Kiss n Tell

by Suzy McCoppin

  “I’m going to French,” I murmured to Vaughn, closing my locker door.

  “Are you seriously ignoring us right now?” Ava asked, stepping in front of me.

  I regarded them: Stella with her sheer thigh-high stockings and stilettos, Odette with her faux-collegiate Ralph Lauren blazer, and Ava with her stupid hot pink braided leather belt. They looked ridiculous. They were ridiculous.

  “Wait, I know …” Ava said, playfully gripping Odette’s sleeve. “They got emergency plastic surgery to un-fuglify themselves!” she exclaimed.

  Odette shook her head. “No, they couldn’t afford it. I mean, look at their shoes.”

  Our heads instinctually dropped to our feet: Vaughn in silver Havaianas, and me in my cream-colored Converse. Xander approached, slinging his arm around Odette. Vaughn turned crimson, swallowing hard at the sight of him.

  “Would’ve been a total waste of money anyhow,” Ava sighed.

  “Yeah, the best doctor in Beverly Hills couldn’t fix that face,” Odette snapped, pointing at Vaughn.

  Xander stared at us, a stunned look on his face. I’m not sure if it was PTSD from the ‘rhea incident, or just evidence that his brain cells really were in short supply, but he looked dumbfounded. I touched Vaughn’s arm lightly. She was burning up. As though set off by some kind of bitch-dar, a small crowd had formed around us, shamelessly looking on. “Omigod, you guys!” Stella crowed, “They thought a whore’s helping of foundation would cover up the fact that they’re full of shit!”

  “Literally,” Odette added. “Judging from the vile stench in Xander’s bathroom. Right, baby?” She nudged Xander.

  “Don’t remind me,” he muttered. Stella shrieked, throwing her head back, laughing. There were some chuckles from the crowd. Vaughn’s face was pinched and furious.

  “Seriously, I could gag just thinking about it,” Odette said, raising a hand daintily to her chest. “In fact,” she said, scrunching her face in disgust, “I think I’m getting a whiff of them now.” She covered her nose and backed away. “Fuck, do those girls live up to their nicknames!” They snaked away, sneering, and the crowd dissipated. Vaughn slammed her locker, scowling.

  “Vaughn—” I started tentatively as she headed to class.

  “Let’s just go,” she said numbly.

  * * *

  The day trudged on, and it was as bad as I’d imagined. The news of Saturday night had spread like wildfire across cliques and classes. Vaughn and I couldn’t go anywhere without people making a stink (no pun intended), covering their noses when they passed us, calling us “Vag and Anus.” One particularly despicable human wrote “Shitheads” in lipstick across our lockers.

  Vaughn and I met after last period to pack our bags before I headed off to my Film Society meeting, and she went to band practice. As much as it felt like Vaughn and I were each other’s only friends, I got along well with the four other kids in the Film Society, and I know everyone in band respected Vaughn. This time of day was usually one of our happiest, the only time we felt accepted and confident, but Vaughn was uncharacteristically quiet. It wasn’t a despondent quietness, like on Saturday night. It was an enraged quietness. I squeezed textbooks into my Jansport, secretly stealing glances at Vaughn in my peripheral vision. Her eyes were waxy, her lips set in a thin line.

  “Did you mean it?” she said, out of the blue.

  I closed my locker door, heaving my backpack over my shoulder, and turned to face her.

  “Mean what?” I asked.

  “Did you mean it this morning when you said I looked good? Or were you just saying that?”

  I touched her arm, stunned. She looked empty, starved for a genuine compliment. “Of course I meant it!” I assured her. “What, you think I would lie to you?”

  She exhaled, shaking her head. “No,” she said quietly.

  I sighed. “Listen, Vaughn, if your goal is to impress them, it’s never going to happen.

  Even if we looked like supermodels, they’d pretend we were hideous.”

  “My goal isn’t to impress them,” she murmured, still emotionless. “I just wish they’d feel bad sometimes, you know?”

  “Would that really make it okay?” I cocked my head. She was staring at the floorboards, biting her lip, her hands balled into fists. I shifted my weight. “Listen, we better go. Just try to focus on everyone who thinks you’re great,” I offered.

  She glared at me. “What, like my mom?”

