A Tale of Two Besties (19 page)

“What was
that
about?” Lily was already deep into the world of her phone again, probably texting Jane, but at least she looked up to direct her question at me. And though I was still mad at her, and I still didn't have answers—about where she'd been both emotionally and physically, about what was going on with her, about the status of my birthday plans—in that moment I knew the perfect thing to say.

“Stephanie has actually been a really great friend to me lately. I'm probably going to go over there in a minute.”

I expected Lily to look hurt, but instead she just smiled, oblivious. “That's great, Harper! Things have been moving so fast, haven't they? Let's GChat soon, okay? And I promise, I'm going to plan something extra special for your birthday to make up for the PuppyBash.”

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”

The trick about cell phones, I thought while waiting for Jane in the flower garden, is to constantly be doing something with them, even if it's something like typing a list that you'd usually write longhand. People will just assume you're talking to your friends, and while it's still rude, it doesn't generate the weird looks that, say, reading a book at the dinner table will.

I sat there typing nonsense into my phone, not really knowing how I came up with that tactic, and similarly not knowing why I had walked away from seeing Harper feeling so upset. It's like, here is the thing that Harper really doesn't get about me right now: It's not all good vibes and sprinkles and rainbows in my world. People constantly expected things from me now, needed me to live up to their ideas of what wacky, peculiar girls should act like at all times. It's actually
exhausting
.

I felt like I was going to pass out and had to buy myself one of those butter-smeared sticks of roasted corn from Golden Maize, a nearby food cart.

I'd spent my entire life not fitting in, which was just fine with me. I'd never needed a lot of friends or a group of kids to sit at a lunch table with me. All of that looked kind of boring, frankly, and I had always told myself that I would never change who I was just to lose my self-identity to a group mentality. The irony was that now I'm at a new school, where I made all these friends pretty much on accident, all because of the exact same things that made people look at me sideways before: mumble-talking, my obsession with folklore and old-timey stuff, being an over-achieving creative type in general.

So now I'm finally in a place where I can say with some authority that I was wrong. Having a bunch of friends isn't boring. It's
exhausting
. All these demands: “Lily, show us your wings!” “Lily, play us some music!” “Lily, be the freshman face of NAMASTE!” “Lily, be the Gawkward Fairy at all times, and don't for one second relax or wear an outfit from this decade or say anything less than totally precious!” “Lily, be our toy!” “Lily, be our pet!” “Lily, be our mascot!” “Lily!” Why couldn't anyone just let me “do me,” like that emo rapper Drake who Harper is always quoting says. But I guess everyone else “doing” me was the problem here.

Still shaky from the Harper run-in, and wiping greasy crumbs of salt and cayenne pepper off my fingers, I fished out Nicole's quartz from my bag and held it to my chest. I needed to think.

I did feel really bad for bailing on PuppyBash this year. And, okay, I felt bad about a lot of other things I'd done lately that I'm pretty sure Harper would hate me for. But I had to focus. I was in a band now that people actually wanted to hear play, and the blog party was really important to Jane, and these were all responsibilities I couldn't shirk—no matter what the reason.

“Lily?” It was Jane, making me jump at the sound of a voice outside my head. She waved her polka dot manicure in front of my face. “Hello in there, anybody home?'

“Sure.” I forced myself to laugh. “Just zoned out.”

“What would our LilyFairy be if she didn't have her head in the clouds?” Jane playfully pinched my side. “Well, wake up girl! We've got a photo shoot to do! The FancyFashionFeminist waits for no woman, even the ones with wings.”

The pictures of me that Jane had taken on the first day of school had started to get some major buzz, not just on her website, but on other fashion blogs around the Internet. Readers were submitting their own interpretations of my style—as well as their own version of the “Fairy Look”—so many that Jane had to hire a “curatorial intern” from the freshman class to go through all the pictures people sent in and pick the best ones. A new set of photos ran each week on the recently dubbed FancyFashionFeminist's Fairy Fridays. The whole thing was kind of weird, but I can't pretend I wasn't psyched when
Lucky
ran my photo online to go along with a feature in a style section called “Be DIY Fairy Chic (for fairly cheap).”

