“Sixteen,” I answered.
“So you must be just starting the eleventh grade? That’s cool.” She grabbed onto my dad’s elbow and flashed a look at her watch. She wanted to get out of here, probably, but even I knew that part of being a good girlfriend was pretending to like the kids. “I remember when I was in eleventh grade,” Darcy nodded.
Yeah, of course you do, I thought. That was only six years ago.
There was nothing I could do to stop my dad from going out with her. And really, I guess I wanted him to be happy. What I didn’t understand was why this Darcy business made me feel so empty inside.
Miss Popularity
If there’s one thing that moves quickly at Whitbread, it’s gossip. Word about the nonexclusiveness of this year’s Pimps and Hos party had spread fast. Kim had set up a Pimps and Hos group on Facebook, with a picture of the Key Club in the profile, and everyone was invited to join the group.
“Hey, are you going to Pimps and Hos?” I asked Taylor one morning during free period. This particular free period, I was lying on my stomach on the floor of the Room, checking the updates on the Facebook group.
“No way,” Taylor said.
“Why not?” I asked. Taylor, if I remembered correctly, had worn a bikini onstage in a school production the year before. There was no way she had a problem with baring skin. Besides, her dad was a famous costume designer. He could probably make a pretty amazing costume for her. “Is it because of the drinking?” I asked.
“Nah. It’s because it’s stupid. It’s just an excuse for girls who work too hard to play too hard, and totally show off while doing it. You and I both know that the morning after, there’ll be tons of new pictures posted online of those girls in their underwear, prancing around with bottles of Jack Daniel’s.”
The truth was, I didn’t like that Pimps and Hos was an excuse for girls to make sluts out of themselves and then giggle self-deprecatingly while guys treated them like the sluts they were pretending to be.
So why did I want to have a photo of me with Jack Daniel’s online? Knowing all that I did, why did I still kind of want to be one of them?
“Totally,” I said, agreeing with Taylor and quickly exiting the Facebook page. “It’s pathetic.” Taylor gave me a confused look. “And immature,” I added. Taylor nodded. I wanted to make sure I had her approval as a level-headed, mature friend.
It seems I always want people to approve of me.
Later that day, Kim approached me in the hall. “Cute shoes.”
I was wearing red, patent leather ballet flats, as a result of my mother’s fashion advice. I made a mental note to thank her.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling. Was I smiling too widely? Damn it. Why did I even care about whether Kim thought I was smiling appropriately? I looked up at her. She was really tall, and I always felt sort of stout around her.
“Are you coming to P & H? ’Cause you totally should.”
I couldn’t stop myself from nodding.
“Just RSVP on Facebook.” The bell rang. “I should go. I have chem, and I missed yesterday for a sample sale. So, I’ll see you at the party?”
“Yeah,” I responded, standing still, trying to get my bearings.
Kim turned to leave, and then, as she began to head down the hallway, she turned around and added, “Cool. There’s no list this year, but, if there were, you totally would have been on it.”
I couldn’t help feeling as though my social status might be changing. Being friends with Taylor was fine—but friends with the Trinity? Now that would be amazing. After all, this was high school. I had plenty of time to find friends who were my intellectual equals. Besides, partying at P & H seemed a hell of a lot more exciting than watching a movie with Taylor.
A few days later, Alissa invited me to go out to lunch with her, Kim, and Courtney. We sat at Matsuhisa, an expensive Beverly Hills sushi restaurant, nibbling on sashimi and rating the Stratfield boys who would be at the Halloween party. Seeing as I knew almost no boys, except for Joey, I had very little to contribute, aside from my excitement at the prospect of meeting some.
“The guys on the basketball team are pretty hot,” Courtney said.
“Yeah, but not as hot as the soccer team!” Alissa chimed in as she took a tiny bite out of the single piece of sushi on her plate.
“Yeah, the soccer players are pretty cute,” I added. I just hoped nobody would ask me if I actually knew any soccer players. I stared at the food in front of us on the table. We had ordered a lot, but most of the food sat uneaten in front of us. I was starving, but I didn’t want to seem like a horse on my first real social outing with the group.
