Saronda's morning began with a new alarm ringtone "” a hip-hop song she had never heard. "Huh, dat kinda sounds cool," she murmured to herself (in a voice she still had yet to recognize as her own). She ate a quick breakfast, showered (in a really cramped shower) and put on some clothes - a black, sort of low-cut shirt along with some boyshorts that happened to complement her rather rounded butt. Saronda thought of what Sarah would have looked like, and how people would have reacted, if she was ever caught in something like this. But a tank top would have shown her too much of something she didn't want to see every second of every day: chocolate brown skin.
She knew from the photos on her phone that La'Shawndra - or whatever she was called in this upside-down reality - was on the cheer squad, like herself. I'm gonna get after dat bitch, she muttered as she grabbed her backpack and got on the bus (ugh, not a car, Saronda thought) and headed down bumpy roads to the high school.
"” "”' "”
If her home had changed, and her skin color, and her voice, at least the high school hadn't. It was a midcentury-vintage hunk of modernist brick buildings, tied together with sort of cramped hallways, a few renovated areas here and there, and a quintessentially late-80s expansion that contained the cafeteria and a high concentration of pastel paint.
Saronda checked her binder, looking for a class schedule. Indeed, Saronda's classes were in a different order from Sarah's, though except for an elective (Sarah had taken home ec, Saronda had some sort of computer class), they were the same.
She did notice that one class hadn't changed. It was fourth period science class. Good. Then I'll see if nice white La'Shawndra's there.
Meanwhile, Saronda navigated toward her first class. History, with Mr. Allen, a teacher she had not had as Sarah. I can't wait for fourth period.
