“Brown,” Missy squeals. “Dad will be so happy.”
“I know,” I say, floating on the moment. Maybe my luck has changed. Maybe my life is finally going in the right direction.
“So, Dad,” I say later, after he’s hugged me and patted me on the back and said things like, “I always knew you could do it, kid, if you applied yourself,” “since I’m going to Brown…” I hesitate, wanting to position this in the best possible light. “I was wondering if maybe I could spend the summer in New York.”
The question takes him by surprise, but he’s too thrilled about Brown to actually analyze it.
“With George?” he asks.
“Not necessarily with George,” I say quickly. “But there’s this writing program I’ve been trying to get into—”
“Writing?” he says. “But now that you’re going to Brown, you’re going to want to be a scientist.”
“Dad, I’m not sure—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says with a wave, as if shooing the issue away. “The important thing is that you’re going to Brown. You don’t have to figure out your entire life this very minute.”
And then it’s the day swim team starts again.
The break is over. I’ll have to see Lali.
Six weeks have passed and she’s still seeing Sebastian.
I don’t have to go. I don’t, in fact, have to do anything anymore. I’ve been accepted to college. My father has sent in a check. I can skip classes, drop swim team, come to school intoxicated, and there’s nothing anyone can do. I’m in.
So maybe it’s pure perversity that propels me down the hall to the locker rooms.
She’s there. Standing in front of the lockers where we always used to change. As if claiming our once-mutual territory for herself, the way she claimed Sebastian. My blood boils. She’s the bad person here, the one who’s done wrong. She ought to at least have the decency to move to a different part of the locker room.
My head suddenly feels encased in cement.
I drop my gym bag next to hers. She stiffens, sensing my presence the way I can sense hers even when she’s at the other end of the hallway. I swing open the door of my locker. It bangs against hers, nearly slamming her finger.
She pulls her hand back at the last second. She stares at me, surprised, then angry.
I shrug.
We take off our clothes. But now I don’t sink into myself the way I usually do, trying to hide my nakedness. She’s not looking at me anyway, wriggling herself into her suit and stretching the straps over her shoulders with a snap.
In a moment, she’ll be gone. “How’s Sebastian?” I ask.
This time, when she looks at me, I see everything I need to know. She is never going to apologize. She is never going to admit she did anything wrong. She is never going to acknowledge that she hurt me. She will not say she misses me or even feels bad. She is going to continue forward, like nothing happened, like we were friends, but we were never that close.
“Fine.” She walks away, swinging her goggles.
Fine. I put my clothes back on. I don’t need to be around her. Let her have swim team. Let her have Sebastian, too. If she needs him badly enough to destroy a friendship, I feel sorry for her.
On my way out, I hear shouting coming from the gym. I peek through the hatched window in the wooden door. Cheerleading practice is in session.
I walk across the polished floor to the bleachers, take a seat in the fourth row, and lean into my hands, wondering why I’m doing this.
The members of the squad are dressed in leotards or T-shirts with leggings, their hair pulled back into pony-tails. They wear old-fashioned saddle shoes. The tinny thump of “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” echoes from a tape-player in the corner as the line of girls shake their pom-poms, step forward and back, turn right, place a hand on the shoulder of the girl in front of them, and one by one, with varying degrees of gracefulness and skill, slide their legs apart into a split.
The song ends and they jump to their feet, shaking their pom-poms over their heads and shouting, “Go team!”
Honestly? They suck.
The group breaks up. Donna LaDonna uses the white headband she’s been wearing around her forehead to wipe her face. She and another cheerleader, a girl named Naomi, head to the bleachers and, without acknowledging my presence, sit two rows ahead.
Donna shakes out her hair. “Becky needs to do something about that B.O.,” she says, referring to one of the younger cheerleaders.
“Maybe we should give her a box of deodorant,” Naomi says.
“Deodorant’s no good. Not for that kind of odor. I’m thinking more along the lines of feminine hygiene.” Donna titters, while Naomi cackles at this witty remark. Raising her voice, Donna abruptly changes the subject. “Can you believe Sebastian Kydd is still dating Lali Kandesie?”
“I heard he likes virgins,” Naomi says. “Until they’re not virgins anymore. Then he dumps them.”
“It’s like he’s providing a service.” Donna LaDonna’s voice rises even higher, as if she can’t contain her amusement. “I wonder who’s next? It can’t be a pretty girl—all the pretty girls have already had sex. It has to be someone ugly. Like that Ramona girl. The one who tried to be a cheerleader three years in a row? Some people never get the message. It’s sad.”
Suddenly, she turns around and, with a patently surprised expression, exclaims, “Carrie Bradshaw!” Widening her eyes, she stretches her lips into an exuberant smile. “We were just talking about you. Tell me, how is Sebastian? I mean in bed, of course. Is he really as good a fuck as Lali says he is?”
I am expecting this. I’ve been expecting it all along.
“Gosh, Donna,” I say innocently. “Don’t you know? Didn’t you do it with him an hour after you met? Or was it more like fifteen minutes?”
“Really, Carrie.” She narrows her eyes. “I thought you knew me better than that. Sebastian is far too inexperienced for me. I don’t do boys.”
