Sophomore Year Is Greek to Me (9 page)

Suddenly there's no more time left to run around Athens playing visitor—or new resident, anyway. It's my first official day at the Greek International School.

According to my handy brochure, it's K–12, state of the art, has students from all over the world (including Greek kids who want a better education than the public schools offer), everyone is required to speak fluent English . . . and I don't want to go.

Please let me find one person to hang out with,
I think as I sit on the train clutching my backpack against my knees.
Just one.
I feel strongly that the universe should grant my request, especially since I didn't also wish for there to be a super cute guy who will immediately fall in love with me. That has to count for something, right?

I get off at my stop, check the map on my phone for the eighteenth time, and start walking through a small plaza. I can feel my heart racing and I try to tell myself to calm down:
It's just school, it's just what you've been doing for pretty much your whole life, only in a different place. Talking to people is not hard, and you will be fine. Pretend it's all research for a story.

My internal pep talk isn't helping. My mouth is dry and my palms are wet. I try to imagine Hilary and Matty walking beside me. Trying to calm my nerves, I think of the most complicated vocabulary words I can:
Abnegate. Rapacious. Extrapolate. Persiflage.
I turn down a little path and come to a massive gate; it reminds me of prisons I've seen in movies.

This doesn't look very promising at all.

I walk past a security guard booth and into a big courtyard with a lawn surrounded by a bunch of buildings. Little kids with giant backpacks are being herded by teachers, older kids are in clusters comparing homework and laughing. It looks . . . well, it looks a lot like my school in Manhattan, actually. I relax a bit.

I have only a vague idea of where I'm going as I try to find the administrative office to get my schedule and check in as a new student. I get sucked in to the sea of students who, as I look more closely, all appear to be dressed like the kids back home. Another notch of tension dissipates—at least I won't be the weird new kid dressed totally wrong.

For the first time since I got to Athens, everyone around me is actually speaking English. It's crazy how that sounds strange all of a sudden, being able to understand people's conversations and not just letting the sounds drift over me.

When I get to the third floor, I ask a tall girl where to find the admin office, and it turns out I'm actually in the wrong building. I feel like an idiot, but she tells me her name is Maria and offers to walk me over to the right place, which is really sweet. I feel less awkward having someone to walk with.

“You just moved here?” she asks in totally unaccented English.

“For the rest of the year, yes. I mean, not permanently,” I stumble.

“Oh, interesting. Parent's job or something?”

“My dad's, yeah. He's a—” Before I can explain, Maria's cell rings in her bag.

“Sorry—forgot to turn it to vibrate. Hang on.” She fiddles with her phone for a second, and by the time she looks up at me again, we're outside.

As we head into the correct building, an older woman points at her wrist as if to say
Don't you miscreants know you're late for class?
but Maria just smiles and we turn down a corridor. The walls are covered with pictures painted by little kids.

“They moved the admin offices to the Lower School last year—it's confusing,” Maria explains when she sees me looking. “Anyway, here you are. Good luck—I'm sure I'll see you around. I gotta run to class.” And with another big smile, she's gone.

Well, at least she was nice. And I'm not lost. So far, so good.

I was assigned a buddy to take me around the first few days, a girl who is in all my classes. She's really nice, but kind of a
lot.
Exactly the type of person who would volunteer to
be
a buddy: she's very chatty, involved in lots of activities (which she tells me about at lightning speed every time we change classes), very “on” in general. Her name is Artemis, which I had no idea was an actual name outside of
The Odyssey,
and she's pretty great about introducing me in every class. Her little speech about my being from New York City and living in Greece just for the rest of the year saves me from having to do anything at all except smile and sit down. Basically, my dream come true.

By the end of second period I've figured out that Artemis is the Tracy Flick of our grade. She's the girl who always raises her hand, always points out other kids' mistakes (or the teacher's), and is never late or skips an extra credit project or doesn't run for student government. Like the super nerdy guy who asks too many questions and makes the other kids groan, or the kid who flat-out refuses to pay attention in class and gets sent to detention every other day, every grade in every school has an Artemis. I wonder briefly if being associated with her will be bad for my street cred, but then remember I don't actually have any and get over it. After all, she is (at this point) the only person I know at all.

But as glad as I am to have someone answering my questions and making sure I don't get lost, Artemis is definitely not someone I would choose to hang out with. She's nice enough, as I said, but just . . . too
much.
I can't process her. So I'm not that distressed when she tells me she has to run to her locker after fourth period, but she'll come find me later.

As I drift into the cafeteria (easily found by following the masses on their way there), I realize it doesn't really matter that I don't have anyone to sit with. I have a cell phone to play with, a book I can pretend to read (or even
actually
read), and a million new pages of school stuff to memorize—the layout of the campus, the order of my classes, my teachers' impossible-to-pronounce names. All I have to do is get food without humiliating myself and find a place to perch and I'll be set.

I get in line and am immediately crestfallen. It's not like I expected the food to be amazing, but when I look at my choices, I don't really know what anything is. No grilled cheese sandwiches or plain pasta here;
everything
is covered with olives or weird breading or drenched in mysterious sauce. I can practically feel the people behind me growing impatient, so I step out of line with an empty tray, looking around desperately for a nice safe granola bar or potato chip section.

