Nice and Mean

by Jessica Leader

  I pressed “play” on the red carpet scene and watched everybody strolling by. Then, when I did the close-up on Rachel’s heels (so nice and slow! Excellent job, Marina!), we heard the sound of “Barf 1,” the quick little Bleh. When the camera showed her balloon sleeves, there went “Barf 2,” a slightly longer Bleh-heh-hehhh. And for the fake pearls and eye shadow, “Barf 3:” the Bleh with the plunking. I grinned.

  “You’re not really going to do that, right?” Addie tugged on her gold chain, which did not go at all with her pink sweatshirt.

  “Um, yeah, that was the idea,” I said. “Come on, it’s hilarious.”

  “You’re going to do it for other people too, though, right?” she said. “So it’s not just about Rachel?”

  “I have to make it about Rachel,” I told her. “Otherwise, we have no victim.”

  Addie picked at one of the stickers on Jake’s computer—mr. zogg’s skate wax, it said in big yellow letters. “She hasn’t been that bad since the whole Hamptons thing,” she said softly. “Maybe that was just a misunderstanding.”

  “What?” I asked. “You did not misunderstand her uninviting you. Come on, you said you were going to do this. You can’t back out now.” No one ever wanted me to have any fun.

  “Hey,” called a voice. “Can somebody come help me with these groceries?” Addie’s stepmom, with perfect timing as usual.

  Addie turned to me, panicked. “I’m not allowed to be in here,” she said. “Um—”

  “Here,” I said, and clicked the video shut.

  It wouldn’t close.

  “Hello?” said Addie’s stepmom again. I heard a sound like grocery bags being thumped into the apartment. “Anybody home?”

  “You go help her,” I said, giving Addie a nudge. “I’ll get this out.”

  “She’ll hear you.” Addie stood up. “The kitchen’s right out there.”

  Did I have to figure everything out myself? Times like this, the “Biggest Plebe” thing really made sense. “Go meet your stepmom in the hall,” I told Addie, “and give her a big hug and go slow walking into the kitchen. I’ll put Jake’s computer in your room and we can get the disc out later. Okay?”

  Addie breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Reener,” she said, and fled.

  I unplugged the power cords, clutched the laptop with my baby inside—which I’d better be able to get out of the disc drive, hello—and dashed through the kitchen, past the dining room, and into Addie’s bedroom. As the door swung shut behind me, I heard Addie’s mom say, “Thanks, honey. Just be careful of the rip in that one.”

  Phew.

  When the doorbell rang ten minutes later, I still hadn’t gotten the DVD unstuck. “Marina!” Addie wailed. “When are you going to get it out?”

  “It’s fine,” I said, really tired of the mini heart attacks. “The real thing is at school.” I wasn’t actually supposed to have made my own copy, but what Mr. Phillips didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  “Addie!” called Addie’s mom. “Your friends are here.”

  Someone giggled, and Addie and I whirled around to see Rachel and Elizabeth in the doorway dumping their bags on the floor. Elizabeth’s hair framed her face in beautiful blond waves, and Rachel had the stick-straightest blow-out I had ever seen.

  No. Way.

  “Hey!” said Addie, coming forward to hug them. “You guys look great!”

  I closed Jake’s laptop behind me with a click. How could Rachel and I have had the same hair idea? Did that make me victim-licious? Mine was the only one in the half bun, but her hair was ruining my effect.

  “Your hair looks great, Bird,” I told Elizabeth.

  She smiled. “Oh, you too!”

  I came toward Elizabeth, ignoring Rachel. Rachel’s face was so thin, the flat-ironed hair made her look like my cousin’s poodle after his bath.

  As I went to hug Elizabeth, she stepped back. “Hey,” she said in a joking voice, “don’t mess the do.”

  “No, no, of course.” I leaned in and gave her an air kiss.

  “You really think it looks okay?” Rachel was asking Addie.

  Elizabeth groaned. “As I told you five million times in the cab, yes, it looks fine.”

  I burst out laughing. Elizabeth, giving Rachel a hard time? What was that about?

  “I don’t know,” said Rachel, taking a seat on Addie’s bed, looking shrunken and wounded. “The whole thing was so traumatic.”

