“Do whatever you want,” Mom said. “I just want you to be happy.”
I looked back up at the mirror. Rian was staring back at me, and I looked deep into her eyes. Clichés flew at me. Brunettes do it better. Blondes have more fun. And redheads? Well, I wouldn’t work as a redhead anyway.
Brunettes do it better. Yeah, maybe that’s true. But maybe doing everything better isn’t such a good thing. Blondes have more fun. It’s possible; who knows? I knew that I certainly didn’t have that much fun. I sighed and swiveled my chair around to face Rian, who was chatting animatedly with my mom about a recent episode of Kathy’s Eye.
“I want to go lighter,” I said. “Much lighter.”
And two hours later, I loosened the ties of my robe and walked out into the Beverly Hills sunlight, a brand-new blonde.
Uniformity
The conventional wisdom about a school like Whitbread is that it must be so great to go to an all-girls’ school that has a uniform, because it means we can just roll out of bed in the morning, put on a skirt, and head to school without having to worry about what we look like.
Yeah—not exactly. Two types of girls attend Whitbread: There are the girls who do just roll out of bed in the morning and head off to school, and then there are the “flair” girls—girls who accessorize their uniforms as much as they can possibly get away with.
For me, getting dressed for school is a process, not a roll-out-of-bed kind of thing. But not because I’m a flair girl, more because I’m…particular. For example, if I’m wearing the white collared shirt, I refuse to wear the white sweater. If I’m wearing the navy blue collared shirt, I can’t wear the navy sweater. My socks have to rise to no more than one inch above my sneakers, and my skirt can’t have wrinkles.
I always set out my clothes the night before the first day of school, and my backpack is always prepacked. But this year, I decided to wait until the day-of to pick my outfit. I think it was my attempt to be just a little bit more like everyone else.
But as I dug through my closet Tuesday morning trying to find a navy blue shirt that would work with my white sweater, waiting until the last minute didn’t seem like such a bright idea.
Finally settling on a button-up cardigan, I zipped my backpack, put my phone on vibrate and tucked it into the pocket of my skirt (which was hanging on my hips instead of my waist—another perk of not eating), and headed down the stairs. Today was the first day that I was allowed to drive to school. Only juniors and seniors are allowed to drive to school because the parking lot isn’t big enough. Of course, the upcoming renovation would leave us with a couple floors of underground parking, so future sophomores wouldn’t be forced to wait like I was. I didn’t live far away from school. So I didn’t really need to drive. But it was the principle that mattered. That and my thirty-pound backpack. Mostly, I wanted to start off this year differently—with a bang. And not the kind of bang that came from huffing and puffing under the weight of my backpack, walking into school with my face red and my skirt riding up.
I didn’t need to be at school until eight, but I was ready to leave at seven-thirty. Grabbing my car keys off of the front hall table, to the silent house I shouted, “Good-bye.” Stratfield had one more week of summer break, so Jack was still asleep. I had no idea where my parents were.
I drove down Third Street, passing the Wilshire Country Club golf course and that mansion with the naked statues in the front yard. After a few blocks, the big white building that is Whitbread came into view. To enter the parking lot, I had to drive past the ivy-covered front entrance and turn left in the middle of the block. The car waiting in front of me for the parking lot was an Audi, and the car that turned in behind me was a Prius. Priuses and Audis were among the most popular cars at school, although there were quite a few Mercedes and BMWs as well. The Audi was struggling to pull into a tight spot, and the security guard was gesturing wildly, trying to help the girl. I pulled around her and parked in an empty spot in the back of the lot, just behind a light blue convertible. Leaving my keys in the car, I stepped out into the pleasantly warm air. If you parked in the lot, you had to leave your keys, just in case one of the security guards had to move your car to let out another car. It’s all a part of the Whitbread Honor Code.
You wear the uniform, you adhere to the Code.
