our country into the future yikes but i figure it's better to be a weird foreigner than a pathetic loser looking on the bright side when you're socially invisible people don't realize you're watching them it's sort of one of my favorite pastimes people watching especially when they have no idea you exist sometimes it's good to be unseen which is why i like to people watch i can do this anytime but it's especially fun when i'm in math class with mr markman by the way mr markman is obsessed with the scent of whiteboard markers not sure if i want to know anything more about that so his back is always toward the class you may not be able to see him but you can hear him taking deep halting breaths as he scribbles notes on the whiteboard last month i got in trouble because i accidentally called him mr marker man to his face but that's another story so during his class i have a back row corner desk which is a prime spot for viewing the high schoolers i get a glimpse of the different groups of kids and get to peek into their lives you know all groups they're in every school since time immortal the jocks or as i call them the grunts because that seems to be the only response anyone gets to questions they ask them the ultra pretty girls also known as twofers because they make every one syllable word into two for example if i tell them their shoes are so last year instead of saying what to first say what the geeks or as i call them the geeks and the motorheads who know nothing about 19th century british poetry but can dismantle and reassemble in 1956 gt faster than you can say blue color career as i observe the natives i fill out a journal i figure if i can't be a part of high school society then i'll document my observations for future generations my journal is divided into chapters chapter one how many days in a row can our football team not bring anything to class no notebook no pencils no textbook so far they're up to 157. it technically should be 158 days in a row but i had to give credit for last tuesday when paul dugan and brian wirth came into class chewing a pencil eraser i'm nothing if not fair i also keep a running tally of how many times steve journal turns and smirks at me when i say something in class every single time and of course alt-huffs doesn't help the team's count as he digs in the garbage for notebook paper usually i give him credit for foraging but he sometimes catches me watching him i'm not sure if he's the president of the who thinks apple is weird fan club but he's at least the secretary it's a common fact that they give that job to the biggest jolt i guess you could call some of these guys handsome if you're into that sort of thing of course i couldn't care less about them i just wish they wouldn't always laugh foreign exchange students have feelings too chapter two does marsha glasglow the queen of all twofers wear the same outfit twice this chapter really is more of an excel graphing sheet which documents marsha's outfits one thing i should be really good at is recognizer recognizing designer clothes i may have no social life but we're loaded thanks to my dad being a surgeon so i have a pretty killer wardrobe except i sort of mix up designer chic with walmart geek but it seems to work for me it may even be better than marsha's outfits but who's keeping track technically i guess i am chapter 3 this is my favorite chapter so far top 10 secret moves to see if the teacher is watching you if you must know the top moves are the yawn stretch turn your head move the wipe your chin on your shoulder and look move and then my personal favorite glance at the clock and quickly look at teacher move so far after writing about these observations over the course of my high school career i've learned that watching people studying people and analyzing their behavior but i still can't figure out the one thing i really want where do i fit where do i belong last week at lunch i found an empty table next to the founding members of the twofers marsha glassglow she saw me trying to save my soupy applesauce from sliding next to my chicken nuggets i might have freaked out a little bit okay i hyperventilated i hate when food touches what's wrong with food segregation don't want my peas touching my pasta or my meatloaf mingling with my melon marsha watched me from the next table and giggled it started to roll from that into an all-out eye crying hold her chest laughing hysteric oh my gosh apple she yelled so everyone could hear what do you think you're doing keeping your applesauce from touching you a real apple that's like that's like cannibalism yeah good one marsha but of course this is what sticks in people's minds whenever they see me at lunch now at school which is why i sometimes eat in the closet next to the teacher's lounge remind me to tell you some of the things i hear floating through the vents while they're eating whoa some serious issues and they're teaching us marsha queen of mean is the one person i try to avoid at school i want to be invisible around her most times i can hide but in the middle of the lunchroom on that horrible day last week up bubbled one of my quirky questions it's like the words simmer in my stomach and then bypass my mind erupting over my tongue please please not now not the questions with her i 18. i asked as applesauce dripped down my mouth excuse me she shrieked her eyes were wild as they scanned the room to see who was watching before crud it's happening again who knows what i even mean do i have tourette's syndrome apple you are one weird fruit and with that marsha shook her head and dismissed my question and my existence my humiliation is complete but not quite i saw someone sitting next to her who was chuckling at me most kids turned their attention back to the barf tastic burrito lunch everyone except the football team must i always have witnesses for every humiliation