By Wednesday, something had sunken in. Corianne realized that mechanical drawings had to do with ratios and measurement. That still didn't mean she could draw them straight, but she could get the proportions straighter and on the second attempt, she managed to draw the required shape in the required way. Her drawing was not as perfect or pretty as Tikvah's, but it passed.

"You deserve to pass," Mr. Quaranta told her just in time for her to get to the way too long lunch line. Corianne hoped Ms. Albina would be in the line instead of far ahead. She really did not want to hear from Suri or Jupita. Why was it so easy to create a new set of enemies before you even do anything to them?" Corianne wondered.

She was glad she had Tikvah to keep her company in the endless line. Tikvah had spent most of shop doing a mechanical drawing for her tie clip. It was hard to do one for a twisted object though she got the idea of angles after Mr. Quaranta explained it. "I hope we do angles in Team Project this afternoon," Tikvah blurted out not caring who heard, and why should anyone complain. Tikvah wanted to make her metal shop project easier.

"Team project sucks!" commented an unasked for voice from behind. "What's a matter?" Suri asked.

"Did you get out of line just to wait with us?" Corianne inquired. She couldn't imagine a kid like Suri ending up at the tale end of the line.

"My social studies teacher is a flaming bitch. I don't know why we have to learn geography?"

"What would you rather learn?" Tikvah had a knack for stepping into traps. She was also very good at talking like an adult, something Corianne found uncanny.

"I'd rather play games."

"What's your favorite game?"

"Wolves and bunnies. What's yours?" Tikvah had caught Suri off guard.

"I'd rather read."

"You would."

"Lots of kids like to read," Corianne interjected.

"You read that picture book like a retard," Suri stuck it in.

"I got that book from the high school library," Tikvah reminded Suri. "Wanna see..."

"You just look at the pictures," scoffed Suri

"Wanna bet?"

"What you want me to prove I can read or something."

"I want you to see it's not a picture book."

Suri gave her head a shake that would have tossed her hair, except today her golden locks were in a wonderful, French braid. "Beauty is as beauty does," Corianne reminded herself. Meanwhile, Tikvah, handed Suri her book on light. "Start anywhere," she offered.

"At least it has small print," Suri judged and then begain: "Microwaves range from 300 MHz (1 m) and 300 GHz (1 mm)...What language is this."

"It's metric MHz, is frequency, how many per second. The higher the number the smaller the wave and m and mm are metric for length. You either get lots of little waves or a few big ones." Suri threw the book back at Tikvah who barely caught it. "You're a fucking dweeb she concluded."

"Eat hair and be smart," Corianne sing-songed, just as the lunch line began to move.

Tikvah and Albina sat in the penthouse at the end of the night. Somehow Albina was always the last Suite Advisor to call "curfew!" Tonight would be no different. Tikvah sat looking at Amazon. Buying tights was not easy. Many of them came in prints that Tikvah did not want. Some came in bright red or pink. This really was not a problem because Tikvah wore red and pink  shirts and sweaters, but more often red and burgundy. She simply did not care for bright pink. Red felt more serious. There were also no green, yellow, royal blue, or burgundy tights in the packages. The bigger problem was size. Tikvah was a girl's medium to large. The right size did not always show up, and sometimes she took an extra-large.

"OK, I guess the package is out. The most expensive tights are the ones that will sit in your drawer. Let's see what we can do with your fifty dollars, and get you a nice variety of colors."

Tikvah wondered if this was the end of tznius. She pictured herself in red tights, knowing they would match a red poloshirt and leave her feeling confident, and independent. Wearing tights at all was a badge of the fight continuing and a small victory. With tights running seven to nine dollars apiece plus taxes, Tikvah could order five pairs which was more than she had when she left New Square. They would also be her current size, because Albina insisted she buy them a bit big if possible. That meant Tikvah was finally an extra large, which was the end of girls sizes. "What happens if I get bigger?" she asked.

"You shop in the grown up woman's department and become the smallest size, and for a while nothing fits. I've been there. A lot of grown women have."

Tikvah then had to pick out the colors. She bought two navy blue, one red, one green that had to be the right shade,  one royal and there was money left for a pair of burgundy tights as well. There would be no white tights this time. They got disgusting looking. She realized she was sick of white, and this school unlike the one in New Square did not have rules about tights colors. Corianne usually wore pants and sandals to school so her ankles and feet were bare to the world. Tikvah was actually glad she got to pick out tights colors. She was not sure why it was different from having to select food every day. She wondered if her tati would understand.

Zia resolved not to have to chase an errant kickboard any more by not using one when it came time to swim. Her kick was straight even if her crawl still resembled a dog paddle. "Where's your kickboard?" asked Ms. Wrinkles from the side of the pool. "I don't need it," Zia boasted and then she was afraid she would face punishment for mouthing off.

"Let's see you swim crawl then," Ms. Wrinkles replied.

