What If... All Your Friends Turned On You

by Liz Ruckdeschel

  Alex was an intern in Eleanor Eton’s office, and he was so capable he’d been given as much responsibility as some of her aides.

  “I can’t believe you’re celebrating that woman’s inauguration,” Annie said. “She’ll set the state back fifty years.”

  “But I bet it’s going to be a fabulous party,” Hannah offered.

  “You’re telling me,” Alex said. “Eleanor Eton does not have simple tastes.”

  No, she definitely does not, Haley thought. She couldn’t help wondering what the ball would be like. It was sure to be lavish, but in what way? What did Alex’s duties entail, exactly? And who would be invited?

  More importantly, would Alex be allowed to bring a date? What if a certain someone, say, Haley, helped him prepare for the big event—would that certain someone be allowed to attend?

  There was a lot to think about. And a lot of groundwork to be laid.

  So, Dave’s mom is marrying the wacky Mr. Von. It’s not as if anyone couldn’t see it coming—anyone but Dave, that is. Most of the kids at Hillsdale like Mr. Von. However, having him as a stepfather is another story.

  Still, the big Von-Metzger engagement party is sure to be an unmissable event, with lots of Mr. Von’s favorite students—meaning the art crowd—in attendance. If you’re positive that Haley would never skip this milestone in Hillsdale student history, turn to, VON-METZGER.

  On the other hand, Eleanor Eton’s inauguration is a milestone of another sort, and her outrageous ball is likely to draw a totally different crowd: the social princes and princesses not only of Hillsdale but the whole state of New Jersey. With Alex spending all his free time preparing for it, what should Haley do? Alex already said he’d have no social life until after the ball. But then, there are always ways around that. Haley could socialize with him by working at Mrs. Eton’s headquarters, helping him get ready for the big day. So what if her family disowned her.

  If you think Haley would rather see state politics—and Alex—up close rather than make small talk at a teacher’s house, turn to, POLITICAL PREP.

  You can think big, or you can think small. Of course, the higher you reach, the farther you can fall.

  NEW YEAR, NEW YOU

  New Year’s resolutions are meant to be broken.

  “Haley, glad you’re here.” Coco barked at her like a general. “Close the door and sit down. We’ve got work to do.”

  It was New Year’s Eve—still a holiday, last Haley checked—and Coco’s large bedroom suite was decked out for a party. There were platters of food and bottles of bubbly, and the guests—Sasha Lewis, Whitney Klein and Cecily Watson, all there for a private girls-only New Year’s Eve soiree—wore glittering clothes and party hats and clutched champagne flutes in their manicured hands. All that was lacking was a festive mood. Haley didn’t feel as if she’d walked into a party; she felt as if she’d just walked into the war room at the Pentagon.

  “You’re involved as much as any of us,” Coco said, waving her cell phone with a picture of Reese and one of his buxom new female friends in Haley’s face. Haley cringed at the painful sight.

  “But I have to admit that knowing those boys as I do, Spencer is probably the worst offender,” Coco went on. “How dare he be so disloyal to me? In front of other people? Obviously you can’t go anywhere or do anything in public that people won’t find out about. Camera phones are everywhere—what moron doesn’t know that? But if he thinks he’s going to get away with this, he’s even more of a devil than I thought. Those boys tricked us into thinking they were going on a wholesome family vacation, and then we see this!”

  She waved another picture at the girls, this one of Spencer licking a blond girl’s stomach. Yecch.

  “I want revenge!” Coco cried. Her fine-boned face contorted with anger, but her chic gold-sequined minidress still complemented her curvy frame and brunette hair, carefully highlighted with autumnal reds and golds.

  “Slow down, Coco,” Sasha said. “Deep breaths.”

  “How can you be so calm, Sasha?” Coco said. “Look what your boyfriend is doing!”

  Sasha had to turn her face away from a picture of her boyfriend, Johnny Lane, helping one of the girls tie—or untie, it was hard to tell the difference—the string on her bikini top.

  “I know, I know,” Sasha said. “Believe me, I’m furious too. But I don’t want to rush into any crazy revenge scenarios. We need to think carefully before we act or we might do something we regret.”

