What If... All Your Friends Turned On You

by Liz Ruckdeschel

  What she wasn’t willing to do was take the Coco Cleanse, which, as far as Haley could tell, amounted to ingesting lots of hot water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and little else. Even diet soda was off-limits, as Coco insisted it led to bloating and that the added chemicals weren’t a friend to skin.

  Now she and Coco were having lunch together in the cafeteria, if you could call Coco’s cup of water lunch. “You want a bite?” Haley offered her a piece of chicken.

  Coco shook her head. “That’s not on the Coco Cleanse. You’re not following the regimen, and I hate to say it, Haley, but it totally shows.” She pinched the skin on Haley’s upper arm as an example.

  Haley tried to keep her temper. “That’s muscle,” she said, seething.

  Haley had a feeling that for Coco, this “healthy regimen” was really about deprivation, starvation and self-control, certainly not health. She accurately guessed it was a way for Coco to feel in charge after Spencer had pulled the sarong out from under her on his modelizing trip to Nevis. “I’m worried about you, Coco. I’m afraid you’re taking this cleanse thing way, way too seriously.”

  Coco pulled a fashion magazine out of her bag and pointed to the model on the cover. “Look at her. Look how skinny she is! She makes me look like a total fatty. Apparently, this is the kind of girl Spencer likes, so that’s what I’m going for. And I won’t stop until I get there.”

  “You’re pretty close already,” Haley warned. Coco smiled with satisfaction, but that wasn’t Haley’s intended effect. She couldn’t help but notice that her friend’s skin and eyes were starting to look dull and tired. Coco seemed to have lost some of her fierce spirit and compelling edge. Sure, she could be a little too spirited at times, especially if you got on her bad side, but without that spark of personality, Coco was missing most of her overall appeal. How could Haley tell her that to her face without having her own head chopped off and served to her on a platter?

  Now that most certainly was not a menu item on Coco’s New Year’s diet.

  Coco has always had a tendency to go overboard, and this cleanse is no exception. It’s as if she’s lost all sense of proportion. If you think the waif look is in, turn to IV.

  All the dieting and cleansing is for a purpose, don’t forget: to make those flirty beach boys eat their hearts out. Looking lean and mean is just one part of the plan. If you want to see what goes down when the ladies unleash their arsenal of weapons on the unsuspecting boys, go to, MAN DOWN.

  Of course, changing your looks and getting revenge on unfaithful boys is risky business, best done carefully. If you think Haley should go home and regroup before she makes any major decisions about love and life, turn to, ON THE SCALE.

  Do boys really want girls who are literally starving for attention? Haley’s about to find out.

  THE COCO CLEANSE

  If you are what you eat, what is a person who eats nothing?

  “Everything with calories is bad for you,” Coco declared.

  “Even spinach?” Whitney said. “Even fish?”

  “Everything,” Coco said.

  “That doesn’t really make sense, Coco,” Sasha protested. “Food is the fuel your body needs to get up in the morning and get through the day. Calories are just a measure of how much energy you’ll get from your food.”

  “That’s the sort of thing fat people say,” Coco said. “So I’d expect it coming from you.”

  While Coco and the other girls were following a strict ten-day fasting plan—they were currently on day two—Sasha was still consuming some light proteins and steamed vegetables. And Coco wasn’t letting her forget it, needling her constantly about her “chubby” cheeks and “thick” thighs, even though there was nothing chubby or thick about Sasha at all.

  Haley had decided there was no arguing with the Gospel According to Coco, though. She’d been given a guest pass to Coco’s health club, where all the other girls belonged, so that she could join her friends for a group “detox” sauna in the mornings before school. She loved how refreshed it made her feel. Her skin looked clearer and her mind felt sharper. But it also made her thirsty, like, really thirsty, and she drank gallons of water to make up for all the fluid she sweated out every morning.

  “Food is the enemy,” Coco went on. “All food.”

  “What about mangoes? Or grapefruit?” Whitney said. “I heard they speed your metabolism.”

  “You don’t need to speed your metabolism if you haven’t taken in any calories to burn,” Coco said, leaning back against the cedar sauna wall and adjusting her towel.

  “Can’t argue with that,” Cecily said.

