My middle school career was rudely interrupted in the early part of sixth grade when we received a transfer student from a neighboring community. She stood in the front of the class one morning, from out of nowhere, and the teacher introduced her with great enthusiasm.
“Class, this is Elizabeth Lerner. Please make her feel welcome here.” The teacher smiled brightly. “Elizabeth, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?”
I had a sudden tremor in my heart. What was this? What was going on?
“Hi, I’m Elizabeth, but everyone can call me Lizzie.” She beamed. Her brown hair was pulled into pigtails that curled in ringlets beneath two pink satin ribbons. They bounced, mesmerizing, with each bob of her head. Her dress was also pink, with white trim, and her tights were white and lacy. Black Mary Janes protected her feet from the elements.
It was at this moment that I knew I had met my mortal enemy.
The cute girl.
Here was the one who would steal from me the spotlight I worked hard and long to keep, but not because of any redeeming qualities she had striven for. She was inherently cute, and that, that alone, would be the reason praise was heaped upon her. I knew this instinctively, and just as instinctively, I hated her.
“I used to go to school in Westford, but my parents moved, so now I’m coming here. I like kitties and reading and my favorite color is pink.” Her smile had not faded one bit. “I also do ballet.”
“Isn’t that nice, class?” the teacher asked, smiling benevolently.
I rolled my eyes, fortunately unnoticed. What grade was this girl in, anyway? Pink? Ballet? We were practically in high school, for crying out loud.
“Lizzie, why don’t you go sit next to Margaret?” The teacher pointed, and with a smile, a few steps, my enemy in pink sat primly and cutely beside me.
“Hi, I’m Lizzie,” she said to me quietly, glowing rosily beside me.
“I know,” I said, my voice hard, and turned to the teacher.
She looked surprised for a moment, and I almost felt guilty, but then class began.
Life proceeded in this manner for some time. At recess, Lizzie would go out, and all the other girls would beg to play with her. The boys never pulled her hair or made fun of her, and they brought her fruit snacks out of their lunches. The teachers called on her with enthusiasm, and never scolded her when she was wrong. She was always nice and polite to everyone, and endearingly cute, and I hated her more than anything I’d ever known.
The frustration grew slowly, seeping in through cracks in my armor. Her projects were always put on display, even when mine were right and hers were just pretty. She got stickers on her tests when she did poorly to encourage her to get better grades, and my perfect scores were ignored. Slowly she began to take over my place in the school that I had worked so hard for.
Late on a Wednesday, the teacher was arranging well-done tests on the wall for a parent’s night. I had stayed a bit late to finish some reading before my mother came to pick me up. I went to see what she was putting up.
Displayed prominently on the wall was Lizzie’s paper. It was a science test that many children in the class had passed easily. One by one, I read all the names and noticed that mine and several others were missing.
My teacher greeted me warmly. “Hello, Margaret.”
I wasted no time on formalities. “Where’s my paper?”
“Well, I’ll be handing it back to your mother and father when they come tonight.”
Fear seized my throat. “I didn’t… I didn’t pass?” I was sure that I had done very well on that test. Science was one of my best subjects.
“No, you did fine.”
“Then why-”
“Well, your schoolwork is always so good that I felt we had to share space with some other children.”
Of course. Of course. I blinked, and found that my eyes had teared up a bit. “Okay. I’ll go home now.” Before she could say anything to me, I grabbed my bag and exited the room.
When my mother returned that evening and handed me my paper, I silently accepted it. It had a large 100 on it in red, and no sticker.
“I hate her,” I confided in my best friend Jill. We were swinging at recess, slowly, watching the children spread out over the playground.
“Who?” She kicked her legs back and forth a little, dark hair pulled tightly back.
“Lizzie. I hate her.”
She glanced at me, confused. “Why?”
“Because. Everyone likes her for no reason. And she made the teacher stop liking me.” Bitterness was sharp in my mouth.
She laughed a little. “Is that all, Margaret?”
“Is that all!” I exclaimed with righteous indignation. “The teacher wouldn’t even put my paper on the wall! And she never gets the answers right! And everyone still likes her all the time and never me anymore!”
Jill pondered this a moment. She did not love Lizzie as everyone else did, but I didn’t think she hated her. What came out of her mouth, I did not expect. “So let’s do something to her.”
“What?”
“Let’s do something mean so she goes away. Back to wherever it was she came from.”
I frowned deeply. “I don’t think that’ll work.”
“Then we’ll do something so she’ll cry and not want to come back.”
“Well…”
“And then the teacher will like us again.” She looked at me and her eyes were dark. Jill had a bit of a mean streak, but she was all right if she liked you. I was pleased that she didn’t like Lizzie.
