Class Favorite

by Taylor Morris

  “You are.”

  “We’re supposed to be best friends,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, if we are,” she said, her voice rising, “then I’d think you’d believe your own best friend when she tells you she didn’t tell anyone about your stupid period flowers!”

  “God, Arlene, I don’t think the cooks in the back of the kitchen heard you!”

  “Sara, are you okay?” asked a voice from behind us. We both turned to see Kirstie standing just off to the side, her thin arms folded over her stomach. She walked toward us but kept her eyes on Arlene. The sort of comfort Kirstie’s presence gave me right then was exactly what I needed.

  “It’s okay,” I told Kirstie.

  “Well, look who it is,” Arlene said, and I hated the accusing tone in her voice.

  “Yeah, look who it is,” I said to Arlene. “My friend.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Arlene’s eyes were filled with confusion. I stared back at her, trying not to cry.

  “Let’s go, Sara,” Kirstie finally said, taking my tray and dropping it on a nearby table. She gave my arm a tug and guided me out of the barfeteria. I wanted to look back at Arlene. But I didn’t.

  “Just forget about her.”

  That’s the advice Kirstie had for me when she called me that night. The truth was, I was completely shaken up by the whole encounter with Arlene. I’d never spoken to Arlene—or anyone—like that before. I don’t think I believed half the things I’d said to her. All I had really wanted to do was ask her if she had any pranks planned against me, and it’d all gotten so out of control that I hadn’t even asked her the one thing I wanted to know. I was embarrassed by how immaturely I had handled myself, and how I’d treated my best friend. More than anything, I was confused by what I felt and what I believed.

  “If you were my best friend,” Kirstie continued, “I’d never break your confidence. Not even once. I didn’t even really think she was the one who had spread the word, but if she’s the only one you confided in, that pretty much speaks volumes. Don’t you think?”

  My mind was wandering, but when I realized she expected a response, I pulled myself out of it. “Yeah, I guess,” I muttered. I’d been sulking in my room since dinner and didn’t plan on coming out until the next morning. I wished that Elisabeth was the kind of sister I could talk to about this stuff, but since she was never home it wasn’t worth trying. Mom was always around, but between her and Dad, Dad was easier to talk to. If he still lived here I could probably find him out back inspecting the yard. It was just so hard trying to process what was happening with Arlene, and I couldn’t imagine a world where she and I wouldn’t be friends—and, worse, one in which she could screw me over big-time. I guess nothing felt right lately.

  “I’m really sorry about the whole mess,” Kirstie continued. “You can always call me if you need anything.”

  “I know,” I said. “Thanks.” Even in my daze, I still wondered why Kirstie was being so nice to me. The truth was, with everything in shambles, Kirstie was all I had. I decided to not read anything into her friendly gestures.

  “Oh! How could I forget,” she said suddenly. “Next week for spring break, Mother is taking me to Aspen and said I can invite a friend. And since you’re pretty much my only friend, it’d be so fun if you came. We’ll even pay.”

  I should have been flattered, but the truth was, Kirstie and I barely knew each other—our friendship seemed to be moving pretty quickly. Besides, Arlene and I had planned a marathon viewing of Razzies for the break—we already had five movies picked out, but with what had happened, I could forget that now. Maybe going on a trip with a new friend wasn’t such a bad idea. Plus, I secretly thought, having some exotic travel stories would make me seem like a woman of the world. Very Class Favorite-ish.

  “Wow.” I tried to force enthusiasm into my voice. “Totally. I’ll ask my mom.”

  “The best remedy for a broken heart is distance,” Kirstie said. I got the feeling that, in all her moving from place to place, it was something she knew a lot about.

  Over the next couple of days, Arlene tried to call me a few times, but seeing her number on my caller ID, I ignored it. It was hard to know what to say when I still didn’t know what to believe. Every time I told myself she hadn’t leaked word, I reminded myself that she was the only one who knew—and that she had told stuff about me in the past. Still, the thought of our friendship being ruined for good always sent my mind reeling.

