The Aristobrats

  “Well, I guess you’re not expelled a la mo,” Kiki guessed, “because you’d have to be thoroughly daft to be expelled and play field hockey anyway. Just for kicks.” She leaned on her stick as the rest of the gym class fought for the goal down the field. “Expelled and hockey is like a double negative. Like wide wale corduroy.”

  “That’s a triple negative,” Plum observed. “Wide. Whale. And Corduroy.”

  “Plus,” Ikea pointed out, “it’s wale. Without the h.”

  “Whatevs.” Kiki made the big W over her forehead. “Parker’s still not expelled. Which means…what, exactly?”

  Ikea volleyed her hockey stick left and right like she was really playing. Except for the fact that she was fifty yards from the action, it was fairly convincing. While Ikea was nearly perfect at everything else, she was a total spazette in gym. She’d learned how to work with what she had and look good doing it—a Lylas credo if there ever was one.

  “Hotchkiss nearly poisoned me,” Parker told them. She lowered her eyes, knowing she’d failed her friends. “It was terrible. I couldn’t get us out of it.”

  “Buggers!” Kiki stomped her cleats. “I knew it!”

  “What are we going to do?” Plum asked.

  “Move to a new town.” Parker said. At least that’s what I’m doing.

  “How about London?!” Kiki suggested, only half-joking. They all watched as Cricket ran quickly down the field and, just as she got within the limits of the striking circle, passed the ball to Cosima, who scored a goal. Cricket’s shiny hair swayed back and forth as she ran. Her matchie-matchie headband kept it all neatly away from her face. Her dark, natural eyebrows made her perfect, corn-on-the-cob teeth look even whiter. (P.S.—Even though natural eyebrows were now in according to this month’s Teen Vogue, they were still so out according to the Lylas.)

  Coach Payne blew her whistle. All the Crickettes were jumping up and down with excitement. Their leader had so generously let someone else score. Yes, the ugly truth reared its ugly head: Cricket Von Wielding was truly a shining example of what an eighth grader could be.

  “What do they all see in her anyway?” Plum stared.

  “She’s only the governor’s daughter,” Ikea reminded her.

  “A veritable supernova of meh,” Kiki said.

  “She has three-hundred-and-two Friends,” Ikea told them. “That’s only ninety-four fewer than Parker.”

  “No!” Kiki could barely contain herself.

  “I have a Friend from Christmas Island,” Parker reminded everyone. That counts for something. Right?

  “Nice.” They all nodded.

  “Festive,” Kiki said.

  Pathetic, actually, Parker thought.

  “And, I know you’re going to hate this, Keek, but…” Ikea pulled her phone out from her sock and turned it on, “they started a Fans of the Lunch Menu Group.”

  “Really?” Kiki was surprised and more than a bit flattered. “A fan club?”

  “Don’t call your agent just yet.” Plum peered at Ikea’s screen.

  Kiki and Parker gathered around Ikea’s phone. The sound of video was tinny and barely audible but the top ten hit was familiar enough to fill in the blanks.

  “‘Ain’t Nuffin but a Jam Thang’?” Kiki was in shock.

  “Hump D. Dump.” Parker nodded cautiously.

  It was an awful sight. Someone in the group had superimposed Kiki’s head on DJ Jazzy Jeremy’s body. Kiki’s oversized face was frozen into an awkward position while Jazzy Jeremy showed off his most bewildering freestyling to the Hump D. Dump beat.

  “It’s pretty realistic.” Ikea couldn’t help but admire the technology. Kiki gasped and went pale. Parker rushed quickly beside her.

  Coach Payne’s whistle blew. “Girls!” She yelled loudly from the other end of the field. Ikea deftly slid her phone back into her sock. She made it look like she was stretching. “I see the wheel spinning but the hamster looks dead!”

  Parker barely heard her. All she heard was the sound of the Crickettes snickering.

  Chapter 20

  Kiki sat silently in the middle of the comfy couch at La Coppa Coffee, her pupils dilated and fixed like she was rehearsing to play the lead in a glamorous zombie movie. Plum had to hold her tea for her because Kiki had already crushed two of them. Her legs were covered in the scalding remnants of two grande English Breakfasts. Kiki hadn’t even felt the pain.

