by Lauren Saft
She frantically began flinging her Tiffany and Cartier–clad wrists from side to side when she saw us.
“She’s, like, out of control,” Alex mumbled as she snatched the Diet Coke from my hand. Veronica was already skipping her sticky little legs over to us. Alex and I braced ourselves for a deluge of positive energy and some obliviously whorish story.
“Ladies!” she squealed, then took notice of my green face and crippled stance. “What’s wrong?”
“Mollie’s having a rough morning,” Alex said, squeezing my shoulder. “We had to go with Plan B.…”
“Again?”
Veronica kept talking, but I was in no place to listen to sounds higher pitched than dog whistles and Chipmunk Christmas albums.
I tuned her out to survey the school yard. Most noteworthy summer transformation awards went to Julie Goldstein, who’d gotten a much-needed nose job, and Margot Swan, who’d lost a solid twenty pounds. They looked good, I guess, but Julie still had that post-op cat-face, stiff-upper-lip thing happening. The swelling would go down, though, and she would undoubtedly be cuter than she was before. Good for her.
Christ. Had anyone else gotten fat over the summer? The whole boyfriend thing had really wreaked havoc on my ass. I’d spent my entire summer “splitting” nachos and sausage calzones and at the McDonald’s drive-through at three AM. Sam eats like a sumo wrestler training at Walmart, and what was I gonna do? Be the lame barf jars girlfriend that picks at a garden salad with dressing on the side while idly watching him house carb-infused meat concoctions with melted cheese? Doubtful. At least I was puking today—that couldn’t hurt things.
“So, Friday night?” Veronica said, pulling me back into the conversation I’d been ignoring. She looked at me, her vacant green eyes seeking approval.
“For her First Week of School party,” Alex interjected.
“Oh yeah,” I said, already stressed out by the prospect of another one of Veronica’s momentous parties. I changed the subject. “Hey, V, did Alex tell you that she’s trying out for American Idol?”
“What?” Veronica squawked.
“It’s just a band,” Alex said. “It’s not a big deal.”
She rolled her eyes. Was she annoyed that I wasn’t taking this seriously? Was she actually taking this seriously? Since when was Alex serious about anything?
“Wait, are you actually trying out for Idol?! Or an actual band? Is it a new ‘Band Idol’ format? I’m confused.”
Veronica was confused. Shocking.
“It’s just a band,” Alex barked. “A silly, practice-in-a-garage, just-for-fun high school band.”
“With non-Crawford boys? Oh my god, are you going to be in the Battle of the Bands on Halloween?! You’ll be like a celebrity! Remember those smokin’ hot guys from that reggae band last year? Do you think you’ll meet them? Invite them to the party on Friday!”
“Oh my god.” Alex rolled her eyes so hard I thought she might actually tip over. “I’m not even in the band yet, calm the fuck down.”
“Why didn’t you ask if we wanted to do it with you?” V asked. “We could all be in a band; it could have been, like, our new thing? I love singing!” I actually wanted to hear Alex’s answer, but V interrupted herself. “Oh, can you ask Sam if he can get us a keg?”
The question was directed at me.
“I guess,” I said.
Asking Sam for favors always required a trade. I picked you up from school, you buy me dinner. I let you watch Real Housewives, you blow me. I puked one more time behind a red Jeep Wrangler before we all made our way into homeroom.
VERONICA COLLINS
In homeroom, I watched an even balder, though just as fat and sweaty as I remembered, Mr. Boardman shuffle through some papers on his desk and survey the talent in his homeroom. He caught my eye, gave me a wink and a wave, and said, “Welcome back, Ms. Collins. How was your summer?”
I sat up on my foot and leaned over my elbows on the cold linoleum desk.
“Great!” I said with a smile. “Did a lot of traveling… and tanning.” I undid a button and pulled my white oxford shirt down over my shoulder to show him my tan line.
“Very nice,” he said. “I’m sure everyone would love to hear about your adventures.”
