I am waiting at the bus stop, and Sheila and Stephanie Shelly, the two fat, buck-toothed sisters who live across the street, are snickering about my tennis shoes and ankle socks. I clutch my books close to my chest, resigned to my status as the Bigelow Elementary School pariah with my weird Southern accent and the lime green and white cotton summer dress my mom cut down for me from one of my cousin Janice's, who is a blonde-haired cheerleader and a lifeguard back in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Trent and Troy, the frecklefaced, red-haired brothers I see wearing their coonskin caps and riding their banana seat bicycles like wild mustangs around the cul-de-sac on the weekends tease me about my skinny knees. "Chicken legs! Chicken legs!" they squawk like little banty roosters.

I slip way down deep into the silence. It'll be a long while before I come out.

In the safety of our kitchen in the mornings sometimes, my mom kneels down in front of me, brushes the dark hair out of my eyes and tells me I have the legs of a thoroughbred filly, that those rawboned Shelly girls are just jealous, and to not pay them any attention. Then of course she really helps me out in the popularity department by insisting a few weeks earlier on purchasing three pairs of embarassingly silky and embroidered underpanties from the IGA to give to Stephanie for her birthday present at the one party I actually get invited to over the summer. "Well, these are just practical," my mom exclaims, stuffing them into the shopping cart and marking that one off of her list. "I don't know what girl wouldn't like these."

I have no comment. Only the red flush of heat rising up on my face as Stephanie rips the Christmas wrapping paper off of the package in front of 10 other little girls.

Later I tell my daughter J. this story. Her mouth hangs open. She says, "Grandma Sammie did what?!"

"Oh, just wait and see," I say. "Someday I will be an embarassment to you, and you won't even want to go to the mall with me."

She rolls her eyes. Stuffs her long, skinny feet into her barn shoes.

The schoolbus lurches forward across the subdivision, over the I-75 overpass to the trailer park where we pick up another social butterfly—Debbie Prince, in her pale-pink, cat-eyed glasses with the rhinestones in the corners. In an act of pure self-preservation, I do not even say "hi" to this other outcast who's farther down on the fringes of the pecking order than I; as the nearly invisible girl makes her way towards the backseat of the bus down the black rubber aisle that's already slipping out from under her sturdy oxfords. She is more of a ghost than me. Not even the bus driver acknowledges her existence. Her strawberry-blond curls are bobbing, and as soon as she sits down her index finger is already halfway up inside of her nose, excavating for something elusive, gooey, and green.

As we careen out of the trailer park gate onto the road, the girl and her horse are waiting right there, right where they always are.

I push the dirty bus window down so I can get a good look at them both, sitting on the ripped-up seat on my knees, peering over the tops of my knuckles into the morning.

Trent and Troy are eyeballing me over the back of the seat in front of me. I ignore them, not saying a single word so no stray ya'lls slip out past me and those mean boys fall on me like a pack of wild dogs.

The girl's horse sits back on his haunches just a little bit from the excitement, and she raises her hand in greeting as they leap forward and come up alongside of us. I am pretty sure no one else sees the girl and her horse galloping beside the bus. She has long brown bare legs and bare feet, and she rides like an Indian. (Her mom says she is part Cherokee. Black Irish, she tells her.) And I'm not quite sure how she can be out there while I am trapped here inside of this ugly yellow schoolbus with all of these kids who hate me. Because she is me. Don't you see?

But they don't.

The girl canters her horse bareback through the soybean fields, the corn and the occasional two or three cows that eventually turn into more postage-stamp lawns of more subdivisions and more tract houses, over the railroad tracks, clattering down the cement sidewalks until we turn into the driveway of Bigelow Elementary School.

As we're filing off of the bus, Sheila Shelly pokes me in the ribs with an elbow and asks me if I've been to any birthday parties lately. I manage to duck around the other side of a bike rack and escape the peals of laughter before they can really sting. Like stepping on about a million bees in your bare feet.

Next to the flagpole, with the big flag of the U.S.A. waving, the girl's horse arches his neck and stamps a hoof. She hugs him tight and grins. Opens her mouth and speaks, breaking the awful quiet of it all, but I can't make out the words for the life of me. Won't be able to understand what she's saying for a long time.

All I can think of at that moment is that wouldn't those Shelly sisters and all their friends be surprised to know who'll be waiting right here for me on the return ride home?

There's a pair of rainbow-colored Converse high-tops in my little girl's closet. Right next to her riding boots.