  I inhaled. “Like Mr. Waters. Like everyone in band. Like me,” I said.

  Vaughn sighed. Tears pooled in her eyes. “I wish I didn’t care,” she said. “But I do. I really do.”

  * * *

  The Film Society met in the tech lab, which was in the basement—a 1,500-square-foot, subway-tiled studio lined with computers, lighting and sound equipment, with an annexed dark room. It was where the hippie kids from Venice learned to develop 16 mm film, where the video bloggers edited their future YouTube creations on Final Cut Pro, and where we—Caleb Hochfelder, Boyce Casey, Manu Valdez, Dwight Dawson, and I—talked movies. Unlike the others, we had no aspirations to be directors or screenwriters or creative executives. We were just embittered critics and lofty appreciators.

  On Mondays, we usually screened a movie to ease into the week. By the time I arrived downstairs, Manu was making a case for Pulp Fiction, even though we had already watched it six weeks ago, at our first meeting back in September. Manu had only seen it about a dozen times before that.

  “But it’s so fucking badass, yo,” he whined, whacking his hand on the smooth stone counter. “And anyway, like, I feel like we haven’t sufficiently analyzed the structure of the thing,” he said.

  Boyce rolled his eyes, crossing his ankles on the countertop. “Seriously, man?” “Dude, it’s like, that complex and shit!” Manu urged.

  Caleb ripped off his geek-chic glasses, vigorously wiping them on his Lacoste polo. “Then invest in the Blu-Ray,” he said, sighing. Caleb was the only one in the group who wasn’t on some form of financial aid. His dad was a partner at a big entertainment law firm. I used to wonder why all the scholarship kids were attracted to clubs like this, as opposed to sports teams or art electives or music. Then Dwight pointed out it was one of three extracurriculars Cranbrook offered that didn’t cost money to participate in. You didn’t have to buy uniforms, supplies, or equipment to pontificate about movies.

  I tiptoed into the room, bracing myself for some uproar about Saturday night. Manu inquiring about the texture of my shit, Caleb asking why I had been at Xander Carrington’s party in the first place. I liked being one of the boys, but sometimes it was just humiliating. I quietly made my way over to the shelves of DVDs at our disposal, scanning their candy-colored spines. A bright yellow one emblazoned with 70s bubble writing popped out at me.

  “What about The Harder They Come?” I asked, peering over at the others loafing around the counter. They looked at me. Boyce dropped his sneakers from the counter, sitting up straighter. Manu’s jaw dropped open. Dwight scanned my figure, stunned. Caleb swallowed hard, pushing his glasses over the bridge of his nose. “It’s totally badass,” I pressed on, hoping they’d ignore the elephant in the room. “Plus, we’ve never seen it, and Jimmy Cliff did the soundtrack.”

  “What’d you do to yourself?” Boyce asked flatly. I frowned and looked over my navy scoop-neck tee from the Gap, my uniform skirt, and Converse.

  “Dude, you look fucking hot!” Manu exclaimed. I frowned, stunned.

  Caleb smacked Manu in the shoulder. “He means, um—you changed your hair, right?” I smiled slightly, running my fingers through my new layered ‘do. “Yeah, I—”

  “You’re wearing makeup or something, too, right?” Dwight blurted. I nodded, starting to feel lightheaded from all the attention. “You look … really good,” he said softly.

  “Yeah, man, I mean, you were always pretty tasty in that sorta bad librarian way, but now you’re like … I dunno, man!” Boyce explained.

  I smiled shyl
y. “Thanks … I think,” I said. They gaped at me. I couldn’t believe it.

  Before today, these guys didn’t even think of me as a girl. Now they were having trouble forming sentences?

  “Dude, so this is like, what all those rumors are about?” Manu asked. I froze. I really, really did not want to talk about Saturday night. Not anymore. Not here, my sanctuary. “No wonder, bro!” he exclaimed. “Those bitches didn’t want their men to notice there are hotter chicks at this school,” he said. I flinched. “That’s why they fucking poisoned you. They were all like, ‘Yo, she may be pretty, but eww look at her shit!’ But the joke’s on them ‘cause, like, everybody shits, dude.”

  I gripped the edge of the bookshelf, flushed. Caleb covered his eyes with his hand and shook his head.