The Horny Trinity
It was early still, but the campus had already begun to fill up with students. I walked up the steps, past senior girls who were writing in lipstick on the faces of underclassmen their class year. I set down my backpack along a wall near the library. At Whitbread, we’re allowed to put down our belongings anywhere on campus and come back to pick them up later. Nobody ever steals anything. As I started down the north hallway, I passed two girls with large sunglasses, messy hair, and skirts rolled over so short that most of their boxer shorts were showing. One of them lowered her sunglasses and gave me a once-over. Alissa Hargrove. The head of the Trinity.
Amanda and I had anointed them the Horny Trinity in the ninth grade after we heard about some sex toy party Alissa had hosted. That we weren’t invited to, of course.
Alissa readjusted the large designer bag she had hoisted over her shoulder. The bag must have weighed at least as much as she did. I had this theory that Alissa Hargrove didn’t actually eat (like, for real—not for few-day stints, which was all I could manage), and I had yet to see anything that would disprove it. Also, for the past year or so, there had been a rumor going around that she did coke. Which, I guess, would help with the staying-skinny thing. Her long, gray cashmere sweater vest hung loosely over her nonexistent hips. She, naturally, was one of the “flair” girls. Gray wasn’t actually in uniform, but somehow she managed to get away with wearing it. I smiled pleasantly and said, “Hey.”
Alissa paused for a moment, then nodded. “Hey.” We’d been going to school together for twelve years—since kindergarten at our progressive private elementary school—but she looked at me as if she’d have to think really hard to come up with my name. I thought about Barneys and her dad’s hand on my back and blushed a little.
Courtney Gross, the girl with Alissa, gave me a shy smile. I had never had a full conversation with her, but she seemed nice enough. Instead of a collared shirt, she was wearing a white tank top with a rhinestone frog on the chest. My mom had featured that brand on her show—the company custom-designed these shirts, which cost a fortune. I was just about to ask the generic first-day-of-school question—“How was your summer?”—but I was stopped by an overexcited Kimberly Turner. “Guys,” she squealed to Alissa and Courtney, “the new Junior Living Room is fab! They installed a refrigerator and TV in there for us.” The three of them were essentially the most popular girls in my grade, and I felt awkward, standing there on the edge of their conversation. I was about to make an excuse to keep on walking when Kim turned to me. “Omigod, Becky, how was your summer?”
Kim is tall and gesticulates a lot when she speaks. She always reminds me of her mother; the energy never fades. We used to be friendly because her mom always brought her to the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee meetings at my house. Her mom was a dedicated member of the group, but Kim stopped coming to HWPC meetings once she became cool and had better friends to hang out with. Kim and I had also gone to elementary school together, but even with being thrown together because of our moms, we hadn’t ever been friends.
“My summer was really good,” I replied. It would be really nice, I thought, if her mom hadn’t told her about my parents getting divorced. Because if she had, not only would the whole grade know about it, but also my “I had a great summer” disguise would be ruined. “How was yours?”
“Ah-mazing. Did you lose weight? You look awesome. I lost weight. I lost two pounds. P.S.—I love the blonde. It’s fab on you. So, I should get to Advisory,” Kim said, all in one breath. “Do you want a Red Bull? I have, like, a six-pack in here, and I brought a carton for the Junior Living Room. You know, first day of school pick-me-up, whatever
.” She shrugged her shoulders and nodded her head rapidly. I wondered how many Red Bulls she’d already had. I thought about mentioning that the “bull” in Red Bull is because of the taurine that’s in it, which was originally found in bull bile, but I thought better of it. Facts like that weren’t exactly friend-winning.
“Sure.” I choked back a momentary repulsion and the fear that if Amanda could see me, she wouldn’t approve, and I grabbed a can from her bag. “Thanks. I should get going, but good to see you,” I said, and I awkwardly continued down the hall, thinking about how that was the longest conversation Kim and I had had in years.
School Daze
Seventh graders rushed ahead of me, dragging their rolling backpacks behind them, desperate to be on time to class on the first day. As a student advisor, I would get to know some of these girls throughout the year, but I had no idea who my co-advisor would be now that Amanda was gone. Whitbread had a student advising system that paired two juniors or seniors with one faculty member and ten underclassmen. Not every junior or senior did it—but I was the type who did. The idea was that we, the student advisors, would help the younger girls navigate the rocky waters of adolescence and Whitbread. Because we were so much older and wiser.
