All That Glitters

by J. Minter

  “Hey, Mattie,” I said, hanging the strap of my bag over the back of my seat.

  “Flan!” she called with her usual enthusiasm. “I heard you were coming back to private school, but now that you’re here, I can’t believe it. This place needs you!” Her barking laugh rang out across the room.

  I chuckled with Mattie to be nice, even though nothing funny had happened. I was also looking around the room to get a feel for the other girls in the class. They didn’t look too scary. Actually, they looked pretty normal, just trying to squeeze in one last text message or nail file session before the bell rang. I’d been hoping Olivia might be in my class. We’d had English together back at Miss Mallards, and our notebooks had been filled with more games of Would You Rather than notes on Edgar Allan Poe.

  “So, what’s the scoop on freshman English here?” I asked Mattie.

  “Oh, it’s a breeze,” she said, waving her hand at me. “You’ll totally be fine. You like Shakespeare, right?”

  “Uh, sure. ‘To be or not to be,’” I stammered, trying to remember what little I knew of Shakespeare from Miss Mallards, although I didn’t actually know where I’d pulled the reference from.

  “Oh, we’ve already done Hamlet. I think we’re picking up with The Merchant of Venice, even though Romeo and Juliet is totally my favorite. I’m such a romantic,” she said, breaking out the bark-laugh for the second time. “Speaking of romance, are you going to go to the pizza party tonight with the Dalton boys?”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to figure out how to field this one. I hadn’t had time to hear Camille’s list of social suicide no-no’s, but if I had, I would guess that The Barker would be near the top. But as I looked at Mattie’s big grin and eagerly clasped hands, I found myself nodding. Social demarcations be damned, right? I hadn’t come back to Thoney to be snotty, and I could use all the friends I could get. “Sure,” I found myself telling Mattie, “I’ll be there. You should head over for some pizza, too.”

  “Oh, I really wish I could, but I have to dog-sit for my neighbor’s cockapoo tonight,” Mattie said, laughing so loudly that I could feel the rest of my new classmates staring at us both.

  And of course, at that moment, Kennedy paraded in with Willa in a cloud of Betsey Johnson perfume. Both of them set down their corresponding Marc Jacobs leather satchels, then turned toward Mattie and me with correspondingly raised eyebrows. Somehow the room seemed quieter now that they were there, and each of my classmates was giving Kennedy and Willa the type of once-over glance that I usually reserved for models at Fashion Week.

  If Kennedy noticed the attention, she didn’t show it. Instead, she merely cocked her head at me and said, “So great that you two BFFs picked up right where you left off. Care to share what’s so hilarious?” Her voice was sickeningly fake. “Or is it an inside joke that only you two could possibly find funny?”

  But before I even had a chance to flub my second Kennedy interaction of the day, in walked a pencil-thin man in a tweed coat and boxy glasses who I guessed was Mr. Zimmer.

  “Welcome back, everyone,” he said, taking a sip of coffee before leaning against his desk. “And welcome especially to our new student”—he looked down at his notes—“Flan Flood.” When he looked up he scanned the room, saw my unfamiliar face, and gave me a warm smile. “Joining us from Stuyvesant, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, blushing for no reason and feeling the whole room’s eyes on me.

  “And what were you studying at Stuyvesant?” he asked.

  My brain went totally dead as I tried to remember a single thing I’d done to get that A on my English final last semester.

  “Um,” I said, fiddling with the buttons on my blazer. “We just read Animal Farm?” I felt my voice rise up in a question, and I wanted to say something else to not sound like such a nervous mute. “I really liked the way George Orwell satirizes communism.”

  Mr. Zimmer nodded. “I do, too. You’ll find, however, that the curriculum at Thoney is not quite as progressive as your old school’s. We’re still stuck in the sixteenth century with Shakespeare. We shall begin this semester with The Merchant of Venice. Everyone open the paperback you picked up as you came into class.”

  I looked around at the other twenty girls in the class, who all seemed to have the book in their hands. Very quietly, I got up and went to the front door to get the book while everyone watched.

  English had always been one of my favorite subjects, and even if the Thoney curriculum was going to be a total switching of gears from what we’d been reading at Stuy, I figured I could handle it. After all, Mattie had said the class was a breeze, right? So why was I getting so flustered?

