The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber

by Lauren Mechling

  “Stop it!” I flared up. I couldn’t stand that smug expression on Sam’s face, or his sarcasm. Why was he always so, so obnoxious? Right then, I felt more determined than ever to prove him wrong. I couldn’t give up yet. I’d invested way too much already. I knew I could get in with them. And besides, now that the girls had betrayed me, I felt less guilty about dishing out so many details of their lives, Dear Diary and all. “What if I promise to be honest?”

  Sam frowned.

  “What if I swear? C’mon Sam, honesty’s my middle name!”

  Sam kicked a chunk of heaved-up pretzel far into the distance and finally grinned at me. “You wish.”

  We started laughing. Some secrets I’ll never give away.

  Pot Luck Breakfast

  THE ONLY REDEEMING THING ABOUT DRAGGING your ass to Baldwin on Mondays is checking your school e-mail account (technological lazyass that I am, I still haven’t figured out how to access it from a remote computer). After a long weekend away, your in box is usually crammed with interesting items. Beyond the expected acupuncture seminar announcements from Zora Blanchard’s executive office, there were usually a few random greetings from student organizations and maybe an actual note or two.

  This explains why, rather than cross the main lobby and risk an encounter with my so-called friends, I paid the computer lab a visit during my first free period. I needed some distraction from the massive plummet in my social standing over the last forty-eight hours.

  Six messages were waiting in my in box, but the screen could fit only the first five, three of which were junk, and the remainder of which were from Rachel, carbon copies of the ones she’d sent to my home account that contained details of the Lone Star Hair with Flair Fair she went to “for kicks” this weekend. Even though I’d already scanned the e-mail the night before, I actually reread about how good old Richard Eagins—a former classmate we used to call Mr. Potato Head—got so hammered that he let a lady named Maybell give him a mohawk in front of a thousand strangers. “He looks more potatolike than ever,” Rachel wrote. “He actually has spores on his head!”

  I clicked on the arrow that would lead me to the next page, where my sixth e-mail was waiting. Figuring it would be yet another copy of a note I had already received from Rachel, I was shocked to discover otherwise. It was from Max Roth, or PainterRoth00. Well, this was certainly a first. Why on earth was he writing to me? Good thing nobody else was in the computer lab. For some reason I didn’t feel like examining, I found myself seriously freaking out. The letter wasn’t as juicy as Rachel’s account of Richard’s public shearing, but still it was from Max, who had Rachel beat in the sexual attractiveness category. Plus, I appreciated knowing that someone at Baldwin (besides Amanda, who still Instant Messaged me on an hourly basis, and Sam, that is) had registered my existence. “Hey, Mimi,” it said. “What’s going on? Nothing new here, just procrastinating . . .”

  And so on. Max was no Shakespeare, but then very few boys composed emails like my friends and I did. I was musing on this gender gap when I heard my name. I leaped up in my seat, and my left foot thumped forward into the surge protector, which I guess I managed to unplug or break. The monitor went black, and I turned around feeling like a total dumb-ass.

  “Hey, Vivian,” I murmured, totally nonchalant and above-all-that as I rose from my chair. She was wearing more eye makeup than most drag queens, which, let’s face it, looked a little silly that early on a Monday morning, but not as silly as it would have on a less stylish girl like me. She seemed to have just emerged from three days at some basement rave: no traces of her weekend of sun and fun clung to her sallow complexion. Of all the girls in the group, Viv was the quietest, the least forthcoming, for better or worse—definitely the hardest to face in my current condition.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  I just shrugged and made for the door. Unfortunately, Vivian stood directly in my path. “What’s going on, Mims?” she repeated. “I was just coming to find you. Do you want to skip out of here for a cigarette break? I’m so not in the mood for school right now. I was supposed to read this book for French culture, but I couldn’t get past the first page. It was so annoying. All about the gazillion love affairs some old woman had. Totally gross, not to mention inappropriate.”

  I tried to keep my expression flat and unemotional. Play it cool, Mimi, I told myself.