  “Sasha’s right,” Whitney chimed in.

  Coco mocked her. “‘Sasha’s right.’ Of course you’d say that, Whit. Now that you and Sasha are practically sisters, you’re like her walking echo.”

  Whitney’s mother, Linda Klein, was living with Sasha’s father, Jonathan Lewis. The relationship was looking very serious, so Sasha and Whitney—who’d always run in the same circle but had never really been on the same wavelength—had learned to overlook their differences. Differences which were considerable: Whitney was a bubbly fashionista—in fact, she designed and made all her own clothes—with highlighted blond hair, a fuller figure and an obsession with her weight. Sasha was a tall, leggy golden girl, a soccer star and singer/songwriter with long wavy hair and easy, effortless style. The two had become as close as sisters, which they now practically were, and this seemed to annoy Coco, who, as the third in their trio, was beginning to feel left out.

  “Coco, you’re just being mean,” Cecily Watson said. Cecily was friendly with Coco but not always part of her inner circle, though she was certainly pretty enough to be one of the elite: tall, dark-skinned and graceful, with a funky sense of style.

  “And besides, Whitney,” Coco finished, ignoring Cecily, “you’re the only one of us who doesn’t have a boyfriend down in the Caribbean having an orgy with swimsuit models. So you can keep your mouth shut until we figure this out.”

  Whitney obediently held her tongue, and no one else came to her defense. Everybody knew Coco well enough to know that it was no use reasoning with her when she was this worked up—it would only invite her wrath. And no one wanted to be the object of Coco’s unbridled ire.

  “Somehow, I have a feeling Mia is behind all of this,” Sasha said as she flicked through the photos. Mia Delgado was a Spanish supermodel who had spent some time at Hillsdale High chasing after her ex-boyfriend, Spanish exchange student Sebastian Bodega. Sebastian had decided to spend the term in Spain, claiming they couldn’t bear another cold New Jersey winter. But, as far as anyone knew, they’d both be back come spring.

  “That would be the absolute last straw,” Cecily said.

  “Why isn’t Matt Graham in any of these pictures?” Whitney asked. “Isn’t he one of Spencer’s best friends?” Matthew Graham was a bad-boy buddy of Spencer’s from his boarding school days. They’d both been kicked out, and now Matt went to Ridgewood, Hillsdale’s rival school.

  “I think Matt and Spencer are on the outs,” Coco said. “And besides, Mrs. Eton refused to invite Matt. She thinks he’s a bad influence on sweet little Spencey. If only she knew! She’s going to lose it when she sees these pictures.”

  “Do you think she’ll punish him somehow?” Haley asked.

  “Who knows?” Coco said. “I don’t care if she does or not. I don’t leave punishment to amateurs.”

  Haley glanced nervously around the room, and caught the other girls doing the same. Coco could be a little scary when she decided to go for blood.

  “Maybe you think the boys have some excuse for these pictures, some logical explanation?” Coco ranted. “You’re in denial, girls! Look at these pictures. Really take them in. Think of all the awful things our boyfriends did with them! Look at them! Would any guy in his right mind be able to resist them?”

  “What about a blind guy?” Whitney asked. Coco glared at her, nostrils flaring. “Never mind,” Whitney said. “I’ll shut up.”

  “Think about it,” Coco went on. “Right now it’s midnight down there, New Year’s Eve. The guys are at a beach reso
rt without their girlfriends. There are hot models in every direction, wearing practically nothing but a piece of dental floss. It’s not only socially acceptable to kiss at midnight, girls, it’s practically the law! What do you think is going to happen once those boys lock lips? Do you think they’re going to stop right there and say, ‘Okay, happy new year, I better get to bed now, good night’?”

  There was silence for five full minutes while the girls—Coco, Haley, Sasha and Cecily—stared at the proof of their boyfriends’ betrayal. Coco focused on the nightmarish Spencer pictures, while Sasha fixated on Johnny, Cecily on her longtime boyfriend, Drew Napolitano, and Haley on her cute and previously noble neighbor, Reese Highland.

  Reese, she thought sadly. What’s happened to you? Even with the hard evidence in front of her, she still had trouble believing her virtuous Reese could be this devilish.

