“Yeah, all over his crotch.” Laura’s hands were still shaking as she took the wheel again, shifting back into gear and lurching ahead in the line, finally able to get around the drop-off lane and enter the senior lot.
“You didn’t?” Ginger asked, and started to giggle when Laura nodded. Maybe someday, when she looked back on this moment, she’d laugh about it, too. But not now. All she felt was burned.
* * *
It is said that nothing gives a brighter glow to the complexion, or makes the eyes of a beautiful woman sparkle so intensely, as triumph over another.
—Lady Caroline Lamb
Pick on me and that’s between us. Pick on my friends and you’ve got a war on your hands.
—Mac Mackenzie
* * *
Fourteen
“Mah-chelle! Didn’t you hear Alex honk his horn? You’d better dance fast, sister, or you’re gonna be late!”
Mac ignored Honey’s shrill cries, as, yes, she’d heard the horn and was moving as fast as she could. Was it her fault her alarm clock had decided to flake out on this particular morning? If Honey hadn’t banged on her door twenty minutes ago, she would’ve slept through half the day. Not that she was going to thank her daddy’s trophy wife for doing her any favors.
Mac’s hair was still damp, the dark waves just beginning to curl. She’d barely had time to swipe her lips with gloss and brush a quick coat of mascara on her lashes so her eyes didn’t disappear entirely behind her black-framed glasses. There was a strange crease down the back of her white oxford, which she hadn’t noticed before; and it seemed like her plaid skirt was shorter than last year’s model. It looked like something Burberry had left over from Christina Aguilera’s Stripped tour. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that small, but Mac felt like her hem was higher than it should be, leaving at least an inch of her knobby knees exposed.
She discarded a pair of black tights with a run up the back and opted for white socks instead, quickly pulling on a fresh pair, and then slipped her feet into her beat-up black Coach loafers.
Ta-da. She was ready to go.
“Mah-chelle Mackenzie! Get your butt on down here now!”
Mac grabbed her black REI knapsack and ran down the stairs as fast as she could.
The stepmonster was standing at the bottom in her fuzzy robe and slippers, hair in rollers as big as orange-juice cans.
“Did my dad leave already?” Mac asked her, and Honey gave an irritated nod.
“He left a good twenty minutes ago. You’re the one runnin’ behind. You didn’t have time to eat, did you? Take these,” she said, and shoved a foil-wrapped pair of Pop-Tarts into Mac’s hand.
Ah, nothing like a home-cooked breakfast to start the first day of my senior year at PFP off just right, Mac thought. “Thanks,” she murmured before stuffing the cold toaster pastries into her bag.
“So you didn’t see the morning paper either, did you?” Honey asked, to which Mac was tempted to reply, Duh. She’d only just come downstairs, after all. Honey’s pink-nailed hand tapped a folded copy of the Chronicle, which she pulled out from under her arm. “Looks like Miss Ginger’s been thrown into the fishbowl—”
“Yeah, I saw it on TV,” Mac said sharply, cutting off further comment. Mac didn’t want to discuss Ginger, particularly when she was still upset that the calls and texts and e-mails she’d sent to Ginger after watching the ten o’clock news had gone unanswered. Her BFF probably thought she’d get bawled out for being duped by that jerk Javier, and she was probably right. It was hard for Mac to see her friends get hurt by guy after guy after guy, and Mac was no good at biting her tongue.
With a hasty goodbye, she flung herself out the door and practically ran into Honey’s BMW, which was parked right in front. She skirted it and hurried over to the gray Saab that sat farther up the driveway, its motor humming. Mac opened the car door, said, “Hi, Alex,” and then tossed her knapsack in back before she got in.
“Mornin’, sunshine,” he said, and glanced at her with his hair falling onto his brow.
She almost did a double take, even though she’d seen him yesterday afternoon. She thought again how much less nerdlike he looked with the cool thin-rimmed specs, the longer hair, and the more confident way he held his newly six-foot-tall self. The way he squared his slim shoulders even made him look taller sitting behind the wheel. The only thing remotely geeky about his appearance now was his Caldwell uniform of white shirt, brown leather belt, and tan pants.