  “Actually, they’re affairs she supposedly had,” Viv corrected herself. “The book might have been a little more believable if her author photograph weren’t so repulsivo. No way I can go to class and survive a forty-five-minute-long discussion of some wacked woman’s sexual fantasies. The only thing I’m prepared to say is that I spilled Diet Coke all over it and some of the pages aren’t even readable.”

  I couldn’t help it: “Gosh, must have been a hard weekend, struggling through such a heavy book?” I scowled.

  “I am pretty tired, yeah,” she admitted.

  “Must be pretty rough, lying out at the pool all day.”

  In response, Vivian played dumb—and quite well, I might add. She was definitely well practiced in popular-girl bitchery, and her smile kept on widening. “Hey, I know.” She lowered her voice. “All we have next is assembly—aka, free period, right? Why don’t we go grab some Turkish coffee at that place around the corner? I could totally use some caffeine.”

  The Williamsburg party had introduced me to this basic expression in the Baldwin lexicon: “Turkish coffee” was code for pot. I couldn’t believe Vivian was actually going to light up a joint at eleven-thirty-five on a Monday morning. It was so bright-lights-big-city generic.

  “Sure,” I said. I couldn’t believe how weak I was, but I couldn’t help it: I liked her, and maybe I was also a little lonely for cool female friends like Rachel. Or maybe my ridiculous eagerness came from my curiosity to try pot again (if only to prevent further respiratory disasters at future social gatherings). “And we’ve got lunch next, so that gives us, like, two hours.”

  “Totally—lucky I already ate, huh?”

  An hour later, we were sitting on my couch in the Village, fairly to totally high. All had gone well until then: I’d exhibited forgiveness and restraint and all those qualities my mom always praises in Myrtle, probably just to make her biological children feel inadequate. We had smoked under some scaffolding on Court Street a block from Baldwin. Then, when it became obvious that sitting through a biology lab double period would pose serious health risks, we took the train to my house. The one thing I hadn’t lied to Amanda about this weekend was my father’s photo shoot—though he was, of course, photographing organic soaps in a studio, not overweight live-action models. Now that he was shelling out five figures for his precious younger child’s education, he actually had to go out and make money. He tried to make me feel guilty about his “selling out” to the catalog market, but personally I thought it was good for him to leave the house every once in a while. I mean, really, there are only so many days you can waste doodling rabbit ears on snapshots of dead movie stars.

  Vivian and I had been plopped on the couch for about an hour, flipping hyperactively from one cable station to the next before finally settling on this crazy talk show about women whose husbands have left them for their children’s babysitters or other trusted members of the household.

  “So what did you do this weekend again?” Vivian asked me midway through this highly entertaining program. “I can’t remember.”

  And just like that, all my sorrows welled up in me again. I felt a little shocked, given the bitchiness of my earlier weekend reference, that Viv would revive the subject. Still, I managed to answer as casually as Vivian had asked. “I went to this electronica symposium at the NYU gym,” I said. Uttered out loud, it sounded incredibly lame.

  “You did? I was dying to go to that symposium!”

  The funny thing about being stoned is that people become more themselves, if that makes any sense. Vivian, despite her creds, had always seemed too dorky for authentic pop
ularity—too enthusiastic. Viv had made some truly hilarious comments that morning, like when the talk show host had invited members of the at-home audience to call up if they’d ever caught their siblings in bed with their husbands, and Vivian had gasped, “Omigod, how horrible!” On the other hand, maybe she was just insecure about having a sister even hotter than she was.

  “Yeah, right. Everyone there had antennae and multiple eye-brow piercings—Sam was the best-looking guy in the whole place, if that’s any indicator!” I pointed at the antacid commercial on TV: a creepy-eyed bald man clutching his stomach and leaning against an eighteen-wheeler. “The rest of them all looked exactly like that dude.”

  “Sam doesn’t have a girlfriend, does he?” Viv asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I just thought he might. He has such . . .” Viv flicked her eyes to her feet “. . . nice coloring.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. Surely she was.