  Cecily broke the silence. “We’ve got to get them back for this. But what can we do? I don’t know how to be that terrible.”

  “Well, luckily I do,” Coco said. “Here’s what we do. As soon as they get back from their little Caribbean jaunt, we execute a group dumping. We dump every single one of them at the same time, publicly, so that everybody, everywhere knows about it. Spencer Eton, Drew Napolitano, Johnny Lane and Reese Highland—jilted! That should humiliate them enough to make them see the error of their ways.”

  Haley felt doubtful. “What if that’s not enough?” she said. “What if they don’t really care?”

  “We’ll make them care,” Coco said. “We’ll—” She stopped, glancing at her vibrating phone. “Well, if it isn’t Spencer Eton texting me with an innocent little New Year’s greeting. How fricking sweet! What a fricking hypocrite!”

  She paused to read the message and snapped the phone shut, looking shaken.

  “What did he say?” Whitney asked.

  “It’s about the inaugural ball,” Coco said. Haley knew Coco had been looking forward to that ball since the day Spencer’s mother announced that she was running for governor of New Jersey. “Spencer says he can’t wait to take me with him. It will be my official coming-out as First Girlfriend.” Her face hardened, stricken with pain. “What a fraud! He probably had his tongue down some other girl’s throat while he was pressing Send!”

  “Well, so what?” Whitney said. “You’re still going to go, aren’t you? You’re not going to miss the ball?”

  “Only someone who doesn’t have a boyfriend would say something like that,” Coco snapped, and Whitney’s face fell. “I don’t want to miss the ball, but how can I go? After he has treated me so horrendously? I’m so disgusted I can’t even look at him, much less appear in public with the snake.”

  This sounded new to Haley, who had always been under the impression that Coco was able to swallow any amount of personal pride for the sake of public appearances. Was Coco finally going to stand up to high society for the sake of her own sense of self? Whatever was going on, Haley had learned the valuable lesson Whitney hadn’t yet seemed to master—don’t contradict the queen when she’s on a rampage. Besides, maybe Coco had changed, and in pointing this out, Haley might risk changing her back.

  “Stupid Spencer,” Coco muttered. “It’s so unfair. And what really burns me up is that half of New Jersey gets to go, but not me! I was supposed to be the First Girlfriend! I mean, even geekoids like Mrs. Eton’s lame new intern, what’s-his-name, get to go.”

  “Alex Martin?” Haley said. She didn’t consider Alex a geek—not really—but she knew he had been working for Mrs. Eton.

  “Yes, that nerdinger,” Coco said. “Well, this is it, girls. Things have to change. From this moment on, everything is going to be different around here.”

  She marched across the room and grabbed a stack of fashion magazines from the towering pile on her reading table. With a look of grim vengeance, she passed one to each of her friends. “One for you, one for you …”

  “Oooh, oooh, oooh! Are we doing makeovers? Already?” Whitney squealed. “Goody!”

  “More than just makeovers,” Coco said. “This is a complete and total overhaul. We are going to convert ourselves from hot suburban girls to completely irresistible world-class beauties, so that those boys really ache when they see what they’re missing.”

  Cecily glanced at the cover of a teen magazine Coco had just given her. “‘New Year, New You’?” she sniffed. “They do these stories every January, and there’s never a new me.”

  “That’s because you always quit after the third day, all of you,” Coco chided. “This time’s going to be different. This time, we’re going to stick to the plan.”

  “I’m not sure I want to create a new me,” Sasha said. “I kind of like the regular old me.”

  “Listen to me, girls,” Coco said. “We’re at our peak. This is the time when we define what the rest of our lives will be. When we start as little caterpillars in cocoons and emerge as gorgeous butterflies. This is the most crucial moment of our lives! In their own lame way, those boys have given us a gift. They’ve inspired us to become the best we can be. Sure, we’re cute little high school girls now. But we can be better! Supermodel better. And when those idiot boys see what they’re missing, they’re going to eat their pitiful little hearts out.”

  “And then we’ll take them back?” Cecily asked skeptically.

