by Lara Deloza
This is the thing that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Fact: Without intervention from me or some other interested party at Spencer High, Alexandra would’ve been a lock for queen. Hands down. They probably could’ve gone ahead and handed her the crown for prom, too, just to save us all a little time.
Anyway, here I am, 1,000 percent miserable in what is typically the happiest forty-seven minutes of my school day. Not only because Alexandra just embarrassed me in front of the entire cafeteria (even though that was pretty awful, too). No, I’m miserable because I can’t figure out why she’s dropping out. And I know Alexandra well enough to know that there has to be a reason.
There’s always a reason.
Time to regroup. When I first started formulating Operation End Alexandra, I debated which allies I was going to target first—Erin (the competitor) or Sam (the confidante). I’d been leaning toward Erin, but now I know it has to be Sam. She’s the only one who might possibly have intel on Alexandra’s intentions.
I pull out my Moleskine notebook and open to a fresh page. At the top, in capital letters, I write “SAMANTHA SCHNITT.”
It’s almost better that Sam’s first on the hit list, because at least I know how to get close to her. She’s one of three confirmed lesbians at Spencer, and the other two are high-school married. Our Indiana town is too conservative for her to have a lot of opportunities for hookups, if any.
I’ve never kissed a girl before, but I am an actress, and I have no problem playing the part of someone who has. I mean, Meryl Streep did it, right?
The problem is that I only really see Sam on school grounds, and when I do, she’s almost always glued to Alexandra’s side. That’s a challenge.
My first bullet point: ISOLATE SAM.
My second: FLIRT WITH HER.
My third: MAKE OUT WITH HER UNTIL SHE TELLS ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW.
It looks so simple on paper.
TWENTY-TWO
Ivy
It is 7:42 on a school night and I am eating dinner at Panda Express with Alexandra Miles in the food court of the Tall Oaks Mall. We have spent the past two-plus hours trying on potential Homecoming dresses. Or, rather, Alexandra has tried on dresses as I have watched. I do not need a dress for Homecoming. I do not plan on going to the dance. I have tried to tell Alexandra this several times, but she does not believe me. Or if she does, she is convinced that she can change my mind.
She is very persuasive, that is for sure.
I have known Alexandra since we were little kids, and I think we were probably friends at some point. Not real friends but like the fake kind that exchanged grocery store valentines and invited each other to our birthday parties because that is just how it was. But we have not even been fake friends now for many, many years.
I push my Sweetfire Chicken around the plastic bowl while Alexandra explains to me about how she trains for a pageant. She did not volunteer this information; I asked her to tell me about it. I have asked her a lot of questions tonight, because each question means that she keeps talking and I do not have to. She prattles on about cabbage salad and practicing her walk but I am only half listening to what she is saying. The other half of my brain is trying to figure out why Alexandra Miles has taken such a sudden interest in me. The easy answer would be that it is because I am inexplicably one of the nominees for this year’s Homecoming Queen, but I do not buy it.
She is being nice. Very nice. Nice in a way that I do not remember Alexandra ever being. It is strange in that she is one of the most popular girls in the whole school—she always was, even in grade school—but she does not have a lot of friends. In fact, her only real friend is Samantha, and even with her I am not sure if what they have is friendship or fealty. Her boyfriend, Matt, adores her. But I have seen them together since the start of the school year and she does not look like she adores him. She kind of wears him like a human accessory.
There is something about this entire situation that does not feel right to me. I am pretty sure that my nomination for Homecoming Queen is a sick joke—that I was put on the ballot so some twisted high school bullies could reenact the pig’s blood scene from Carrie. This is why I am refusing to go to the dance. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.
Alexandra talks with her hands, but in a weird way, like a game show hostess pointing out prizes. I nod along as she talks, but really I am just trying to figure her out.
See, if this is truly part of a plot to humiliate me at the dance, then Alexandra must be in on it. Correct? This would explain why she is trying so hard to be my friend. Why she herself has dropped out of the race. Why she is spending all of this time to help me find the perfect dress—she has even offered to help me find a date.
I am Ivy Proctor. I am the crazy girl. The one who had a public breakdown in the middle of biology class. Who bled all over Mr. Barksdale’s linoleum floor without shedding a single tear.
Nobody wants to be my friend. And I cannot blame them.
Then again, none of this feels like Alexandra’s style. Hayley Langer—this is something that she would do. But Alexandra is a good girl. She is a straight-A student. President of the Key Club. A pretty, perfect pageant queen.
Dr. Sanders would say that I am catastrophizing or one of the other many cognitive distortions she tells me I exhibit every time I see her. The frequency of my visits has increased to twice a week now that I am back at Spencer. This is due more to my mother’s anxiety than my own. I have spent the past eighteen months making myself numb to the high school thing. I am focusing on college now. College means getting away from everyone and everything in Spencer, including my cloying parents.
College means having a chance of truly starting over fresh. Going somewhere where no one knows who I am or what I have done.
Another reason for avoiding the dance: if some horrible prank were to take place, it would surely be captured on multiple phones and uploaded to the internet where it would live on, a stain on my face and my name ad infinitum. It is a miracle that it did not happen the first time around. I guess everyone was too freaked out to remember to press record.
