Chapter One—Welcome to Florida and Amy O
Have you ever wanted a best friend, someone who will do anything for you? Well, Amy O is that girl. Amy O is smart, sassy, strange, quirky, and loveable. She is difficult but nice, and my best friend, ever.
I remember exactly how we met… Public School Central Florida # 6 had just let out for the day. I was a new seventh grader at the middle school located about a mile from my house. I had just moved into a three bedroom ranch block/stucco home in a development in Central Florida. Each house looked the same except for the occasional orange house whose owners must have been color blind. It was a beautiful September day, sunny and mild. Yes, each each day always looked the same, sunny or partly sunny. Don’t get me wrong, I like sunshine, but it does get boring.
I was scurrying out the door of good old CF #6 when I accidentally bumped into some tall, big kid wearing a blue and orange basketball jersey, (a Gators’ wannabe).
“Hey you, Baby Hippo, watch who you’re bumping into!” He pushed me aside and my backpack shifted from the 20 pound weight of my new textbooks causing me to lurch and fall to the ground. He laughed with his buddies while I stared and imprinted his zitty freckled face with his big front teeth to my brain so as never to be in his path again.
I remembered hearing, “Hey, you, are you okay?” I felt a hand tug at my sleeve as I tried to get up without success. I lay there feeling helpless, flailing my arms and legs like a big overturned turtle.
“Here,” she said, in a comforting voice. “Let’s get you out of your backpack first.” Slipping out of the straps, I scrambled to my feet. In front of me stood a tall, thin, girl with long dark curly, ginormous hair and olive skin.
She began to brush the sand off my backpack while telling me not to pay any attention to the sports jock who by now had disappeared around the corner of the building. No need—I had already forgotten him—not. She stuck out her hand to me and said, “Hi, I’m Amy O, and that’s with one “O”, ha, ha.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, “my name’s Olive—with one “O” too, I guess.” She laughed. We started walking and during our conversation discovered we lived in the same development. I lived at 5210 67th Place and she lived at 5210 67th Street. We lived only a block apart in almost identical tan and brown homes on almost identical numbered streets and had the same house number! But,whatever happened to streets with real names like back near Buffalo, New York in a small town where I used to live? I missed seeing street names like Ivy, Cook Avenue, and Valley View.
I had seen her (that hair was hard to miss) in one of my classes. I really hadn’t gotten into many conversations with anyone but the guidance counselor who had taken me to my homeroom and left me with nothing but a schedule; but I was used to it. I had moved three times in the last five years. It was the woman’s first year at her new job. Duh, like I couldn’t tell. “Hey, you’re doing fine,” I said, thinking to myself, what could be worse on a first day than to have a counselor take you to your first class who didn’t know any more than you did? The woman stopped to ask for directions while I pretended to be invisible.
Being invisible is something that I do very well, except for one thing. I’m not invisible and being heavier than others my age makes me stand out. I better tell you right now that I guess I’m not pretty. You see, if you’re overweight, you can’t be pretty. Now you can have a pretty face, but you’re not really pretty. People say to me, “Oh, you have such a pretty face; too bad you don’t lose some weight”. You see, unless you have a pretty body to match your face, you’re not pretty. To be pretty, you have to be thin.
Do you wanna know what I look like? I have light brown wavy hair, freckles on my nose, brown eyes, glasses, and a body like a round beach ball. There, I said it.
So here we are. I’m plump Olive with only a pretty face and I am in my new school as a seventh grader. I had spent the day trying to figure out the teachers, find my way to my next class, write down my homework assignments and generally pray that I could make it through the day without any incident. As you know by now, that didn’t happen.
But I did meet Amy O and that has made the difference. Amy and I are buddies now. I know we look like two odd girls—one short, one tall, one plump, one thin, one light, one darker. But we do have something in common; we are both an only child. I think children who grow up without brothers and sisters have it rough. Why? We don’t know how to act around kids our own age; we have no one to practice on. But give us an adult to relate to, we become pros. I don’t expect much from kids my own age. That’s why Amy surprised me.
|