The Lonely Girl
The lonely Girl
The head bangers had staked out a spot about twenty-five feet from us. They had been there for hours. They had drunk themselves sober and were now arguing over who had the nicest hair, White Snake or Motley Crew! Their heavy metal blaring across the courtyard made it hard for us to hear ourselves think. I was with my friends Deana, Jessie and Mary Kay. The lone girl with them was Dawn, a sister of Fish, one of the head bangers. We knew her from school. We all thought Dawn to be very strange. She never talked to anyone, except her brother. It didn’t seem that she had any friends of her own; she just seemed to tag along with Fish and his fellow head bangers. She was never a part of our group. She would never be good enough to be one of us.
Although I have never spoken a word to them, Fish and Dawn lived a few houses down from me. They shared the same mother, but had different fathers. My mom and my Aunts sit around on the porch and talk about their mom. They say that she is a drunk and a slut, always out in the bars all of hours of the night. She doesn’t care if the kids are home alone, or if they have eaten or even if they come home at all. We were told to stay away from them; we were not allowed to talk to them in or out of school. That was fine by me; I didn’t have anything to say to them anyway. They were too weird for me.
Since my friend Mary Kay knew Fish from biology class, we nominated her to go ask them to lower the radio. Not wanting her to go by herself, I walked over with her. As soon as we were in front of them, one of the older boys in the group, someone we didn’t know, stood up and said “Wassup’ ladies, looking for some weed?” I couldn’t believe that he just asked if we wanted weed! What a stupid jerk! We’re not like them, we’re better. They’re just gross, pot heads with no future. I was so mad that I could’ve smacked him in the mouth. Of course, I didn’t. I was scared of them, so I just stood there next to Mary Kay, staring back into the face of a head banger.
Mary Kay told them that we didn’t want weed, we wanted to know if they could please lower the radio. We wanted to talk without having to shout over the music. They all laughed at us and told us to go home to our mommies and play with our Barbies. Instead of saying anything back to them, we turned and walked as fast as we could to our friends. We knew that we should just let it go and head to the other side of the courtyard. If it got bad enough, we could always go to Mary Kay’s house to sit on the porch. None of us wanted to start a fight with those guys. They were such idiots! As we walked to the other side, we heard them holler out, “Look at the little girls running home to tell mommy.” We ignored them.
We could still hear them hollering at the other side of the courtyard, we ignored them. Deana, being the more sensitive one of us, began to get nervous. She wanted to go home. There was no way out of the courtyard except to climb through the hole in the fence, on the other side. We had to walk by the head bangers to leave! Sticking close together, we walked by them, not looking at them and not saying a word. We were hoping that if we just walked on by, they would leave us alone. Not a chance they began to tease us some more. The one boy who asked us if we wanted weed stood in front of us and wanted to know why we were leaving. He said that we should stay and party some with them. I
Nervous, I kept looking over at the street, hoping that someone would see us and come to help. We tried to walk around him. Some of the other boys came over to get in on his teasing. Dawn stayed sitting on the fire escape, watching us. Not knowing what to do, I stood in front of the boy and shouted at him to leave us alone, that we would scream really loud and go get the cops. They all laughed at us. All of a sudden they had us in the middle of a circle. Deana was crying. Jessie was holding her hand, telling her that it was going to be ok. The only thing that I could think of doing was push the boy down, so that was what I did. I was so mad, he fell right back on his butt onto the hard concrete courtyard. His friends laughed at him on the ground. That only made him madder. He jumped up and grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back. He pushed me up against the wall of the school. My face, pressed up against the wall, hurt.
Mary Kay trying to grab my arm free was held back by one of the head bangers. Deana and Jessie were still in the middle of the circle. All of a sudden the radio was shut off. We heard a loud girl’s voice yelling “let them go now!” It was Dawn. Walking over to the head bangers, she told them they better let us go. If they didn’t, she was going to get the cops. Dawn yelled at them to start acting their age. She called them idiots and jerks. Her brother Fish was the first one to back off. He looked at his sister and told her that he would talk to her at home. She told him, “Whatever.” The other head bangers let us go.
We ran to the hole in the fence and climbed through quickly. We decided not to say anything to our parents because they would never let us hang out in the courtyard again if they knew. So we kept this to ourselves. Back at school on Monday, we saw Dawn. We didn’t know if we should go thank her or something. So after acting like a bunch of jerks, we thought that we would write her a note. When no one was looking, we shoved it in her locker during lunch. After school that day we walked over to Lincoln Park to hang out before we had to go home. Dawn was there by the fountain. Waving us over, she handed us each a cigarette. It turns out Dawn was not a strange girl, just unsure of others. With a brother like Fish, who can blame her? Dawn has an awesome personality, we have been friends ever since.