I lean forward and lock my eyes onto hers. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be you.” I look around the gym and sigh. “It must be so…exhausting.”
I gather my things and hop off the bleacher. As I walk toward the door, I hear her shout, “You wish, Carrie Bradshaw. You should be so lucky.”
And so should you. You’re dead.
Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep putting myself into these terrible situations where I know I can’t win? But I can’t seem to help myself. It’s like having been burned once, I got used to the feeling, and now I have to keep burning myself again and again. Just to prove to myself that I’m still alive. To remind myself that I can still feel.
Dorrit’s shrink said it was better to feel something rather than nothing. And Dorrit had stopped feeling. She was afraid to feel, and then she was afraid of the numbness. So she started acting out.
All very neat and tidy. Tie up your problems with a big bow and maybe you can pretend they’re a present.
Outside, near the door that leads directly to the pool, I spot Sebastian Kydd parking his car.
I start running.
Not away from him, like a reasonable person, but toward him.
He’s blissfully unaware of what’s about to happen, checking his stubble in the rearview mirror.
I grab my heaviest book—calculus—and heave it at his car. The book barely grazes the trunk as it splits open and lands facedown on the pavement, pages akimbo like the legs of a cheerleader. The thud is just loud enough to jar Sebastian out of his self-loving reverie, and he jerks his head around, wondering what—if anything—is happening. I run closer and throw another book at his car. It’s a paperback—The Sun Also Rises—and it slams the front window. In the next second, he’s out of the car, crouched for battle. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” I yell, trying to fling my biology book at his head. I nearly lose my grip on the slick paper cover, so I raise the book over my head and charge at him instead.
r /> He stretches his arms protectively across the car. “Don’t do it, Carrie,” he says warningly. “Don’t touch my car. Nobody scratches my baby and gets away with it.”
I’m picturing his car shattering into a million pieces of plastic and glass, scattered across the parking lot like the detritus of an explosion, when the ridiculousness of his statement stops me in my tracks. But only momentarily. A roar of blood fills my head as I rush him again. “I don’t care about your car. I’m trying to hurt you.”
I swing my biology book, but he snatches it out of my hands before I can make contact. But somehow I keep going, past him, past his car, stumbling across the macadam until I trip over the curb and come to rest in a heap on the frozen grass. I’m followed by my biology book, which lands with a thump a few feet away.
I am not proud of my behavior. But I’ve gone too far now and there’s no turning back.
“How dare you?” I cry, scrambling to my feet.
“Stop it! Stop it,” he shouts, grabbing my wrists. “You’re insane.”
“Tell me why!”
“No,” he says, furious. I’m happy to see he’s finally pissed off as well.
“You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you a goddamned thing.” He thrusts my arms away as if he can’t stand to touch me, while I chase after him, popping back and forth behind him like a jack-in-the-box.
“What’s the matter? Are you scared?” I taunt.
“Get away.”
“You owe me an explanation.”
“You really want to know?” He stops, turns, and gets in my face.
“Yes.”
“She’s nicer,” he says simply.
Nicer?
What the hell does that mean?
“I’m nice.” I pound my chest with my hands. My nose prickles a warning that tears are not far behind.
“Leave it alone, will you?” he asks, running his hands through his hair.
“I can’t. I won’t. It’s not fair—”
“She’s just nicer, okay?”
“What does that mean?” I wail.
“She’s not—you know—competitive.”
Lali? Not competitive? “She’s the most competitive girl I know.”
He shakes his head. “She’s nice.”
Nice—nice? Why does he keep using that word? What does it mean? And then it dawns on me. Nice equals sex. She has sex with him. She goes all the way. And I wouldn’t.
“I hope you’re very happy together.” I take a step back. “I hope you’re so happy you get married and have kids. And I hope you stay in this stupid town forever and rot—like a couple of wormy apples.”
“Thanks,” he says sarcastically, heading toward the gym. This time I don’t stop him. Instead, I shout dumb words at his back. Words like “maggots” and “mold” and “nacreous.”
I’m stupid, I know. But I don’t care anymore.
I pick up a blank piece of paper and roll it through my mother’s old Royale typewriter. After a few minutes, I write: The trick to being a queen bee isn’t necessarily beauty but industriousness. Beauty helps, but without the drive to get to the top and stay on top, beauty will only make you a bee-in-waiting.
Three hours later, I read through my handiwork. Not bad. Now all I need is a pen name. Something that will show people I mean business, that I’m not one to be messed with. On the other hand, it should also convey a sense of humor—even absurdity. I absentmindedly straighten the pages while I consider.
I reread my title, “The Castlebury Compendium: A guide to the fauna and flora of high school,” followed by, “Chapter One: The Queen Bee.” I pick up a pen, pressing the clicker in and out, in and out, until finally the name comes to me. By Pinky Weatherton, I write, in neat block letters.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Pinky Takes Castlebury
“Maggie is making me go to this prom committee meeting with her,” Peter says under his breath. “Do you mind putting the paper to bed?”
“No problem. Have a good time. Gayle and I will take care of it.”
