Epic Fail

  He swung his leg over the bench as he plunked a can of soda and a long stainless steel cylinder on the table. He settled in next to me, and I had to shift over even more. This guy took up a lot of space.

  So it was my lucky day, right? Handsome Guy was sitting two inches away from me. I stole a peek at him and noticed—now that he was up close—that his eyelashes were so thick and dark, he almost looked like he was wearing eyeliner. Girls would have killed for those lashes.

  They didn’t look so bad on him, either.

  He pulled the tab on his soda. As he raised it to his lip, he caught me staring at him—for the second time that day. He sighed heavily and looked away.

  Way to make a first impression, Elise. Oh, wait—second impression. Both bad.

  “Is Coke part of the diet?” Chase asked jovially.

  “It’s not cooked, right?” He took a big gulp.

  “Derek, meet Juliana and Elise.” Chase gestured toward each of us in turn. “They’re both new. And they’re sisters—but you can kind of tell that, can’t you? This is Derek,” he informed us.

  “Hi,” Derek said, a little warily.

  We nodded and smiled and said hi back. There was a pause, like he and Chase were waiting for us to say something else. When we didn’t, Derek turned his attention to deconstructing the stainless steel cylinder, which turned out to be a set of small matching containers that all screwed together, and which he now carefully laid out on the table in a row in front of him. He opened the first one and sniffed dubiously at the unidentifiable brownish contents.

  “That looks disgusting,” Chase said.

  “I don’t even know what it is.”

  “Dump it and get something else, man.”

  “I promised my mother I wouldn’t.”

  “Did you also promise her you wouldn’t grab a slice of pizza after school?”

  Brief smile. “Not in so many words.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Derek!” a new voice exclaimed. “You’re back! Oh my God, how was it?” There was an impatient tap on my shoulder. “Excuse me—do you mind?”

  I looked up and recognized the pretty girl I had bumped into that morning. She was with her pal Gifford again.

  She recognized me at the same moment. “Oh, it’s you. Hi. Hit anyone with a door lately? JK. Can you move, though? I need to sit next to Derek—I haven’t seen him all summer.”

  There was plenty of space on the other side of me, so I slid down obediently while Chase nodded a casual greeting in her direction and said all our names by way of introducing everyone.

  As Chelsea took my old place, Gifford plopped her tray on the table between us and waited expectantly. I sighed and slid down some more so she could sit between me and “Chels,” who had taken hold of Derek’s arm.

  “So how was it?” she asked him eagerly. “Fantastic? Was it fantastic? It was, wasn’t it?”

  “Did you see a kangaroo?” Gifford chimed in before he could respond. She unwrapped a container of sushi and pushed it toward Chelsea. “We’re sharing, remember. And don’t forget I paid this time so you have to next time.”

  Chelsea ignored her. “I am so jealous,” she said to Derek. “We didn’t go anywhere all summer long except Belize and Costa Rica. And to visit our grandparents in New York. Oh, and that endless cruise to Alaska. That was so cheesy, though, it doesn’t count.”

  “Derek just got back from Australia,” Chase explained to Juliana.

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s so cool.”

  “The beaches were nice,” Derek said with an indifferent shrug.

  “Did you see a kangaroo?” Gifford asked again. She seemed a little obsessed with the kangaroo thing.

  “Yeah, a couple. But not on the street or anything—just in animal parks.”

  “I am so jealous,” Chelsea moaned.

  “Eh, seen one kangaroo, seen ’em all.” Derek tentatively poked his fork into another container—something green and slimy this time. “They look like overgrown rats.”

  “They can punch people, right?” Gifford said. “They’re like pro boxers.”

  “I think that’s only in cartoons,” Chase said, and he and Juliana exchanged a grin.

  “Do you have pictures?” Chelsea asked Derek. “Can we see them?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “I want to see them, too,” Gifford said. “Can I see them, too?”

  “What made you choose Australia?” Juliana asked Derek.