"I can't," Zia answered.

"What happens if you try."

Zia thought about that. Usually she just forgot the arm movements and gave up. That meant she dog paddled. Zia gave an example.

"You need to concentrate," Ms. Wrinkles now squatted on the side of the pool. For an older lady, she was really quite flexible.

"Don't worry about how fast you go. Just concentrate on the arms and the breathing. Don't even worry about the kicking."

"If I don't kick," thought Zia "I won't go anywhere." Still she gave it a try. With just her arms she moved slowly but she felt the rhythm and made it to the end of the pool. Then she turned around and doggie paddled back down until Ms. Wrinkles made her revert to doing the crawl stroke again with just a few kicks.

"You're catching on," Ms. Wrinkles told Zia.

"Thank you."

"I'm going to show you something that will help." Ms. Wrinkles jumped into the water. She wore a bathing suit the color of claret wine. She splashed herself to get wet and dunked her upper body like a pro.

"Let's get to wear it is pretty deep. What we're going to do is tread water. Here is the part with the arms. It's a little different from the dog paddle. On the bottom you peddle a bicycle with your feet." It took Zia a couple of tries to get the hang of treading water.

"Let's get out where it's deeper,"  Ms. Wrinkles suggested.

She swam a few strokes. Zia paddled behind her. Then together they treaded in water over Zia and Ms. Wrinkles' head. They treaded and treaded a good ten minutes before the male swim instructor, Mr. Morrisy, blue the whistle. Zia dog paddled over to the deep end ladder, and then remembered to try the crawl stroke at least a little. "Are you OK with going nowhere in the water now," asked Ms. Wrinkles. Zia smiled and something inside that smile hurt.

"If I learn to swim," she told herself. "It is really going to change me."

Albina, the mora (She was in mora mode again), took everyone back to Al-Sigh 11B for a half hour or more of homework. "We either use this time productively or we wait in line." Put that way, homework was better, though Tikvah would have rather read her light book. She understood a bit about the very large and very small units used to measure electromagnetic radiation now and so understood what she was reading a lot better. Being in enrichment math paid off, but Tikvah knew she could not get away with free reading.

Since her English story, like most short stories one had to read for English was just plain awful, and not particularly relatable when one came down to it, she decided to work on enrichment math which did not take part in the school's craze for word problems, ratios, unit conversions and other practical math. Enrichment math started off with set theory/symbolic logic. It required concentration because the more complicated problems (nested with parentheses) could get tricky. Corianne worked on her geography as the girls sat next to one another in a corner of the lounge.

Tikvah felt bad when she had to go to dinner. Working on math was a nice flow that took her away from the low grade spiritual conflict she had fought daily for the past fifteen months in the "secular world." It was not the "modern world." Everywhere was both old fashioned and modern when one thought of it. Tikvah now remembered that if she had not been such a coward yesterday, she could have returned to New Square. All she would have had to do was run, jump into her Dad's car...and....

"You know what would have happened," Tikvah told herself, as her stomach knotted up with memory. "There is only so much a kid can take," she decided, but the good mood from working on set theory had evaporated, leaving a piece of dark, smelly, crud in its wake. Worse yet, it was Tikvah and Corianne's job to find and set up the tables. This was supposed to feel like family dinner, but no family had a big restaurant menu.


LBD Dinner 9/7/20

Main Line
Ham Tetrazinni
Chicken Breasts Divan
Crab Croquettes
Broccoli Quiche
Wax Beans
Yale Beets


Cold Bar
Potato and Egg Salad
Carrot Apricot Salad
Canned Pineapple
Fresh Fruit
Assorted Baked Desserts

Specialty Station 1
Burger Bar

Specialty Station 2
Extended plant Protein for Salads

Welcome to a New Week!


And no mother who served pizza for dinner would take it away either. Of course there was peanut butter and fruit preserves, and plenty of cereal. Quiche was probably meatless. Ham came from pigs, and crab was... "Why is every meal a mine field!"

"Weird," Corianne said of the menu.

"What are you going to get."

"Maybe the quiche. It's vegetarian."

"But pie crust."

"Why should that be different from pizza?"

"No reason," Tikvah offered and she stood in the line with Corianne who in the end did not want the quiche either but got the wax beans and beets, neither of which Tikvah wanted or would have stood in line for. Corianne could eat off the cold bar and salad bar. She fixed herself chick pea, cherry tomato, and green olive salad with ranch dressing and also got a small bowl of potato and egg salad. Tikvah had peanut butter and strawberry preserves, which really wasn't so bad, three oreos, and lettuce with Thousand Island dressing and a few cherry tomatoes. Corianne was a hog for cherry tomatoes, when you thought of it. No one complained though. "They'll always put out new ones," Corianne told Tikvah as they arrived last at the table. "We chickened out at the hot line," Corianne explained.

