The Memoir of Antonia Boots

Beginnings

A C. I stared down at the paper in my hand that showed my grade for my education fair project. A C. I could not believe that all my research and hard work had only earned a C. I had nearly burned my fingers off using a hot glue gun to construct replicas of hiding places along the Underground Railroad. I had spent hours researching. I had never gotten a C before. I stuffed the paper in my backpack and pretended that my grade was nothing less than I had expected.
My classmates chattered around me as they anxiously awaited the announcements that would mark the end of our seventh grade year. Everyone was in their proper groups. The jocks chatted with the cheerleaders, the druggies and juvenile delinquents talked amongst themselves, and my friends, the smart/socially awkward grouped together in a corner.
Even within that group, the one that I supposedly fit into, I often felt like I was an outsider. And now that my mind was elsewhere I had once again pushed myself outside of the group.
The announcements came on and the moment they ended we barreled through the door anxious to board the buses. All I could think of was that C. I didn’t understand why I had gotten it. I had always gotten A’s before. That was who I was. My grades were what defined me. If I was no longer an A student then who was I?
My brothers and I got off the bus together at the end of our driveway. My mother sat on the front porch smiling. My brothers ran past me as I trudged up the driveway.
“How was your last day of school?” My mother asked us all. I tried to fight back the tears, but I couldn’t. I tried to push past my mothers. I wanted to run to my bed and hide there. “Antonia, what’s wrong?” I hung my head as my mother grabbed a hold of my arm and tried to pull me into a hug.
“I got a C,” I sobbed as I handed her the paper from my backpack.
“On your ed fair project?”
“Yes.”
“You worked hard on that. Did you ask Mr. Boston why you got this grade?” she asked I shook my head. “I think we should call him and ask him.”
“No, I don’t want to.”
“I’m going to call him. It doesn’t seem fair to me.”
I sat on the blue carpet of the play room and hugged my knees as my mother talked on the faux payphone. It took her only a minute to get Mr. Boston on the phone. I listened as she explained to him why she was calling and asked for an explanation of the grade.
“Tanya would have done it better!” my mother exploded, “You gave my daughter a C on a project because her sister would have done it better!” That was the first time that I can distinctly remember feeling that I was worth less than my sister.

In sixth grade I had realized that my peers saw me as nothing more than smart. They always asked me how to spell things or for help on math problems. I was the go to person for last minute homework and had been nicknamed “the human dictionary.” At that time it gave me a sense of identity, but by the end of seventh grade I wanted to be something more. I had also realized that I could not live up to my sister’s genius and therefore I had failed at smart.
In eighth grade the constant barrage of classmates who wanted my help began to grate on my nerves. “Do it yourself!” I would yell angrily. I soon established myself as a bitch and went out of my way to piss off my classmates. I think it was part of some bizarre type of defense mechanism. I had convinced myself that if I hurt them first they couldn't hurt me back.
I tried playing sports in an attempt to make myself more than just an academic. Unfortunately the small town school offered few options. The choices were soccer in the fall and basketball in the winter. I did both. I did all right in soccer. My bitchiness meant that I was an aggressive defensive player and willing to get in the way of girls ten times my size. However, I was still far from the best player on the team. During the basketball season, I was a benchwarmer for a championship team. Let’s just say that did nothing to help with my growing self esteem issues.
I soon gave up trying and decided to just ride out the rest of the year. I concentrated on my academics, wrote angry stories and poetry, and continued to be a self-righteous bitch to everyone. I kept telling myself that high school would be a new beginning.