  There was a slight pause, like she had said something awkward, but I had no clue why. Was she supposed to know why the guy we’d never met before had just vacationed halfway across the world?

  “Movie shoot,” he finally muttered.

  “Movie shoot?” she repeated blankly.

  “He was keeping his mom company,” Chase added, like that explained it.

  “Oh.” Jules shot me a questioning look, and I shrugged to indicate that I had no more idea than she did who Derek’s mother was, and everyone else was acting like we should already know, which made it impossible to be normal and just ask.

  Derek seemed to have caught our silent exchange. He was watching us curiously, like something about us was confusing to him.

  “Oh God, look at her!” Chelsea exclaimed suddenly.

  “Someone offend your fashion sense by wearing sandals with socks again, Chelsea?” Chase joked. “My sister takes these things very seriously,” he told Juliana.

  “I didn’t realize she was your sister.” Jules looked at me again, and I shook my head—I hadn’t known that either.

  I felt like we needed SparkNotes for this whole lunch.

  “No, seriously,” Chelsea said. “It’s her. The new principal. The one everyone hates already.”

  We all looked up at that and saw her, the new principal, charging around the picnic tables, stopping to pat one kid on the shoulder, exchange a word with another, admonish a third who had let a wrapper blow onto the ground without picking it up, and so on.

  “She looks totally crazy,” Chelsea said. “Which I hear she is. They say they only hired her because the guy they really wanted took another job at the last second so they were stuck and she was the only candidate who was still, you know, available, because no one else would take her.”

  The new principal did look a little nuts. She was wearing a reasonably businesslike dark red suit, but she had matched it with a bright chartreuse top with an enormous bow at the collar, navy tights, and brown pumps. Her graying brown hair had been pinned up in a bun at some earlier point in time, but it was the kind of kinky, wavy hair that plots its escape from the moment you try to capture it, and wisps were flying all over the place.

  Her wire-rimmed glasses were slightly askew. My fingers itched with the urge to straighten them as she stopped at a table near us and asked the kids sitting there if they had any suggestions for improving the cafeteria.

  “Serve Frappuccinos,” said one girl.

  “And Pinkberry!” said another.

  “Free booze,” shouted a boy at the far end of the table.

  “Who said that?” asked the principal sharply, swiveling to look in the direction the voice had come from. A lot of boys were sitting there. They all grinned at her innocently. “That’s not funny.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Chelsea said. “The woman can’t take a joke. Despite quite clearly being one.” She picked up her empty cup and climbed over the bench. “Anyone else need something from the caf?”

  I was about to ask her to grab me a fork and napkin when the principal turned and called out, “Excuse me. You there! What’s your name?”

  As Chelsea reluctantly told her, Juliana and I sank down lower in our seats.

  “Well, Chelsea, it’s nice to meet you.” The principal held out her hand, and Chelsea shook it, with her lip curling so high, I thought it was going to enter her right nostril. “I’m Dr. Gardiner.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Dr. Gardiner tilted her head sideways, which made her
glasses look almost straight. “Let’s talk about the dress code, Chelsea.”

  “You mean like uniforms?” Chelsea said. “We don’t have uniforms here. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “But we do have a dress code.” Dr. Gardiner gestured toward Chelsea’s legs. “And I’m afraid that skirt doesn’t conform to it.”

  Chelsea put her hands on her hips. “This is a Dolce and Gabbana, and our tailor just hemmed it.”

  “He hemmed it too much: skirts can’t be more than four inches above the knee.” The new principal reached into her pocket and pulled out a tape measure. “Let’s check.”

  Chelsea took a step back. “No way.”

  Dr. Gardiner shrugged. “Fine, but I’m going to have to ask you to change.”

  “Change into what? It’s not like I keep an extra wardrobe in my locker.”

  “You can wear your PE shorts.”

  “You have got to be kidding me! Do you know how dorky those are?”

  The principal slipped the measuring tape back into her pocket. “If I see you still wearing that skirt later today, I’ll have to notify your parents and send you home.”

