Better You Than Me

by Jessica Brody

  “He said he’d give you a chance to redo the presentation tomorrow,” Mom continues. “Otherwise, he’s going to fail you.”

  My stomach clenches. Fail me? As in an F?

  “You can’t just read the online summary, Skylar. Reading is not just about summarizing the plot. It’s about living the plot. Befriending the characters. Getting inside their heads.”

  I fight not to roll my eyes. Here we go again. Mom’s big speech about how reading is life’s greatest gift and how much I’m missing out on by choosing to watch TV instead of burying myself in a life-changing book.

  “The problem with reading a summary,” Mom goes on, oblivious to my frustration, “is you’re unable to insert any of yourself into the story. That’s the whole joy of reading. Interpreting. Letting your own experiences shape and color the material. You can’t do that with a summary.”

  “Okay, I’ll read it,” I promise her, even though we both know I probably won’t. But thankfully, Mom finally decides to drop the issue.

  “Well, you better get up or you’ll be late for school.”

  School. I can feel my eyes prick with tears at the very thought of the place.

  “Mom?” I say.

  “Hmm?” she replies absently, straightening the stack of unread books on my desk like a meticulous librarian.

  “Is it okay if I stay home today?”

  She looks over at me, tilting her head. “Why?”

  I shrug and stare at the ceiling, hoping she won’t see the moisture in my eyes. “I just don’t feel like going.”

  “Oh, my bird.” She comes and sits on my bed. “Are those Elmo girls giving you trouble again?”

  I roll my eyes, wishing I’d never told her about them in the first place. “They’re called the Ellas, Mom.”

  Mom snorts at this. “I don’t care what they’re called. Ellas. Bellas. Bobs. Boingos. Scared, insecure little girls is what they are.”

  She really doesn’t understand anything, does she?

  “The Ellas are not insecure, Mom.”

  “Of course they are. Any woman—or girl—who is mean to another member of her own sex is covering for a deep-rooted insecurity, buried beneath a wardrobe of trendy clothes and a face full of fancy makeup. It’s the same whether you’re twelve or forty. It’s all a facade to hide the fact that they have nothing else to offer.”

  And this is what it’s like to live with a college professor. You never get any practical advice. It probably doesn’t help that my mom spent exactly two weeks in seventh grade when she was my age, before the teachers determined she was too smart for their classes and promptly moved her up two whole grades to the high school. She loves telling the stories about how adorable all the teenagers thought she was. The little bespectacled brainiac in their advanced classes.

  Yeah, well, life isn’t that easy for the rest of us.

  I sigh. “You just don’t get it, Mom.”

  “I get it!” she insists. “Believe me, I get it. Their lives look perfect, right? But that’s just from the outside. If you want to see someone’s real life, you have to look beyond appearances. Everyone has problems underneath.”

  I know there’s no use arguing with her, so I just smile and say, “Thanks, Mom.”

  She pats my leg. “You’re welcome. Now get up and show those Ellas that you do have something more to offer. That you’re a strong, accomplished woman. And that you won’t be intimidated by them just because they’re intimidated by you.”

  I almost want to laugh. The Ellas, intimidated by me? Yeah, right. The Ellas aren’t intimidated by anyone. But I really don’t want another lecture. Mom can save those for her students. So I get up. I say good morning to the life-size Ruby Rivera cardboard cutout that stands guard in front of my closet. Then I make my Ruby Rivera–themed bed (complete with the extra Genie decorative pillow) and head to the bathroom to shower. Afterward, I comb out my long, dirty-blond hair, which would probably look less flat and dull if I could use a little styling product. If only Mom would let me buy some. She doesn’t believe in styling product. She thinks it’s just corporate America pushing its antifeminist agenda on the consumer, trying to make women feel bad about themselves so they’ll buy useless beautification products.

  Of course, Mom doesn’t need any styling product. Her hair is a gorgeous shade of strawberry blond that shimmers naturally in any light. Too bad she always keeps it tucked back in that ponytail. What a waste.

  After my hair is brushed, I stand in front of the mirror, staring at my reflection. My pale skin looks almost ghostly in this light. Mom and I live in faculty housing on the UC–Irvine campus. It’s a small, two-bedroom apartment with horrible lighting. Not that good lighting would help my skin situation. I’ve always been pale. I wish I had Ruby Rivera’s skin. Her mom is from Mexico and her dad is from El Salvador, so she has this beautiful light brown skin that always looks flawless.

  I sigh and shut off the light. There’s only one bathroom in the apartment, so Mom and I have to share. It’s in the hallway between our two bedrooms. As I walk back to my room, I can hear Mom in the kitchen. She’s talking in that hushed angry voice again. The one she uses only with Dad. It’s a new voice. I’d never heard it until a few months before they told me they were getting a divorce and then Mom coincidentally got this guest professor job shortly after. She didn’t even try to stick around and work things out with Dad. She just gave up. Packed up our stuff and shipped us both to California. And did I get any say in it? No. Because apparently my feelings on the subject don’t matter.

