Curvy Girls Can’t Date Soldiers by Kelsie Stelting
Four
Nadira
Yearbook wasmy least favorite class. I’d joined because it counted as an art class, but everyone else signed up so they could put pictures of themselves across the pages. Plus, instead of holding a vote amongst the student body, the yearbook class assigned the “best” and “most likely to” pages every year. And that torturous day was today.
Mrs. Johnston teetered to the front of the classroom in too-tall designer heels and began writing the list on the board. Best Smile. Best Hair. Most Likely to Become President. (We’d actually had a few U.S. presidents graduate from Emerson Academy, and even some foreign exchange students who went on to become prime ministers.)
I sat behind my computer, looking up at the board and wishing I was literally anywhere else. If I had a choice between sitting in front of a room full of middle schoolers who’d pick on me for my vitiligo and being in this room, I’d say, hello middle schoolers.
Not only did seeing the “bests” every year remind you of who the beautiful people were, but not seeing your name in the yearbook reminded you that you weren’t. Because, let’s face it—most funny never went to the actual funniest person. It always went to the hottest guy who could make you laugh sometimes.
Mrs. Johnston clapped her manicured hands together and said, “Who wants to nominate someone for Best Smile?”
Isabella raised her hand high and then said, “Obviously, Tatiana needs to get that title.”
Tatiana batted her hand and pretended to be surprised. “Are you sure, Bella?”
Now would have been a good time to bring up the fact that barf bags should be available at every desk.
Isabella wrapped her skinny arms around her friend. “I couldn’t imagine anyone more beautiful, inside or out.”
Mrs. Johnston put her hands over her surgically altered chest. “How sweet to see girls lifting each other up. Any objections?”
The room stayed silent, not that anyone would willingly encounter the wrath of the IT girls. (That was what my friends and I called Isabella and Tatiana since they practically ruled the school.)
Mrs. Johnston led the class through the rest of the categories in which beautiful people were celebrated and regular people, people like me, were reminded of just how worthless we were.
At the end of the list, Mrs. Johnston said, “We usually create a wild card category each year. Last year we had ‘High School Sweethearts Most Likely to Live Happily Ever After’ for Beckett Langley and Rory Hutton. Any suggestions for this year?”
Tatiana raised her hand, and when Mrs. Johnston pointed at her, she turned in her seat and looked at me. “I think we should have a ‘Most Unique’ category, and I nominate Nadira. There’s no one like her.”
Suddenly, all eyes were on me. This was even worse than being ignored for all the other categories. Instead of being skipped over, I was being focused on for nothing other than my skin condition. I knew it wasn’t about my personality because most of the people in the room didn’t know anything about me, other than the fact I was a Mathlete, and they bullied me mercilessly for it.
I hated the white patches on my black skin almost as much as I hated the stretchmarks that spread over my hips and stomach. Almost as much as I hated the girls in front of me.
Almost as much as I hated that I wished I could be like them.
While everyone proceeded to give me the pity vote of “Most Unique,” Isabella and Tatiana got the beauty vote. They never had to worry about going to a school dance without a date. They never had to stand with their friends and worry about being the DUFF. Never had to deal with children staring at them at the mall and loudly whispering questions to their parents.
The bell rang, and Mrs. Johnston said, “Let me take a picture of the board before we open the door! Remember, this list is top secret! No one outside of this room finds out.”
As though the winners of any of the categories would come as a surprise.
She snapped a picture with her phone and quickly erased the board while the rest of us packed up our bags. I kept my head down as I walked past my classmates and out the door. When you looked like me, the only way to be safe was to disappear, to make sure no one noticed you at all.
In the hallway, I kept my eyes peeled as I usually did. For allies, for enemies. I brushed past Tatiana greeting her momentary boyfriend (again) with a very public display of affection, then found my friend Des.
We were complete opposites, had been since we met in sixth grade, so it was somewhat of a miracle we’d come to be such good friends at all.
