Bending the Rules

Chapter 4 : Bagel

Tori was not one to brood on the hard parts of her life. She didn't brood at home in Australia, and she certainly wasn't going to do it here. She loved life too much. There was too much to do, to many new things to learn. There was too much fun to have. If she wasn't going to have fun at Aunt Tessa's, she could have fun everywhere else.

School was great. Not that all the teachers were fabulous, but she had enough good ones that she felt as if she could learn something here. Every day she was amazed at how an American school could be so different, and yet so much like school in Australia.

She loved her new friends. She already felt as if she'd known Barbie, Lara, Nichelle, Ana and Chelsie forever. She knew they would stick by her through thick and thin, and she would do the same for any of them. She had never had a group of friends who were so different from one another, and she loved that. Things never got boring.

The best part of the day was the time she spent in the newspaper office, Room 712. It had no windows and it wasn't very big, but it was bursting with kids, computers, and laughter at almost any time of the school day. Tori sprinted up there when she had a free period, or when there was a substitute teacher who let her go, and, of course, almost every day after school.

Because she loved to hang out in Room 712 and she was so good on computers, she had gradually become the person who was more or less in charge of the school's brand-new website.

She was learning how to set it up as she went along. But she was passionately interested in how the web worked. She wanted to make it the coolest website of any school in the world. She worked tirelessly on the graphics, making them brighter and better. She added lots of links to extreme-sports websites, just for her own amusement. And she kept adding new photos taken by the newspaper's staff photographers. Most of the best photos were taken by Barbie. Everybody already knew she was the best photographer in the school, even better than the seniors.

After school, there was always a ton of homework. The teachers at M.I.H were known for giving lots of it. Most kids, including Tori, usually did their homework with friends. It was more fun that way. She spent lots of time at her friends' houses, especially Barbie's and Lara's. It was easier going there than trying to have people over at Aunt Tessa's.

Luckily, Tori was pretty fast at getting through her schoolwork, so she still had some time to do the extreme sports she loved so much. She skated. She skateboarded. She played fast, furious handball against the walls in the park with friends from school. And when she needed to think, she'd go over to the rock-climbing wall at Chelsea Piers, the big sports club not far from her house. She'd climb to the top and just hang there and think for a while.

And that's where she was one Saturday afternoon, not long after Lara's visit. Tori was thinking about her aunt, which was something she did a lot. She hung there, facing the rock wall, trying to figure things out. She wished she could understand Tessa better.

Tessa wasn't exactly mean to her; she just didn't seem in any way to be open to her. For instance, there was never any possibility of a heart-to-heart talk with her aunt.

She knew nothing about Tessa's life. "Why did she have all that southwestern stuff?" Tori wondered. "Had she ever lived there? Or had she always lived in New York? And why did she have so little to do with her family in Australia? And why had she clammed up so fast when Lara had asked about the painting?"

"Excuse me, up there!"

Tori kept thinking, not noticing the voice from below.

"Excuse me!"

Tori looked down. There was the woman who worked there, still holding her ropes at the bottom and looking pretty irritated. "Other people need the equipment, you know!"