Surviving High School

by Lele Pons

  But I’m not your average queen bee. Sure I’m pretty and tall like typical queen bees, but I don’t abuse my power, I don’t rule through intimidation and exclusion and dictator-like regulations. I just want everyone to have fun and to like who they are, and I don’t want anyone to ever feel the way I did when I started out at Miami High.

  If I were to put out an official royal newsletter it would say something like: Be not afraid to embrace your truest self, for Miami High welcomes and celebrates the nerds, weirdos, freaks, outcasts, and overall eccentrics. Imagine trumpets blaring as these words are read off a scroll to an entire kingdom.

  • • •

  It’s Friday and those of us in sixth-period Spanish are growing restless. Those last few minutes of school are the hardest to sit through, especially on Fridays. As Señora Castillo’s green marker squeaks across the white board, we all glance at the clock, willing it to move faster. My God is it painfully slow. Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . I have time to start a family and grow old and die in between each second; it’s practically torture.

  But then the glorious moment comes. The three o’clock bell rings and we burst out of our seats, throw our pens and papers in the air, cheer like we’ve collectively won the World Cup.

  “Sit your asses down!” Señora Castillo snaps. “I mean . . . sientense.”

  “But it’s Friday!” I protest.

  “Bitch, you trippin’,” Señora Castillo says. Okay, so she doesn’t say that, but that’s the look she gives me. “No es viernes,” she says, super smug. “Es jueves.”

  It’s Thursday, not Friday. How could this be?!

  Bubble = burst. Parade = rained on.

  • • •

  When Señora Bossy-Pants finally does let us out of prison, I meet up with Darcy by the lockers. It may not be Friday but at least I get to go home, so things have been worse.

  “Wanna get a family pack of Kisses and watch Beverly Hills, 90210? The old version, obviously,” I ask.

  “I have to study for the calc test tomorrow,” she says, because everyone wants to burst all my bubbles today. “And you probably should too.”

  Just when I’m about to strangle her, the first “Yooooouuuu” from Soulja Boy starts to play. Everyone freezes. The music is coming from a radio inside one of the open classrooms. It may be 2014, but the Soulja Boy dance from 2007 is just like riding a bicycle: nobody ever forgets how to do it.

  “Let’s go, people!” I call out, and we all fall into line. This is our jam and we know it by heart. See, when this song came out we were only eleven—while you were out voting for Obama we had nothing else to do but practice this dance over and over and over again.

  “Soulja Boy off in this hoe . . .” Okay, so we never figured out what we were singing back then, but we can crank out the choreography without a single misstep.

  A bunch of white and Latino kids plus Darcy.

  40

  How Others See Your Little Siblings Versus How You Do / We’ve All Gone Through Them Lazy Days / How You Are Outside Versus at Home

  (8,400,999 Followers)

  My life is good, right? I have friends and fun and a boy, I even have some fame, which is more than most can say! So why do I feel so . . . overwhelmed? My mom is pressuring me to get better grades and I’m pressuring myself to be the perfect girlfriend and my followers are pressuring me to keep churning out Vines like I’m a machine but I AM NOT A MACHINE! I am just one girl! Am I ever going to get to relax again?

  Alexei obviously likes me a lot, but I still don’t feel like I can be myself around him. It’s weird, because I am always myself, but as soon as he comes around I feel this overpowering need to be ladylike and cutesy. Like a doll. Is that what men want? A doll? I don’t know, I just don’t know.

  On Saturday night Alexei picks me up and takes me to see Godzilla 3D. Not the most romantic movie of all time, but we make out through most of it anyway. The dress I’m wearing is too tight at the waist—it makes my waist look smaller but it also makes it so that I can barely breathe. I keep having to suck my ribs in so that my chest has room to expand within the dress so that I can get enough oxygen. But still I end up gasping for air. I try to make the gasps sound cute and nonfrightening. The things we do in the name of looking hot!

