Tea Party
I had to make an appearance at the mandatory Junior Class Winter Tea on Saturday afternoon. The tea was held at the sprawling Brentwood mansion of Autumn Fielding, a ballerina in my class with whom I had little contact. The invitation emphasized that there would be very little parking available, so my mom dropped me off on her way to a location shoot. Unfortunately for me, she was going to be busy for at least two hours, so I wouldn’t be able to leave the tea until, at the earliest, five o’clock. I braced myself and tried to put on a happy face.
Everyone was dressed up and chitchatting over cups of tea, delicate miniature scones, and strawberries and cream. The party frocks and peacoats made me almost forget that we were, in fact, in Los Angeles. Some of Whitbread’s traditions seemed to be directly lifted from East Coast prep schools. I stood by a cluster of girls to whom I rarely spoke and made small talk about winter break plans and the difficulty of last week’s biology test. The truth was, the girls I didn’t know well were more willing to talk to me than those I did know. The first half hour went just fine, and I almost relaxed, realizing that not everyone read Facebook or knew Aaron Winters or listened to the Trinity’s gossip.
But then Alissa arrived, fashionably late as always. She teetered in the door, a stick figure in a wrap dress and heels. I smiled, trying to show that I simply wasn’t afraid of her. Hating this, Alissa made a beeline across the room for me.
“Becky.” She looked me up and down with a scathing eye.
Kimberly, followed by Courtney, walked by me next. Kim “accidentally” bumped into me as she passed, sending hot tea sloshing out of my cup and onto the front of my white dress. “Slut,” she hissed. Courtney gave me a hard look. I squinted my eyes to meet hers.
At first, I thought that leaving the party early would be a sign of weakness. To leave early would be to show that, no, I couldn’t handle the whispered gossip on the other side of the room or the fingers pointing toward me as the rumors spread. But then I realized that this wasn’t a game that I could win by just sticking it out to the end. This was my life, and it was my well-being that was at stake. And even if I did make it to the end of the tea party, neither the Trinity nor anyone else would acknowledge my strength. All that would happen would be that I would just feel even more beaten up. And I certainly didn’t need that.
But once I decided that I wanted to leave—really wanted to leave, in fact—then there was the issue of how the hell I was going to get out of there. After another insult was whispered in my direction by Alissa as she soared across the room, I decided to text message my dad. SOS, I wrote. If you get this, please come pick me up at Autumn Fielding’s house. Please. My dad had a business cocktail party that afternoon, and I doubted that he would leave it to come pick me up. Work was far too important.
“I’m so sorry to have to cut out early, but I have an event tonight,” I said to Autumn, loudly enough, I hoped, that one or all of the Trinity heard. I wanted them to know that I had better places to be than at the stupid tea party. I excused myself and walked outside. My dad hadn’t messaged me back; I had nowhere to go. I began to shiver. I had a shawl over my sleeveless dress, but that really wasn’t helping me retain any heat. I walked far enough down the block that anyone leaving the party wouldn’t see me, and sat down on the curb. Ten minutes passed. I contemplated going back inside, but the hatred on the Trinity’s faces stopped me. Closing my eyes didn’t help the dejection I was feeling. But because my eyes were closed, I didn’t see my dad’s convertible pull up across the street.
“Come on, hop in. You must be freezing,” he called through the open window.
“You came!” I said, surprised and grateful. “I thought you had that work event.”
“I did. But you sent me an SOS.”
That night, Dad canceled his date with Darcy and went out to dinner with me instead. I filled him in on bits and pieces of what I had been going through—excluding, for example, being called a slut. “Sweetheart, I can’t believe you’ve been going through all this and I had no idea,” Dad said. “I want to be there for you and to support you, but I can’t read your mind. I have no way of knowing what’s going on with you unless you tell me.”
“I know. And I’m going to try to get better at telling you things and keeping you in the loop. It’s just hard because, well, when you and Mom split up, I think I sort of blamed it on you. And I know that was wrong, but I thought I had to blame someone. You guys were mad at each other, and I guess I was mad at you.”
