by Helen Eve
I hovered at the door, awkwardly shifting my weight from one foot to the other, until Mrs Denbigh ushered me inside. There were almost one hundred Sixth Formers at Temperley High, split into five form groups which met for roll call and what Mrs Denbigh called troubleshooting. My group already comprised twelve girls (and six boys, but they mattered less). I was lucky number thirteen.
Awkward and pigeon-toed, I gripped my nerdy collection of box files and textbooks like a shield as Mrs Denbigh happily told the class I was from Manhattan – a real-life Gossip Girl, she said as if that would help me.
My heart sank as the four girls in the back row smirked. Their clothes were expensive; their hair was glossy; their eyes were charcoaled; they radiated sheer, undiluted confidence. Sixth Formers didn’t wear a uniform, but these girls had one that the prospectus hadn’t alluded to and which was entirely at odds with my pathetic efforts: skinny jeans or tiny skirts, layered tank tops, oversized jewellery, messy bedhead curls (that took hours to perfect) and perilously high heels. Besides this were the silver stars that decorated not only their ears but their clothes and bags, giving them an otherwordly quality that was wholly calculated.
I was wearing Marc Jacobs – apparently – and was confident that these girls were sufficiently label-conscious to know, but I stuck out in my fitted suit and smart heels. Not to mention that I was already getting blisters. I realized too late that I was dressed for a job interview or a day at a polo match.
I breathed in hard and tried to collect myself before my new mascara started to run. Of course they’ll accept me. I’m from New York! I shop on Fifth Avenue! In a movie, I’d be the star; as new girl it was my right to take centre stage. Besides, everyone envied American teenagers. Isn’t that what all British kids aspired to be? And, apart from worse teeth (or so I’d heard), what did these kids have that I didn’t?
I remained in my daze, a state that would soon come to safeguard me from the sharper edges of boarding school life, as Mrs Denbigh read out a notice from Dr Tringle, the Headmistress, about the consequences of breaking curfew. After that, I was half-aware of a back row girl complaining that Matron’s insistence on keeping the bathroom window open was making the surrounding area a pervert’s paradise (‘So stop posing there in your knickers!’ shouted one of the guys), and another reminding the group that playing death metal on the Common Room jukebox was a threat to modern civilization.
Eventually Mrs Denbigh asked a girl named Lucy (who didn’t sit in the back row) to take me to English Literature, whereupon she led me through packed hallways to a classroom on the second floor.
‘How long have you been a student here?’ I managed to ask as we fought our way up a narrow stairwell.
She nodded at a formation of little girls in straw hats and blazers who were running downstairs. ‘Since I was a Shell. They’re twelve.’
‘A Shell?’ English expressions made no sense to me and I immediately regretted asking.
She spoke rapidly. ‘The youngest students are Shells, then Removes, Fourths and Fifths. The Sixth Form is split into Lower and Upper, and we don’t wear a uniform, but you can tell what year the younger students are by the colour of the ribbon in their boaters.’
I lacked the energy to ask her what a boater was. In any case, it was at that moment that we entered the classroom, and then I forgot that Lucy was even beside me.
* * *
My first close-up of Stella was like a smack in the mouth. I wasn’t tall, but she was tiny. Even in skyscraper-high Louboutins, which were hardly comfortable daywear, she was smaller than any of the other girls, and because she liked the back row she used to sit on a velvet cushion to see the whiteboard. Her size was a huge part of her appeal, simultaneously making girls feel elephantine while boys were desperate to (amongst other things) protect her. And the word pretty didn’t get close to describing her face any more than it did her most striking and enviable feature: her waist-length blonde hair.
It was hair that made other girls study L’Oréal commercials like documentaries; steal her shampoo; trail her down hallways for a closer look. It was hair that boys involuntarily reached out for; hair that hypnotized them into adoring submission; hair that they would have climbed towers or fought dragons or smashed themselves against rocks for. And it was hair that she never, ever compromised or dyed or changed.
