Second Helpings

  “But I guess I have to thank you, in a way,” I said.

  “For?”

  “For, well, as uncomfortable as it was for me to read, you kind of showed me who I could be—that is, if I weren’t such a moron.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “Well, how you took a lot of artistic license with the Jenn Sweet character, you know, making her a lot of things I am, only better.”

  “How better?”

  “Better. Cooler. Someone who stands up for what she believes in, yet everyone still likes her, anyway.”

  She squinted at me, then shook her head in disbelief. “Girl, that’s how I always saw you.”

  “What?”

  “I always saw you as the girl who had it going on,” she said. “But you just didn’t know it because you were stuck in an area code where your bean ain’t never gonna get the respect it deserves.”

  “Are you on crack?” I asked, in utter disbelief.

  “Not anymore,” she laughed.

  “How could you say that Jenn Sweet is me?”

  “I can,” she said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and tapping it against her hand. “Because I’m the one who wrote it.”

  It’s unreal, isn’t it? How other people see you versus how you see yourself? Ever since I read Hy’s book, I’ve felt inadequate when compared to my cooler alter ego. And here Hy was telling me that I was my alter ego.

  I was about to protest, when I thought about what had happened an hour before this conversation. I had told off my crush-to-end-all-crushes, my former obsessive object of horniness, the gay man of my dreams. Yet he still seemed to like me, anyway. What more evidence did I need that she was right? Hy was right. I am my alter ego. I’m just not used to seeing myself that way. Powerful. Confident. And not a social outcast.

  I may feel like a social outcast, but I’m not really one. Taryn, now, she’s a social outcast. I think I’m an outcast inasmuch as I want to be left alone by people I can’t stand, which isn’t really the same thing as true social ostracization, now is it?

  I dare say not.

  Why did it take me until my last marking period of high school to figure this out? Because I’m me, and I’m a moron. That’s why. (You probably had this all sorted out a bizillion pages back.)

  “ ‘We are what we pretend to be,’ ” I said, with finality.

  “Kurt Vonnegut,” Hy replied.

  “Of course you knew it. That’s a pricey private-school education for you.”

  “Speakin’ of education, where you headed next year?”

  The Question. How odd that my first face-to-face with Hy in over a year had so quickly become so comfortable as to follow the required conversational patterns for seniors in high school.

  “I’m still waiting to hear,” I said. “I’d rather not jinx it by telling you.”

  “No big,” she said. “But you’re stressin’ for no reason.”

  If only she knew. “What about you? Harvard?”

  “Maybe,” she replied. “I don’t know if I’m down with Cambridge. When you’re born and raised in the dopest city in the world, livin’ anywhere else just ain’t an option.”

  Funny, how living in the least dopest city in the world could make me come to the same conclusion.

  Hy’s “people” soon came over to tell her that she was late for her next appointment.

  “I’m out,” she said.

  “Yeah, me, too,” I replied.

  “Later,” she said.

  And you know what? I knew that she was right.

  “Later, Hy,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”

  When I met up with Bridget back on the bus to Pineville, she was hanging her head in shame.

  “I bailed,” she said. “I, like, totally bailed when I saw her.”

  “It’s okay, Bridge,” I replied.

  “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t go off like I wanted.”

  “It’s okay. I couldn’t go off on her either for some bizarre reason.”

  “I guess we don’t have it in us to be bitches,” she sighed with resignation.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I replied.

  “Well, in high school,” she concluded, while pensively chewing on her ponytail, “being too nice can get you in more trouble than being a bitch.”

  Again, Bridget spoke the truth.

  April 1st

  Dear Hope,

  Let me say it again: I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU! Congratulations on getting into the Rhode Island School of Design. I still wish that you had picked Parsons, but if I get into Columbia, we’ll be eight hundred miles closer than we’ve been in the past two years! Whoo-hoo!