At that time, the parents in my little town had a choice of where to send their kids for high school, since our town did not have its own school. There were several choices: three public high schools, and one private, but there was only one that the town also provided a bus to. That was the school that my older sister was attending, so that’s where a majority of my classmates and I were sent as well. Since it was a school of eight hundred and we had been a class of fifty, the chances of having classes with most of the classmates that I despised was very unlikely.
My sister had encouraged me to join the cross-country team because she wanted someone to run with. She suffered from shin splints and couldn’t to run very fast. Although she had friends on the team, they were all in the top seven. She recruited me to be her running partner. Through the practices that August, I faithfully plodded along at her side. At that time I was the perfect little sister. The coaches assumed that I had the same running ability as my sister and never tried to coax me to move any faster.
Our first meet that year was an invitational in the capital. The course wound through the woods and had a lot of hills. It was one of the hilliest courses in the state. We started on the far side of a field and ran across it to the tennis courts. We went around them towards the woods. It was here that my sister told me that I didn’t have to wait for her. To this day I don’t know whether or not she meant it, but I didn’t wait for her. I stretched my legs forward and flew. The trail wound through the forest along a path of soft brown earth. The leaves on the trees were still the green of summer. My feet barely impacted against the earth as I soared through the course.
I passed runners in uniforms of blue, maroon, orange, and yellow. I leaned into the hills, pushing myself up and lengthened my stride to fly down the other side. My bladder ached. I had forgotten to use the bathroom before the race. I considered ducking into the woods for a moment to relieve myself, but I didn’t want to stop. I was in the zone flying along the course. Before I knew it, all the other runners were behind me and somewhere along the way I had peed myself.
The day was hot. Sweat tumbled off the bodies of the runners. I figured everyone would assume that it was either sweat on my shorts or water that I had thrown on myself to cool myself down. I would change after the race anyway and no one would ever know.
As I came up the final stretch there were two girls in front of me. I pushed myself to move faster, sprinting across the final field to the finish line. Sweat dripped from my forehead as the world went past me in a blur. Before I knew it, I was holding a popsicle stick with the number three on it.
At home that night, my sister got all the attention. No one seemed to care that I had done well in my race. In her room, I could hear my sister crying and telling my mother how it wasn’t fair. Why should I have natural ability when she worked so hard at it? I was unworthy of success. I tucked my bronze medal away in the top drawer of my dresser.

One of the first people I met at the high school outside of the cross-country team was Don. The first class we had together was band with the jovial Mr. Ames. Don and I were both tenor sax players and, as the only two freshmen, had been seated next to each other. He was tall and skinny with black hair and his facial features very much resembled a goat’s, and fittingly he sported a goatee. He was new to the area, having moved to Maine from Virginia over the summer.
That first week, I discovered that Don was also in my English and science classes. I don’t remember when we actually started to talk. I think it was in that very first week, but I really can’t be sure. It was around the same time as my first cross-country meet. I have no idea what we talked about, but I assume that I probably started flirting pretty quickly.
My status as smart and bitchy at grade school had kept the boys there from having any interest in me. There were a few exceptions, but I always jumped to the conclusion that they only asked me out of desperation. One guy called my house and asked me to go to a dance with him. I called him a loser and told him to get lost. Oddly enough, I ended up going to the eighth grade dance with him.
So, despite the fact that Don resembled a goat, I was flattered to have caught his attention. We spent many classes passing a notebook between us and not paying any attention to science or English. We wrote to each other about our families, our classes, and our weird little quirks.
At the end of September, he asked me out at a football game. It was by chance that I even attended the game. I had had a cross-country meet that day, and when we got back my sister had wanted to go to the football game with her friends. Since she was my ride I had no choice but to go along.
The cool night air was refreshing as I sat on the bleachers with the band. I moved my fingers in imitation of playing my saxophone as all my friends played Louie Louie. The melodies of the band fell short as the buzzer sounded announcing the beginning of the second half.
“Come on let’s get something to eat,” Jen said gesturing to Don, Rebecca, and I.
“That sounds good,” Rebecca agreed as she put away her flute.
“When do you have to play again?” I asked.
“Not till the fourth quarter,” Don answered, “Do you want to join them?”
“Sure, but I’m not hungry. The cross country team stopped for dinner on the way back from our meet.”
“Well, neither am I. Do you want to just walk with me?” He asked.
“Sure,” I answered pleased by the suggestion.
He grabbed my hand and we walked around the track that encircled the football field. I knew the track well from running on it during practices, but somehow it seemed different. As we got to the far side he turned to me, “I want to ask you something.”
“Okay,” I began, “What?”
“I was hoping that maybe you would be my girlfriend.”
“Sure,” I responded quickly.
“Great,” he smiled, grabbed my hand and started to walk back towards the bleachers pulling me with him.
“Let’s go under,” he said with a grin as we reached the bleachers.
“What?” I asked “What would we do there?”
“We could talk.”
“Isn’t it gross under there?”
“No, come see.”
“Alright,” I agreed. We walked to underneath where the band was sitting. The grass was damp and there were leaves all over, but no piles of trash like I had thought there would be.
I rode home from the game that night with my sister. I told her that Don had asked me out. She just kind of shrugged. I don’t think I ever did anything that impressed my sister. Tanya and I had always been very different people. In school, she was perfect. Her grades were perfect and she was everyone’s friend. If Tanya didn’t like someone they never knew it.
To me, it seemed that Tanya could do no wrong, while on the other hand I seemed to mess everything up. I would think that I had finally managed to do something right, only to discover that once again I had messed up.