Those attributes aside, I tried endlessly in those early days to figure out exactly what people couldn’t resist. She’s only human, I thought repeatedly. She must have good and bad features, just like everyone. And surely our imperfections – a cleft chin, a crooked nose – are what make us interesting. Perfection doesn’t exist.
Her enormous eyes slanted like a cat’s and were endlessly blue, darkening to violet when she was upset or disapproving or angry. Her eyelashes were so long that I thought them fake until Katrina told me she’d never seen her without them, even when she was sleeping or swimming. And her eyelids were heavy, so she blinked like a doll.
Her bottom lip was large – disproportionately so – and she had a habit of denting it with her teeth. Her nose, by comparison, was small. She had two dimples, one in her right cheek and the other below her mouth, but these were rarely seen because somehow, whether it was the arrangement of her features or something else, Stella always looked sad.
She was intensely creative and her most impressive work of art was herself. It was speculated that her clothes were vintage couture cut down to fit her, but every item was so heavily customized that its origins were never clear. Importantly – although I didn’t realize then how much – she never followed trends. She didn’t need to, because she appeared to be responsible for setting every single trend that existed at Temperley High.
* * *
Our English teacher, Mr Trevelyan, was tall with spiky dark hair and cute little glasses. He was in his late twenties, friendly and soft-spoken, and it was obvious from the way the girls shimmied past him that he was a popular member of the faculty.
Instead of listening to him tell me which books my classmates were studying, I stared at this girl in the back row who was so fascinating I could have watched her all day. She looked perfectly blank and uninterested and didn’t flicker until Katrina (dressed in a fur gilet despite the central heating that rose unpleasantly from the floor) whispered something that made them both giggle. I looked away, my cheeks flaming, and prayed that I wouldn’t be seated near them. I felt safer at the front of the room close to Lucy, even though the girl on my other side was so wide that I barely had space to fit my chair under the table.
Somehow I could feel Stella’s eyes appraising me, assessing my outfit, my hair, the back of my neck. I hoped she couldn’t see how red my ears were. Her brain must have been working overtime as she wondered whether to ignore me, victimize me, or whether I constituted a sufficient threat for it to be in her interests to befriend me. I could see even then that all her relationships worked like this.
Stella ruled Temperley High like the star of every teen movie I’d ever seen. As venomous as Heather, as influential as Regina, as fragile as Marissa, she was eighty-five pounds and five foot and half an inch of every nightmare that had ever woken me up screaming. She treated staff and students like pawns, and under her reign we were little more than this. I know how ridiculous it is that we were so affected by her, but I maintain that people who never met Stella can’t understand. That’s my excuse – and everyone else’s, for that matter. By the end, it had to be.
Chapter Four
Stella
We aren’t allowed to call our teachers by their first names, even though Temperley High is quite progressive, but because Mr Trevelyan is our youngest teacher we always call him Jamie, and usually he doesn’t bother to correct us.
I took English because it doesn’t involve Bunsen burners or fieldwork, but the other Stars only chose it because you can always see Jamie’s nipples through his shirt in cold weather. The six of us sit together at the back, which I can only think is allowed so that Jamie can
confine us to one section rather than risk us contaminating the whole class with unattainable life aspirations. He likes to pick on the others (usually Ruby) to check they’re listening, but not me. I expect it undermines his teaching skills to see me get full marks irrespective of whether I turn up, fall asleep, listen to Katrina’s iPod or spend the entire lesson flirting with Ravi and Christopher. I know for a fact that I’m Jamie’s favourite because he puts a silver star on all my essays, something he never does for anyone else.
I lean across the aisle and nudge Penny. The exertion of her morning ride has fanned her soft flaxen hair around her shoulders like thistledown, giving her a misleadingly innocent demeanour.
‘What?’ she hisses, busily arranging her pink pencils into size order.
‘You and Edward, hey?’ I prompt.
She tilts her chin defiantly. ‘It’s too late for you to warn me off him. I know you don’t want any of us to be with Edward, but we’ve already kissed, and who knows what’s next?’