  Soon, Arlene began ignoring me too, and I took her silence as guilt. I didn’t want to stay mad at Arlene forever, but every time I saw her, she seemed to be having so much fun with her other friends that I realized she wasn’t even missing me. Her ease at forgetting me—at not even needing me—really burned. I didn’t know whether to be hurt or just plain angry. I was glad to have Kirstie around. At least I wasn’t lonely.

  I decided that since Arlene was obviously upping her status in school with her athletic friends, I would finally try to move out of wallflower-dom and get some good recognition. I decided to talk more to Kirstie about making the Class Favorite list—maybe she could help me come up with a real, concrete plan of how one could go from nothing to something in a matter of a couple of months. We never did make that list we had talked about for Class Favorite qualities, but I wanted to do it.

  Sometimes I wonder what the heck I was thinking.

  7

  Do You Have What It Takes to Be the Coolest Kid in Class?

  Which word best describes your attitude toward popularity?

  a) superficial

  b) (my) reality

  c) unachievable

  It had been more than a week since my lunchroom confrontation with Arlene, and we had become experts at avoiding each other. We didn’t look at each other in class, and I sat with Kirstie at lunch. I slowly began to think that Arlene wasn’t going to pull some locker prank on me, and I began to feel like maybe I’d made a huge mistake. I’d been so embarrassed about the flowers that I was afraid I’d taken it out on her. And yeah, it’s true that I felt left out, what with all her new friends. But that didn’t mean she’d betray me, even if she secretly didn’t consider me her best friend anymore.

  “I think I’m going to talk to Arlene,” I told Kirstie one evening when we were at her house making root beer floats and watching E!. “She hasn’t done anything to me. No locker pranks, nothing.” I stirred the long spoon in my frosted mug. “I think it’s time to grovel.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?” she asked, surprising me. “I’m just thinking . . . maybe she’s waiting for the storm to settle, and then she’s going to do something.”

  “I don’t think so. I think that, even if she was going to do something at one point, she’s not planning on doing it anymore. I think the storm hasn’t just settled—it’s passed.”

  Kirstie dipped her spoon into her float thoughtfully. “Maybe just wait until after spring break before you say anything to her—just to make sure. I have to be honest—I have a bad feeling about the whole thing. So wait a little longer. For me?”

  I hesitated before I said, “Yeah, sure.” Even though I wasn’t sure. I felt confused and saddened about Arlene, and torn with Kirstie, who had been the only person there for me since Valentine’s Day, it seemed. Now everything was all turned around and upside down.

  Every time I saw Arlene she really looked like she’d moved on quite easily. It hurt my feelings knowing she could go on as if we were never friends. Still, I told myself, despite what Kirstie said, I’d make a sort of last-ditch effort and apologize. I thought it was the right thing to do.

  That night when I got home from Kirstie’s, I shuffled down the hall to the room that used to be Dad’s office but was now just a tiny junk storage room. A dusty desk with our one computer sat in front of the window that faced out the side of the house. Mom had gotten our computer free from the bank when they upgraded, and it was such a piece of junk that it groaned and wheezed ever
y time we turned it on. I couldn’t even IM because it always crashed, so I had to make do with regular ol’ e-mails, but I guess it was okay.

  When the computer finally groaned to life I froze. I had an e-mail from Arlene:

  First of all, I told myself I wasn’t going to write you for a while after what you said to me in the lunchroom that day. I wanted to cool off and think about things. I actually tried to see things from your perspective. But the more I thought, the angrier I got. How could you accuse me of doing something without even hearing me out first?? I don’t know who told about your flowers, but I do know who was in the office when they came: your new “friend” Kirstie. She really leeched on to you pretty quickly. Did you ever stop to wonder why?

  That was it. That’s how the e-mail ended. I didn’t know how to respond, or even if I should. I thought about calling Kirstie, but I didn’t. I wanted to think about how I would respond, so I closed the e-mail, telling myself I’d answer it later. But I never got the chance.

