The Princesses of Iowa

by M. Molly Backes

I rolled my eyes. “I’m so flattered.” The halls opened up around us as people wandered into classrooms, calling back over their shoulders, giggling, sighing. A gross goth guy pushed a skinny, pale girl up against the cold concrete brick, stealing one last black-lipstick kiss before the bell rang.

  Brian Sorenson turned to scold Chris. “Paige is an eleven, at least!”

  “Thanks,” I said flatly. Sometimes I got tired of putting up with Jake’s friends, but I knew I needed to keep their favor if I wanted to be on homecoming court at all, much less become queen. I kissed Jake goodbye and walked to take my seat. I wasn’t even supposed to be in this class. I had planned to take film appreciation as my elective, but Jake and his boys heard that creative writing was the easiest A and talked me into switching. So I did, reluctantly, only to find that over the summer Lacey had talked Jake into switching out of creative writing to be in class with her — in film appreciation!

  “She was so nervous about taking it alone,” Jake explained after I’d sat through an entire class without him. “She didn’t know how people would react to her, you know, now. She was worried they might make fun of her.”

  “So you ditched me?” I pulled on a strand of my hair, wrapping it around my finger. Over at our usual table, Lacey was laughing and threatening to hit Chris with her cane.

  “Babe,” Jake said, “I knew you’d be fine on your own.” He kissed me on the nose and I gritted my teeth. “You’re such a strong woman, you don’t need me.”

  “But Lacey does?”

  “She would do the same for you or I if our places were switched.”

  “You or me,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He frowned. “Are you mad? Don’t be mad.”

  “We should have just signed up for film appreciation in the first place. I don’t know why I listened to you.” I had already tried to switch back to film appreciation, but the guidance counselor wouldn’t let me. Apparently, it was a very popular class. As was creative writing, she reminded me. I was lucky to get in at all, she said, but she could always switch me into another elective if I wanted: business math, or ag.

  “Because creative writing is easier,” Jake explained patiently. “That should make you feel better! I’ll be busting my ass while you coast through.”

  “Watching movies,” I said, but dropped it. I already felt like Jake and I were fighting all the time. I didn’t need to add to it.

  And that is why I was now wasting seventh period watching Mrs. Mueller chatter and flirt with the football players when I could have been slouched in the back of film appreciation, napping to the sound track of Citizen Kane.

  Behind me, Randy whistled. “Now there’s a ten.” The boys around him erupted in laughter as a tall freshman hurried into the classroom. He ignored them, keeping his gaze on the girl he always sat with, as if he were so intent on talking to her that he didn’t even notice the guys hassling him. At the base of his hairline and just before his ears, though, his skin turned slightly pink, giving him away.

  “You wanna come to our kegger, Freshman?” Chris asked loudly, laughing before he even finished the question, as if the idea of the Freshman coming to the kegger was just too, too hilarious.

  Randy drawled lazily, “Dude, he can’t come. He probably has a date with his boyfriend.” More snickers.

  The class was a joke. Every day, Mrs. Mueller fluttered her hands as Randy and the guys did whatever they wanted. According to Nikki, all they’d done so far in film was watch some black-and-white movie where soldiers stabbed people with bayonets, and a bunch of Ku Klux Klan members galloped around on horses. All Nikki could think as she watched it was, What if a KKK guy rode under a tree with low branches? Wasn’t he worried he’d lose his hood? Other than that, she said, it was pretty boring.

  Still, it sounded better than creative writing. In a week of class, we had spent an entire day listening to Mrs. Mueller explain what a journal is and why we should keep one, read and discussed a poem called “Theme for English B,” and watched Dead Poets Society. Literally, we spent three entire class days watching Robin Williams yell “Carpe diem!” while in the back of the room Randy and Brian snickered about the faggy kid who wants to play Puck. Maybe film class would have been equally lame, but at least I would have been with Jake.