  See what’s happened? I wrote “if.” If I get into Columbia. With every day that goes by, I am less and less certain that I’ll get in. Karmic punishment for all my college cockiness.

  I am dreading the Williams letter. My final non-Columbia acceptance could come any day now, and I’ve run out of stalling tactics. I’m no Scheherazade, that’s for sure. My parents are still so pissed about Piedmont that they will not tolerate any more ifs, ands, or buts. As their reaction to my recent visit proves, they will never be in a New York state of mind. They are the only people in the tristate area who did not run out and buy I NY paraphernalia after 9/11.

  Why do I do this to myself? Why do I always want what I can’t have? And why do I never want what I can get?

  Because I, my friend, am a moron. I don’t need an Ivy League degree to know that much. Now I must go and celebrate the holiday that is specifically targeted at fools like me.

  Masochistically yours,

  J.

  april

  the twelfth

  In homeroom this morning, Sara was showing off the thick envelope she received in the mail from someone who, according to the return address, is named S. Jones. S. Jones had stapled it more than a dozen times, requiring Sara to wrench it open with brute force. This was the desired effect. With one quick pull, Sara told me, the envelope exploded, showering the D’Abruzzis’ plush carpet with glittery, multicolored shrapnel. Sara had been letter-bombed with beach-themed confetti: green palm trees, yellow suns, blue ocean waves. Her living-room couch had taken the harshest hit, and I knew her stepmother would be unamused. No matter how thoroughly the housekeeper vacuums, years from now, long after Sara’s college days are over, she will still be finding tiny, shiny coconuts or beach umbrellas in the cushions.

  But nothing could dampen Sara’s excitement. Apparently she had gotten over the fact that she hadn’t scored high enough on her SATs to attend Rutgers with Manda.

  “OMIGOD! THIS! IS! SO! COOL!”

  S. Jones is Sandi Jones, a senior at Harrington College and Sara’s “Freshman Initiation Counselor.” Sandi had cleverly turned a favorite picture of herself into a sticker and attached it to the bottom of her greeting letter. She had beauty queen beauty, the kind of perfection found in Miss America pageants back when the swimsuit competition was worth more points than the interview. She had shoulder-length blond hair, no bangs, blown-dry smooth and curled under. She was wearing a silver lamé strapless gown and a toothpaste-commercial smile. A disembodied male hand rested on her shoulder.

  “OMIGOD! SHE! IS! SO! BEAUTIFUL!”

  In her letter, Sandi revealed that the manly hand was attached to a Sigma Chi brother—as she was designated the fraternity’s official “sweetheart.” This entitled her to a plastic cup of beer fetched at a moment’s notice. No keg lines for the sweetheart of Sigma Chi. No siree.

  The letter itself was a marvel. Each word of the two-page document was written in a different-colored Magic Marker. The pattern: pink, blue, purple, teal, yellow, red, orange. Repeat. This wasn’t colored-copied at Kinkos. It was done by hand. Multiply this by, say, ten others in Sandi’s Freshman Initiation group, and that meant approximately one bizillion Magic Marker switches. I couldn’t imagine Sandi getting ink on her soft, paraffin-treated hands. She must have had someone else do it— an a
ssembly line of Delta Gammas each designated her own Magic Marker color to trace Sandi’s faint pencil letters into a rainbow of welcoming. A sorority sweatshop.

  “OMIGOD! I! WANT! TO! BE! HER!”

  What Sara didn’t realize, but I did, was that Sara and Sandi Jones were already the same person. In fact, I would bet that Harrington College was comprised entirely of Saras. A college full of superficial, moneyed daddy’s girls who weren’t smart enough to get into better schools, all of whom would bring out each other’s worst eating-disordered, stucco-butt fears.