“Who do you know on the soccer team?” Alissa asked.
Shit.
I was about to speak, but Alissa quickly interrupted me. “Hey, I just remembered who I know on the soccer team! Aaron Winters. You guys probably don’t know him because he’s been out of the country for a couple years. I think he was in Switzerland. His mom was living there—said she needed a break from the ‘Hollywood life.’ But he’s back, apparently, because his mom e-mailed my dad and said that I should introduce him to some new friends. He’s at Stratfield, but he knows, like, no Whitbread girls.” She stopped to take a breath. “I invited him to P & H, of course. But the thing is, I haven’t seen him since, like, eighth grade, at one of my parents’ parties.” Alissa looked around the table to make sure that we were all paying attention. We were. “Anyway, I remember him being pretty cute. He played soccer back then, and I bet he’s on the team this year. Who knows, maybe someone can get some action with him!”
A new boy? A new boy who wouldn’t know or have heard all about my lackluster reputation as the Smart Girl? Yes!
Courtney looked down into her salad. Kim laughed. “Score! New blood. Sounds great.”
“Yeah, because he won’t already know your reputation,” Alissa said.
I started to blush until I realized she was talking to Kim, not me.
“What reputation?” I asked, even though I knew. Amanda and I had referred to them as the Horny Trinity, after all. But was Kim somehow worse than the others? Kim elbowed Alissa and gave her a look of warning.
“Kim tends to get slutty when she drinks.” Alissa smirked, then turned the smirk into a smile. She laughed, so I did, too, hoping that this was a joke and that it was the right thing to do.
I went to the bathroom before we left the restaurant. In the stall next to me, Alissa was doing something that sounded a lot like throwing up. As we washed our hands side by side, I knew better than to say anything. “You’re looking good,” she told me. The fact that such a little compliment made me so excited embarrassed me.
After Matsuhisa, I ate lunch with the Trinity on a fairly regular basis. I started seeing less of Taylor outside of Advisory. Every time she asked what I was up to, I would make up some school-related thing, usually having to do with MUN.
Within a week, Taylor joined MUN. She said she didn’t know how much time she could spend researching, because of drama, but that since I talked about MUN all the time, she wanted to see what it was like.
I tried to include her, tried to make her feel welcome, but when, at the end of her first meeting, I sat down with Alissa, Courtney, and Kim to eat lunch, Taylor didn’t join me.
“Why don’t you come sit with us?” I asked, weakly. She didn’t. The truth was, I could tell that the Trinity didn’t especially like Taylor. And I didn’t want them to not like me just because I was friends with her.
Later, Taylor was packing up her backpack, getting ready to leave. She looked like she had something to say, so I walked over to her.
“I like you, Becky, but them…They’re fake, you know? They’re nice to anyone who’s nonthreatening and willing to go along with whatever they want to do. But if you don’t act like a robot, then you’re screwed.”
I widened my eyes. Was Taylor calling me a robot?
“I’m not saying you are a robot,” she corrected. “Just…if I were
you, I wouldn’t get too close.”
I shrugged. Taylor was wrong. She just didn’t want me to become better friends with them than I was with her. She was jealous—that was it.
Trick or Treat
I’d put off getting a costume for so long that by the time Halloween had arrived, I had nothing to wear. I had always been…creative with my costumes, as anyone who’d gone to elementary school with me could attest, but this year I just wanted to look like a normal teen girl. Which is probably why I’d procrastinated: Normal teen girls dressed like sluts for Halloween, and part of me really didn’t want to give in to that.
“Alissa wants me to be a mouse because she’s going as a cat, but I’m not sure,” Courtney told me as we lay on the field at break, sipping nonfat lattes and alternating between gossiping and quizzing each other on ancient philosophers. It had taken Courtney twenty minutes to finally understand the difference between Plato and Socrates. Maybe sticking to gossip was the easier way to go.
“Yeah, that’s a little weird,” I said. “Cat and mouse? It’s like some sort of power play. As if she has dominance over you…or she’s chasing you, or something like that.”
