RAYNA Chapter 1: Bad Influence

Airyn's Mom starts to think her new little friend is a bad infuence and she pulls her into a different class.

She laboriously handed me my coat, slipping in her own, and we both left for her car. Snowflakes sprinkled down and melted on our coats and stung against my skin. I tied my hair back in a messy bun and pulled my hood over my head as snow piled up in my hair, making my hair a wet mess.

Airyn, leading the way, got into her car and I felt guilty for not speaking to her right away because we both were drowning in awkwardness and regret. We haven’t spoken much since the party and we were going to try to keep it that way.  In the passenger seat, I reached for the radio when she slapped my hand away. What? We can’t have music?  When she wasn’t looking I made faces at her like a child and she turned towards me angrily when we could both hear children from a different cars bursting out into giggles. It’s not that I made faces to make her angry, it’s just an inside joke we had when we were younger. If one of us was being annoying the other one would make faces at them saying, “Stop being annoying and please shut up before I punch you so hard you’ll never sleep with both eyes closed anymore.” We still loved each other, though. And we would never punch each other. But considering the fact that in this story so far, that Airyn is mad at me, I bet she’s about ready to punch me in the face.

                “I’m so sick of this, Rayna. You’re being so obnoxious,” Airyn complained. Oh my gosh, she was being such an idiot. She knew that was our special code. Well, excuse me for trying to make her laugh and feel better.

Okay, so maybe I need to start from the beginning before we go any further. Airyn Baker was my best friend since first grade.  We did practically everything together and no one tried to change that because everyone knew we were best friends and they all knew something bad would happen to them if they came between us. One thing we loved to do was play pranks on people if they messed with our delicate little hearts.

When we had first met, Airyn was assigned a seat next to me. She seemed really annoying and geeky at first. Every day her hair split into two curly pigtails that fell at her shoulders. She wore a plaid skirt, a buttoned up shirt, and little black ballet flats. When I really started to get annoyed with her was when the teacher made us draw a picture together on one piece of paper. We were actually getting along pretty well until I drew a little ninja kicking her little pink piggy in the butt. But it hardly even looked like a pig since we were in first grade. It was two pink lopsided circles, one bigger than the other and big black holes. She had explained to me before I drew my ninja that it was pig named Polly and that she liked picnics. Once I drew the ninja I told Airyn that it was a ninja named Nini.

“But they’re awesome!” I argued, and got so angry with her for disagreeing that I scribbled all over her pig. She then scribbled on my ninja.

“There shouldn’t be a ninja!” Airyn complained. Her hands dropped the crayons and then went right for me, shoving me to the ground.  Her black curls bounced and her head bobbed as she ran back over to the teacher.

The teacher didn’t do much but keep us in for recess.  Airyn blamed me because I was the one who started her up with putting a ninja on our drawing. I beg to differ when she was the one who complained and told the teacher. But it was hard to blame each other not in regret mostly when we were BOTH inside for recess.

We had our tiny faces pressed against the windows right by the playground. That day was sort of rainy so the kids were jumping in puddles. A little girl with short brown hair was shoved by a little mischievous boy. She landed in a puddle, the puddle water splashing around her and tumbling onto her, and the little boy was laughing. He fled off to his friends before he could get caught. A teacher came over to the little girl and helped her up, checking if she was hurt. Well, I thought. At least when Airyn pushed me down there wasn’t a puddle near me. Then I chuckled to myself and immediately shut up when Airyn was looking at me.

Whenever I was inside for recess-and I was a lot, in my younger years-usually Airyn would be inside with me because we both had a lot of devious plans. When I first met her she was soft and sweet. She was a teacher’s pet, got good grades, and was outgoing. Then I guess I changed her. The only thing I didn’t change about her was getting good grades. I figured to let that be after she gushed to me how important school is to her at my house one day.

Airyn backed away from the window. “I don’t like the teacher for keeping us inside,” she whispered to me. I nodded my head, agreeing. We should have a plan, I thought.

A PRANK.  My pranks weren’t that good considering I was only six years old. My dad has always been the fun and devious, but also mature, adult. He plays little pranks on my mom sometimes and I have to confess they are pretty good. Since he’s more involved with his work when I was in first grade so he stopped for a while.