  “Who would like to read the beginning of Act One?” Mr. Zimmer asked.

  As one of the nail filing girls cleared her throat and began to read, I had to feel impressed by how assured she sounded plowing through the Shakespearean verse. But by the time I finally found where we were on the page, she was already reading the last line.

  “Thank you, Maya. Very nice,” Mr. Zimmer said. “Last semester, we discussed the purpose of an opening act, how to see it as an introduction that sets the proverbial stage for what’s to come in the rest of the play. With that in mind, how can we make sense of this particular passage?”

  Whoa. Mr. Zimmer might as well have been talking in Shakespearean English. I was slinking down in my seat and praying that he wouldn’t call on me when I realized, to my surprise and slight horror, that he wouldn’t have to call on me. Half the class had their hands raised to answer.

  Was I the only one who was lost?

  As Mattie and even Kennedy were called on to answer Mr. Zimmer’s questions, I realized:Yes, apparently I was the only one who didn’t know exactly what was going on. I mean, I knew the gist of The Merchant of Venice, but that was mostly because I’d seen SBB’s modern retelling, Loan Shark of Venice Beach. But all I’d heard for months was how hot her kissing scene with Penn DiMontagne had been, and since none of that was happening in Act One of the actual play, I had very little to add to the discussion going on in class.

  Mr. Zimmer continued, “Now, who can tell me about the agreement that Antonio and Bassanio come to by the end of Act One? Flan, would you like to weigh in?”

  I gulped. It sounded like an easy question. But with the whole class’s focus suddenly shifted toward me, all I could think about was SBB lamenting how she and Penn never could quite recapture their passion off-screen.

  I tried to block the image of the two of them making out in that one scene on the boardwalk so I could look at Mr. Zimmer and respond like a capable, intelligent girl. But I just kept seeing the way Penn brushed his blond hair out of his eyes before he leaned in to kiss SBB. After thirty painful seconds of dawdling, the only answer I could come up with was a very timid “Um …”

  “Hmm,” Mr. Zimmer said. “Someone else, then?”

  Without missing a beat, Willa jumped in. “‘Try what my credit can in Venice do,’” she recited from memory. “He wants to use Antonio’s street cred for collateral. It’s right here on the page,” she said, shrugging carelessly in her baby blue cashmere shrug.

  “Mmm. Yes, excellent, Willa,” Mr. Zimmer said.

  Street cred? Excellent? I wondered whether everyone in this school was drinking the “Bow down to Kennedy and Willa” Kool-Aid. Still, watching Willa blow off the question as utterly obvious, I felt like the class über-dunce. Why had I totally choked?

  I dropped my eyes into my book and wished I were anywhere but here. I ran my eyes over the words another time, but the language was still swimming around in my head. All I wanted was to catch one phrase that made any sort of sense.

  Just then, Mattie slyly dropped a folded sheet of paper on my desk.

  TO FLAN, it said on the outside.

  What was this? A pity note from The Barker? That would be a great way to start out the semester. Surely, Camille would have a rule against accepting this. But when I opened up the paper, I saw that the note wasn’t from
Mattie at all—what was written on the inside was far worse than anything Mattie could have thought of. But here, finally, were words I actually understood.

  YOUR PERSONAL ACT ONE IS LOOKING A LITTLE TRAGIC. PERHAPS IT’S TIME TO GET THEE TO A TUTOR.—XOXO, KENNEDY

  Chapter 5

  Signing up for Battle

  ACT I, SCENE II (MODERN ENGLISH VERSION) Unsuspecting Manhattanite returns to private school in attempt to make life easier for herself. Finds struggle and uncertainty waiting on the front steps. Seeks trouble unintentionally. Seeks tutor. Seeks happy ending to epic first day.

  SETTING

  Student Activities Fair, Thoney

  Gymnasium, Upper East Side Manhattan

  Enter Peppy Student Senate kid with high ponytail and argyle shift dress.

