Pride & Princesses

by Summer Day

  Mrs Mouche once told us, ‘men don’t change and women always make the mistake of trying to change them.’ Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps the pre-men we have in mind are more open to negotiation.

  ‘You have to get them while they’re young.’ Mrs Mouche told us.

  ‘Get ‘em while they still have muscle tone,’ Mouche joked. ‘Past eighteen is seriously past it...’

  Trey rolled his eyes.

  ‘Could my sister be any more sexist?’ Trey said proudly.

  Although I’ve never been exactly boy-crazy, at sixteen, I was inclined to agree. Eighteen was plenty old enough for us and maybe even a little too old as I later discovered.

  ‘We have to psyche ourselves up for Fall Fling...’ Mouche said. ‘It’s the perfect place to network and prepare for the social event of the year, junior prom.’

  We were determined not to be wallflowers for the ultimate social occasion; the school formal.

  ‘Fall Fling is just for practice. It is hardly social suicide for besties to attend together. As the social monitors of the Sunrise Blog, we will be armed with cameras,’ Mouche said, ‘though it would be nice if we could take along Jet and Mark...just to make the Princesses jealous.’

  That night we finalized the rules for the Boy-Rating Diary:

  THE BOY-RATING DIARY

  This diary shall remain a secret. The object of the diary is for Phoebe Harris and Mouche Macintosh to create a dating manual that may be of use to future generations (and to have some serious fun in junior year).

  1. The boys of Sunrise need to learn what our heroes of yesteryear knew – respect for women.

  2. Therefore, a kiss is the culmination of the romance, not the beginning.

  3. A date must consist of a beginning, middle and end and we have to practise a few dates for ourselves before we encourage other girls (i.e. the Princesses) to embrace our personal philosophy of self-respect.

  4. Proof: there needs to be proof of the date in the form of photographs, gifts (to be gathered via a treasure hunt – gifts of red roses are not permissible since they can signify a bad end to a relationship).

  5. Affording us some tradition, the boy needs to make an effort to impress the girl.

  6. The ultimate love token comes in the form of a love letter. Whoever gets the most love letters and shares the best advice as well as the date of her dreams for junior prom (i.e.: Mark Knightly), wins the competition and gets to keep the gifts we gather during our dating journey.

  7. All details must be shared in the old-fashioned form of a written diary; contributions to be made by both parties, with an overview and progress report due on the last Friday of every month.

  8. Remember, knowledge is power.

  9. The Dating Game shall remain a secret even if and when we decide to involve other people in our game.

  It didn’t occur to us that night, after we swam in Mouche’s brightly-lit pool with sparkles of water playing on our skin, that our plan would drive a wedge between us as friends and highlight our competitive natures more than ever; a quality people don’t normally seem to approve of in girls. For example, Mr Sparks, my drama teacher, once asked me rhetorically, ‘Are you ambitious, Phoebe?’

  ‘Of course’, I thought, but I was too shy to actually say it. He seemed to be inferring that being ambitious for your life is not okay if you are a girl. How wrong was he?

  Chapter 5

  The Love Drug

  The first boy I saw on Monday, the second week of junior year, was Joel Goodman. Joel is dangerous and wild and I have it on good authority that he dated both Teegan and Tory at the same time. He managed to hook up with them at Sunrise Mall one afternoon last summer. Joel is known as the virgin-converter and has a network of older and more devious buddies and a slightly unkempt air about him. There is no denying he is good-looking but he’s known to be a very bad person, not that I’m trying to moralize, it’s just that people talk.

  ‘Whoa, he gave you such a nice smile,’ Mouche said as Joel walked past. We were on our way to the auditorium.

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘he’s monosyllabic and barely grunts in class. Besides, I could never date a man who didn’t challenge me intellectually.’

  Peter Williamson, who was a math genius as well as a dancer, was a rare combination. He walked past us on the way to class.

  ‘Looking fine, girls,’ he said as he rushed to Algebra.

  ‘Why is it all the best boys bat for the other team?’ Mouche asked confidentially, although it was hardly a secret around here.

  And it was good to know a boy with awesome fashion sense had noted we were looking our best.

  We’d planned new outfits for every day of the month. Our make-overs, along with our dating strategy, were sure to elevate us to a whole new level of social acceptance. We walked down the hallway with a unique resolve, like we owned the place. We were dressed very sharply in our new skirts and sweaters. Even our shoes had extra shine.

  After all, we’d had the previous weekend to prepare.

  ‘We should definitely start by wearing more appealing, feminine clothing,’ Mouche had suggested after we’d finished our Sunday night swim. We’d dragged some old dating and beauty guides back with us from the library that weekend and had raided our mothers’ vast quantities of them. They had titles like Sophia’s Pathway to Beauty and Ava Gardner’s Guide to Gorgeousness. There was also Marilyn Monroe’s Blonde Beauty Secrets and basically the stories of all the great movie stars with beauty guides from the 1960s and beyond. (For example, did you know you can make your own lip balm with beeswax, rosewater and natural food colouring?)