“I thought the teacher liked you.”
“My paper wasn’t up either. None of my papers were up. At least you had that history project on the back table. My parents came home and asked me where my work was and I had to tell them that I didn’t know.” Her voice was low and cold. I realized I hadn’t paid much attention to the others who had been neglected when Lizzie’s magical aura had started to dazzle our classroom. This was a good idea.
“Okay, let’s do it. What should we do?” I started swinging a little faster, urged on by my impending triumph.
“Something mean.”
“Really mean.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah!” And I shouted to the whole world as I swung, intent and victorious.
The first plan was simple. She was very girly, so if we did something gross, she would scream and run away. The nightcrawlers took us three days to find - ice fishing is not completely uncommon, but still fairly rare - but once we had them, we were sure our plan would work.
New England winters are cold and snowy, and like most of our classmates, she brought winter boots for going outside and indoor shoes for time in class. Jill would ask to go to the bathroom during class, sneak into the coatroom, dump the worms into her boots, and come back innocently to class. It would be perfect.
But it was not.
Indeed, Jill left the class at the planned time to go pick up the nightcrawlers we had stored in the bathroom beside the toilet in the handicapped stall. And she returned, but with a sick expression her face. I knew something had happened. I waited until she passed by my desk and dropped a note.
With a covertness even the FBI would envy, I opened it inside my book. The message was dishearteningly short: “Worms gone. J.”
I turned to my left to where she sat, three rows over and one back, to give her a horrified look. I mouthed two words, “New plan,” and that was all.
The second plan was more elaborate. Instead of night crawlers in her shoes, we would steal her winter coat so she would have to stay in at recess and freeze while she waited for her mother. This was truly evil, because it would make her look as if she had misplaced her coat, and that she would be cold from her own foolishness. I felt gloriously insidious, as it would be my job to steal the coat and hide it.
The day of the plan, we waited for her to show up. Homeroom passed, and the first class, and the second.
Jill and I kept looking at each other throughout class, as time passed, and she still did not show up. Of all the days to be sick, she had to pick this one.
At lunch time, between bites of peanut butter and jelly, I declared one thing in anger: “Plan C.”
Perhaps this plan was both the simplest and the most dangerous. Before we got out to be picked up by buses or parents, we would corner her and pull her hair and tell her to her face we didn’t like her. Jill and I had steeled ourselves; if she told, we would most definitely get in trouble. But we prayed that someone would listen to reason; there would be two of us, where she only had herself on her side. Justice would have to win out, though in this case, it would be justice on our terms.
All day, Jill and I watched the clock ease its way around the circle of the frame. Lizzie kept prattling all throughout the day, answering questions cheerfully and responding with her usual pep. She had no idea what awaited her. This thrilled me, this sense of control over someone else’s fate.
The bell rang and Jill and I leapt out of our seats. We gathered our stuff the fastest we ever had before and raced outside to where we knew Lizzie’s mom picked her up. Everyone else but her took the bus, unless after-school activities kept them. Now was our moment of glory. Now was our triumph.
Sure enough, she came around the corner, alone. The sounds of laughing children had dissipated from the hall and the buses idled in the front. Jill and I dropped our bags so we could have both of our hands free.
She stopped as she saw us, confused. “Hi, Margaret. Hi, Jill. What’s going on?”
Suddenly my courage faltered. Glancing at me and sensing this, Jill moved forward until she was almost in Lizzie’s face. “We don’t like you,” she said darkly, her voice iron. She reached out, and with one swift motion, yanked on a brown pigtail, disrupting the ringlets and pulling off a pink ribbon.
The shock and horror that crossed Lizzie’s face spurred me on. There was another pigtail for me. I reached for it suddenly, and she tried to pull away as she realized what I was doing. She was too slow, and I yanked with all my might, wrenching out the ribbon. Satisfaction flooded my veins as she cried out.
Tears were welling up in her eyes, and I found this horribly fascinating. This was for all of those times she had stolen my praise, my spotlight, my stickers. I shoved her a little, gleeful. “Go away! We don’t want you here!”
“We hate you,” Jill added, just as exhilarated as I was. We kept moving towards her, over her, menacing. Out of desperation, she finally grabbed her bag, pushed herself between us, and flew out the door. As she ran, I noted with satisfaction that her pigtails had nearly fallen out and the ribbons were in our possession. I had several strands of her hair in my hand. I pocketed them, to keep for voodoo later.
Jill and I gave each other satisfied smirks, then collected our belongings and moved towards the waiting buses.
She did not wear pigtails the next day, or the next, or the next. She never wore them again as long as she was in our school. This was the most satisfying experience of my sixth grade year.