by Emma Mills
She nods briskly. And then “You should go. I have other homework.”
* * *
Zoe comes over for dinner that night, and the first thing she does when we get up to my room is zero in on the TION biography, which features a black-and-white photo of the TION boys on the cover, all in varying degrees of pensiveness.
“What’s the deal with this?” she says, holding up the book and grinning at me.
“Iris lent it to me.”
“Okay, multiple questions.”
“Go for it.”
“You were hanging out with Iris?”
“We’re partners in Brit lit.”
“By choice?”
“Kind of? She sort of coerced me into it.”
“Redemption arc?”
“Exactly.”
“And is this required reading? Is that what really goes on at your school?”
“Obviously not,” I say with a grin. “Iris loves them. She’s some kind of superfan. She has two cardboard cutouts. She has every piece of branded merchandise they’ve ever released.”
Zoe considers the cover for a moment. “Collectible dolls?”
“Yes.”
“Bedsheets?”
“Yes, and apparently they come in king-sized, which boggles the mind.”
“Bottle opener?”
“Yeah, Kenji’s mouth is where you put the bottle top.”
“For real?”
“No. But if it existed, she would own it.”
“Well, I guess that’s … her prerogative. Not everyone has our taste.”
We start playing Battle Quest, and it’s quiet for a bit until I ask, “Would you buy a Drunk Residential bottle opener?”
“No. We love them because of the music, not because we want Jes Peretta’s face on stuff. Iris is obviously trying to fill some void in her life with manufactured pop music.”
“Maybe,” I say. “She’s crazy rich you know. Like private island rich.”
Zoe snorts. “They’re all private island rich at your school.”
“Not really.”
Before PLSG, I didn’t know how many different kinds of rich there were. I guess I thought of it more as a binary—either you had money, or you didn’t. I think Zoe, not having witnessed the various gradations of Having a Boatload of Money, still probably feels like that. But apparently there are many different degrees of richness.
There are kids whose parents are doctors or lawyers—“Just normal, I guess,” Sam McKellar said when I asked her about it once. Though to be fair, I think Sam’s perception of normal is different than my perception of normal. Sam’s mom works downtown as an accountant for Chase Bank. I’m pretty sure the McKellars don’t stock up on five-for-ten frozen meals as often as my family does. They definitely have the luxury to think that the grocery-store brand isn’t as good as the name brand. Sudha Prabhu is normal by Sam’s standards, too—both her parents are cardiologists.
Then there are kids whose families own something, or invented something, or are the CEOs of something. “Well-off,” according to Sam.
To me, Sam’s notion of well-off was what I imagined when I thought of stereotypical rich people. They had designer things. They skied. They occasionally suffered from a disregard for consequences, or the crushing weight of trying to live up to their family’s expectations. Sometimes both.
If there was a flowchart for well-off, it would start with Is there a child nicknamed “Trey” in your family—called thus because he is the Third? Yes? Well-off. No? Proceed to next question.
Is there someone in your family with a name that is more than the Third? Callie Ford wins that at PLSG—her brother is Clifford Oscar Ford the Fifth, and they call him “V.” Like “five.” Like the roman numeral for five.
Does your family own something with their last name on it? Like Amber Brunati. Her family owns a regional chain of fast-food Italian restaurants called Brunati’s Pizza. Lena Ideker’s family owns a series of car dealerships—the Ideker Automotive Group. Her dad is on TV on the regular: Shop Ideker Automotive Group for your new Ford, Volkswagen, Buick, BMW, Hyundai, Subaru, or Volvo! Lena had her pick for her sixteenth birthday.
Then, past normal, past well-off, there are kids like Iris Huang.
Where either you don’t even really know what their parents do or how they made their money, or else their wealth is so conspicuous that you know exactly how because their name is on a skyscraper or something. “Next level,” Sam said. “Just … a whole other dimension of rich.”