  “Are you all right?” Alexei whispers in the dark.

  “Oh yeah, I’m fine.” I cross my legs and lace my fingers over them as if I’m Jackie O. at a gala or something.

  When he drops me off I kiss him good-bye and hurry into the house. As soon as the door is closed behind me I literally rip the dress off my body. Just then, Mom walks in.

  “Oh, Lele, what are you doing this time?”

  “I was on a date wearing this stupid dress and it was too tight and I couldn’t breathe but hallelujah now I’m free! I’m free!” I run back and forth in my underwear, fists victoriously in the air shouting “Freedom! Freedom!” Mom shakes her head and walks away.

  I must have forgotten to lock the front door, as it suddenly opens. It’s Alexei. Goddammit.

  “Ummm, you left this in my car,” he says, handing me my wallet with a semistunned look on his face.

  “I uh— I was just . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain, Lele, I’ve pretty much figured out that you’re a total nut job by now. It’s part of why I like you. And I was going to see you in your underwear eventually anyway.”

  With a wink and a smile he’s gone. I don’t know if it’s my boyfriend seeing me in my underwear for the first time or that sexy wink he just gave me or the fact that I haven’t had a proper breath of air in a few hours, but a wave of dizziness comes on and I fall to the floor.

  Everything goes black.

  • • •

  “I tried calling you a bunch last night, are you okay?” I answer the phone Sunday morning to Alexei acting all concerned and boyfriend-y.

  “Yeah . . . actually, I sorta fainted last night.”

  “What do you mean you sorta fainted?”

  “Okay, I did faint. I must have forgotten to eat or something.”

  “But you’re okay? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “When I came to I just curled up in bed and fell back asleep and have been asleep until now. It was actually kind of cool, I had never fainted before!”

  “Oh, Lele.”

  “Oh, Alexei.”

  “You should come over. I’m just babysitting Aya all day.”

  “Sure, I guess I could come over.” I read somewhere once that you’re not supposed to act overly excited when Bae asks you to hang out—you don’t want him getting too comfortable in this relationship now, do you?

  • • •

  When I arrive, Alexei and Aya are on the couch watching Adventure Time. She’s curled up with a pink bunny-spotted blanket and a Barbie doll, total angel.

  “Hey, Lele, come watch with us.” Alexei waves me over. “You’ll love this show, it’s completely bizarre.”

  From what I can gather coming in midepisode, this show is about a boy named Finn and his dog, Jake, who live in some sort of alternate universe where there’s an evil king who shoots ice from his hands and kidnaps princesses in his spare time, forcing them to be his wife. Seems a little dark to be a show for kids, but I appreciate the outrageous direction cartoons have been going in lately.

  “I’m going to get something to drink. Lele, want a Coke?”

  “I want a Coke,” says Aya, fluttering her eyelashes.

  “You can have a Sprite, silly billy.”

  “Ok Alexei-y!” Aww, Alexei-y.

  “I’ll take a Sprite too, actually, can I help you get them?”

  “No, no, relax. Enjoy the show. Be right back!”

  Then I’m alone with Aya and the Ice King’s pet penguin, Gunter, is using a set of icy stalagmites as a xylophone.

  “So, is this your favorite show?” I ask. She turns to me and with a chilling calmness starts to speak. The look in her eyes says she isn’t the sweet little girl she was a second ago.
>
  “I have to tell you something,” she says, “I like you, but if you make my big brother sad . . .” She takes the Barbie’s head and deftly pops it off its body. I gulp for dramatic effect.

  “Are you trying to tell me that if I do anything to hurt Alexei you are going to cut my head off?”

  “Mm-hmm.” She lowers her voice to the creepiest whisper I’ve ever heard and turns her eyes up at me like a demon. “And you won’t be able to hide from me. I will always find you.” Jeez, where is this coming from?

  Alexei comes back into the room with our Sprites and sits down in between us.

