The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber

by Lauren Mechling

  “It looks fierce,” I said.

  We ended up in a dim sum joint, where Lily, Jess, Pia, and I pigged out, and Vivian drank a shitload of green tea. I kept shooting sly glances at Vivian, wondering why she wasn’t eating. Could she be mad at me—suspect something, perhaps? I thought about my little insight in the record store: Could Viv possibly like Sam? Of all the guys in school, my Sam? I shook my head and tossed back another steamed dumpling, dismissing the thought. I was just paranoid, that was all. Vivian and Sam inhabited completely different social universes: She was more out of his league than Quinn or Max Roth—or any hot guy, for that matter—was out of mine.

  On our way out, Vivian perked up rather abruptly. “Let’s go check out this jewelry shop on Canal Street,” she said. “It’s right around the corner.”

  “All the models get their nameplate necklaces here,” she said, scanning the displays. “This place has everything.” That was true. There were fake gold Pumas, fake gold palm trees, fake gold Cadillacs.

  “Over here,” Lily called from the back of the store. “Come here! Look!”

  Pinned into the velvet case, positioned between a pendant that said “I Want You” in cursive and another shaped like a hot dog, was a glistening golden saddle.

  “We’ll take five!” Pia said, and brandished the Am Ex. “It feels so good to buy stuff sometimes,” she said with a wink.

  Have You Ever Been Experienced?

  EN ROUTE HOME, I FINGERED MY NEW NECKLACE. Strangely, though major areas of my life were falling to pieces, I felt insanely happy, almost as if it were summer vacation. When I reached my house, I was still swelling with love for my new friends—and that was when I saw Sam sitting on my stoop. My stomach hit the sidewalk and kept going.

  Double shit. I walked the remaining steps slower than a caterpillar, trying to figure out what to do. Scared to invite him inside, I sat down next to him on the step. We sat there in silence, shoulder to shoulder, as a man waited for his black Lab to pee on the tree directly outside my house. Everything seemed odd and off-kilter. When I first spotted Sam, I felt only dread and anxiety, but for some reason I couldn’t come within ten feet of him without flashbacks of his naked shoulders swirling in my head. I wasn’t attracted to him—never in a million years. Still, something had definitely changed between us, and our friendship no longer made any sense.

  Sam spoke only after the relieved dog and its owner had walked on. “Mimi,” he began, “I’m not here to hook up with you.”

  I sighed, relieved that Sam was experiencing similar feelings of confusion and remorse. “Oh, thank God. I was so freaked out about everything, weren’t you?”

  Instead of answering, Sam put his finger over my lips. “Let me talk here, all right? I’ve been thinking about things, and, er, us. And, well, I need to tell you . . .”

  “Sam, can this wait a little bit? I’ve hardly even unpacked.”

  “Mimi, I really like you,” he said. Then, just like that, he lunged forward and aimed his face at mine. So much for not wanting to hook up with me! I couldn’t believe Sam’s obtuseness—he was actually expecting a make-out session on my stoop! And in broad daylight!

  It was clearly time to take action.

  “Whoa.” I popped to my feet, leaving Sam’s face pressing into my knees. “Let’s hold our horses here. Sam, look,” I tried to think of the diplomatic way to put it, and couldn’t. “The other night, that was about experience. Something we both needed to get out of the way. Just think of the whole stupid event as . . . a random hookup.”

  All color drained from Sam’s face, which was otherwise as young and innocent as in my family photo album. “How can a hookup be random if it’s with somebody you’ve known your entire life?” he said very quietly.

  “If it’s with somebody you’ve known you didn’t feel that way about your entire life. And still don’t.”

  You should have seen his face. I’d say it fell, because it did, but before settling into an expression of emptiness and sorrow it contorted into about sixty-seven depressed permutations.

  “OK,” he said. “I see.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I understand. And you know what I also understand?”

  I waited, wishing I could hit Fast-Forward on my life and escape this situation.

  “I understand that I hate you,” he said very slowly. “I hate how insecure and fake you are, and I hate the way you use everybody. And for what, I haven’t the foggiest.”