  “So what can we eat?” Whitney moaned. Giving up sweets had been the hardest for her.

  “Nothing,” Coco declared. “Except for lemon juice.”

  She really is serious, Haley thought. After all, even paramecia needed to eat something … bacteria, if Haley recalled last year’s biology class correctly. No woman could live on lemon juice alone. And in fact, Haley had secretly been picking at healthy dinners with her family at night, and having two bites from a small bowl of oatmeal before school in the mornings. She’d expected the diet to last a couple of days and then for everyone to come to their senses, but Coco was showing no signs of letting up.

  “Heat’s the best thing for you,” Coco said. “I basically live in heat now. Sauna in the morning, steam showers at night, Bikram yoga in the afternoons … it makes me feel great. All the gunk in my system is being flushed out. I think it’s working, don’t you?”

  Cecily checked her watch. “That’s twenty minutes. We ought to get to school.”

  The girls trooped into the locker room for cooling showers. Haley opened her locker, unscrewed the cap on a big bottle of water and drank it down as Coco took off her towel and started getting dressed. Haley noticed that her friend’s normally svelte body was even tighter and firmer than usual. Coco was actually beginning to look like a swimsuit model—if the adage was true that the camera packed on ten pounds and those pounds were distributed in all the right places.

  Haley glanced down at her own stomach, which felt puffier than ever, probably because she’d been drinking so much water. The cleanse is working for Coco, she thought. Why isn’t it working for me?

  If you think Haley should focus on Operation Dump ’Em and get the hard part over with, turn to, MAN DOWN. If you want her to weigh in after all this cleansing effort to see if she’s lost any pounds, flip to, ON THE SCALE. Finally, if you think Haley is starting to think she might need to lose a few more pounds after seeing Coco’s skinny frame, follow Coco’s extreme diet lead on, IV.

  FORMIDABLE OPPONENT

  Smart is not the same thing as wise.

  “I can’t believe Darcy said that to you,” Irene said. “Not only is she a cheap flirt, she plays dirty!”

  “She’s even starting to annoy me,” Shaun said. “And I’m usually a fan of pop tarts.”

  Haley was at Shaun’s house recounting her disastrous triple date with Devon and Darcy. The story of Darcy assailing Haley in the bathroom really got them going. Haley was glad to have Shaun and Irene on her side when it came to Devon. Maybe they could help her get Darcy out of the way for good.

  “She throws herself at him every chance she gets,” Haley complained. “And he doesn’t have a clue.”

  “She’s got the blinders on him, for reals,” Shaun said. “I don’t mind having the ladies come a’calling, but we haven’t given her the Willkommen seal of approval yet, and I can’t recall the last time me and the Devster kicked it mano a mano.”

  “And have you noticed how any time there’s even the remotest chance of rain she wears a white T-shirt? And ‘forgets’ her jacket?” Irene said. “Totally on purpose. I don’t know why Devon can’t see through her.”

  “Maybe because he can see through her shirt,” Shaun joked.

  Irene glared at him. “Shaun. Not funny.”

  “Saw ti thguoht I,” Shaun replied.

  “It’s like she’s got
him under a spell,” Haley said. “Do you think she’s using black magic?”

  “It must be the dark arts because Devon’s not that dumb,” Irene said. “At least, I never thought he was.”

  The doorbell rang. “Oh, who could that be?” Irene said sarcastically.

  “Probably D-Squared,” Shaun said.

  “Well, aren’t you going to answer it?” Irene asked.

  “Let me get my monocle.” Shaun had taken to wearing a monocle when greeting guests. Haley didn’t know where this latest quirk came from—apparently from some old British TV series he’d recently started watching—but Shaun was always up to some new weirdness; it hardly surprised Haley anymore.

  Shaun found his monocle on the kitchen counter and answered the door with a British accent. “Willkommen to the Willkommen household. I’m the butler, Shaunessy. Do come in.”

  “Thanks, Shaun,” Devon said, hardly batting an eyelash at this new persona his friend had taken on.

  “Please join the other guests in the kitchen,” Shaun said. “May I offer you a beverage?”

  Darcy stared in awe at Shaun’s large, modern house, with its plate glass windows, meticulous Asian landscaping and backyard infinity pool. “Wow, this is where you live? Some crash pad!”