  Since it was the week before spring break, a buzz filled the air—talk in the halls became louder and more excited, people laughed more often, and everyone, even the teachers, seemed like they were in a good mood. A little joy had even seeped into me, despite my situation with Arlene.

  Miracle of all miracles, Mom had agreed to let me go skiing with Kirstie and her mom. She only had two conditions: We would pay my way, and she insisted on speaking with Kirstie’s mom before we left. So far, they’d been playing phone tag, but I wasn’t worried—I was too excited. Kirstie let me borrow an old pair of ski pants, and her mom said I could borrow her jacket (“It gives me an excuse to buy a new one,” she’d said).

  But because this is my miserable life, when I got to algebra, Mrs. Everly, who has been a teacher since before the abacus was invented, announced we were having a pop quiz on systems of equations, even though we had just started studying them. I rolled my eyes and thought how perfect this was.

  Mrs. Everly handed a stack of test papers to the person at the front of each row, licking her finger as she counted them out. I was glad that I sat four seats back—hopefully by the time the papers got to me, her spit would be dry. Old people can be so disgusting.

  “You have twenty minutes,” she ominously announced.

  It was just like her to give a quiz right before spring break, when no one wanted to do anything but talk about where they were going and what they were doing. Sometimes you had to wonder if teachers have any memory of what it was like to be a student. I stared down at my sheet and tried to focus. I decided to give a halfhearted attempt, knowing that Mrs. Everly throws out our lowest quiz score for each six-week period.

  Once I decided to suck on the quiz, my eyes started to wander. Everybody’s head was down on their sheets, including Mrs. Everly’s, who was probably doing the crossword puzzle in the back of Woman’s Life. I don’t think she really gave her classes much thought anymore, especially since nothing new ever happens in the world of math. It’s been the same nonsense for a hundred years.

  Jason sat by the window, his long back rounded over his paper. His smooth-skinned face was fixed in concentration, and I realized I had no idea what kind of grades he made. Must have been average, considering he wasn’t in honors algebra. Kayla Cane, whose almond-colored hair always rested perfectly on her back, had probably never had an unpopular day in her life. I looked over at Rosemary Vickers, who sat in the front row on the far right, next to the door. Her thick mane of red hair had hundreds of shiny gold strands mixed in, making it shimmer even in the dull fluorescent lights of the classroom. I fingered my own hair, so thin that my sister teased that I’ll have bald spots by the time I graduate high school.

  Rosemary tucked her locks behind her ear with French-manicured nails and tapped her bright blue pencil on her desk. She wasn’t athletic, and she was still popular. I wondered how she did it. Yeah, she was nice and really pretty, but what made her seem so great to everyone? She wasn’t the only nice, pretty girl in town. She dated, but hadn’t had a boyfriend since last year. Not because she couldn’t get one—she obviously just chose to stay single.

  I rested my chin in the palm of my hand, even though I read in Seventeen that the dirt from your hand gives you zits, and wondered what it was about her that made everyone like her so much. Every girl who had been nominated for Class Favorite had great hair, and they all had nice nails—whether they were short or long, they were always manicured. I’d painted my nails a pale pink from a home manicure kit, but it didn’t look near as nice as Rosemary’s or Kayla’s. I’d never seen Rosemary get in a fight with anyone, and I never heard of anyone being angry with her. I watched as she scratched her freckled forehead, then gazed around the room. She looked back at me, and before I realized I had been staring at her, she smiled and shrugged her shoulders, and I somehow knew it had to do with the quiz. I smiled and rolled my eyes as she turned back around. My heart thumped in my chest.

  I’d never had one of the popular kids acknowledge me before, except that time I accidentally sneezed on Kayla Cane in the halls earlier this year. She got this totally disgusted look on her face and screeched, “Ew! Gross!”—which is normal when you’ve had snot spewed on you by a stranger. Her friend Jessica laughed and said to me, “Way to go, grace.” Kayla, though, was not amused. She held out the arm I’d blown spit and snot on, wiped it on my shirt, and snapped, “You’re nasty.”