  There was a long silence, and then he rose, pushed me aside, and dragged his body down the steps, all without looking at me. Before reaching the sidewalk, he spun on his heels: “You’re lucky you have that stupid Coolie Diary. You know that? You’re really freaking lucky. Because if I were to get my hands on it again, just think of the things I could do with it.”

  And then he walked off.

  I just sat there, speechless, crushed. Dumping Sam felt like more than just another growth experience. It felt like having my whole heart scraped out.

  Two images flashed through my mind: Sam’s shoulders, and that snapshot of us as kids, me in my Superwoman costume and Sam as Spiderman, racing across the Brooklyn Bridge with our arms extended behind us, like wings. My arms had been in that same position more recently, when I was trying to help Sam unhook my bra. This was borderline sick.

  I wanted to go inside and stare at the television, but I was too rattled to face my dad. So I began walking, aimlessly turning corners and crossing streets. By dark I was all the way down in Battery Park City, my fingers freezing. It was almost eight when I got back to the Village, but even then I wasn’t up for going back, so I stopped at the Magnolia Bakery for some mental medicine in the form of chocolate cupcakes.

  As if that afternoon weren’t weird enough already, right after I’d paid, I heard a familiar voice behind me: “Mimi? Mimi Schulman? Is that you?”

  My jaw dropped when I twirled around and almost collided with Max Roth, the heart-melting artist from World Civ. Max Roth with his arm around a miniature old lady. Max Roth, who had completely slipped my mind over the last week of self-absorbed sorrows.

  “Oh, hey—hey! Hey, Max. Funny running into you here!” I thought you lived uptown I (thank God) didn’t add. On Eighty-fourth and Amsterdam?

  “Long time, no see.” He nodded. “How was your break?”

  “My break? Oh, all right, I guess.” I paused, distracted by his long black eyelashes. “I was in Texas.”

  Max nodded, then pressed his palm into the shoulder of his fashionable companion. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so rude! Mimi, meet my grandmother, Bubbie.”

  “Allo,” the woman said. She removed her sunglasses to reveal gorgeous liquid gray eyes surrounded by massive sunburst eyelashes: Max’s eyes. Max’s eyelashes. While I was still gawking, Bubbie offered me her hand, which was as delicate as a child’s.

  Taking it, I felt as huge and loud as a whole team of five-foot-eleven oxen.

  “Bubbie and I always spend Saturdays at the museums, then stop by for cupcakes right before I drop her home,” Max said. “Today we hit a bunch of galleries in Chelsea.”

  “Tradition,” Bubbie said, turning her neck to give her adorable grandson an adoring smile.

  “We saw the Bruce Nauman installation at the Dia Center,” Max said. “It was pretty intense. There was this one room with a water faucet that squirts out green Jell-O. It nearly hit Bubbie in the eye. It happens every time.”

  “Tradition!”

  Max was so cool, and Bubbie so rocking, that I felt embarrassed, buying lard-cakes by my lonesome lard-ass self. “That’s so neat,” I managed to get out. “I live around the corner from here, so my tradition is coming here and eating as many cupcakes as possible every day!” A stupid comment, and my shrill giggle did nothing to conceal it. Had I really used the word ‘neat’? Unable to deal, I clasped my cupcake armor to my chest and backed out of the tiny bakery before he and Bubbie had reached the front of the line. “I’ve gotta go, actually—it was great to
see you, Max, and you, too, Bubbie! Or to meet you, I mean, I. . .”

  I hurried down the street, trying hard to forget Max and the fact that I’d addressed his beyond elegant, foreign grandmother as “Bubbie.” Why was Max so cute and nice? Why had I made such a mess of my life?

  Home at last, I still wasn’t quite ready to face my dad—my own depression was enough to juggle that day—so I lingered in the hallway, sorting through Judy and Judy’s South American crockery catalogs. I was studying Ecuadorian tile designs when Sam’s parting words about the Coolie Diary ballooned in my head: “If I were to get my hands on it again, just think of the things I could do with it.”

  Those words had been a threat, definitely, a bona fide evil threat. I tried to recall the last time I’d seen the diary and drew a blank. I was pretty sure it was on my bedroom floor, but I wanted to be more than pretty sure. For peace of mind, I had to find it and hide it, if not burn it.

