The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber

by Lauren Mechling

  Several U-turns later, we were all nestled in a banquette in the back room of a club called Peppermint Pete’s. The decor was immaculate: marble floors, thick velvet seats, white linen tablecloths. Even with all the shirtless female employees offering lap dances, the joint was incredibly classy. Everyone in the place—by which I mean all the preppy businessmen downing whiskeys at the surrounding tables—was staring at us.

  I had just figured out that we were the only nonperforming females in the joint when I noticed that once again Jess was rolling the bottom of her shirt up over her flat stomach. I’d never met a girl who thrived on male attention more, in whatever context.

  “Stop!” I lunged at her. “We’re customers, not strippers!”

  “Chill out, Mimi, seriously.” Pia signaled. “Could someone get her a drink?”

  As if psychic, a bouncy-breasted lady bopped over and handed me a Freaky Fizzy, a special mixture of Midori, Amaretto, and about three other liquors I’d never heard of. The comparative modesty of my own chest had initially made me feel insecure, but two sips of my Fizzy and I remembered that my breasts, however unimpressive, were at least all natural. Yep, the Fizzies sure got me into the spirit of things, and I was happier than I had been when my Houston luggage finally reached the bottom floor of our brownstone. Soon I was dancing with Lily in one of the aisles, swirling my hips and avoiding the leer of a bald giant in blue-tinted sunglasses, when I spotted several familiar male faces across the room: Preston, Jess’s boyfriend, and a horde of his cheesy-looking friends.

  “Lily, oh my God!” I said, ducking down. “Preston’s here. We can’t let Jess see. She’ll flip.”

  “Why? She told them to come.”

  “Oh.” Did I ever feel like an idiot.

  The guys seemed pretty uptight when we joined them a few songs later: Half of them ordered Diet Cokes. I knew less of Jessica than any of the other girls, and I couldn’t figure out how such a beautiful girl could fall for a lout like Preston. He had broad shoulders and nice blondish brown hair, yes, but his eyes were too close together and his front teeth too far apart, which made him look more than a little stupid. Not only that, but he seemed incapable of conducting a conversation in a normal tone of voice: Everything he said, he shouted.

  “What is this?” I said. “The prohibition era?”

  No one laughed.

  “We’re not really in a position to get sauced,” responded a sort-of redhead in baggy pants. “It’s early-decision application time. We’re kind of stressed out.”

  “They’re all seniors,” Lily told me. “College apps. Hey, where’s Blow Job Harry?”

  “He’s coming later. He had other plans,” said another guy, bringing a ginger ale to his mouth suggestively. Blow Job Harry was a Baldwinite known for having his way with Baldwin women. It was weird. Monday after Monday, girls trudged into school admitting that they’d gone down on the kid over the weekend. Nobody knew how he did it. At any other school, Blow Job Harry would’ve been a total reject: He didn’t play a single sport and in fact had probably never exercised, judging from his emaciated physique. He was about seven feet eleven, with plenty of freckles and front teeth big enough to launch a rocket off. But Harry was also hilarious, self-confident, and extremely clever, and at Baldwin—a place renowned for its open-minded coeds—these three qualities more than compensated for his physical inadequacies.

  “I’m beat,” the ginger ale drinker said, “I just finished bullshitting my way through the Princeton essay. Call me anal, but November one is right around the corner, and if I don’t get in early, my dad will probably revoke my trust fund.” He looked a little too attentively at me, then leaned into my neck. He was so close, I could feel his breath against my skin. “What are you wearing?”

  “My perfume? I got it in Texas. It’s called—”

  “No, I mean your shirt. I was admiring the fabric. It’s very sexy.”

  My expression surely revealed my repulsion, because right then the baggy pants guy came to my rescue. “Ignore him. He gets like this when he’s stressed out. We shouldn’t have let him get so close to sophomore girls.”

  “Oh, but it’s OK for the sophomores to hit on each other, is that it?” the lecherous Princeton guy shot back, gesturing to where Pia and Viv sat tickling each other’s arms.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jess issued an offended gasp.

  “All I know is that I’m lucky to have already landed the best sophomore ever,” Preston bellowed, drawing Jess even closer. “Jess, baby, can I tell you something?”