The kind of rich where even rich kids think you’re rich.
I can’t help but wonder how Iris’s family got so rich, so I get online that night and Google a number of combinations of the name Huang, and fortune, Chicago, business, rich, etc.
Finally, I text Sam McKellar.
Hey do you know what Iris’s parents do?
She replies with a link to an article:
MERGER OF BEICHEN RETAIL GROUP AND OMNI INDUSTRIES. “Yun Huang, CEO of Shanghai-based Beichen Group, expands internationally following the acquisition and incorporation of Omni Industries properties.…”
Why the interest in Iris? Sam texts. Looking for a sugar mama?
I send her the eye-roll emoji back.
If you’re in the market, she’s a prime pick I guess. She could literally afford to buy us all, put us on a preserve, and hunt us for sport.
Lovely, I reply.
sixteen
Del, Caris, and I go to the theater after school on Monday to take measurements for the costumes.
For the girls, we’re supposed to get measurements for the bust, waist, and hips. For the guys, we need measurements for the neck, chest, sleeve, waist, hips, and—the entry on the wikiHow page that gave me the most pause—inseam.
“Measure from the crotch to the back of the heel, where you want your pants to end,” it said.
Measure from the crotch, it said.
Thank goodness, Mr. Palmer’s plans for setting the play in the present day meant that certain people—the lovers and the court for the most part—would just wear clothes they already had. Or clothes we could buy, like, based off their normal sizes. So that lowered the number of crotches that I would need to be around.
Not that I was pathologically afraid of crotches. I just … like to know a person before I measure from the crotch to the back of the heel where I want the pants to end.
I start by measuring Keara Shelton, who’s playing Hippolyta, for the wedding dress that Del’s designing.
While we’re measuring people, they’re going through the first entrance of the fairies on stage. Before Titania and Oberon show up for the first time, there’s a little scene between Oberon’s magical servant Puck and the character scripted as First Fairy. Iris.
Puck is being played by a sophomore named Aimee Santo. I don’t know her personally, but as is the way at PLSG, I’ve seen her around. She has short, spiky hair and lines her eyes all the way around with dark liner.
It looks like most people have changed out of their school uniforms for rehearsal—the girls are wearing a variety of yoga pants or soccer shorts. Aimee is wearing black jeans with holes in the knees and a big, baggy T-shirt.
Iris is still in full uniform—jacket on, even—and they make an odd picture, standing there onstage. Like Iris is Aimee’s weirdly formal aunt or something.
“How now, spirit?” Aimee says. “Whither wander you?”
Iris holds up her script and begins to read in a complete monotone, with little pause for punctuation: “Over hill over dale thorough bush thorough brier over park over pale thorough flood thorough fire.” She speeds up even more:
“Idowandereverywhereswifterthanthemoon’ssphere—”
“Let’s hold for a sec,” Mr. Palmer says. “Iris, how about we try slowing it down a little?”
He works through the scene with Iris and Aimee a bit, but before long they move on to Gideon’s and Paige’s entrance. We don’t get to stick around to see it, though—Del gestures Ca
ris and me out into the hallway, where we find the Mechanicals running through their lines, and we set about getting their measurements.
We head back to the shop when we’re done, and as we’re wrapping up for the day, Iris stops by.
She gives Del the briefest glance and then approaches me. “They said to stop by here for measurements?”
“You could’ve come tomorrow,” I say.
“Or never,” Del adds. I look over to see if she’s joking, but she appears absorbed in her work, pinning scraps of fabric to a dress form.
“I’ll measure you,” I say, noting the glare Iris sends Del’s way.
I pull out my tape and start in on it.
“I saw the scene you guys were doing earlier,” I say as I move Iris’s limbs this way and that.
“Ugh” is Iris’s reply.
“Sounded like you were a little … rushed.”
“This whole thing is stupid,” she says darkly.