I leaned farther over the desk and pushed my elbows together. “Well, you know, I’m always happy to share them.”
Alex scoffed under her breath.
I laughed it off. “What?” I asked her as I plopped back down on my foot, the hard new leather cold under my skirt.
She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was smiling.
“What?!” I said. “Just giving him a little spank-bank material.”
“I really don’t think you want to be a part of the twisted depths of a man’s spank bank. Especially balding, sweaty old men with lisps who take jobs at all-girls schools.”
“Please, I just made his morning! And he’s not that old.…”
I felt him still watching, so I turned and twisted on top of my foot again, but this time, I turned out my hip to give him a nice little up-the-skirt shot.
I’VE ALWAYS DISCONNECTED FROM Mollie and Alex after I’ve been away for a while. I always break back into their little bond after a few weeks, or faster if Mollie happens to be annoyed that Alex is too clingy that week or if Alex happens to decide that Mollie is too bossy that day. But, without fail, as soon as I go on vacation or miss a party or go home sick, they re-fuse and I’m back at zero: alone on the swing set, pining for an invitation to take a turn on the two-person seesaw, like it’s fifth grade all over again. It’s really annoying. You’d think they’d just have accepted that we were a threesome by now, that they’d have gotten over the idea that I had to reinitiate myself and prove my worth every few months. But I knew the party would bring us back together—one drunken night of fun was all they needed to remember why they decided they liked me in the first place.
While I was in Europe over the summer, I’d decided that I was going to get a real boyfriend and try to do better in school this year, maybe attempt to get into a respectable college. I was tired of Mollie bragging about her relationship and thinking that because she and Sam went out to dinner together sometimes that she was somehow a better person than I was. Plus, even I was getting bored with the whole party-girl thing, and I should go out on top, right? My Last Week of School party last year ended with five police cars, a pool full of blood, an illicit video, and a pregnant sophomore—where do you even go from there? I debated even having my First Week of School party, but my First Week of School party is a tradition, so not having it would be downright bad luck, right? That, and the big empty house was starting to get to me. I’d been home for only two days, and already my dad had left for Asia and my mom hadn’t left the gym or her new trainer, Roger. I was sort of looking forward to filling my house with warm bodies for a night, pumping some life back into that ancient history museum.
We resumed discussion of the party on our way to tennis practice that afternoon.
“Let’s keep it just juniors and seniors,” Alex proposed as she rummaged through leaves and papers and god knows what else to find cigarettes under the passenger seat of her car.
I agreed. “Though your brother can come with a few sophomores if he wants,” I said.
“I’ll mention it, but it’s always weird when I see him out. Let him stay home and play video games. Get his own damn life, like I had to.”
We used to torture Josh Holbrook when we were little. Nothing permanently damaging, just things like telling him that his freckles were a highly contagious rash or that every time he sneezed the snot that came out was part of his brain. He was also undyingly, annoyingly, and obviously obsessed with Mollie. Freshman year, we found her picture in a drawer next to his bed. Mollie pretended she was grossed out by it, but continued to prance around the Holbrooks’ house in short shorts and skimpy tank tops anyway. Typical, hypocritical Mollie.
“Aw! Come on. Isn’t that what big sisters are for?
Inviting you to parties? Getting you hammered?” Mollie said.
“You just want him there so he can fawn over you all night,” I said, regretting the amount of sass in my tone.
Mollie spun around in the front seat, whipping her ponytail against her cheek. “Oh, stop it,” she said. “He’s like my second little brother.”
I snorted.
“Are second little brothers like second cousins? Ya know, the ones you’re allowed to bone?”
“End of conversation!” Alex screamed as she slammed on her brake. “Neither the boning of second cousins nor my little brother is allowed, okay? Everyone? Veronica? Do I need to make you repeat after me?”
“No boning your little brother or second cousins. Got it.”
“Wait,” Mollie said. “Can she not bone your second cousin or any second cousins?”