  “Oh, Ray-Belle.” Addie sat next to her. “What happened?”

  Prediction: This story was going to involve everybody worshipping Rachel. I leaned against the desk and mentally signed up for a barf bag.

  “My mom took me to her hairdresser,” Rachel said (spoiled show-off), “and the stuff they put on it smelled like that acid we used in science, and they got some on the back of my neck, and it totally burned me!” She turned around so Addie could see her neck. “Look!”

  “Ow!” said Addie, leaning in. “Do you guys want to see?” she asked me and Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth gave me a little smile like, Oh, gosh. “Um, I already saw,” I told Rachel.

  Addie dropped the chunk of Rachel’s hair. “Poor you!”

  “The stylist didn’t think so,” Rachel said, finger-combing her hair into place. “She kept laughing at me.”

  “What?” I asked. Someone else thought Rachel was ridiculous? I should get her number.

  “She was like, ‘Oh, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, sh-sh-sh.” Rachel mimicked the woman, waving her hands like she was putting out a little fire. I laughed, wishing I’d been there.

  “Then,” Rachel said, “at the end, when I said, ‘I think there’s something wrong with my neck,’ and she saw the burn marks, she was like, ‘Oh, that happens to some of our clients, but you’ll be fine.’ She completely blew me off—twice!”

  “That is pretty evil,” I admitted. “I would have told my mom not to tip her.”

  “Oh, I did better than that.” Rachel grinned. “They gave me tissues, because I was crying, so I crumpled them up really small and left them in the mints jar at the front desk.”

  “You did not!” I cried.

  “I totally did!” Rachel’s smile stretched all the way across her narrow face. “Somebody is going to have a delicious surprise when they reach for a post-haircut breath freshener.”

  I cracked up.

  “I can’t believe you did that!” Addie cried.

  “That is gross,” Elizabeth declared, folding her arms.

  Rachel and I were still dying. “I know,” she said, “but that woman deserved it.”

  “I think it’s awesome,” I told her. Elizabeth being grossed out didn’t bother me, but I was sick of Addie’s Careful Routine. “I should add that to White Pages, Volume One.”

  Rachel cackled. “Hey, Adds,” she asked, “did you get a new computer?”

  Addie flinched. “What?”

  Rachel pointed at Jake’s laptop.

  “It’s Jake’s.” Addie started picking at her fingers, and I thought, Stop it! Touching those cuticles is a dead giveaway! “He was just, um, showing me something.”

  “Oh.” Rachel tossed her hair. “I was going to say, those stickers are so not you.”

  “Oh, yeah. Ha!” Addie gave a lame laugh, then looked nervously at me.

  I didn’t want everyone staring at the laptop, so I walked over to the other side of Addie’s bed and lay down. Elizabeth sat next to me with her back against the headboard.

  “I’m tired,” said Rachel, flopping onto her stomach to face me. “I almost don’t even want to go tonight.”

  “No way,” I said. “Really?” I was feeling kind of cozy too, but I still wanted to go to the Bar Mitzvah party.

  “Yeah.” Rachel picked at a loose thread on Addie’s comforter. “I don’t know, it’s kind of nice when it’s just us, away from everybody.”

  “It’ll be fun when we get there,” Elizabeth said.

  “No, I know,” Rachel answered.

 
As the room fell silent, I watched Rachel’s silver fingernails picking at the thread, surprised at what she’d said. She was the one who’d wanted to hang out with the eighth graders during my shoot, or that time I showed up at rehearsal. Was she getting tired of trying to be Most Popular? Hey, I didn’t mind keeping the title. I was psyched for the party. But Rachel really did look droopy, and not just because of her hair. For a minute I felt bad for her.

  “Come on,” I said, nudging her elbow, “you know you want to go.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, I know.”

  How could she forget our joke from last year? “No, I mean, you really want to go.”

  A smile cracked across her face. “Hmm, I don’t know . . .” Good, she did get it. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “No, you know you do.” I propped myself up on my elbows. “You’ve been, like, fantasizing and dreaming about this moment your entire life, and now it’s actually going to happen, and you cannot wait.”