  PEPPY STUDENT SENATE KID

  Hi! Welcome to the spring semester Student Activities Fair! Here’s your packet! And your Thoney ballpoint pen! And your window sticker—cute, huh? Please proceed in a counterclockwise motion around the gymnasium, and feel free to sign up for as many activities as you like!

  HEROINE

  Oh. Um. Thanks. Thank you.

  Counterclockwise, did you say? Okay.

  Somehow I had made it through the first day of school, rebounding slightly after the embarrassment of this morning’s Shakespearean stumping. But what I saw when I entered the Thoney gymnasium at three forty-five on Monday afternoon was a whole different kind of overwhelming.

  The place was insane. Sure, it showed some signs of being a high school gym—there were basketball hoops, free throw lines painted on the floor, retractable bleachers, and bad fluorescent lighting high up in the rafters. But if there’s one thing the Upper East Side knows how to do, it’s upgrade.

  The overhead lights had been shut off, and the room was lit by a hundred soft-white antique street lamps. Individual wooden booths had been wheeled in and set up in concentric circles around the room. Each was decorated by a painted clapboard sign designating which club, team, or organization it represented. Clusters of girls with megawatt smiles and VOSS bottles in their hands beckoned those milling about to approach their booths and sign up. Bite-sized burgers and veggie sushi rolls went around on silver trays. And a deep gold carpet had been rolled around the booths so that it felt like you were following a yellow brick road toward your extracurricular dream destination.

  I guess the sight of it all was sort of thrilling. I could totally dig the man in the beret flipping crepes at the French Club booth. And the Fashion Club’s minirunway was attracting more open-mouth stares than the Saks windows at Christmastime. But as I started walking—counterclockwise—around the room, the conversations I overheard brought me back to reality. Sure, the execution of this fair was award-worthy, but underneath the soft lighting, I was starting to see that this whole event was yet another Type-A UES spectacle.

  “It just won’t work,” I heard a brunette in a red poncho and tortoiseshell Salt Works glasses say as she fiddled with her Trio. “I already have Key Club on Monday afternoons, riding on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and drama practice on Wednesdays. My masseuse asked me not to commit myself on Fridays so I can have some detox time. You’re going to have to switch the Latin Club to a power lunch or I don’t see how I’ll be able to fit it in.”

  At the next booth, a Korean girl in a tailored suit and funky jewelry was facing her almost identically clad friend with crossed arms.

  “No, I already told you. I was secretary last year. If I don’t get at least treasurer this year, I’ll never be president by senior year.”

  I kept walking, past a slew of other frantic voices looking for the Pilates club, the technology club, the Susan G. Komen breast cancer philanthropy club. Everyone in the room seemed to be in a hurry to pump up their college résumés. Coming to a high school like Thoney was a boost to any application, but it seemed like the student body here was still pretty cutthroat about securing a place at Harvard or Yale after graduation.

  But all I wanted right now was to find my friends, sign up for a low-maintenance club or two, and debrief on how intense this place was while simultaneously gearing up for the Dalton pizza party later this afternoon. Where was Camille? The dotted line on the map she’d drawn me this morning only extended as far as the entrance to the gym. With the number of girls-on-a-mission in this room, I was beginning to worry that I might never find her.

  I started to push my way through Roberto Cavalli tote bags and Halogen down jackets with as much vigor as the other girls when suddenly, I hit a roadblock. A very tall, very muscular, and somewhat scary-looking roadblock.

  “Whoops,” I said, taking a step away from the girl I’d just run into. “I’m sorry, I was just—”

  “You’re new,” said the girl. She was sporting a gray zip-up hoodie with Thoney spelled out across the chest. Her long dirty blond hair was pulled back and, despite her intimidating frame, she had great cheekbones and friendly hazel eyes.

  “Um, yeah,” I stuttered. I still wasn’t used to the fact that almost everyone else in this school knew each other—and that I stuck out because I didn’t. “I’m Flan Flood,” I said. “I just transferred from Stuyvesant.”

  “Cool,” she said, nodding and flipping her ponytail over her shoulders. “Stuy has a killer field hockey team. Did you play?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, thinking that the field hockey girls at Stuy were all super intense and sporty and looked, well, a lot like this girl. Not that it was a bad thing. Suddenly feeling judgmental and guilty, I said, “But I used to see them practicing a lot. They looked pretty good.”