  I don’t want to sound shallow but we decided to start from the outside and work to within. Until midnight, we practised hairstyles and make-up. We even dressed up Wednesday. We made her look like a smurf, then she fell asleep. I don’t mean to sound like a Princess but we really felt we deserved some fun after our daddies had dipped into our so-called college funds and we would be working every spare minute during future holidays just to have enough money to last even a week in New York. We imagined a future time, when drenched in French perfume and looking like movie stars, we resided in our own luxury apartments overlooking Central Park. Man servants doted on us. Boyfriends wept at our non-exclusive schedules.

  Reality checked in along with dawn.

  We were wearing pink gloss and oatmeal face masks. The pasty oats were moistened with warm water and mixed with Vaseline so they didn’t drop off in clumps into the pool. Wrapped up in bathrobes, heavy duty moisturiser smoothed over our elbows and heels (our ‘rough edges’ according to Sophia’s Beauty @ p.29), our feet dangled in the water making us seem like ladies of luxury.

  ‘I have a need for speed and a strange feeling I’m going to win this bet...’ Mouche said as she pulled her raisin feet out of the water.

  I looked over at Mouche.

  ‘Don’t be so sure, Mouche, I’m totally going to give you a run for your money.’

  Mouche flicked some water at me.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said, ‘you’re going under,’ and instead of feet sloshing around a pond the pair of us were engulfed in a tidal wave, our clothes soaked through.

  ‘Hey, you pushed me first, I just pulled you under!’ Mouche said.

  We splashed about for a few minutes then stayed awake, texting plans, long after everyone thought we were sleeping.

  The following day, Friday, was audition day.

  As we filed into the auditorium and looked up at the proscenium arch, Miss Tartt and Mr Sparks waved to us then pointed in the direction of our seats.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say we almost look like the Princesses,’ I mused aloud...

  ‘Except there are less of us and we have more taste.’ Mouche added. ‘I am so going to win this bet,’ she said, as if she’d solely invented the boy dating and rating competition in the first place.

  So you’re going to win, huh? Not so quickly Mouche, I’d thought laughingly. The truth is we were both lookin
g sharp; our clothes were new, our hair extra shiny and our lip gloss sparkled. Boys were noticing us, especially Mark and Jet. We’d made a big effort as prescribed in our dating guides ad nauseum.

  ‘It is such a shame we had to entice them with teen glam,’ Mouche conceded.

  ‘It might be time to put away the old games of cards and tea leaves. We should rely on common sense and instinct,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ Mouche agreed.

  The entire student body endured the welcome speech. Due to scheduling difficulties, it was delivered by our Principal a week later than usual.

  Mr Sparks, our drama teacher, appeared slightly dazed by the length and monotony of the address and could be seen dozing off during the speech. If Mr Sparks had been talking to the entire student body, he’d at least have added a light show, ‘and maybe some disco...’ Freya sniggered in a sarcastic horse whisper.

  Teegan, the Barbie, was the next person we bumped into that day and she said, ‘hi,’ in a newly mature way. We said ‘hi’ in return because it doesn’t pay to let the enemy know exactly how the land lies. Mouche and I still resented her and her friends for taunting us when we were children and invading our new school to boot. She almost tripped over her own shoes running down the hallway barking, ‘Mark! Ma-ark!’ as if she owned him already.

  I hadn’t seen Teegan this anxious to get someone’s attention since she chased an assistant casting agent through our school car park to try to snare the lead in a teen angst afternoon special.

  ‘Now observe her undignified display,’ Mouche noted, ‘desperate to try to get Mark’s attention. Doesn’t she realize, ‘if she has to work that hard in the beginning she’ll have to work like an Olympic athlete towards the end?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Oh, this great dating tome is called, ‘How to Treat ‘em Mean to Keep Them Keen...’

  ‘The only problem is ‘they’ have to be keen in the first place...’

  ‘So true.’

  Mark seemed pretty busy ignoring Teegan as he walked on by but when she finally fell at his feet and her notes scattered around him, instead of stepping over them like some sort of android, he stopped, picked Teegan up and gave her a sincere smile. What a gentleman.

  ‘Clearly, her decorative exterior has won him over...’

  ‘I just knew she’d be busy chasing Mark Knightly,’ Mouche said.

  ‘You are so psychic, I can almost hear her thoughts, ’ I replied.

  ‘True. You are so telepathic,’ Mouche added.

  ‘She’s just pretending to be nice. Why can’t he see through her?’ I mused.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Mouche replied. ‘If only they’d learnt what we have...men have zero radar for feminine wiles...’

