Bittersweet Sixteen

by Carrie Karasyov

  Plus the pranks between Sophie and Whitney had definitely ratcheted up since the whole boot-out-Laura thing. First, after a class where we had been learning about mythological beasts, Whitney scanned a picture of Sophie onto her computer and grafted Sophie’s head onto a horse’s body, making her a Sophie centaur. Then she printed out copies and gave them to everyone. To top it off, Whit’s group started whinnying when Sophie walked by. You could tell Sophie was enraged. Then, later, I saw “WHITNEY = PIG” scrawled in Yves St. Laurent lipstick on Whit’s locker. She tried to laugh it off, then opened it to find a cache of fetal pigs Sophie had purloined from Mr. Rosenberg’s laboratory. As horrifying and gut-churning as the swine guts galore were, the stench was worse. (The noxious cocktail of ballet-slipper stink coupled with formaldehyde lingered in the hall, impossible to expunge. All the Miu Miu coats had to go.)

  Whitney’s screams were met with sympathy as the war heated up even more. I knew she was more furious than she’d ever been. And I also knew that major retribution was not far behind. I shuddered to think what it would be, almost grateful at this point for my ex-friend status.

  I got through Monday the way a soldier gets through a trench: by lying low and dodging the bullets as best he can. The thing was, even though Ava and Kaitlin and all of my other friends were normal to me, Whitney and Sophie were such powerhouses that it seemed like the entire class was against me. People still talked to me, but there wasn’t exactly a line to be my new best friend. The fact was that the competing birthday parties were so dominating our class that a) no one wanted to risk alienating one of the birthday girls for fear they wouldn’t be invited, so they limited their interaction with me, and b) all anyone talked about these days was the birthday parties, and now that they knew I was on the blacklist, why bother talking to me? I felt much more like Tom Hanks in Cast Away every second.

  I didn’t truly exhale until I burst out of the double doors and spilled my carcass onto the street. Soft snowflakes were starting to float down from the sky and the scent of Christmas trees was in the air. This was normally my favorite time of year. I really got into all the holiday decorations and everything, totally NOTL-y, but this year I couldn’t even enjoy that, with all the stress in my life. It was only a week until Christmas break and the Gold and Silver Ball, which I had been so psyched for and was now dreading.

  Every year, the first weekend of Christmas break is the all-important Gold and Silver Ball. It is of mega-significance because it’s not just our class but tenth through twelfth grades from all the private schools. It’s held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Park Avenue, and the street out front is glutted with limos and Cadillac Escalades, drivers perched at the wheel, ready to shuttle their teen clients to various after-parties up and down Fifth Avenue, hoping they don’t chunder in the backseat.

  As I walked toward the bus stop with my head down, I spied with my peripheral vision Sophie and her new posse (Ava and a few other girls who Sophie had never talked to before) in the diner, munching fries with their feet up, hanging in the corner table I always used to plop down in after school. I saw her shoot me a slit-eyed glare through the window, and I am sure if the glass wasn’t there I would have keeled over. My fast walk turned to a trot as I closed in on the bus stop where hopefully an M4 would pull up and take me away from all the unpleasantness, all the tears, and all the terror of Tate. Seven more days until break, thank God—I wished I could reach into the future and pull myself there right away.

  As a big blue bus started to pull up, I heard a familiar voice.

  “Finnegan!”

  “Hey, Jake.” I couldn’t even bear to look him in the eye.

  “I’ve been yelling your name for blocks!”

  “Sorry, I guess I was in the zone,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  “You’re always in the zone! Geez, it’s like you turn on your deaf ears when you walk to your bus.”

  I could tell he was just trying to be funny, but I wasn’t in a laughing mood. He noticed right away.

  “How come you haven’t returned my phone calls?” he asked, cheeks flushed from running up to me.

  “Sorry,” I said kind of coldly. “I have exams. Not to mention a little social chaos.”