Mrs. Jackson went to the kitchen to get snacks for snack time. That’s when I ran to the storage closet in the corner that filed away glue bottles, pencils, colors, papers, rulers, scissors, and puny little clocks that were just the size for first graders hands. They were mostly used for learning how to tell time. Airyn followed a minute after I left her by the window.

“What are you doing?”

“Have you ever heard of pranking someone? Well, that’s what I’m doing,” I explained, trying to find the invisible Elmer’s glue. “It has to be in here somewhere.” She kept asking questions about what I was doing.

“This is wrong,” she complained once I convinced her to help me. She found the Elmer’s glue at the top of the storage closet where neither of us could reach. “Well, it looks like we can’t do this without glue. I’m heading back over to the window.” Airyn scooted a blue plastic chair over by the window and continued watching children have fun in the puddles.

“Come on,” I urged. “All we need is a ladder or stool.” I couldn’t find one in the teacher’s mess of paper work and games so I lifted the blue chair out from under Airyn and led her and chair over to the storage closet. It wasn’t easy to get her over there. I had to tug her over there by one of her pony tails. She whined for me to let go and give her the chair back but I told I’d give it right back after we were done getting revenge with the teacher.

I climbed up onto the chair and reached for the glue. It was still too high. “Airyn, can you lift forty-one pounds?” I questioned.

“No!” she shouted from across the room.

“Don’t make me come over there and pull your pony tail again!” Behind me I could hear her feet tapping against the floor. From the corner of my eye I could see her black curls and her pale face.

“Can you at least give me another chair to put on this one?” She groaned, but she finally gave in. Once I got the glue down I squeezed a little puddle of glue on the teacher’s chair by her desk. I urged Airyn to squeeze a few drops but she kept pushing the opportunity away.

“Just do it! This teacher is being a meanie for keeping us inside. We need our recess!” I declared. “Be quiet! If we do this there won’t be any recess for you. That’s ‘cause I’m not helping you.” She crossed her arms. I grabbed her hands and placed them on the glue bottle. Out came big globs of Elmer’s glue all over the teacher’s chair. I giggled, deviously and we sat in our seats before the teacher returned along with the students coming in from recess.

The children fumbled around with each other, laughing and playing, as they entered the room. Some of them teased us because we had to stay in. They get glue in their seats tomorrow, I thought, bitterly. I don’t think Airyn was thinking the same thing. Her hands were shaking and beads of sweat built up on her pale forehead.  Even though she was nervous she still sat patiently in her seat next to me looking down at her feet. That was probably her first prank and she felt guilty for it. Unlike her, I smiled with pleasure of what I was going to bring the teacher. Airyn still looked accountable.

 I elbowed her softly and whispered, “Don’t be sad about this. Be happy. If we get in trouble, we get in trouble together.” And from that sentence on we were friends.

When Mrs. Jackson returned from the kitchen, she stood up for a while, explaining what we were doing in the afternoon. I quietly chanted “Sit, sit, sit, sit” while Airyn just murmured “We are so in trouble.”

Well, she never sat while we were there. She walked us to Art class at the end of the day (her chair still covered in glue and no bottom on it) and I prayed she would sit on her chair while we were gone. Hopefully she had work to do at her desk where her chair is waiting. Airyn sat across the room from me in Art so I couldn’t nervously babble to her about it. We gave each other glares every once in a while, not because we hated each other. We were just perplexed on why Mrs. Jackson never sat down once while we were in the room. I finally smiled when half threw the Art class, the principal called “Rayna Feingold and Airyn Baker” to the office. The kids all burst out into giggles and guffaws. Some just said “oooooooooh.” ANNOYING, I thought.

Still smiling with victory, I held hands with Airyn and we, at a snail's pace, made our way down to the office.

Before we walked in the office, Airyn turned towards me. “I’ve never been called down to the principal’s office before. I’ve hardly ever gotten in trouble before.” Her sorrow blue eyes gleamed into mine.  I could almost see the water in her eyes build up near her bottom eyelashes. A tear splattered down both of her cheeks.

