The day Elizabeth Flores noticed me.

Moved on but not forgotten

Like many exceedingly cool adults, I was not one of the cool girls in high school. I would have probably been able to happily coast through four years of obscurity had it not been for the brief period of fluke coolness I’d experienced in eighth grade.

Despite an awkward and nerdy adolescence, the summer between seventh and eighth grade was a transformative experience. I came back to school with real boobs, an extra five inches of height which made my pudge disaspear, and a wardrobe financed by my guilty dad. I had one of each of Gloria Vanderbilt and Calvin's, a burgundy velour dress with gold trim and a daring slit up the side, and a coveted pair of Candies mules, only I didn’t know they were called mules back then. They made a delicious clop clop clop sound as I teetered - probably quite ungracefully - down the halls at Pease Middle School in San Antonio.

My enviable duds and willowy appearance attracted the attention of the cool girls, and for one blissful school year, I was one of them. Then we moved to a better and more affluent neighborhood, the year before I started my Freshman year.

I was no longer one of the cool kids. My clothes weren’t right. My designer jeans and Candies were wrong. The cool kids were wearing effortlessly faded Levis, loafers without socks, polo shirts, and all the monogrammed things. I made the early mistake of buying a polo shirt with a fox appliqué instead of an alligator or a man playing polo, not that I really grasped the concept of polo or fully understood it was an actual sport.

Oh well. Easy come, easy go. I was just sort of taking up space in my fancy new school in my JCPenney - or maybe it was Sears - polo shirt. I might not have been one of the cool kids but there wasn’t anything stand-out weird enough to make me an obvious target for bullies.

Until Elizabeth Flores decided to notice me.

Fourth period was pep squad, which met in the school’s auditorium to practice flash cards and cheering. I hated pep squad with the fire of a thousand suns. My new stepmother, a perky cheerleader type, assured me I would just adore pep squad because it was the gateway to becoming a cheerleader.

My new stepmother, who fortunately didn’t stick around long enough to actually get to know me, didn’t consider that I wasn’t the peppy type, but that was okay. As it turns out, practicing flashcards and cheering took up minimal time, leaving me with lots of downtime to write angst-ridden prose inspired by Sylvia Plath while I tried to tune out the noise from detailed conversations about whether we could get bikini ready in a week by eating half a pack of dry-roated peanuts for lunch every day.

Elizabeth, or Betsey, as she was called, sat next to me. She was on the fringes of the cool kids. Not an inner circle cool kid, but solid B-list, although it'd be a couple of decades before I fully understood what B-list meant. I disliked her immediately. She was shrill and unpleasant and she instinctively made me want to be invisible.

“What’s that smell?”

She made an exaggerated sniffing noise, moving her head to and fro like a cartoonish bloodhound as she tried to pinpoint the source of the unpleasant odor that her nostrils had picked up.

I inhaled deeply. I didn’t smell anything and went back to ignoring her and hoped she’d reciprocate.

“OH. MAH. GAWD. It’s YOU!”

I moved my eyes to the left. She was talking to me.

“Jill, you stink.” She declared. “Did you take a bath last night?”

She had my attention. She had everyone’s attention.

To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time in my young life I’d been told I smelled bad. My instinctive reaction was to dip my nose toward my chest and, you know…sniff myself.

Do I stink? No. I don’t.

I smelled like Jean Nate, Aqua Net, and Doublemint chewing gum. I had indeed taken a bath the night before and also a shower with a shampoo that morning. I was 14 and obsessed with hygiene and bath products.

What do I do? Ignore? Engage? Cry? Escape?

I did not know.

“LOOK! She’s sniffing herself. Jill’s SNIFFING herself! EWWWWW. You stink. You’re gross! Miss Johnson, can I change seats? Jill STINKS.”

There were about 50 freshmen girls in the fourth-period pep squad. Conversations stopped. Eyes turned toward me. Miss Johnson was sitting in the front row, reading something. If she heard B List Betsey’s request to be reseated, she did not let on. I’d already figured out Miss Johnson’s presence in pep squad was not the high point of her teaching career and also that she was kind of an ass. If anyone was going to throw me a lifeline, it would not be her.

I dared to let my eyes scan the room Would anyone make her stop? Would anyone leap to my defense?