  I was still thinking about the bizarreness of such a preppy guy using the word “baby” when Preston dropped the bombshell: “Jess”—his voice couldn’t have been louder—“I know I’ve been a real head case lately, trying to get all my shit together for school, but I’ve been meaning to tell you, well . . . I think I love you, Jess. I’ve only had two beers, so I swear I’m being serious. I’ve never been in love like this before.”

  There was silence at all six adjacent tables, and even the leather banquette stopped squeaking. The only sound on the whole earth right then was the pulsing techno remix egging on the waitresses.

  “I love you.”

  He said it again, just like that, right in front of all of us, at a cheesy club where the fanciest thing on the menu was deep-fried mozzarella sticks, about as unromantic as you could get. The strange thing was, Jess seemed genuinely touched. A tear gleamed at the corner of her eye, and her head dropped into Preston’s beefy chest. “Oh, Preston!” she simpered. “Preston, I—”

  I’m totally not making this up. When Preston mentioned the nearby five-star hotel where he’d conveniently booked a room, Jess was too wilted to protest. Preston’s friends exchanged winks and jabs and I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe the whole seduction scenario had played out in front of so many unrelated Baldwinites. Jess could be too good-hearted for her own good.

  The rest of the girls and I soon detached from Preston’s posse and proceeded to the Pazzolinis’ New York pad, which was located uptown in the Columbus Circle Trump Tower. Not only did Pia’s parents have one of the most luxe apartments in the place, but they had an adjoining guest suite. By the time we rolled in, we were totally, ecstatically wasted. When I called my dad to give a progress report on my biology project, I discovered that my central nervous system wasn’t functioning all that well.

  “These people are such nerds,” I told him. “Yeah, I know, but we’ve got a few more hours of work left, and Ms.”—I coughed—“said she wouldn’t even feel comfortable sending me in a cab at this hour.”

  “Well, Mimi, I can come up in a cab and get you if it makes you feel any safer,” Dad said.

  “No, Dad, it’s OK, I wouldn’t want to put you out like that.”

  “Really, Mimi, I don’t mind at all. What I do mind is your staying out all night with someone I’ve never even met.”

  God, he sounded lonely. Why else would he get all Curfew King on me? “Dad, can I help being conscious about school?” I think I meant another word, but it was all slurring together. “Hey, what’s that on in the background, Dad? You having a little party over there or what?” (I was hoping to distract him from the very unacademic sounds on my end of the line.)

  “Nope, not even close,” he sighed. “Quinn and I are just watching Grand Hotel—your very favorite film of 1932, right?”

  Ever since the split, my dad pulled stuff like that all the time, declaring every single thing he saw “your favorite”—“your favorite” root vegetable, “your favorite” reality show, “your favorite” brand of green tea (not that I even drank green tea)—as if trying to prove that he knew more about me than I did. He couldn’t go to the grocery store without purchasing “your favorite” quilted Kleenex or running into “your favorite” homeless man at the West 4th Street subway station. Dad’s declarations had exactly zero basis in fact, and their frequency made me wonder if maybe he was losing his grip.

  “Oh, Dietrich, right?” I sa
id after a too long pause.

  “No, no, Garbo, silly!” His voice perked up—if there’s one thing he loves it’s correcting me about my favorite things. “She’s a good-looking lady in this film, isn’t she, Quinn?”

  “Yup!” Quinn intoned.

  I was feeling semi-sad as I walked sluggishly down the hall, imagining Quinn drooling over another woman: I didn’t stand a chance against an eleventh-grader, much less Garbo. I walked into the luxury bathroom to find Pia and Viv lounging in the hot tub.

  “What is this? Some sort of fantasy sequence?” I asked.

  “Hop in!” Pia commanded.

  I turned to Lily, who was sitting with terrible posture on the black marble toilet, covered in enough sweat gear to warm the Statue of Liberty. “Go ahead.” She made a sick face. “I’m not into germs, that’s all.”

  Lily was even less into nudity, I could tell, and I couldn’t help feeling slightly uncomfortable myself. “Can I borrow a swimsuit or something?” I asked after a pause.

