“Well,” she said, regaining her composure. “Maybe we haven’t heard all about you. Aren’t you intriguing, Miss Repetto flats?”
If I wasn’t sure Skyler was the alpha dog before, I was now. The other girls sat quietly as she checked me out. This meant I had to tread carefully. Threaten her position and I’m doomed. But if I show fear … I’m just as doomed. Given the alternatives, might as well die a warrior. Noel said to fake it ’til you make it, and it was time to go for it.
“That’s me, international girl of intrigue,” I said, liking that, but unsure how to follow it. I decided to get a foot back on solid ground.
“Andy said you were the who’s who of who to know,” I said, mentally correcting that to whom to know in my head, but knowing how stupid that would have sounded.
“Yeah, that’s why we keep him around,” she said, giving Andy a smile that looked twice as practiced as mine. She brushed his arm and gave him a knowing look, and I felt a tiny pang of jealousy mixing with my other emotions.
She turned back to me: “Sit.” So I did.
Presumably that was Andy’s cue to make his exit. “I’ll catch you later,” he said to the group. Turning to me, he added, “Play nice with the girls. They’re fragile.”
That got a laugh out of the group, dying out only after Andy left. I was alone with the pack of wolves. The true test had begun.
And it was going brilliantly. We had more in common than I could have possibly dreamed, albeit mostly stuff that reminded me of entries from the first third of Noel’s diary, which is all I’d read so far. It was almost like these girls had read it—or even written it.
They were bitchy, sure, but what Old Hailey considered bitchiness, New Hailey considered self-empowerment. They were discriminating, sure, but now that seemed more like focus. They knew there’s nothing wrong with going after what you want.
This is whom I’ve been—make that who I’ve been—all along, I thought, reminding myself that perfect grammar was for nerds. And that’s not me.
It was unreal, I thought. And truth be told, it was unreal. What true friendship in the history of friendships was formulated in forty-three minutes? Still, I was happy to live the lie, even if it didn’t last.
When lunch was over, I walked with Skyler and the group back to the main building.
“We eat together every day,” Skyler said. “If you want to join us, you have an open invitation.”
“Wow, formal,” I replied.
“You’re damn right it is,” she said, turning and stopping to face me. The other girls circled around us. “We don’t just half-ass our way through life, Hailey. That invitation is highly prized around here, at least by anyone worth caring about. There are juniors who crave that very invitation, even seniors. You understand?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking, this is a big first day.
“Look,” she said. “This is going to sound harsh, and it is harsh, but life is full of harsh realities, and it’s kill or be killed. I don’t make friends by happenstance. I like you, and so far I think you’ll fit in well. But there are rules, Hailey. We keep things just the way we like it, and that means sticking to some policies.”
“There’s a rule book?” I said, trying to sound light. “It’s the first day of school, I’m not sure how many study materials I can handle.”
“It’s not a book, but we treat it like our bible,” Skyler said. “And no one deviates from it, not once, not ever. Don’t stress about it, though. We’ll talk more later. It’s a big first day for you, Hailey with an i.”
“Wait,” I said, my curiosity piqued. “Can I get a few examples? We still have ten minutes until class.”
“Okay,” Skyler said. “Don’t invite anyone to lunch. If you meet someone in one of your classes who you think might fit in, think again. Everyone who’s invited is already on the list.”
This brought chuckles from the other girls, but I was taken aback.
So I’m not allowed to have other friends? Haters sure are gonna hate!
This wasn’t the time to cause trouble, though. It was only my first day. Play along.
“Okay,” I said. “What else?”
“Well, I know this is going to sound a little controlling, but it’s for your own good,” Skyler said. “If you’re at a store, like, on Robertson or at Barneys or whatever and you happen to see something you think you like? I need you to take a picture and text it to me before you try it on, let alone buy it, to make sure a) I don’t already have it, or b) I don’t want it.”
“Huh.”
“Did I lose you there? You have to keep up. We don’t hang back for stragglers.”