“I know. But I have and I will keep you from getting into too much trouble. I’ll try to take all the blame.” We hugged and we walked inside.

Another tear dribbled down Airyn’s face when she saw what and who was in the office. Mrs. Jackson had crossed arms, a red face, tangled hair tied in messy knot, and Elmer’s glue all over her blue velvet skirt. I bit my tongue, trying not to laugh when I saw her skirt. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. My friend looked at me and smiled. She knew I laughed so I could get into more trouble than she did. Her warm smile and sparkly eyes said “Thank you.”

Principal Margaret stood up and gave me a dark glare that could have stopped me from laughing ever again. Swiftly, I shut my mouth and listened to what she had to say. There was still a smile lit upon my mouth when out of the corner of my eye I could see Mrs. Jackson taking and toilet paper from the bathroom and wiping off the glue with it. Again I burst into giggles and for once Airyn did, too. Maybe she decided that if we get in trouble, we get in trouble together. We both smiled.

Our punishment wasn’t too severe. We were just kept inside for recess for a long time. Our teacher had to eat lunch with us in the classroom. Mrs. Jackson didn’t really mind. She didn’t like eating with other teachers. Every teacher kind of hated her because she was so tidy, clean, picky, and was always judging people. Well, Airyn and I did mind being inside. We were kept inside almost until winter. It snowed fairly early in Montrose, Minnesota so we also missed recess in November. It was right before Thanksgiving weekend when it had snowed almost 10 inches already in Montrose. Airyn loved to play in the snow and I liked building snowmen. We finally decided we must get outside soon.

“Airyn, I know what we can do,” I said on Thursday. “Me and you are in first grade. Teachers shouldn’t be such meanies. We should be playing outside. They should know that we could have done this on accident. So we’ll pretend we did it on accident.”

“You mean like in kindurgarden when we played dress up and princesses and stuff?” Airyn asked me. We were whispering by the windows like we always did inside for recess.

I hesitated. “Um, sort of.” I tugged her arm and we ran over to the teacher’s desk where she was working. Mrs. Jackson had her glasses at the tip of her nose and her hand wrapped tightly around her pen. Every few minutes she would drop her pen and pick up a big baloney sandwich with lettuce and cheese.  Her hands worked fast, picking up her food and soda, writing down a bunch of cursive stuff. Mrs. Jackson looked like she couldn’t be disturbed, not even by a screaming child.

Gradually, I walked over to her desk, Airyn following ten feet behind me. “Hey, Mrs. Jackson?”She looked up. Her eyebrows slanted down and her eyes narrowed. “What do you want?” she asked darkly. Her blues eyes seemed to turn into a spine-tingling gray as she said this.

Um, I just wanted to say that, um, we were doing an art project,” I began. Airyn looked at me, her eyes bulging and her freckled face turning pale, and I continued talking. “There was glue involved and we needed to take some from your desk and it went all over and there were no paper towels left.” I took a deep breath, put my head down to stare at my shoes, and wait for a big “Oh, it was all a misunderstanding, I’m sorry!” speech. Nothing happened. There was no movement. The room was enveloped in silence.

Then I heard something that had me taken completely off guard. Mrs. Jackson laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. “That’s a funny story!” she chortled. “But I’m not buying it! If the story was real, you would have told me a month ago. Nice try!” She was still chuckling. We returned to our seats by the windows, desolately.

This part of the story is really important mostly because we lived nowhere near each other, had a seats separated since the pouring of the glue, and we sat in corners a lot, so during the inside time during recess we bonded. We drew pictures together (without trying to kill each other) and we built snowmen out of Play-doh.

The weekend of Thanksgiving I couldn’t do much because my parents had found out what I was doing at school a while ago. I played with family, ate turkey, stuffing, and potatoes and went to bed.  That was basically my schedule for the whole weekend. My schedule when it wasn’t Thanksgiving weekend was: wake up, eat, take a nap, eat, take a nap or quiet time, eat, bedtime. On school nights, it was basically play, eat, and sleep. I didn’t get a lot of playtime. When Thanksgiving weekend was over and school started again, Mom went easy on me until I did something wrong again. She practically begged the teachers to let her out for recess. I almost stopped her when I realized I wouldn’t get to see Airyn very much.