“I guess. Whatever—I can always just tell my stepmother to go out and buy something. That way, I’ll be sure to look like the whore I’m not!”
There was no safe way to ask how much of a whore she wasn’t, which is what I really wanted to know, so I just said, “Yeah, me either. And I don’t know how I’m going to dress like one either.”
“Who’s not what?” Kim asked, settling down next to us on the Burberry blanket that covered the grass.
“Becky’s not sure about dressing slutty for Halloween,” Courtney said.
Kim let out a long laugh, cocking her head back in the air, her hair falling behind her. “I can believe that! You know…” she said to Courtney.
Please don’t, I thought. Please don’t.
“…she dressed up as Hillary Clinton in the first grade!”
Thank you, Kim.
“Oh, and who were you in the sixth grade, again?” she asked me.
I tried to put on a good-hearted, self-deprecating smile. “Ralph Nader,” I said. I had worn a suit with a tie that read SPOILER. I stood up before things could get any worse. “Listen, guys, I have to go, but see you at lunch!”
As I walked off toward the history hallway, I heard the end of the conversation in the background.
“Who’s Ralph Nader?” Courtney asked.
“Fuck if I know.”
After school, I headed to Yes!, a novelty store and, come October, costume store. It was just down the block from what I’d started thinking of as Therapists’ Row. I’d parked along the side street that was in between June Kauffman’s and Sara Elder’s buildings, and I quickened my pace as I passed both.
The store was packed with last-minute shoppers roaming the aisles of tacky costumes wrapped in plastic bags.
I waded through an aisle that was labeled WOMEN but looked more like it should say SLUTS. To my left, a girl slipped on a ladybug tube dress. “Can I help you?” a petite salesperson in a revealing Snow White costume asked me.
“I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for,” I said, suddenly wishing that I weren’t wearing my school uniform.
The conversation I’d had with June the day before played in my head.
“Well, what do you want to dress up as?” she’d asked, when I told her I was stressing about what to wear to P & H. “What would you be comfortable dressing up as?”
I’d stared at the tapestry on the wall opposite me. “I don’t know.”
“Think about that. Think about Becky and what Becky wants. I want you to be able to smile in those Halloween photos.”
The saleswoman—MARINA, her name tag said—chewed her gum noisily and gave me a once-over, then turned to the wall of costumes, picked one out, and handed it to me. I repeated June’s question in my mind, and still came up with no answer. The cover of the costume bag pictured a very busty fake blonde wearing a baseball shirt, hat, and kneesocks. The shirt was red and white and cut in a deep V-neck. Down the front, it read PLAYER. I held the plastic handle tentatively. “Just try it on. It’s really cute,” Marina assured me.
I put my purse on the floor between my feet and removed the shirt from the plastic bag. At least I was short enough that the shirt might work passably as a dress. With the “costume” over my T-shirt, I searched the aisle for a mirror. If the costume was slimming, I might be able to deal with it saying PLAYER on the front. I would wear sneakers, not heels like the model in the picture. I made my way through girls in slutty Dorothy, Minnie Mouse, and 1950s girl costumes in order to reach the mirror.
“I like that one, Mom,” a preteen girl proclaimed, pointing to me. She put her hands on her skinny hips and smiled up at her mother. “Especially the number on the back!”
“Honey, I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” the mother added.
I jerked my head around in terror to face the girl. “What number is it?”
“Sixty-nine.”
Oh no. No. I was not going to walk around as an advertisement for oral sex. Not even if the shirt was slimming. I zigzagged my way back toward Marina and my uniform skirt, hopelessly trying to take the shirt off at the same time.
From behind me, I heard a familiar voice. “Yes, excuse me? Do you have this Little Red costume in a smaller size?” But then, amid the masses of teenagers and polyester, a bony hand emerged in front of me, waving frantically from the sleeve of an orange sweater set. It was rather distracting.
“Oh, now this is cute!” The woman in the orange sweater set held up a bumblebee costume and took a step toward the mirror, holding the outfit in front of her. “Honey, I think you’d like this.”
