The new girl wasn’t just different because she was new to school, she was different because, well, she smelled different, too.
Brad Davis noticed it first, sitting right behind her in first period, but by lunch we were all talking about it. Jennie Smith had the locker next to the new girl; she noticed it between periods. Heather Gaines was paired up with the new girl for Chemistry lab in third period and she noticed it. Robin Wilson noticed it in the girls’ bathroom.
Her name was Madeline. “But everyone calls me Maddy,” she said softly, barely a whisper, when each teacher made her introduce herself. We all knew that, in our hick Nebraska town, it would be a while before anyone stopped calling her New Girl. She didn’t make much eye contact; her hair was cut in bangs that hung down past her eyebrows. She was not ugly, not beautiful either, not unpleasant to look at, though not a head-turner, she was slender but didn’t appear frail.
But here’s the weird thing about the smell, and this took a little longer to discover. Nobody smelled her in the same way.
“Did you notice how she smells like apples and cinnamon?” asked Brad Davis in the lunchroom.
“What do you mean?” said Heather Gaines. “She smelled like lavender and lemon to me.”
“Burning leaves in the fall to me,” from someone else.
“Honeysuckle.”
“Fresh-cut grass.”
“Sawdust and hay and manure, like in a stable.”
“A pine tree, like a Christmas tree in the living room.”
“Salt spray and a sandy beach and well, sunshine.” That was Todd Spitzer, who had vacationed in California last year, and now wanted to be a professional surfer when he graduated.
To me, she smelled like honey, with a little touch of warm toast.
We argued about it and shook our heads; it was a great school mystery. Without really noticing it, or saying anything to each other, we made little changes in our daily routines, different routes between classes or through the lunchroom or on the way between desks each class, just so we could pass by the new girl and try to catch a whiff.
She didn’t seem to notice. She was really shy. We tried to talk to her a little, but she just mumbled answers in short bites. Some of the girls invited her to do stuff after school but she always had a reason that she couldn’t. She did OK as a student, but you could tell the teachers felt uncomfortable about her.
Our town is small, so it wasn’t long before we figured out that the new girl lived with her parents in the little mobile home park out by the grain elevators. Her father was a truck driver; her mother stayed home. They had an old sedan, but the new girl walked to school every day. We wondered what she would do when the Nebraska snows came.
One day a thunderstorm rolled in just as school let out. I was running home with my books over my head when I saw the new girl, just standing by herself, her arms held up to the sky, her face tilted up to the downpour. She didn’t see me, but I wondered if she was trying to wash all the smells off, or maybe just take on a new one, the smell of a rainstorm in the fall.
Then the odd stuff happened. It was a gradual thing, like when you feel the air start to change from one season to the next, or like after the holidays and you notice your clothes have gotten tighter, or when you realize that your boyfriend or girlfriend isn’t holding your hand quite as tightly as they used to.
Teachers noticed it first. Assignments were coming in at the last minute, or even late. Lots of kids got called out in class for daydreaming, staring out the window. Best friends started arguing over stupid stuff. Off-hand comments suddenly became major judgments on your personality. Becky Thomas and Jack Alston, seniors who had dated since they were freshmen and were planning to go to college together, broke up.
The new girl just kept to herself, none of us really could get close to her, but to be completely honest we didn’t really try that hard either. We just stood there as she walked by, to see what she smelled like that day.
I was alone more than usual. Thinking a lot about far-away places and what they might smell like. What would Egypt smell like? Did hot desert sand have a smell? India? Curry, I guessed. Russia? Like my Uncle Pete’s breath on holidays, like vodka.
There were teacher meetings about the problem. Grades were dropping. Calls went out to parents. The grown-ups were worried.
I got a “C” on a math test, so Mrs. Taylor asked me to stay after class.
“What’s going on with you? You used to be my best student. Is something wrong?”
I just shrugged. Nothing was wrong. Really. I felt fine.
Then, just before Thanksgiving, the new girl was gone. She didn’t show up for class, and when questions were asked, teachers shrugged. They’d been told the family moved away.
Nobody really talked about it, but I know that for me at least, it felt like a fog had lifted. I stopped dreaming about traveling the world. My grades improved. Our group of friends settled down and got along again. Becky and Jack got back together. Life was normal again, if a little boring.
But occasionally, when I’m by myself, maybe like walking home from school, and I catch a whiff of a fresh apple pie cooling on someone’s windowsill, or a gust of diesel smoke from a passing truck, I think of the new girl, and I wonder where she is, whether she’s OK, and what she smells like today.