No. It appeared not.

There were awkward giggles and stares, a few sympathetic glances. I locked eyes with a girl in the row in front of me, whom I considered a casual friend or a potential one, anyway. She looked away. I judged her for that move forever, and we were never more than “Say hi in the hall” acquaintances after that. Perhaps I was too harsh, and perhaps her lack of action was merely a form of self-preservation; we could have been great friends, but I’ll never know that.

Thankfully, no one else jumped on the “Jill stinks” bandwagon, and after a few more rounds of loudly speculating about my level of hygiene, she stopped. Conversations about how fattening peanuts really were and other teenage girl chatter resumed.

I kept my head down, as if looking at my notebook of angsty prose, allowing my hair to fall over my face. I wanted the floor to swallow me whole. Miraculously, I managed not to cry by telling myself that she wanted me to cry and not to give her the satisfaction.

I’m not sure if that was true. I don’t know if Elizabeth Flores had a heart or a conscience, and I don’t know if seeing evidence of how truly upset I was would have made her feel bad or if it would have brought on Jill Stinks Act II.

I dropped Freshman pep squad and went to PE, which gave me substantially less time to work on my angsty prose but proved to be a relatively drama-free experience. After all, I wasn’t the peppy type.

Throughout the next four years, I managed to mostly stay under her radar. There was one small incident where she merrily threw me an insult as we passed each other between classes. I kept it moving, and since there was no audience, she didn’t appear interested in pursuing things. I had one class with her Sophomore year. It was a large class, which provided her with an audience but I was well-liked by the teacher. Whatever the reason, she switched to ignoring me and our paths didn’t really cross after that. It was a big school.

For the longest time, I wondered what I’d done to deserve her attention. I’ve come to the conclusion that she was sniffing around - pun intended - for a weak target and wanted to either see what she could get away with or see if singling me out would be viewed as clever or cool. While nobody leaped to my defense that day, other than a few titters, she didn’t get much of a reaction from anyone else. I managed to get through high school with marginal academic performance, a handful of friends, and numerous spiral notebooks filled with angsty prose. If I ever had the reputation as “Jill the girl who stinks,” I was blissfully unaware and continued my love affair with girly-smelling bath products.

I don’t think most of us are born with thick skin; it’s something that just happens along the way, or not. Somewhere along the course of my life, I developed a pretty thick skin and an unwillingness to put up with people’s BS. If someone told me I stunk today, I’d probably shrug and go wash my pits. If someone tried to make sport out of loudly and publicly taunting me, I’d probably tell them to fuck off. I wouldn’t spend time wondering what I’d done to deserve that and would recognize a mean girl for a mean girl.

And, I like to think that if I encountered an Elizabeth Flores in the wild picking on someone else, that I’d be the advocate I hadn’t had. I’d probably recognize this type of behavior as a manifestation of insecurity, although I'd not excuse it. I want to think I’ve become the kind of person who wouldn’t let the Elizabeth Floreses of this world go unchecked.

I remember that one afternoon during my Freshman year with staggering clarity. It’s what anyone who has seen Inside Out knows is a core memory and not the happy, whimsical Bingbong kind. I remember that day better than I remember what my family and I did to celebrate my birthday last year.

I don’t think I dwell on it. I’m definitely over it. I just remember it. Mostly, I think about how mean kids can be to each other and give myself virtual pats on the back for who I have grown up to be. That’s something, right?

I don’t lie awake at night wondering where Elizabeth Flores is today and if she ever morphed into a nice person. I’m sure it’s possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one blip that’s so deeply stamped upon my memory is something she doesn’t remember at all. Time and life can be funny that way and I’ve certainly had my asshole moments that I wouldn’t want my entire existence to be judged on.

But, if you were to ask me what one of my most significant high school memories is, this would be in the top three, easily. If you were to ask me what moment in my life I’d like to do over, it would be not taking this one so passively. Would I have told her to shut up, fired back, “Yeah, well you stink, too,” or popped out of my seat like a jack in the box and smacked her smug little face? I think about that sometimes, and I like all of those options better than sitting there waiting for the moment to pass.

But I’ll always remember the day Elizabeth Flores noticed me.