“Well, I’ll just have to find out for myself, then, won’t I? What’s your phone number, Becky?” Aaron flipped open his phone and looked at me, his blue eyes looking intently into mine.
I was shivering with excitement, and the ceiling had begun to spin above me. It was all I could do to remember my own phone number. I think I gave him the right number. I hope I gave him the right number.
The next memory (and the last of the night) was of Aaron and me standing near the stage. It was late. L.A.’s hottest new DJ (and a client of Kim’s father’s) had just finished his last set. I was drunk and confident.
“So,” I said, discreetly pulling my top down a little to show more cleavage. “Who are you supposed to be? Your costume, I mean.”
“You can’t tell?” he said, pretending to look hurt.
I smiled and shook my head.
“I’m Prince Charming.” He took his plastic sword out of its holster.
“Oh yeah? So, who’s your Cinderella?”
Aaron wrapped the sword, and his arm, around my back. “You.”
The Morning After
I woke up the next morning lying under a cashmere blanket, spread out on a couch that I didn’t recognize. My head was pounding, and I could barely remember a thing from the night before. There was a cup of black coffee sitting on the end table above my head.
“Drink the coffee,” a tired voice told me.
I sat up and realized that I was still wearing my costume from the night before. “What happened?” I asked as I realized that the light pink room I was in was not my own.
“You got drunk.” Alissa plopped down on the couch next to me.
“And you hit it off with Aaron!” Kim sat down, too.
Hit it off? I did? Really?
“Cool! Um, where’s the bathroom?” My head was throbbing and waves of nausea had begun to travel up my throat. I stood up and looked around.
“Right down here,” Courtney directed me. Her bedroom was a large suite, and the bathroom was within it, just behind the dressing room. I stopped Courtney at the bathroom’s mirrored door.
“Did I do anything stupid?” I asked.
“No! You basically just sat with Aaron all cozy on the couches until you passed out and we carried you home.”
How embarrassing. But back to this Aaron thing? “And what about Aaron? I mean, I feel bad saying this, but all I remember is that he was pretty cute. Anything else?”
“Yeah, cute…and smart…and athletic. He’s the perfect catch, Becky!” She paused. “Oh, and I gave him your screen name, so you should probably be expecting an instant message one of these days!”
Courtney’s stepmom was approximately the same age as Darcy, but the stepmom was a better cook. Alissa, Kim, Courtney, and I sat around the marble island in Courtney’s kitchen picking at an egg-white frittata. Courtney went completely silent when her stepmom reemerged wearing nothing but a red negligee. Alissa and Kim just kept forking at their eggs, but I caught Courtney’s eye, and I saw the pain. I could only imagine how awful it would be if, someday, Darcy had breakfast at our house, wearing lingerie.
We drank coffee and rehashed details from the night before, laughing at stupid things we’d done and checking our cell phones for text messages from cute boys.
The Rules
At school on Monday, the Room was abuzz with P & H gossip. I didn’t run into any of the Trinity that morning, and by the time All-School Assembly came around, I was sufficiently convinced that they were avoiding me and that we weren’t really friends after all. As I walked into the auditorium, I saw them sitting together. There was an empty seat beside Kim, but no one specifically beckoned me over to it, so I sat a row behind them, with Taylor.
“Hey,” I said, settling into the seat. I didn’t worry about asking permission to sit with her.
“Hey.” Taylor tucked her legs, which were covered in heavy navy blue tights and a slightly too-long skirt, under her on the chair. “So, did you have fun at P & H?”
“Um…” I paused. What should I say? Taylor didn’t go to the party, and moreover, she didn’t really approve of everything that the party was about. I finally decided on “It was certainly interesting.” That was just ambiguous enough. I didn’t want to admit that it had been my best night all year. I didn’t think Taylor would share my excitement at Aaron calling me his Cinderella. “So, what did you do this weekend?” I said, hoping to direct the conversation away from me.