  And as predicted, Viv nodded and laughed. “Well, he does have stellar taste in music,” she said. “And hanging out with you sounds much better than getting molested by a bunch of eighty-year-old European sleazebags. One of the guys who was there, my dad actually sued last year for securities fraud, and there he was, living like a total king. And then there was this disgusting hedge fund president who went to China and came back with an eighteen-year-old bride. And he had the nerve to say we looked alike. But whatever . . . I’m so jealous of you. You’d better invite me next time, mkay?”

  Even stoned I thought this was a pretty rude, salt-rubbing comment: not just as a reminder of all the glamorous events I’d missed, but of her father’s fame. I did my best to answer acerbically. “Yeah, Sam’s great. He’s kind of nerdy, but at least he doesn’t disinvite me to parties and then crack jokes about it. At least he’s reliable.” Somehow, thinking about my parents, and about Sam and Rachel and best friends and my childhood in New York, depressed me, and for the millionth time in forty-eight hours, tears rolled down my cheeks.

  “Oh, sweetheart, What does that mean?” Vivian scooted toward me on the couch. “Tell me what’s wrong. You’ve been so distant and weird all afternoon. Have I done something?”

  So I did it, I described every last detail of my dull as hell—not to mention agonizing—weekend. I’m even pretty sure I remembered the part about logging onto e-mail 1,800 times and cursing Pia twice as often. Vivian coaxed this record of my shame from me with sympathetic nods. It was funny: Usually she seemed the most distant and checked-out of the bunch, including even Pia, but that Monday afternoon she was treating me just as I’d always wanted my emotionally deficient big sister, Ariel, to—considerate, kind, confiding.

  “When did she invite you, again?” Viv asked.

  “Last weekend,” I said. “Right after the Williamsburg party. And she acted as if she meant it.”

  “Now, Mimi, I’m sure she did—obviously. Pia’s just careless sometimes. You know—she expects the whole world to turn on her pinkie.”

  “Well,” I sighed, “that’s why I was weird this morning, in a nutshell. I felt totally, I don’t know, rejected.”

  “I get it now,” she said afterward. “I feel so stupid. I’m seriously glad you told me, Mimi, because there’s something about Pia you have to understand. She’s not mean, she’s really not. It’s just that Nona going into rehab really threw her for a loop, you know? They were best friends, and Pia’s just kinda lost her grip.” Vivian clapped her arm around my shoulder and gave me a little shake. “Mimi, listen. We had no idea. I completely forgot she’d invited you—I’m totally absorbed in my own troubles right now, and so are the rest of the girls, but I swear no one meant you any harm. We like you, Mimi, we really do. We were all talking about you so nicely all weekend, Pia most of all.”

  “You were?” I asked, smiling and sniffling at the same time. “She was?”

  “Yes. And, come to think of it, your amazing boots. Insider tip: I’d keep an eye on those guys. I know four devious ladies who are trying to figure out ways to make off with them.”

  Dear Diary,

  I have no idea which day it is, or even which month. I guess I could look at the newspaper, but that would require energy.

  Truth be told, I spent the first few days of this week in a depressed fog. Perhaps it came out in my last entry that Pia’s “forgotten” invitation to the Hamptons was a serious downer. On the popularity meter, I felt as if I’d hit the lowest possible level, hovering around the molten core of the earth.

  But, turns out I was just wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Viv told me that it was a mistake, and I know that’s a cliched excuse, but I actually believe it.

  Nona and Pia, apparently, had a “special” friendship that none of the other girls shared and turns out that Nona had sent Pia an e-mail that really upset her. She was supposed to come back to school soon, but the doctors decided she needs to take some time off, and they’re sending her to some boarding school in Bumfuck, Massachusetts, where there’s a farm on campus and the nearest liquor store is forty minutes away—by car. To top it off, Nona’s totally bummed about it. She wanted to come to Baldwin and do outpatient therapy in the city, but her parents are so mad at her they don’t even want to lay eyes on her. So that pretty much explains it. And Viv swore to me that next time they make an excursion out of the city, I’m getting an invite by certified mail.