  “Listen, Laura, I know you’re going out with Josh and all, but—”

  “What?” Was he insane? Not if Josh was the last humanoid roaming the green orb we call earth.

  Jake looked momentarily annoyed. “He told me about, you know…”

  “About what?”

  “That you guys hooked up at Sophie’s, and last weekend.”

  My blood was bubbling its way up to my face. “That is a total lie!”

  Jake looked surprised. “That’s what Josh said…”

  “He’s lying.”

  “Oh.” He said it in a tone that I wasn’t familiar with. Was he happy? Was he indifferent? I couldn’t tell. We stared at each other for a second.

  The bus opened its doors as a line formed to board.

  “So…why haven’t you called me back?” Jake asked earnestly.

  I dug through my bag, which was a bottomless pit of pencils, scraps, pennies, and paper clips, searching for my bus pass. “I told you, things have been crazy.” Well, it was true. Things had been crazy, what with my being a social leper ’n’ all. But then I thought, Screw it, my life is in shambles anyway, I might as well go down in flames. “Plus, Jake, I really didn’t want to interrupt one of your rolls in the hay with Sophie.” I spat that out.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Look, I have enough heinosity in my life right now, I don’t even want to explain. I’ll talk to you later.” I finally retrieved my bus pass and climbed the stairs as Jake stood on the sidewalk.

  “So that’s it, Finnegan? You’re blowing me off? Friendship over?”

  Just hearing him say the word “friendship” made me even sicker. “I don’t know, Jake,” I said, flashing my student pass to the driver as the doors began to close him out. “I don’t know about anything anymore.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Should I have been so harsh to Jake? No. It was inexcusable. But I was sick of being his “friend” and listening to all his problems with his parents and hearing him tell me how he wants to be an architect and all his other taxicab confessions, only to have him go off and make out with Sophie. I mean, I know we were playing spin the bottle and he had no choice, but he clearly enjoyed it, according to her. And now it just seemed like he was leading me on. I didn’t want to play the role of “best friend” anymore. It was getting too painful.

  And the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got. At Jake, for leading me on. And for not liking me. At Whitney, for being my so-called best friend for years and then dumping me at the drop of a hat. At Sophie, for butting into our clique and then making a mess of everything. And at my parents, for sending me to that lion’s den where they had to know that one day not being able to keep up with the silverspoon set would really matter, despite how well I did academically. And since they were ten feet away in the kitchen, I ended up channeling all of my venom toward them. They were an easy target and were still currently speaking to me, but also they had dropped me in that situation in the first place.

  They could definitely tell I was ticked off when I sat down to dinner, glowering. I saw my father and mother exchange what they thought were discreet raised eyebrows at each other and I decided to let them know how angry I was.

  “You know, Mom and Dad, you guys are really to blame for all this,” I announced, placing my glass of milk down on the table with a dramatic thud.

  “What do you mean, sweetheart?” asked my mom, perplexed.

  “It’s, like, I was a baby fish and you dropped me into a tank full of sharks.”

  “Is Tate the fish tank?” asked my father, scratching his head.

  “Yup.”

  My parents gave each other one of those “we are so much wiser than her” looks that make me want to murder. They to
ok a collective deep breath.

  “Honey, this seems like misdirected anger,” said my mother. “I think you know how wonderful Tate has been for you, and the value of a great education, Miss A’s on her last two term papers.”

  “And don’t forget, you and Whitney have been best friends for years,” said my dad. “This might be a momentary fissure in your friendship, but I have no doubt you will reunite and be best pals again.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, folding my arms. “I can’t even remember why I was friends with her in the first place. She’s spoiled and self-centered. So not fun.”

  “Whitney? Come on,” coaxed my mom. “I remember all the fun times you girls had when you were little, putting on musicals for me and Daddy, going to all those gymnastics classes together. You were two goofballs!”