“How was yearbook?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. “It was pick-the-best day.”
She shuddered. “Let me guess. Tatiana won Best Smile?”
I pretended to be shocked. “How did you find out? Mrs. Johnston said it’s classified information.”
Giggling, Des said, “Some things never change. Can you believe this is our last semester here?”
“Graduation can’t come soon enough,” I muttered. I only had one semester—two quarters, eighteen weeks—until graduation and early admittance to MIT. (Not that I was counting.) People on the East Coast were different, colorful, unlike our whitewashed private school. Heck, even my black skin was fading away at Emerson Academy.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like we should savor our last semester, right?”
“That’s what people who had fun in high school want you to do,” I said. “The rest of us know it’s best to just keep your head down and make it out alive.”
We reached the English classroom and took our seats near the front. From her desk, Mrs. Peters looked at us and said, “How was your break, girls?”
A lot of people thought Mrs. Peters was strange, but I liked her. She wasn’t as obsessed with beauty as everyone else seemed to be—any time I caught a peek of her legs, they were unshaved, and she never seemed bothered that her glasses were out of style. Like if she just waited patiently enough, they’d come back in vogue—not that she’d care.
“Rang in the new year with milkshakes,” I said.
She chuckled. “Not bad.”
As more students came into the room, she greeted them, and I got lost in thought about Apollo. Part of me wished I’d never seen his social media profile. Now just the thought of writing to him made me all jittery. I didn’t talk to guys who looked like him. Even when Dad brought his players over to the house to watch film, I just stayed in my room.
Guys said the meanest things about girls they didn’t find attractive. Like somehow not being pleasing to the eye made us deserve verbal vitriol.
Rustling sounded around me, and I looked to see everyone was packing up their bags.
“What are we doing?” I asked Des quietly.
“Computer lab,” she said, hitching her backpack over her shoulder.
“For what?” I began packing my bag too and followed her out of the classroom and into the hallway where Mrs. Peters reminded us to be quiet as to not disturb the other classes.
On the way, Des whispered to me we were supposed to write a self-portrait. Great.
She and I sat at two corner computers, and I couldn’t help but check my email when Mrs. Peters wasn’t looking.
My mouth fell open. Apollo had written back.
I glanced up to make sure I had time, and when I found Mrs. Peters helping another student, I clicked it open.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Dear Nadira,
It’s nice to “meet” you. I’ve only been at Brentwood U for a semester, and I haven’t had much of a chance to meet anyone outside of my roommate or ROTC. I stayed on campus over break and I have more time than ever now, but everyone else is at home until next week when classes start up again. It’s nice to have someone to email with, and I don’t mind that you’re in high school. :) I was there just a few months ago.
You asked what brought me to California, and I have to give a boring answer and say that I’m a legacy student at Brentwood U. My dad went here, and my grandpa did too. I’ll be the first person in my family in the military though. Air Force, specifically. I’m majoring in chemical engineering, and I’ll be an officer when I graduate. (If you don’t know much about rankings, it means I’ll have a little more authority than if I just enlisted. And some extra pay too.)
Why did you choose aerospace engineering?
V/r,
Apollo Banks
PS - I thought I should include a picture of me so you know who you’re writing to. Can you send one back so I know you’re not a random 35-year-old man who Dean Harris accidentally let in on the study?
Next to me, Des sucked in a gasp. “Holy hotness, who is that? And why are you smiling so big?”
Fighting the heat in my cheeks, I looked around to make sure Mrs. Peters wasn’t looking. Thankfully, she was still helping someone else across the room.
“It’s my new pen pal,” I explained, giving her a shorter version of the story I’d told my other friends this morning.
She squealed quietly and shook my arm. “Dir, what if this is how you two fall in love? Can you imagine telling your kids someday?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Hold up. First of all, I’m not having children. And if I do, it’s child, singular. Second of all, I don’t even know if he’s looking for a relationship. And third of all, if he is open to a relationship, there’s no way he’d even look twice at a girl like me.” I frowned, thinking of my “Most Unique” moniker and the girl who’d given it to me. “He’d go for someone like Tatiana or Isabella without a second glance my way.”
