“Well, we’re not going to have time to change before dinner tonight,” my mom explained, smoothing the lines of her skirt.
“We’re going to dinner?”
“Of course. Dr. Cohen said that all the parents go to the John Thomas Steakhouse. It’s supposed to be fabulous.” Her lips formed an elegant smile as if she had been practicing it.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. I thought you guys were just gonna help bring my stuff, then leave tomorrow.”
I could almost see his dreams of a wild first night fade from his muddy eyes. Instead of burgers and hot freshmen girls, he’d be chilling with filet mignon and doctors’ wives. I covered my lips with my hand to hide my amusement.
“Mom!” he whined.
“Vincent, we’ll leave you on your own tomorrow. Is it really too much to ask?”
My father peered directly into my brother’s eyes. Vince blinked first.
The packed SUV pulled away more than an hour later with Vince’s similarly packed BMW trailing behind it. When you have two men who can’t agree on anything, let alone how to organize two cars to fit more luggage than they have interior space, it can slow down the departure process.
Lilly and I were finally settled onto the couch with a bag of popcorn laced with M&Ms and a deeply tragic “E! True Hollywood Story” to entertain us.
“So, you nervous about starting school?” I asked during a commercial, shoving a handful of chocolate-covered kernels into my mouth.
“A little. I’m more nervous that people won’t like me.”
“Are you kidding? People’ll love you. They always do. You had, like, a bazillion friends back home.”
“Yeah, in Utuado. But I’ve kinda gotten the impression that things are a little different here... .”
“Eh, not so much. Plus, you got me. What more do you need?”
“Yeah, and your friends just love me,” she grumbled, diving her hand into the snack bowl.
“You were a bit of a shock. Just give ’em time,” I stated as the doorbell rang.
Tootsie dashed in from the kitchen, barking with excitement, as Lilly and I swiveled toward the door.
“You expecting someone?” Lilly asked.
I shook my head.
“Well, might as well make myself useful.” Lilly stumbled to her feet and trotted to the door. She pushed back the sheer curtain on an adjacent window pane.
“It’s like they heard us,” she muttered, holding back my giant poodle.
As soon as she unlocked the dead bolt, the door swung open, and in barreled Madison and Emily.
“What up, girl?” Madison greeted, as she patted Tootsie’s head.
“What are you guys doing here?” I squinted at them.
“What do you think? Your brother’s gone, your parents are gone, and you’re racked with guilt over some family drama. We’re here to cheer you up!” Madison exclaimed as she pulled a pint of gourmet ice cream out of her pink leather bag.
The two girls walked briskly into the kitchen to fetch the spoons. They knew where they were, and they didn’t need permission. For more than a dozen years, we’d invaded each other’s homes unquestioned.
I followed them in. Lilly followed me.
“Ya know, I don’t need cheering up,” I said as I pulled out a stainless steel stool from under the island. “I’m totally fine.”
“Oh, so you’re totally cool with the whole bastard aunt thing?” Madison asked, eyebrows pushed high.
“Why does everyone keep calling her that?”
“’Cause it’s true. I mean, it’s not her fault or anything. But it’s true.”
I snatched the pint of ice cream from Madison and dug in. “I don’t know. My dad’s acting like nothing happened in Puerto Rico. And no one’s talking about my uncle’s hissy fit at the barbeque.”
“Well, what’d you expect?” Emily asked as she rested her elbows on the black granite.
She and Madison were standing on one side of the island; Lilly and I were seated on the other. It felt like the great divide.
“That we’d all just get along ...”
“Yeah, welcome back to Spring Mills,” Madison said with a forced chuckle.
“Seriously. Since when do our families discuss anything important?” Emily added.
Her face faded, but when she realized that I’d noticed her shift in mood, her eyes quickly livened. I brushed it off.
“I may not know Teresa, but I know your family,” said Madison. “And trust me, the Ruízes are gonna ignore her until she goes away.”
She stared straight at Lilly as she spoke, her lips curled in a sneer.
“Hey, I’m gonna go check my e-mail. See if my mom contacted me,” Lilly remarked, hopping off her stool.
“Yeah, adios chica,” Madison said with a hollow laugh.
I smiled and pretended like she was kidding. Lilly didn’t look amused.
Ten minutes later, Madison, Emily, and I were deeply involved in a conversation over what to wear on the first day of classes. We only had a couple of days before sophomore year kicked off, and, while I wasn’t a fashion victim, my style sense couldn’t compare to Madison’s expertise. The girl could teach a collegiate course contrasting this year’s fall colors to those of previous seasons, and she always made sure we benefited from her wisdom. Each fall, without fail, she’d help Emily and me put together the most fashionable outfits possible so we’d start the year off fresh. It was a mini-bonding experience I looked forward to every Labor Day.
She was in the midst of dissecting why brown was the new black, when Lilly cried out from my dad’s study.
“¡Ay Díos mio! Mariana!”
“What? What’s going on?” I rushed toward her.
The study was located just off the kitchen, accented by a giant bay window framing the lush backyard. It was my father’s home within a home; he spent more hours there than he did in his bedroom. I halted in the doorway and registered Lilly’s wide-eyed focus on the flat screen computer. Madison and Emily stopped behind me.