“I helped my dad move.” Taylor pulled her long braid over her shoulder. “I can’t stand moving.”
“Moving sucks,” I agreed. “My mom found a new apartment. Again,” I told Taylor. “And she wants to move in right away. I’m not looking forward to it.”
“I never even got to see your last place,” Taylor said.
“Well, you should come to the new place then,” I told her.
“Excuse me, ladies. If I could have your attention,” said Mrs. Donnelly, the head of the upper school, from the podium at the front of the room. The hall went quiet within a minute. Mrs. Donnelly didn’t usually speak at assemblies—that was Ms. Morton’s job. Seeing Mrs. D. up at the podium meant something serious must be happening.
I’m sure it’s not in the job description, but I had rarely seen Mrs. Donnelly without a trademark article of Burberry clothing. Today, she wore a brown plaid scarf draped over a black peacoat. Her hair, as always, was curled and set to caramel-colored perfection.
“Girls. Quiet, please.” She tapped at the podium. “There’s an unpleasant issue that I must bring up. Your grade-level leaders are handing out papers so that you may follow along with what I’m saying. On these papers, the Whitbread School Understanding is printed.”
Ugh, the Understanding. It’s the social contract Whitbread sends out over the summer, and each student has to sign it and, ultimately, abide by it. The irony of the fact that our social contract was called the Understanding did not escape me. Because I would bet that a good portion of the school didn’t quite understand it, much less abide by it.
“The Understanding, as you all know, is a very important part of our school,” Mrs. Donnelly continued. “Without it, there would be no honor code and no off-campus lunch privileges, and your teachers would have to stay in the classroom while you take tests.”
The auditorium was hushed. A pile of maroon handouts came my way. I took one and passed the rest along.
“You are all Whitbread girls, and whether in or out of uniform, you represent the school. Now, I have friends in the neighborhood who tell me they run into my girls on Larchmont and can’t believe the way they are acting or the things they are saying,” Mrs. Donnelly said.
“Fuck,” I heard Alissa whisper. So maybe that rumor about Alissa doing coke in the bathroom of a boutique on Larchmont wasn’t just a rumor.
“When you are out for lunch, or getting coffee after school, or at a party on a Friday night, you need to remember that you are a Whitbread girl and that all your actions reflect on the school. If your actions are unacceptable, you may be suspended or receive demerits.”
A hushed murmur traveled through the room as the words “at a party on a Friday night” sank in.
“You may be expelled for such actions as, say, showing up drunk at a Stratfield dance.”
I turned to Taylor, who was rebraiding her hair. “So wherever we go, Whitbread is watching us?”
“That’s the way it seems,” Taylor said, her eyes staring forward.
“This past weekend, many upper school students attended a party.” My stomach dropped. I’d never done anything that could get me in trouble at school so the panic I felt was of an entirely new variety. I leaned forward and tapped Courtney on the back. She shrugged her shoulders. “I am told there was drinking and risqué dancing, not to mention the outfits.”
Shit. Now would have been a good moment to have the ability to recall more than just four memories from that night.
“Pictures from this event were posted on facebook. com, where many of you list Whitb
read as your high school. The head of another school contacted me to let me know that there were pictures, online, of some of my girls wearing very little clothing and holding red plastic cups.”
Mrs. Donnelly went on about how the girls who were in the photographs had been talked to and we should take this as a lesson.
Wait—what? How had I escaped that?
I poked Courtney a little harder. She turned around and shook her head. Kim leaned back toward me and whispered, “Don’t worry. We’ve got it covered.” I could feel Taylor’s eyes boring into me. I avoided turning to look at her.
That day, almost a hundred girls changed their Facebook network from Whitbread School to one of a few random California cities.
I ran into Alissa in the bathroom before AP English. She was coming out of the large stall, sniffling a little. A small plastic bag filled with a white powder was balanced on top of her poetry anthology.