  Pia laughed and a bubble landed on the center of her tongue. “Swimsuit? Hello, does this look like the Speedo outlet?”

  I would have preferred to join Lily in her decency, but there wasn’t any extra space on the toilet seat. Besides, the one good thing about having friends who weren’t self-conscious was that they probably wouldn’t be paying much attention to my not exactly stellar body. To them it had about as much shock value as a pile of laundry.

  “Are we going to have to drag you in here?” asked Viv. “Because I will if I need to.”

  “No need,” I said, slightly dismayed.

  And so, clutching a melon-colored hand towel, very gingerly I peeled off my purple shirt and stepped into the swirling water, one foot at a time.

  Blame It on the Margarita

  BIO CLASS PROVED PRETTY DEMANDING THE NEXT day, which came as quite an unwelcome surprise, especially since I’d stayed up very late drinking bubbly in the bubbles. I was not prepared to ask much of my brain that morning.

  Over the past few weeks our biology lessons had been getting easier and easier as our teacher, Lance, sunk deeper and deeper into depression. A mere month ago, back when l’amour toujours with the French teacher Claudine had Lance’s confidence soaring, he had made us learn stuff: memorizing the function of mitochondria, labeling the different parts of lungs, reading articles in Science magazine, and all sorts of inconveniences. But ever since Claudine terminated her petite affaire with him, Lance had us spending our class time playing Science Scrabble or coloring in pictures of fauna, while he sat at his desk and stared sadly into space. For a simpering accordion enthusiast, Lance was a good-natured guy who didn’t deserve this kind of heartbreak.

  To rub salt in Lance’s wound, Claudine started giving private French lessons to Stuart Francis, a teacher in the language structures department. They’d meet in the cafeteria, for all the world to see. I guess when Lance caught wind of the nouvelle development, he went from sad to mad and resorted to taking his angst out on his sweet students that morning by springing a pop quiz on us.

  I was the last to reach class, but it had taken me forever to get there. Around five a.m., I had taken the subway from Fifty-ninth Street back to the West Village, and after a brief nap and a noble battle with my wardrobe, I chose the one train that stalled for fifteen minutes between the Wall Street and Clark Street Station. So when at last I stumbled into Lance’s bio heaven, I was surprised to find not the usual mayhem but orderly rows of silent, wide-eyed students. From his seat in the back Sam shot me a look of extreme anxiety.

  “Glad you could drop by, Mimi,” Lance growled as he flung a sheet of paper at my desk. “I hope you’ll be able to finish in time.”

  I experienced all the telltale symptoms of total panic: dry mouth, shaky wrists, churning stomach. I could barely understand the exam questions, let alone ace them. I looked down at the paper, empty except for a single question: “What are the functions of life?”

  I couldn’t believe my luck: overlapping lesson plans must be the only good thing about switching schools. I hadn’t exactly been knocking myself out studying at Baldwin, but I remembered this answer from my ninth-grade science class in Houston; I’d probably still retain it at the ripe old age of eighty-seven. I’d always remember MRS GREN. “Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion, Nutrition.” Ta-da!

  That accomplished, I lay my head on the cool tabletop. I started reminiscing about the hot tub party, which gave way to a delicious vision of Quinn beckoning me across a crowd at some Chelsea gallery opening when a bell jostled me awake half an hour later. “Thank you, thank you,” Lance said as he collected our test papers. He cleared his throat and shuffled to the door, where he stopped at a gray trash bin and dunked our exams right in. We all watched with startled interest. “Now you know that it pays to be prepared for life’s more miserable possibilities,” he said, and walked off before anybody could respond.

  “That sucks,” Sam said as he made his way over to me. “I totally aced that sucker.”

  It was time for assembly, which was a totally Baldwin phenomenon: a daily schoolwide get-together in the second-floor lobby where students announced meetings and birthdays and other such earth-shattering events. Zora Blanchard, who could sip from her ever-present coffee mug and speak simultaneously, then read off the names of people who had missed classes the previous day. After assembly, students were expected to approach Zora and explain their absences, a ritual I was not above sticking around to observe. Baldwin was just a barrel of comic relief. The truants’ excuses ranged from “I was feeling depressed” and “I slept in” to “I felt like cutting.” Zora preferred the more creative efforts, those along the lines of “I was so consumed with my tuna can sculpture that geometry class completely slipped my mind” and “I was feeling jittery so my shrink and I called an emergency double session.”