On Monday morning, at school, I looked around for Airyn before the bell rang for school to start. It was three minutes until school started and she still wasn’t in Mrs. Jackson’s class. There was one empty seat in the back of the room where she sat.5… 4… 3… 2… 1… RING!  Mrs. Jackson began talking but I didn’t pay attention. Where was my friend?

I raised my hand for Mrs. Jackson to call on me. “Yes, Rayna?”“Where is Airyn?” I asked. A tear dribbled down my cheek.

The teacher sighed in disappointment. “Can anyone tell Rayna what I said five minutes ago about her?” Oops, it probably would have been a good time to listen to the teacher.

A girl with strawberry blonde hair, named Leesa raised her hand. “Airyn went to another class ‘cause a person in here was a bad…?” She paused. “What’s that big word you said?”“Because someone in here was being a bad influence,” Mrs. Jackson continued, narrowing her eyes at me and then looking around at the other students, in a friendly way. She continued talking. Tears started overflowing my cheeks. Mrs. Jackson didn’t pay attention to me. She just kept talking. I felt bad for everything at that moment.

At recess, since I had a different recess than Airyn, I sat on the all alone with worse people than me that get timeouts. I wasn’t exactly on a timeout, I just needed some time to think and to maybe spill a few tears.

From that point until the end of the school year, I didn’t see her much. She was still sort of friends with me but she was hooked onto knew, more playful friends. They didn’t play pranks and get into trouble as I did. They were just like her; good grades, goody-two shoes, and they all loved to play with dolls. It’s not that I didn’t like dolls; I just thought they were too girly. During the rest of the school years I didn’t have any other friends. Leesa put me down a lot when the teachers weren’t looking. It was a pretty sullen school year for me. I didn’t do any pranks at all. Without Airyn it was a just a prank. There was no spark to it. During the end of the school year and during the summer I cried in corners a lot. Finally one miracle happened when the phone rang in the middle of July. I bounced down the stairs and I could see Mom had picked up the phone. She doesn’t like it when people listen to her phone conversations so I tried to be as quiet as I could. Her finger drummed against the granite counter top and her golden sandals clicked against the linoleum floor. Mom looked way younger than she actually was; curly golden hair sat at the top of her head, cascading down her neck in a ponytail; deep, chocolate eyes; a smile that was always covered in vanilla-flavored lip gloss; she wore a tank top, a skirt that just about reached her knees, and sandals. She looked just about ready to go to a party on the beach. But of course we live in Minnesota so there is no beach, unfortunately.

Mom traveled from the kitchen to the living room. The tears built up in my eyes when I heard the words “abandoned” “new” “friends” “worst” and “play.” Cradling and hugging myself, I crawled on my hands and knees, up the carpeted stairs to my room. I curled up in a tight ball on my bed under the covers and sobbed. My sobs slowed to uneven breathing when I heard Mom say stridently, “Bye, I got to go!  RAYNA!” She stampeded up the stairs, sounding like she weighed more than an elephant. Sobbing even louder, I rolled around and my blankets and I tumbled onto the floor. The fall hurt my head and I may have bruised my knees, but the nonphysical pain hurt the most. Suddenly, arms and hands wrapped around the blankets and searched for my body. I’m never coming out of here, I thought. Mom finally found my body after I tried to escape. Airyn did that to me. Made me curl up in a ball and cry. She was my first friend, and I wasn’t really that good at making friends.

“It’s going to be okay. Your friend Airyn’s mom called and said something…,” Mom trailed off. I sighed. “What? Did she call to tell me that Airyn thinks I am a loser? Well, she's the loser! Loser, loser!" I shouted and buried my face in Mom's yellow silk tank top. The softened texture of the fabric nestled against my face and dried my tears.

  

"Airyn wants you to come over. She said she doesn't like her new friends because they always abandoned her and always picked her as the last and worst of the group and never included her. She wants you Rayna, because you're special. You are not a loser." Mom bent over and kissed on the top of my head. My face and her shirt were both tearstained. Handing me a tissue, she stood up and offered to drive me over to Airyn's house.