  “Manu,” he said through clenched teeth. “We said we wouldn’t give credence to the rumors. We were gonna ignore them, remember?”

  “Yeah, dude, but this changes everything,” he said, gesturing to me.

  “What does?” I asked.

  Manu shrugged. “They’re obviously messing with you ‘cause they feel threatened,” he said.

  The words hung in the air as everyone watched for my reaction. Even if it was true, it didn’t change the fact that I was completely humiliated. I didn’t want to address it. I just wanted to move on.

  I sighed. “So, what do you think?” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to movies. “The Harder They Come?” The boys looked around, shifting in their seats.

  “Uh, yeah …” Caleb croaked. “Sure, man,” Boyce seconded.

  “Looks totally badass, yo,” Manu conceded.

  “I guess we’re in agreement,” Dwight resigned.

  “Cool,” I said, feeding the DVD into the projector. I shuffled to the back to switch off the lights, and when I turned around, I noticed everyone was watching me. Not like everyone else watched me today, like I was a disgusting freak, but like how Danny Zuko looked at Sandy Olsson after the Pink Ladies dressed her in spandex. Maybe Raven’s makeover was more dramatic than I thought. And maybe Manu was right: maybe Stella, Odette, and Ava really were threatened by us. Maybe they just had killer poker faces.

  I pulled a seat next to Dwight, who stood as I approached him. I frowned warily. “At ease, soldier,” I said. He averted his eyes quickly, blushing. The opening credits blared over the bright hues of Jamaica, and we all settled into the film. But I had to admit, something strange hung in the air. Something uncomfortable. Then Dwight leaned over and murmured:

  “Are you gonna ignore us now that you know you’re pretty?”

  I frowned, squinting at his face in the dark to make sure he was serious. He looked anxious. “Of course not,” I said. I couldn’t believe he would ask me something like that. “You guys are my friends,” I added.

  Dwight nodded. “Just thought I’d put it out there now,” he said somberly, looking back to the screen. “Before things change too much.”

  9.

  EVERYTHING CHANGES

  Vaughn

  In the weeks following the incident at Xander Carrington’s, the spoiled monsters at Cranbrook unleashed a wave of terror the likes of which we’d never seen.

  Everywhere I went there was some obstacle. Once Miller Toff tripped me in front of all the water polo guys, including Xander, and everyone laughed. Another day at lunch, Ava Goldmann and Wes Huntley walked by holding a big plate of refried beans, wondering why they looked so familiar. “Oh, that’s right,” Ava said, “they spewed out of Vag’s ass.” I was relieved they didn’t pour them all over my head. Changing in the locker room, after gym class, despite my cowering in the corner like the hunchback of Notre Dame, Stella and Odette repeatedly created a whole hullabaloo about my boobs, or lack thereof. “They’re like nasty mosquito bites!” Stella would shriek. To top it all off, some nameless douchebag trashed my iPod, which took me a year to buy after saving and saving, ripping it from my grasp and hurling it onto the hardwood floors. So my whole life, walking from class to class, heading to and from school on the bus, was set to the nagging sound of my aching soul, as opposed to the rebel sound of Lorde.

  Sometimes I thought I would fold. I really did. I wanted to shut down, click off the emotional side of my brain and become a teenage sociopath. You know the kind who seems super meek and incapable of anything threatening, but secretly steals the neighbors’ cats to torture them? The kind with a promising life of serial killing ahead of them? Except that, simultaneously, something else was happening at Cranbrook, and I think probably unrelated to the diarrhea fallout: the small percentage of students who kind of liked us treated us better.

  The Monday after Xander’s party, Angie Ryu and Lucy Sung from the strings section in band complimented my hair and invited me out for Pinkberry after practice. Since then, we’d been chatting between classes and had become pretty friendly. Teddy Singer, who played clarinet and stood right next to me in orchestra, actually asked me out! He tapped me on the shoulder, squishing his legs together like he was holding in pee, his mouth twisted up. He said, “Wanna eat French fries and ketchup after this?” Maybe my standards were too high, but Teddy Singer had this weird milky breath, so I told him I didn’t want any romantic activity to ruin our friendship.