  “You really can’t,” Addie put in, and Rachel, Elizabeth, and I burst out laughing, because it was so unexpected for Addie to say something like that and get it right. My eyes landed on Mr. Jolly, Addie’s ancient stuffed frog, sitting on the shelf above her bed. He may have been babyish, but tonight, I wanted to give him a hug.

  “You know what we need?” Rachel bounced up onto her elbows. “We need something to set us apart. To show everyone that we’re, like, the four besties.”

  “Like what?” Elizabeth scratched her neck lightly. “We don’t want to make people feel left out.”

  Leave it to Elizabeth.

  “Nothing major.” Rachel tapped a silver nail against her teeth, thinking. “Just something—”

  Addie jumped up. “I know! I have the perfect thing. It’s in my parents’ room.”

  “Ooh, I want to see!” I said. “I’ll come with.”

  “My stepmom got these stick-on rhinestones in a magazine,” Addie whispered in the hallway. “You put them under your eye, right here.” She tapped her cheekbone.

  “Woo!” We slipped into her mom’s room. Two scores for Addie in one night—who knew? We agreed that Addie would wear the rhinestones into her bedroom, since they were hers, and then the rest of us would all put them on together.

  “Check it out,” Addie said, and did a very Victim/Victorious–like strut down the hall, her hips snaking back and forth, her arm snapping over her head.

  “Go, Addison!” I giggled. “Hey, girls,” I called as we came into the bedroom. “Check it out.”

  Rachel and Elizabeth had moved to the computer, and they whipped around when we walked in. Their mouths fell open. And I realized what they had been looking at while Addie and I had been dancing.

  Behind them, the screen flashed a slide show of pictures I knew way too well: Rachel victim pictures. From where I stood, the soundtrack was tinny, but I could have sung along with every single photo.

  “Omigod,” Addie said. “How did you—you guys weren’t supposed to—”

  “We just wanted to hear Jake’s iTunes.” Elizabeth’s voice was a whisper.

  Rachel twisted back to the computer and hunched in her chair. Elizabeth turned away from me and put her arm around Rachel.

  I ground my feet into the carpet. I wanted to run from the room, but I was sewn to the floor. Don’t be mad, I wanted to say. It was an accident. You weren’t being fun when I did this. It’s not my fault.

  Before I could say anything, Rachel turned back to face us, her eye makeup smeared. “What were you guys doing?” she asked. “Is that Marina’s video? Addie, are you helping her?”

  “No!” Addie cried. Then she looked at me. “I mean, Marina wanted to use Jake’s sound effects, but I told her I didn’t want to work on the video anymore. I was going to tell you!” she said to Rachel, sounding like she was going to cry. “I just didn’t want to tell you tonight.”

  “What?” I asked. I couldn’t believe she’d flat-out deny it. “That is so not true,” I told Rachel. “She was totally helping me.”

  “Why would you even do something like this?” Rachel asked. Elizabeth stared at me with round eyes, like she was wondering the same thing. “What did I ever do to you?”

  Air blew in from the window. Somewhere in the apartment, a door closed. “I don’t know,” I said. I had meant to get Rachel upset, but I had never thought about what she would look like when it happened.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked.

  “No,” I muttered. “No.”

  “So you just did it for fun?” Rachel’s voice croaked.

  Yes? Or more than that? “I don’t know.”

  “Then why?” Rachel looked at Addie. “Just tell me.”

  Addie gulped. “She said you were getting too bossy.”

  Rachel’s mouth dropped open. “Marina, you thought I was bossy?”

  “I don’t know.” Outside the window, pigeons squawked. “Kind of.”

  “So you made a video about the way I dress?” She stared at me like I was insane. “What is that? You’re the one who always says you hate followers. I try to be a little different and you make me look like a freak?” Her voice cracked.

  “Rachel, we love the way you dress.” Elizabeth knelt next to her. “You’re just who you are, and that’s amazing. No one else does what you do.”

  Just because Rachel was crying, she was amazing? Whatever!

  “I think you dress great too.” Addie ran to her side. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what I was thinking. I just—we got carried away. But we’ll totally erase it, and—”

  “Oh, please,” I burst in. “Addie, you’re not even going to tell her why you’re mad at her? You have, like, no backbone at all.”