  So all popular girls weren’t nice, and having Rosemary acknowledge me in algebra was almost as exciting as having Jason himself engage in a full-on conversation with me, I decided.

  “Time’s up,” Mrs. Everly announced. “Everyone pass your papers forward.”

  I looked down at my sheet. I had barely answered half.

  Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Everly went over all the questions on the quiz and I realized that, even with the questions I had gotten around to answering, I had only successfully answered the first three problems correctly. Screw it, I thought as the bell rang and we all slapped our books shut. I glanced at Rosemary, who dropped her blue pencil in her red Coach as I slipped on my tan corduroy jacket. Richie passed her and said, “Later, Rose,” and she smiled at him. Jason tapped his pencil on her head and winked at her. I deliberately stuffed my book and papers into my faded black messenger bag, trying to keep pace with her. Whatever it was that Rosemary had, I wanted a piece of it.

  I thought back to that recent night at Kirstie’s, when she finally helped me make the list of all the things that made popular people popular, like we had talked about. I would use it to tick off qualities for my Class Favorite quest, as well as to see how people like Rosemary made it to the top every year. Kirstie’d already given me pointers about my outward appearance—she suggested I cut my hair in long, sweeping layers and give it some golden highlights. I’d gone to Supercuts but chickened out and just asked for a trim. I also realized I couldn’t afford the color job, and still planned to buy a home-job at the grocery store. We talked more about the connection between Haden Prescott’s ascent and how I could do the same. We thought of things she had, and used those as guidance for me. This is what we came up with:

  1. Hotness. Duh. Every movie star, even the D-listers, are beautiful. Same with popular people. (This made me wonder a thousand other things: Am I good-looking? Is popular beauty natural, or can I acquire it? Do you have to get a professional manicure? What about a pedicure? Or only in the summer? Do you have to get your hair done at Toni & Guy, or was Supercuts okay so long as it looked like something out of CosmoGirl? Was the home color job I was planning on buying okay or was it total white trash? And, wait, was CosmoGirl even cool, or was it so sixth grade?)

  2. The clothes. They really do count, don’t they? Maybe Bai Ling was a great actress, but she dressed horribly and so was never taken seriously. For me, Kirstie had suggested more skirts—short ones, she said—but I didn’t have many in my arsenal. She’d loaned me a couple, but she was taller than I was and they ended up being knee-length. She promptly took them b
ack, ordering me to the mall, stat.

  3. Niceness. Here I got confused. Like I said, Rosemary is one of the sweetest girls in school, Kayla, not so much. Both were equally popular. Kirstie told me she was always nice, and sometimes people liked her, sometimes they thought she was a freak. “There’s no way of knowing,” she’d said. But I’d always been nice. Hadn’t I? How did my lunchroom brawl with Arlene fit into this?

  4. Boyfriend. In Hollywood, arm candy boys were always a bonus but not necessary. In Ladel, Rosemary didn’t have a boyfriend, but she was probably an exception. Being the girlfriend of someone popular must be an excellent way to get your name on the CF ballots. But do you have to be popular already to get the popular guy? And in the real world of Bowie, could Jason ever be mine?

  5. Poise. Even when being grilled on the Oscars red carpet about her personal life, Haden Prescott had not faltered; she graciously declined to answer such questions. Was it even possible for me to keep it together considering the levels of humility I’d been enduring since V-Day?

  6. Academics. Ugh. I hoped you didn’t have to be an Eric von Trieger—smartest person in our class—to be popular. Of course, Eric wasn’t really popular. People sort of respected him because he did so well in school, and sometimes he tutored kids. So, is intelligence moot? Many Hollywood actors were high school dropouts, but I didn’t respect that. (Hmm . . . funny reading this one as I purposely bombed my algebra quiz.)

  7. Confidence. Like Kirstie said, even if I don’t have any (which I don’t), I should at least fake it.

  8. How many friends you have! I’d lost one and gained another, but was that enough?

  Leaving algebra, I took my list from my bag and got right up to Rosemary’s desk just as she gathered her books. She had smiled at me during class, so I told myself there was no reason to be intimidated by her.