  Ikea was looking at the fans of the Lunch Menu Group on her phone. Parker snuck a peek over her shoulder and read the painful (and growing) list of members. The group linked directly to the webcast itself.

  The feeling was pure panic. Parker just wanted to reach into Facebook and yank the whole thing out, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t her home page. What could she do?

  “So this is what humiliation feels like.” Plum groaned.

  “Carnage.” Ikea agreed. Parker shut her eyes tightly.

  Kiki sighed. “I can’t believe I horked in gym class.”

  “At least you got to go to the nurse’s office,” Plum said.

  “At least you didn’t have your head cut off and stuck on Jeremy Landis’s body!”

  At least you don’t have to leave Wallingford and go to be a noof at Fox Chapel Middle School! Parker wanted to scream. But she couldn’t tell them now. They would have felt like she was leaving on purpose. She couldn’t let them down—she had to get them out of it. She had to get out of it.

  All four of them were squeezed onto the couch. The only way it seemed to feel any better was being squished all together like a big wad of Play-Doh from four different cans—at least they were in the ugly mess together.

  “I guess we can’t call backsies.” Plum shook her head at Ikea’s small but devastating screen.

  “Remember Samantha Mazzafundo’s video of herself singing ‘Can I Have This Dance’?” Ikea powered down and put the phone away.

  “Anyone can Google ‘Mazzafundo’ and see it,” Plum said. “For all eternity.”

  Parker tried her best to think of a solution but her mind was painfully blank.

  “What’s happening to us, Park?” Plum asked.

  “I don’t know.” Parker didn’t have a clue. Her (former) ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth best friends were members of the group. She felt sick. All her work had amounted to nothing.

  “Everything was going great and next thing you know…” Plum took a sip of Kiki’s lukewarm tea. “Arthur the janitor is down on the field with a bucket and bag of sawdust.”

  “Very funny.” Kiki took her tea. “It was a perfectly natural reaction.”

  “A melt-down is a gateway toward a total transformation,” Ikea announced plainly. They all looked at her in disbelief. Ikea could get so annoyingly empowered sometimes. “It is, you guys!” she assured them. “It’s been proven.”

  “GirlPower is like the last thing we need right now, Ike,” Plum said.

  But Parker kept listening. Ikea was smarter than anyone she knew. Besides, it’s not like anyone else had any brilliant ideas.

  “Maybe we have to open the door,” Ikea explained, “take the Gateway, and walk boldly toward Self-Empowerment.” She smiled slyly.

  “That’s the most RYE-dik-u-luz thing anyone has ever said! Ever!” Kiki raised her voice. “Like in their entire lives!”

  “Uh, hello?” Plum said. “What about ‘I do’ to McDweebs in second grade?”

  Parker winced. Things were getting out of control. This was serious rule breakage: Never mention the arriage-may in front of Iki-Kay. Never!

  “Stop, you guys,” Parker demanded. Super-pissiness was not helping find a solution to the problem. “No ideas are bad ideas,” she reminded them. “It’s a rule. Remember?”

  Ikea dropped her head and Kiki attempted a very careful sip of her tea. Plum squinted at the front door of La Coppa Coffee as it open
ed. A rush of fall leaves kicked up outside.

  “Check out who it is.” Plum pointed over to Graham Henry, who was waiting in line with his mother. Ikea looked up. “The Belch-Maestro.”

  Graham looked over at the Lylas and gave them a devilish smile.

  “That kid is a serious case.” Kiki said. “He gives Wallingford Academy a bad name.”

  Parker’s eyes grew wide. She got goose bumps all over her arms. “What did you say, Keek?”

  “About what?” Kiki sipped her tea.

  “About the kid!” Parker said. “You were saying, he gives Wallingford Academy a bad name…”

  “Parker, I really can’t do the fake super-nice thing today—”

  “But he does, Kiki!” Parker interrupted. “He gives Wallys a bad name!” Parker started doing the Happy Wiggle (another Lylas move). “I love you, Graham Henry!” she shouted.