“Oh, honey. Your mom and I aren’t mad at each other, and neither of us wants to make you choose sides. We’re still adjusting to this new life, but we are going to get it all figured out. We are. Everything might not be perfect, but it will be okay.”
Okay sounded pretty perfect to me.
Speak Up
Give a speech in front of the whole school—just what I wanted to do. A month before, I might have been up for it. But now, not so much. Every year, before winter break, there’s an All-School Assembly recapping the highlights and events of the first part of the year. Music and dance groups sometimes do performances, the student body president makes a speech, and a few other students are also asked to speak. This year, I was one of them. I had never been asked to give one of these speeches before. Talking to the Parents Association was one thing—giving a speech to the whole school was another. Mr. Elwright had told Ms. Morton about me winning the gavel at the MUN conference and about my project of building a school in Uganda, and she was—according to Mr. E.—so impressed that she insisted I be one of the winter assembly speakers.
But the last thing I wanted was to get up on stage and be able to see the entire junior class—as well as girls in other classes—whispering and gossiping about me while I spoke. During Advisory on Friday, one of my seventh-grade advisees had approached me and asked if I was upset that my boyfriend had dumped me for Courtney Gross. I had tried to come up with a remark that would show just how over it I was, but I didn’t think I’d succeeded. What struck me most about the situation was that seventh graders knew. And if seventh graders knew, that meant that everyone knew.
Friday morning came. I put on a freshly ironed polo shirt and made sure that my boxer shorts didn’t show below my skirt. I blow-dried my hair and even put on some makeup. I wanted to look my best. I hoped that looking good would help me to feel good. I had memorized my speech but brought a printed copy just in case I needed it.
After a performance by the modern dance troupe, it was my turn. “Hi, my name’s Becky Miller,” I started. And then I stopped. I thought about how crazy my life had gotten this semester. I thought about my Shit Lists and my Bright Side Lists. My prepared speech seemed so stupid, so boring, and so irrelevant. And finally, for once, I wanted to say what I meant. I wanted to speak the truth and not hold back. I looked out at five hundred waiting faces, and began again.
“I was asked to speak about my accomplishments with Model United Nations this fall and about the great first semester I’ve had this year. But the truth is, although my MUN experience has been great, I’ve had kind of a rough time recently.” All of the murmurs in the hall died down. It was silent, and I had everyone’s attention. “This fall, I got caught up in a silly quest for popularity. I cared too much about what other people thought about me and found myself doing the opposite of what Whitbread teaches us to do—to hold firm to our beliefs and never be afraid to state our opinions. In one particular situation, I found that I shied away from voicing my opinions because I was afraid that my opinions would affect my popularity. Instead of speaking out, I took the passive route, a decision that might have cost me a very important friendship. I want to take my time up here today to say to you that I am done with being passive. I am done with not saying what I think and with trying too hard to fit in. This past month, my boyfriend turned out to be a jerk and then posted some mean stuff about me online. The day after we broke up, a girl who I thought was one of my best friends started going out with him.”
/> I was sure that if I looked to where the Trinity were sitting, there would be a lot of activity. I knew that I could take this opportunity to mention that his new girlfriend had failed chemistry and had a boob job, but why bother? I didn’t need, or want, to sink that low.
Upon hearing about my breakup and betraying best friend, a chorus of awww s emerged from the audience. “No,” I stopped them. I didn’t want them feeling bad for me. “No. It’s okay.” Then I added, “I’m okay.”
Then the applause began. It quickly gained momentum until I was receiving a standing ovation from almost the entire school. Blood rushed to my face. “The most important thing I learned this semester is this: that you should never sacrifice who you are in order to conform to other people’s expectations of who you should be. Whether it’s at an MUN conference, where another delegate is trying to convince you to sign onto a resolution that your country doesn’t agree with, or whether it’s with your friends or boyfriends.” I received another round of applause as I stepped off the stage. I was grinning widely, filled with adrenaline and relief. I had no idea that speaking the truth would feel so good.
