Ilana Angelino

Ilana Angeleno never once said good morning back to Beth when Beth said, in her bright-eyed, never-failing, first period cheerfulness, “Good morning, Ilana!”

Today, Ilana was all set to say, “Good morning," to Beth, and she even planned to smile back at her, though Ilana didn’t like to smile because she didn’t have the teeth Beth had. They were not perfectly straight and dazzling white, nor were her eyes big and blue and sparkly. No. Ilana's eyes were brown, almost black, and they were set close together. She’d heard Sister Agnes call them beady and mean looking eyes, and that next morning in front of the mirror Lana tried to make them not beady and not mean, and she tried to work her face so as her eyes were not set so close together, but in the end decided she was the way she was, and knew she would be this way right up until the day she kills herself.


This morning, for the first time ever, Ilana was going to say, “Good Morning!” to Beth, but this morning, for the first time ever, Beth didn’t say good morning to her or to anyone else. Beth came into Algebra I late with puffy, red eyes and sat down at her desk and immediately sobbed into her arms folded across her desk. Three or four, or six, or maybe ten girls were immediately at her side touching her, patting her, stroking her, asking what’s the matter Beth and Beth said, “Someone killed my dog”, and burst back into tears. Then the teacher, Miss Rose, was standing beside Beth, patting her arm and saying, “There, there,” or some other nonsense.


There were many things Beth could do that Ilana could not. Ilana couldn’t flounce her blond ponytail as she sashayed down a school hallway as though she were walking a model’s catwalk. Ilana had no ponytail, and if she had had a ponytail, it certainly wouldn’t be blond. Her hair was black, or it was when she had hair, but that same day in the mirror’s reflection she watched herself cut it all off. Then she shaved her head. Now she was bald. She was a bald, twenty pounds overweight Chicana with beady eyes who couldn’t fit into a pair of skinny jeans if you held a knife to her throat, and there would never be no sashaying down no hallway catwalks for Ilana Angelino, not now, not ever.


Ilana watched all this with Beth and could hear them asking questions and Beth blurting out, “The vet sssaid, the vet sssaid, the vvvvvet ssssaid Puffy was fed snakeskin and choked to death!”


All the girls and the teacher said, “Snakeskin?” at the same time. They looked at each other in confusion as Ilana sat at her desk across the room smiling inside herself and playing with the rattles on her new necklace of rattles. She wondered if anyone was ever going to mention the fact that she had shaved her head.

—530 Words—