My heart ached as I said the words, because I knew how true they were. No one had ever asked me on a date. No one had flirted with me. I was just a Mathlete. The girl you talked to for answers on the math homework, not for a date to the dance.
Des gave me a look. “You need to be nicer to yourself. Can’t you see that you’re beautiful?”
I rolled my eyes. Des had been on a self-love diatribe ever since discovering Lizzo and Meghan Trainor, but it wasn’t like I could flip a switch and stop seeing my patchy skin colors or the way my school uniform pulled tightly around my stomach.
She pursed her lips together. “When this guy sees you, he’s going to think you’re stunning. Mark my words.” She turned back to her assignment, not even entertaining any more arguments from me.
Des might have mastered self-esteem, but I sure hadn’t. There was no way I could ever let Apollo see me. If he kept talking to me, it would only be because of a research project. And knowing he was only speaking to me because he was forced to was even worse than being rejected.
While everyone else worked on their self-portraits, googled what v/r meant. Apparently, it was a common sign off in the military meaning “very respectfully” or “virtual regards.” I liked that he’d used it with me.
With a smile, I began typing an email back.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Dear Apollo,
Thanks for emailing me back. I hope you’re having a nice break. I’m supposed to be working on an English assignment, but this is writing too, right? Besides, emailing is a much more practical skill than writing an essay about myself. Although... I guess I am kind of writing about myself.
I’m majoring in aerospace engineering because I’ve been interested in space for as long as I can remember. One of my grandparents got me an astronaut costume for Halloween, and that was it. I’ve watched about a million documentaries, and recordings of every historical rocket launch—the moon landing, Apollo 13—I cried for weeks after watching The Challenger explode.
I want to be a part of something bigger someday, something that draws states and countries and millions of people together. I’m hoping aerospace engineering can do that for me. I guess I’ve always wondered if there’s something more for me out there. I don’t know. Maybe I just feel a little out-of-place here on Earth.
Since I know why you came to California, now I want to know why you joined the military. Did you know anyone outside of your family who joined, or did the school recruiters convince you with that *awesome* swag? It sure is hard to say no to free pens and notepads. ;)
Nadira
PS-I’m not a 35-year-old man.
With the email still in my drafts, I used the trick every student knew to get past the school’s blocks on social media and logged into my page. But when I saw my profile picture, I frowned. It was a photo from homecoming, but the thought of sending it to Apollo made me queasy. I could easily see the indent of my belly button where the silk dress strained against my stomach. My double chin was on full display. The dimpled fat under my arms was as prominent as ever. I couldn’t send that picture to him. My fingers wouldn’t even move to let me download it.
Why did he have to ask for a picture of me anyway? This email program was for a research project. Not a dating profile. Why did it even matter what I looked like? I could send him a picture of any person on the internet and be fine. Be more than fine, because I wouldn’t have to deal with the change in tone that would surely come after he found out what I looked like—if he even kept emailing me at all.
And that would affect Mom’s research... She would be so upset if I was the reason her research project was ruined. Sending him a picture of someone else would just be helping her, right?
I was grasping at straws now, but I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want him to see me as Nadira. I wanted him to see me as one of the beautiful girls. Someone he would actually be interested in instead of repulsed by.
Someone like Tatiana.
I went to her profile and downloaded her profile picture. No matter how much I wanted to deny it, she looked beautiful, with her relaxed hair falling around her face in pretty layers and her perky chest highlighted by the low neckline on the dress she’d worn to the winter dance. Her smile was bright, and her eyes even had a spark of light that looked like it could have been edited in.
This was what I wanted Apollo to see when he thought of me—someone beautiful. Someone worthy of a guy like him.
I attached it to the email and hit send.
