As the name might imply, the LSBs were all gross for various gross-boy reasons, and these three were some of the grossest. Tommy Wills-Wyatt: aforementioned boner incident. Stevie Vandenberg: squat pug-like nose and eyes that didn’t quite go in the same direction, liked to grab girls’ butts in the hallway. Tate Kurokawa: rumored to have gotten oral sex in the auditorium in seventh grade, very loud laugh. All of them: stole my notebook in fourth grade, read it aloud, humiliated me.
The three of them banged out of the kitchen door, snorting and punching each other and generally acting self-satisfied the way only fifteen-year-old boys in full Brooks Brothers can. I thought that if I stayed still, maybe they would not notice me and proceed to whatever Loud Sophomore Boys things they had planned. But, as had already been established, an Oklahoma! skirt did not make for good camouflage.
“Hey,” said Tommy Wills-Wyatt. He was a mopey six and a half feet tall, and even when he wasn’t wearing cowboy pants, he walked sort of bowlegged.
“You all right, Peach?” Tate Kurokawa grinned at me. He was wearing a blazer and a shirt with the top button undone, and his hair was the color of bister, which is a pigment made from burnt beechwood that’s a kind of brownish-grayish-black and comes in conté crayons. Mom keeps a box of them in her studio.
“Plum,” I said.
Stevie Vandenberg snickered, probably because his brain was incapable of beading together two coherent words. “What?”
“Plum,” I said again, and indicated my name tag. “My name is Plum. Not Peach.” Of course, my name is actually Patience. But that was not what I had written on my name tag.
Stevie Vandenberg grabbed two sandwiches from a tray and crammed them in his mouth. I narrowed my eyes in intense disgust. Tate Kurokawa just snapped his fingers.
“Ugh. So close. Knew it was a fruit that starts with P.”
He also took a sandwich from the tray, which Stevie Vandenberg had now endeavored to offer to him.
“These are pretty good,” Tate said.
“Gimme,” said Tommy W-W.
“Hey!” I felt suddenly very protective of the sandwich trays. “Those aren’t for you.”
The three of them looked at one another. Stevie snorted. Tommy licked his teeth. Tate ate another sandwich.
“Relax, Peach,” he said. “We’re here on official business.”
“Wur ferving fuff.” Stevie was talking with his mouth full, which did not stop him from cramming in another one. I did some quick sibling calculus—Stevie had an older brother, and there was some Wills-Wyatt girl in Ginny’s history class—which must have shown on my face, because Tate Kurokawa nodded across the garden, at a long-limbed curly-haired boy in a salmon-colored polo shirt.
“I’m with him.”
“Benji Feingold,” I said, “is not your brother.”
Tate blinked. “You got me. I’m here voluntarily. I just heard there were sandwiches.” He tipped the plate toward me. “Want one?”
I shook my head.
“They’re good,” said Stevie. Tommy W-W was probing a tray of little toast slices.
“It’s liver,” I said. Tommy retracted his finger.
“Nah, man,” Tate was saying. “This is nothing. The library gives out cannoli at their fund-raiser thingies.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And the Historical Architecture Society has caviar.”
Because there was nothing for me to add, I took out my book, which is what I do when I don’t know what to say. I retrieved my bookmark, a Christmas-card picture of Gizmo and Doug, from the interior of Jane Eyre and set it on the table.
“Hey, that’s right,” Tate said, right in my ear. He had onion breath. “You guys have the dogs. Two black curly ones, right? Portuguese water dogs?”
Everyone thinks that Gizmo and Doug are Portuguese water dogs, I guess because they don’t know that standard poodles don’t have to get that froofy haircut. Also, the froofy haircut was designed so that the poodles could keep their joints warm in the water when they splashed in to retrieve game. It’s actually quite practical.
“Poodles,” I said, and explained about the haircuts—warm joints, retrieving game, practical.
“Huh,” Tate said. “I never knew that.”
Stevie burped.
“I have to go now,” I said.
I found Ginny on a folding chair back by the punch bowl, tapping at her phone, with Charlotte craning her neck to stare at the screen. Most of the other High-Strung Smart Girls had dissipated to make conversation with the headmaster or one of the parents. Seeing an empty chair and no parent to rope me back into service, I sat.