“You ready for it to start all over again?” he said.
She knew what he meant by “it”: first-day angst, empty notebooks with so many lines to fill, new teachers to get used to, new and old faces to see, names to recall, and everyone dividing up into little cliques.
Her smart-ass answer: “Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.”
“I didn’t think so.” She sighed and rested her head against the window as they pulled out of their street onto Knipp and veered left toward Taylorcrest.
Mac wondered how Ginger was doing and was anxious to see her, even if her friend didn’t want to talk about what happened yet. Mac made herself promise not to deliver any “I told you so’s” when that was the last thing Ging probably wanted to hear.
“Do y’all have an assembly this morning?” Alex asked, breaking into her thoughts. “You think they could come up with something new instead of always doing the same old thing.”
“Yeah, we’ve got one before first period,” she told him, and glanced at the car’s clock, knowing she’d have to scramble to get into the auditorium on time. Upper levels had their assembly before the middle grades.
“Too bad I can’t be there to keep you awake, ’cuz I could do this,” he said, and reached over to pinch the exposed skin of her thigh.
“Alex!” Mac blushed and hastily tugged the hem of her skirt closer to her knees.
“Sorry.” He pulled his hand away and set it on the steering wheel, focusing on the road ahead and simply driving.
Within minutes, they were mere blocks away from the PFP campus, but the traffic had already slowed to a crawl. Mac let her gaze wander across the lines of high wooden fences that hid gracious houses and yards beyond the grass-lined ditches on either side of the road. The second Alex was able to pull the car into the crowded circle in front of Pine Forest’s main building, Mac hopped out, retrieved her knapsack, slipped one arm through it, and hoisted it on her back.
“Thanks for the ride,” she leaned in to tell him. “But I’ve gotta run.”
“See you later,” he said, adding, “You need a ride home? Unless you’d rather have one of your friends take you—”
But Mac had already slammed the door.
Cars and people swarmed the tiny campus, and she made her way through the throngs as best she could, ultimately getting sucked into the river of PFP zombies in white shirts and plaid skirts who flowed in a solid stream toward the doors.
Hitching her bag higher up on her shoulder, Mac headed as fast as she could up the stone steps and into the nearest of the neat brick buildings with their neoclassical façades and path-crossed courtyard meant to conjure up images of New England and the Ivy League. Trustees had spent a lot of money making sure real ivy grew up the red brick walls, though Mac had heard it was Algerian ivy, not English. Even the school’s motto was intended to suggest deep roots and lofty aspirations: Via, Veritas, Vita.
“The Way, the Truth, the Life,” strictly translated, though students through the years had corrupted the message, substituting “The Lays, the Booze, the Lies.”
The “lays” and the “lies” seemed especially appropriate at the moment, Mac decided as she hurried through the hallways toward the auditorium, where the headmistress would deliver her annual “Welcome back, Pine Foresters” monologue, or so decreed the letter sent around to all parents and students several weeks earlier.
Ho-hum. Mac just hoped she could stay awake through the always-endless fifteen minutes.
When she flung op
en the doors to the foyer of the auditorium, the noise of a hundred and twenty voices buzzing in conversation stopped her dead in her tracks, as did the sea of heads and white shoulders yawning before her.
How am I supposed to find Laura and Ginger in this mob?
Forget about it.
Mac knew she’d have to wait until she got inside and found the seats for the senior class.
“Hey, Mac,” said a voice from behind her. “How’d your summer go?”
It was the new girl who’d started in the middle of last spring’s session: Cindy Chow, a transfer from St. John’s across town. With her shiny black hair and striking Asian features, she definitely stood out from the usual cast of WASPs at PFP. She was both pretty and skinny enough to rate a membership in the Bimbo Cartel, but she seemed to like her independence. Mac had heard she rode a Harley, which wasn’t exactly de rigueur in the Villages and probably defied a noise ordinance or two.
“I’m Cindy,” she reminded Mac.
“I remember,” Mac told her, and Cindy smiled, revealing tiny rows of straight white teeth.