  I found a spot in the lobby near the yellow elevator (there was a yellow and blue one, for even and odd floors, respectively). Across the lobby some of the cool senior girls were giggling and passing around a photograph that they were going to great pains to conceal. Judging by the high-pitched level of their excitement, I figured there had to be some nudity involved. Next, I noticed that standing next to the girls was none other than Max Roth. He was wearing a pair of Levis and a hooded sweatshirt, both of which were accented with a dash of white paint. His hair, too, had some paint stuck in it. It was kind of unfair, how hot some people were. Why must there be some things that seem to exist solely to remind you that you can’t ever have them?

  I ended up standing next to Amanda of all people, who squeaked and gave my wrist a little tug when she saw that I was next to her. Perhaps for this reason, assembly that day seemed even more excruciatingly boring than usual. Sarah Ramos, a sophomore devoted to wearing bright yellow raincoats indoors, raised her hand to describe her missing digital camera. Another kid lost his SAG card and complained that he couldn’t audition again until it had been returned. Finally, lovelorn Lance, desperate for companionship, tried to recruit musicians—or, as he put it, “collaborators”—for his innovative new Klezmer band.

  After assembly was over, I tried to break free of Amanda and her friend Courtney, but they were both still trailing behind me when I reached the opposite side of the room.

  “Are you friends with them?” Vivian asked me when at last I managed to wave my all-American escorts away. I turned away from Amanda’s and Courtney’s retreating figures, surprised by the amount of scorn in Viv’s voice.

  “No, of course not,” I answered, perhaps a little more emphatically than necessary, given that Amanda and Courtney might still be in earshot. A twinge of guilt shot through me—but why? It was true that Amanda and I weren’t friends, wasn’t it?

  I couldn’t dwell on my remorse for long, though, because right then Pia jabbed me in the side. “You still have those little Swiss army scissors your mom gave you, right?” she asked. “There’s this tag on my sweater that I forgot to ta
ke off. Can you help a girl out?”

  As I pulled my mother’s survival gift from my bag, Pia scooped up her hair so I could perform the operation easily. Two seconds later, a $365 price tag had come undone and fallen to the lobby’s linoleum floor. “Thanks. Now put on your coat. We have a little party to attend.”

  Torre’s was only five blocks away from Baldwin, but it felt like three worlds. I’d been there only once before, with Sam, for lunch. It was this total dive in the North Heights, always empty except for the waiters watching soccer on the bar TV. We chose a table near the back, behind a beaded curtain that gave us a sense of totally unnecessary privacy.

  “Let me.” Pia signaled for the crotchety-looking waiter. “A pitcher,” she commanded. “With salt.”

  The waiter raised his eyebrows and started to chuckle. “What, are your parents coming?”

  “Look, I’m old enough to know I’m entitled to a light drink.” Pia switched on her huskiest voice, then brandished her fake ID.

  “I don’t think so. I wasn’t born yesterday, so unless you want to walk right out—”

  Angelic Jess, who was oozing warmth and sunshine that morning, took this opportunity to intervene and purred, “How ’bout we compromise with some virgin margaritas?”

  I didn’t really care either way. It was 10:55 in the morning—I would’ve been happy with a doughnut.

  “And some queso, too?” Lily asked in her meekest voice.

  “See, all it takes is a little smile,” Jess said to Pia as the waiter happily waddled toward the bar, “and you’ll get everything you need out of life.”

  “You call virgin margaritas what I need?” Pia was clearly enraged that her fake ID worked everywhere except the shittiest Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn. After a young woman who also worked there delivered our pitcher, Pia reached under the table and started rifling through her bag. “At least I came prepared,” she said, bringing a flask of vodka up to the table-level and emptying it into the pitcher. Just seconds later, the first stern waiter returned, totally unaware of Pia’s latest exploit. Impressive.