  The Freshman was becoming a daily target of Jake’s friends’ teasing. He hunched over his notebook with an air of extreme concentration, attempting to convey the message, I assumed, that he was so engrossed in his writing that he didn’t even hear the taunts of the jocks. His floppy brown hair fell across his eyes, and he brushed it away with an absent wave. I probably wouldn’t have noticed him at all if Randy and Brian hadn’t singled him out. We were on opposite ends of the social spectrum. I was a senior and he was a freshman. I was popular and he was an unknown. I was going to be a princess, and he was going to stay a nobody.

  I sighed, watching the clock. A minute and a half before the bell would ring to start class. Only two weeks in and I’d already memorized the exact position of the second hand for each period’s bell.

  Behind me, Randy pretended to sneeze into his fist. “Faggot.”

  The Freshman’s friend, a pretty Indian girl with thick black hair, whipped around in annoyance. “Why don’t you go eat some more steroids, dickhead?” she snapped. “Another week or two and you’ll grow out of your training bra.”

  Randy’s face turned bright red and his nostrils flared. It was true that his man-boob problem was growing out of proportion, but we all knew better than to say anything to him about it. “Better watch your back, Tonto.”

  “Yeah,” added Brian, “or you might get scalped!”

  A look of amused disbelief moved across the girl’s face. “I’m Indian, geniuses, not Native American.”

  Randy crossed his arms smugly. “Same thing.”

  “No, it’s not. My family’s from Chennai.” She paused, waiting for a reaction she didn’t get. “In India.” She laughed. “You stupid asshole.”

  I knew her, I realized suddenly. Shanti Kale. I had a random memory of her punching Danny Abbot in the solar plexus during a flag football game in sixth grade. Her family had moved the next summer. In my memory, she looked like a little boy, with super-short hair and baggy clothes. She must have moved back over the summer; I was surprised I hadn’t heard anything about it.

  Randy’s face turned bright red. “What did you just call me?” He slammed his meaty hands on his desk, but the ringing of the bell kept him from descending fully into one of his ’roid rages.

  Mrs. Mueller bustled into the room, looking like a monstrous sparrow with her puffed-out chest and her beady little eyes. She stood behind her overly large podium and clapped her hands. “Class? Class . . .” Almost too short to see over the dais, she grabbed its wooden sides and pulled herself up on her tiptoes. “Class?”

  Under the low murmur of “Chill out, man” repeating itself in the back of the room like a jock mantra, Randy’s breathing quieted until he sounded less like an angry bull and more like an asthmatic pug. The whispering and giggling dulled to a low hum, and Mrs. Mueller chirruped in gratitude. “Thank you, class, thank you.” She pushed her glasses up her shiny nose and checked her notes. “For your assignment today, class, I’d like you to pair off with each other —” Everyone started murmuring, securing their preferred partners. I saw Shanti give the Freshman a quick head nod.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Mueller said. “Listen first, okay? What you’re going to do is, in partners, you’re going to interview the other person, and then you’re going to write some kind of creative introduction to them, okay? And then you’re going to introduce your partner to the class, by reading your creative introduction. Does that sound good?”

  People started to stand up, shoving desks around to be closer to their friends. I scanned the jocks in the back row, looking for an odd man out, but there was an even six.

  “Hold on a moment!” Mrs. Mueller called. “Hold on one
moment, everyone! I forgot one thing!” It got slightly quieter, and she announced, “I want you to count off by twelves!”

  Everyone groaned. Count off? What were we, kindergartners? I bet I wouldn’t be counting off in film appreciation. We did it dutifully, though, and of course we had to find our partner number. I was one. Across the room, I saw the Freshman holding one finger to his lips, as if shushing someone. Behind his finger, he was almost, but not quite, smiling. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I held up one finger. One? He shrugged and nodded.

  I reached down and grabbed my bag, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear as I headed over to where the Freshman was half sitting on the edge of his desk. His friend — the girl, Shanti — had paired up with my sister’s friend Jeremy Carpenter. They settled themselves on the floor near us, leaning against desks. Jeremy said something that made Shanti laugh. She swatted at him as if they were best friends.

