I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl

by Gretchen McNeil

I tucked the magazine under my arm and turned to face my friends. “Guys, you know Jesse.”

  “No,” Spencer said. “I don’t.”

  He wasn’t going to make this easy on me, was he? “Jesse, these are my friends, Gabe and Spencer.”

  “What’s up?” Jesse said, no hint of nervousness in his voice. His clothes were just as relaxed as he was: Vans and baggy jeans, an extra-large grandpa sweater over a plain blue shirt, and his favorite navy beanie perched on his head.

  “Nice to meet you,” Gabe said, then practically shoved a bagel half into Jesse’s hand. “Bagel, cream cheese. Good? Good. Now . . .” He arched an eyebrow. “So you and Bea are a thing? Boyfriend-girlfriend? Hot dates and making out and—”

  I cut him off. “Seriously?”

  Gabe shrugged. “If you’re not going to fill us in on the details, I thought Jesse might.”

  Jesse turned to me, head cocked to the side. He still held the dry bagel half in his upturned palm. “You didn’t tell your friends about us?”

  Dammit. The answer was that there were too many emotional wild cards with making our relationship public. Would my friends accept him? Would he accept them? And how would he fit in with our lowly social position at school? I’d managed to avoid these questions all summer, and even though it was only the first day of school, I was already feeling nostalgic for those days when Jesse and I could just hang out in my living room without any pressure.

  So instead of telling him the truth, I changed the subject. “We should probably get going. Don’t want to be late on the first day, right?”

  “Don’t we?” Gabe slouched back against the sofa, all thoughts of Jesse and me forgotten. “I mean, I’m not exactly in a hurry to get my ass kicked.”

  Spencer snorted. “If you could just remember to not mouth off in front of the football team or get their beloved coach fired, you’d be golden. Now me, on the other hand . . .” He drew his thumb across his throat and lolled his head to the side, tongue hanging out of his mouth. “I’m a dead man.”

  “Maybe it’ll be different this year,” Jesse said. “I mean, you’re seniors now. Won’t those guys have freshmen to pick on?”

  Jesse had only been at Fullerton Hills a semester, but that had been long enough to know exactly where Gabe, Spencer, and I fell in the social hierarchy at school—i.e., the bottom—so I really had to appreciate his optimism.

  Gabe propped his feet up on the coffee table. “Dude, even the freshmen pick on us.”

  “Maybe if you toned it down a little bit?” Jesse suggested. “Blended in?”

  I winced. As much as I would love for us to fit in, the last thing I’d want would be for my friends to change who they were.

  “How exactly should I blend in?” Spencer asked, his eyes cold. “Do you think if I pretended I were actually gay they’d stop calling me a fag in the halls?” He nodded at Gabe. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Gabe said. “But, you know, if you were really a flaming queer, they’d probably leave you alone. They wouldn’t want to be anywhere near that stereotypical homosexual bullshit for fear it might rub off on them.” He pursed his lips and drew his hand up to his chin, posing like a cover model. “Thad, your cheekbones are fabulous. Has anyone ever told you that? I just want to run my tongue up and down them.” Then he roared like a tiger.

  Spencer laughed. “I’d pay to see the look on Thad’s face.”

  “Right before his fist connected with your nose,” Gabe said, then turned to me. “And I don’t know what Bea could do to shake her nickname.”

  “If she’d just agree to do their algebra homework,” Spencer said, naming the one thing I absolutely refused to do, “she’d probably be able to hang out with Cassilyn and her crew whenever she wanted.”

  Jesse grabbed my hand. “Maybe that could be your thing? You could be a math tutor.”

  I jutted out my chin. “I’d rather cut off my arm than help those half-wits figure out the value of x. It’s insulting to the memories of Diophantus and Brahmagupta.”

  Jesse blinked. “Huh?”

  Gabe waved him off. “Math stuff. Don’t ask or you’ll get a lecture.”

  I took a deep breath. “Jesse’s right.” Sort of. Though I disagreed with his suggestion that we tone down our personalities, my boyfriend did have a point. “We’re seniors now. Definitely not the freaks and weirdos we were freshman year. This is our school, and our last year at it, and we’re not going to let a bunch of ’roided-up assholes take that away from us. We have to act like we’re not afraid of them.”