  “I think your sister just threatened me,” I say, keeping my eyes on her.

  “Oh yeah? What’d this little monster say?” Behind his back so only I can see, she runs one finger across her neck like a razor. What kind of freaky gangster movies have they been letting this four-year-old watch?

  “Oh, nothing, we were just goofing around.” I backtrack. She nods in agreement, drinks her Sprite.

  “Aww, glad you girls got to talk. Isn’t she just the cutest?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Real cute.”

  • • •

  I get out of there as fast as I can. I tell Alexei I’m really tired and should go nap, which actually isn’t a lie. I feel a laziness growing in my bones and muscles that I desperately want to give in to.

  At home I barely make it to my room before collapsing. I lie down on my floor, sprawled out like a starfish. I notice that when I let myself dramatically fall to the floor, my phone went skittering a few feet. I try to reach for it but my arm isn’t long enough and I just don’t have it in me to get up and move.

  “It’s okay,” I say to my phone. “Go on without me. Save yourself. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  This exhaustion gives me a great idea for a Vine but I’m too weak to look for pen and paper. Note to self: Vine where girl is too tired to do anything. We see a montage of her trying to reach for her phone, eating food right at the foot of the fridge, she falls asleep while walking her dog, lies facedown in a pool, falls asleep on top of a stranger who is forced to drag her around town. In the end, she finds peace sleeping in a mattress store, but is tragically woken up by a disgruntled employee.

  I just hope I remember it when I wake up. Zzzzzz.

  41

  What You Wanna Do When You See Your Bae Cheating / How to Make an Exit with the Hewlett-Packard x360

  (8,511,356 Followers)

  For a lazy Saturday activity, Darcy and I buy bags of candy from Sweet Factory at the mall and eat them on the kiddie rides. You know, the rides you put quarters into that go like one mile an hour? We live life on the wild side, undoubtedly.

  I’m chewing the head off a gummy worm when something catches my eye. My blood boils, my heart drops: it’s Alexei . . . WITH ANOTHER GIRL.

  “Lele? You look like you just saw a ghost,” Darcy says, bobbing up and down on a bright yellow rodeo horse.

  “I—I uh—” I stammer. The blood has drained from my head so that forming sentences feels impossible. I feel my body kick into fight-or-flight mode. “Be right back!” I say without an explanation, then dart off after Alexei and the girl.

  Oh, when I get my hands on his skinny little neck I’m going to strangle the life right out of him—but not before I make him get naked and write “I’m sorry, Lele” one thousand times on a chalkboard. In front of the whole school. My cheeks get hot and I feel like I’m going to vomit, the tense pain of betrayal in the pit of my stomach. I’d start crying on the spot but I’m too stunned.

  I slip through the crowd, past Claire’s and Panda Express, turning the corner at Wetzel’s Pretzels until I’ve sneakily caught up enough to see that . . . it’s not Alexei.

  Just a doppelgänger—same hair and style, less sex appeal. “Oh, thank the good Lord,” I say, a little too loudly.

  “Hm?” The couple turns around, thinking I’m speaking to them.

  “Nothing, sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Hey, are you that girl from Vine?” the girl says. She’s super pretty; if it had been Alexei that she was with I would have had to kill her too.

  “Me? Oh, yeah, I am. But ignore me. Pretend I’m not here. Have a lovely day, good citizens.” I bow in their direction, then turn on my heels and get the hell out of there. Why do I have to turn into such a psycho in awkward social situations?

  “What the hell was that about?” Darcy has moved onto the choo-choo train by the time I return. Who are we? What are we doing with our lives?

  “I thought I saw Alexei with another girl,” I pant. “So I chased them down.”

  “Oh my God! Are you serious? What did you say?”

  “Turns out it wasn’t him. But I did have a lovely conversation with what turned out to be two complete strangers.”

  “That makes sense. Alexei wouldn’t cheat on you.”

