Rival

by Sara Bennett Wealer

  “It won’t be weird, it’ll be great.” Chloe handed me what she’d written. Meet new friends Friday night at our JUNIOR GIRLS SLUMBER PARTY!!! “I’ll make invites tonight,” she said. “Quit frowning, Brooke, this is going to be fun.”

  The invitations, which Chloe printed on Pepto-pink paper, made it obvious what the slumber party was really for. Especially when you looked at who got one and who didn’t. Chloe started with our basic group of friends. Then she filled out the guest list with girls she’d seen in the hallways and in class. The main criterion for getting invited was “looks cool.”

  “What does that mean?” I said as I went over the guest list with her in the commons after school.

  “You know.” She waved at a couple of girls walking past like they were animals at the zoo. “Pretty. Nice clothes. Like that girl from your choir—what’s her name? Kassie?”

  “Kathryn.”

  “Right. Like her.”

  “Kathryn doesn’t have nice clothes.” Kathryn actually had great clothes. But they weren’t brand names. A lot of her stuff looked handmade—skirts sewn out of vintage fabric, hand-knit sweaters. You couldn’t find stuff like that at the mall.

  “She’s got inner style,” Chloe told me. “It’s a wonder the music freaks haven’t killed it yet.”

  Chloe sat down on a bench and started rummaging through her purse.

  “I’m a music freak,” I told her.

  “No, you’re not.” She pulled a big purple pen out of her bag and started adding names to the list. “You’re superinvolved.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I bent over and took her notebook away so she’d have to look me in the eye. Chloe knew how much music meant to me.

  She sighed and tossed her razored red hair. “You’re one of those people that does it all. You have to be a little bit into everything. If you weren’t you’d only be a little bit popular.”

  “But I’m not a little bit into music,” I said. “That’s what I do.”

  “Well, thank God you do other things, too.” She grabbed the notebook and went back to her list.

  The original plan was for us to have the party at Chloe’s house. Her stepdad, who was in the middle of running for state representative, had just put in a new hot tub, and she was dying to show it off. But then he invited some big campaign donors over for dinner. Chloe’s mom waited until that morning to tell her our party would be too disruptive, and, by the way, could she please make herself scarce for the rest of the evening?

  I thought it sounded like a great excuse to cancel. But Chloe wanted to have the party more than ever, so we went to plan B. We had it at my place. She had Dina Mendoza text out the new plans, conveniently neglecting to mention that my mom would be working late. Not that it really mattered. Even when Mom was around, she always pretty much let the twins do whatever they wanted, and that extended to me, too.

  “Easy on the onions!” Chloe shouted. She swooped down on Angela Van Zant, who was making chili at the stove in my kitchen. “Seriously, An! We don’t want our breath to reek while we’re talking to people.”

  “Sorry,” said Angela, and she started scooping onions out of the pot.

  I hoisted myself onto the counter and stole a carrot from the veggie tray. “Why don’t you make it yourself, Rachael Ray? Then you can put in whatever you want.”

  “Because it’s inefficient,” said Chloe. She took the spoon from Angela and removed all but the last few pieces of onion. “Everybody has a job to do, and if everybody would do it right, then we wouldn’t be running late like we are right now.”

  I looked around and, sure enough, Chloe had taken a bunch of our friends and put them to work. We’d already dragged the flat screen up to my room, plus the Wii. Now we were making refreshments. Jenna Rogers and Kiersten Coons were in charge of cutting up veggies while Madison Verbeck spooned cookie dough onto baking sheets. Violet Alexander was mixing up guacamole, and…

  “Where’s Dina?” I asked just as Bill and Brice banged into the kitchen. College hadn’t started for them yet, so they’d stayed in Lake Champion an extra week to party. Their arms were loaded with bags from the liquor store that never checks IDs.

  As soon as they saw the twins, everybody dropped what they were doing and tried to look cool.

  “So, Bill!” chirped Chloe. “Are you two going to be around tonight? We could totally use your input on the new girls.”