“You must’ve done well enough in the audition to get the part.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It was fine being ridiculous when there were just two people in the room, but here everyone’s … looking at me being ridiculous.”
“It’s not being ridiculous, it’s acting.”
“Oh, thanks. That helps.”
I finish the rest of the measurements in silence.
“What?” Iris says when I’m done.
“Nothing.”
“No, say whatever you’re thinking.”
I shrug. I can’t help but think of the car ride home from rock climbing, of Iris’s quiet admission: I love her. You can’t just turn it off like that.
“The play is important to Paige, right?” I say. “Like, she’s pretty into it?”
“Yes.”
“So … maybe. You could, like … take it seriously and do really well, and … show her that it’s important to you, too.”
She blinks at me. “Why would I do that? Why would it matter?”
I shrug again and loop up my measuring tape.
“I don’t even know what this stupid scene is about,” she says before I can move away.
“What do you mean?”
“The scene. Like the actual words.” Her voice drops. “I don’t … actually … get what they’re talking about.”
“Oh. Well, that’s … it’s not so complex, is it? You’re in the woods, doing your fairy thing—like, running errands for Titania, I guess—when Puck shows up. And you know him, you’ve heard of him before, and he likes that, so he starts telling you stories about funny stuff he’s done. Sort of like he’s trying to impress you, but sort of just because that’s how he is. That’s all.”
She looks at me, suspicious. “Did you get the version where it says it all in normal speak on the opposite page? Because we were supposed to get the Folger edition.”
“I did get the Folger.”
“So how do you understand what they’re saying?”
“I don’t know. I just read it.”
She’s still eyeing me suspiciously. “Okay,” she says, and then “Help me.”
“Sorry?”
Iris takes a deep breath. “Will. You. Help. Me.”
I nod. “Sure.”
* * *
We break down Iris’s dialogue and go through it bit by bit, sitting at the bench in the costume shop even after Caris and Del have left. We practice a few times, too, me stumbling along as Puck in place of Aimee Santo.
When we’re finished and we’ve both set our Folgers aside, I glance over at Iris.
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?” She looks suspicious again.
“How did Lucas make it into TION if technically he got eliminated in week three of Pop Talent?”
Iris’s eyes light up.
seventeen
At Iris’s behest, I watch a playlist of videos titled “TION Pop Talent Journey,” which is not only a compilation of the time the This Is Our Now boys spent as contestants on Pop Talent, but also a fan edit of this time, meaning there’s a lot of slow-motion replays and editorializing with emotional music.
I can’t help it. I fucking love it.
Should I listen to their albums in any particular order? I text Iris that night.
She immediately texts back a detailed order for listening.
* * *
I find myself in the studio the next afternoon, working on construction in between taking measurements of the people we missed yesterday. Including Gideon.
He stands in front of me expectantly. “I’m ready for you to measure me!”
Measure from the crotch to the back of the heel, where you want your pants to end.
I glance across the room at Caris, who’s chatting with Aimee Santo. “Or, you know,” I say, “I could just … like, you could measure yourself and read the numbers off to me, if you want.”
“No, I want the full costume shop experience.”
“Okay.”
Okay.
I unspool the measuring tape. Then I step closer and look down at the expanse of Gideon’s chest. He has one too many buttons unbuttoned on his shirt. I think. Maybe it’s exactly the right number of buttons.
“Claudia?”
I startle.
“Am I … supposed to do something?” Gideon says, looking at me curiously.
“No, just stand there. I mean, you could put your arms out. Like out to the sides.”
Gideon obeys. I go about gathering his measurements as quickly and non-awkwardly as I can.
Del comes in during, her arms full of fabric.
“Hello, Delilah,” Gideon says, and I’m sure it’s accompanied by a sunny smile, but I’m too busy fumbling with the measuring tape around his waist.
“Am I interrupting?” she says in that smoky voice of hers.
“No,” I say as Gideon says definitively:
“Yes.”
