Wild Thing

Chapter One

If there was anything I missed about the Finger Lakes, it was the rolling hills. Hills coated with maples and pines, narrow, winding roads, and a lakes in the valleys. Looking out the diner’s dirty window I sighed. Tulsa was much flatter, immensely hot, and had been raining heavily since my family arrived a week ago.

The words ‘sun belt state’ echoed in my mind and I rolled my eyes at the breaks of sunlight through the grey mass of clouds. The rays of light were simply fueling us all with false hope. The weather man called for a week of rain and possible hail storms.

When my parents first made the decision to move south, I was absolutely thrilled. They took the time to sit me down and explained it all so gently to me, my father’s words being “Dot, honey. I know that you’re going to be a senior this year, but me and your mother think it’s best if the whole family moved to Oklahoma.” I don’t know what they were expecting my reaction to be but my excitement about the move took them by surprise. To me it was a new challenge; a new landscape; a new school; a new group of people; a new opportunity to reinvent myself. Isn’t wonderful to think that after sixteen years of being pigeon holed as one person I was suddenly able to start fresh? It was like starting a whole new life, but instead of being a baby I was entering as a teenager.

I remember sitting in our Ford Falcon as we traveled from state to state, passing through the hills of Pennsylvania and the plains of Illinois, dreaming of all the possibilities. Who could I be now? Some of my personal favorites were ‘cheerleader/Miss. Senior Dot’ and ‘Greaser Girl, Female James Dean Dot’. They were two complete opposites, I know, but I’m given a unique opportunity to be whoever I want and I’m going full out.

I was so damn hopeful too, thinking that it was going to be an easy change. In the week that we’ve been here in Tulsa, the only ‘image changing’ I’ve done is sort through my wardrobe. I had only gotten around to doing that because I was unpacking those boxes anyway.

So now I’m sitting alone in the diner booth, right after the lunch rush, playing with a pepper shaker and looking out the window. In the minutes I’ve spent awaiting the arrival of fries I ordered, I’ve come to determine that the weather outside was a great representation of how I was feeling; cloudy with a ray of hope.

I couldn’t help but think what my mother would think of me right now, sitting alone and wallowing in my self-pity. After the late morning shower stopped, she pushed me out the door and urged me to make some friends. Summer had just started so the town was crawling even more with teenagers. They hung out in large groups, piling into cars, crowding diners and drive-in restaurants, raising hell for no apparent reason. Tulsa, Oklahoma’s youth was much different than back home in Union Springs, New York. I grew up in a little farm town on Cayuga Lake. It was predominantly a white, middle class society with a few outliers. The town itself was much too small for any riffs between social classes and youth groups, everyone pretty much hung out with who they wanted to and since they all were stuck up each other’s asses it didn’t take long to figure out who didn’t like who. Small town drama, that was about all we got.

But here, in Tulsa, it’s like a whole other world. Everyone was sorted by social class, how much money you had, who your parents were, even the color of your skin played a part. In the poor neighborhoods on the eastside, Greasers stuck together in little clumps. They were a mixture of whites, Hispanics, and blacks, tough with the attitude of an alley cat. To the west, on the riverbanks, is where the socs hung out; wealthy kids with nice cars and loud mouths. They like to ride around in large groups yelling at everyone they passed. Then there were people like me and my family, the middle class who either associated with only of the sides or stayed neutral. Moving from a quiet farm town to a divided city was quiet the shock for us. I was really interested to see where everyone placed me.