Fay “four eyes” Juniper
In the third grade, Fay Juniper let her classmates tease and bully her for her ugly round glasses. It’s not that Fay was a loser—because she most certainly had plenty of friends and a fruitful social life, for a 9-year-old, that is—but she was definitely shy. In fact, some of her classmates thought she was mute because she so rarely talked.
Bluebush Elementary School was not always a particularly friendly place for little girls who preferred writing stories over playing with Barbie dolls. The school itself only had about seventy students per grade, and Fay had been stuck with the same peers since pre-school. Fay liked most of her friends at Bluebush to an extent, but she much preferred suspending time with her journal and the fictional characters in her short stories. On most days during recess, Fay would stay in the classroom while her classmates rushed outside to enjoy childish games on the playground. Some classmates teased Fay and called her a “friendless loser” or mocked her introverted tendencies. One time, a boy said Fay reminded him of the character Max from the show Max & Ruby because “you’re both always around, but neither of you say very much.” Fay actually thought that comparison was quite funny. She reveled in the fact that nobody really knew what was going on inside her head. So, when Lenny Smith told her that her thick, black-rimmed glasses made her look like a bug on crack, she laughed and shrugged it off.
Fay met Lenny the year before Kindergarten. They were in the same pre-school class, and Lenny was always getting in trouble with their instructors. He had flaming red hair and a stocky build, so his presence was impossible to miss. Like most little boys, Lenny loved superheroes and he would wear t-shirts with different Avengers characters on them every day. He loved Iron Man and Captain America, although Fay thought Lenny’s stocky build made him more comparable to the Hulk. One time, Fay told her mom that she thought Lenny was obese, and Mrs. Juniper scolded Fay and said “he just hasn’t lost his baby fat yet.” However, Fay ignored her mother’s advice, and the next day she called Lenny fat to his face. He cried, and thus the rivalry between Fay and Lenny began. From Kindergarten through third grade, the two children threw subtle insults at each other and tried to get under the other’s skin. On the surface, Fay was relatively unbothered by Lenny’s constant jabs because she knew she was destined to be more successful in life. Besides, people were only friends with Lenny because they were scared of how he would treat them if they were not on his good side. At least Fay’s friends genuinely liked her.
The real issue, however, was that Fay wanted to eventually stand up for herself. She really did. She tried and tried, but the imaginary scenarios she invented in her creative, twisted little brain failed to become realities. Sometimes Fay imagined punching Lenny Smith in the face. “I have a stigmatism you effing idiot!” she would yell at him. Or maybe she would slip a note to the school guidance counselor and suggest that someone whose name rhymes with Kenny was planning on bringing a knife to school.
But realistically, Fay knew the odds of actually taking down Lenny Smith for good were slim. In the years between pre-school and third-grade, Lenny had turned into a total tattletale. He liked to throw out mean comments and tease classmates, but as soon as someone clapped back at him, he would cry to his teacher like a winy toddler who lost their binky. Apart from picking on Fay, Lenny would call kids with big ears “dumbo,” steal personal items out of people’s lockers, or give other boys wet willies when they weren’t looking. And on the off chance that someone reported Lenny, he would cry to the principal and always got off unscathed.
At least, that’s exactly what happened when James Finkle stood up to Lenny. One day on the Bluebush Elementary School playground, James gathered a group of the toughest boys he could find and cornered Lenny by the jungle gym. James was a smaller boy with overgrown brown hair that hung in his eyes. One time he accidentally peed himself on a field trip to a hunted hayride in first-grade, and Lenny called him “Tinkle Finkle” ever since. “Call me Tinkle Finkle one more time and we’ll BEAT you up!” James said while his friends circled Lenny outside. They put on their meanest faces and some even threw fake punches. Lenny immediately started crying and ran across the playground to report James to a recess monitor. And naturally, James was eventually suspended for two days on the account of unprovoked bullying.
Now, Fay thought this was complete bullshit. She thought that James Finkle had every right to give Lenny a taste of his own medicine. But James’s unfortunate suspension was a wake-up call for Fay. If she wanted to end Lenny Smith’s terror, it would take a lot more than a lousy comeback to one of his mean comments about her glasses. No. She had to think of something big. Something demonic. Fay wanted to guarantee that nobody would sit with Lenny on the bus or in the lunchroom. She wanted him to be picked last when they played kickball in gym. She wanted his parents to find out that their supposed “goody-two-shoes” son was actually a menace. Fay needed to do something that would ruin his reputation forever.