  That Whitney seemed so different from the Whitney I currently knew. It’s true, we had a lot of fun together when we were younger. In first grade we used to sit in the corner of our homeroom and draw horses over and over and compete with other girls over whose was the best, until the head of lower school got fed up and banned drawing horses. And then in third grade our teacher Mrs. Palmer used to let us out of class early so we could race home and watch General Hospital. (Yes, soap operas are really for the very young, and we were totally addicted.) In fifth grade we spent hours rehearsing our tap-dance routine to “Macarena.” In sixth grade we spent every free moment for three weeks writing, choreographing, and composing a musical version of The Parent Trap. I could go on and on…but it just seemed like that Whitney didn’t exist anymore. Things like money and country clubs and private planes, things that don’t matter to you when you are little, all seemed so important to her now and had made the abyss between us grow. I used to fool myself that she could ignore it, but unfortunately she had proven me wrong. Dead wrong.

  “Whitney’s changed,” I said, suddenly realizing what the years had done to my friend. “She’s turned into her mother.”

  “Whitney may be going through something right now and be very caught up in it, but you have to remember why you liked her in the first place. She’ll come around again,” said my mom.

  Why I liked her in the first place was becoming a distant memory. I know when people bashed her I always defended her, saying although she may seem stuck up and snobby, she was just insecure because her mother always did a number on her, telling her she was too fat or that she slouched. Harp, harp, harp, that’s all her mother does. Her mother is way too concerned with the superficial—that’s one reason why Whitney is such a mess, especially recently, with all the party planning. But how could I defend her anymore when she was being evil to me? Before I could say anything, it was as if my father read my mind.

  “Laura, I know it is not reassuring to say that this will end, and that you and Whitney will one day be friends again—”

  “No, we won’t,” I interrupted.

  “Well, I’m not sure I can believe that. You’ve had too many good times,” said my mom, dishing out more green beans. “And what about Sophie?”

  “She’s lame too. I was the one who defended her to Whitney and everyone else. They all said she was vapid and vain, but I insisted that she was not all flash, that yes she was fun on a superficial level, but she had heart. I brought her into our group and she turned it upside down. I can’t believe I brought it on myself.”

  “Oh, honey, you were only trying to make her feel welcome,” said my dad, putting his hand on top of mine. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I guess. But it totally backfired. I wanted her and Whitney to be friends because I thought that they were two peas in a pod. Once you break through their outer facades they’re on the same level and can be fun to talk to and go out with. But the problem was exactly that. They were too similar, and they are both small-minded and shallow.”

  My parents could tell I was about to cry, so they sat in silence, giving me sympathetic looks and caressing my arm. What I hated most of all was that Whitney and Sophie made me feel like I was using them. They think someone like me, someone without as much money, would just covet those fancy clothes and love those trips abroad and all that. But I’ve grown up around it so much that I am used to not having it. And Whitney was always cool about sharing her clothes, but at the same time I was soooo hyper-careful about not being a mooch and had even made a niche for myself designing my own duds. And for every trip to the Caribbean that she took me on, there were ten that I declined. She had zero frigging right to make me seem like an opportunist.

  “You feel betrayed,” my mom said as if she were reading my mind.

  “I just…” I started to cry, and my parents both hugged me. Finally I took a breath. “I guess it does bother me that I don’t have all this money and stuff. And I thought as long as we were friends it didn’t matter, but now that we aren’t and I’m, like, ostracized by everyone, it all just seems like a class thing. It’s like ‘You can come in if we let you in, but we have every right to throw you out.’ And I just feel…so alone and dumb. Dumb for even caring about this crap when I should be studying for my math exam.”

  “Laura, you’re not alone,” said my dad. “I know it can be rough being a loner or an outsider, but trust me, it will turn out okay. Everything will work out.”

  I choked back tears. “Thanks…”

  “And you always have Daddy and me to be goofballs with,” said my mom, gently pushing my hair out of my eyes.