  The letter also clued Sara into all the bizarre Southern rituals she’d have to know by heart before she attended the Freshman Induction Ceremony. According to Sandi, a white dress topped the list of must-brings. This was the required dress for the Proclamation Night ceremony. The details of said ceremony were kept very hush-hush, but Sandi Jones did say that it is a time-honored tradition, when all freshmen are initiated into the college. Apparently, they all wear white dresses (girls) and white shirts with red ties (guys) and walk in single file down a brick path that’s lined on either side with identically dressed seniors, carrying candles.

  “That would creep me out,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I mean, there’s something very satanic about that.”

  Sara flipped me the bird.

  Sara was expected to memorize a song before she arrived, to be sung along with the seniors.

  Harrington, Harrington

  This is the song

  That will be sung

  By you, it’s true

  Four years and forever

  Harrington

  “Are you sure you got accepted to a college and not a sorority?” I asked.

  Sara flipped me the bird. Again.

  Still, as much as Sandi Jones’s letter scared me, I couldn’t help but get a little jealous over Sara’s unadulterated excitement about the next four years of her life.

  I’m insanely jealous over everyone’s acceptance letters. Hope and RISD. Len and Cornell. Manda and Rutgers. Scotty and Lehigh. Bridget even heard from UCLA, which is really unfair because until she got the acceptance, she had insisted that she wasn’t even going. But now that it’s here, guess what? She wants to go. That’s the great thing about being Bridget. Her mind is so uncomplicated that it doesn’t take much to change it. It’s great for her, but sucks for me because I was relying on her to be the one person who was not caught up in college excitement.

  WHY HAVEN’T I HEARD FROM COLUMBIA YET????

  the fifteenth

  WHAT RECENTLY DUMPED BRAINIAC IS FUELING SAPPHIC RUMORS BY REJECTING THE MOST POPULAR, BEST LOOKING CLASS ATHLETE’S PROM INVITATION?

  I hate the Mystery Muckracker. I really do. Why should my business be anyone else’s business? This violation of my privacy pisses me off. Jesus, I wish I could write an editorial. Something along the lines of “Gutless Gossip: Pinevile Low Author Finds Safety in Anonymity.”

  While I’m hating people, I hate everyone who has been accepted to college.

  I hate Mac and Paul Parlipiano for making me care so much about Columbia. I hate them for making me want this so much. I’m much better off when I don’t really want anything. Only then can I maintain the ironic detachment toward my whole life that keeps me from going certifiably insane.

  Though this college thing has been a nice way to get my mind off of other things, like how Len and Manda are severely disappointing me by not breaking up. And how it kind of bothers me when Bridget isn’t home to field my Columbia freak-out phone calls. And how Marcus has been more distant and silent than he’s ever been.

  the seventeenth

  My Educational Options for Next Year

  Since It Is Clear That Columbia Doesn’t Want Me

  (and I don’t want to go to any of the other Schools

  I’ve been accepted to)

  Piedmont University. Room with Call Me Chantalle and major

  in Hobagitry. I’ll just have to suck it up. (Ha. In more ways than

  one.)

  Ringling Brothers Clown College. My moniker could be Dinky

  Dumbass.

  McDonald’s University. I am very familiar with their Dollar

  Value Menu.

  the nineteenth

  Ringling Brothers Clown College closed last year!

  DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  the twenty-third

  The mailman is Satan.

  the twenty-Seventh

  Why is it that I’m never allowed to get excited about anything?

  I’ve been wired, wired, wired—so wound up that I couldn’t even do sun salutations without feeling like I was going to snap into a bizillion pieces. My body has been buzzing with excess energy and I knew there was only way to get rid of it. I tried to ignore the urge through deep-breathing techniques and mini-meditations, but nothing, nothing could stop me today from doing the unthinkable.

  I laced up my sneakers and went for a run. That’s right. I’ve damned the downward dog to hell and have finally accepted the truth: I am not a yoga person. No one was home, so I figured no one would ever have to know. Even if I did get caught, who cared? It was too far into the track season for my father to insist I rejoin.

  I hadn’t run in about six months. And for the first few hundred steps, my body rebelled.

