Gwen Doh Lynn

1: Rain of Spiders

The day it rained spiders on my house was a pretty bad day all around.

It started with my mom shoving a brown paper lunch bag into my hand. "Just try to fit in," she said.

Easy for her to say. It was bad enough we had to move to this town and I had to start a new school, but she at least could've had the decency to move before the school year started. Here I was, showing up two weeks late to fourth grade.

I hefted my gold sequined backpack on my shoulder and scowled.

She opened the front door. The sky was gray to match my mood. "Look," she said, "by the time you get home, the moving truck will be here with the rest of our stuff. We can even order pizza if you want."

I shrugged. I wasn't going to let her bribe me with pizza, even if she got it with olives and extra garlic.

"I'm going to clean the upstairs rooms today," she went on. Yesterday afternoon she had forced me to help her clean and she'd kept squealing and carrying on about all the spider webs. "Then maybe you can make a playroom up on the third floor," she said hopefully.

I rolled my eyes.

"Okay, love you, honey. Don't be late." With that, she basically pushed me out the door and closed it behind me. Hmph.

Our new house loomed over me. My mom said it was called a "Victorian." It had dark purple siding and a couple of tower-like parts sticking up. There was a porch on the side of the house instead of the front and a huge red maple tree shaded half the yard. The people who sold it to my mom had only lived there during the summers. The whole thing was kind of dumpy and dirty and it looked like it should be haunted.

Well, this was it. First day. New school. No friends. Might as well get it over with. I hefted my backpack on my shoulder once again and set off down the sidewalk.

I passed a bunch of normal looking houses, in normal colors, with the regular two stories, no weird towers and sunny front yards.

As I rounded the corner near the school, I noticed a little flower garden with a white gazebo in it. Two girls, one blond and tall, the other brown-haired and short, were leaning against the side, talking and texting.

I didn't make eye contact, but I heard one of them say, "She looks like a pilgrim." They giggled.

I felt a knot in my chest. I knew they were talking about me. Because of the mix-up with the moving truck, all I had were some lounging-around-the-house clothes and my old school uniform. I had been forced to wear my black blouse with the white collar, and my black skirt that went down past my knees. They didn't require uniforms at my new school. These girls were wearing t-shirts from a store in the mall and expensive jeans.

So much for trying to be normal. Strike one: stupid clothes. I put my head down and kept walking.

*****

McFinnerly Elementary School was much uglier than I'd imagined. It was a low, one story, rectangular brick building with no interesting features whatsoever.

My old school in the city had been three stories tall with two stone lions out front that we painted different colors or put clothes on when it was school spirit days. I missed it already. I guess maybe I shouldn't have screwed things up when I was there.

In the main office, there was a lady behind the desk with poofy red hair and fake red fingernails. I stuck the paper my mom had given me in front of her face.

"Oh," she exclaimed. "You're the new girl!" No kidding. "Well..." She looked down at the paper. "... Gwendoline... welcome to McFinnerly." Ugh, I had asked my mom to just put "Gwen." I hated when people used my whole name, and they never pronounced it right anyway. They said the end part like the word "line" (because it's spelled that way, thanks mom), but it's really supposed to sound like "lynn." Gwen-doh-lynn.