  “Don’t patronize me, Jared,” Mom is saying. “I’m not one of your doting little students.” There’s a pause and then she says, “Yeah, well, a lot of things you do used to be charming but aren’t anymore.”

  I run to my room and close the door.

  It doesn’t matter, I reassure myself. This is temporary. Just like us being in California. As soon as we get back to Amherst, they’ll both admit that they’ve been stupid and they’ve missed each other and they want to get back together. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Everyone knows that.

  Plus, I just don’t have the time or energy to deal with my parents fighting. I have other stressful problems to tackle right now. Like my closet.

  I can’t stop thinking about how the Ellas made fun of my clothes yesterday. That was one of my favorite outfits. I would ask my mom to take me shopping for new clothes, but she’d probably just lecture me about how I don’t need new clothes to impress the people at my new school. I just have to be my brilliant self.

  The problem is, I can’t be myself. I can’t show these people who I really am, because I keep getting in my own way. It was easier in Amherst, when I had a built-in best friend I’d known since preschool. I never had to think about how to act around Leah; I just acted normal. And she acted normal, and that was that.

  Leah says when you pick out clothes, you should think about a cute boy and then pick out an outfit you think he would like. So of course, I think about Ryder Vance. He’s the only boy for me. He plays Ruby’s longtime crush, Miles, on Ruby of the Lamp. And he’s everything you’d ever want a cute boy to be. He has long, light brown hair that swoops across his forehead like he’s trapped in a constant breeze. And he does this dreamy, pensive thing with his eyes whenever he looks at Ruby on the show, like he’s thinking really hard about how much he secretly likes her. He’s obviously a very deep and introspective person in real life. I mean, no one can act that well.

  I wonder if Ruby thinks about Ryder when she gets dressed in the morning.

  Mom says you should never dress to impress a boy. Boys should fall in love with your brains, not your looks; that’s what makes a lasting relationship. She always said that’s how it worked with Dad. He fell in love with her opinions about Sylvia Plath, the famous poet. But now Mom and Dad are getting divorced, so that strategy didn’t work out too
well. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Sylvia Plath killed herself. Maybe if they’d fallen in love over someone less dramatic, like, say, Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss, I might still be in Amherst with Leah.

  I finally settle on an orange dress with orange tights and white ankle boots. It’s similar to something Ruby wore in the premiere episode of season 3, after she heard that her crush, Miles, liked the color orange. I figure if I can’t dress to impress a boy, I can at least channel Ruby dressing to impress one.

  After getting dressed, I head into the kitchen, where Mom is thankfully off her call. She’s packing up her school bag between hurried bites of cereal. She’s always been really good at multitasking, a skill I must get from her, because I manage to eat breakfast, pack my lunch, and watch a YouTube video of Ruby at a movie premiere the other night all at the same time.

  I close the lid on my container of leftover brown butter and thyme gnocchi and put it in my backpack. I made it last night in an effort to distract myself from the burp incident. That’s what I do when I’m stressed out: I cook. It takes my mind off things. I’m actually really good at it. It was a skill acquired of necessity. When you grow up with two busy professor parents who value knowledge more than the quality of the food they eat, you learn to follow recipes pretty quick. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life eating takeout and cardboard-flavored mac and cheese.

  With bags and lunches packed, we’re off. The school bus doesn’t make stops at the university faculty housing, so my mom drives me to school each day. Then I take the public bus home. It’s the one reprieve I get. I’ve heard the middle school bus is even worse than the middle school hallways.

  When Mom pulls up to the student drop-off zone in front of the school, she must notice the look of total panic on my face, because she says, “Don’t worry. I’m sure today will be better.”

  I wish I could believe her. I wish I could know with absolute certainty that everything will be okay. That no one will even remember what happened yesterday.

  But this is middle school.

  Everyone remembers everything.

  “And hey,” Mom says, her voice sounding extra peppy. “The weekend is just around the corner, and then it’s the big day!”

  Okay, I admit that the reminder of the weekend does cheer me up a little. Ruby Rivera is doing an autographing session at the South Coast Plaza mall in Costa Mesa, which is only a short drive from Irvine, and Mom promised to take me. It’ll be the first time I’ve ever seen her up close. I mean, I’ve seen her in concert in Boston three times, but we had terrible seats, so she was like the size of an ant.

  “And afterward,” Mom goes on, “maybe I can show you around campus a little.”

  I grimace. Mom has been trying to get me to come to UC–Irvine to see her office ever since we moved here. But I don’t really understand the point when it’s just a temporary position. Pretty soon she’ll be back at Amherst College and back with my dad, where she belongs.

  “That’s okay,” I say, trying to sound breezy. “I think I’ll skip that part.”

  Mom smiles, although I can tell she’s holding back disappointment. I feel a twinge of guilt but quickly push it away. She’s the one who insisted we come out here. She’s the one who walked out on Dad and our whole life in Amherst. She can get used to disappointment. I have.

  Well, almost.

  I pull on the door handle and kick the door open with my foot.

  “Have fun!” Mom calls after me.

  “I’ll try,” I mutter before closing the door and threading my arms through the straps of my backpack.