  “That’s a negative.” Bill leaned over and snagged a celery stick. “We’re headed to The Rocks.”

  “But we didn’t forget you,” added Brice. He set one of his bags down on the table. “There’s beer, Boone’s, and peach schnapps in there. Should be enough to at least get you started.”

  Everybody totally forgot their cool as they swarmed around the table. If it’s possible to fit fourteen arms into one paper bag, we managed to do it. I opened a bottle of beer and took a long drink.

  “Hey, Brooke.” Brice stopped on his way out the door. “How’s your ass?”

  “Yeah!” chimed in Bill before they both disappeared down the hall. “Watch your butt tonight, okay, Baby B?”

  Everybody cracked up. I poured the rest of my beer down the sink. At the end-of-summer party, I’d thought it was hilarious to let Dan Hummel chase me around and try to whip my bare ass with some old Mardi Gras beads we’d found in my kitchen junk drawer. The next morning, though, when my butt cheeks were covered in welts and people were posting photos on Facebook, it didn’t seem funny at all. Plus, I had a hazy memory of running into the street and almost getting hit by a car. All because I was sloppy, stupid drunk.

  I tossed my bottle into the recycle bin, but if anybody noticed me wasting perfectly good beer they didn’t say anything. That’s because Dina had just walked into the room.

  “Dina!” shouted Chloe. “Where are the DVDs? Didn’t you get them?”

  “No.” Dina’s voice was small and sad. She slumped into a kitchen chair.

  “Hey!” I went over and knelt down next to her. “What happened?”

  “I went to Videoworld.”

  “And?” Videoworld was a dump, but not bad enough for a visit there to make someone look borderline suicidal. Dina glanced around to see if the others were listening. They totally were, even though they pretended to be busy with their snack making.

  “He works at Videoworld,” she half-whispered to me. “I didn’t know he worked there.”

  “What? Oh no!” Chloe flew across the kitchen and flung her arms around Dina’s neck. “Are you saying you saw Noah?”

  Dina deflated even more. Her nose went red.

  “I didn’t know he worked there, either!” Chloe said. “If I’d known I would have told you to go to Blockbuster instead. It’s just that Videoworld has such a better selection….”

  I shot Chloe a look. Noah Brink was a senior. Dina’d practically gone all the way with him over the summer and he’d not only dumped her the next week, but he’d told everybody the gory details, too. Dina had been avoiding Noah like the plague ever since.

  “That must have been awful,” Chloe murmured. “Especially after you sent him that email with your class schedule so the two of you would never even have to be in the same hallway.”

  “You did?” said Madison from over by the oven.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” said Dina. She jumped up and hurried out of the room. I rolled my eyes. This was why you never told Chloe anything you didn’t want broadcast to the rest of the world in boldface caps.

  “Are you sure you didn’t know he worked there?” I asked. Chloe’d been mad at Dina for going to lunch with the cheerleaders and not inviting her along. And since Chloe always knew everything, it wasn’t hard to imagine she also knew where the guy who’d broken Dina’s heart worked.

  “I swear. I had no idea.” Chloe looked seriously sorry. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  “No, I’ll do it,” I said. With Chloe’s big mouth, she’d probably do more harm than good.

  “Hey,” I
called through the bathroom door. “Dina, it’s okay. We’ll do pay-per-view tonight. Or we don’t even need videos. We’re supposed to be meeting people, not watching movies, right?” I heard sniffling, then the faucet. Dina opened the door. Her eyes were still red, but she didn’t look so miserable. “Don’t think about it for the rest of the night,” I told her. “At least you’re here partying and he’s stuck at work.”

  She smiled, nodded, and let me lead her back into the kitchen. Jenna offered Dina her knife. “Wanna help cut the cauliflower?”

  Dina took the knife and started cutting neat little flowerettes while Violet smashed avocados, Madison kept an eye on her cookies, and Angela watched Chloe stir the chili.

  A few minutes later, the doorbell rang.

  “Okay. This is it!” said Chloe. She whipped off her apron. “Whoever you talk to, remember as much as you can so you can report back afterward!”