  “Exactly,” Jesse said. “Just act like you’re cool and everything will be fine.”

  I smiled at him. I wasn’t sure it would work, but I was willing to give it a try.

  THREE

  SPENCER PULLED HIS 1970s diesel Mercedes (a hand-me-down from his grandmother) into the spot next to Jesse’s Scion, and we all silently stepped onto the black pavement. No one spoke as we trudged up the steep concrete stairs that led from the student parking lot to the main campus, but I could feel the tension bubbling beneath the surface.

  Above us, the glass-and-chrome facade of Fullerton Hills gleamed in the bright Southern California sunshine, its sleek, modern construction and green manicured lawns seemingly out of place on the parched hillside. The city had spent a small fortune on the newest high school in the district, and to me, it was a perfect analogy to the student body: all flashy, expensive exteriors with very little substance once you got inside.

  But there had to be a way to combat the bullshit we faced every day at school. I took Jesse’s hand. Maybe he was right. Strength and confidence, those were the keys to success. Maybe if we just acted like we weren’t intimidated, people would leave us alone? It was worth a shot. I pulled open the double doors and strode purposefully into the foyer, head high, unafraid. Spencer and Gabe hesitated.

  “Come on, guys,” I said, trying to rally the troops. “According to Dr. Mannheim’s treatise ‘On Mathematics and Human Behavior,’ as long as we don’t act like prey, we have a sixty-two percent chance of being left alone by the predators.”

  Gabe pursed his lips. “Right, because that’s totally how it works in the Serengeti.”

  I elbowed him. “Stay positive.”

  “I agree with Bea,” Jesse said.

  “You would,” Spencer mumbled.

  Gabe cleared his throat, then started to sing, “‘Where can I find a woman like that?’”

  Spencer’s jaw clenched as he glared at Gabe.

  “What song is that?” I asked.

  “Never you mind.” Then Gabe backed down the hallway toward his homeroom, blowing us a kiss as he went. “Hello, Fullerton Hills!” he cried out, arms flung wide. “I’m here to give you a big hug.” A gaggle of girls scurried by and he pointed right at them. “You heard me. Hugs for all!” Then he half tackled them, their shrieks of laughter pinging off the highly polished tile floors.

  Well, at least he was taking my advice to heart.

  Spencer, Jesse, and I were in the same homeroom, so after quick stops at our lockers, we hurried upstairs to the freshman English classroom—the same one in which I’d met Spencer years ago. We were halfway down the hall when a group of short, scrawny guys barreled toward us. One of them shouldered Spencer’s forearm so hard his book bag went flying onto the ground.

  “Watch where you’re going, loser,” the jerk said, smiling at his buddies for approval.

  Instead of getting angry (Spencer never got angry), he ignored them and calmly retrieved his bag. But whether it was because Jesse was with us or because I was relatively sure the perpetrator was a sophomore with absolutely no social standing of his own (or a 78 percent chance that it was both), something inside me snapped.

  “You know,” I said, standing my wheelie bag on its legs and approaching the group with arms folded across my chest, “I feel sorry for you.”

  “Aww, Math Girl feels sorry for me?”

  I nodded. “Absolutely. Because based on the remedial l
evel of the textbooks you’re carrying and your obvious lack of adequate adult role models as exhibited by your behavior, I estimate you have an eighty-five percent chance of living with your parents until you’re forty. So have fun with that.”

  And before he could answer, I spun around, caught the handle of my bag, and strode resolutely into homeroom.

  Jesse slipped his arm around my waist. “That was pretty cool.”

  “Thanks.” I blushed as we snagged desks on the far side by the windows, exactly ninety-three seconds before the final bell.

  “Welcome, seniors!” Mrs. Murphy, our freshman English teacher, breezed into the room. She was a prim, well-dressed woman in her midfifties, with an ever-present string of pearls and a short, tidy hairdo that looked as if she got it set once a week and slept with a cap on each night to keep its shape. “I hope your last year at Fullerton Hills is one you’ll remember as you move forward to college and beyond.”

