Snark and Circumstance (Novella)

by Stephanie Wardrop

  SNARK AND CIRCUMSTANCE

  Book One in the Snark and Circumstance Series

  Stephanie Wardrop

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products such as: Polo, Abercrombie & Fitch, Chuck Taylor, Brooks Brothers, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Starbucks, Doc Martin, American Idol, Hollister, Vineyard Vines, Sears.

  Copyright © 2013 by Stephanie Wardrop.

  Snark and Circumstance by Stephanie Wardrop

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Swoon Romance. Swoon Romance and its related logo are registered trademarks of Georgia McBride Books, LLC.

  No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Edited by Mandy Schoen

  Cover design by Su Kopil

  Cover art copyright©: Swoon Romance 2013

  To my friends and family who believed in me long before they had a good reason to, and especially to Chip, a preppie boy whose smirk set things in motion.

  A big thank you to my critter friends at YALitChat, the not-at-all “twerpy” Amy King, Lynn Laurie, and especially Mandy, who took a chance on a snarky girl (and her first book).

  SNARK AND CIRCUMSTANCE

  Chapter 1: The Devil Wears Polo

  I’m not one to judge, but the new kid is a stuck-up asswaffle. I discover this first thing on the first day of our junior year, when he marches up to me in homeroom and announces, “You’re in my seat.”

  I blow the bangs off my forehead and look up from the depths of my backpack to see a tall boy with dark curls glowering down at me. I don’t remember him from last year. I was new to the school then and not exactly winning any popularity contests, but I still knew who everyone else was. And I would definitely have noticed someone this obnoxious.

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “You’re in . . . my seat,” he repeats, more distinctly this time.

  I try to sound reasonably bright and cheerful but this kid’s kind of freaking me out. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s assigned seats yet. At least, there’s no nametag here.”

  He sighs a little and tries again. “I always sit in the center seat, second row.”

  “How am I supposed to know this, since I have never seen you before in my life?” I immediately regret the way that sounds, but I’m nervous. And when I’m nervous, my mouth often works independently of my brain. It’s the bane of my existence, really.

  Before he can say anything else, Mr. Mullin walks in with a newly shaved head that draws some hoots from the guys in the back. I point to the desk next to me and the boy sighs again and slides into the open seat—but not before he gives me a look that would wilt lettuce.

  Great. Last night I promised my mom I would try harder to make friends this year. The school day hasn’t even officially begun and already I’ve almost wrestled a guy for a chair. Even though he started it.

  I turn away from the Chair Nazi as Mr. Mullin picks up a sheaf of printouts and starts taking roll. People are still jabbering about their summers at the Cape and the Patriots’ prospects and how awesome this year is going to be, but more quietly as Mr. Mullin announces that we have a new student at Longbourne High. He calls out, “Mike Endicott?”

  “It’s Michael Endicott,” says the Seat Freak, exactly the way I would imagine the Queen of England would respond to you if you called her “Lizzie.”

  Mr. Mullin rubs his shiny, pink-topped head with one hand and nods under his palm. He says, “Okay. ‘Michael’ it is. Hey—‘Endicott?’ Like the street in town? Where the Starbucks is?”

  Michael smirks a bit and replies, “Yes. But we were here before the street. And the Starbucks.”

  Mr. Mullin just nods and starts reading names at the top of the attendance sheet again.

  Despite myself, I turn back to Michael and demand in a whisper, “You’re not new here?”

  “I grew up here.” He sounds as if I should have known this somehow. “But I went to a different school.”

  “Where? Charm school?”

  He almost smiles then, but his dark brows form a deep V.

  “No. I went to the Pemberley School,” he says, turning to the front of the room. He then turns back to me and jerks his head toward Mr. Mullin. “Is that you?”

  “Is what me?” I splutter ungrammatically, until I realize that Mr. Mullin has been calling my name for some time now. People are looking at me with the sort of pity or contempt you would feel for any girl over the age of two who is unable to recognize her own name. They are ready to direct me toward the special classrooms.

  “Yes!” I call out, too loudly. “I mean, I’m Georgiana Barrett . . . except everyone calls me Georgia.” Mr. Mullin just nods and marks something on his notebook—maybe a little checkmark next to my name in the “Potential Space Cadet” column.

  “ ‘Georgiana?’ ” Michael repeats.

  “What?” I practically growl, because I am embarrassed enough already.

  “It’s just an unusual name.”

  I explain, “Well, my dad teaches at Meryton College—Victorian lit—and he named us all for characters in novels or famous women in nineteenth-century England.”

  He’s looking at me steadily with his intense dark eyes. I think of those snakes that hypnotize their prey, only there’s something also alarmingly appealing about these eyes, something that makes me want to keep looking into them.

  “You didn’t grow up here, did you?” he asks me after a few moments of appraisal.

  “No. We moved here last year,” I admit, before I can wonder how he figured that out.

  “I can tell,” he says as the bell rings.

