That got Renata thinking.
She tapped her chin as she considered which incident she would tell Millie first. "The most common one was a racist thing, like slanting their eyes, calling names, those tame insults. You are Chinese; you must have had these kinds of experiences."
Millie nodded her head at her as she sat on her bed, resting her elbow on her thigh and her jaw on her hand. "Yeah, that happened. People sometimes mock me for my weird English too. I have funny pronunciation because of my Chinese and Russian accent."
Renata sat against her almost non-existent headboard, and she started to tell her from the beginning. Renata was quite naughty. Her father was always busy during the day and came home pretty late at night. By the time he got home, she was usually fast asleep. Her mother was always working from home, but that doesn't mean she was idle; she was equally busy. And her unruly daughter was out of control almost all the time. Her mother, of course, told her father, but since he was not at home during the day, no one reprimanded or disciplined her. So, his father had an idea to put her in a strict boarding school—and better yet, an all-girl boarding school. Her parents agreed that Renata would start living in a dormitory by the 6th grade.
First thing Renata did when she heard about it from her parents was jump up and down. She was happy because the young (stupid) Renata didn't quite understand the meaning of boarding school. Her parents told her she would have many friends 24/7. An 11-year-old girl would live in a place full of friends the same age as her, in a place far from her parents, with no parent supervising. Renata thought the boarding school had to be heaven on earth. She was beyond ecstatic.
Turned out it was hell on earth. And worst of all, it was an all-girls boarding school; she didn't know that there would be no boys in the vicinity. Being loud was a sin; no talking loud, no laughing loud, maybe no breathing out loud too. The way she dressed, the way she behaved, the way she ate, even the way she walked had to adhere to the etiquette manual, 24/7.
If she ever thought the girls in her previous private school were mean, she was wrong. She re-learned the meaning of "vicious" there. Especially when they knew who she was. In 6th grade, a popular girl in her class, called stupid1, told her that the bag Renata used was unique, and she liked that. But one day, she overheard this stupid1 saying that Renata's bag was the ugliest bag she had ever seen to her ass-kissers in the toilet. She even tried to make Renata an outcast to their fellow classmates, which oddly didn't work.
Millie arched her eyebrows, "That sounds like Regina from the [Mean Girls]. So what do you do?"
Renata shrugged, "Nothing, she was drowning in shame when we were in 7th grade. It was when people learned my parents own a handbag store. You must know, Rosaline Perlée bags always got reviews from some magazines over the years. I'm not sure which media it was, but I was at a charity gala accompanying my father for the first time. A tabloid took a snap, and the next thing I knew, the whole school was talking about me."
"So stupid1 stopped doing anything to you anymore because of shame and guilt?"
Renata shook her head. "No, it got worse. I didn't want to be friends with a fake like her, so she was offended. One day stupid1 asked me to eat at a cafe with her bum-suckers on the weekend, she said she wanted to apologize by buying me food. They left me in the cafe to pay; the bill was over $300. I had to call my father unless he wanted to see me in juvie. I mean, who does that??" She got good spankings because of the incident; her father was furious. The next day, Renata glued stupid1's ass to her chair, along with her other three monkeys.
Then another kid, stupid2, took her Muji aluminum pen, one that would have cost her $8, just because stupid2 thought Renata could afford to buy another. Renata was a fanatic for Japanese stuff, and she loved her Muji stationery. She fought with stupid2, which ended with her pen breaking and a visit to the disciplinary committee for two months. Not just stationery, she lost cute clothes, skincare stuff from Japan such as lip balm, body butter, moisturizer, nail polishes, the list could go on. Being rude was second nature when she was there, although sometimes she did it in a girly style, passive-aggressive.
Renata continued, "The final straw was when they were gossiping about me on MySpace; this involved many upper class girls too. Gosh, that was so bad. They edited my photos with older men, boys, or any men in horrendous poses and posted those to their MySpaces. I told my father that sooner or later I would commit murder unless he put me in another school. I couldn't stay there until 12th grade, either because I killed someone or because I killed myself. That's when he suggested this school." Renata promptly agreed, as long as she could get away from that school. She assumed that her father also did something to those kids since she heard they were sent to the discipline committee for the rest of their time there.
Millie's slanted eyes got rounder and bigger. "That was awful. So you didn't have any friends all those times?"
"No, I have more friends than bullies. Two of my friends were also bullied; the rest were having a normal school life. We 'inmates' stuck together in those horrible situations. I recently added them to Facebook."
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When Renata was at the library the next day, Janice gave her the new anklet. Renata returned the broken anklet to Janice; she didn't want used stuff. Wilson was watching the whole exchange and asked Renata what had happened after Janice left.
Not only about Janice, Renata also told Wilson about her life in previous boarding school. He listened without interupting, and by the end of her story, he asked, "What is body butter? Is it the same butter we use to cook with?"
Maybe he shouldn't ask that question; she looked at him as if he told her the earth was flat. "Body butter is like a lotion but thicker. Really make your skin smooth and feel good to touch, supple. And no, we cannot use it for cooking. Unless you want your omelet to smell like flowers, then go ahead. Some of them are edible anyway." Renata proceeded to "teach" him the difference between lotion and body butter, when to use them, and the general skin care routine she did daily.
"Why do you care so much about appearance? There are things better to think about or do than skin care or about looking good." Wilson, definitely, should learn not to ask this kind of question, she looked at him as if he grew a horn on his forehead.
"Of course I care, not because I'm a girl, but because I really love to do it. I love to look good, and I love to feel good. Who doesn't? If you are going to say you don't, you need a major change of perspective, Wilson."
"Then, enlighten me. Looking clean and neat are enough, I think."
Renata smirked as she thought, 'challenge accepted.'