“Want some?” she asked. I wondered if there were cameras in the bathrooms. It probably didn’t matter, I realized. Whitbread would never expel Alissa Hargrove, especially since her father had just made a several-million-dollar donation for the new construction project.
“I’m good. Thanks, though.” The truth was, I was terrified of cocaine. And I was sure that it wouldn’t combine well with my various anti-anxiety medications.
“So, what happened? With the Facebook stuff, I mean.”
“We took care of it.”
“How? I mean, what did you do? Weren’t there pictures of you on Facebook?”
“Yeah. You, too.” I regretted not having checked Facebook that weekend. “But we got a tip that this shit was happening, so we took all the pictures of us offline. So don’t worry, you won’t get in trouble.”
Us? She had said “us.” I pulled a strand of highlighted hair over my ear and turned away, trying to hide the smile I knew was coming.
Moving On
As it turned out, I, like Taylor, would be moving that week. Mom wanted to waste no time. The new apartment looked as though it hadn’t been renovated since the mid 1970s, which was fine with Mom.
“Oh, this is great! I can add a renovation aspect to the show. I’ll discuss the process of redoing my new apartment. That would be great, don’t you think, Becky?” Mom had asked as we did a walk-through after school one day.
The walls in what Mom said would be my bedroom were wallpapered with fluorescent peacocks.
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll redecorate the whole place, Becky!”
We had to. There were handicap bars in the shower. As far as the building itself, the location was good. Doheny Park stood right at the corner of the Sunset Strip, at the edge of the Beverly Hills city limit. And apartments were for sale, not lease. There was only one unit available in the building, and it was Apartment 903, the same number as our apartment at Beach Tower. Mom took it as a sign.
She had gone into escrow and begun preparing for the renovation.
“It’s perfect,” Mom had gushed as we toured the kitchen. “Doheny Park is one of the hippest buildings in L.A. right now.”
“And Paris Hilton just moved in. She’s so hot,” Jack had added.
Just who everyone wants as a neighbor.
We moved on Thursday, in the early afternoon. I was at school, and then at June Kauffman’s, so once again I didn’t see my new room until I got home in the evening. Mom was excited for Jack and me to see the apartment. It was still in the midst of renovations, but Mom insisted we move in anyway. Everything was in boxes, and I’d had trouble finding a skirt to wear to school that morning. I’d settled for one from the seventh grade that was still in the box of clothes I had brought from my dad’s house that summer. The skirt was so short that my boxers (which were chic only at my school, I’m sure) hung out from beneath the pleated gray hem.
The only thing that was immediately set up in the new apartment was the computer and Internet connection. I was sitting in bed, researching AIDS orphans in Uganda, when I received an instant message.
It read, New message from Playaaron.
I knew immediately who it was.
Hey, he had typed.
Fingers shaking, I replied.
Globalgirl: Hey.
It was beginning to come back to me, what had happened that night. I remembered sitting with him on the couch, our legs touching. I had had to go to the bathroom but I hadn’t wanted to leave him. I had been afraid that by the time I got back, he would have already lost interest. And I’d loved the feeling in the pit of my stomach—the fluttering that told me maybe, just maybe, he liked me.
Playaaron: What’s up?
Not 2 much, I replied. I was careful to insert a 2 instead of too. On the Internet, for reasons beyond my understanding, it was cool to abbreviate and misspell. Aaron responded after only a few seconds, informing me that he was watching the baseball game and playing online poker. Each time my computer beeped with the NEW MESSAGE notification, I got a little thrill. I wanted to see him again.
Globalgirl: So, how’s ur week going so far?
I tried to give him a good opportunity to ask if I wanted to hang out. I didn’t know much about boys, but I did know they were the ones who were supposed to do the asking. Instead, he told me about soccer practice and how his coach had been a total dick to the team.
I stared at the screen and the dark blue writing and the soccer ball icon and without remembering to think, I pressed ENTER, sending him the sentence I wished he would type.
Globalgirl: What are you doing this weekend?
