Her mother, absorbed with “adult problems,” advises, “Try not to let this upset you too much.” Not much help there, so Wendy mounts her bike, her “crawny leg muscles work to put as much distance between and life as possible.”
Hoping that a guy is writing to her, Wendy sighs: “Why couldn’t I be the one who was lucky enough to be born so pretty that everybody liked me?” An unseen witness passes encouraging sticky notes whenever Wendy is attacked. Wendy furtively flees, steering clear of the marauding cliques: the Suaves (the designer-clad guys), the Sticks (the anorexic fashionista girls), the Jocks, and others who swagger atop the pecking order. His verbal pecks draw virtual blood in the figurative barnyard of Bellingrath Junior High. Wendy Robichaud is enjoying eighth grade until a classmate, “John-Monster,” starts calling her “Bird Face”– his inspiration, no doubt, Wendy’s Gallic nose and diminutive chin. She also deserves an MS degree as a Master of the Simile for this stylistic labor of love. Toney packs her pages with humor, realism, and insight. Ten years in the writing, 8 Notes to a Nobody is required reading for any family with adolescents.
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