Top Grade: Fall 2011

October Schwartz is not dead.

Now, there are plenty of dead folks in this book (you read the title before starting the book, right?), it’s just that October Schwartz does not happen to be one of them. That said, it was her first day at Sticksville Central High School, and she sort of wished she were dead.

October had moved to Sticksville only a month earlier, and she didn’t know anyone yet, unless you counted her dad and maybe the Korean lady who sold her gum at the convenience store. She’d spent the month of August reading in the cemetery behind their house and working on writing her own book. So her first day of high school was even more nerve-wracking than it was for most of the students at Sticksville Central. The way she figured it, everybody was going to hate her. They certainly had in her old town. Why should this one be any different?

There were plenty of reasons for the average high school student to hate her: she wasn’t chubby, but she wasn’t not chubby, which, to those naturally inclined to be unpleasant people, meant she was fat. Also, she wore more black eyeliner than most — barring only silent film actresses, really. Add to that the natural black hair she’d inherited from her mom and her affinity for black clothing, and she was like a walking teen vampire joke waiting to happen.

Plus, she was a little kid. Due to the advanced state of middle school in her former town, a futuristic utopia of almost 40,000 citizens — most of them employed by the town’s snowmobile factory — she’d been allowed to skip grade eight altogether in Sticksville (only three hours away geographically), straight into the teenage Thunderdome of high school before she even reached her teens. She was twelve and headed into grade nine, where most of her classmates were well on their way to fourteen if they weren’t there already. This part was to remain a secret from everyone, if she had her way. But even if her classmates didn’t know, October was sure they could smell the tween on her — the stench of Sour Keys and Saturday morning cartoons.

As October pulled on a black T-shirt, she began to imagine burgeoning extracurricular clubs founded on the members’ communal hatred of October Schwartz, its members wearing T-shirts emblazoned with hilarious anti-October slogans.

October’s dad — Mr. Schwartz to you — taught grade eleven and grade twelve biology, as well as auto repair at Sticksville Central, so it was sort of his first day, too. But somehow, October doubted her dad was anxious about what people would think of his clothes and hair.

She left for school early that morning, because she was cautious about that sort of thing. About other sorts of things, she wasn’t very cautious at all, as you’ll see. She shouted goodbye to her dad, who was still busy shaving in the washroom. He didn’t respond, but he was kind of concentrating, blaring music by Fleetwood Mac or some other band from the 1970s.

She walked into the backyard and out to Riverside Drive using the cemetery that bordered their backyard as a shortcut. Mr. Schwartz had been uncertain at first about purchasing a house so close to the town’s lowly cemetery. Not that he believed in ghosts, but there was something unseemly about it to him. However, the price was good and he wanted to find a home before the school year started, so he dismissed his uncertainties. October liked it. She smiled crookedly as she passed through the wide expanse of decaying stone and forgotten names on her way to the first day of the rest of her life.

The air was crisp and a bit cold for early September, like a Granny Smith apple left in the freezer by accident. October lived only about twenty minutes from Sticksville Central, so it wasn’t long before she pushed her way through the double doors of the school’s entrance. She opened her bag and unfolded her schedule.

Evidently, October wasn’t the only student concerned with arriving early. A veritable gaggle of other kids could already be seen congregating, conversing, and giggling inside the main corridor of the school.

One of these students — a tall one with auburn hair and a belt the width of a small diving board, who was standing with some friends beside the vending machines outside the cafeteria (spoiler alert: she’s a witch) — caught sight of October Schwartz and pursued her like a fashionable, but very silent homing missile. October, who was attempting to avoid contact with anyone and everyone, hurried past her. But she wasn’t quick enough to avoid the belt enthusiast’s loud slur:

“Zombie Tramp!”

Mortified, October made a sensible, strategic retreat to the girls’ washroom, which was thankfully empty. She gripped a porcelain sink and stared dolefully at herself in the mirror. Two minutes into high school and things were off to a horrible start. But, above all else, October was determined not to cry at high school. Ever. She was still twelve, but she wasn’t a baby.