  “Thank you. You’re right. He’s a good guy and he likes me.”

  “And if he did he certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it in a mall.” I glare at her, throw a peanut M&M at her head, but she ducks and it sails past.

  “I really lost it for a second back there,” I say. “I’ll tell you what, Darcy, if I ever do catch him with another girl I swear to God I’ll make a voodoo doll of him and stick millions of pins in it. I’ll flail it all about so that he acts totally insane and out of control, and after days of torture I’ll throw the doll off a bridge.”

  “Why would you throw it off a bridge? Won’t it just be gone then?”

  “No, if I throw it off a bridge, Alexei will throw himself off a bridge. That’s how it works.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “Oh yeah? Since when do you know so much about voodoo dolls?”

  “I don’t really, I’m just saying that— Look, he’s not going to cheat on you. But maybe you should look at why you’re so worked up about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It sounds like you’re feeling insecure in the relationship. Maybe you should talk to him about it. I mean, that’s what couples do, isn’t it?”

  Ugh, Darcy, what a know-it-all.

  • • •

  Later that day I’m in Alexei’s room dwelling obsessively over what Darcy said. I have my head in his lap and he’s stroking my hair, which sounds nice, but his fingers keep getting tangled and pulling at my scalp. Ouch. The energy in the room is off, everything feels out of sync.

  “Hey, so, something funny happened earlier today at the mall,” I say, after about an hour of deliberating whether I should or shouldn’t.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “So I was with Darcy, and all of a sudden I could have sworn I saw you hanging out with another girl.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous. I was at home with Aya all morning. Wait, are you saying I’m cheating on you?”

  “No, no! It’s just a funny coincidence. I followed them and saw that it wasn’t you!”

  “You followed them? So then you did think I was maybe cheating on you.”

  “No, it’s not that. Darcy thinks maybe I’m just insecure in the relationship still. You know, because it’s so new. Do you think that’s normal? I don’t think you’d cheat on me, but you never really know, do you?”

  “No, I guess not.” He lets his guard down a little bit. “The beginnings of relationships are always a little shaky, it does take some time to build trust.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you should really know, I would never hang out with another girl without telling you about it first.”

  “What? You would want to hang out with another girl?”

  “Well, of course, I have friends who are girls.”

  “Oh really? Name one.”

  “I mean, Darcy and Yvette are my friends, aren’t they?”

  “Neither of them would ever want to hang out with you without me around.”

  “Are you saying I’m not fun to hang out with?”

  “No,
I’m saying that my friends are loyal to me and wouldn’t want to spend time with my boyfriend if I wasn’t around because they know that’s shady.”

  “How is it shady if I explicitly run it by you first?”

  “It doesn’t matter if you run it by me a hundred times, the answer is always going to be no.”

  “As in, no I can’t hang out with other girls?”

  “Correct.”

  “Like, literally any other girls, whether they’re your friend or not?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You’re never going to let me hang out with other girls, even in a completely nonromantic, nonsexual scenario? From now on I can only hang out with guys?”

  “Yes. Guys or me. I’m your friend, why do you need other friends who are girls?!”

  “It’s different now, you’re not my pal the way you used to be. You’re my girlfriend now, I feel like we can’t goof around the way we used to.”

  “Why do you feel that way?”

  “I don’t know—you’re not wacky around me the way you used to be. You try to hide that side of yourself, I can tell. Like the other day out at the movies you were so well behaved and . . . basic, but then when you got home you went wild. I miss that Lele.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I didn’t realize. Thank you for telling me that.”

  “I just want you to be you. And you have no reason to be worried about other girls, I’m not even a little bit interested in any of them!”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Okay, I believe you.” We hug and he kisses the top of my head. Wow, I always thought having a boyfriend would be a dream come true, I never realized it would be the beginning of a whole new world of problems. I got ninety-nine problems and a boy is pretty much all of them.

  • • •