  “No,” Coco said. “That’s when we really crush them, grind the stilettos into their hearts. We don’t need those pathetic high school jocks. We can do a lot better than that. We’re going to become the most glamorous creatures Hillsdale’s ever seen. Boys will flock to us.”

  “Don’t they already do that?” Cecily asked.

  “I’m telling you, there will be no looking back,” Coco commanded.

  “But what other boys are there?” Sasha asked. “I mean, our guys are the best ones we know.”

  “There are better options out there,” Coco said. “There have to be.”

  The girls shifted uncomfortably in their cushy seats. Haley was finding Coco’s rant painful yet also curiously cathartic.

  “Sasha, think about all the heartbreak Johnny’s caused you over the past year or so,” Coco said. “The fights. The misunderstandings. All the times he held you back from doing things you really wanted to do. Don’t you deserve someone who’ll worship you like the goddess you are—or will be, after I’m done with you?”

  “Uh, I guess so,” Sasha said. “But some of that Johnny stuff was because I—”

  “Quiet,” Coco snapped. “And Cecily,” she went on. “Sure, Drew’s attractive, in a meathead sort of way.” Cecily gasped. “But he’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Meanwhile, look at you: you’re beautiful, you’re head cheerleader as a junior, you’re a track star and you’re smart enough to apply to the Ivies next year. Shouldn’t you be with a guy who can live up to all that? Or will you settle for a dumb jock who’s going to come back from college two years from now with a beer belly?”

  “Well, when you put it that way …,” Cecily said.

  “And you, Haley.” Coco was on a roll now. “I’ll admit that in some ways Reese Highland is untouchable. Yes, he’s gorgeous and smart and a star athlete. And he always seemed to be such a good guy. But now look at him: parade a swimsuit model in front of him and he can’t keep his filthy hands off her. Ask yourself, Haley: how well do you really know Reese? To me, these pictures say none of us ever knew him very well at all. He’s got a secret dark side, and that’s not what you deserve.”

  “Well, I am disappointed in him, it’s true,” Haley said. She had trusted Reese, she’d believed in him, and now she did doubt his integrity. Not only that, she wondered if he ever really cared about her in the first place or if he was just stringing her along.

  “In a way, this is our own fault,” Coco said. “We haven’t been living up to our own fabulous potential. But that’s all going to change, starting tonight.” She began paging through a magazine, searching for ideas. “When those boys get back to Hillsdale, we ar
e going to look hotter than they’ve ever seen us. They’re going to drop to their knees. And that’s when we’re going to deliver the knee to the face. Boys, get ready to face the dumping squad!”

  Coco raised her champagne flute. The other girls followed suit. “This is it, girls. New year, new you, new boys!”

  “New year, new you, new boys!” echoed Whitney, Cecily, Sasha and Haley. They all clinked glasses.

  Coco pointed them all to an article called “The Ultimate Detox.” “I’m going to start with this,” she announced. “Starting tomorrow I’m on a ten-day juice cleanse. It’s the perfect new beginning. I’ll purge myself of toxins—including the toxic bachelor Spencer Eton—and lose a quick few diet-starter pounds in the bargain. It’s win-win. Who’s with me?”

  Sasha took the magazine and read about the benefits of the cleanse. “‘Follow this regime to the letter and you’ll have more energy than you ever thought possible, skin like a newborn baby’s, brighter eyes, a stronger immune system, greater mental clarity, increased self-confidence and, on top of everything else, the pounds will just fall away.’ Sounds almost like magic.”

  “I know,” said Coco. “And it’s going to change our lives.”

  New year, new you … it’s a natural way to feel on January 1. But isn’t Coco taking this spirit to the extreme? Maybe that’s the only option when your boyfriend has just been caught snuggling with supermodels in the Caribbean. If you’re going to make a change, why not go all the way?

  But will Haley decide to go along with this extreme regime? And if so, how far will she take it?

  There’s a big question looming here: why was Haley invited to join this little dinner party so late in the game? The most powerful clique at Hillsdale High—the Coco-Whitney-Sasha triumvirate—has officially reunited, taking Cecily Watson as its chosen mascot. So if three is a crowd, and four is a nice round number, what’s five? Now that the Cocopuffs are back together and have adopted Cecily, will there be room in the power circle for Haley to take a seat?