"I don't blame you," sighed Jupita. "You should have gotten a burger."

"Corianne wants to cut the cheese," commented Suri.

"Where did that come from?" asked Albina who was caught flat footed.

"Chick peas. They make you..." Suri caught herself. This was after all a table with a Suite Advisor.

"That's disgusting," commented Rupinder.

"You're right," Suri answered "Chick peas are disgusting."

"So are those ready made hamburgers," Corianne responded.

"So what do you want sirloin?" asked Suri

"How about sausage or chorizo."

"Isn't that pork?" Suri

"I'm not vegetarian or kosher. I just like vegetarian food better than meat sometimes."

"Weird."

"And who are you to judge," the Suite Advisor awakened.

"Some things are just weird," Suri pressed her luck.

"I think eating hamburgers day after day is weird."

"No you don't."

"Look at what's on my plate Suri" Albina tipped her plate up. She had something that was brown on the outside and white on the inside set on top of zucchini, shredded carrots, black olives and raw mushrooms.

"I don't know what that is," Suri was honest.

"Baked tofu," replied Corianne.

"Toe food."

"Excuse me."

"I'm sorry."

"You're not. Tell me back home did everybody eat the same food and like the same food?"

Suri had no answer. For Tikvah, the answer had been yes which was what made the cafeteria so daunting in a low level day after day stressful way.

"Alright," Albina continued the lecture that had been coming since yesterday "Then it's the same way here. You have kids from all different backgrounds and all over the world."

"Yeah but who eats beans for lunch and dinner?" asked Suri.

"Someone who doesn't like what's on the hot line."

"Then you get a burger."

"Or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or cereal, or vegetarian salad. How many entrees does that make if we just look at broad categories." Albina really sounded like a mora now, but a high and mighty mora, maybe a rav.

"You can add in the hot line to get a total," Albina added.

"That's eight choices," offered Jupita. "It's a lot more because you can have different side dishes and desserts and drinks."

"OK, Suri why do you think the dining hall staff serves eight choices at lunch and dinner."

"Because some kids are weird."

"And would you want us weird kids to starve?" Tikvah dove into the fray.

Suri blinked. "You at least have cookies for dessert and you're... OK, but don't make me eat beans, or fish, or hair, or toe food."

"Who would make you eat hair?" Tikvah was baffled.

"She means alfalfa sprouts," Corianne explained. "They look like hair."

"But hair is brain food," Suri sing-songed.

"I thought fish was brain food," Albina picked up on the mood.

"That was in the old days," Suri explained.

"Well no one will make you eat anything you don't like but on Friday, the burgers disappear."

"Just like the pizza," thought Tikvah.

"That will be pretty bad," Suri realized aloud.

"Maybe something else good will come along."

"Like the toe food."

"Yeah or maybe the pizza will come back."

Corianne sailed out of school on Monday, floating so gently, that she forgot Ms. Albina would be waiting for them, and the plurality would sentence her to.... games.

In this case, they were outdoors so the games were break through the wall and wolves and bunnies. The first game was just hard, physically hard, especially since Tikvah let herself be knocked down and sent to the other team where she did them no good and then in the second round, she became part of the other team's wall on the first go. Corianne who half tried did not better.

Wolves and bunnies was even more odious. Corianne and Tikvah were co-wolves. "Damn!" thought Corianne. I should have asked for a pass to the library. "Aroooooo!" Corianne did her wolf howl. "Pfffffttttt...." Suri replied."Bunny's passing gas!" called out Neila answered. "Whoever smelt it delt it!" answered Suri.

"Aroooooooo!" Corianne howled again. Even though wolves and bunnies positively sucked, Corianne liked the howl part and she ran after different suitemates, including the odious, Suri. She had no luck but Tikvah managed to tag Jupita via a comedy of errors. Corianne chased Jupita straight into the bored half-playing Tikvah who yelled "Gotcha!"

"Oh shit!" Jupita complained. "This isn't real wolves and bunnies. You need to play the game in the woods. Tikvah did not stay a bunny for long, but by now, Corianne felt inspired. She ran hard after Suri. Humiliation needed to get well spread, and it was Suri's turn.

Alas, Suri did not cooperate. And soon there were early groups of students crossing the quad to Ladon Burchard Durren. "Wanna move the game to the woods?" asked Ms. Albina. Ms. Albina, did not want to wait in a long line for dinner. Lunch was bad enough.

In the woods, Corianne had no better luck than she'd had on the quad. "Maybe next time, we'll play Dumb Dumb Dodo. That's perfect for this place and this crowd," she thought. The afternoon's triumphs in science and social studies were far behind her. Not even Tikvah remembered, as she walked with her head down in her pre-food funk before dinner. There was no line and Shayla and Jetta got to choose the tables and push them together. "Let's check the menu," Corianne suggested. Some rituals, she realized, were always better than others.