“Well,” I said, slowing my thoughts down, trying to choose my words carefully. “First, I don’t know what Robertson is—is that a store?”
Cassidy chimed in: “It’s a street.”
Then Daniella: “Fairly decent but not, like, couture.” I’d come to learn she was the daughter of the famous fashion designer Eliza Hunt, who’d made her meteoric rise in the fashion world on the heels of a scandalous affair with a famous rock star. Nobody knew if Daniella was actually his daughter and nobody talked about it.
“Not a problem,” I said, trying to act blasé. “I don’t know it and I don’t go shopping all that much anyway.”
“Then it won’t be a problem,” Skyler said, then added, “but really, photos first. It’s a good rule to live by … because even if I don’t want it, you’ll want my opinion.”
“Or mine,” Daniella added.
It was weird. I didn’t know what it was like to have these kinds of friends and I didn’t want to rock the boat because in the hierarchy of popular girls, Skyler was obviously the Queen Bee and we were lucky to be part of her posse. This wasn’t how I was used to friendships going down. But at this point I was grateful to have any friendships, let alone the most coveted ones in my grade. I wasn’t about to screw this up.
“Give me your phone,” Jericha said, palm extended.
“My phone?” I asked. “Why?”
She looked at me like I was a child. “Duh. So I can put our numbers on your speed dial.”
“Umm … okay,” I said, reaching into my bag and handing her my clunky iPhone 4, several years old but still kicking. Normally I wouldn’t have been self-conscious—so what if I didn’t have the latest gadget—but I worried that they’d notice and think less of me.
“Whoa,” Jericha said. “Antique much?”
And there it was. “Yeah,” I said with a wistful sigh, and suddenly the lies came pouring out. “It was my boyfriend’s phone. He died in a car accident and his parents gave it to me and I transferred my service to it. I know it’s totally outdated but … I don’t know, I just can’t let go of it.”
“Oh my God,” Skyler said. “That’s so sad.”
It was sad. I felt like a total asshole for lying, but when I weighed the pros and cons in the millisecond before my lie came flying out of my mouth, dead-boyfriend sob story trumped out-of-touch loser with an outdated iPhone.
“What happened?” Skyler asked, her brows furrowed, her hand now clutching my arm either to show support or check my blood pressure—her grip was so tight I wasn’t sure.
“Um, it was a fire,” I started to say, already screwing up the story I just invented. What the hell! My poor, dead, mythical boyfriend deserved so much better.
I tried to recover: “I mean, his car caught fire after the accident, so he technically died in the fire. Smoke inhalation mostly. He was unconscious. He didn’t suffer. I really don’t want to talk about it. It’s still too painful.”
“What was his name?” Cassidy asked.
I froze for a minute as I tried to pick the perfect dead-boyfriend name—Edward, Jacob, Conan, Shia, OMG, what’s wrong with me—but thankfully Jericha took pity.
“She just said she doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s obviously still painful for her. She’s carrying his phone.”
“It’s still a little fresh,” I said, and then looke
d away, hoping a new topic of conversation would be hovering just over one of their shoulders.
“We totally get it,” Cassidy said. “And we’re here for you.”
I felt so stupid lying like that, but just as the clothes I was wearing weren’t mine, neither was this new persona.
I was still ironing out the wrinkles.
Be my friend.
—SIA
“Breathe Me”
CHAPTER
5
If the most boring person in the world married the most socially awkward person in the world and they had a baby and that baby grew up to have adult acne, wear tie-dye and become my new art teacher, you’d pretty much have the picture. Miss Hoyt: art teacher exBOREDinaire.
Holy snoozefest, was this class tedious. This was like watching paint dry on a wall in a retirement center being covered live by C-SPAN. (You know C-SPAN, right? That channel you flip by as quickly as possible to get to the comparatively action-packed C-SPAN 2.) Considering my love of art and that my future plans for world domination were somehow focused around art of some kind, this did not bode well. I weighed the pros and cons of sleeping through the class for the whole year, wasting precious time—but catching up on the rest I wasn’t getting at night—or seeing if I could transfer out and maybe get a free period instead.