Playaaron: No plans yet….
I wrung my hands together to keep myself from typing any more. I waited to see if he would continue. And then, I just didn’t want to wait any more. Do you want to maybe hang out or something? I wrote in the blank box. And then—by mistake again, of course—I sent it. I knew that the boy was supposed to do the asking out. That was the way it worked in the books I read, at least. But I was a feminist. I didn’t have to wait for the boy to ask me. And besides, I didn’t have the patience for that.
I stood up and walked in a circle around my bedroom, not wanting to wait while he typed, and not wanting to see him say no. The blue writing popped up on the screen: Yeah, we could see a movie or something. That same shiver I had felt the night of P & H went flying up my arms.
Okay, I replied. That sounds good.
Even though I had done the asking, that didn’t change the fact that it was a date. Right?
What to Wear
“I’m going out with this boy I met at P & H,” I told Amanda on the phone the Saturday afternoon of my date with Aaron.
“A date! With who?” But before I could answer, Amanda had continued with, “I have news, too. At my dad’s opening last night, I hooked up with this actor from the play.” This was a new Amanda entirely. Old Amanda never talked about hooking up like it was as casual as going out to lunch. It seemed like she was becoming an entirely different person. Then again, maybe I was, too.
But even though I seemed to be making an unlikely transformation into a popular, dateable girl, I hadn’t gained any fashion sense. I had no idea what might be an appropriate first-date outfit.
“I’m leaving soon,” I told my dad that afternoon. It was the end of my week with him, and I hadn’t spent more than five minutes at a time with him.
“Where are you going?” he asked, eyes glued to the computer screen. “Over to Mom’s?”
“No, I have plans.” A date, I reminded myself. I had a date. But somehow, the thought of telling my dad I had a date seemed too weird for words.
“I just have to finish reading this one brief and then I’ll be right with you. Wait just a sec, okay, honey?”
No, not okay. I walked down the hallway in a huff. This was one of those moments I talked with June about. According to June, I’m supposed to remind myself that I don’t need him. I want my dad’s attention, and I love my dad, but I am a complete person with or without him. And I don’t need anyone else’s vali
dation to be a great person.
That’s what June Kauffman says I am. Sometimes she switches it up and calls me gifted, and when she does that, I say that maybe she’s overestimating me. But she says she’s not.
I slammed my bedroom door shut, hoping the noise would startle my dad. When I got no response, I continued into the dressing room, flipping on the light switch as I walked. Sliding open the door to my closet, I began to tear through clothes, tossing onto the floor in front of me any shirts and skirts that I thought might work.
Finally, I had a pile of tank tops, polo shirts, jeans, and sweaters lying in front of me. And none of it would do. I wanted to look casual, but not grungy; sophisticated, but not as if I were trying too hard. I wanted to be Alissa Hargrove, who had a personal stylist, or Courtney Gross, whose closet was full of clothes because her stepmother couldn’t ever pass up a designer sale.
My outfit problems, I decided, could be boiled down to Whitbread. During the school year, I get it in my head that all articles of clothing I purchase should be either navy blue or white, because that’s what I wear five days a week. The idea that I might need clothes to wear on the weekends always manages to escape me; I’m too busy trying to buy the right clothes to make my uniform look effortlessly chic with a tinge of I-just-rolled-out-of-bed.
So, I had plenty of navy sweatshirts, but for a date, that wouldn’t work. I dug a black V-neck out of the pile and stood up, holding it to my chest and staring in the mirror. The front was cut deep enough to create the illusion of cleavage, but was showing my nonexistent cleavage on a first date too risqué? I didn’t want to seem like I was asking for it.
I pulled on my skinniest jeans and tugged a cable-knit sweater over my head. Finishing the look with some ankle boots I had taken from my mom a while back, I decided I was ready.
And, with perfect timing, that was exactly when my phone rang. I ran out of the dressing room and into my bedroom to answer. “Hello?”
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