by Sophia Rossi
I was such an idiot . . . hadn’t he told me his dreams of being a revolutionary filmmaker? And now the whole school was seeing me in Spring Breakers 2: Sober and Stupid. Except, you know, I wasn’t as cute as Selena Gomez.
“Hey,” Derek mumbled in my direction, practically an admission of guilt. I wanted him to look at me, but he kept his eyes on the ground. Clearly he was too ashamed . . . was it because he was sorry about releasing the video? Or because he was embarrassed to have kissed the girl who freaked? It was probably the second—I hadn’t turned out to be the cool girl he believed me to be, and he felt like he had been tricked into putting his lips on a phony, lying loser like me.
I didn’t need to be judged by Derek or Kendall; I knew that I was better than that. I was still trying to think of something cutting to say when I realized where I was: out of breath and in the parking lot. I guess I had unconsciously followed one of those patented MomTips that I thought would never come in handy: If you can’t change the room, change the location.
I didn’t even know I was running until Tim grabbed me in the parking lot, saying “Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry, Harper.” Right then I needed my Lily more than anyone in the whole world, but she wasn’t here. I also needed human contact from anyone with an actual heart and soul who didn’t see me as a total joke. I collapsed into Tim and let him wrap his arms around me and I closed my eyes and felt nothing but the relief of not falling.
“Hello, Pathways!” I sang-yelled into the old-fashioned microphone to a small test audience of a select group of NAMASTE members. It was our first public performance, and I was kind of freaking out—but in a good way! We were stuck in the music room, where the acoustics were pretty awful, but we’d been booted out of the auditorium, this time by the Pathways Improv Dance Troupe, who were practicing some sort of gyrating adaptation of Pippin. “We are your entertainers this evening! Allow me introduce you to the one, the only . . . the Jug Judies!”
Our first couple songs were a little shaky—our version of Haim’s “My Song 5” wasn’t quite as subtly haunting as we would have hoped because my soft vocals were totally overpowered by Drew’s enthusiastic tooting. Our “Anything Could Happen” by Ellie Goulding was actually coming together, though, and Jane was killing it on Miley’s cover of “Team,” now re-covered by us, with just me on the ukulele and some very enthusiastic jug playing—but we didn’t really hit our stride until everyone had finished the tempeh stir-fry from our favorite food truck, which Drew had hired to cater the event.
“This next one is also a cover of one of my favorite artists, Katy Perry,” I said cheerfully, announcing my lead-vocals debut. I was getting friendly with the small crowd, marveling over the fact that I, Lily Farson, was actually telling an audience information about our music! That I was playing live for real people! And they were listening to me! Sing one of my favorite songs! AH! Yikes. Maybe this was actually a mistake? But before I could lose my nerve I saw Nicole flash a thumbs-up sign from the back of the room—her new purple hair unmissable even in a sea of totally unique faces and a few fluttering wings. Nothing to do now but perform.
“This one I want to dedicate to Nicole and NAMASTE,” I said. “For helping me realize my best self is me!” Drew counted off—“One-Two-Three!”— and then suddenly, I was singing.
I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath
Scared to rock the boat and make a mess
So I sat quietly, agreed politely
I guess that I forgot I had a choice
I let you push me past the breaking point
I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything
When filtered through our homegrown sound, the music was like a playground rhyme set to a lullaby.
I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire
’Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
Louder, louder than a lion
Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
As soon as it had begun, the song was over. Everyone cheered and the applause was deafening, thanks to the room’s weird acoustics.
“Fairy girl! Fairy girl!” Started a chant from the back of the crowd, and pretty soon everyone was calling out “Fairy Girl! Fairy Girl!”
Jane, Drew, and I took our bows, and I squeezed their hands as tight as I could. I couldn’t believe how different everything was. How different being popular . . . or, not popular . . . but being liked was! Even though we had yet to play a real show that was open to the whole school, it seemed that everyone was interested in us and wanted the chance to talk to the Jug Judies. For instance, everyone knew about the party Jane was throwing to celebrate the re-launch of her FancyFashionFeminist blog, and at least twenty people had already asked if I was going, and if the Jug Judies were going to play. Even now, as we packed up and walked down the hall toward the Lane, a couple of junior girls who spent all their time in Cinema sessions asked where they could get wings like mine. Two freshman girls I hadn’t met before approached shyly and asked if I would pose for their drawing session. It was the same day as an environmental nature walk I was taking with NAMASTE, so I told them that I’d have to think about it. A boy in a plaid shirt and adorable Harry Potter glasses asked if he could get my autograph.