Later that day, Taylor approached me in the hall. “You were really brave to say all that stuff up there today.”
“I just hope you’ll forgive me for, you know, that whole Facebook situation.”
“It hurt me that you didn’t stand up for me, but, I mean, I guess I can understand why you didn’t. You know something? I always saw you as this girl who was just brimming with self-confidence.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s why I couldn’t quite understand why you wanted to be friends with them.”
I shrugged. It flattered me that she had thought I possessed so much self-confidence, but I was trying to stop caring so much about what other people thought of me. What mattered was what I thought of me. Nonetheless, I was glad that Taylor was speaking to me again. She was a genuinely sweet girl who I had hurt unfairly. “So, feel free to say no,” I ventured, “but would you maybe want to go out for coffee this weekend? We could go to Peet’s or something?”
Taylor paused, looked me in the eye, and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” I should have been expecting that. “Yeah, I understand.” Taylor nodded, silent.
“I just hope you know how sorry I am. Your friendship means a lot to me, and if I could do things over, I would….”
“But you can’t.”
“I guess I can’t.” I wanted to tell her that I could try to do better in the future, that I would do better, but I could see that she wasn’t ready to believe me. And why should she? It’s not like I’d been such a great friend so far.
“I should get to class,” she said.
I nodded. “See you around?”
“Yeah. See ya.”
I stood there for a minute, watching Taylor walk down the hallway, away from me.
Home Sweet Home (No, Really)
Mom had decided to sell the Doheny Park apartment—once the repairs were finished, of course—and went into escrow on a house in Hancock Park, only four blocks away from Whitbread and eight blocks from my dad’s house. Mom, moving fast as always, set “Immediately” as the moving date.
So we packed up our stuff from the Four Seasons and moved to South Arden Boulevard. The house was light blue with bright white shutters and a garden in the front. It felt fresh.
Just four months before, I had carried a suitcase of possessions from my dad’s house into a foreign apartment at Beach Tower. Now I was back in Hancock Park, and I was just as popular as I had been at the beginning of the school year, which is to say, not very. Taylor still hadn’t forgiven me, but I’d done my best and hoped that someday we’d be friends again. Although I wasn’t necessarily happy yet, I knew that someday, I would be. And even though my life was far from perfect, I had started to believe that just maybe it was actually going to be okay.
That Saturday morning, I carted boxes of books into my new bedroom as Pam Michaels and my mother walked around the house determining what the best layout for the furniture would be. My brother played video games in his room. A little past noon, the doorbell rang. It was Joey. “Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Better.” I was starting to actually believe in my words. “Thanks for, you know, being there for me. It meant a lot.”
Joey’s cheeks flushed a little. Joey was looking into my eyes so sincerely that it made me feel light-headed. “Of course. Anytime.” Then he added, “Hey, um, do you want to go get lunch on Larchmont or something?”
We started off down the block walking side by side, our steps almost in rhythm. Then, slowly and gently, Joey reached out his hand to meet mine. Our fingers interlaced, and a shiver traveled up my arm. Joey turned to look at me, and I looked right back at him. I smiled, then turned back to look at the sidewalk in front of me.
Back in Hancock Park, it was almost as if I had come full circle—except not quite. Because in the past four months, a lot had changed. I had changed, and I would continue to change. Maybe my time in high school wouldn’t be the best years of my life. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Because if you peak at sixteen, then really, what was there to look forward to in life?
I was ready to stop looking backward, ready to stop focusing on what could have been, and ready to start focusing on what still could be.
It was my life, and I was going to own it.
About the Author
ISABEL KAPLAN was born in Los Angeles, where she attended Marlborough School. She is now a student at Harvard University. This is her first novel.
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Credits
Jacket photo © Clay Patrick McBride
Jacket design by Jennifer Heuer
Copyright
HANCOCK PARK. Copyright © 2009 by Isabel Kaplan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-191894-0
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