Gasping and giggling, we poured out of Alex’s car and onto the Crawford campus, where the tennis courts were. We composed ourselves, stretched, and breathed in the open wild of the boys’ school.
Our tennis team practiced at the courts at the boys’ school because we didn’t have tennis courts on our campus. We barely had a gym, but something closer to a barn with a basketball hoop because, well, I guess athletics are not exactly a financial priority in an all-female education. The Harwin athletics department pretty much consists of a bunch of lesbians in kilts and knee socks snapping the branches off some old maple trees, handing them to us, and telling us to play some field hockey. No one admitted it, but the fact that we practiced at Crawford was the reason that we were all on the tennis team. Or at least it was the reason I was.
I slid my new sunglasses on and puffed out my chest. I hadn’t seen any of the boys all summer, so I needed to make a good impression. I needed a damn, Veronica got tan and hot over the summer buzz to drown out the oh my god, Veronica blew Austin Markel in a Whole Foods parking lot chatter from last spring.
Mollie took down her ponytail and straightened her skirt. Lex slammed the driver’s-side door closed with her foot, crossed her arms, threw on a scowl, and lit another cigarette, right there on their campus, which I thought was a bold move. I looked around at the brick buildings and boys with floppy hair in navy jackets and striped ties and tried to look like I didn’t notice them noticing us.
We made our way down the long trail to the tennis courts, balls and rackets in hand.
“Yo!” a male voice screamed from across the soccer field. It was Drew Carson. He waved his lanky arm in the air and ran from his pack of stretching ultimate Frisbee teammates over to the fence of the court, where Alex met him. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but Alex’s rough edges softened as she smiled and swayed between her long arms, which were clasped onto the green fence like a monkey’s at a zoo. Drew was awkwardly tall, alarmingly skinny, and always had dark circles under his eyes, not in an up doing blow all night kinda way, but in, like, an I have trouble sleeping because I’m so engrossed in this book and think so long and hard about the universe kinda way.
Drew and Alex acted like they were dating, but Alex swore he was just her “guy best friend.” And Drew seemed like the type of guy who was capable of actually being best friends with a girl, so I bought it, even though I’d never really had a male friend and didn’t totally get how that worked. I didn’t know him that well. He was “Alex’s friend,” but he’d always been really nice to me and paid attention to me in a way that didn’t make me think he was just trying to get me into the backseat of his Pathfinder. Most Crawford boys were capable of only two kinds of interactions with girls: ignoring them and hooking up with them, and, well, I’d never been one for being ignored.
I ran up to Drew and Alex and joined their conversation. They stopped talking about whatever they were talking about when I got there.
“Carson, you coming to my party on Friday?” I asked, stretching my arms over my head.
“I didn’t know I was invited,” he replied.
Coach Potts blew a whistle.
“Call you later,” Alex said.
I leaned through the fence to give him a little of course you’re invited! kiss on the cheek. Alex gave him a fist bump through the green plastic-coated wire tangles. The coach blew the whistle again.
ALEXANDRA HOLBROOK
We didn’t have tennis practice on Wednesdays, so, that first Wednesday back, I found Drew’s white Pathfinder parked in my driveway when I got home from school.
“Hey, stalker,” I screamed into his passenger-side window, “what’re you doing here?”
He gestured for me to get in. “Smoke and drive?”
His car smelled of wet leaves, pot, and Polo Sport. “I have to be at that band tryout thing at seven.”
“I’ll drop you off. Can I watch?”
“No way.”
He palmed the back of the headrest and swiveled his long, sun-browned neck as he expertly backed out of my driveway. I knew he wasn’t intentionally putting his arm around me, but I liked to pretend that he was. I liked to think that if someone had seen us right then at that moment, they might have thought we were a couple.
“I’m probably about to make a huge ass of myself,” I said.
“Please, they should have to try out to play with you.”
Eyes on the road, one sturdy hand on the wheel, he reached into his pocket and handed me a CD. “I burned it for you.”