I reached Mr. Elwright’s classroom, took a deep breath, and opened the door. Inside were ten seventh graders, twenty backpacks, and several tote bags filled with brand-new binders and colored pencils. I spotted Mr. Elwright struggling with the printer. When he saw me, he waded through the mess of school supplies to greet me. “How was your summer?” he asked. Then, before I could answer he turned to the seventh graders and said, “Girls, why is all of this in my room?”
“Is there somewhere else we can put it?” a girl whose skirt went down past her knees asked.
“Yeah, anywhere!” Mr. Elwright exclaimed, moving a plastic bag of locker shelves so that he could reach his coffee.
“Mr. Elwright.” I nudged him. “It’s their first day. They don’t know about the purple lines.” Mr. Elwright had never dealt with seventh graders before. He was the MUN advisor, and he usually taught only in the upper school. And there was a reason for that: He wasn’t one for patience.
“You can leave your stuff mostly anywhere around campus,” I explained to the new girls.
The door opened from behind me, and a heavy bag hit me in the calves. “Oops, sorry. Hey.” Taylor Tremaine, the only girl in my class who still occasionally wore her waist-length hair in pigtails, entered the room. “So you’re my co-advisor?” she asked, nodding toward me and stating the obvious.
I popped the top of Kim’s Red Bull and took a long gulp as I sat down on top of a nearby desk. “Yeah.” This wasn’t exactly who I had had in mind for a co-advisor. It totally sucked that Amanda couldn’t be here, but I had sort of been hoping that this might be an opportunity to get to know someone cool. That is, cooler than me. And definitely cooler than Taylor.
“I was so glad I got to do this. I mean, I only found out last week that they had an opening. Because…” She stopped. “Sorry. I mean, I’m sorry Amanda left. It’s just…I hope we’ll have a good year, right?”
“Yeah,” I said again, trying to smile my most enthusiastic smile. I looked out at our charges, who were busy comparing their schedules for the day. Taylor was probably a nice girl. I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. It was just that…well, she still occasionally brought a rolling backpack to school. Even I knew better than to do that. I wondered when I had most recently spoken with Taylor. I mean, she did drama. That was a world away from Model UN. I couldn’t even remember if she had been in any of my classes last year.
Advisory was seven minutes long. Exactly. It began at 7:50 and ended at 7:57—Whitbread had an odd way of timing classes. As Taylor explained important first-day information and answered questions from the seventh graders, Mr. Elwright pulled me aside. “Becky,” he said, straightening his polka-dotted tie. Mr. Elwright was famous for wearing suits, even on casual-dress Fridays. “How are you doing? Is everything going okay, you know, without Amanda?”
“I’m doing fine,” I said, with a harsher tone than I intended. “I mean, I don’t need Amanda….” Really, I was scared that I did need her. But I didn’t want to admit that.
The bell rang, and I turned to leave. “Wait,” Mr. Elwright said, reaching out and putting a hand on my shoulder. I turned back to face him. “We need to meet about MUN.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “My schedule’s outside. I can e-mail you with my free periods.”
“That sounds good. Listen, Becky, everyone loved what you did last year, with Pakistan and coming up with the activism component.” I nodded again, staring at the map on the wall behind Mr. Elwright. His face grew softer, and he lowered his voice a little. “You know, you can do this, even without Amanda. You’ve been leading this club all along.” He paused, and although I wasn’t looking directly at him, I could feel his eyes on me.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Thanks.”
“I mean it, Becky. You’ll survive this. And you’ll be wonderful at leading this club.” The start-of-class bell rang. Mr. Elwright looked down at his desk and shuffled a few papers; I shifted my feet a little, wondering whether I should go. “Okay, that’s it for my motivational speech. Go to class. Don’t be late.” He reached over his desk and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Have a good first day,” I called as I walked out the door.