  Shaun kept up his British accent, for the moment. “Yes, we rather like it for the time being, until the renovations on the big house are completed.”

  “There’s a bigger house?” Darcy asked.

  “He’s kidding,” Irene said. “Shaun, drop the butler bit.”

  “Whatever you say, my lady.”

  “Now.”

  “Okay, Rini, okay.” He whispered to Haley, “Milady’s a bit peeved about my fraternizing with the guests.”

  Haley had noticed that a power shift had gradually taken place between Irene and Shaun. They’d started out with Irene more or less retreating to the background because Shaun’s flamboyant personality grabbed most of the attention. But as time went on, Shaun had become so attached to Irene that she began to take it for granted. Now she could say just about anything to him and he’d obey still completely crazy about her.

  This dynamic seemed to work for the couple, but Haley would hate to see Devon being bossed around by Darcy that way. It just wouldn’t seem right.

  In the kitchen, Irene heated milk for hot cocoa as Darcy ran her hand along the smooth marble counter-top. “Everything in here just looks so … expensive,” she cooed, her eyes on Shaun, who looked away sheepishly. Haley thought she’d never seen the unembarrassable Shaun look so uncomfortable. You’d never know by the sight of him, but yes, Shaun’s parents were well-off. Very well-off. The trouble was, most of his friends weren’t. Shaun didn’t care; he didn’t have a materialistic bone in his body and dashed headlong through life, always looking for fun, not dollar bills.

  But apparently Darcy did care. She and Devon were neighbors in the Floods, the “wrong side of the tracks” in this basically affluent suburban town. Devon had turned his lack of means into a persona, outfitting himself from the thrift store where he worked and reveling in retro-seventies chic. But from the way Darcy was drooling over Shaun’s luxurious house—and then, suddenly, Shaun himself—she was clearly looking to move into fancier precincts.

  Irene poured the steaming milk into mugs and mixed in the powdered cocoa while Shaun took a bag of marshmallows from a cupboard. “I like my cocoa to be half marshmallow, half coconut,” he said, pouring half a bag of coconut flakes into his cocoa. “Who’s with me?”

  “I’ll stick with just the ’mallows. Toss me a couple of those, bro,” Devon said. Shaun shot two marshmallows at him. Devon caught the second one in his mouth.

  “I’ll try it your way,” Darcy said suggestively, leaning across the counter so that her boobs were bobbing in Shaun’s direction. She reached out her arm and dipped a finger into Shaun’s coconut-cocoa, lifted it up to her mouth and then gave it a good long lick. “Yummy.”

  “Rini, I don’t know about you, but I think I’m suddenly in the mood for cider,” Shaun said, dumping the contents of his mug down the drain. “Wanna help me retrieve some from the cellar?”

  Irene whispered harshly to Haley, “You’ve got to do something about her. Now.” And then Irene and Shaun headed downstairs.

  “Is all that property out there Shaun’s?” Darcy asked Haley, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the rolling lawn bordered by tall old trees. “How many acres does he have?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Haley answered truthfully.

  “Do you think he’d mind if I had a look around for a minute?”

  “Go ahead,” Haley said, relieved to see Darcy disappear down the hall. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a private moment alone with Devon. “So, how did you guys like the movie the other night? You left so quickly, we didn’t get a chance to talk about it.”

  “What do you mean? You were the one who dashed out.”

  “Um, no.”

  “But Darcy said you were catching a ride with a neighbor,” Devon replied, looking confused. “I just assumed she meant Reese.”

  That little skank! Haley thought, outraged that she’d been outmaneuvered by Darcy for the umpteenth time. She wouldn’t let that happen again, that was for sure. “Reese? Not a chance. I haven’t seen him in weeks, and the last time I did see him, he was cradling a swimsuit model on his lap in Nevis. Or didn’t you see the text messages that bounced around over break?”

  “So you’re not—”

  “Not even close. Wherever did you get that idea?”

  “Well, Darcy said you two were—”

  “I didn’t realize Darcy was an expert on my social life. Remind me to ask her later what I’m doing for my birthday.” Devon smiled and moved a little closer to Haley.