  A low beep signaled the beginning of morning announcements, which should have been read jointly by our student body president and vice president, Gus Hendrickson and his younger brother Gary, who’d been elected in a landslide last spring, but instead, Principal Ramos took the microphone. A general welcome, a mission statement, a call to action to make Fullerton Hills the best high school in Orange County. The usual BS.

  My mind wandered to the copy of MIT News Magazine in my bag. I estimated my current chances of getting into MIT at approximately 87 percent, but winning that scholarship would guarantee me not only admission but early decision. MIT had been my dream school since I was ten, when I realized there were colleges that actually specialized in math and sciences. My goal was to study applied mathematics, and winning that scholarship would make me a rock star in the department. People would know who I was, know my actual name instead of just calling me Math Girl. Because everyone there would be Math Girl or Math Boy, and I would be the Cassilyn Cairns of the MIT math department.

  I had to come up with an amazing project, backed by the most original, most out-of-the-box research anyone had ever seen.

  I sighed. No pressure.

  The announcements ended, and Mrs. Murphy picked up her iPad. “Let’s do a quick roll.” She went through the list, alphabetically calling out the names of the thirty seniors in the room, all present, until she got to the bottom of the list. “And I see we have a late addition. Toile Jeffries?”

  “C’est moi!”

  I turned toward the affected French accent, which appeared to come from the hallway. Instead of a person standing in the door, there was just a head peeking around the door, her face obscured by an enormous black-and-white striped sun hat and a tangled mass of blond hair.

  “Toile Jeffries?” Mrs. Murphy repeated.

  Without a word, the new girl stepped into the room. She was pretty—porcelain skin with high cheekbones, unnaturally violet eyes, and a delicate, ballerina-like figure—but her looks were overshadowed by the most outlandish outfit I’d ever seen. She wore bright yellow tights, thick and opaque, disappearing into shiny black patent Mary Janes, and a vintage floral dress, empire-waisted, with tiny puff sleeves trimmed in lace. Over that, she’d thrown a gray crocheted vest with green and pink flower appliqués, and on her shoulder, she clutched an oversize white canvas hobo bag, scribbled all over in multicolored Sharpie ink with words like “beauty” and “magic” alongside longer phrases in what appeared to be French and Italian. The effect was disorienting, like staring into a kaleidoscope.

  She paused for a moment, a smile twitching at her lips, then dropped into an awkward curtsy. “I’m Toile.”

  Mrs. Murphy beckoned her to the front of the room. “Welcome to Fullerton Hills. Why don’t you tell us a little something about yourself?”

  Toile approached the whiteboard, blinked several times, her tiny smile deepening, then she bit her lower lip. “I like birds.” She was very matter-of-fact. Like a child proclaiming a newly discovered truth.

  Mrs. Murphy arched an eyebrow.

  “I know it’s weird and totally not cool, but I like the way they look when they soar across a blue sky, wings outstretched, glimmering in the sunshine.”

  “Okay . . .” Mrs. Murphy looked confused. “Are you a bird-watcher or—”

  But Toile barreled on, ignoring the interruption. “And Tennyson. I love Tennyson.”

  “Wonderful!” Mrs. Murphy exclaimed. “I believe English 12 does a module on British poetry, and you might enjoy—”

  The bell rang, signaling the end of homeroom and of Toile Jeffries’s official introduction. Which was good because I wasn’t sure how much more of her scatterbrained babbling I could take. Why couldn’t she just state the facts? Name, grade, city of origin. Short and to the point.

  “A moment, please!” Mrs. Murphy cooed above the excited throng of newly minted seniors bustling out of the room. “I need a volunteer to help our new student get to her first-period class.” She rested her hand on Toile’s arm. “Where are you going, dear?”

  Toile’s glassy eyes lit up. “Show choir,” she said reverentially.

  Of course she was in the show choir.

  “Is anyone going near the theater?” Mrs. Murphy asked.

  “Uh, I guess I am,” Jesse said, staring at the schedule printout in his hand.

  “Wonderful, Jesse,” Mrs. Murphy said, beaming. “Since you were new here last year, I’m sure you’ll be able to offer Toile some advice.”

  Jesse glanced at me, an apology in his eyes. “I guess I can’t walk you to class.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “See you at lunch, okay?”