Fay planned her takedown on a Friday afternoon in March. She set her alarm to wake her up an hour earlier than usual at 7 AM so that she could put on her best outfit for school. She had picked out her clothes the night before—a denim skirt and white T shirt that said “Girls Rule” written in sparkly, blue sequins. After rolling out of bed, she combed her messy brown hair and pinned it back with a light pink bow. When she put on her black rimmed glasses, she felt an unusual sense of pride. Checking herself out in the mirror, Fay knew she looked good. And better yet, she felt good.
The bus ride to Bluebush Elementary was about thirty-minutes long, and Fay usually listened to music on her iPod while watching the suburban neighborhoods of Bluebush pass by outside. All the houses looked the same, and every yard was perfectly manicured with fresh cut lawns and curated gardens. Bluebush was a small, quaint town where stay-home moms dominated the PTA board and fathers commuted into New York City for their hotshot corporate jobs. Fay’s mom always told her, “everybody knows everybody in Bluebush.” Fay supposed that’s what made her town so great. It’s the reason why she had the same friends since she was two-years-old. But, she also knew that gossip traveled at light speed, and the Bluebush PTA moms were bound to find out if she cursed out Lenny Smith.
Today’s boring bus ride was no different, except now she had time to rehearse what she would say when she finally saw Lenny at school. Fay imagined she would wait for him to provoke her with a comment about having four eyes, and then she would clap back. She originally considered poking fun at Lenny’s pale, stubby legs or Cheeto-colored hair by saying “when Stephen King wrote about Pennywise, he was picturing you!” But judging someone’s appearance felt like an easy insult, and Fay doubted that Lenny even knew who Stephen King was.
Fay ignored the inevitable fact that the Bluebush Elementary principal would have to call her parents and file a disciplinary report following her roast. While Fay did not care if she got suspended like James Finkle, her parents surely would. Her mother would be completely embarrassed to go to the next PTA meeting and face a crowd of parents that knew her child was problematic. And as a result, Fay would probably get her iPad—which housed her entire library of books—taken away as punishment. Ultimately, Fay decided that she could deal with her parents’ anger, so long as she got the satisfaction of putting Lenny Smith in his place.
When Fay arrived at school, she weaved through the maze of hallways flooded with students and made a beeline for her classroom. The third-grade rooms were housed in the back corner of the school, and rows of rusted blue lockers lined the hallways alongside each classroom doorway. She threw her backpack in her own locker grabbed the ugly yellow vocabulary workbook she needed for class. Fay set her eyes on Lenny’s locker, which was about 30-feet away from her own, and considered that a pre-homeroom showdown felt like an exciting way to kick off her morning. Lenny was standing with a group of boys talking about basketball.
“Target acquired” Fay thought to herself. “It’s go time.” She pushed her shoulders back, plastered a smirk across her face, and began to strut toward Lenny’s posse of prepubescent friends. Unfortunately, Fay got in about three steps before Melody Manzino jumped in front of her locker.
Melody’s brown Girl Scout vest covered in colorful iron-on patches distracted Fay’s eyesight. Whereas most girls only had about twenty or thirty patches on their vests, Melody was pushing sixty. That’s how Fay knew Melody was an overachiever. It’s one of the things that made the girls best friends—they both set goals to outshine and over-perform against everyone at Bluebush Elementary. When they had playdates, they played pretend games where they lived in New York City and went to parties and socialized with famous writers and actors. Melody balanced out Fay perfectly. Whereas Melody was petite with blonde hair, Fay was tall with brown hair. Melody was social and bubbly, but Fay was quiet and reserved. For the most part, Fay considered Melody to be her better half—but in this present moment, Melody’s nasal, valley-girl voice managed to interrupt Fay’s train of thought and seriously annoy her.
“Fay are you going to the Brownies meeting after school today?” Melody asked. She leaned against a locker and swung her tight, blonde ponytail around her shoulder.
“I don’t have time to talk about Girl Scouts, Melody. I have more important things to deal with.” Fay squinted past her best friend and attempted to step around her. Melody mirrored Fay’s movement and stood up straight, blocking her from going any further.
“Okkkaaaaaayyy. But I don’t want to go alone and—”
Fay whipped her head to look Melody dead in the eye. Granted, Fay’s hazel eyes were shadowed by her black glasses, but Melody could tell Fay was irritated.