  I sit there for a few seconds, feeling like I have just been slapped. He’s obviously a major snobhole, but that just makes him like all the other prepbots in this town that looks like a set for Abercrombie: The Movie. I figure I’ll ignore him as easily as I ignore the rest of the cast.

  Two hours later, when he walks into Ms. Ehrman’s AP English class, I feel my stomach sort of curl up on the sides. But then I think that maybe my mom had a point when she told me last night that I am too hard on people. I was a little harsh on him. At least that magical center seat, second row is still open so Michael doesn’t lapse into a psychotic episode. I sort of smile at him and point to the favored seat, but he doesn’t seem to recognize me.

  When I get to bio class and see that the only open seat shares a lab table with Michael, I only stop in my tracks for a nanosecond of dread. Then I decide that karma has given me another chance to be a little decent to the new kid. After all, I know what that’s like. We’ve moved a lot for my dad’s work, and it sucks. And when you move to a new school and you’re in any grade above third, it really sucks, because everyone already has their friends all set and they don’t need you. It can be really lonely. I know.

  I hover next to the open seat.

  “Is it okay if I sit here?”

  Michael indicates with a lordly wave of his hand that I am worthy of the battered plastic seat next to him. He then opens up a notebook and proceeds to ignore me. Which I guess I deserve.

  The bio teacher, Miss Grogan, is older than dirt. Everyone says she could have been a brilliant scientist when she was younger—like a Nobel Pri
ze winner or something—but ended up teaching instead. She’s still really smart, I guess, but people say she’s slipping because last year she occasionally wore her cardigans inside out and once wore one blue pump and one brown one and spent the whole day glaring at anybody who noticed it. I sneak a couple peeks at Michael as she explains the curriculum for the year. For such a stiff-looking guy, he has kind of crazy hair; all these dark curls are threatening to riot all over his skull and seem to be mounting an attack on his ears. I’m contemplating the contrast between the boho hair and the starchy polo shirt when Miss Grogan begins explaining the dissections, and my attention snaps back to her. When she mentions the fetal pig, I gulp audibly.

  “What?” Michael asks.

  I keep my eyes on the whiteboard. “Look, I don’t want to be unfair—and this won’t affect your grade at all, I promise—but I really can’t do the dissection. I’m not going to cut up an animal.”

  He keeps his eyes on Miss Grogan, too, and groans. I sneak a peek at him and see his jaw clenches for a second before he says, “Well, if you’re not going to do your half of the labs, then that is going to affect me. You’re responsible for half.”

  “And I will do as much as I can without actually cutting into some innocent creature.”

  He shakes his head and his mouth is quirked at one corner. I can’t tell if he thinks I am sort of amusing or truly pathetic. It’s especially hard to tell because we are both looking resolutely at the teacher so she can’t accuse us of not paying attention. We talk out of the sides of our mouths, like gangsters in those old movies my dad likes to watch.

  Miss Grogan is trying to explain to someone that she does not offer extra credit and it is a little too early in the year to be worried about that anyway as Michael says, “The animal is already dead, you know. It’s not like you have to stalk it through the woods and kill it with your bare hands.”

  “You’d prefer that?”

  He narrows his eyes slightly and sits back in his chair. “Our first lab is a worm. A worm.”

  “Which is a living creature. Or was a living creature, until it was killed so a bunch of high-school kids can poke around its vital organs. That’s sick, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a worm.” He’s studying me carefully now, the way you would look at someone you’re trapped in an elevator with as you start to suspect they may be certifiably crazy. “What kind of life do you think it had before it came here to the lab?”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t as exciting or important as yours,” I snap. “But maybe his ancestors were here even before yours.”

  “‘His?’” Michael is laughing under his breath now and my face gets really hot. “Are you going to name the animals, too?”

  The bell rings. I start dumping my books and notebooks into my bag and answer, “No, because as I said, I am not going to be part of the dissections.”

  Michael stacks his books into a pile and pulls them toward him.

  “Then I am going to need a more rational lab partner,” he says as he stands up, “because you are not going to sit here and draw hearts and flowers and peace signs while I do all the work.”

  “Fine,” I say through gritted teeth as we both speed walk to Miss Grogan’s cluttered desk.

  Michael announces before I can say anything, “I need another lab partner.”

  Miss Grogan frowns so hard the lines around her mouth almost swallow her lips. “Absolutely not. This is advanced biology, people, not a game of musical chairs.”

  “Are there alternative assignments to the dissection?” I ask and Miss Grogan looks at me as if she’d like to take a scalpel to me to reveal what could possibly be inside such a ridiculous girl.

  “Again. This is advanced biology. Dissection is a requirement.”

  Michael smirks at me again but before he can gloat, Miss Grogan says, “I suggest you two work this out before the first lab next week.”

  He just turns and stalks toward the door.

  “We’ll figure this out,” I say after him, feeling like a puppy nipping at his heels as we navigate the crowded hallways. “It will be months before we get to actual animals, and when we do, I’ll write up all the reports. I’ll do all the drawings and the typing. Everything but—”

  “Everything but the actual work,” he says and takes a sharp turn down the social studies hallway. I decide to just let him go. It’s a better alternative to what I’d really like to do to him.