I mark down his waist measurement and then look at the remaining empty spot on the sheet, which I’d purposefully skipped.
I don’t want to measure that. There’s no way. It’s not happening. I can feel my face getting hot already.
“What’s your inseam?” I blurt.
“Huh?”
“Your inseam. Like the inside of your legs, like the measurement for—”
He blinks at me. “We can’t be properly sure unless you measure it, right?”
“It’s the second number of your pant size,” Del says, crossing over to us. “Put poor Claudia out of her misery, she obviously doesn’t want to get anywhere near”—she gestures widely at Gideon’s lower half—“all that.”
He tells me the number, and I record it, and Del moves off to the other side of the room.
“Sorry,” Gideon says after a moment. “If I made you uncomfortable. I was just trying to be funny. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Noah says I shouldn’t try to be funny but I don’t know why. I’m the funniest person I know,” he declares. “Except for you. You’re funnier than me.”
“That’s not saying much, because you’re not funny at all,” I murmur, and then blanch. That’s not the kind of joke you make around someone you don’t know very well. But Gideon just grins at me.
“Maybe I haven’t found the right market for my humor. Maybe I’d be really big overseas.”
“Maybe.”
I put Gideon’s sheet on the clipboard with the others. When I look up, he’s fiddling with the edges of a bolt of fabric sitting on the table.
“So,” he says.
“So?”
“Maybe I’ll see you around this weekend.”
“Maybe.” Like, if he goes to the same grocery store my parents go to? Or if he happens to be in the mood for a Pinky’s sub.
“Cool.” Gideon smiles as Aimee approaches.
“Hey, can I talk to you?” she says.
“Sorry.” I turn back to my stuff. “I’ll leave you guys to it.”
“Oh. Uh, yeah. Sure.”
“I’ll see you upstairs,” Gideon says to Aimee. “And I’ll see you this weekend!” he says to me with a grin.
“What’s up?” I say as Aimee pulls out the stool from the table and takes a seat.
“I heard you helped Iris with her dialogue.”
“I, uh. I mean, not really, we just talked about it some.”
“Well, whatever you did, you made her not suck. She said you helped her make sense of it.”
“She did?”
“Uh-huh.” Aimee holds up her script. “So you want to make sense of some more stuff?”
eighteen
PARTY 8PM TONIGHT MELISSA PRATT’S HOUSE!!!!!!
I stare at the message from Gideon in the hall between classes on Friday. It’s probably a mass text, and I don’t want to be the loser who responds thinking it was just for them. So I don’t reply.
IT WILL BE REALLY FUN, Gideon sends a little later.
LIKE VERY FUN CLAUDIA shortly follows.
I blink.
And open up a reply:
Are the capital letters supposed to sway me?
THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO CONVEY THE LEVEL OF FUN. WHICH WILL BE UNPRECEDENTED.
What will be so fun about it?
YOU’LL BE THERE
I smile. And against my better judgment, type:
Yeah okay.
EXCELLENT. GET READY. SO MUCH FUN.
* * *
It’s not fun.
Or, really, I guess it’s more accurate to say that I’m unable to assess the party’s level of fun, because I don’t make it past the front steps of Melissa Pratt’s house. Gideon and Noah are standing outside when I arrive, next to Alicia and Sudha, who are sitting on a decorative wrought-iron bench underneath an arched trellis.
“Hey!” Gideon waves when I approach. “Hey, hey,” and he holds up a hand for a high five, which I slap.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re just figuring out a game plan,” Gideon says. “I’ve deemed this party unacceptable.”
I blink. “You said it would be unprecedented levels of fun.”
He shrugs. “Unacceptable is unacceptable.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The cups,” Gideon says resolutely.
“The cups,” I repeat. I glance at the girls—Sudha is on her phone, but Alicia looks exasperated. Noah is looking at Gideon expectantly, eyebrows raised, amusement pulling at his lips.