“I’m busy” Fay said.
“Busy with what? The bell rings in like two minutes.”
“Just—busy. Okay?”
“Does this have to do with Lenny Smith?”
“What?” Fay blinked three times and looked in any direction but Melody’s eyes. “Why would you say that?”
“You kept looking at his locker.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
“Whatever.” Melody waltzed off to go bother someone else.
Fay took a deep breath and rehearsed what she wanted to say another time. Closing her eyes, she pictured herself clapping in Lenny’s face and giving him the middle finger. She didn’t really know what the middle finger meant, but she saw someone do it on an episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” and it felt fitting for this occasion. A voice in the back of Fay’s head warned her that this plan of hers was a bad idea, but she ignored it. She reopened her eyes and looked back over toward Lenny’s locker. His friends had dispersed, and he was in the process of stacking up his own vocabulary workbook and binders that he needed for class. Fay paused and cringed at the state of his locker. Crumpled papers were shoved behind his crooked locker shelf, and a mysterious brown liquid appeared to stain the rusted metal door. Fay nearly felt herself shudder at Lenny’s utter incompetence, but it only fueled her hatred of him.
DONG. DONG. DONG.
Right as Fay slammed her own locker shut, the bell summoned her to class for the day. She tried to rush toward Lenny’s locker and catch him before class anyway, but he scrambled to pick up his books and ran into homeroom before being given yet another late slip.
“Fuck” Fay said under her breath. That word was another thing she learned from Khloe Kardashian.
Third grade was boring. Students at Bluebush Elementary were stuck in the same classroom all day and forced to sit in uncomfortable plastic chairs for hours at a time. Fay’s classroom was particularly awful because it only had windows in the back of the room. And that meant that nobody could stare outside and fantasize about playing kickball while they were supposed to be solving long division equations. The misery created by this fluorescent-lit, cold room is partially what put Fay in an increasingly irritable mood before recess.
In homeroom, Fay patiently listened while Melody yapped on about how many boxes of Girl Scout cookies she sold over the weekend. In math, Fay diligently worked her way through complex equations and even volunteered to show her work on the whiteboard for the rest of the class to see. And during free-write, Fay worked on the next chapter of her fantasy novel. Writing was her favorite part of class because she could channel her emotions into words without making anyone upset. That, and she also wanted to be a published author by the time she was twenty-years-old.
But when the bell rang at 12 PM, Fay eagerly jumped out of her seat. She wanted to be the first one on the playground before Lenny and his gang of friends arrived. Melody seemed surprised at Fay’s sudden willingness to sprint outside, but she chalked it up to Fay’s unusual behavior today. Maybe Fay was finally bored of tidying the classroom or writing in her tattered journal.
Unfortunately, Fay was a star-student. While this was ordinarily a good thing, Fay’s teacher’s pet-tendencies prevented her from carrying out today’s take-down mission. Before Fay made it halfway across the classroom, her teacher Mrs. Chasten stopped her.
“Fay, sweetie,” Mrs. Chasten said, stepping in front of Fay’s attempted beeline toward the door at the back of the classroom. “Do you have a minute?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Wonderful. This will only take a second.” Mrs. Chasten walked toward her desk and sat down before she motioned for Fay to take a seat too.
“Am I in trouble?” Fay asked.
“No! Not at all!” Mrs. Chasten sorted through a stack of multi-colored folders in front of her. Fay took note of her teacher’s pineapple-printed dress and the collection of wedding photos she had scattered across her desk. Mrs. Chasten’s obsession with neon-colored decor made Fay feel uneasy, so she directed her focus solely on the woman’s overly made-up face.
“I just wanted to talk to you about this fabulous extra-credit assignment you turned in last week.”
“Um, okay.”
“All good things, Fay!”
Mrs. Chasten handed Fay the short-story she wrote about a unicorn invasion taking over Bluebush. There were red pen marks all over the front page, but a smiley face sticker was pasted onto the top-right corner. Fay smiled as she took back her story. She loved validation from her teachers. But, her happiness quickly dimmed as Lenny Smith ran behind her en route to the door that led to the playground. His stocky body nearly took out a wooden desk and the hamster cage that housed the class pet—a light-brown hamster named Butterfinger—in the back of the classroom. Fay cringed at Lenny’s utter disregard for the Butterfinger’s well-being and glared at him as he squeezed out the classroom door. Fay thought her disgust was subtle, but Mrs. Chasten picked up on her mood shift immediately.
