by Lara Deloza
This is what happens when you allow for distraction. You crash. You burn. And you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself.
I’m going to have to call for help. Who’s it going to be? Uncle Douglas or Matt? Doug will tell me to call AAA. Matt will come and change the tire himself.
I choose Matt. I don’t love playing a damsel in distress, but I hate breaking a nail even more.
I’m fishing around for my phone when a timid voice addresses me by my full name: “Alexandra Miles?”
I look up, startled to see none other than Ivy Proctor standing before me.
Seriously, what are the odds?
But there she is, in the flesh. Everyone’s favorite head case and my potential new BFF. She is out and about, walking what appears to be the world’s ugliest, slobbery-est dog on the planet. Although, to be honest, the beefy mutt looks more like he’s walking her.
“Are you okay?” she asks me.
“What do you think?” I say, a little too sharply. My tone causes Ivy to recoil visibly. I shake my head as if to clear the cobwebs. “No. No, I didn’t mean . . . I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just . . . rattled.”
Beefy strains at his leash, crying and slobbering all over the sidewalk. “Butcher, settle down,” Ivy commands in a stern voice. It’s the most confident she’s sounded in years. Remarkably, the mutt listens.
“You should call your mom,” she says to me.
I stifle a snort. As if Natalie could do anything to help in a crisis. And if I told her why I’d swerved off the road, she would have had to go back to bed for three days. She never talks about my father’s accident. Ever.
“I can wait with you until she comes,” she adds. “If you want.”
“Actually,” I say, “I was going to call my boyfriend. But, uh, my phone is dead. Can I borrow yours?”
She shakes her head. “I left it at home.”
I cannot believe the incredible luck of this chance encounter. It’s like I scripted it myself.
“Is your house nearby?”
“Yeah. About a block and a half from here.”
“Let me grab my purse. Then I can follow you over. If that’s okay.”
“Um . . . sure?” she says, sounding anything but.
Ivy walks briskly, probably to keep “Butcher” from choking himself to death.
“Cute dog,” I murmur. “What kind is he?”
“A mutt,” she says. “Rescue from the pound.”
“That’s amazing. I really admire people who save animals.”
Am I laying it on too thick? Ivy’s walking slightly faster than I am and it’s too dark for me to register her facial expressions.
“It’s just one dog,” she says dismissively.
“How long have you had him?”
“A little over two years.”
It doesn’t take a genius to do the math, but even so, Ivy spells it out for me.
“He was part of my therapy,” she explains. “After my breakdown.”
“Oh,” I say.
“The psychologist I was seeing—the one I still see, actually—she thought it would give me perspective if I had to care for someone outside of myself. So my parents took me to the pound to pick out a dog. Butcher was, like, the biggest, ugliest, most pathetic one there. So, you know, I totally had to take him home with me.”
She adds, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
I don’t either, but I’m not complaining.
“It’s okay,” I say, touching her elbow. “We were all really . . . worried . . . when that happened. A lot of people care about you, Ivy. Myself included.”
Ivy snorts. She actually snorts.
“If they do, they have a funny way of showing it,” she says. The bitterness in her voice startles me. “People can’t even look at me, let alone talk to me.”
“I’m talking to you,” I point out.
“Because you need my phone,” she says.
I stop short. It takes Ivy a few beats to realize I’ve stopped walking. When she does, she turns to face me.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“No,” I say in an artificially quiet voice. “It . . . it hurts me that you feel like that. I think—and honestly, I can only speak for myself here—but I think a lot of kids just weren’t sure what to say to you. It was scary, you know? But it never meant that we didn’t care.”
Ivy looks at me—like, really looks at me, like she’s trying to drill down into my soul—and for a second I think she doesn’t buy a word of what I said. Her grip on Butcher’s leash tightens as he strains to move forward.
Finally, after an extended, uncomfortable silence, Ivy says, “I never thought of it like that. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
I have to hide my smirk. I have her, hook, line, and sinker.
The students of Spencer High have spent the past two and a half years treating Ivy Proctor like a total pariah, as if they might catch the crazies just by talking to her. And here she is, apologizing to me, for hurting my feelings.
I am fucking brilliant.
For a split second, I question whether or not I should go through with my backup plan. After all, I do have compassion, and poor Ivy has already struggled with so much for so long.
Then again, I’m not the one who made Ivy crazy in the first place. What responsibility do I have to her, really?
I have a Homecoming race to win. And in the fight between Erin Hewett and me, I must—I will—prevail. Ivy has a part to play, and if she does it perfectly, I’ll find a way to reward her later.
After I get my crown.
SIXTEEN
Sloane
In the 2004 teen movie Mean Girls, a voluptuous redhead schemes to take down the bitchy leader of the Plastics, a group of popular girls that terrorize their classmates. That redhead’s name is Cady Heron, and she is played with exquisite perfection by Lindsay Lohan (you know, before she became a total trainwreck). Cady is systematic in how she dismantles Regina George, the lead Plastic, by making her fat, turning her friends against her, and stealing her super-hot boyfriend. Eventually, Cady becomes the new Regina and wins Spring Fling Queen, while Regina just gets hit by a bus.