Suddenly, the reflection of a middle-aged woman with curly blonde hair appeared in the mirror, next to the orange sweater set. “Yes, my niece says that she is looking for the Little Red costume in a size small.”
It was none other than Sara Elder, contemplating the purchase of a Leg Avenue costume.
I ducked to the ground against the side of the aisle, where pieces of costumes had fallen and I stood a dangerously likely chance of being trampled upon. Grabbing onto the baseball shirt, I tried to tug it off, but from my fetal position on the ground, this was difficult to do.
The familiar mass of curly blonde hair attached to a babbling cell phone appeared precariously close to me. “Yes, dear, I’m looking for your size,” Sara Elder spoke into the Nokia.
My former psychiatrist was shopping for a Little Red Riding Ho costume?
Still kneeling on the ground, I stretched my arm upward and grabbed for a costume bag. Lil’ Ho Peep? This would work. The skirt was pictured as longer than crotch-length. Not exactly “what Becky wants,” but I could make this work.
On the way home, I called Joey to ask him for a ride to the party. The only rule my parents had ever given me was that I wasn’t allowed to drive past eleven at night.
“Sure,” Joey said. “I might not stay very long, though.”
I thanked him and flipped the phone shut.
When I arrived home, Dad, Jack, and Darcy were sitting around the coffee table in the living room on the newly recovered couches while the television hummed from the dark wood armoire. A bottle of white wine had been uncorked, and Jack’s feet were up on the table as he sipped a Coke. The only signs of Halloween came from the lopsided pumpkin sitting right outside the front door and Jack’s multicolored Afro, which stood up high in the air. Dad was still in a suit, and Darcy, well, her minidress was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Oh, good, Becky’s here. Hey, Becky, why don’t you spend some time with Darcy while I help Jack figure out his costume for tonight.” My dad flashed me a grin and stood up, smoothing out his pant legs.
“What are you doing tonight, Becky? I’m so disappointed that I won’t get to spend the night trick-or-treating with you!” Darcy’s smile was too sugary to be sincere. She winked, grabbing
onto Dad’s elbow and standing up next to him. If she had turned around, she might have seen Jack casually raising his middle finger to her.
“I’m going to a party.”
Jack stood up, and I realized exactly what my dad had meant about needing to rework his costume. It was impossible to tell what Jack was attempting to dress up as—rapper with an Afro, perhaps. He was wearing his shorts so low that his boxers were almost entirely visible. The problem was, he hardly looked tough, since his boxers were covered in lots of little starfish. Jack wore a Laker’s hat on top of the Afro and wore a white T-shirt with a big “J-Zizzy” in black marker on the front. I managed to keep from laughing until he and my dad had made it up the stairs.
Then, it was just Darcy and me. Darcy looked down at her fingernails, alternating between examining her cuticles and checking her watch. “How long are they going to be?” she finally asked me, with dread hanging from her voice. Then, a minute later, she added, “So, what do you want to do? Um…we could…I don’t know…something.” Maybe she thought this was some obligation she had to fulfill in order to win my dad’s heart—and a starring part.
“Hey, so you finished school pretty recently, right?” I knew the answer, but I hoped the question might drive home my point. I walked into the front hallway and grabbed my backpack by the straps. I never did homework on Friday nights, but there was no way she would know that. “I have so much homework,” I said, pretending to sound exasperated. “You know. So, I should probably get started on that.” As casually as I could, I removed my calculus book and binder from my bag. “Lots of math to do.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I began circling my homework problems in the textbook. Darcy sat silently for a few minutes while I wrote out formulas. Finally, she said, “Do you want any help with that?” Her voice was entirely lackluster.
“Sure! Here, see if you can figure out problem twelve.” I smiled brightly, passed the book over, and handed Darcy a sheet of paper and a pencil. Twelve was a relatively easy problem, no discontinuities in the function, and it was clearly differentiable. It was probably mean of me, but I resented Darcy. My dad went out with her all the time, but I got barely one night of his time a week.
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