  The girl stuck out her hand. “I’m Ramsey Saybrook, captain of our freshman team. Have you ever thought about playing? We’re not as hard-core as the Stuy team, but we could really use some height,” she said, pointing at my frame as she talked.

  I’d never thought about joining a sports team before, but I had spent many summers in the Hamptons playing roller hockey with Patch and his friends—once I gave Arno an accidental black eye when things got heated during a game-winning goal.

  And hey, why not give field hockey a try? New year, new school, new activities, right? Ramsey seemed cool enough, and she did mention the team being more low-key than the one at Stuy, which was definitely a good sign.

  I shrugged and nodded my head. “Sure,” I said. “I’d love to sign up.”

  “Killer,” Ramsey said, sounding genuinely enthused. “Let me get your e-mail, and I’ll let you know about practice and everything.”

  After saying goodbye to Ramsey, I felt like I’d accomplished my extracurricular goals for the day. Now I just wanted to find Camille and the girls and maybe snag a crepe.

  “Flan! Yoo-hoo—over here,” I spun around in the direction of the voice and grinned when I saw Morgan waving me over. Camille and Co. were clustered—amazingly—right in front of the crepe stand. I so loved these girls.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, wading through the booths to get to them.

  “How was your first day?” Camille asked. “Oh my God, have a bite of this banana Nutella thing—it’s to die for.”

  I nibbled a bite from her crepe and said, “I guess you could say I’m still getting adjusted.”

  “Oh, but it’s only your first day,” Amory said, tugging on the brim of her black newsboy hat.

  “And we’re all still in winter break mode, so everyone’s a little out of it.” Morgan nodded as she fast-forwarded through a song on her iPod.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll settle in fast. And we’re here to help,” Harper agreed.

  Camille looped her arm through mine. “Did you guys sign up for any clubs yet? I just can’t decide between yoga and Pilates. I mean, really, what’s the difference?”

  “I put in my time at the debate booth and managed to argue a few new people into joining the team,” Harper said, tugging on her heather gray vest and looking pleased.

  “Good work, Har,” Amory said, shifting her Prada knapsack to the other shoulder. “I foun
d out that auditions for the spring play are next week. We’re doing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” She beamed. “And I’m dying to play Maggie.”

  “I talked to Ms. Bridge about the radio station,” Morgan added. “They’re going to let me DJ on the station’s Web site Thursday nights.”

  “I signed up for field hockey,” I said, glad to be able to contribute to the conversation with my very involved friends. “I’ve never played before, but I think it’ll be fun—”

  “You did not!” Camille said, wide-eyed. “Didn’t you get my e-mail?”

  I shook my head. The day had been so crazy, I hadn’t even had a chance to look at my iPhone.

  “What’s the big deal?” I asked. “I met this girl Ramsey, and she seemed really nice…. Kinda scary, but enthusiastic, and she said they needed more tall girls.”

  “Flan, Flan, Flan,” Camille said as a teeny brunette munching on a raspberry crepe skirted around us.

  “Jeez,” I said, watching all the other girls shake their heads. “Did I already break another cardinal Thoney rule?”

  “It’s just that, um, Kennedy and Willa are on the team,” Camille said. “And they are fierce.”

  Morgan nodded. “I heard Willa’s father made her sign up so she could take out her ‘aggression’ in a productive way.”

  Suddenly there was a field hockey ball–sized lump lodged in my throat.

  “Well, I can’t back out now,” I said, looking at Morgan’s, Amory’s, and Camille’s worried eyes. “I’ve already signed up, and Ramsey said the first practice is tomorrow.”

  “Do you really want to play?” Camille asked. She bit her lip and cocked her head to the side, studying my face.

  “Sort of,” I said. “I mean, I did. And I don’t want to let Kennedy or Willa stop me just because they’re being so vicious, but …”

  Camille looked at me in her Camille way.

  My lips curved into a smile. “Are you having one of your ideas?”

  “You could call it that,” she said, smiling. “Would it make you feel any better to have a field hockey sidekick? I think I’ve still got my old stick from summer camp in our storage unit somewhere.”