  OM SHANTI!!!! OM SHANTI!!!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?????

  But I forced myself to keep going. By the time I was out of sight of the house, I fell into an old but familiar rhythm. I realized how much I missed doing this. Not the competitions, just this. For myself. This is who I am: a runner.

  For the duration of my forty-five-minute run, I barely thought about the Answer to the Question or anything else. Little did I know that it would be waiting for me with clenched teeth, sweaty brows, and a lot of yelling.

  “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?” my father yelled as I walked through the door.

  “I felt like going running,” I replied, assuming that’s what he was freaking out about. After all, if I could run the streets of Pineville, I could certainly run circles around the track. But that’s not what had incited this riot.

  “WHAT IS THIS?” my father screamed while wildly waving an envelope in the air.

  I grabbed it from him. A thick envelope from Columbia College, Columbia University.

  “Jessica Lynn Darling! What is this?” my mother shouted.

  It was already torn open.

  “Well, you’ve already violated my privacy by opening it, so why don’t you tell me?”

  “You are not going to school in New York City!” they yelled in unison.

  I pulled out the letter on top. It began, “Congratulations! You have been offered a spot in the Columbia College Class of 2006.”

  Oh my God.

  “We apologize for the delay. The late mailings and website postings were the result of a technical error . . .”

  OH. MY. GOD.

  “. . . and we regret any inconvenience this might have caused.”

  Inconvenience, schminconvenience! The torture of waiting was nothing compared with the torture of getting accepted, as my parents’ reaction was about as awful and close-minded as I had imagined in my worst nightmares.

  “You are going to Piedmont on scholarship.”

  “No I’m not. That place sucks.”

  “We are not paying for you to go to a school located near Ground Zero!”

  “Columbia is nowhere near Ground Zero! It’s more than a hundred blocks away!”

  “You know why?” my father asked. “Because the terrorists wouldn’t bother bombing Harlem! It’s already a demilitarized zone!”

  The fighting stopped only when we’d all screamed ourselves into laryngitis.

  I am not backing down. No way. I don’t care if I have to take a bizillion dollars in loans, work a thousand minimum-wage jobs. The struggle will be worth it. I just know it.

  the twenty-eighth

  I thought brida
l showers were the most excruciating custom in modern society, what with all the paper-plate bow hat traditions and break-a-ribbon, make-a-baby superstitions.

  But today I discovered that there is one thing worse.

  Baby showers.

  No one likes them, especially the mama-to-be, whose sweaty tumescence was extremely disconcerting to me but didn’t seem to bother anyone else. Bethany couldn’t unwrap more than three presents in a row without having to waddle to the ladies’ room to pee. This made the already slow and excruciating ordeal even slower and more excruciating.

  As if the shower didn’t suck enough, my mother was putting on her super-dee-duper nicey-nice tone to cover up the fact that she is still supremely pissed off about Columbia. Whenever a great-aunt or a second cousin or anyone else with whom I am blood related (but barely know) asked me the Question, my mother singsonged the same annoying response.

  “Jessie got accepted to every school she applied to!” she’d say, putting her arm around my shoulder, squeezing a bit tighter than necessary. “She’s still undecided. We’ll let you know as soon as she considers her offers.”

  And I would just stand there smiling a wax dummy’s frozen, artificial smile.

  Finally, Gladdie came to my rescue.

  “J.D.! Park yourself over here!”

  She was wearing a baby-blue pantsuit with a baby-pink beret. Her walker was still St. Patrick’s Day green, which really bothered me. Couldn’t someone at Silver Meadows help her stay color-coordinated if she couldn’t do it herself anymore?

  “Whatsa matter, J.D.?” Gladdie asked. “Your face is all screwy.”

  “Oh, I hate stuff like this,” I said, plopping down in the seat next to her.

  “Why? Whatcha got against showers?”

  Bethany opened up a box wrapped in alphabet wrapping paper. “BOTTLE WARMER!” she announced to the crowd.