  Kiki struggled to free herself of the couch and put some distance between herself and Parker’s freakish outburst.

  “Don’t you get it, Keek?” Parker said breathlessly. “Great leaders don’t sit there and wallow in their problems. They fix them.” She felt like tropical punch Pop Rocks were going off in her head. “And Graham gives Wallys a bad name!” She wrapped her arms around Kiki and squeezed. “You’re brilliant!”

  “She is?” Plum looked confused.

  “I am?” Kiki looked even more confused.

  “Ohhhh…” Ikea was the first to get it. “We’re love love loving it!”

  “Hotchkiss said that she was sure we’d do something that would make the school proud…” Parker painted her vision for them.

  “So what if we do something that won’t make the school proud…” Ikea continued.

  “Something she won’t show,” Parker explained.

  “Like the DVD won’t work or something?” Now Plum was really confused.

  “Not something she can’t show…” Ikea told Plum.

  “Something she won’t show. As in ever.” Parker said. “Something that would give Wallingford a bad name.”

  Plum’s grin grew until it filled half her face. “If we do the worst show, like the baddest show ever…” She finally figured it out. “She’ll have to fire us.”

  “Positutely,” Parker said. “And everything will be back the way it was before we started doing the crummy webcast.”

  Kiki smiled wickedly. “I am brilliant.”

  “Hotchkiss will just have to give it to someone else.” Parker smiled too. “She’ll have no choice.”

  “The Einsteins,” Kiki said.

  “Exactly,” Parker agreed.

  “Allegra Oliphant will be soooo excited.” Ikea did the Birdie.

  “Totally! So, like we’re doing something completely nice.” Parker said.

  “Like an example.”

  “For the whole school to follow.”

  “Très perfect idea.”

  “Fantabulous.”

  Ikea was right. All they needed was a little GirlPower.

  “To the worst show ever.” They turned toward each other and clinked friendship rings. “To the worst show.”

  For the first time in weeks, it once again felt great to be a Lyla.

  ***

  Parker taped up pictures of dresses and hairdos for Fall Sosh on the wall next to her desk. She organized them in order of preference and color. Something blue, she thought. Maybe? Or canary yellow, which looks great with a fresh tan. She opened her computer to its most frequented website but she didn’t check her requests box or compare her Facebook Friend count with everyone else’s or search for the new app that would animate her profile pic. Instead she focused on the blank box at the top of the screen.

  What’s your status right now?

  She wasn’t answering the question for anyone but herself today. It was her status. Nothing anyone said, no group anyone else belonged to, no wall anyone wrote on, would change that. She looked over at the pictures of dresses again. She pulled her favorite one down: full length, pale blue with a really great neckline. She circled the store where it came from.

  A mischievous grin came across her face. It was a brilliant plan, if she didn’t say so herself.

  What’s your status right now?

  Parker is…not giving up.

  Chapter 21

  The funny thing was, the Lylas spent even more time working on the horrible version of Wallingford Academy Today than they had on the first one. It was like bad ideas were way more fun to think about than good ones. It didn’t even seem like work to Parker—it felt just like regular Lylas stuff: how it all was supposed to be again. With no time to lose, everything was getting back on track.

  “The beige, off-beige set has to go.” Plum sat in front of the mirror at the World of Beauty and painted a blue lightning bolt on her cheek with liquid eyeliner. Plum’s sense of style had grown bolder along with the size of her chest. Thanks to the patented technology of American Coquette, she was now a full size B. The undershirts were gone.

  “I completely agree. Has to go immediately.” Parker tried to wipe some fugly mauve lipstick off, not realizing it was the kind of lipstick that’s supposed to remain on one’s lips barring everything except an apocalypse.

  Plum finished her lightning bolt, put some nail polish remover on a cotton ball, and handed it to Parker.

  “Maybe something that makes you sick just looking at it.” Ikea combed clear eyebrow tamer gel onto each of her brows.