“Hey, mind if I tag along?” Cindy asked. “I think I know where I’m going, but I’m still a little fuzzy on everything.”
“Yeah, sure, follow me,” Mac said as they merged into the crush of plaid-skirted, button-downed bodies.
A sign on the doors reminded them to PLEASE TURN OFF ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES BEFORE ENTERING, so Mac shut off her cell and stuck it back in her bag.
“Have you seen Laura Bell or Ginger Fore?” she shot over her shoulder as Cindy followed her down the left-hand aisle.
“I don’t think so, no. Oh, wow, I hope Ginger’s okay. I saw the thing on the news about the tree protest. Did she get arrested for real?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mac said, wishing she’d gleaned what she knew first-hand instead of from the TV. And she would have if Ginger hadn’t been avoiding her. Well, her friend would have to face her soon enough, right?
“Well, I admire her guts,” Cindy commented. “It can’t have been easy chaining herself to a tree that her father’s company planned to squash.”
Mac felt yet another stab of guilt for not being more supportive when Ginger had told her what she was up to. “No, it couldn’t have been easy at all.”
When she was finally far enough down the aisle to make out faces instead of just hair, she skimmed the rows of seniors to find Jo Lynn Bidwell and her toadies, Camie and Trisha, whispering and looking particularly smug. The Bimbo Cartel must’ve sensed Mac staring, and stopped whispering long enough to smile disingenuously at her.
Mac moved on to the next row, scanning another dozen seniors until she spotted Laura’s pale gold hair and realized her friend had settled into the seat farthest away from Jo Lynn and her cohorts.
Though Mac willed her BFF to glance in her direction, she didn’t. Laura kept her gaze trained on the stage, her back ramrod straight. Is something wrong? Mac wondered.
“Hey,” Cindy said, and nudged her gently from behind.
“They’re about to start.”
Mac looked toward the stage just in time to catch their headmistress, Dr. Esther Percy, striding toward the podium. A typically wrinkled gray suit enveloped her heavyset body, its charcoal hue matching her short cap of gray hair almost precisely. Even from where she stood, Mac could make out the lines carved into Dr. Percy’s face.
Cindy whispered, “The Seal. That’s her nickname, right?”
Mac had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. “No, she’s the Walrus,” Mac corrected.
“Ah, yeah, I see the resemblance,” Cindy whispered back just as Dr. Percy tapped the microphone with a finger, sending a buzzing noise through the auditorium.
“Take your seats, please, girls,” the headmistress said, clapping her hands, as if that would make everyone move faster.
“And don’t forget to turn off your cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, and whatever other new gadgets you’ve collected over the summer.”
Mac slipped off her knapsack and set it at her feet before settling into an empty seat beside a brawny girl from the tennis team, with Cindy sliding in behind her. If she leaned forward and looked right, she could glimpse Laura, but she saw no sign of Ginger.
Dr. Percy stood at the podium onstage, holding on with both hands, and Mac found herself pondering the number of chins that wobbled beneath the headmistress’s Jell-O–like jaw. Five, she counted.
Finally the noise in the auditorium grew more muffled as everyone finished filing in and a couple of teachers shut the doors.
“Good morning, students,” Dr. Percy trilled with a grin, displaying an impressive set of horse-sized teeth. She actually looked pleased that school had resumed and hundreds of pampered girls were in her charge again. “There’s a special announcement affecting the whole school, so we’ll hear about that first, before the a cappella choir performs our school song. Afterward, I’ll have a few more announcements before I send you off to your homerooms. So let’s get started”—she paused, turning stage right and gesturing—“come forward, Ms. Fore, and don’t be shy.”
From behind the folds of green curtains walked Ginger, her red hair tamed from its usual spikes, her white oxford shirt crisp, her skirt hovering at her kneecaps and no higher, wearing relatively staid stack-heeled Mary Janes with preppy socks. She seemed a bit pale, but other than that she appeared the model Pine Forest preppie, all shiny and scrubbed.
Mac nearly fell out of her seat.
What is Ginger doing up there? And why does she look like a Stepford schoolgirl instead of like herself?