“Seriously?” I laughed.
Even when I wasn’t hanging out with Nicole or Jane or Drew, kids in the Lane would call me over and ask if I wanted to eat lunch with them. (“Can’t, going to band practice!” “Next time, then? Ciao, Lily!” “NAMASTE!”)
“Great job, Lily!” Jane said, putting her arm around me. “You really are this beaming ball of good energy.” I blushed . . . no one had called me a beaming ball before!
The other good thing about being part of NAMASTE is that even the teachers treat you like you’re special. Earlier that week Jamie Godfrey asked me to bring in the film I made with Harper, and we spent a whole session analyzing its themes and our artistic vision. Apparently my movie was a lot deeper than I’d thought: Godfrey said it was “a cinematic interpretation of female colonialism.”
The only part of my Pathways schedule that kind of sucks is the hour I have after lunch, in a session called Life Lessons. It’s supposed to teach us about the real world and giving back to the community, but so far it’s just like giant group therapy. Our instructor, Bill, always wears wool sweaters, even when it’s like eighty degrees out (which is literally always because we’re in LA) and is constantly eating beets from plastic Whole Foods containers with his fingers, which in turn are perpetually red. We met in the gymnasium, where everyone sat in a giant circle, about thirty of us of all different grades, and went around the room “sharing” our feelings.
Most of the time kids would just say normal stuff. Like, “My dad decided making an appearance at Cannes was more important than coming to my one-man show” or “I used to be inspired by Bret Easton Ellis but then he decided to remodel the place next to ours and the noise is driving me insane and maybe Less Than Zero wasn’t even that good?” Once in a while though, someone would say something really crazy. The day of our practice concert, a really tall boy with a voice like a girl’s stood up and told Bill he had something to say.
“So I just found this out,” the boy began, his eyes focusing on the ground. “And I don’t really know what to think about it yet . . .”
“Go on.” Bill motioned with a beet-stained hand.
“Well, so, I went to the doctor because I was getting all these stomachaches, and I guess they saw something in there, and I was really scared it was going to be cancer.” The room held its collective breath . . . cancer was the kind of serious topic that wasn’t joked about in the land of SPF 100. “But when they removed the . . . mass, well . . . I guess what happened was that, before I was even born, I had a twin. And I ate him. Or her. Like, in the womb.”
I know it wasn’t supposed to be funny, but the combination of his sweet v
oice and the morbid story it was telling, and then watching everybody’s grossed-out reaction, well, I couldn’t keep a straight face. I could feel my mouth twitching, and then I caught the eye of that cute senior in suspenders who drove the blue Mustang, and he had his hand over his mouth but I could tell he was smiling. The next thing I knew, I was snorting back laughter with tears streaming down my face. It was the kind of laughter I hadn’t busted out since middle school, when Harper and I would come down with daily laugh attacks.
As if on cue, the rest of the class started giggling, too. Quietly at first, but then louder and louder. The tall boy looked surprised for a moment, and then struggled to talk over everyone with his soft voice. “I mean, it was before I was born! When I was in my mom’s uterus!” He looked totally mortified, which made me feel bad for a second, and for some reason I was struck by a quick flashback to that day in fourth grade gym class, when I first met Harper. Because I realized that, if Harper were there, I probably wouldn’t have started laughing at all. Harper is supersensitive to other people’s feelings and never likes to laugh at someone for saying something weird—especially when it was something that person didn’t have any control over. Neither did I, as a general rule, but . . . “in my mom’s uterus” was just too much. Even Bill, trying to get everyone to settle down, was not doing a very good job of hiding a bewildered grin at the absurdity of it all.