  Anais was a little unnerved that people would act so differently just because we changed our hair and makeup. I, on the other hand, ignored whatever depressing implications about the superficiality of mankind these little pockets of happiness conjured and clung for dear life to the silver lining of the dark and stormy cloud that was my life. I was pretty now! And at least some people liked me.

  “How much longer are you gonna Bogart my laptop?” Anais whined. “I have homework to do.” It was a Wednesday, nearly two weeks after Anais’s sixteenth birthday/the worst day of my life. We had made it through half the week, and I was crashing. I had stopped over at her place to unwind and dreamily scan Perez Hilton before heading home to face my parents.

  “Just let me procrastinate for ten more minutes,” I groaned, clicking to enlarge a picture of Dakota Fanning wearing skinny jeans and cool boots at some nightclub. She looked slender and fresh-faced and happy. She made me think to myself, I want to be like that. Then something clicked: maybe I already was like that. Dakota Fanning was basically our age. She went to high school. Maybe she even got tortured in high school. The only difference was, it didn’t matter if she got tortured, because she was Dakota Fanning. She had other stuff going for her.

  She starred in movies, got to meet all kinds of cool people at the coolest places. I turned to Anais, who sat on the carpet, surrounded by books, studying her daily planner.

  “We need to be like this!” I blurted, pressing my finger to the screen.

  Anais frowned. She looked from me to Dakota. Dakota to me. “Huh?” she said.

  My thigh was stuck to the seat and pinched when I shifted my weight further toward her. “We need to think outside the box,” I said. “Stella, Odette, and Ava are big fish in a small pond,” I continued. “So what if we just left the pond for once?”

  “What does this have to do with Dakota Fanning?” she asked.

  I inhaled. “I always thought the only things happening were Cranbrook parties, or Harvard Westlake parties, or Crossroads, or whatever,” I started, trying not to lose my train of thought, “But we live in L.A.,” I said, drawing out the aaay, sounding like a true Valley girl.

  “I’m aware of that…”

  “Why limit ourselves to just high school stuff? If we had some outlet, completely separate from the Shrew Crew, they wouldn’t bother us so much,” I said.

  Anais crossed her legs. “But we do have outlets. You have band and I have the Film Society.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not lame outlets, or anything we would do for a college application.

  I’m talking about something we do just for us.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, maestro,” Anais snapped. “You’re a prodigy. You’ll get in anywhere. I, on the other hand, nee
d to use all my extra time to either cultivate my application or earn money for tuition.”

  I gave her my best “bullshit” eyes. “And how exactly is watching The Breakfast Club with your mom on Saturday night ‘cultivating your application’?” I challenged. She smiled shyly. “Instead, why don’t we go to some of those cool places we read about on Perez Hilton?” I urged.

  She met my eyes. “Because we’re underage.”

  “Besides that.”

  “Because they’re brutal at the door, they’ll turn us away.”

  “Would it hurt to try?” I pressed.

  She shrugged. “And how will this effect Stella, Odette, and Ava?” she asked, picking at a smudge of chocolate on her skirt.

  “If we can establish that we have a life outside of Cranbrook, a way cooler life, we’ll be in a prime position to make them feel like crap about themselves,” I stated plainly.

  She guffawed. “That’s a lot of hoop-jumping just to make them feel like crap,” she said.

  “Also,” I managed, “it’ll be fun!”

  Anais shook her head, unconvinced.

  “You don’t get it,” I continued. “You think you have it all figured out but you’re wrong. High school doesn’t have to be hell. It doesn’t have to be some mind-numbing limbo on the path to college. It doesn’t need to be some fucked up rite of passage. It could be perfect,” I said, moving to take a seat next to her on the bed. “We’re in the prime of our lives! Our asses will never be this taut again! Our metabolisms will only get slower!” I was shouting now, I couldn’t help myself. “Our skin will only get duller! Anais,” I urged. “If there were ever a good time to illegally infiltrate a super-exclusive nightclub, it’s right now.”

  She shook her head, exasperated. “We don’t have ID,” she said.

  “If we look hot, we won’t need ID.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Are you seriously that confident in your appearance?” “Are you seriously not?” I countered. “You said yourself the guys in Film Society haven’t watched a single film since you debuted your new look. You’ve basically given them whip-lash!” I chucked a pillow at her.