The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills Read Online Free PDF Page A

could tell. In their presence, I felt all my worst physical flaws sharpening into stark focus: My shoulder blades stuck out like a stegosaurus’s spines; I had eyebrows like two woolly caterpillars trying to mate; skinny arms; hair the color of paper grocery bags; and the long legs and feet of a frog….
    I’d been bursting to tell Margo about my encounter with Jimmy, but now I wanted to wait until the BRGs weren’t so close. I’d permanently move to a remote Polynesian village if they ever heard me gushing about Jimmy.
    “Who’d you talk to? What was it you were so excited to tell me?” Margo asked.
    “Oh, you know,” I said quickly, thinking of Jimmy’s face and voice while trying to avoid the gaze of the BRGs. “Just things. Always things.”
    We got glasses of sweet iced tea and took our usual table, but even as we were pulling out our chairs, I felt something — the cold realization that the popular girls’ gaze had shifted to us. We’d somehow managed to attract their idling, carnivorous attention.
    Theresa Rose called out to us. “Hey, Margo,” she said in her syrupy voice, “love the shirt! Very edgy, very fashion-forward!”
    ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
The leader of the rival tribe offers a challenge. In this setting, that challenge comes in the form of sarcasm: direct address with a wicked mock-compliment.
    The BRGs looked at us expectantly, waiting for Margo to respond to TR’s comment. Instead, Margo glared at the wall, not answering. There was a rustle, and then three pairs of well-shaved legs, all fragrant with spray tanner, were coming toward us. TR giggled, more than she needed to, playing up her double-edged friendliness. She was the de facto leader of the BRGs, alpha bitch, legend among Melva girls and guys alike ever since she’d supposedly shaved her crotch as an eighth-grader and flashed it for five high school guys during a game of truth or dare behind the Girl Scout hut in the city park. She and her pack surrounded us, looming above the table where we sat. Margo shivered beside me.
    ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
By remaining standing, thus maximizing their physical presence, the BRGs exert dominance over the weaker, lesser tribe.
    “Hey, Margo, I don’t think you heard me. Oh, hi, Janice,” TR said, nodding at each of us. “I’m thinking of joining Science Club. Is it too late in the year?” She smirked at me.
    “And you’re entering Miss Livermush, right, Janice? Or will you have scientific obligations — excuse me, anthropological ones — that you need to attend to?” Tabitha added.
    I hunched my shoulders in an awkward, nonresponsive shrug. Margo elbowed me, hissing, “We have to say something back! TR can’t just do this!”
    I shook my head. I was an anthropologist. An observer. Indeed, it was because of TR that I became an anthropologist in the first place. In seventh grade, I’d been stricken with the self-destructive urge to try out for middle school cheerleading. Yes, Janice Wills, Gangly McGangles, had wanted to be a
cheerleader
. Don’t ask me from where this impulse had come, but with true monomaniacal madness, I’d been consumed with the desire to dance around and do splits and smile my face off. (I could not and cannot dance. I could not and cannot do splits. And I don’t smile excessively. I am, generally speaking, not a performative person.) I blame this whole episode on temporary insanity.
    Anyway, I’d sheepishly, eagerly shown up at tryouts. TR, the team captain, quickly nicknamed me “Stilts the Clown” and“Wobbles” after I fell (more than once) during the routines. Needless to say, Stilts the Clown had not made the middle school cheerleading squad. When I’d found out and gone home crying (at my lapse in judgment and subsequent humiliation more than anything), my mom had said to me, “Oh, darling. Sometimes to make it through these years, you just have to step back. Become an anthropologist when you need to, you know? Observe the behaviors