  He smiled, then shuffled to the front of the room to claim his ward as Spencer and I hurried off to AP English.

  FOUR

  LUNCH AT FULLERTON Hills was a big deal. I suppose that’s true for every high school, but the imposing magnitude of Fullerton Hills’ cafeteria made the location of your table monumentally important. And the first day of school, when you staked your cafeteria claim, could literally make or break your year.

  There were three interconnected eating areas, each with its own predetermined label of social importance. The main room—a long, rectangular space with a high arched ceiling and massive windows at each end that resembled a small airplane hangar—offered maximum exposure to a select mix of upper- and lowerclassmen, a plus if you wanted to show off your social supremacy but a minus if you wanted to remain in the shadows. On either side, the cafeteria opened up into two smaller eating areas, like the north and south transepts on a medieval cathedral, with diner-like booths tucked against the walls.

  Spencer, Gabe, and I preferred the north room, the dominion of the unseen. It was safer to be out of sight, a strategy that had served us well through six semesters’ worth of lunch periods, and I wanted to make sure we were discreetly ensconced in a quiet, secluded booth—with room for four, of course—before the tables filled up. As soon as the bell rang at the end of third period, I headed to the cafeteria, where a quick scan of the north room showed it to be 95 percent unoccupied.

  Excellent.

  I maneuvered my wheelie bag through the smattering of round tables, eyes fixed on my first choice in seating location (in the corner, near the exit in case we ever needed to make a quick getaway), when a figured stepped in front of me, blocking my view.

  “Beatrice Giovannini.” Michael Torres stood with his hands on his hips, legs spread shoulder width apart like a drill sergeant addressing the new recruits.

  “Michael Torres.” I wasn’t entirely sure my upper lip didn’t curl as I said his name. On paper, my archenemy, Michael Torres, and I should have been friends. We had been the only two freshmen in Trigonometry and AP Physics I, but instead of us forming a bond, it had been hate at first sight.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded.

  I strained on my tiptoes to see over him. Tables were beginning to fill up, but no one had claimed any of the booths in the north room. Yet. “It’s lunchtime. So I’m going to eat lunch.”

 
; He squinted at me. “And your ‘friends,’” he said, using air quotes as if Spencer and Gabe weren’t real people but figments of my imagination, “will be joining you?”

  Michael Torres and I rarely interacted unless forced to, so I had no idea what his game of Twenty Questions was about. There was a shiftiness in his brown eyes, as if he was hiding something, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d seen the MIT scholarship announcement. Did he want to ask me about it? Would he be going for it too?

  “So you and Spencer and Gabriel Muñoz will be sitting back there for the entire lunch period . . . ,” he said slowly, as if trying to grapple with the information.

  I had no idea what was going on in that devious mind of his, but I was officially done with the conversation. “If you’re fishing for an invitation, the answer is no. We have a strict no-douche-bag rule at our table.” I strong-armed him out of my way. “Later.”

  The booth near the emergency exit was still empty and I immediately nabbed it, breathing a sigh of relief as I parked my wheelie back next to the cushioned bench. Safety had been attained for one more year.

  “Hey,” Spencer said, sliding in next to me. “You want to go to LACMA this weekend? There’s a Fauvism exhibit I want to see.”

  I nudged him. “Sit on the other side.”

  “Why?”

  “Hey, Bea.” Jesse shuffled up, bag lunch in hand. “Is there room?”

  Without another word, Spencer slid out of the booth and took a seat across from me. “Of course.”

  “Sweet.” I felt my heart rate accelerate as Jesse sat beside me. I was in the cafeteria with my boyfriend. For a split second, I almost wished we were sitting in the main room so the entire school could see us.

  “This is great,” I babbled, feeling the need to speak but not quite sure what I should say. “You’re here and I’m here and we’re all eating lunch together.”

  “Which is what you do in a cafeteria,” Spencer said, staring at his lunch.

  His snark only intensified my nervousness, as if I needed to make up for it somehow. “How were morning classes, Jesse?” I asked, talking so fast the words practically blended into one another. “Did you make it to first period okay? And did you like Advanced Econ? I know I made you take it, but if you really hate it—”