white boys (river phoenix)

33

Chapter Thirty Three

    (Friday.) It was a day before homecoming, and Robin still didn't have her dress. She wasn't particularly worried though, as it wasn't really her own fault, since she'd been asked on such late notice, and she also had a lot of pretty gowns and dresses she could pull off as homecoming dresses. No one would criticize her for wearing last year's prom dress, since no one knew her last year. She wasn't really depending on looking like the best-dressed there, she'd rather leave that to Stacey so they didn't have another run in with each other. Even if it weren't for Stacey's borderline sociopathic outburst just a week ago, she wouldn't have wanted to make a big fuss out of her dress and hair and makeup anyways. Besides, Robin considered herself a fairly well-dressed, fashionable person, so it wouldn't take four salon trips and three thousand boutique outings just to find the right dress and look.

    Anyway, she wasn't particularly worried about that today. After all, it was the homecoming game, meaning she still had a day and a half to get herself a dress. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a t-shirt that said "FENWAY HIGH '87" with a picture of the Lochness monster, their mascot, on the back. She wore the UCLA sweatshirt her dad had given her around her waist, and her hair was in a light curl. She was on her couch with her feet sprawled out, waiting for her friends to pick her up, browsing aimlessly through television channels.

    The whole week was themed around homecoming, nicknamed "HOCO Week." Students were a lot more cheerful the whole week, as pep rallies happened almost daily in the gym. Monday was decades day, and Robin dressed up as a seventies "hot mamma", which gained a lot of unwarranted attention, mainly from Feldman. Tuesday was costume day, and Robin was a Pink Lady from Grease. Wednesday was culture day, something they had never had at Robin's old school, and she bought her Ethiopian flag to school and wore the flag colors, and not one person judged her or looked at her funny. Thursday was color wars, where each grade was given a different color to wear in "competition" with each other. Lastly, Friday was school spirit day, where kids dressed in the school colors, which were blue and green. It was a fantastic week, and every day, everyone (esecially River) had something sweet to say.

    But what stuck out to her was the fact that on culture day, River brought both a German flag and a Venezuelan flag, and carried it around for part of the day. When Robin asked him why, he said it was because he had lived in a lot of different places over the years and only recently settled in Boston, but that he most closely associated with Venezuela because he had lived there in poverty with his family and sang on the streets for money with his siblings. It was an endearing story, and made Robin feel like maybe she judged people too fast, just like other people judged her too fast, based on looks. It was overall an interesting week, and Robin wished her school had done the same. She was almost overjoyed that she had moved to such a different place, around such a different community and different people.

    "Aw, Birdy, your last homecoming game!" her mother squealed, coming out of nowhere with a rusty polaroid camera clutched tightly in her hand.

    Robin rolled her eyes and flipped over on the couch, hiding her face with her hands and groaning,

    "Mom, no flash photography."

    "Oh you shush," her mother growled. She then began to whine. "Come oooonnn, Birdy, it's your last homecoming game, I wanna make it count! One for the books."

    "Mom. Leave. Me. Alone."

Her mother sighed obnoxiously, but then seemed to perk up once a lightbulb went on over her head,

    "Okay, if you don't let me take pictures now, alone, I'm just gonna force your friends to get in them once they arrive."

    Robin hopped up off the couch abruptly, nearly falling off of it, and shouted,