I will not let myself be a target.
“Target?” Alexandra says. “What do you mean?”
Did I say that last part aloud? I must have, or else why would Alexandra be asking me about it? It’s not like she can read minds.
“Target girl,” I say on the fly. “Like, wearing a dress from Target. I can’t let myself be that girl.”
“Never,” she says back. Alexandra’s face is full of horror. It almost makes me giggle. She puts her hand across her chest like she is about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and says, “I solemnly swear that I will never allow you or any of my friends to purchase a dress for a semiformal from any store that also sells laundry detergent and baby wipes.”
She says the words so fluidly—“you or any of my friends”—that I cannot help but wonder if maybe she is for real. It is impossible to know for sure until something bad actually happens. Or is it?
“What’s your angle?” I blurt, before I can puss out.
“Angle?” she echoes.
“Yes, angle. Before I got nominated for Homecoming, you didn’t so much as look my way. Now this? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Alexandra’s dark-blue eyes drop to the table, and her perfectly manicured hands twist in her lap. “You’re right,” she says quietly. “It probably doesn’t make any sense . . . to you.”
“But it does to you?”
“You don’t have to believe me,” she says.
I do not respond. This is a trick I learned from Dr. Sanders. Silence makes most people uncomfortable. If you do not say anything, they will, just to avoid the dead air.
Alexandra does not disappoint. “What you don’t get, Ivy, is that I was you. Before I learned to channel my energy into pageants, I was so . . . angry that it could’ve been me in that biology classroom. I came so close, so many times, to completely losing it. . . .”
Tears start to fall, making
delicate tracks down her smooth, unblemished cheeks. It is like art, watching her cry like that. Like her crying face should be in a museum.
“Pageants gave me something to focus on,” she says through the tears. “Something that would make my mom proud. And then, after my dad . . . you know . . . died, and my mom turned into a Tennessee Williams cliché . . . I had to focus even harder, to get her to see me. I’d already lost my dad—I couldn’t lose my mom, too.”
Whoa. Alexandra never talks about her mother. Never. Once upon a time, Mrs. Miles was this glamazon of a woman—tall, flawlessly gorgeous, and reeking of big-city style, even though she had never lived a day of her life outside of Spencer. She was awesome, in the truest sense of the word.
But after the horrible car wreck that claimed Mr. Miles’s life, Alexandra’s mom came completely unglued. On the rare occasion that she picked Alexandra up from school, she would be half in the bag, and do completely bizarre things like show up wearing one of her fur coats over a silk peignoir and a pair of tennis shoes. You could tell how mortified Alexandra was, but she never said a word, and no one else ever said a word about it either—at least not to her face. It was this unspoken rule in the Spencer community: you could gossip about Natalie Miles all you wanted, but doing it in front of her kid was 100 percent off-limits.
I cannot believe Alexandra is talking about this with me.
“I used to see a therapist,” she continues, catching me by surprise. I am sure there are tons of kids in Spencer who see shrinks but like my meltdown and Alexandra’s cracked-out mom, no one ever talks about it. “It was after I lost my dad. He was kind of a quack—the therapist, not my dad—but he really encouraged me to stay active in pageants, even when I wanted to quit. He’d say, ‘You can’t let other people dictate how you feel about yourself, but sometimes it takes a little external validation to help generate the internal kind.’”
Alexandra reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “I want that for you, Ivy. I want you to know how amazing it feels to have the spotlight on you for all of the right reasons. Not because your dad died or you lost your shit in a very public way. But because you were chosen. Because you’re the one they picked to wear that crown.”
For a split second, I can see it. Me, on that stage, wearing a deep purple strapless gown and a pair of scary-high stilettos. Principal Frick placing that rhinestone tiara on top of my head. Walking down the steps for the ceremonial slow dance with this year’s king. I have never slow danced with a boy. I have never gone to a high school dance, period. Everything I know about them comes from TV and movies. But boy, would it be nice to have that movie moment—the one without the pig’s blood pouring on my head.
“And just think what you running could do for the others—the outsiders who feel like they could never fit in,” she says. “Imagine, Ivy, what it would be like for one of their own to be honored that way.”
I chuckle. “Even the outsiders wouldn’t have me.”
Alexandra sighs. “Look,” she says, pulling her hand away. “I’m not going to make you run. Not if it makes you that miserable—”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “Honestly. It’s scary more than anything else.”
“Of course,” she says. “You’re putting yourself out there for public judgment. I still throw up before every pageant—and not because I’m trying to fit into my dress, either.”
This makes me chuckle. Alexandra wipes the last of the tears from her cheeks and smiles brightly.
“It can be so much fun, Ivy. I can make it fun. I’ll be, like, your campaign manager!”
She instantly starts rattling off ideas: when I will get my hair cut, what I should be wearing to school, how I should be doing my makeup, who I need to be seen with. She even pulls out her iPhone and starts making an official list.
I have no idea what I have just gotten myself into, but for whatever reason, I am not interested in finding a way out.