  “Marina, stop!” Elizabeth cried. “Don’t make things worse.”

  “Whatever.” I folded my arms. “But I don’t know why you’re being so nice to her, Addie. You should hear what Rachel says about you.”

  “What do you mean?” Addie looked from Rachel to me.

  “Ask Rachel.” I nodded in her direction. “Maybe you want to know what poll categories she thought you’d win before the two of you get all lovey-dovey.”

  “Marina.” Elizabeth’s mouth was a tight line. “Do not go there.”

  “Go where?” Addie’s gaze bounced back and forth between us. “What categories?”

  Rachel smeared her face with the side of her hand and sat up straighter. “You agreed with me, Marina.” She thrust her head forward, just like she did when she lied to teachers. “I was joking, but you wanted to put those categories in there.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Addie’s voice sounded strained—great. Was she going to cry even before we told her about Biggest Plebe?

  “Look,” Elizabeth broke in, “they didn’t do it, so don’t even worry about it. And Marina,” she said, her gaze landing on me, “you can’t show people that video.”

  “That’s my property,” I said. “I worked hard on it.”

  “You can still keep the good parts, right? Can’t you have a different victim?”

  “It’s my video.” I did not like her telling me what to do. “I can do whatever I want with it.”

  “But why do you have to do—that?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Because I do,” I said. If she didn’t get it, I couldn’t explain it to her.

  “Why does everybody have to be like this? Just—trying to get each other all the time.” With her wavy blond hair, standing by the chair in her washed-out jeans and off-white sweater, Elizabeth looked like she was visiting from someplace where it was still summer. “Sometimes I can’t fall asleep because I’m thinking about all the things I said that day and how you’re going to get mad at me.”

  Really? Elizabeth?

  “Me too,” Addie squeaked. “Some nights I can’t even fall asleep.”

  Okay, now that was just the peak of raging ridiculousness. They were just trying to make me feel bad. “Look,” I said to Addie, “don’t pretend you didn’t want to get Rachel back.
And Elizabeth, I’m sorry if you got upset, but that’s how the world works, and if you’re too nicey-nice to—”

  “What do you want from us?” Elizabeth burst out.

  It took me a second to realize she was talking to me. “What?”

  “You just have something bad to say about everyone.” Her voice wobbled. “If you hate us all so much, why are you friends with us?”

  Wonderful. Let’s all cry because of Marina.

  “Seriously.” Rachel wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  “Yeah,” Addie said.

  They all stared at me: Rachel with her smeary cheeks, Elizabeth with her pinched face, and Addie with her eyes all droopy and sad. I started to feel hot and starved for air, like the time in second grade when I threw up in music class.

  “Oh, like you all don’t bad-mouth each other all the time.” I shook my head. “I’ve heard you all, every single one of you.”

  No one said anything.

  I rolled my eyes. “Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks, all of you.” I grabbed up my bags and stalked out of the apartment without even looking at them.

  The sky had turned that creepy blue you get on fall afternoons, but it was barely five o’clock, and the party wouldn’t start for another two hours. A few cars slid down Park without any traffic to stop them. The only other person on the street was a man walking his dog.

  Heading back to Angelica and her hamburger would be beyond depressing. I couldn’t lower myself by going to Madison’s or Chelsea’s, and Rachel would probably text them that I was evil, anyway. I tried to rest against the ledge carved into the building, but it wasn’t wide enough to hold me, and the stone dug into my thighs.

  Where was the party, anyway? I fished the invitation out of my bag. dish restaurant, it read in raised maroon calligraphy, forty-two east fortieth street.Like I even knew what the city looked like down there. The restaurant had better be cool, I thought, running my fingers over the creamy paper. How pathetic would it be if the first Bar Mitzvah of the year was held someplace totally un-hot?

  Hey! I knew someone who lived near there: Sachi. When we did a number puzzle with palindromes in math—Mrs. Ramirez’s idea of a fun treat—someone had mentioned that Sachi lived on Thirty-Third and Third. I had never heard of anyone living in that neighborhood, which was why I remembered it.