  Everybody showed up at once, it seemed like. All of a sudden my foyer was filled with girls we barely knew, all of them looking overdressed and nervous. Chloe raised her eyebrow at me as she took purses and overnight bags. She was enjoying it all way too much. I’d just started to get claustrophobic when I saw a brown ponytail through the crowd. It was Kathryn, getting cornered by Angela with Twenty Questions.

  I went over to rescue her.

  “Sorry about this,” I said as I helped stick a name tag onto her baby blue sweater. The sweater had a little pearl flower on the chest and looked like it came from a vintage shop. “Some people suck at remembering names.”

  “That’s okay.” Her eyes had little gold specks that flickered when she looked at me. “I could use some help, too.”

  “Listen up, please!” Chloe reappeared on the stairs, clinking a water glass with a knife. “Thanks so much for coming tonight, everyone. We’ve got dinner and refreshments in the kitchen, if you’d like to follow me in there.”

  We wound up standing around the table trying to ignore the rumbling in our stomachs. The chili on the stove smelled great, but nobody ate anything. I could see the rest of our friends sending ESP messages back and forth across the table: What do you think about this one? Is she good enough? Is she too good? Meanwhile, the new girls were talking over one another, trying too hard. Kathryn caught me watching and smiled.

  Finally, Chloe made everybody go up to my room. We sat in a circle on the floor and passed the schnapps around, the new girls trying not to make faces as they took huge gulps. The alcohol did what it was supposed to do. Before long, people were talking, laughing, and dancing around the room to old Madonna songs.

  I went downstairs to bring up the chili. When I got back, Kathryn was standing off by herself, flipping through my CDs.

  “Having fun?” I said. I hoped she’d say no so I could launch a rant about how fake the whole evening was. Something about Kathryn made me think she’d understand.

  “I’m having a great time,” she said. “Your friends are nice.”

  I put the chili down on my desk. Who was I kidding? Nobody was going to eat it.

  “Tell me you’re just saying that.”

  “Okay, I’m just saying that.” Kathryn laughed a quiet little laugh and held up a collection of French art songs. “Dawn Upshaw. I love her.”

  “Me too. My dad took me to see her in The Great Gatsby at the Met. It was amazing.”

  Kathryn’s eyes got wide. “You’ve been to the Met?”

  “Sure. Haven’t you?”

  “I’ve never been to New York. My mom and I were saving up to go over spring break but it’s so expensive. I listen to the operas every Saturday on the radio, though.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d thought I was the only person who did that.

  “So what did you think about the new Turandot?” I’d been dying to talk about it ever since the broadcast.

  “The new aria was great, but I couldn’t handle that it didn’t end with ‘Nessun Dorma.’ I guess I’m traditional that way.”

  “Totally.” I couldn’t stop staring at her. Nobody I knew knew anything about music, let alone a famous melody from a Puccini opera.

  Chloe had opened my closet and the other girls were trying on my clothes. Kathryn laughed as Violet flounced around in my old Halloween flapper boa. “Mr. Lieb, my voice teacher at Baldwin, says not listening to the Met is like wasting a free ticket.”

  “That’s what Hildy says, too. Lieb has his studio off the courtyard, right? Hildy Schultz is right down the hall.”

  Kathryn nodded and flipped some more. “You have a really good collection.”

  “Dawn Upshaw is my only soprano. I’m all about the mezzos and contraltos. Listen to this.”

  I took Madonna out of the CD player and popped in Bizet’s Carmen. Denyce Graves singing “Down Near the Walls of Sevilla” came blaring out of the speakers. Kathryn tipped her head and nodded along with the music. “Denyce Graves is awesome,” she said. “Did you see her in Aida in St. Paul?”

  “Hey!” Chloe’s voice came at us from across the room. “Turn that crap off!” She grabbed a couple of the new girls, whirled them around to face me, and announced, “Brooke here wants to be an opera singer when she grows up. Which is fine and all, as long as the rest of us don’t have to hear it.”