But then there was Chris Roberts. Piercing blue eyes, fair skin, perfect red lips and a couple of freckles on his adorable nose. He looked like Ian Somerhalder but less vampirey—not that I’d mind being bitten on the neck by him either. He was by far the best part of being in that class, which was terrible considering it was my favorite subject. I could only gawk at the cute boy for so long before it would become obvious and stalkerish. Plus, he caught me looking at him once already. Second day of class. He glanced over at me and I felt like I was busted staring at him so I rolled my eyes at him, as if to say, “Could this class possibly be more boring?” but never having spoken to him prior to that moment, for all I know he could have just thought I was just some eye-rolling weirdo. I made a habit of not looking at him during class after that. Ditto for PE, which we also had together. Talk about an uneven playing field—pun intended if you’re into that, but whatever—putting me in shorts and a T-shirt next to Chris in all his golden-goddedness. It was patently unfair. He looked like a Men’s Fitness cover model from every angle. Whereas I remained of the opinion the only way I looked even semi-okay was if I rotated my torso exactly twenty degrees to the left while flexing my right calf just less than halfway while turning my head fifteen degrees to the right while also lifting my chin just high enough to reduce any appearance of a double chin but not high enough to show everyone the inside of my nostrils. And it’s really hard to get through school maintaining that pose the entire day. Let alone even trying to walk.
I stuck it out for the first week, working on my cartoon for almost the entire class, eyes down (to avoid Chris Roberts), taking full advantage of the fact that Miss Hoyt at first seemed physically incapable of actually wandering more than five feet away from her desk. I secretly wondered if she had an ankle sensor that would alert the LAPD if she took one more step in our direction. What did you do to get desk arrest, Miss Hoyt? Did you kill the real art teacher, the one who knew the difference between Manet, Monet and Mo’Nique?
Yep, that was pretty much the whole period, until we had five minutes left. Then I’d flip my sketchbook to a fresh page and bang out whatever lame assignment she’d asked us to do, and I’d do it better than anyone else in the class. (Gauging from her examples, that included her.)
Unfortunately, each day Miss Hoyt started venturing farther from her desk—guess her lawyer got her acquitted, but I hear that’s LA for you—and tried to sneak peeks of what I was really working on. By Thursday, she just flat out asked me if she could see it.
I wasn’t thrilled at the idea, but that felt like Old Hailey behavior, being self-conscious and wary of disapproval. New Hailey wouldn’t give a crap what this tie-dyed lady thought, so I handed her the sketch pad.
My comic was a variation of my character Abby Invisible—but my move had given me new insights and, I suppose, a more biting sense of humor. I was working on a five-panel strip in which the popular girl gets hit in the face with a volleyball during PE. Her nose is swollen and crooked. All of her “minions” appear to be horrified.… But there’s a twist. Suddenly, swollen, crooked noses are all the rage, as minions line up outside of Dr. Fredrick B. Utcher’s plastic surgery office for their “fix.”
“See me after class,” Miss Hoyt said. That was it. No strong reaction to my cartoon either way. She walked back up to the front of the room, yammered on for a few more minutes that felt like nine days and then the bell rang.
I bet I won’t be calling this art teacher by her first name, I thought. Whatever her first name is. What was it again? Mothra? Widowmaker? Prometheus?
I gathered my things and walked to the front of the class.
“You seem to have your own ideas of how you’d like to spend this hour,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said, then added, “I do your assignments.”
“I know. But you’re obviously bored.”
“Yeah, kinda,” I said, looking everywhere but at her.
“I’m recommending you for the school paper,” she said matter-of-factly. “The newspaper staff meets at the same time as this class.”
“Oh,” I said, a little bit taken aback and a lot pleased. “That’s cool.”
“I thought you might think so. Perhaps you can do your comic for the paper.”