“It’s Teresa! You are not gonna believe this.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“She’s moving.”
“So?” I asked.
“To the States.”
The blood squished from my brain to my toes.
“She met a guy on the Internet. She’s moving to Jersey. Like, in two weeks.”
My stunned, wounded gaze drifted to a family portrait my father had nuzzled on a nearby bookshelf. It was taken years ago by a renowned Philadelphia photographer. We were all grinning wide in front of a cloudy gray background with my grandparents standing proudly at our sides. I locked on my grandfather’s face. He looked so foreign to me now. The man who lived his life ensconced in secrets seemed so different from the man who rested his weathered hand on my shoulder that day. We all looked different—less innocent.
Chapter 6
I didn’t tell my parents about Teresa, at least not yet. When they got back from Cornell, they looked so happy—full of pride for their Ivy League son. They raved about the campus, the restaurants, and the quaint collegiate location. I didn’t want to strip them of that poignant, parental, “just-dropped-my-firstborn-off-at-college” moment by informing them that the remainder of their family was about to implode when the next flight landed from San Juan.
I convinced Lilly to stay quiet until I determined the right moment to drop the news. She easily agreed. She had bigger things to occupy her brain waves, namely her debut at Spring Mills High School.
She spent thirty minutes straight talking to her mother about “expectations” and how she needed to appear “muy inteligente.” Lilly was already intelligent, and I didn’t expect her to have to work very hard to prove that to her new teachers. But her parents were understandably nervous—Lilly’s academic performance had to justify their losing their daughter for a good chunk of her teen years.
“Last chance to change your mind. You sure you’re ready?” I asked as I opened my custom-made
jewelry box and pulled out the diamond stud earrings that my parents had given me for my confirmation.
Lilly was carefully selecting her “first day of school” outfit from my closet. She insisted that I show her what “everyone else would be wearing,” but I doubted that I was the best judge. I tended to lean more towards the casual, comfy attire rather than the sleek, trendy looks Madison (and most of the female student body) preferred. I did, however, have a closet full of skirts and dresses from family occasions gone by, and after ten years in the district I knew that dressy attire was a safe choice on day one.
“It just seems a little formal for school,” Lilly said, glaring at the array of skirts flowing in my walk-in closet.
“Look, I could tell you to mimick an outfit from the celebrity pages of last week’s People, but I think it’s a little late for that. Trust me, a lot of girls will be wearing skirts.”
“Skirts with ruffles?” she asked, flicking a pale pink frock.
“Those are box pleats, and yes, girls will be wearing stuff like that.”
I had already selected my outfit. I was planning to wear the dress I wore to Vince’s graduation. No one outside the ceremony had seen me in it, and I thought it was safe to say that even those who had would have forgotten after three months of summer vacation. “It seems kinda boring,” Lilly said as she held a black skirt to her waist.
“Well, our school’s kinda weird about clothes. We don’t have a dress code, but there’s a ‘code of conduct’ that eliminates any item that could be worthy of MTV.”
I clipped the price tags from my new leather school bag and filled it with pencils and pens from my desk. My mom had bought Lilly and I a complete set of new notebooks, binders, folders, rulers, and calculators. I love school supplies.
“So, Madison’s picking us up tomorrow at 7:15,” I stated.
“Oh, great,” she grumbled.
I stared at Lilly, my head tilted. “Give her a chance. You haven’t seen the real her yet.”
“Well, maybe I won’t need to,” she said as she arranged a navy skirt and ivory top on my bed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just need to figure this Spring Mills thing out, you know?” She collected the outfit in her arms, along with a matching pair of navy sandals from my shoe rack, and headed toward the door.
“You will. And I’ll help you.”
“Hey, I’m a big girl. I can tie my own shoes.”
“That’s the beauty of Spring Mills. You don’t have to tie your own shoes. You can hire people to do that for you,” I joked.
Lilly shook her head and left the room. She seemed impeccably calm for a girl about to enter a world that was utterly unfamiliar. I think I was more nervous for the start of school than she was.
Madison’s red Audi smelled amazing. I wish they could bottle that new car smell, because I would drench my entire house in it. I slumped my head onto the black leather headrest and inhaled deeply.
“So, Lilly, how you feelin’?” Emily asked from her permanent seat in shotgun.
Since Lilly and I shared a residence, and therefore always had to be picked up together, we were designated backseat passengers. Not that I minded, but I knew that if Lilly wasn’t around, then Emily and I would at least rotate positions in the front.
“I’m okay. I’m mostly worried that I’ll be behind in my classes.”
“Aren’t you at all freaked out that you’re going to a school that speaks a foreign language?” Madison asked, looking at Lilly through the rearview mirror.
“Like my English sucks?” Lilly rolled her eyes. “Besides, considering my school back in Puerto Rico was almost entirely Americans, I don’t think it’ll be too strange. How different could it be?”
Madison pulled into the driveway that led to Spring Mills High School. The lawn was speckled with students clad in designer clothes and toting leather backpacks. A couple of guys kicked a soccer ball back and forth; a group of elite senior girls were cuddled on the laps of their football stud boyfriends; a few familiar sophomores goofed off on the steps; and the remaining kids chatted in small groups with headphones or cell phones attached to their ears.