‘I don’t care if you’re with Edward,’ I say. ‘We had an amicable, mutually respectful break-up. Has he called you since?’
There’s a pause. ‘No.’
‘It’s for the best, Pen,’ I say. ‘You wouldn’t want to be his girlfriend. You’d be a nervous wreck like Ally, furious every time he speaks to another girl.’
‘I don’t think Ally minded when Edward spoke to other girls,’ Katrina corrects. ‘She only minded when he kissed other girls.’
Edward, across the room, looks up at the sound of his name. Penny looks hopeful, but he wolf-whistles at Katrina instead. ‘Nice hair, Marchbank.’
I never know if Edward’s being sarcastic, but Katrina flushes with pleasure and adjusts her bow. ‘Thanks, Edward,’ she says breathily.
We both turn away, but she gasps when some screwed-up paper hits her on the back of her head. ‘Edward!’ she moans. ‘I know it was you!’
‘You’re so lucky, Kat.’ Penny is plaintive. ‘Edward never throws anything at me.’
Jamie is introducing a new girl, Caitlin something, to the class, and I can tell, because he and I have a connection, that he’s wondering whether to trust me and Katrina to look after her. Deciding against it, he asks her to sit at the front with Hannah Wise glowering on one side and Lucy Ainsworth grinning inanely on the other. Both of them are a complete embarrassment, and I can’t believe he thinks they’re good ambassadors for the school. Lucy, for example, is wearing boot-cut jeans circa 2004 and a red jumper that looks like viscose. And she’s presentable compared to Hannah, who takes up two desks on her own.
It’s not fair that being fat makes you unpopular, but really there’s no excuse. Hannah is forever banging on about an underactive thyroid, but she’s always first in the queue at mealtimes and buying out the vending machines. She’s never around during prep, which this year we’re allowed to do in our rooms (although you never do unless you have no friends, because everyone knows prep time isn’t about work), and I can imagine her in her lonely pink bedroom, stuffing herself with Walnut Whips. All the Stars are thin, but if we weren’t, we’d starve until we were. There’s no sense ruining your life over a simple matter of self-control.
The new girl is small like me, and pretty with long dark hair and what looks like a Marc Jacobs jacket. She looks unmanaged, like a yearbook picture on Before They Were Famous, but the raw materials are there. I wish Jamie had let her sit closer to us, but I make a mental note to speak to her later. After all, I don’t want her getting in with the wrong crowd.
* * *
Yet another English lesson is taken up reading Hamlet out loud. I never used to volunteer to read parts in class – it’s so geeky – but everyone else is so goddamned slow that unless I do we won’t finish it before we sit our exams. Unfortunately, since I’ve started volunteering, Katrina has too. Sometimes Jamie and I look at each other when she stumbles over something particularly easy, and, although he’s too professional to show it, I know he feels my pain. Perhaps his New Year’s resolution is to be more assertive, because today he ignores her raised hand.
Edward plays the lead while Penny and Lila are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which is an inspired piece of casting, and when I raise my eyebrows at Jamie he smiles. They’ve always dressed like twins and it gets stupider the older they get. Today they’re wearing identical tea dresses with shearling cardigans and Charlotte Olympia Kitty shoes. They’ll claim it’s a coincidence, but I know for a fact that they meet secretly outside our official wardrobe meetings to coordinate outfits. Penny is baby-blonde and soft, while Lila is sharper-featured with long dark curls, and they function oddly like points of balance for each other. Penny’s father treats her like a china doll, which has left her unable to make decisions, so I suppose she’s lucky to have a protector like Lila, who will belt anyone who looks at her the wrong way. Their closeness is ammunition against any potentially damaging accusations that the Stars’ friendships are more strategic than heartfelt. This, and the pro bono expertise that Penny’s father’s PR firm has offered us for the duration of the election campaign, makes them indispensable party members.
We all hand in our holiday essays except Ruby, who cinches in her belt and promises to get hers to Jamie before the end of the day.
‘The computer room printer was out of ink,’ she simpers.