First period that day was an All-School Assembly across campus in the Whitbread Auditorium. The whole school, faculty included, fit into that one room, where the seating sections were assigned by grade. I started to walk toward the sophomore entrance but quickly corrected myself, instead heading down the hallway to the back of the auditorium. The noise of squealing seventh graders mixed with the sound of reuniting upper schoolers (the all-girls alternative to upperclassmen), and at the front of the room, a projector screen was being set up. There was an empty seat next to Taylor Tremaine, and despite the fact that I wasn’t sure I liked her—and that hanging out with her certainly wouldn’t increase my social prospects—I urged myself to go sit next to her. It’s not like I had a lot of other options. “Hey,” I said, sitting down. “Do you know what this year’s assembly is about?”
“The construction project, probably.”
I nodded. “I heard it was going to last three years. Sucks we won’t get to be here for the result.”
“Yeah, but I’m kind of ready to get out of here. Aren’t you? This place is like a bubble.”
At that moment, as if on cue, Kim Turner, who was seated in the row in front of us and had been craning her neck to scan the room, spotted me and stopped. “Oh, Becky, I forgot to say this earlier…but I’m so sorry about your parents!”
I grimaced. Thanks, Whitbread bubble.
Up at the podium, Ms. Morton, our head of school, cleared her throat into the microphone. “Welcome back, girls. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful summer. I am very excited to share with you the details of our new construction project!”
Whitbread had recently decided that our state-of-the-art art studios weren’t state-of-the-art enough, and that we could use a bigger, better library. Plus the underground parking.
It’s a sixty-five-million-dollar project.
Taylor and I looked at each other, each with raised eyebrows. It struck me that maybe Taylor was different from the other Hollywoodified robots in my grade. And maybe that was a good thing. But was she too different?
The lights dimmed, and a slideshow revealed what our new ceramics studio and photography darkroom would look like, along with a large student resource center filled with couches and computers and a cafeteria. Photographs of current Whitbread students had been Photoshopped into the slideshow, as if to prove just how great this would be for future Whitbread students. At the end of the slideshow, about half of the students cheered, and a couple of teachers rolled a tented table to the front of the stage.
“Now, in honor of the new construction, and to thank you all
for supporting and enduring it, we have a few goodies for you. Coming around are pins for our new Construction Campaign, and here”—Ms. Morton paused as she walked toward the table that had just been wheeled out—“is something I think you’ll all like.” She pulled off the tented cloth. I couldn’t see the stage very well, so I missed the big reveal. “Girls, this is a model of what the school will look like after the construction. And here’s the great part—it’s a cake!”
There were gasps and murmurs in the audience. “Is she kidding?” I whispered to Taylor. “A cake model of the school? Isn’t that a little excessive?”
Taylor shrugged. “Of course it’s excessive. It’s Whitbread.”
Warning Signs
As soon as I got home from school, I laid out my calculus homework in front of me on my bed. I meant to actually do the homework, but I guess at some point I must have fallen asleep, because two hours later, my cheek was pressed against my open textbook, and my mom was calling my name. Groggily, I sat up on my bed. Mom had come in and sat down at the edge. “How was school?” she asked.
“I…it was…” I shrugged. I usually shared all the details of my life with her, so this avoiding-her business was hard. But if I suddenly started talking to her again, she might think that I was giving in—that I wasn’t really mad at her for this whole divorce thing.
I guess my mom read my mind. “Honey,” she said, “you must have known this was coming. The divorce. All the warning signs were there.”
I folded my arms tightly across my chest. If this was her way of comforting me, it was a lousy one. As my mom waited for me to say something, one particular memory stuck out in my mind. It had been a few months earlier, on a Friday night. We were all sitting down at the table—Mom, Dad, Jack, and I—when we realized that nobody had made dinner. Usually, Mom cooked or we went out, but once in a while, Dad made dinner. Dad was a better cook than Mom, who often got distracted and forgot ingredients. I wasn’t sure if that Friday was meant to be my mom’s or my dad’s night to cook, and apparently I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t remember. The silence was painful as we sat at the table behind empty plates.
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