  Kathryn ejected the CD and handed it to me. “Maybe we can listen some other time,” she said.

  I took the CD and smiled a smile that said, See, Chloe? Somebody else cares about this stuff, too.

  “Fine,” I said. “But one of these days you’ll wish you were nicer to us music freaks.”

  Chloe waved a whatever hand as she turned away.

  “I highly doubt that,” she said.

  KATHRYN

  TWO HOURS. THAT’S HOW MUCH sleep I got the night of the slumber party, just two hours somewhere between four in the morning and ten a.m., when I stumbled back through my own front door, headachy, stale-mouthed, and utterly exhilarated. All of the years that I’d kept to myself with Matt, I’d convinced myself I wasn’t missing anything; Matt was comfortable and familiar, just like the best guy friends in the old movies we liked to watch, and that was good enough for me. I didn’t need girlfriends.

  After Brooke’s, however, I knew it wasn’t true. There was something special about being around other girls, a sense of belonging I’d never experienced before. And I did belong—at least that’s how it felt, because everybody seemed to be going out of their way to make it easy. Dina, Chloe, Angela…I could recall faces and voices, but I couldn’t remember all of their names. The only person who stood out as a clear, fully formed person was Brooke, mostly because I’d already noticed her in choir—it was impossible not to, with her deep voice and her easy confidence. Even when we were freshmen and technically supposed to be keeping our heads down and paying our dues, she talked and joked around with the upperclassmen like she’d known them forever.

  I soon found out that she probably had.

  “Do you know who her brothers are?” Matt asked me when I showed him the pink slumber party invitation. “Bill and Brice Dempsey.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t been completely under a rock for the past two years; I knew about the golden twins who’d practically ruled the school before graduating the previous spring.

  “People are still talking about them,” Matt told me. “And it looks like Brooke is going to inherit all of it.”

  I reread the invitation as if the words were a new language to learn. “So why does she want me, I wonder?”

  “Because you’re amazing.” He pulled a face of mock terror. “Oh noes! What if you become insanely popular? I’ll be so lonely!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, folding the pink paper and tucking it inside my aria book. “I somehow doubt I’ll be deemed worthy.”

  But the amazing thing about that night was the feeling that I was worthy. Riding home from Brooke’s party in my father’s car, I switched the radio from the morning news to a pop station, and as we rounded the corner onto our street a song came on that I had danc
ed to just hours earlier. Dad let me listen in the driveway until it was over, even though he needed to leave for a job fair.

  “Wish me luck, Sweetpea?” he’d said as I gathered up my things. He wore his business suit, which made me sad every time I saw it. At his last job he only ever wore short sleeves and khakis; nerdy, but I preferred nerdy to formal. Formal meant résumés and waiting for interview callbacks and Mom working longer hours, clipping coupons, and staying up all night worrying.

  “Good luck,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek.

  Inside the house, Mom sat on the living room couch with her coffee and her morning crossword puzzle spread out across her lap.

  “There you are!” she said. “I didn’t know when to expect you.”

  “It’s not that late.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, hoping my breath didn’t smell like peach schnapps.

  “Not late at all. It’s just you have your first English paper due this week. I thought you’d want to get started on it.”

  “I’m going to work on it now,” I told her. My eyes were sandy and my brain felt sluggish from lack of sleep.

  “Great!” she said. “Do you want some coffee to help you stay awake?”

  She loaded me down with an old French press, a mug, and a plate of buttered toast, then she sent me upstairs, but instead of going to the guest room where we keep the computer, I went to my own room across the hall and lay down on the bed. I closed my eyes and let my mind fill with images—Brooke’s elegant house, her brothers coming home at three a.m. and entertaining us with stories about the party they’d just attended, the other girls in their pajamas, dancing around Brooke’s room like actors in a TV commercial. We’d polished one another’s nails. We’d chatted online with some sophomore guys, giggling when they mooned the webcam. We’d seen one another in our underwear, retainers, and zit cream; I fell asleep with these things in my mind.