I consider pointing out that she has her own printer. The computer room is only used by scholarship students and I doubt Ruby even knows where it is. Jamie isn’t listening, though, so I don’t bother. Anyway, I have a free lesson next and I’ve arranged to meet my boyfriend Luke. Katrina whines for a bit and then Penny takes her off to watch QVC.
Luke and I have been together for six months, but I like to play it cool. He sometimes gets a bit tetchy, but if he won’t wait for me there are plenty of people queuing to take his place. He spends a lot of time in the gym, which I suppose is a constructive way to cope with it. He’s planning to apply to Oxford to read Medicine, and I hope he gets a place, because Medicine is very competitive for a pastime that requires its participants to dismember putrefying corpses. If he doesn’t, he might expect me to visit him in some godforsaken halls of residence in the north. Tuberculosis and numerous other diseases are rife up there and I’d be wary about the dangers of airborne viruses if I had to travel further from civilization than, say, Cambridge.
He picks me up from the Common Room and we go to the cafeteria where he orders a fried breakfast. Nothing could be less appealing at this time of day than the aroma of cooking flesh, but Luke gets hungry after football practice and I’ve learned that I can tolerate it as long as I avert my eyes from the cholesterol and lard, and breathe only through my mouth. All relationships must involve similar fortitude.
If I were any less pretty, I might feel grateful to Luke for being with me and insecure about all the girls who try to hit on him. As I couldn’t be more pretty (unless I’m wearing a halo, which I limit to special occasions), our relationship is fairly balanced. He’s tall and broad, he’s always tanned because his parents’ divorce qualifies him for twice as many foreign holidays as other people and his fair hair is bleached from the sun. Aesthetically he’s pretty perfect (pretty and perfect). He’s quieter than Edward, but he’s sweeter too.
He spent Christmas in Antigua with his dad, and he’s brought me some duty-free Silk Cut (even though he’s totally against smoking) and a huge teddy bear. Syrena’s room at home is already bursting with stuffed animals he’s given me, but I don’t mind because lots of girls are watching us. Although I’m not insecure, you can’t take any chances, and Ally, for one, is staring over her iced doughnut as if she’s going to combust with jealousy.
I tell him about Ruby and Blake, and he reports an unconfirmed rumour that Blake was going at it with Delia Henderson in the changing room showers this morning. We laugh because Delia has a hooked nose which, though smaller since her recent rhinoplasty, still overshadows the rest of her face. Personally I think this is a good thing.
Wh
en Luke has finished, and I’ve had as much Diet Coke as I can stomach, we go back to the Common Room. Luke sits down while I tell Lila about Delia and Blake. I make her promise to keep it secret, ensuring she won’t, and then I watch her call Caroline and say something that makes them both burst out laughing. Caroline isn’t a Star, partly because there isn’t a vacancy and partly because she has fat knees, but we keep her in the loop, at a distance. For one thing, she’s almost surgically attached to her Twitter feed and is always happy to act as an unofficial spokesperson for rumours we don’t want directly attributed to us.
* * *
The Common Room is a hub of activity that enables me to keep tabs on everyone. Like everywhere else, there’s a hierarchy. The Stars and Stripes commandeer the Chesterfield sofas and armchairs beside the French windows. Other people can use them when we’re not here, but even if the room is busy we always have first refusal. It’s the natural order. The furniture gets cheaper on a sliding scale of status, leading down to the old chairs with the missing springs next to the teabag bins.
Covering the walls is a mural of the seven deadly sins. When it was new, everyone had a field day trying to photograph as many applicable representations as possible. It was amusing, I suppose, to see Hannah eating a Yorkie beneath gluttony, and Quentin dozing against sloth. These days everyone’s wary of sitting too close to the walls for fear of what it might mean, but sometimes I position Luke next to lust, just because I can. I’m usually against public displays of affection – they’re unnecessary if you’re in a successful relationship – but I orchestrate one every so often to keep other couples on their toes. There must be worse ways to spend a free lesson.