  “Hey,” said the Freshman. “Paige, right?”

  I stared at him curiously. His voice was different than I’d assumed it would be, deeper and far more confident. It was the voice of a radio announcer, an NPR reporter maybe, but not a freshman.

  “That’s me,” I finally said.

  “Ethan. Ethan James.” He held out his hand and lowered his voice, speaking quickly. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am, my pleasure.”

  “Thanks.” I allowed my hand to be shaken, then looked around to see if anyone was looking. I’d gotten so used to being alone all summer, I still wasn’t used to being home, where everything you said, and everyone you said it to, was noticed. “Well? Should we . . . ?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “Step into my office.” He gestured to the desk facing his.

  “Okay, everyone!” Mrs. Mueller called. “Remember, you’re going to interview each other, and then write a creative presentation introducing that person to the class!”

  Ethan leaned over his notebook like a cub reporter. “Okay, Miss Paige. I’m ready. Spill it all.”

  His cheeks showed a hint of shadow, suggesting that if left to their own devices, they’d sport a beard worthy of a coffeehouse rocker in no time. It made him look older than he was, and for a second I saw what he might look like in five or ten years, sitting in the back of some city council meeting with a notebook perched on one knee, a serious look in his dark eyes. If you could ignore the fact that he was a freshman, he was almost cute.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “The five Ws,” he said. “I’ll start with the easy ones: Who is Paige Sheridan? What lies beneath the surface? When are you most yourself? Where do you go when you need to get away? Why are you here?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in the school-issue chair, determined to keep my face blank. “You forgot How.”

  “Forgive me, miss. You’re absolutely right.” He smiled slightly and looked off behind me, speaking lowly. “The dame had class, I’ll give her that. You couldn’t slip a thing past that razor-sharp mind.”

  “Has anyone ever mentioned the fact that you’re kind of strange?”

  Ethan grinned. “Not a one. In fact, it comes as quite a shock. You’ve cut me to the quick.”

  “Okay,” I said, tiring of his game and unable to resist showing off just a little. “To answer your questions: Who? You’re looking at her. What? More than you’ll ever know. When? I’m never not. Where? None of your business. And why? Because my boyfriend made me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Made you?”

  I’d known it was the wrong thing to say the second before it came out of my mouth. Now I sounded like some pitiful girl whose boyfriend makes all her decisions for her, who can’t go against him, who will end up in some crappy marriage where she has to show up at work telling stories about running into doors. And I was so not that girl. The idea that the Freshman would assume such a thing about me pissed me off.

  “Nobody makes me do anything,” I said coldly.

  He held up his hands. “Whoa, I didn’t say that —”

  In the front of the room, Mrs. Mueller clapped her hands, cutting him off. “Fifteen minutes left, everyone, and then you’ll present your partner to the class!”

  “She took an entire fifty-minute period to explain what a journal is, but she’s only giving us twenty minutes for this?” the Freshman asked, with a look that was part apology, part peace offering.

  I decided to be charitable. “I know, right?”

  He picked up his pen. “Children, this is a pen! Can anyone tell me what you use it for?”

  “Seriously,” I said.

  Mrs. Mueller shrieked over the low chatter of the class; in the distance, a thousand dogs probably started barking. “If you get stuck, ask about plans for next year! Are you going to college? Where are you applying?”

  The Freshman propped his chin on his hand and crossed his legs. “What are your plans for next year? Are you going to college? Where are you applying?”

  “I’m going to Northwestern, just like everyone else in my family.”

  “A legacy, hmm?” He nodded. “I thought about Northwestern, but during the tour this extremely haunted-looking dude grabbed my arm and told me that if I was at all interested in writing, I should stay far, far away, as they would”— he made finger quotes —“eat my soul.”

  “Weird.” Across the room, I could hear Randy telling a story about turning a plastic flamingo into a bong.

  “So,” the Freshman said cheerfully, “good luck with that!”

  “Thanks.”