TWENTY-THREE
Alexandra
With Ivy on board, my top priority is making sure that Erin Hewett knows what’s going on—not only that I’ve dropped out of the race, but that I’m throwing my full support behind Ivy. If I’m lucky, she’ll take the news back to Frick and I’ll kill two birds with one well-played stone.
Ivy. It’s almost pathetic how quickly she caved. All I had to do was drop a few tears and spew some rah-rah bullshit about how if she ran, she wouldn’t be doing it for me or even herself but for all of the outcasts everywhere. And she ate it up!
Now that I’ve made her want it, she’ll do just about anything I tell her to. It’s almost like having a second Sam, only this one doesn’t want to jam her tongue down my throat.
Speaking of: I should give Original Sam a call. I’ll need her help if I’m going to turn Ivy into someone worthy of a crown.
Our training starts tomorrow.
I don’t get home until almost nine thirty; Natalie has already gone to bed. At least, I assume she’s gone to bed. Her door is locked and the blue light from a perpetually-on television set seeps out into the hallway. I knock softly, as I always do, to let her know I’m home. Sometimes I get a grunt in response. Mostly I get silence.
I prefer the grunt. At least then I know she’s still alive.
Things weren’t always this way with Natalie. While I’ve never really loved her—at least, not in the way you’re supposed to love your mother—there was a time, years ago, that I admired the hell out of her. For one thing, Natalie was preternaturally gorgeous. She looked like a movie star marooned in the Midwest. Plus, her body was banging; years of pageant training left her with legs so cut they would make a grown man cry. And even though the gossipy moms in Spencer were convinced she’d gotten her boobs enlarged and her butt lifted, I can assure you that everything about Natalie is 100 percent au naturel.
But beyond her looks, Natalie had an absolutely brilliant mind. You wouldn’t know it if you met her today, or even if you’d had a casual conversation with her back then. Most people pegged her as this vapid trophy wife, but it was all an act. My mother could walk into a room full of strangers and size them up in five minutes flat. She’d know in an instant not only whom she should be talking to but also how she should be talking to them. She knew exactly what to do to get whatever it was she wanted, whether it was information, attention, or things. In the peak of our training, right before my father died, I felt like I was finally starting to measure up. Like she had looked at me with that appraising look and liked what she’d seen.
That version of Natalie died with my father, though I don’t understand why things got so dire. She was only thirty-four when he was killed in the collision, and she was still the most stunning creature ever to walk the streets of Spencer, Indiana. Natalie could’ve landed herself any one of a dozen eligible bachelors, men who had even more money and power than my dad. She must have really loved him. Or whatever version of love her iced-out heart could manage.
But instead of getting back out there, she crawled into the bottom of a bottle of bourbon and rotted into the erratic, pill-popping wretch she is today.
I knock again. The sound on the TV gets louder—Natalie’s way of telling me to fuck off.
Why do I even bother?
I retreat to my own room and instinctively check my reflection in the full-length mirror. My makeup has held up remarkably well for such a long day, but my lips definitely need to be refreshed. I switch out the MLBB shade for MAC’s Russian Red—Matt’s favorite. Then I Snapchat him a kissy-face shot with the caption “Miss me? I miss you.” I shift positions slightly and take a second selfie, only this one I send to Sam.
Within thirty seconds she texts me a question mark. I reply: OMG that was meant for Matt!!! Sorry!
She waits two full minutes before texting me back: I figured
I let another two minutes go by before asking her if she has time for a quick chat. This time, she responds immediately: Of course
It’s late and I have a ton of homework I need to bang out
before bed. I probably could’ve skipped the photoplay, but where’s the fun in that?
On the phone, though, I’m all business. I give Sam a quick overview of the evening—high-level detail, nothing too specific. She asks a lot of questions, about where we went and what shops we hit and why we stayed out so long. Typically I’d have a higher threshold for Sam’s neediness, but not tonight. Tonight I’m exhausted from the sheer effort I’ve expended pretending to like Ivy Proctor.
It’s going to be a long three and a half weeks.
“Can’t you pick me up on the way to Ivy’s?” Sam whines when I tell her I can’t give her a ride to school in the morning.
“No. I told you. I have to get there really early. I can’t let the girl dress herself, now can I?”
“But I can help,” Sam says. “You know I’m great with the straightening iron.”
It’s true. She’s a whiz with them. But the last thing I want is Sam stepping in too soon, metaphorically peeing on the poor girl just to mark her territory.
“No,” I say more firmly. “I have to establish trust first. You’d just scare Ivy off.”
“How?” she demands.
“Why are you arguing with me?”
“Because I don’t understand why you need to keep me and Ivy separated. I’m still a part of this plan, aren’t I?”
“Samantha,” I say, “you’re part of every plan. You know that. Or, at least, you should know that by now.”
This, I think, will shut her up. Me reminding her of the overarching goal: to get us the hell out of Spencer. So what if I don’t actually intend to take her with me? Or hell—maybe I’ll want to, when the time comes. Maybe there’s a usefulness to Samantha Schnitt that extends past graduation day.
“Please,” Sam says. “Don’t shut me out.”
And with that, I’ve reached my limit.
“I’m hanging up now,” I say.