The flower beds, which were everywhere, were so freshly fertilized that the earthen scent floated into the car even with the windows sealed and the air conditioner blasting. The stone building shone with recently painted windowsills and new red doors at the column-flanked entrance.
“Wow,” Lilly mumbled under her breath.
She tugged at her borrowed blouse (only two inches of cleavage showed, which I considered a vast improvement).
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Emily grinned as she twisted to look at Lilly between the leather seats.
“You should see how crappy the schools outside the Main Line are. When we play them in sports, I feel like we’re rolling into a prison,” Madison boasted.
“Mad, you’re a ballerina. Since when do you play sports?” I asked.
“We’ve gone to some of the football games,” she said, her blue eyes twinkling.
“Once.”
Madison pulled into the student parking lot and eased into a spot near the fence that led to the tennis courts. I grabbed my new messenger bag and climbed out of the car. My chocolate wrap dress hung below the wide belt cinched at my waist. I tugged at the hemline.
“First day of school, gotta love it,” Emily stated as she flung her plaid tote bag onto her shoulder and adjusted her black skirt.
Madison checked her hair in the car window and yanked at the waist of her designer jeans. She was wearing an exact replica of an outfit Cameron Diaz was photographed wearing on Rodeo Drive last week, down to the red ballet flats.
“So what does your school look like in Puerrrto Riccco,” Madison purred in a fake Spanish accent.
“Not like this,” Lilly mumbled.
A few minutes later, I walked Lilly to the front office. Since my dad had registered her via cell phone while the dean was on a par three, she hadn’t received a printed schedule in the mail.
We stopped in front of the glass doors. Three secretaries hurried behind a large wooden counter handing out rosters that students had lost over the summer, checking doctors’ notes, and reviewing homeroom discrepancies. The office always buzzed with chaos in the mornings.
I reached for the door handle, but Lilly grabbed my arm.
“What?”
“I want to go in alone.”
“Are you nuts? Why?”
“Because I want to.”
“Lilly, I know all of the secretaries. I can help you out.”
“I wanna do it on my own.” She stared through the glass into the bustling office.
“So, what, you just want me to leave you here and go to class?”
“Yes,” she said firmly.
“Lilly, you don’t know where anything is. At least let me look at your schedule and show you where your classes are. You still have to find your locker,” I said, foolishly assuming my tenure in the district would make me rather useful.
“You’ve done enough already. Trust me. I can do this by myself. I can’t be ‘Mariana’s cousin’ forever.”
“It’s the first day of school! Where are you getting ‘forever’ from?”
Lilly angled her head and peered at me.
“Mariana, I have no friends here besides you. And I can’t just assume that your friends will be my friends. We live together; we eat dinner together; we go to school together. If I keep following you around, we’re both gonna lose it.”
If I had been in Lilly’s position, actually when I was in Lilly’s position this summer, I had no desire to branch off on my own. Lilly’s life was my life. Aside from the occasional trip to the Internet café, we did everything together. I needed her in Puerto Rico, at least until I met Alex. But I even met him through her. I wasn’t good at meeting new people. Madison, Emily, and I had been glued to each other for so long that I had forgotten how we had become friends. I coul
dn’t imagine that Lilly didn’t need me in the same way.
“Okay, go for it. But if anything happens, you have my cell.”
“Mariana, I don’t have a cell.”
“Oh. We should make sure my dad gets you one.”
Lilly turned toward the door, took a breath, clutched the metal handle, and pushed it open. I watched for a moment until she attracted the secretary’s attention, but once they were involved in conversation, I took my cue to leave.
Chapter 7
My locker looked exactly the same. Students kept the same metal storage unit with the same combination throughout the duration of high school. So with each passing graduation, the hierarchy of the class wings rotated. The senior wing from last school year now housed freshmen, and my hall of lockers went from being the “freshmen wing” to the “sophomore wing.” It was odd to see freshmen roaming the hall that my brother had occupied with his senior buddies last year, but that was the cycle of Spring Mills.
“Hey, Locker Buddy! You’re back!” I cheered as Bobby McNabb approached the locker adjacent to mine. “How was bloody ole Dublin?”
“I think that’s a British accent you’re attempting there, ’cause the Irish definitely don’t sound like that.” He swung open his locker door, his blond curls flopping onto his forehead.
“Oh, so you’re an expert now?”
“I am, brutha,” he smirked, peeking at my butt. “Hawareya? Nice arse.”
“Okay, I’m gonna pretend you did not just look at my butt,” I said, a shocked smile across my face. Bobby’s cheeks flushed.
I hung my messenger bag on the hook in my locker and pulled my small red purse from inside.
“So, did you do the whole film thing?”
“Yeah. It was cool. Ireland’s awesome. We traveled all around. I filmed the whole thing. You’ll have to see it.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I heard you went away. To Puerto Rico?”
“Yeah. It was kind of a last minute thing. Didn’t really have much of a say in the matter thanks to my brother.”
“He at Cornell now?”
Amigas and School Scandals Page 4