  As a vegan, I am committed to nonviolence, in all aspects of life.

  But I’d really like to kick Michael Endicott in the shins right now.

  Chapter 2: Never Bargain with Your Mother

  I tell my sister Tori all about him as we walk home together. Our younger sisters aren’t with us because Cassie stayed behind for cheerleading and Leigh has a ride from our mom to either her dance lessons in East Longbourne or something at her church. It could be a tag sale for the homeless, or a book burning. I can’t keep track of all her saintly endeavors.

  Tori might not be a saint but she is almost annoyingly reasonable and suggests when I finish my tirade, “Well, it was his first day. Maybe he was nervous, too?”

  “Yeah,” I agree as I hoist my bag onto my shoulder. “Maybe Michael Endicott—of the Longbourne Endicotts—has OCD and he really needs that particular seat to feel safe or something. Maybe he’s off his medication today. Maybe I induced some kind of episode in him, and now he’s home, frothing at the mouth. And beating his chest with one fist . . .”

  I trail off as Tori shakes her head and ignores my delight in my own morbid imagination. “It sounds like he really cares about his grade and is worried about what your sitting out the labs will mean to it.”

  “Some things are more important than grades. Like principles.”

  “They’re not his principles,” Tori sighs as we arrive home.

  Our house is a smaller version of the other old Victorians in the neighborhood. The front looks wrinkled from its chipping paint, like the one old lady on the block who didn’t get a facelift. I go right up to the room we share and log on to Facebook to message my friend Allison in Boulder about my first day and my encounter with the Seat Freak. Hours later, I haven’t even looked at my homework, and I am wishing I had come downstairs earlier and not been so caught up in my rant to Allison. Even if it meant an interrogation by Mom, I could have scraped together a better dinner for myself than the salad of bagged lettuce and pile of plain noodles sitting on my plate.

  Leigh notices my plight and passes me the salad bowl before it’s all gone. She’s not in her usual jumper and white shirt—her own self-imposed parochial school uniform, I guess—but is still wearing a pink leotard and white shorts from dance class. She actually looks young and fresh and less like she’s auditioning to be somebody’s sister-wife.

  “Are you still eating vegan?” she asks, kind of the way you would ask someone if they still had cancer or a broken arm.

  “Yes,” I say, poking at my congealed noodles and looking at my mom. “It’s a serious choice I’ve made. It’s not a fad, not some phase I’m going through.”

  Leigh nods and pulls her long braid over her shoulder, a gesture of hers that always reminds me of someone petting a little monkey who perches there. About three years ago, when we were living in Colorado, Leigh found religion. Don’t ask me where. Now she is the only churchgoer in the family and she’s taken to wearing shapeless dresses with little flowers on them like one of those refugees the FBI rescues from those polygamist camps in the Southwest.

  Her twin and polar opposite, Cassie, smirks, swishes her dirty blonde ponytail, and passes the plate of chicken wings right under my nose. She asks, “When are you going to stop being a hippie freak, Georgia? We’re not in Boulder anymore.”

  “Cassie, I know you don’t understand someone caring about anything besides American Idol and what’s on sale at Hollister, but some of us actually think about things and make ethical choices based on that,” I tell her. “And we’re willing to stick to them, even if
we may get a bad grade in bio . . .”

  This gets my dad’s attention, so I explain how Michael wants to trade me in for a new lab partner. When I describe Michael’s insistence on having a particular seat, I embellish it a little so that it sounds like he practically picked up the chair and dumped me out of it. My dad actually chuckles.

  “Well,” he says as he picks up the platter of dead birds from Cassie, “it sounds like this boy has a real sense of entitlement. Typical for a town like this.” He looks at me over his glasses and says with a crooked smile, “You’ll set him straight, George.”

  My mom, of course, interprets my story completely differently.

  “The Endicotts are the oldest family in Longbourne,” she tells me. “I hope you weren’t too rude to him.”

  Cassie, flushed with the triumph of her first cheerleading practice, laughs so hard I think the iced tea will come out of her nose.

  “I’m serious,” my mom half-wails, as if any of us had thought she was anything but. “The Endicotts have done a lot for Longbourne—”

  “Like run the first Indians off the land?” I crack.

  Cassie leans back in her chair and declares, “I heard Michael Endicott got kicked out of prep school. But he’s hot.”

  Okay. The prep school expulsion is certainly intriguing, but I don’t want Cassie to know I think this, so I just roll my eyes at her. And as for Michael’s being “hot,” I won’t deny that. That crooked smile is infuriating, but there’s also something kind of attractive about it. Like he knows a really good joke and if you’re nice to him, he just might share it with you.

  “There’s a newbie in the senior class, too,” Tori tells us. “His name’s Trey Billingsley.”

  I immediately launch into a parody of an upper-crust accent to try to get my dad to laugh again—“Oh, I say! It is I, Trey Billingsley, here to play the grahnd pi-ah-no!”—but Dad doesn’t find this funny. He just looks uncomfortable.