  Okay, I tell myself, walking slowly toward the front doors of the school. You can do this. You can—

  But as soon as I enter the building, I know for certain that I can’t do this. Coming to school today was a huge mistake. I should have just faked sick, refused to get out of bed, told my mom I had the plague. Because the moment I step into that hallway, every single person turns to look at me.

  I duck my head and continue down the main hallway toward my locker. I try to tell myself it’s just my imagination. No one is looking at me. No one even knows who I am in this school! But then a group of guys passes by me and one of them lets out a disgustingly loud burp that seems to shake the very floor I’m standing on. The other guys break into hoots of laughter as they all nudge and high-five each other.

  “Nice going, Belchman!” one of them shouts.

  I run to my locker and quickly dial in the combination, trying to keep my head down.

  “I guess you haven’t seen it yet,” a voice says to me, and I look up to see a boy from my science class standing next to my locker. His name is Ethan. We were paired together for a project at the beginning of the year so we hung out in the library together a few times. He’s sort of cute, with shaggy blond hair, a small nose, and a super-pointy chin. He plays lacrosse. I only know that because he told me once and I didn’t know what lacrosse was and had to look it up. Right now he’s probably the only one in this hallway not laughing at me.

  “Seen what?” I ask, dread coating my throat.

  He sighs and pulls out his phone. “Daniella posted it this morning,” he explains, looking sympathetic. “It’s kind of gone viral.”

  He turns the screen toward me and suddenly everything makes sense. The titters. The stares. The attention. My hand flies to my mouth as I realize what I’m looking at. All the blood seems to freeze in my veins.

  “Oh my gosh!” I utter, horrified. “Oh my gosh!”

  Ethan looks like he’s about to say something—maybe he’s going to start laughing at me, too—but I don’t wait around to hear what it is. Without even bothering to close my locker door, I turn and run as fast as I can out of the school.

  Mom is standing in the mini kitchen of the trailer, pouring blueberries from a carton into a tiny white bowl that looks like it was stolen from a dollhouse.

  “Hi!” She greets me with a beaming smile when I step inside. “How was school?”

  I groan. “The same as always. Ryder was annoying and I took a Learning Space course.”

  She shakes her head. “Why do you bother with those online courses?”

  I shrug. “They’re interesting. And maybe they’ll help me get into a good college.”

  Mom chuckles. “Sweetie, people only go to college to get a good career. You already have one of those.”

  “And to learn stuff,” I remind her.

  She looks confused for a moment, like she’s not following my logic. I know it’s no use trying to explain it to her. Her idea of higher education is keeping up to date on which actress wore which designer to the latest awards show.

  I nod toward the tiny bowl of blueberries. “What are you doing?”

  Mom glances down. “Oh, I’m starting a new diet! That darn Cookie Diet didn’t work. I gained five pounds on it. FIVE pounds.”

  I want to say, What do you expect, eating nothing but cookies for a week? But obviously I don’t.

  “So I’m starting something new,” she goes on. “My nutritionist says it’s all the rage right now. It’s called the Bowl Diet.”

  “The Bowl Diet?” I repeat incredulously.

  “Yup. You can eat anything that you can fit into this.” She picks up the tiny bowl and brandishes it toward me like a game show hostess.

  Seventy-three wisecracks float into my mind at once but I push them all back. “Sounds logical,” I say with a smile.

  Mom beams. “I know, right?”

  This is good. Mom is always in a good mood when she starts a new diet. She gets super optimistic about life.

  I set my phone down on the table in the trailer’s living room and take a deep breath. “Mom, can I talk to you about something?”

  Mom pops a single blueberry into her mouth and flashes me a warm smile. “Of course, sweetie. You can ta
lk to me about anything.”

  I fight not to roll my eyes. She always says that. Mom fancies herself one of those “cool” stage moms whose daughter thinks of her as more of a BFF than a mom.

  “I was thinking about—”

  I’m interrupted by a knock on the trailer door. It’s Stan, the catering manager, coming to deliver my morning meal. It consists of exactly one hard-boiled egg, two pieces of tasteless skinless chicken breast, three carrot sticks, and twelve green peas. It’s been my staple meal for the past four years, and the sight of it makes me want to gag, particularly today, when my stomach is already a wreck in anticipation of this conversation with my mom.

  “Thanks, Stan,” Mom says brightly, setting the plate down on the table and gesturing toward it. “Eat. You need your calories for the next scene.”

  I slide into the bench seat and poke at the hard-boiled egg with my finger. It feels like rubber.

  Mom pops another blueberry into her mouth. “So, what were you saying?”

  I pick up a carrot stick and play hockey with the green peas on my plate, using the two chicken pieces as goals. “Right. So…I was just talking to Lesley, and—”

  Mom’s eyes go wide at the mention of my agent’s name. “What did she say?” she asks, instantly turning defensive. “What are those lowlifes trying to pull on us this time? They’re holding their ground on the pay raise, aren’t they? Those ungrateful little—”

  “Mom,” I quickly interrupt before she gets herself too worked up. “No. We didn’t talk about the contract negotiations.”