Not Your All-American Girl

CHAPTER 1
ROYAL WE
MY FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER ONCE said that Tara and I were the Royal We. “We didn’t like today’s lunch,” I told her after we had been served sandwiches with meat that had weird jellied circles. It was like someone had tried to turn bologna into a stained-glass window.
“May we please use the bathroom?”
“When do we get to take Lola home for the weekend?” (Lola was the class guinea pig.)
“It’s always the Royal We with you two, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Mortson.
I hadn’t heard the term royal we before, but it made sense, because I always felt a bit grander when Tara was around. Being with Tara was like being in a patch of sunshine. She was the one teachers loved and the one who always got picked early for teams in PE. She was the one who got a blue ribbon at the science fair. She was the one someone was always saving a seat for in the cafeteria. But she sat with me. And I was the one she gave the other half of the best friends necklace to.
I have contributed to our mutual royalty exactly once, when we tried out for the school Christmas concert as a duet in fourth grade. I felt a little weird, trying out for a Christmas concert as someone who does not celebrate Christmas. We sang “Winter Wonderland,” which does not specifically mention Christmas, so that no one in my family got upset. Tara said we got it because of me. But in everything else, the spotlight was on Tara.
I thought of it this way: In your typical Pac-Man lunch box, Tara was the PB&J, and I was the apple. You needed both to have a complete meal, even if one was the star. Tara was the star of our friendship.
I found out later that the Royal We was something that kings and queens used instead of “I.” Queen Victoria supposedly said, “We are not amused,” after someone told a scandalous story in her presence. Tara and I still say this whenever my brother tells a so- called joke or when my father asks me to take out the garbage. I can do the British accent with just the right amount of snobbiness. Most of the time, everything’s better with the Royal We.
But being the Royal We hasn’t always worked out. For instance, the Royal We had to stay inside during recess three times in Mrs. Mortson’s class for talking too much.
In October, the Royal We did not win WKRZ concert tickets to see The Police. And only half of the Royal We got designer jeans, because the other half has unreasonable parents who do not see the value of “having someone else’s name embroidered on your hiney.” On top of that, this year, in sixth grade, the Royal We faced our biggest battle yet: The only class we had together was science. Not even lunch. After nearly six months in the sixth grade, no one at Dwight D. Eisenhower Junior High knew the Royal We existed.