  “So, the movie. I thought the cinematography was incredible,” he said. “The way Korsikov played with light and shadow to emphasize the gray areas between good and evil …”

  “Exactly,” Haley said. “Especially given the title, Days of the Sun, Nights of the Moon …”

  “The moonlight is a reflection of the sun,” Devon said. “I got that too! It’s like, some of the goodness of day spills over into night, to save the people of the village from being completely overwhelmed by evil.”

  “And Tatiana Morakova was so beautiful,” Haley said breathlessly.

  “Did you see her in Sad Little Liudochka?” Devon continued. “Where she becomes a heroin addict and then a prostitute, and soon she’s so far gone that even when this artist who loves her tries to save her she can’t be saved? It was so touching.”

  “I saw Liudochka last year,” Haley said, locking eyes with Devon. Haley’s father wanted her to have a good film education, and made sure she kept up on the classics and all the latest foreign films. “By the end, it was so bleak I could hardly watch it.” Haley felt her eyes well up a bit.

  Devon grabbed her hand and squeezed.

  “What are you two talking about?” Darcy said, suddenly breezing back into the kitchen. Haley instinctively pulled her hand away, then wished she hadn’t. Devon looked hurt.

  “Just the movie the other night,” he said lightly.

  “Not that again. Yawn.” Darcy dipped a cinnamon stick into Devon’s hot cocoa and began sucking it like a lollipop.

  “Excuse me, I think I need to hit the boys’ room,” Devon said, ducking out of the kitchen.

  Then Irene and Shaun reappeared carrying a jug of cider. “Now, for the gingerbread,” Shaun said, setting the jug down and spinning on his heel to head toward the pantry.

  “Let me help you,” Darcy volunteered. Irene’s hair stood on end—Haley could feel the static electricity from across the counter.

  “Oh no she didn’t,” Irene said, moving closer to the pantry to keep Shaun and Darcy within earshot. Haley joined her.

  “This pantry is, like, the size of my whole house,” Darcy was saying. “You know, Shaun, I never realized what a cool guy you are. You’re such an i
ndividual, you know? I can tell you’re a real artist because you have that artist personality. Nobody tells you what to do or how to live.”

  “I guess,” Shaun said mechanically.

  “So what do you feel like doing now, Shaunessy?” Darcy said in a seductive voice.

  “Oh, she’s going down,” Irene whispered.

  “Don’t worry,” Haley said. “Shaun can handle her.”

  “I feel like eating gingerbread and sipping on some cider,” Shaun said, grabbing what he had come for and exiting the pantry as Irene and Haley hustled back to the kitchen counter. Before Devon returned from his bathroom break, Irene yanked the ponytail holder out of Haley’s hair and fluffed up her shiny auburn mane.

  “This is all-out war,” she advised. “I wouldn’t normally advocate such extreme measures, but you need to use everything you’ve got to defeat that little prostitot,” Irene said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Darcy may have shown her true colors at the movies, but now she’s really bared her teeth. Her lack of brainpower would be fine if she were at least a nice person, but that’s clearly not the case. Is she really so impressed by wealth that she’d try to steal Shaun from Irene? Those methods tend to work only in the high-powered Coco scene. Fortunately, that’s not the way this crowd rolls.

  If you want to take Irene up on her offer to win Devon’s heart by force, turn to, AMERICAN GOTH.

  But does Haley really want to continue chasing after Devon? Anyone who could be caught in Darcy’s web is clearly not as gifted and talented as Haley first thought. Not that she isn’t fond of the arty trio of Irene, Shaun and Devon, but the addition of Darcy sucks the air out of any room. People tend to get extremely tense whenever she’s around, and lately she’s always around. Maybe Devon just isn’t worth the trouble. There are, after all, other fish in the sea—like, for instance, Reese Highland. To take him back, no questions asked, after his scandalous trip to Nevis, turn to, RAPID RECONCILIATION.

  There’s also the supercute and supersmart Alex Martin. He’s always had a thing for Haley. Devon might be the cooler catch, but maybe it’s time Haley stopped fighting the tide and went with the flow. If you think Haley has had it with Devon and Co. now that Darcy Downer is a staple playmate, and wants to turn her attention to the future, turn to, COLLEGE BOUND.