  I raced past Dad without even acknowledging his hello. Once in my room, I ransacked all my drawers and crawled under my bed, turning the whole room inside out, but the spiral notebook was nowhere. Fifteen minutes later, when the diary still hadn’t surfaced, a sensation of nausea began to tickle my collarbone.

  I was rummaging the medicine cabinet in my bathroom when my dad, all smiles, walked in. “Qué pasa, Mims? You zoomed by so fast I don’t know if you heard me. Sam swung by earlier this afternoon to pick up some video he lent you. Hope it wasn’t R rated, ha.”

  Oh. My. God.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the grimy, toothpaste-streaked mirror. My skin was the color of aspirin. Mimi Schulman, I told myself, you are one screwed cowgirl.

  Out with It

  WITH SAM HOLDING THE DIARY HOSTAGE, that Monday I returned to Baldwin crazy with anxiety. Our weeklong vacation from school had done exactly nothing to relax me. True, Sam was usually the world’s mildest guy, but he sure hadn’t looked mild on the stoop that day. There was, I figured, about a fifty-fifty chance that he’d go public with the diary, a fifty-fifty chance that life as I knew it would terminate. The girls gave no indication that anything was amiss, so I spent that whole day pretending that everything was hunky-dory with me, too. By three o’clock, I was completely exhausted from smiling so much.

  By Tuesday morning, I almost wished Sam would follow through on his threat, just to end my agony. Saturday, Sunday, Monday—the days since that awful moment on the stoop had numbered among the longest of my life. Instead of getting into my bed and falling asleep, I would lie there replaying versions of my social funeral. I spent Tuesday night tossing and turning, looking at my beautiful golden saddle necklace with deep despair. Bright and early on Wednesday morning, I ran into Amanda on the way out of the subway. “Anything new, Mimi?” she asked me as we rounded the corner to school.

  “Not much.” I shrugged.

  “Nothing at all?” she pressed, so insistent that I became suspicious.

  I shot a sideways glance at her, but Amanda continued to grin as if posing on top of a yacht. I shuddered a little: I couldn’t even remember all the nasty comments I had made about her in that cursed book. Poor Amanda. She was only trying to recruit another friend to her fat-free team. Little did she know that her early efforts to befriend me had indirectly led me to strike that catastrophic deal with Sam.

  In the front hall of Baldwin, I said goodbye to Amanda with extra cheeriness. It was only when she suggested that the two of us “grab some coffee” later that week that I remembered the dire warning Sam had issued at Nona’s party—Social Suicide—with a shiver. It occurred to me that I might have even recorded this in my diary. Had I really? Why couldn’t I even remember anymore? It’s amazing how deep the graves you dig for yourself can get.

  Every hour contained another such torment. The icing on the cake was my friends: They had never been nicer to me, acting like we’d all been BFF since first grade. Vivian had borrowed my new parachute pants and returned them with an awesome mix tape stashed in one of the pockets.

  That Friday morning, Jess rang my doorbell. I was shaking in my slippers, certain that she’d come to beat me up, but when I opened the door she was grinning at me, chipper as a virgin. The circles under her eyes were bigger than usual, but they didn’t compare to mine: I had stayed up until three that morning, worrying about nothing.

  “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said, “so this morning I got up super early and rode the subway all the way to Times Square with my mom. She loves having an escort to her office. I had another half-hour to kill, so I decided to pay some social calls on the West Side.” Jess made a little curtsy. “You are my first and only callee,” she said with a little laugh. “Ready to come back to Brooklyn with me? C’mon, we’ll flirt with businessmen on the train. You’ll love it.”

  “I couldn’t sleep that well, either,” I confessed as we headed toward West Fourth Street Station arm in arm. For a second I was tempted to tell Jess why, but I resisted. “What’s your excuse?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jess said with a shrug. “The usual, I guess. My mom took me out to dinner last night, and it was really nice. She’s not the coolest mom you’ll ever meet—but I love her. Sometimes I feel guilty I don’t spend that much time with her. Because she’s one of my best friends, she really is, and I’m just as close to her as I am to you guys. The problem is Preston. My mom’s not sophisticated or Ivy League enough for him, and last night at dinner, I just couldn’t stop thinking—what is Preston’s problem? Why is he such a total snob? I swear, he’s spent a total of five minutes conversing with my mom throughout our whole relationship even though he knows how much she means to me. I guess she’s too outer borough for him. It’s ridiculous.”