She tried to fill her mind with thoughts different from her new “Zombie Tramp” status: her birthday, her dad, and her new classes. What did Zombie Tramp even mean? Why Tramp? Why not Zombie Floozy? Yet, because she was staring into a mirror, her mind kept drifting back to her big, stupid face.

Her dad often told her she was “darn cute,” because he was related to her, but October never believed him. Her dad was no prize himself; how would he know what cute was? October did a quick self-analysis in the mirror. She might have overdone it with the eyeliner today, and maybe she should have taken more effort with her hair. Around her neck, she wore a gift left behind by her mom, a silver ankh necklace. It was probably the eyeliner and all the black that was encouraging the Zombie Tramp comparison.

Leaving Pennsylvania behind wasn’t too difficult for Taylor, who was literally moving closer to her Nashville dream and away from her bullying classmates, but it required a bigger sacrifice from the rest of her uprooted family, especially her father, who had to transfer his business. Nevertheless, the Swifts never put pressure on Taylor. She told Self magazine, “I knew I was the reason they were moving. But they tried to put no pressure on me. They were like, ‘Well, we need a change of scenery anyway’ and ‘I love how friendly people in Tennessee are.’” Andrea had faith in her daughter and trusted her intentions, “It was never about ‘I want to be famous.’ Taylor never uttered those words. It was about moving to a place where she could write with people she could learn from.”

Taylor was glad her family trusted her instincts. “Sometimes you don’t have a sure answer as to where you’re going to go or where you’re going to end up, but if you have an instinct as to where you don’t need to be, you need to follow it and my parents let me make that decision completely,” recalls Taylor.

She didn’t have a label anymore, but she had experience working with one. In 2004, Taylor was featured in an Abercrombie & Fitch “rising stars” campaign and one of her songs appeared on a compilation album, the Maybelline-produced Chicks with Attitude. “The Outside,” the song she’d written about feeling excluded in middle school, had found a temporary home.

It wasn’t long before Taylor found a home as a songwriter at Sony/ATV Records. She was the youngest songwriter they’d ever hired, which is an impressive feat, but Taylor knew she’d still have to prove herself by acting with maturity beyond her years. “I knew the stereotype people had when they heard the words ‘14-year-old girl’ was that I wasn’t going to do the hard work, and I wanted people to know that I was,” Taylor emphasized. “One of my first songwriting sessions was with [accomplished songwriter and producer] Brett Beavers, and I walked in with 15 different starts to songs. I love being prepared and I love organization, and I need people to know that I care and that this is important to me.”

Being a professional songwriter meant that Taylor had to lead a sort of double life, going to high school in Hendersonville during the day and writing songs in the afternoons in downtown Nashville, less than 20 miles away. Taylor called her life back then “a really weird existence,” and elaborated, “I was a teenager during the day when I was at school, and then at night it was like I was 45. My mom would pick me up from school and I’d go downtown and sit and write songs with these hit songwriters.”

The social politics of high school in Tennessee turned out to be very similar to those of junior high in Pennsylvania, but luckily for Taylor, there was one major difference that made school tolerable — a great friend. Taylor met red–haired Abigail Anderson in ninth grade English, when the new girl wowed the class with her sophisticated composition. “We were the ones in the back of the class saying negative things about Romeo and Juliet because we were so bitter toward that emotion at the time,” recalled Abigail. Neither girl was a member of the popular clique, so the pair made their own rules, focusing on what they actually cared about rather than what other people did. For Taylor, that was music; for Abigail, competitive swimming: “When I was a freshman, I knew I wanted to swim in college, at a Division 1 school, and she knew that she wanted to go on tour.” Such focus set the girls apart from their classmates, and bonded them together. Taylor explained to the New York Times, “It just dawned on me that I had to love being different or else I was going to end up being dark and angry and frustrated by school.” Being different meant staying away from the popular–girl party scene, which Taylor had already decided didn’t appeal to her. Taylor told Glamour, “I remember seeing girls crying in the bathroom every Monday about what they did at a party that weekend. I never wanted to be that girl.”