After class, though, I felt terrible for being the one responsible for starting a class-wide laughing fit after some poor kid was just trying to get something off his chest. I told Nicole about what happened, hoping she’d say something to make me feel better or give me some pointers on how to make amends, but instead she just started cracking up, too.
“Lily, it’s totally fine to laugh when someone says something ridiculous like that in front of a group of strangers,” she told me. “Laughter was your natural reaction, and by acting on it, you were being true to yourself.”
“I guess that makes sense . . .” I said. Maybe, without Harper there to influence me, this was just what I was like. I was a girl who laughed when something was funny, rather than one who analyzed scenarios to death to figure out whether it was okay to laugh.
“Oh my gosh!” a somewhat familiar voice called out from behind me, and I turned around. “Lily? Lily Farson, is that you?”
It took me a minute to recognize Beth-Lynne Jacoby, the daughter of the couple who ran PuppyTales. She was a year older, used to volunteer a ton at the shelter, and had made it to a couple of Harper’s PuppyBashes, and although Harper and I weren’t that close to her, she was always super nice and bubbly. Even though she was roughly our age, she reminded me of someone’s aunt, with large, frizzy hair that was always held in place with the same tortoiseshell clip, and penchant for extra-large flannel shirts and unflattering Levi’s. She had a wide, broad nose and a loud, horsey laugh that stopped just short of being startling. But all that could have been excused (and since when did I critique people’s sartorial choices like this??), but the worst was yet to come. Beth-Lynne had horrible taste in shoes, as was evidenced by the bright pink Ugg boots she was sporting today.
I had heard from Harper that Beth-Lynne had cut down on her volunteer work last year when she started feeling the strain of high school AP-level courses, but I had no idea she was at Pathways. Don’t get me wrong—I liked her a lot—but standing there in the hallway in her signature oversized shirt, workman boots and jeans, she looked about as creative as a Denny’s value meal.
“Beth-Lynne? Hey! I had no idea you went here!”
“Yup,” she said. “Since seventh grade. I’m in the Science Tech wing though . . . we pretty much keep to ourselves. We call ourselves Pathways 2.0.” Beth-Lynne cracked herself up, braying with laughter at her own joke. I tried to match her enthusiasm, but my chuckle caught in the back of my throat.
“How are you?” Beth-Lynne asked. “And how’s Harper? Still hanging with the bad dogs?”
“Well, you know Harper,” I said weakly. I heard a sound behind me, and turned to see Nicole tapping her toe impatiently and scrutinizing my old acquaintance’s get-up. Beth-Lynne, totally oblivious, plowed forward.
“Man, Lily! It’s so good to see you! But I’ve got to ask, girl, are you really still wearing those wings? I remember when you first showed up at PuppyTales when you were eleven in those things! My mom thought you had just come from a rehearsal of a school play!”
“Ahem,” Nicole said, making that throat-clearing noise but not actually clearing her throat. She pushed her way in front of me and looked Beth-Lynne up and down. “Bethel, is it?”
“Uh, it’s actually Beth-L—”
“Whatever. How dare you make fun of Lily’s iconoclasm while you stand there, encouraging conformity of fashion trends in corporate America with your mall jeans and that hideous Australian footwear. Made in Taiwan, no doubt. Double Ugg.”
Oh my god, what was Nicole doing? Beth-Lynne just stood there, looking totally stunned. A small group had gathered around our little circle, nudging each other and taking out their cell phones to record Nicole’s takedown of this hapless girl.
“Lily,” Nicole said, startling me out of the imaginary shell I’d retreated into. “Tell Bathilda here that you refuse to let her shame you into not wearing the wings that are literally the most important symbol of your individuality!”
Beth-Lynne’s eyes bulged like she had been slapped. I wanted to tell her to close her mouth, which was gaping open: She wasn’t doing herself any favors by just standing there. Even though she hadn’t done anything offensive, not really, I felt myself getting unusually irritated at Beth-Lynne. Maybe she didn’t mean anything by it, but Nicole was right: She was sort of putting down my look. Ever since I moved to Los Angeles, people have felt like they have the right to just stop and stare at my wings or make comments—“Hey, Tink, got me some magic fairy dust?” “What’s with the costume?” “Can you grant me wishes?”—without stopping to think that maybe me wearing my grandmother’s outfit wasn’t an invitation to question my entire identity.