“Ginger Fore, one of the more, er, socially conscious girls in our new senior class, has a few words she’d like to share with everyone,” Dr. Percy proclaimed before turning over the mike, which Ginger reluctantly approached.
“Um, hello, everyone,” she began, a bit shaky at first. “As some of y’all might know, I was involved in a protest this past weekend to save the Sam Houston Oak in Bunker Hill Park, only it kind of ended badly”—there was a smattering of laughter, though Ginger seemed unfazed—“and I’m truly sorry if my actions embarrassed the school or my family. I thought I was doing something good, and still believe that I was.”
Oh, man, it’s no wonder Ginger was too embarrassed to talk to me, Mac realized. It was obviously too humiliating to explain that she’d been forced to make a public apology at the assembly.
“At the time, I didn’t know it was my father who’d donated the land to Pine Forest so the school could enlarge the parking lot, but I learned that fast enough last night.” Ginger hesitated, and Mac could see the slip of paper tremble in her hands. “I discussed the whole thing with my dad in private, and he spoke with the school’s trustees, who’ve agreed to spare the tree and build the parking lot around it. My father’s company will also match the funds the school has been raising to build a new library, and they’ll donate new computers for the student study area.” Ginger glanced aside at Dr. Percy, who gave a hearty nod. “I guess that’s it, then. Thank you for listening, and, um, welcome back.”
The murmur of voices rippled through the audience, and several people applauded, though most seemed unsure of how exactly to respond.
The headmistress resumed her place at the microphone and thanked Ginger, who was already halfway across the stage.
“Loser,” Mac heard someone cough before Ginger disappeared behind the folds of green curtain. She glanced over her shoulder to find Jo Lynn, Camie, and Trisha smirking.
“Now will everyone please rise and join the choir in singing the PFP spirit song,” Dr. Percy said as the podium became engulfed in a semicircle of a dozen girls in white shirts and plaid skirts.
Mac rose to her feet, and the auditorium filled with a noise akin to an elephant stampede as the rest of the upper grades did too.
After a sadly off-key rendition of “All Hail, Pine Forest Prep” and a smattering of first-day announcements, the room quickly emptied. Mac grabbed her bag from her feet and pushed h
er way past Cindy Chow, muttering a hasty “Excuse me.” Then she took off, hurrying up the aisle, her knapsack slapping against her back as she went after Laura, who’d seemingly disappeared into thin air.
Mac ended up finally catching Laura at her locker. “Hey, Laura!” she said, slightly out of breath, as she leaned in front of her own locker, just a few doors down. “I feel like you and Ging are both avoiding me—”
“Sorry, Mac,” Laura said quietly, head down as she worked the combination on her lock. “I’ve got a lot on my mind, and Ginger’s just afraid you’ll get on her case.”
“I know, I know.” Mac thought her friend looked on the pale side, like maybe she was coming down with something. Or maybe she was just holding something in, like whatever had happened during her disappearing act from the sleepover on Saturday night. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Mac didn’t believe her for a minute. She stood and watched Laura jerk open her locker door, ready to shove her book bag in. Then Laura hesitated and reached inside for something that looked like a flyer. As she read it, she turned even paler before she crumpled up the sheet and shoved it back in, shutting her locker with a bang.
“Shit,” Laura whispered, leaning her head against the metal. “It can’t believe this is happening.”
“What’s happening?” Mac felt as out of the loop as she ever had. Why was she always the last to know everything?
“What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk now. I’ll tell you at lunch,” Laura whispered, before grabbing Mac’s arm and saying, “Let’s go off campus, just you, me, and Ginger. No more secrets, okay?”
“Okay,” Mac said as Laura nodded and glanced nervously around them before spotting something over Mac’s shoulder that made her freeze. Abruptly, she took off the other way.
What the hell was that about?
Did it have to do with Avery? He was so totally a Ratfink.
“Oh, wow, I’m so sorry.”
Someone bumped into Mac’s arm, and she looked up to find herself face to face with Jo Lynn Bidwell.
The Debs Page 14