  “It is,” I agreed. Jess was so heartbreakingly sweet I couldn’t take it. “At least you have a cool relationship with your mom. I wish I could say as much.” But Jess was worked up and wasn’t listening.

  “Also, like, the second we walked in from dinner last night, my dad called. He’s having another kid, which—take my word—is completely unbelievable. Omigod, is that Arthur Gray?” she asked, pointing at a guy a few steps ahead of us. He looked a little bit like Arthur Gray and was holding hands with what appeared to be a drag queen. This was definitely not Arthur Gray from World Civ.

  “Must be his older brother,” I said.

  The train was crowded, and the subject of Jess’s new stepsibling never came up again, but when we emerged from the subway in Brooklyn, Jess beamed a radiant, grateful smile at me. “Thanks for listening to me earlier, Mimi,” she said. “I know I’m such a total bore, but I really do appreciate it. It helps so much, having friends like you. It’s nice talking to you because you’re from here, but you’re not exactly from here, either. I’m not making any sense. I love the rest of our friends, but sometimes I get the sense they’re bored stiff of hearing me talk about Preston and my mom. But what am I supposed to talk about? My stock portfolio? My weekend trips to Monaco?” She laughed bitterly, then added, “Life can be really difficult, you know?”

  Did I ever. I was a total monster. Jess and the other girls’ kindness made me feel, if possible, even more rotten about myself. The tension soon became so overwhelming that I resolved to tell the truth. Every last detail: the fat-free muffin, the bet, the journal, the deception, my unexpected attachment to the girls. I would humiliate myself before Sam had the chance. Coming clean, of course, was easier said than done. Every time one of the girls approached, I wimped out.

  After assembly that morning, Jess and I entertained Lily, Pia, and Vivian by describing our A train adventures. “You should have seen the expression on this investment banker’s face when Jess put her head on his shoulder. He had been ogling her like crazy out of the corner of his eye, but soon as she cozied up to him, he made this really angry expression and shot up.”

  “It was classic,” Jess said. “Such a hypocrite.”

  “You’re a very bad schoolgirl,” chided Vivian. “Naughty, naughty.”

 
We were still cracking up when Ulla Lipmann, the senior editor of the school paper, approached the circle and began clawing at my elbow. Ulla, Baldwin’s greatest all-protein diet devotee, also happened to be the only child of Jim Lipmann, the deposed CEO of Toy Boy, who was now serving time for tax evasion. Given how often embarrassing stories about her father made front-page headlines, you’d think Ulla would shun modern media, but in fact the opposite was true. Ulla was always scurrying through Baldwin with a ratty copy of the Wall Street Journal clutched to her chest. Journalism was her obsession, topped only by the Dr. Atkins diet in her affections. She talked to people only with a tape recorder in her hand, for quotes.

  “Mimi,” Ulla said, flashing the metal scaffolding on her upper teeth. (Ulla was known for her elaborate orthodontia, among other charms: The inside of her mouth resembled an aluminum train track.) “I need you!”

  “Sorry?”

  “We’re putting out a special supplement on college applications, and I have only a week to do it and my deputy went on a last-minute vacation to Aspen and, and . . .” Ulla looked in danger of hyperventilating, but after several wet nasal exhales, she seemed to recover. “I just need help with photo-editing stuff mostly, and I’ll take care of your dinners the nights you stay late! Anything you want. Free sashimi? T-bone?”

  My friends had all stopped talking to stare at Ulla, who was making bizarre barnyard wheezing sounds. From across the hall, Amanda waved a racket at me.

  “Oh! Let me do it,” said Pia. “Sushi is soooo expensive. I didn’t think I was going to taste it until I was an adult.”

  Ulla, who had no sense of humor whatsoever, shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I need Mimi. Her dad’s a photographer and she has skills I need. She’s also semiliterate.”