I honestly had no idea what to do. On the one hand, Nicole was right: Beth-Lynne, whether she meant it or not (and in my heart I knew she hadn’t) had been rude. On the other hand, I knew Beth-Lynne, and knew that she, like Harper, cared about saving animals’ lives and was generally a good person, if a little clueless. But there was Nicole, staring daggers at me, and I could tell by her look that my future membership in NAMASTE would be determined in how I answered. I had to make a decision.
So I made one.
“Beth-Lynne, instead of being so obsessed with my style, maybe you should find one of your own,” I said icily. “You notice how I never ask you why you’re supporting animal cruelty every time you put on a pair of those fugly pink Uggs? Why do you assume I have all day to answer your questions about what I wear?”
“You tell her, Fairy Girl!” someone shouted from the hallway crowd. Nicole smiled triumphantly and for a second I felt vindicated and righteous: Damn the man! But that lasted as long as it took to take in the look of Beth-Lynne’s reaction.
“I’m sorry, Lily,” Beth-Lynne mumbled. “I . . . I didn’t mean it like that.” Beth-Lynne had never been that gifted with words, but I knew that she was truly sorry . . . for ever talking to me in the first place. Her shoulders slumped and her usually milk-pale cheeks flamed bright red. She could barely look me in the eye, and I realized that I had totally, utterly humiliated her. The way she looked at me . . . well, I never want to be looked at that way ever again. Her eyes spilled over with tears, and she hurried away without saying another word.
“See?” said Nicole. “If we hadn’t said those things, we would have been lying to both her and to ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with being honest.”
“Right,” I said. All I could think about was Harper, and that I was thankful she wasn’t there to see this. Because if she had been, I don’t think she would have ever
spoken to me again. At least Pathways had banned students using SchoolGrams, because if there had been video footage of my dressing down of Beth-Lynne, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to look in the mirror again.
On Wednesday, Rachel offered to take me to my PuppyTales volunteer session. When she dropped me off at the Beverly Gardens Park, she said to text her whenever I need to be picked up. Lately I’ve noticed that Rachel’s been being eerily nice to me, which meant even my snarky older sister felt bad for me. At least I didn’t have to deal with her and her friends teasing me on top of everything else—that’s one thing going my way. Well, that and my awesome grades: the combination of Lily-withdrawal-weirdness and a fear of running into Kendall anywhere outside of school meant that I wasn’t really leaving the house much, and with nothing to do there but study and absorb some new MomTips, I’ve been pulling straight As.
In the summer the park tends to get overrun by tourists, but now that fall was arriving and everyone was back in school, there were fewer people than usual sitting on the perfectly manicured lawns, alternating between lattes, spring waters, and bottles of cold-press green juice. (Los Angelenos can micromanage their beverages like nobody’s business.) I was running late: By the time we pulled up, there was already a line of kids and exasperated parents snaking back behind a tan-and-white RV that read “PuppyTales Mobile Center.” One of the panels of the RV was open, like a food truck whose window extended all the way to the floor. In fact, when the Jacobys originally bought the Mobile Center, it was a recently retired vegan taco truck, but they renovated the kitchen and bathroom area so that now the entire space is used to transport their rescues.
As part of our organization’s outreach program, the Jacobys invite kids and families into the center once a month, and let them play with some of the dogs. They also give out literature for the kids to hand to their parents when they (obviously) run back and beg their moms to please please please let them get that Jack Russell terrier puppy with the crooked tail and the wonky ear. We also go to schools, low-income areas, and occasionally rehab centers and correctional facilities (though I’m not old enough to volunteer at those places yet). I also help out as the PuppyTales social media manager, which means I put the word out about where the Mobile Center is going next, and let our followers know what dogs we have up for fostering and adopting. My goal is to eventually become an “angel parent,” which means I would get to host some of the puppies in my home to help them adjust to family life. But I can’t right now because a) You have to be at least eighteen to be an angel and b) my mom is allergic.