“How’s the tea?” I asked.
Ginny made a vague eh sound.
“It’s intense,” Charlotte said for her. Charlotte Forsythe does not particularly like me. She told me once that I was too judgmental just because I did not want mushrooms on my pizza and she did. I didn’t think this was a reflection of her poor upbringing or anything; I just think mushrooms are gross. But Charlotte also always looked like something smelled bad under her nose, so what did she know? “Ginny’s been sucking up to Dr. Maldonado.”
“I have not,” Ginny said.
“The physics teacher?” I said. “Why?”
Charlotte and Ginny exchanged a look—or, rather, Charlotte gave Ginny a look and Ginny huffed.
“Fine, fine, so I want a good letter of recommendation. Is that so shameful?”
“It’s going to be very competitive to try for the science programs,” Charlotte said matter-of-factly. “Especially if you haven’t taken advanced math.”
Ginny twisted the ends of her hair, staring at her phone again. Her poufy bridesmaid dress was sagging a little.
“I’m just saying,” Charlotte said. Charlotte “just says” a lot of things; she is one of those people who corrects you if you complain about chemicals in food, because all organic compounds are chemicals, as if everyone wouldn’t get what you meant anyway. The strap of her sundress, which was a dazzling white eyelet material, slid precariously down one shoulder.
“Your boobs are showing, Char,” Ginny said. To be fair, Charlotte’s boobs were rarely not showing.
Charlotte crossed her arms. “You know I’m right, though.”
I was skeptical. “Is she?” I said. “Are you?”
“I’m her best friend,” Charlotte said, tipping her head onto Ginny’s shoulder. “I’m just being pragmatic.”
Ginny closed her eyes for two full seconds, then nudged Charlotte’s head off her shoulder and whipped her phone into my face.
“Check it out, Plummy. We all snuck inside to take pictures in the bathtub.” She flicked through a few on her phone: Ginny, the Lilys, Charlotte, Ava, and Julia giggling and making duck faces in a huge white bathroom. And at that moment I was struck with a memory, of the day after Ginny’s eighth birthday, when our father could not let go of the fact that there had been two Lilys at her party. “It’s positively funereal!” he had said. And I remember that was the day I learned the word funereal, not that that’s even impressive. Anyone can have a big vocabulary; it’s just a matter of memorization. But what Buck Blatchley could do was use the right word at the perfect time, so unexpected that a single phrase would knock you off your feet.
That’s genius. You’re born with it or you’re not.
I finished examining the picture. “That bathroom is huge.”
“I know! And the toilet actually flushes without a weird pull chain you have to hold on to for fifteen seconds.” Ginny pretended to swoon. “How was serving sandwiches?”
“I almost cut off Pamela Wills’s foot.”
“Oh my God.” Charlotte gasped.
Ginny grinned. “On purpose?”
“Well . . .” I squirmed. “She . . . insulted me.”
Charlotte made a little hmm sound. “Insulted you? How?”
“She just did,” I said. I didn’t want to discuss it, and I certainly didn’t want to discuss it with Charlotte.
�
�And then you stomped on her,” said Ginny.
“I didn’t say that!”
“But you did.”
“Whatever,” I conceded. “Can we leave yet?”
“Sure.” Ginny sighed. “I’m too hopeless to go on.”
“I thought you said we could go to Wawa after,” Charlotte whined.
Ginny looked genuinely torn.
“You guys go for lunch all the time,” I said. All the HSSGs had had high-enough grades to get advance senior off-campus privilege at the end of last year.
“Yeah,” Ginny said. “And I really want to change.”
Charlotte raised her eyebrows and took out her phone. “I bet.”
Ginny gave Charlotte’s shoulder a smack, and Charlotte cracked a smile, and they air-kissed.
“Where’s Mom?” Ginny stood up. “Maybe I can bum a smoke for the ride.”
I nodded back at the tent, where Pamela Wills seemed to be foisting a business card on Mom. “She isn’t smoking.”