Alexandra Miles is the Regina George of Spencer High School, but a thousand times worse. Because at least Regina was unapologetically, unabashedly bitchy. She didn’t try to camouflage her evil under a veneer of sweet or nice, unlike some people I know.
So now I am rewatching Mean Girls for, like, the fortieth time. Only this time, I am taking notes.
My goal: to destroy Alexandra Miles.
It’s true; I’m about to go full-Cady on her skinny little pageant ass. And I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it, either.
Because fact: Alexandra Miles thinks she can get away with anything. Lying to people. Manipulating them into doing things for her own personal gain. Crushing anyone who gets in her way.
I should know. She’s done it to me on more than one occasion.
But Sloane, you may ask, weren’t you just comparing her to the freaking sun? Why, yes. Yes, I was.
That is her superpower, you see. It doesn’t matter how mean this particular mean girl gets; you never stop wanting her to like you.
My mother says that everyone has had at least one Alexandra Miles in their life. Hers, she confessed, was named Angela Wayne. Angela wasn’t the prettiest girl in her class, or the smartest, or even the most popular. She was bossy, and prickly, and could turn on you in an instant—and often did.
“But when she didn’t,” my mother told me, “you felt like the most important person in the world. Making her laugh was an achievement. Earning an invite to sleep over at her house was akin to winning a major award.”
My mom says her friendship with Angela Wayne ended in an epic fashion, at a school dance.
“Angela kept telling me I should dance with her ex-boyfriend,” she said. “He was a cutie—I can’t remember his name to save my life, but I remember
that face like it was yesterday. Anyway, I didn’t want to, because I knew she’d be mad. Only, she kept goading me about it.
“So, finally, I agreed to dance with him. And then we danced some more. And then, out of nowhere, he leaned in and kissed me. Angela saw—Jesus, she was angry! She started screaming at me, saying friends didn’t try to hook up with their friends’ exes. It was awful. All of our mutual friends took her side, too, even though I didn’t do anything wrong. I just did what she told me to do. Like I always did.”
Before you start thinking my mom is some total loser, think. Really think. Who’s your Angela? Your Alexandra? Because I know you have one.
There was a time, if you can believe it, that Alexandra and I were sort of friends. This was in middle school, before she was the Alexandra Miles that we all know today. Before she sprouted the rack that would catapult her into the upper echelon of our class.
And okay: her boobs, while admirable, aren’t the true source of her power. I know this.
She’s a schemer, Alexandra. She schemes her way into getting everything.
She even snagged the volunteer gig I wanted at Hoffman County Library. When I called to follow up on it, Mrs. Brookover told me that the position had gone to someone else. But, she said, she hoped that things were getting better at home, and that I could find some peace. I had no idea what she was talking about . . . until I asked her who did get the job.
So now she’s the one running a kids’ story time program. I would’ve been great at that. I would’ve picked really cool books and done voices and everything. Whereas Alexandra probably just wants to steal the souls from their innocent little bodies. Or, you know, pad her already overstuffed résumé.
Here’s the other thing: even though I can’t prove that Alexandra’s the one who spread all of those rumors about me and Jonah Dorsey sophomore year, she’s the most likely suspect.
I will not dwell on the past, though. I need to focus on the future.
In Mean Girls, Cady enlists the help of her friends Janis and Damian. Well, actually, Janis and Damian are the ones who convince Cady to take Regina down in the first place. But then they help her execute her plans. I don’t have friends, really (oh, shut up). But I have something better—potential allies.
Like that new girl, who could possibly be the only person to ever truly threaten Alexandra in a Homecoming race.
Or maybe Samantha Schnitt, who’s spent the majority of her life trailing A. with her mouth hanging open, hoping for a pat on the head?
I am going to make Erin Hewett be my Janis. Or is she the Cady and I’m the Janis? Maybe Sam is Damian? It doesn’t matter.
Alexandra has taken everything I’ve ever wanted. Now I’m finally going to take a few choice things from her—like that smug-ass look on her face, for one. And maybe that muscle-y boyfriend, too, just for symmetry’s sake.
I don’t know exactly how I’m going to achieve this.
All I know is that Alexandra Miles is going down.
SEVENTEEN
Alexandra
It’s only been a day since nominations were announced, and the buzz on Erin is already building serious momentum. This, despite the surprising inclusion of Ivy Proctor on this year’s ballot. Keep in mind that most people aren’t privy to the exact number of votes each of us got. No, to the students of Spencer High, the five of us are starting on equal footing.
I don’t need a flash poll to tell me what I already know: it’s quite possible that Erin Hewett will threaten everything. I was smart to build in a backup plan; now it’s time to put it into action.
Tuesday, after final bell, I slip out of the side entrance and cut across to the student lot. Sam is stationed outside of the front of the building so that she can alert me when Ivy has left. I have a very small window in which to intercept Ivy before she boards her bus, so the choreography here is crucial.