“I saw that face, Fay. Do you not like Lenny?”
“Nobody likes Lenny. He’s a bully” Fay said. She was met with an obnoxious witch-like laugh from Mrs. Chasten.
“Oh Fay. Sometimes boys are just mean because they like you!”
“Um, okay.”
“When you grow up, you’ll realize that boys act silly when they like pretty girls like you, Fay.”
Fay nodded. She didn’t feel like answering Mrs. Chasten when she had more important business to attend to.
“Well anyway, I loved your story Fay. Let’s hope no unicorns invade anytime soon!” Mrs. Chasten let out another laugh. Fay was convinced that she had to be faking it at this point. No sane adult woman cackled nearly as much as Mrs. Chasten did.
“Thanks.” Fay said while grabbing her story and taking it over to her desk where she shoved it in the wood cubby hole. Mrs. Chasten gave her one last toothy smile, and Fay did her best to avoid making any further eye contact.
Fay thought most of what Mrs. Chasten said was complete bullshit. One, her story was not that funny. It was supposed to be satire and a commentary on environmentalism. And two, Lenny Smith was not in love with Fay. He just felt entitled to make fun of people in order to compensate for the fact that his uppity white parents had named him after the rock legend Lenny Kravitz in a sad attempt to be edgy and eccentric. If anyone should be getting made fun of, it should be Lenny.
And with that, Fay hurried outside to the playground. Now she was fired up and more motivated than ever to yell at Lenny Smith. How dare Mrs. Chasten suggest that his mean antics were just a sad attempt at flirting? Gross. Gone were the days of pretending to be a shy, perfect girl who didn’t care if people bullied her or called her “four eyes.” Fay was done playing nice. And besides, she had watched plenty of movies about high-school mean girls to prepare for this moment.
Fay spotted Lenny on the blacktop waiting for his turn at kickball. A decently sized crowd of third graders was lined up behind him, and a few others were scattered throughout the outfield. Fay noted that a few adult recess monitors were stationed nearby the kickball field, but they all appeared to be focused on the students hanging upside-down on the monkey bars. She scoped out the scene for a minute or two and decided what her plan of attack should be.
First, Fay looked for Melody. She needed someone to back her up when she inevitably embarrassed Lenny in front of all his friends. So, she walked over to the swings where Melody was socializing with the other Girl Scouts.
“Melody, can you come help me with something?” Fay interrupted the circle of girls and motioned at Melody. She waved her hand a bit aggressively and widened her eyes in an attempt to seem urgent.
“Yeah sure Fay. Give me one second girls,” Melody said to the rest of the Girl Scouts while standing up to approach Fay. “What’s wrong?”
“I need your help.”
“You said that already.”
“Exactly.”
“Why are we whispering?”
Fay laughed and stood up straighter. Leave it to Melody to break up a serious moment.
“I just wanted to make it like one of the secretive spy movies,” Fay said, now speaking at a normal volume. “You know how they always, like, whisper to each other before attacking someone?”
“Oh, so who are we attacking?” Melody asked. “Now I’m excited!”
“Lenny Smith.”
“I knew you were staring at him earlier, Fay!” Melody slapped the side of Fay’s arm and gave her an eye roll to say I told you so. “I’m so in.”
And for the next five minutes, Fay filled Melody in on her plan of attack. At first Melody was hesitant to help out, but Fay assured her that she would take all the blame and keep Melody out of any trouble. After all, at least one of them had to keep a clean record if they wanted to escape Bluebush and go to Columbia University one day.
Fay and Melody watched the kickball game from afar and kept a close eye on Lenny. When he was in the outfield, he was alone and farther away from his teammates. Fay wanted to make sure that his friends saw her embarrass him, so she waited until Lenny’s team was back on home base before initiating her plan.
“Are you ready?” Fay asked Melody, who was waiting behind her with their special prop in hand.
“Ready freddy.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Fay marched toward the cluster of boys lined up behind first base and set her sights on Lenny. She never even turned around to check that Melody was still in tow.
“Hey Lenny!” Melody said to get his attention. He turned to look at Fay, and before he could respond, Fay socked him right in the nose. A mixture of snot and blood immediately started gushing down Lenny’s lips.
“OW” Lenny said, cupping his busted nose with his chubby hand. “What was that for?”