  ‘I’ve noticed...’ I stated succinctly.

  ‘High school is an anthropological exercise at the best of times,’ Mouche replied.

  The faces of Joel, Teegan, Mark, Peter and Ethan merged into the crowd as she spoke. Ethan was a pianist, the others have been introduced. Two Princesses and one listed male (Jet) were missing, but we knew they’d make an appearance sooner rather than later.

  With morning classes over, I was sitting alone at lunch with the unfilled diary, wearing my Sunrise High oversized sweatshirt and my black cut off ballet tights (the black pair layered over the pink). I was busy plotting a course of action for the remainder of the day and waiting for Mouche to get out of class. Sitting at a lunch table, sipping fizzy water through a bendy straw with the sun peeping in through the long bay windows of the room was conducive to dreaming. I kept imagining the boys on my list and what they’d look like given a style make-over and some re-programming, when Mouche arrived early.

  ‘I already have the order of dating in mind...but there are quite a lot of them and only one or two I can actually see potential chemistry with...’

  ‘Good,’ I said, ‘me too, that will make things less complicated.’

  ‘It says here men hate over-achievers...’ Mouche said as she carefully applied some lip balm from a tiny container.

  ‘Mmm...we’ll just have to re-educate the boys on that one.’

  ‘Here, I signed the contract in lipstick pencil. Want some?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s legal.’

  ‘I added my signature in pen just in case...’

  ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking,’ Mouche said. ‘Why don’t we just...help each other in the beginning, see what we come up with, pool our dating resources in the so called ‘dating guide’ then go for it for the last few dates. See how much useful treasure we can get from the first ‘dates’ without them knowing they’re just being used for information and teach the boys a thing or two in the process.’

  As we ate, we made notes. A few boys from the opposite table actually looked up. Like I said, Mouche had re-vamped her look (and so had I) but hers was obviously working particularly well in relation to Jet Campbell. Jet has a fabulously inoffensive smile. He is about the same height as Mark and as fair as Mark is dark-haired and seemingly a hundred times more amiable, completely unaware of the annoying idiosyncrasies of those around him. Freya is messing up Jet’s hair and I can see him staring at her fake diamond necklace, sparkling in the lunch room light.

  ‘It’s sad that men are so attracted to artifice, but also very true according to the Young Ladies Guide and my own limited experience,’ I told Mouche.

  ‘Agreed,’ Mouche replied, highlighting a chapter titled, ‘How to please your potential husband,’ written in 1963.

  Have you ever felt like someone else has stolen your life? I was daydreaming after writing notes on Mark Knightly (tall, British-like, uptight) and I was imagining how divine it would be to star in a hipper, teen remake of Pride and Prejudice, we could just call it Pride...when Mouche interrupted my train of thought.

  ‘Oh, by the way...I have to tell you about...’

  ‘Planning time, don’t interrupt.’ I waved my paper in her face.

  Mouche ignored my request.

  ‘Jet Campbell left me this cute little post-it note on my locker and... he spoke to me again and...I think he might be the one.’

  ‘Are you joking? You can’t just settle for one. You’re starting to sound really unimaginative...like a Princess.’

  ‘I guess...I’m getting some lunch.’

  Tapping my pen on the table, lost in thought, I’m inadvertently drawing attention to myself. As I look away, I notice the very emo/gothic looking Jack Adams who actually smiles back at me. I happen to know he is working on another teenage horror film script because he sent me a group email over summer, asking me to write comments about the stupid plot he’d written. I didn’t want to lie to him so I still haven’t replied. I look away even though he definitely has potential. I don’t want to encourage him just yet.

  A few minutes later Mouche is on her way back to our table with today’s least offensive lunch fare – macaroni cheese and a peanut butter sandwich, fries and two sodas.

  ‘Okay, I also got us two apples...for our health.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  So we sat there, munching the apples, reading each other’s diagrammatic plans.

  ‘It says here,’ Mouche read, ‘... the surest way to mess up a date is to be too focused on getting a boy to like you, so take the focus off the boy and create other objectives...’

  This is what Mouche wrote:

  Items to be gathered for our New York Adventure:

  A pen

  A lucky feather

  A beret

  Jeans - vintage (Mouche and I both wear the same size)

  A black sweater (every girl should have one)

  Coco perfume

  The perfect shoes

  A winter scarf

  A golden bracelet (prefer eighteen carat)

  A pair of Chanel sunglasses

  A cashmere coat

  ‘I’m inspired...this will allow us to focus on our future journey. The list will give us ‘other objectives’ for the dates so we won’t b
e so focused on impressing the boys and thus end up embarrassing ourselves.’

  ‘Of course, and all these items will be useful in New York; they start with the most easily sourced and become a little more difficult to obtain...’

  ‘Quick, twelve o’clock,’ Mouche whispered before I could say anything more on the subject.