“Not at the moment, no.” Ginny brushed the front of her skirt. I got up, too, but realized with a sinking feeling that something was missing.
“One second,” I said. “I left my book with the sandwiches.”
When I went back around the house, Tate Kurokawa was sitting at the table, reading Jane Eyre. My Jane Eyre. Well, technically Ginny’s Jane Eyre, but almost everything that I claimed as mine had been hers first.
Naturally, I was horrified. I tried to rush over and snatch it away, but I rounded the table a little too quickly, and the stupid hem of my stupid skirt caught on the stupid wrought-iron table, and I fell. Stupidly.
“Nice outfit, Peach,” came Tate’s voice from somewhere above. “It’s pretty O-K.”
He leaned down and flashed me the okay with his thumb and forefinger. I lay on the headmaster’s impeccably groomed grass and wished for death.
“Hey!”
My eyes flew open to reveal Ginny, hands on hips, bridesmaid skirt poufing everywhere. “Is that your book?”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry. I can get another one.”
Ginny looked aghast. “But that one is special!” She helped me to my feet and wheeled on Tate. “Excuse me. That is not yours. Try CliffsNotes if you’re stumped. They use small words.”
Tate said sorry and backhand-threw Jane Eyre at me like it was a Frisbee. Miraculously, I caught it, and Ginny looped her arm through mine with a hmph and marched me right out of the garden, declaring Tate an asshole in a not-at-all-quiet voice and giving my Oklahoma!-skirted butt a smack.
The fact is, at that moment, I would have actually preferred to spend ten more dollars and several more hours repurchasing and reannotating my own copy than ever have to speak to a Loud Sophomore Boy. But Ginny had her reasons for making sure I kept that copy. Then again, since she was the reason I was at the Senior Tea in the first place, she had also been the reason I’d almost lost it.
Then again, again, really nothing in my life would’ve happened the way it did without Ginny there. That was just what it meant to be a sister.
And yet here I have spent so much time on myself when the real thread of the story leads to the Senior Tea’s aftermath and the mystery of the cigarette butt.
Nothing else truly remarkable happened the day of the Senior Tea. Or nothing that seemed remarkable, especially after the high drama of the Tea itself. When we got home, we were all hot, cranky, and hungry, because no one had eaten enough toast points, so we microwaved popcorn, went to the couch, argued over seating arrangements, argued over the remote, and then fell into a stupid argument over the best film adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. (I like Sense and Sensibility; Ginny thought Hugh Grant was miscast. Mom liked the 1980s direct-to-VHS Pride and Prejudice—not the Colin Firth one; it’s an older one no one else remembers—and Ginny likes the Keira Knightley remake.)
This wasn’t an unusual argument; it was equal parts pointless, pretentious, and heated, like many discussions we have.
“The Keira Knightley one has the best soundtrack,” Ginny declared.
“We know,” I said. “You’re always blasting it in your room.”
Ginny, when she was in a fit of pique, played classical music and lay on the floor of her bedroom. She was often in fits of pique these days.
“Yeah, well, the eighties whatever version is better,” Mom said. “It’s more loyal to the books.”
“That doesn’t actually make it better. It just makes it interminably long,” Ginny said. “And it has the cinematography of an episode of Antiques Roadshow. And no one has ever heard of it except you.”
“And,” I put in, “I don’t like Mrs. Bennet.”
Mom had sunk far back into the couch, with a wounded look. She was staring at the coffee table.
That is one other thing I know about my father. He was a woodworker, constantly scavenging for scraps, bolting and crosscutting things, or so I dimly recall. The coffee table had been a gift for their first Valentine’s Day, and Mom always said that was the moment she knew she wanted to marry him, because there are not many men who will spend hours sanding and varnishing a piece of ambrosia maple for you. According to legend, he had been so excited to give it to her that he accidentally put on a leg upside down. And Mom always said she didn’t care, because nothing was perfect, but Dad always said he was going to fix it. I don’t know if any of that’s true, but the leg is on upside down.
“Yeah,” Ginny said. “There’s no way we’re sitting through that one.”
“Let’s just watch something else,” I said.