  Chelsea’s mouth opened so wide in horror that I could see the wisdom teeth budding in the back, but the principal’s attention had moved on. “How is everyone enjoying his or her lunch?” she asked, gazing along our table. That’s when she spotted Juliana. “Hello!” she said delightedly. “How’s your first day going, sweetie?”

  Juliana managed a weak smile. “Fine?” she said.

  “Good, good. Oh, there you are, Elise! Everything going well?”

  “Yeah, fine,” I said. “Everything’s fine.” Please go away, I thought. Please, please go away.

  Dr. Gardiner said, “Well, I’m happy to hear that.” She turned. My muscles relaxed: she was leaving. Wait, no—she was just picking up a protein bar wrapper that was lying on the ground. She carefully balled it up in her hand as she stood back up. Then she beamed at us like the proud mother she was and opened her mouth to effectively kill our short-lived anonymity. “Won’t you girls introduce me to your new friends?”

  “She’s your mother?” Chelsea said a few minutes later, after Dr. Gardiner had finally moved on. “How can you stand going home at night?”

  “Chels,” said her brother warningly. “That’s not—”

  “Seriously,” she said. “Is she always that bad? And why don’t you guys give her some fashion tips?” Her eyes fell on my T-shirt. “Or not.”

  The insult hardly registered: I was still trying to process the awkwardness of my mother’s appearance, the shock of discovering that Chase’s friend Derek was the son of Melinda Anton and Kyle Edwards, the most famous celebrity couple in the country, and the embarrassing realization that everyone at the table, including my mother, had already known this except me and Juliana.

  Melinda was the leading female action star in the U.S. She’d starred in an endless series of blockbuster movies. Kyle was more of the indie film type, but he’d won an Oscar or two, so he was no slouch.

  They were on the cover of half the tabloids on the newsstands any given week of the year.

  But okay, fine—I guess if I’d thought about it, I’d have expected a private school in L.A. to boast a celebrity brat or two. No big deal, right?

  Except that it seemed to be one for my mother—hence the awkwardness, above and beyond the fact she was our principal, which would have been bad enough. For someone who never wanted to take us to the movies, she got awfully excited when she realized who Derek was: she kept telling him over and over again how “empowering” his mother’s movies were to young girls and how his father was “not just an actor—he’s an artist.” The true horror came when she informed Derek that I—her second oldest daughter—was also very creative and liked to make my own “little movies.” (I had taken one stupid summer class in filmmaking two years ago.)

  Derek nodded briefly as she chattered away, but showed no interest in discussing his parents, just chewed steadily and unenthusiastically on the little brown bits of earth or whatever it was in his lunch rocket. Eventually my mother ran out of things to say and left with a satisfied wave.

  But she’d stayed long enough, judging by the expressions on the faces around us. Chase looked sympathetic, Chelsea looked horrified, and Derek looked like he smelled something bad—although, admittedly, that could have just been his revolting lunch. Gifford, at least, looked indifferent.

  “Go change your skirt, Chelsea,” Chase said. “Mom will flip if you get a suspension.”

  “I’m going to call Linda”—she pronounced the name with a Spanish accent, Leenda—“and tell her to bring me something decent to wear. No way am I wearing those disgusting PE shorts in public.”

  “You’d better hurry,” Chase said. “Lunch will be over in ten minutes.”

  “I have a free period next.” She pulled a bejeweled iPhone out of her Prada bag and started punching furiously at it before putting it to her ear. Pretty soon she was chattering away in fluent and pissy Spanish.

  “Wow,” Chase said after an awkward moment of silence. “I had no idea Dr. Gardiner was your mom. But isn’t your last name—?”

  “Benton,” Juliana said with a slightly nervous laugh. “She kept her maiden name.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Isn’t there a new math teacher named Benton? Don’t tell me that’s your father.”

  “Sort of.”

  He pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure we’re not related to any of the lunch ladies,” I said.

  “Too bad.” Chase turned to me with his ready smile. “I could use an in at the sandwich bar.”