  “Like Levi 501s?” Kiki suggested. She powdered her nose with Terra-cotta Mineral bronzer. Everyone looked over at her. “What?” she asked. “I can’t help it. 501s make me sick, all right?”

  ***

  Plum continued to think about it the next day when the Lylas were doing homework on the ground floor of the Hunt Memorial Library. “Maybe…neon orange.” She rhymed the word with “door-hinge” just like Mr. Lewis, the art teacher, had. “Like a…discotheque.” She remembered his description of her Cézanne still-life drawing. “One feels ill, when one looks at it,” she quoted.

  “What’s a disco-theck?” Kiki whispered from across the library table.

  Ikea did a Google image search on her phone. She turned the screen toward everyone and smiled.

  “Oh….” They all nodded knowingly. “A discotheque! ”

  Ikea enlarged the image.

  “Très perrrfect,” Plum purred.

  “That’s so wrong.” Parker grinned as Ikea scrolled.

  “No cell phones in the library, Miss Bentley!” Ms. Fenderson, the librarian, dropped the yellow slip on the table. Ikea’s name was right up top.

  “My first yellow slip!” Ikea beamed with pride. The plan was working already.

  ***

  The next afternoon they went to the Hat & Scarf department at Langdon’s.

  “I think I should do a piece about the fact that there are only nine African American students at Wallingford Academy when there should be fifty-three point six!” Ikea announced.

  Kiki picked out a black furry hat. She centered the big thing on Ikea’s head.

  “That’s eighty-three point-four percent less than there should be…” Ikea unbuttoned her navy cardigan and tied it loosely around her hips. “…given the statistical breakdown of the country.”

  “Totally en agreement, Ike.” Kiki surveyed the look she’d picked out. “Proportion is everything.”

  Parker and Plum folded their arms in front of their chests and squinted at Ikea’s head. Kiki tucked Ikea’s smooth, shiny hair up under the hat so it seemed like the mass of black fluff was Ikea’s hair. Parker used the Clipboard app on her phone to take notes. The ideas were flowing so fast, she could barely get them all down. Ten folders had already been filled.

  Plum sketched Ikea and her hat in pencil in her notebook.

  “Wallys of color are nearly in
visible! At our school. At my school.” Ikea was so mad the fur on her head was shaking. “Just look at my friend, Divya Venkataraghavan.”

  “Who?” Plum asked.

  “Exactly.” Ikea turned around and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hazel eyes registered horror. Kiki stared over Ikea’s shoulder.

  “I don’t think you should wear that hat in front of the Yale admissions committee,” Plum said.

  “No way,” Parker agreed.

  “Your dad would have a nip fit if he saw you right now,” Plum added.

  Kiki nodded. “Completely.”

  “Hmm.” A smile spread across Ikea’s face. “Fierce, right?!”

  ***

  “I’m so not doing the lunch menu again,” Kiki declared as they walked through the Orion computers retail store Saturday morning. Liam Davies’s new music video played on all the Super-Screens. “Can’t I do something spiff, like be a guest celebrity or something?” She leaned against the display counter and flipped through her magazine.

  “You’re not really a celebrity, Keek,” Parker said. “Sorry to break it to you.”

  Kiki picked up the new black glitter case Plum was buying and held it up to her ear just to try it. Plum was preoccupied with her phone, tapping out something with her thumbs. Parker’s phone buzzed in her tote. She looked at the ID—it was Plum. But Plum was standing across from her, less than five feet away.

  EGB. DN’T TRN AROUND.

  Parker froze. She looked up at Plum. They couldn’t even exchange secret signals because the target was too close. Plum just moved her eyes back and forth toward the tabletop speaker section of the store—obviously the 10–20 on the EGB.

  Another message arrived from Plum, the answer to Parker’s unasked next question.

  UR HAIR IS G2G. LYLAS

  0: - )

  Soon all the Lylas except Parker had seen Tribb and they were all eye-rolling it toward the speakers. Parker’s back was still toward him. She quickly relaxed her body posture, fluffed her hair out and began talking like she was in the middle of a very important conversation that had nothing at all to do with Tribb and his whereabouts.