“I know, I always have terrible taste.” Mom set her glass down with a loud clunk. “I’m a thousand years old and just a mom. So just . . . put on whatever you want. Don’t listen to me. I’m letting the dogs out.”
“The dogs already went out,” I whispered, but the stairs were already creaking.
I stared at the coffee table, at its still-upside-down leg. Ginny flopped her whole tall body on the length of the couch, so that her gross feet were in my lap.
“Get off.” I shoved her away, but she just put her feet right back.
“Make me.”
I gave up, and instead got up to follow the disappearing sound of creaks. Outside, in the hallway, the glass doors at the end of the landing were still closed. Of course they were. Mom didn’t go in the study. Although, on reflection, it’s not really accurate to call it the study, since that implies communal use. It was—it is? It had been?—our father’s. None of us went in, and none of us ever would. No matter how much storage space we ran out of, no matter whether the rest of the house literally caught on fire. Even Gizmo and Doug somehow knew not to trespass.
“I’m putting on Amadeus in T minus ten seconds!” Ginny yelled from the couch. “Plum! What are you doing?!”
“Nothing.” I padded back in and settled on the couch. Mozart gushed dramatically from the speakers.
“This is going to be good.” Ginny wiggled herself to a straighter seat and adjusted the bowl of popcorn in her lap.
I gave her a look that said, It’s always good, because we watch it maybe once a month. Ginny frowned.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
Ginny nodded. “I know. What did I tell you?” She chomped her popcorn with authority. “Something weird is going on.”
Salieri screamed.
So, all told, the events of Saturday, September 3, had the following repercussions:
Because I had embarrassed the family name by crushing Pamela Wills’s toes, Mom had been unable to refuse Pamela’s invitation for a coffee date—perhaps subconsciously realizing that it would be a chance to convince her that not all Blatchleys are homicidal and/or clumsy.
Because I had embarrassed myself in front of a Loud Sophomore Boy, I vowed I wasn’t going to speak to any of them again. (Which, honestly, I did not think would be that difficult.)
Because Ginny had spent too much time with the other HSSGs, and perhaps because she ha
d been wearing an inferior party dress, her high-strungedness about college admissions had skyrocketed to near-incapacitating heights.
“Drill me again,” Ginny said. This was approximately 5:47 p.m. the Tuesday after watching Amadeus, and we were both hanging out in her room. She was trying to memorize a poem by Victor Hugo for French class while folded into the pink armchair with the squeaky springs, and I was flopped on her bed, shimmying my new rings up and down my fingers in a very satisfying way.
“It doesn’t count as drilling if I don’t understand what I’m reading.” I pushed the smallest ring to the tip of my finger, then spun it back down again.
“Well, then just prompt me when I mess up.” Ginny closed her eyes and rose from the chair to pace. Ginny was very good at pacing, like she was a movie villainess during an interrogation, but unfortunately her room, in the tower of 5142 Haven Lane, is about six paces across—maybe less, because her legs are so long—so she didn’t have very far to go. Also, the tower room gets very poor air circulation, and it was an unusually hot evening for the end of September, so we were both sweating.
“‘Demain, dès l’aube, a l’heure où blanchit’— Ow!”
I looked up from my sketchbook to see Ginny rubbing her shin next to her armoire. “Damn. Shit. Ow.”
“That is definitely not French,” I said.
“Très drôle.” Ginny straightened and shook out her hands, and wiped off her forehead. “I’m dying in here.” She peeled her T-shirt over her head, leaving her in a crisscrossing sort of sports bra that had certainly never seen any athletic activity, and flung herself onto her bed, jogging my elbow in the process. The topmost ring went flying to the carpet.
“Damn it, Ginny!” I rolled onto my stomach to retrieve it.
“I’m going to fail.”
I sighed and pushed the ring back on. “No, you’re not.”
“I am. I’m going to fail French and never go to college and die alone in a cardboard box.”
“Shut up, Gin.”
“I don’t even know how to do anything else. We have terrible genes, Plum. Neither of our parents gave us any practical skills.”
“Dad could make furniture,” I reminded her.
Ordinary Girls Page 3