“THAT was for making fun of my glasses.”
Fay raised her arm and threw a second punch, this time at Lenny’s gut.
“And that was for James Finkle.”
A wave of boos and cheers sounded from the crowd that had now surrounded Lenny and Fay. Lenny was hurled over with one hand grabbing his stomach, and the other pinching his nose to stop the blood from flowing out of it. Fay wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw a tear or two roll out of Lenny’s eyes. Fay turned to find Melody, and when the two girls made eye contact, Fay nodded at her best friend.
“Take that, sucker!” Melody said while pouring a strawberry yogurt smoothie all over Lenny’s head. She laughed as the warm, pink liquid coated Lenny’s red hair and mixed with the blood on his face. Melody’s mother packed a strawberry smoothie in Melody’s lunch box every day, but Melody hated the texture of the overly-sweet dairy drink. She usually gave it away or threw it out, but she was happy to put the smoothie to better use today.
“Gross!” a student said as Lenny wiped some of the smoothie out of his eyes.
“Oh, and one last thing, Lenny,” Fay said. “I just talked to Faith Guidi, and she said that you are a terrible kisser!”
“OOOOHHHHH,” the crowd said when they heard Fay spill Faith’s secret. Everybody in the third grade knew that Lenny was in love with the popular girl Faith Guidi. Faith was gorgeous, and every boy wanted to date her. Much to Fay’s surprise, Faith had said yes when Lenny asked her to get ice cream last Friday after school. But at their Girl Scout meeting the following Monday, Faith revealed to Melody and Fay that her date was awkward and that Lenny did not know how to kiss.
“That’s not true!” Lenny said in a sad attempt to defend himself. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Sorry Lenny,” Fay said. “She told me that you’re a bad kisser and that your date sucked.”
The former background noise of whoops and oohs from their classmates had lulled into a wave of whispers. Everyone was talking about Lenny, and Faith even heard one girl say that “nobody is every going to date him again.” Melody softly smiled at Fay and dropped the empty smoothie bottle on the ground before running back to the swings. Fay had told her to get away from the scene as quickly as possible so that she would not get in trouble too. But deep down, Fay knew that Melody was just as satisfied with their epic performance.
Pretty quickly, one of the recess monitors ran over to the crowd of third-graders and broke up the group. An older woman grabbed Fay’s arm and pulled her backward. Fay knew she was about to be sent to the principal’s office and likely suspended for a few days, just like James Finkle. But she didn’t care. She was proud of her new-found assertiveness. She peered up at the teacher who was hauling her toward the main entrance of Bluebush Elementary. It was Mrs. Sarat, an older woman who just-so happened to live down the street from the Juniper family. Like Fay’s mother always said, everybody knows everybody in Bluebush, so Fay really shouldn’t have been surprised that her elderly neighbor was one of the first to find out about her fight with Lenny. “Oh well,” Fay thought. “At least she can tell mom that I punched Lenny real good.”
When Fay was nearly outside the principal’s office, Mrs. Sarat let go of her arm and let out a melodramatic sigh. In the meantime, Fay inspected her bicep and noticed a few small bruises forming where Mrs. Sarat had tightly held her arm. Fay figured she could claim the marks as battle wounds.
“Fay, you made a bad decision today” Mrs. Sarat said. She put her hands on her hips and peered down at Fay with her eyebrows crossed.
“I know.”
“And your mother will certainly be finding out about this very soon. What do you think she is going to say?” She jutted her chin out toward Fay as if she was expecting an explanation. “Hmm?”
“I don’t know.” Fay played with the friendship bracelet on her wrist and turned her shoulders away from Mrs. Sarat’s direction.
“All of Bluebush will be talking about Fay Juniper’s anger problems. Do you think your mother will be happy about that?”
“No.”
Mrs. Sarat ushered Fay inside the office when she was done scolding her. Fay obviously knew she made a bad decision. She didn’t need Mrs. Sarat to talk to her like a child in order to explain that. Ultimately, Fay had accomplished her mission and shut up Lenny Smith. If her Bluebush classmates took her right hook and brutal roast as warnings and stopped calling her “four eyes,” then an inevitable suspension will have been worth it. Fay glanced out the office’s glass windows and watched Mrs. Sarat march back down the hallway until she was completely out of sight. She plopped down in one of the nearby plastic blue chairs and waited for the principal to call her back into his office.