  “You must get pretty good grades to get into Northwestern. Or is it one of those things where you can just sort of buy your way in?”

  “Jesus,” I said, surprised into giving him my full attention.

  He shrugged. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I suppose. Personally, I will be racking up the student loans. The good news is that once it’s in your head, they can’t come and take it back. It’s not like the bank can repossess your brain.” He feigned a worried look. “At least, I don’t think they can. . . .”

  “My grades are fine.”

  “Dude, it was the best thing ever. We called it the Pink Flaming-go. Get it? Like, flaming?”

  “Flabongo,” the Freshman muttered.

  I looked at him. “What?”

  “If you’re going to build a bong out of a plastic flamingo, the proper name is Flabongo, not Pink Flaming-go,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Randy’s not known for his great intellect.”

  Mrs. Mueller screeched, “Ten minutes, people!”

  The Freshman snapped into action. “Okay! What did you do over the summer?”

  I immediately felt defensive. Every time I said anything about the summer, Lacey rolled her eyes and changed the subject as quickly as possible. “Don’t even get her started on Paris,” she’d said yesterday at lunch, lounging back against the picnic table where we always gathered. As though my stories about Paris were so glamorous — and as though she’d completely forgotten that it was her fault I’d been exiled in the first place. Well, Nikki’s fault, technically. But Lacey’s fault, too, because if she hadn’t been such a bitch about Prescott, the whole rest of the night would have been different. The whole rest of the summer would have been different.

  For a second I thought about lying, about just making something up, but a tiny part of me wanted to dazzle the Freshman a little, to intimidate him. “Actually I was in Europe for most of the summer. Paris, mostly.”

  He whistled. “Fancy. Must be nice to be you.”

  I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Whatever.”

  “How’d you score that?” he asked. “Wait, let me guess: you were on a Fulbright, analyzing cross-cultural movements of taxi-driving poets. Am I right?” There was a challenge in his voice.

  “Actually, I didn’t have a choice. I was exiled.”

  “Exiled? Wow, so you must be, what, an enemy of the state? Defending the people’s right to assemble?” One of Jake’s friends walked by and pretended to trip, kicking
the Freshman in the process. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “No, don’t tell me. It was an Evita thing. Forced to live in Paris away from your adoring crowds. Don’t Cry for Me, Willow Grove. Am I right?”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” I said.

  Exile, n., expulsion from one’s home by authoritative decree. My mother was the authoritative decree: judge, juror, and hangwoman. A week after school ended last spring — a week after the accident — my mother rolled me out of bed in the middle of the night and told me to get dressed. She’d packed her own LeSportsac luggage with my clothes and shoes, and she stood waiting in the doorway with passport and tickets in hand while I fumbled around in the dark for a sweatshirt and flip-flops. She hadn’t said a single word to me since the night of the accident, and we drove in silence through the cool June darkness, five hours to Chicago, where she enlisted the help of an airport security man to walk me to my gate and make sure I got on my plane. I was barely awake, but I heard her describe me as a “troubled youth,” and a “high flight risk.” The guard nodded seriously, accepted the handful of bills my mother shoved at him, and trailed me through O’Hare like a sheepdog until my plane took off a few hours later.

  I remember staring out the airplane window as the land disappeared beneath us and we flew into the sunrise. The clouds wisped past the windows, the early light reflected off the plane’s wings, and my throat got tight with tears I wouldn’t let myself cry. I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye. To anyone.

  Suddenly, there were only five minutes before the bell, and the room was filled with the sound of shuffling papers and the heavy scratching of desks moving across the tiled floor. “Well —” Ethan said, but was interrupted by Mrs. Mueller yelling over the din. “We’ll have to do our creative presentations tomorrow!”

  “Later,” I said, and hurried back to my own desk.

  Randy and the guys wandered up to the front of the room, laughing and boasting. “What about that chick from Cedar Falls, dude? You could have banged her, if you weren’t such a pussy.”

  “Students! I almost forgot! Students!” Mrs. Mueller called. “Boys and girls!”