I’ve just started the car when I get Sam’s text: GO TIME. I peel out of the lot and squeal around the corner. Sam is saying something to Ivy. At least she had the good sense to stall her.
I beep the horn twice as I pull up to the curb. Both Sam and Ivy turn in my direction and I offer up a friendly wave. Ivy just blinks at me. I realize almost too late that she probably thinks I’m waving at Sam.
I roll down the passenger-side window and call out Ivy’s name. She pokes a finger at her own chest—the sitcom equivalent of “Who, me?”
Smiling, I nod my head profusely and wave her over.
Ivy is half frowning as she walks down to meet me. She bends so that her face is framed in the open window. “Hey,” she says. Such a conversationalist, this one.
“I just wanted to thank you again for last night,” I say. “You really helped me out. I was hoping I could offer you a ride home.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to,” I say. “Hop in. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”
Ivy hesitates. It takes a lot of effort to mask my annoyance. I had to skip an Evita rehearsal just to take her home, which meant lying to Mrs. Mays about having an appointment to get my flu shot. The longer I stay here, the greater the possibility one of my castmates will spot me and say something to Mays. Like Sloane.
“Come on,” I say. “If nothing else it’ll get you home a little quicker.”
She climbs in, almost reluctantly. Sam takes this as her cue to head toward the car. I peel away from the curb before she can claim the backseat. I can’t risk spooking an already skittish Ivy. Sam will just have to understand.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation last night,” I tell Ivy as I make a right out of the parking lot. She doesn’t respond.
“I mean, I’d like to think I’m a good person,” I continue, “but you were right. I should have been there for you after your . . . incident.”
“I never said that.”
“No, not in those exact words.”
“Not in any words,” she shoots back.
I need to disarm her somehow. After a pause, I say, “I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I feel guilty, Ivy. I feel like I failed you at a time when you needed people the most.”
More silence. Jesus, no wonder Ivy Proctor doesn’t have any friends.
Finally, I say, “Can you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“But—”
“Can we not talk about this?” Ivy asks. “I do not want to talk about this.”
“Of course.”
We drive, not speaking, for a few minutes. Then she says, “You’re being really nice. I still don’t think there’s anything that you need to be forgiven for, but it means a lot to me that you said that. So, yeah. Thank you. And sorry.”
I smile my warmest smile. “You’re good people, Ivy Proctor.”
“You are too, Alexandra Miles.”
For the next few minutes, I make light chatter—asking Ivy about what kind of music she listens to (femme country, though I was totally expecting her to name some emo head case), what TV shows she likes to watch (mostly sci-fi—not surprising), and what she likes to do in her spare time (play video games and read comics). For a second, I think that she’s actually kind of the ideal girl for Wyatt. You know, if he wasn’t wet dreaming about me 24/7.
Then, at the next stoplight, I pop the big question:
“Have you picked out your dress for Homecoming?”
Ivy gives me a look that I can only describe as disturbed mixed with perplexed. “Uh, no.”
“Oh! Neither have I. We should go dress shopping together.”
This makes her chuckle. “I’m not going to Homecoming.”
I feign surprise. “Really? Why not? It’s your senior year!”
“First of all, I don’t have a date.” Yeah, I think, no shit. “But even if I did, I mean, it’s not really my . . . thing.”
“What, are you too good for high school dances?” I tease.
She shakes her head at me like a semi-amused, semi-annoyed
younger sister.
“How about this,” I say. “You go dress shopping with me, and if we find you something fabulous, you agree to go to Homecoming. And if you don’t end up with a date, I know Matt can wrangle you one. We can even split a limo!
“Trust me, Ivy,” I continue. “I can make Homecoming the most memorable night of your high school life.”
If only she knew just how memorable it will be.
EIGHTEEN
Alexandra
“Walk me through it one more time.”
I sigh heavily. I hate it when Sam acts dense. I’m starting to wonder if it even is acting.
“You get to school early tomorrow. Start taking down some of our Homecoming posters. Not all of them—but a few in high-profile locations. Definitely the one outside of Frick’s office, preferably when Frick can see you.”
“And what do you want me to do with them?”
“Place them gently in the recycling bins. Sticking up so people can see what they are—see my face. This will get people talking.”
“I don’t know, Lexi,” Sam says. “I’m just not sure they’ll buy you dropping out of the race.”
“It’s our job to make them buy it,” I say in a tight voice. “But if you’re not up to the task, I’ll just deploy Sloane or one of the other drama queens.”
Sam snorts. “Right. Like that’s ever going to happen.”
“I need that rumor going strong before lunch,” I say. “I know you can do this, Samantha. I’m counting on you.” I say this last bit in an almost-purr. Sam goes crazy when I use her full name, especially in a soft voice.
“I’ve got this,” she says. “Good luck with Corporal Crazy.”
I pick Ivy up before school the next day. Instantly I register some changes. She’s wearing a pale purple top under her black cardigan—some of the first color I’ve seen on her this year. And her eyes aren’t rimmed in black, either. Just a little kohl on the lash line, and a pale, shimmery shadow on the lids.
It’s working. And faster than I expected.