  Love,

  A much happier Mimi

  The L Word

  MY TALK SHOW SESSION WITH VIVIAN REALLY got that next week off to a better start than I’d expected. Sure, I was still touchy about the previous weekend’s ditchage, but Vivian had done her utmost to make sure that my wounds healed fast. I don’t know what she said to the girls, but before the week was up, they had welcomed me into their crew, so I had trouble holding a grudge. This time, there was no seesawing or backtracking: I was officially in with the popular croud.

  We’d get create-your-own salads together at lunch, and after classes let out we’d huddle by the little brick wall outside school, firming up that night’s social schedule. They abandoned me only once, on a Thursday afternoon, when the four of them took the Metro North to visit Nona at her treatment center. I felt kind of flattered when Lily explained the delicacy of the situation, and agreed that it might be uncool to rub Nona’s replacement in her sober face.

  Amanda, meanwhile, refused to take the hint. She kept haranguing me to visit her father’s country house on Cape Cod with her. “It’s so fun! There’s a candle factory where you can watch them pour the wax right up close. And it’s just down the road from an amazing outlet mall!”

  I looked at Amanda with a distaste I had difficulty concealing. She was wearing a red and white striped polo shirt and big silver hoop earrings that gleamed only slightly less brightly than her teeth. She and her whole squash crew—Courtney, Mary Ann, Ivy, and Sophie—looked identical in every setting, ready to canoe or ride horses. My new friends, on the other hand, all had their own styles going. Pia favored haute couture, Viv goth, and Lily grunge (or just gunk), while Jess wore sexy cardigan-and-jeans combos that might have seemed boring if her breasts weren’t so gigantic. In this company, I could wear whatever I wanted, even the most outlandish of my father’s vintage finds. It was liberating, getting dressed up to go out with girls who had such different—and yet somehow complementary—styles. I could experiment much more than in Houston. Like almost everyone in my old high school, Rachel, for all her Jewishness, was an even WASPier dresser than Amanda.

  In short, all was smooth sailing until the following Tuesday evening. I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at my biology notes and cursing Lance, our bio teacher, for insisting that biology at Baldwin had to be as hard as it was at any other school. Why oh why couldn’t we forget about the studying for tests every other day and just make short animated films about mitosis instead? Dad was in the kitchen, too, working on a batch of blueberry pancakes. We were both pretty lost in our own worlds, when the phone rang.

  “Mimi!
What the fuck are you doing home?” It was Pia, on a polite day. I heard squealing in the background. “We’re all at my place. Get dressed. We’ll swing by in twenty.”

  Before I had a chance to answer, she slammed down the phone.

  Dad’s head swung around from the stove. A glop of batter dotted his cheek like a Marilyn Monroe mole.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Uh,” I spluttered, trying to figure out how I could possibly ditch our hallowed Tuesday breakfast-for-dinner tradition, throw on a slinky outfit, and be out the door in twenty minutes. “I’m in deep trouble.” I held out my notes and screwed my face into a constipated grimace. “There’s, ah, this big biology review session at this kid’s house, and I was supposed to deliver a spiel on the nervous system and it totally slipped my mind. And now they’re all waiting for me uptown!”

  Dad flipped a pancake. Slowly. You could tell he was thinking something.

  “They sound super stressed out! Don’t ask why, but they’re counting on me.”

  “Well, young lady, I guess that means more pancakes for me.” He wagged the spatula in reproach.

  It killed me when he tried to cover his disappointment with that funny-guy routine, so I got up and gave him a jumbo hug, but that only intensified my bad-daughter guilt.

  Smushing between Jess and Lily in the back of Pia’s dad’s stretch limo, I forgot all about it. I’d been worried that I was overdoing it in my super-clingy low-cut purple top, but the rest of the girls (except Lily) were decked out like a Versace print campaign. I fit right in.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Pia rolled down the limo’s divider and let the chauffeur have it. “If you take First Avenue, we’re not going to get there for weeks!”