  “Well, the sandwich lady does owe me a huge favor.”

  That actually caught Derek’s interest. He looked up. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “But it’s a long story—involves this knife fight in Brussels back during the war. She was smuggling, I was a double agent for the resistance. . . . The usual.”

  “Is she always this nuts?” Chase asked Juliana.

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’m hurt you don’t believe me,” I said.

  “Get her to stop putting mayonnaise on my sandwich when I ask for ‘no mayo,’ and I’ll believe you,” Chase said.

  “For God’s sake, man, I’m not a miracle worker!”

  “Just to be clear,” Derek said, “this war you’re talking about—” But he was interrupted by Chelsea, who suddenly interposed her body between us to poke at Gifford’s empty sushi container. “Did you eat it all? I thought we were sharing.”

  “I totally offered you some.” Gifford stood up. “Jesus, Chels, don’t keep changing your mind and blaming me.” She stepped over the bench.

  “Whatever. I’ll tell Linda to pick me up a sandwich since she’s coming anyway.” She took out her phone again. “Oh, that reminds me—I need a ride home today, Chase.”

  “You mind going out for pizza with me and Derek first?”

  “Are you kidding?” she said. “That’s even better. I’ll just wait to eat until then.”

  “Can I come, too?” Gifford asked eagerly.

  Chelsea twisted her mouth. “Oh God, Gifford, I don’t think that’ll work. Sorry, but I have a lot of homework. Let’s do it another time.” She touched Derek’s shoulder. “So I’ll see you after school? I am so glad you’re back.” Her hand lingered on his arm as she smiled prettily down at him, letting her pretty hair bounce prettily along her pretty collarbone and pretty shoulders.

  Man, I thought. She really likes him. I’d always wondered what it would be like to have an older brother who could bring friends home for me to date—guess it would be like this.

  Did Derek like her as much as she liked him? Hard to tell. All he said now was, “See you,” and since he didn’t even turn around, he totally missed all that prettiness on display for him.

  Chelsea and Gifford said a general good-bye and moved across the courtyard together.
r />   I shifted over a little, just to fill in some of the space on the bench. Chase and Juliana were talking quietly, which left me and Derek sitting there in silence.

  I was still trying to process the fact that the guy sitting two feet away from me had parents who were world-famous. We didn’t have movie stars in Amherst.

  I studied the table in front of me, running my fingers over the unblemished surface. It wasn’t wood at all, I realized. It was plastic made to look like wood. No wonder it wasn’t splintering or rotting.

  The silence was getting more awkward. I felt like one of us should say something. So I tried. “How’s the raw food thing going?”

  “Sucks,” was the helpful response.

  “What’s the theory with that diet anyway? Is it supposed to be better for you because it’s not cooked? Nutrients more nutritious? Vitamins more . . . vitamitious?”

  That elicited a very small smile. “Something like that, I guess.”

  Four more words: I was making progress. Next topic. “So what was the movie your mom was making in Australia? Will it be out soon?”

  The edges of his mouth tightened. “I don’t know.” He threw down his fork and started to close the containers. “I give up,” he said to Chase. “I can’t eat any more of this crap. If I don’t see you later, I’ll meet you at Romano’s.” He neatly packed up the steel cylinder while I sat there feeling totally brushed off and annoyed about it: I was just trying to make polite conversation. If he didn’t like my choice of topic, he could have come up with one of his own.

  “Hey, you want to come with us?” Chase asked Juliana. “Get some pizza after school? You too, Elise.”

  “We can’t,” Jules said. “We have to drive our little sisters home.”

  “Bring them along.”

  Derek froze halfway to his feet and stared at Chase. He didn’t wave his arms and scream, No! For the love of God, no! but the look on his face pretty much got that message across.

  I quickly said, “I can drive the girls home, Jules. And that way you could—”

  “No, no, I think you should all come,” Chase insisted. “Your sisters will love it—how old are they, anyway?”

  “Layla’s fourteen,” Juliana said. “Kaitlyn’s ten. But—”