Call Me Jojo

1 - Taqueria Blues

I did not look forward to going back to school.

Summer vacation was ending, and though hanging around doing nothing had gotten old real fast, it still beat homework and running the mile.  Nobody wants to go back to school after three months, no matter how uneventful those three months were.  Three months is just the right amount of time for your brain to slowly drain itself of any and all acquired knowledge from the previous six months, a process quickened considerably by the invention of Netflix.  (Admittedly, I'd fallen victim to the evil that is binge-watching just as everyone else had, even if I wasn't watching the same shows.)

I wouldn't have minded going back to school half as much, however, if it wasn't for the sad and simple fact that I had no friends.  I brought this point up with my mom the day before school started, when we went out to lunch at La Cumbre as a last hurrah before summer ended.  Her response, as she thoughtfully chewed her Mission burrito, was one of incredulity:  "What do you mean, you have no friends?  You have plenty of friends!  Just because you didn't hang out with Emma and Madelyn all summer doesn't mean you're not still friends."

Emma and Madelyn, for the record, had spent most of the summer in Cabo, because their families were practically attached at the hip and joint vacations were kind of their thing.  And even if I could've hung out with them, which I couldn't because I wasn't invited on this joint trip to Cabo, I hadn't wanted to.  Emma and Madelyn lived in a world all their own, a world that involved trips to the beach in 50-degree weather and cheesy bikini-clad friendship pictures straight out of a Pinterest post.  It was a world I'd never felt welcome in, even back when we were closer.

"Emma and Madelyn don't count," I told my mother tersely, biting into my quesadilla for emphasis.  "And before you mention Brooke, she lives in Seattle, so she doesn't count either."

My mom took a sip of her diet lemon Snapple and offered it to me.  I shook my head, and she set it gently down on the table.  "Well, what about Jennifer and those guys?  You all had fun at the movies, right?"

"Ehhh," I replied, making a so-so gesture with my right hand.  Jennifer had been my desk neighbor in history last year, and while she was perfectly nice, she was also exceptionally quiet, as were most of her friends.  Most of our lunches together had been pervaded by an awkward silence that would make even the most curmudgeonly of ghosts uncomfortable.  If I had to go one more lunch period like that, suffocated by silence, I was going to stab myself with a fork.

"It's just," I said, and then I stopped, because there wasn't really a way I could word it without sounding pathetic.  I loved my mom, but the last thing I wanted was her pity.  "I don't know," I said finally, picking at a piece of chicken that had fallen onto the table.  "I just...I just don't feel like I fit in anywhere.  I just want to be part of a group.  There's a difference between being in a group and part of a group.  And I just--I don't know where I fit in."

"Fitting in is overrated," my mom replied gently, taking another sip of her drink.  "Trust me.  If I fit in with all the other moms, you'd probably run away from home.  You just have to give it time, Joanna.  You'll find people you like, and that'll be enough.  Loneliness isn't meant to last."

I rolled my eyes and stole a nacho off her plate, just to get on her nerves, and she said, "Hey!" and took a large bite of my quesadilla, and then I started laughing, and she said, "You're not getting any kutsinta at Auntie Angie's birthday next week," but she was laughing, too, and in that moment, I forgot my problems and everything was right in the world.

She was right, though.  Loneliness wasn't meant to last.