“That would be awesome.”
“No,” Miss Hoyt said. “You know what’s awesome?”
“Uhh…” I wasn’t sure where she was going with this. “I guess not?”
“Childbirth is ‘awesome.’ The fact that we can travel to space is ‘awesome.’ Transferring out of a class is a lucky break—it’s not ‘awesome.’ If you can’t learn anything from me in art class, let me at least teach you this: Your use of the word ‘awesome’ is not awesome. The way everyone overuses that word has desensitized it so much that you have no words left when you experience something that truly is awesome. And as the writer of your comics … words matter.”
I stood there for a moment taking it all in: the lackluster teacher with the shrewd and valid point. And she was confident enough to recognize her limits and want me to be able to excel at my art through the school paper. There was no ego. She was a better person than I’d given her credit for. And I felt awful for my behavior, my judgment, for making my boredom so obvious.
Though she wouldn’t be the one to inspire my art, she’d be the person who taught me a lesson I needed, beyond the whole “awesome” thing: Don’t judge a book by its tie-dyed clothes and adult acne.
On my way home from school, I noticed Anya standing by her mailbox. She smiled at me, so I smiled back. A smile was okay, I figured. I’m not going to be a total jerk. But then she turned ever so slightly and I saw something that changed everything: a black T-shirt showing a guy holding a microphone with the quote, “I don’t mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that’s how it comes out.”
Maybe this was going off script, but I had to investigate. I walked up and pointed at the quote on her shirt.
“Holy crap, that’s Bill Hicks, right?”
“Yeah!” she said, seemingly surprised to have someone actually recognize the quote. “You know who he is?”
“I love him! Well, I never saw him when he was alive—mostly because I wasn’t born yet—but my dad used to play his CDs all the time.”
“I know. So unfair. You know people who are like, ‘I was born at the wrong time,’ but they’re talking about a whole era like the sixties or something? I’m, like—how about just ten years earlier, so I could see my comic heroes? He was brilliant. He’s why I want to be a stand-up comic someday.”
“That’s so cool,” I said. “I would never have the guts to get up on a stage. But I do draw comics—like comic stri
ps.”
“Now that’s cool,” she said. “I can’t even draw stick figures. Do you know Mitch Hedberg?”
“No,” I said. The name sounded familiar but I wasn’t certain.
“Okay, you need to come over right now,” she said. “We are going to—”
She stopped abruptly.
“What?” I asked.
Her face wrinkled a little. “Well … I mean, if you want to. If not that’s cool, I get it … honestly.”
I figured it out. She’d seen me with Andy, with Skyler and the crew, and wondered what my deal was, this girl from just down the street.
I didn’t know how Noel would handle this, but she would do something empowered, right? She’d do whatever she thought was right.
“I’m Hailey,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t say hi earlier.”
“Anya,” she said. “But I’ll bet you know that.”
“Yeah,” I said a bit sheepishly. “Anyway, I’d love to come in.”
“Really?” she said, brightening. “Good call, neighbor. I’m about to change your world.”
And like that, what felt like my first real friendship in LA was born. We went inside, Anya introduced me to her parents, and we spent the next three hours listening to bootleg CDs of Mitch Hedberg and Bill Hicks, two of the world’s most brilliant comics (who both, sadly, died way too young). We laughed our asses off.
Spending just a little time with her, I could tell Anya would be great at comedy. She made these biting, hilarious comments that made me wonder: Is this why Andy thinks she’s a psycho? Just because she has a brilliantly dark sense of humor?
We spent three hours quoting jokes and listening and laughing and bonding. Part of me felt conflicted about “fraternizing with the enemy”—I mean, not only was she deemed uncool, I had specifically been warned away from her. But I couldn’t help it. She was cool. She was real. She was exactly the kind of person I’d be friends with if I weren’t in the midst of this transformation. And it also felt pretty good to let down the hater façade and just be me. I figured it was time to address the elephant in the room.
Confessions of a Hater Page 5