On the shiny silver disc, Drew had written Holbrook-Worthy Jams in his five-year-old chicken-scratch handwriting. Seeing your name written by a boy feels almost as good as hearing one say it.
We drove through the leafy streets to the back roads that Drew liked to drive, but I always got lost on. It was still warm but was starting to get dark earlier and smell colder. We wound through the green and stone neighborhoods, listening to some new wave–trip-hop group that Drew had just discovered, tapping our feet and breathing the wind through the cracked windows. We drove up into the developments in the hills.
“Do you ever wonder if your happy childhood will keep you from becoming a great musician?”
I rolled my eyes and took a Camel from the center console. “What?”
He asked if I wanted to park and smoke the joint he’d been keeping in his glove compartment. I did.
We strolled out to a creek—one of those too perfect man-made ones on someone’s private property, whose alarmingly loud trickling water sound was probably bought from the landscaper for an extra ten thousand dollars. We sat on a rock and stretched our legs out in the sun. Drew was still wearing his jacket and tie, but he’d untucked his Black Watch plaid shirt and traded the navy blazer for his signature yellow North Face vest.
“I wrote this short story yesterday,” he said. “It was total garbage—sentimental, self-indulgent, dripping with forced emotion and cliché—and I got to thinking…” He took the joint to his lips and inhaled in a short staccato. “The best music, books, and movies are about struggle, pain, overcoming the odds. We want to be artists, but what is our pain? What’s our struggle? This morning, I struggled to find a parking spot for my luxury SUV, because I was late arriving to my thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year private school, because I was smoking weed that I paid for with my dad’s money. I’m not an artist, I’m a douche bag.”
“Being a douche bag doesn’t prevent you from being an artist, just the same as having money doesn’t prevent you from experiencing pain,” I said, touching my thumb and forefinger to his as he passed me the joint. I braced myself for another one of these conversations. These conversations that Drew and I always seemed to find ourselves in, about the self and the id and identity and confidence, which then always made me self-conscious and worried that one day Drew would see that I wasn’t nearly as bohemian or revolutionary or as confident in the vision of my inner artistic self as I wanted him to believe that I was.
“I know it doesn’t prevent me from creating art,” he said. “I just worry that it prevents me from creating good art.”
I passed him back the joint and I thought a
bout it. He did have something of a point: when I sang, I didn’t want to sing like sixteen-year-old Alex Holbrook, Jewish girl from Greencliff, Pennsylvania—she wasn’t interesting. I wanted to sound like—and, in the privacy of my own living room, imagined myself sounding like—a three-hundred-pound black woman, possibly one who was alive during the Harlem Renaissance or the Black Panther movement, one who had seen and felt real struggle and had had to really fight for things that I knew nothing about, like love and survival. I sat at my piano, closed my eyes, and belted out notes of suffering and heartache, and imagined my voice filled with experience and soul. Two things I worried I did not possess, and maybe never would. But I didn’t want to admit that to Drew. He loved starting these esoteric, self-loathing bourgeois conversations so he could sound smart and tortured. Only one of which he actually was.
“That’s absurd,” I said. “Plenty of wealthy people are successful and provocative artists, especially writers. Jane Austen? Edith Wharton? They wrote about the angst of life in high society.”
“Someone this century?”
“Bret Easton Ellis.”
“But he’s a douche bag.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not successful. If anything, he owes his success to his douchebaggery.”
He laughed at my use of the word douchebaggery. “Fine. Touché. I guess I have no excuse to suck as much as I do, then. Damn it, Holbrook! Foiled again.”
He squeezed my knee until I flailed.
“You’re a writer; you’ve got it easy. It’s music that us suburban Jewish girls have no handle on.”
“Ah, yes, Judaism. That must be what Drake meant when he talked about ‘starting from the bottom.’ ”
We both laughed and stared into the creek.
I gazed at the back of Drew’s neck and watched the short, soft hairs perk and pulsate on the smooth, freckled skin as he laughed. I changed the subject.
“So, will you be attending the soiree of the century at Veronica’s this weekend?”
