We Grew up in Gramercy Park

That Fall Exactly- Chapter 1

"Here," calls out Marin from the back of the cab.

It lets me out right in front of my building's grey awning on Gramercy Park.

"I told you it would be worth skipping that dumb show for!" Her blue eyes flash with a satisfaction.

Her gold bangled arm comfortably hangs over the open window. It drapes against the yellow painted cab door as if she owns it.

"And look – even home by eleven on a Wednesday. We're such good girls!" The cab jerks her long dark hair back when it peels around the corner.

I barely wave and squint in the bright lights of our lobby. In the elevator I pop a piece of vanilla peppermint gum into my warm mouth. I try to fix my smudged eyeliner.

When I get out of the elevator on the twenty first floor I head right instead of left where our apartment door is. The staircase is cold and empty. My footsteps make a sandpaper noise on the steps up. The air outside is full of bite and when the door to the roof slams behind me I scare myself. Around the corner past the wooden deck chairs and table that no one ever uses. "The Do Not Trespass" sign is rusty from years of urban acid rain and snow that clings to it all winter. I take a big step over the smooth thick metal rope that holds the sign and I look up at the metal ladder on the side of the elevator shaft. Each step is precarious and I make sure not to misplace my step, or my foot will slide and get stuck in between the thin rungs and the brick wall. It happened this summer and it hurt like a mother. At the top of the fifteen foot climb I lean against a small four foot wall on top of the scattered pebbles. The pebbles spread under my jeans. I can feel a slight rumble below me, but it's hard to notice when ahead of me I'm confronted with the thousands of sparkling lights of the city roofs framed by dark strips of unlit alleys and sky. I relax and sink into my private resting place. There are no railings up here, so it's important that I remain fairly motionless. It's only a fifteen foot by fifteen foot platform and falling off means tumbling down twenty two stories of Manhattan air. And yet, because no one knows I'm up here. it's the one place I feel completely safe.

_____

When explaining about slowly losing her sight, my favorite Great Aunt Irene says, "If I don't laugh I'll cry, and I would rather laugh."

This sums up much of my sentiments towards school.

She also says, "If you bang your head against the wall, you're only going to get a headache".

Ergo, I try not to think about school unless I'm forced to.

Like most normal human beings, I hate weekday mornings.

My mom says, "Have a great day!" and I think, "Really? Do you not know where I'm going?"

Today it's a breezy 62 degrees, I comb my straight brown hair that's a few inches past my shoulders, put on dark narrow jeans my Dad bought me when we met for dinner in the village last week, and throw on a blue and white fitted Le Sorbonne sweatshirt I took from my genius sister.

I leave my apartment for school at about 7:30am, when I really should leave at 7:15am. Everyone in my building appears to leave at the same time each day, and so the elevator stopd five times before we reach the lobby. Polite morning exchanges, yawns. A smile from my Polish doorman and I'm on the street at Twentieth Street on the edge of Gramercy Park.

After the bus, I hop on the 1 subway for midtown. On the walk from the subway station to school, I buy a bottle of water. To say the NY public school water fountains do anything but dribble is generous. Finally, at 8:20am, I throw open the lumpy painted blue steel public school doors and say hello to the security officer, who asks me why I'm late and how I fit all my books in such a tiny bag. (I hate walking around after 3pm with the essence of school on me, so I always wear a big purse). She hands me a late pass and I trudge up the two flights of stairs to begin my daily sentence.

In this high school, some days are so unbearable you wish you could just put on a new life, and throw yours away. And then a random day comes where you sit on top of the world with a 99% test score, and an older boy tells you you're cute, and you wish you could frame that day and wear it around your neck so that other people can know how good you can be.

My friend Nyla greets me in homeroom with an expression on her face that says, "This is not one of those days." Hers says something more along the lines of, "Look at these idiots I had to tolerate for the four minutes I sat here alone."

Her crazy long curly blonde hair is pulled back today into a poofy low bun with a woven green ribboned headband around her crown. Her tiny arms are crossed on the desk and her head is lying down on them. Today's outfit is a tight grey indie band tee shirt that shows a butterfly smoking a cigar, a black dance shrug and teal straight legged fitted jeans with a tear at the knee. I lock eyes with a look that says, "I know, I'm sorry".

It's roll call, Nyla holds up one earphone for me and we use our free ears to listen for our names. The people we are forced to spend the day with, the teachers who hate dealing with them too, this is high school. One of the loud girls laughs across the room. She doesn't laugh because she feels good, she laughs to make people the rest of us feel bad. Nyla raises the volume on the iPod.

I have two best friends who know who get me. Nyla Schmidt in school is one of them. Marin Cuyler who I'll talk to later is the other. I am friends with one, and I am friends with the other, but never in the same room. They just don't get along. This makes me feel like I am two people. Two personalities are needed to interact with each friend and make the friendship a success. Which, they are. I don't want to give either up, because if I did, I would have to give up one half of me, and then I would be half a girl, with half a life, that may not be able to expand to cover the gap. People would say, "Who is this demi person?" And I would say, "I'm still me," and they would chorus, "No you're not." And, I'd say nothing, because they'd be right.