“Not too appetizing, is it?” a girl behind me says. I turn, not entirely sure the comment is directed at me. Sure enough, there's a pretty dark-haired girl holding a paper bag. “I hate heavy food. You want to share my PB&J?”

“I—I don't want to take your—” I start, surprised.

“Oh, I'm really not that hungry today. Had a big breakfast, so . . .” She shrugs. “Anyway, you're in my history class. I'm Lilena. Lilena Vobras. I love your earrings.”

“I'm Zona. And thanks,” I say, my hand instinctively going up to my right ear. The earrings are made out of soft leather that's copper on one side and bright blue suede on the other, and they're shaped like lightning bolts. I wore them for good luck. “My best friend makes them,” I continue, falling into step with Lilena as she heads for a table near the windows. “My best friend at home, I mean.”

By now we're standing beside a table full of kids, some of whom I recognize from my classes. Lilena slides into an empty seat. “Do you want to sit down?” she asks me. So I do.

The other kids stop talking and look at me, but not in a suspicious, who's-the-girl-invading-our-table way. Lilena points to each person in turn, making introductions. The school population is really diverse, and this lunch table is no exception. Everyone seems friendly and totally cool with my joining them. I guess I was expecting more typical cliquey cafeteria behavior, and my shoulders relax yet another small notch.

Lilena opens her lunch bag and takes out a sandwich, an orange, and a bottle of water. She gives me half the sandwich and the orange, and when I protest she reminds me about her big breakfast. I'm so hungry that finally I just take it. I notice the two girls sitting across from me exchanging a look, but it passes so quickly that I figure it's probably nothing.

“So, you're from New York, yes?” asks a guy whose name I've already forgotten. He has an accent that I can't place.

“Yes, born and raised,” I answer around a bite of peanut butter. I haven't been able to find regular peanut butter in the grocery store near our apartment—does Lilena have a secret stash? Also, I can't believe I just said “born and raised” out loud. I hate when people do that, like they have to prove they're cool enough to be from New York. Ugh. I remind myself to chew and swallow and also to breathe.

“What about you?” I ask him—Nikos! Nikos is his name!—in an attempt to recover.

A girl with a blond pixie cut across from me giggles. “Where
isn't
he from?” She pokes him in the arm. “Portugal, Arizona, Indonesia, Dubai, Greece . . .”

Nikos smiles at her. “You forgot Italy, but that was otherwise pretty good. Have you been writing a blog about me, Ashley?” I like the way he talks, and his accent makes more sense to my ears now—it isn't really from anywhere, more like
everywhere.
I wonder if he and Ashley are a couple, the way they tease each other. Nikos looks at me. “My father works for a world bank. We're on a free world tour, as my mother likes to say.”

I laugh. “So you were born in Portugal?”

“Yes, but we're Greek. My mother insisted we come back to Athens, finally. That was when I was in eighth grade.”

“Yeah, now we're stuck with him!” Lilena chimes in, and everyone at the table laughs. She's only nibbled around the edge of her half of the sandwich and is sort of playing with it by rolling bits of the bread into tiny balls. Oh, how I wish I were eating it instead! I try not to think about it.

“Here you are!” I hear over my shoulder. Artemis. I turn around and smile, unsure whether I should get up and go with her or what. I sort of feel like her project, but I was just starting to get to know these new kids, and it doesn't seem like they're friends with her.

To my surprise, Nikos stands up. “Do you want to sit?” Now it's Artemis who seems torn, as her friend is waving to her from across the room.

“Oh, thanks, Nikos.” She smiles. “Melody and I were going to go over a paper, actually . . . but you seem good here, Zona. Want to find me after?” I nod, and she wends her way over to her friend. Nikos sits back down.

“That was nice of you,” I say to him. I can't imagine one of the guys at home being so polite; Matty's really the only civilized boy in our school as far as I'm concerned (Ben Walker doesn't count, as he's in his own category). Of course, Matt just loves to remind me and Hilary that he prides himself on being a feminist, which, according to him, means letting women stand instead of offering his seat. God, I miss that little jerk.

Nikos shrugs, looking away. “It's nothing.”

The girl next to Ashley pipes up. She has a very cute, very high-pitched voice and an English accent. “We don't really hang out with Artemis outside of school, but she's fine. I mean, we don't have cliques here like in the States. No one gets chased away from the lunch table like in
Mean Girls
or that sort of thing.”

I feel myself blushing, as though I'm somehow responsible for the reputation of American teens being jerks. Also because it's exactly what I'd been thinking. If I went over to a lunch table where I didn't usually sit at home, most likely no one would offer me a seat and it would be weird. But then again, I would never do that.

I'm mentally forming an idea for an article about cafeteria politics in different countries when Lilena leans over. “Yeah, I was surprised, too, at first. I got here a year ago, from Chicago. My family moves around a lot, and it really is different that way. People are just kinda friends with everyone here. It's very cool, actually.”