“Don’t tell Smidgens, okay?”
“I won’t,” I reassure him. “You can trust me completely.”
Peter doesn’t appear entirely convinced, but he has no choice. Maggie has come into the art department and is standing behind him. “Peter?” she asks.
“Coming.”
“Okay, Gayle,” I say, when they’re safely down the hall. “Time to get to work.”
“Aren’t you scared of getting in trouble?”
“Nope. A writer must be fearless. A writer has to be like a clawed animal.”
“Says who?”
“Mary Gordon Howard.”
“Who’s she?”
“Doesn’t matter. Aren’t you glad we’re getting revenge on Donna LaDonna?”
“Yes. But what if she doesn’t know it’s her?”
“Even if she doesn’t know, everyone else will, I promise.”
Working quickly, Gayle and I remove Peter’s story about doing away with the gym requirement for seniors, and replace it with my own story on the queen bee—aka Donna LaDonna. Then Gayle and I walk the mock-up of tomorrow’s edition of The Nutmeg to the AV room, where several happy nerds will turn it into a newspaper. Peter and Ms. Smidgens will be furious, of course. But what can they do—fire me? I don’t think so.
I wake up early the next morning. For the first time in a long time I’m actually excited about going to school. I run into the kitchen where my father is frying an egg.
“You’re awake,” he exclaims.
“Yup,” I say, making myself a piece of toast and smearing it with butter.
“You seem happy,” he says cautiously, carrying his egg to the table. “Are you happy?”
“Sure, Dad. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I didn’t want to bring this up,” he says, getting all squirrelly and uncomfortable, “but Missy told me a little bit about what happened with—er—Sebastian, and I don’t want to make anything worse but I’ve been wanting to tell you for weeks that, well, you can’t rely on anyone else for your own happiness.” He pricks the yolk of his egg, as he nods in agreement with his own wisdom. “I know you think I’m only your old man and I don’t know much about what’s going on, but I’m a great observer. And I’ve observed your sorrow over this incident. I’ve wanted to help you—believe me, nothing hurts a father more than seeing his own child hurt—but I also know that I can’t. When these kinds of things happen, you’re alone. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. And if you can get through these kinds of things on your own, it makes you stronger as a person. It has a vast impact on your development as a human being to know that you have strengths to fall back on, and—”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, kissing him on top of his head. “I get it.”
I go back upstairs and rifle through my closet. I consider wearing something outrageous, like striped leggings and a plaid shirt, but think better of it. I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to myself. I put on a cotton turtleneck, corduroy jeans, and a pair of penny loafers, instead.
Outside, it’s one of those unseasonably warm April days that makes you think spring is just around the corner. I decide to take advantage of the weather and walk to school.
By bus, the trip is about four miles. But I know all the shortcuts and by zigzagging through the little streets behind the school I can get there in about twenty-five minutes. My route takes me by Walt’s house, a pretty little saltbox with a long hedge in front. The outside of the house is perfectly kept due to Walt’s efforts, but I’m always amazed how his entire family fits in that tiny abode. There are five kids and four bedrooms, which means that Walt has always had to share a room with his younger brother, whom he hates.
When I get to Walt’s house, however, I spot something unusual. A green camping tent has been erected at the far end of the backyard and a bright orange outdoor electrical cord runs from the house into the tent. Walt, I know, would never allow a tent in the backyard—
he’d consider it a blight. I move closer as the flap of the tent opens and Walt himself emerges, pale and unkempt in a rumpled T-shirt and jeans that look as though he’s slept in them. He rubs his eyes and glares at a robin that’s hopping around, looking for worms. “Go away. Beat it!” he says, walking toward the robin and waving his arms. “Damn birds,” he says as it flies away.
“Walt?”
“Huh?” He squints. Walt needs glasses but refuses to wear them, believing that glasses will only make his eyes worse. “Carrie? What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing in that tent?” I ask with equal astonishment.
“It’s my new home,” he says, with a mixture of irony and sarcasm. “Isn’t it fabulous?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Hold on,” he says. “I’ve got to pee. I’ll be right back.”
He goes into the house and comes out several minutes later with a mug of coffee. “I’d invite you in, but I promise, you won’t find it pleasant inside.”
“What’s going on?” I follow him into the tent. There’s a tarp on the ground, a sleeping bag, a rough army blanket, a pile of clothes, and a small plastic table on which stands an old lamp and an open box of Oreos. Walt paws through the pile of clothes, pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and holds it up. “One of the advantages of not living in the house. No one can tell you not to smoke.”
“Ha,” I say, sitting cross-legged on the sleeping bag.
I light a cigarette as I try to make sense of this situation. “So you’re not living in your house?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says. “Moved out a few days ago.”
“Isn’t it kind of cold for camping?”
“Not today.” He rolls over and ashes his cigarette in the corner of the tent. “Anyway, I’m used to it. I love hardship.”
“You do?”
He sighs. “What do you think?”
“So why are you out here?”
He inhales deeply. “My father. Richard found out I was gay. Oh yes,” he continues, taking in my shocked expression. “My brother read my journal—”