  We had a group hug before I went into my room for the night. I hoped that things would get better. But could all these feelings of anger and hurt and rejection and embarrassment ever be reconciled? I doubted it. It’s like when you’re sick and in the depths of the fever, you truly feel like you’ll never get well. You just have to power through and take one hour at a time.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It’s almost scary how easy it is to be invisible. The next day at school I threw myself into study mode, crunching for my exams and trying at all costs to avoid everyone. And it was strangely simple. I glided around, laying low and doing my own thing. I would be lying if I said my heart didn’t skip a few beats when I heard Sophie and her posse or Whitney and crew strolling by, but they generally ignored me.

  At one point, I was in the library and heard two freshmen freaking out. From their conversation I was able to make out that Sophie had just sabotaged Whitney in the cafeteria—the ol’ chocolate-pudding-on-the-seat routine. When Whit and her gang came back to her table after a Pellegrino refill, she slid right into the goo and got up with a brown blob on her butt. Nightmare! On her way to the bathroom, she apparently walked by a smirking Sophie and said, “You’re toast.”

  Ugh. Between the death threats, lame pranks, and my honors algebra 2 test, I was drowning in stress. The feng shui of Tate was all off and I was immersed in bad vibes with only an hour till test time.

  “And…stop.” Mr. Caster’s voice rang out into the bluebook-covered classroom. “Pencils down.”

  Despite heinous karma swirling over my school, the gods did smile on me in terms of my last big academic hurdle of the semester. Maybe I was a social leper, but in the grades department I was feeling confident. I exhaled as I handed in my exam with a smile, ready to bolt home. Ahhhh, school’s out! But then I felt the sting of memory: School may be over till the new year, but the Gold and Silver was the last obstacle in front of me.

  Whitney and I had looked forward to the Gold and Silver for years—and here it was upon us and we weren’t even talking. I didn’t want to go at all, but I had bought my ticket in October and there was no backing out now after shelling out the two-fitty, which was my early Sweet Sixteen present from my parents. Whit and I always said we’d get our hair done together, get mani/pedis, and do frock auditions, but now I had to get dressed solo.

  I had spied a Carolina Herrera gown in a Madison Avenue boutique window a month before, and in my head I’d done a variation for my gown—long and white with thin straps, very elegant and simple but pure
glamour. Since I wasn’t having my own big bash, this would be my special gown of the year, and I’d been in various stages of sketching, cutting, and sewing for weeks. When I finally put it on, the clouds above my head started to part. It was more beautiful than I’d ever expected. My mom came in to fasten the fabric-covered buttons into the silk loops I’d made (very couture, no zippers here!), and I took a big gulp and kissed my parents good-bye.

  Like Cinderella I had a golden chariot—a New York taxicab. When it pulled up in front of the hotel next to all the limos, I stepped out holding my huge white silk and tulle skirt and walked into the grand lobby, past the older girls smoking cigarettes and tuxedo-clad guys taking not-so-secret swigs from sterling monogrammed flasks. I had arranged to meet Kaitlin in the lobby so we could enter together. She would normally be hanging with Sophie, but apparently Sophie’s parents were dropping her off on their way back from a “small party at Calvin Klein’s house” and Sophie wasn’t sure exactly when she’d hit the ball. Since Kaitlin didn’t want to enter solo, she remembered that I was still her friend and called me to arrange a rendezvous. That was one thing that was annoying about Ava and Kaitlin. It’s like, it wasn’t their fight, and yet they had also drifted away from me. They were totally friendly, but they were so scared of Sophie and Whitney that it was almost like they had to hide that we were friends. It was lame, and when Kaitlin had asked me to meet her, I had called her out on it and she fully fessed up. We semi-patched things up and planned to hang more in the future.

  Walking into the ball was a little surreal. It definitely had the vibe of an older party. I suddenly felt thrust into a more grownup soiree where the stakes (and sins) were higher, the kids faster, the scene more intimidating. Walking down the long carpeted hallway, it was very Pretty in Pink, except my dress rocked. But I had the same Ringwaldian insecurity and wave of stress.