What was less awesome was when people posted their own pictures of me on other random websites or social networks; candid photos of me walking around school while I obliviously went about my day. One time I saw one of me exiting a Godard retrospective at an indie theater, and I have no idea who even took the photo—so creepy! On Twitter and Instagram and SchoolGrams, #LilyFairy was actually a trending topic, and there were entire ask.fm threads about #lilyfairy—and people weren't even being totally awful in the comments section.

As Jane walked me around the park ordering me into different poses for her fashion shoot, I thought about how all of this was kind of overwhelming in a scary way, the feeling that someone might be watching me at any moment. Especially since Nicole demanded such high standards of excellence from members of NAMASTE. Not only were we supposed to be vegan and not wear leather or any other animal products, but we routinely had to “patrol” other kids in our class for non-NAMASTE behavior. Since I was the freshman delegate, I was in charge of kids in my own year. If I saw another freshman wearing leather sandals or eating an almond butter (Pathways has been peanut-free since 1998) and honey sandwich, my job was to call them out in front of everyone, Beth-Lynne style, because bees are apparently the original repressed workers, slaving away in their artificial hives and apiaries just so we can feel good about using a natural sweetener instead of refined sugar or chemicals. Who knew? Nicole had recently suggested using even more “guerilla” techniques for enlightening students, like throwing red paint on anyone we see wearing faux fur, or replacing someone's animal-tested lip liner with a blue ink pen.

Most of the time, things only got as bad as they did that day with Beth-Lynne. (I still have to compartmentalize that whole thing happening. I have idiot shivers just thinking of that moment and myself.) But I was worried that soon Nicole would ask me to take a really revolutionary step to prove myself to NAMASTE, and to someone as nonconfrontational as me, the idea was really cringe-worthy.

“Good!” said Jane, finishing up a round of photos of me sitting down and smiling on a bench. “Now go pick some of those flowers over there.”

I couldn't talk about these things with other kids at school, especially Jane and Drew, and I was so tempted to just break down and tell Harper everything when I'd run into her in the park. But when it really came down to it, I couldn't. I wanted to tell her everything and anything, like always, but today it felt like we were two BFF's on two total different time zones . . . and we were in full jetlag mode!

All I could do was tell her that I couldn't make it to PuppyBash (at least I'd been honest about something) and watch her walk away from me, super disappointed. But she had to know I was acting weird and totally unlike myself—so why didn't she ask what was going on with me? If anyone had the power to pry secrets out of me, it was Harper, but she hadn't even tried. Thinking about our failed catch-up session now, I realized I was even more upset than I'd thought. Upset because I needed her, and sad and confused because she made me feel like I had let her down, without trying to understand what I was going through.

“Huh? What did you say?” Jane put down her camera and gave me a weird look.

“Oh, nothing. Sorry,” I said, not realizing that I'd been muttering my spiraling thoughts aloud.

I guess my mind was really wandering while going through the various poses Jane was having me try (blowing kisses to people on the street! Swinging from one of the big flower sculptures! Being generally boho-chic!), because after about twenty minutes she was shaking her head and angrily punching buttons as she scrolled through our takes.

“I can't use any of the ones where you're just frowning and muttering to yourself,” she sighed. I shuddered inwardly; my conversation with Harper was affecting my real-life work.

Jane looked up from her camera and cocked her head at something behind me. “Hey, Lily, I think someone's waving at you.” I turned and squinted between the man-made petals of a sculpture, and for a second was sure that it was Harper, having changed her mind about not wanting to meet Jane. But, no, it wasn't Harper, it was Mrs. Carina, swooping her arms at me like those people at airports who direct planes with light sticks. She must have been there to pick up Harper from PuppyTales, though in her Prada dress and Louboutins, she looked like Victoria Beckham at one of her son's soccer games

I jogged over. “Hey, Karen,” I said, putting on a smile that didn't feel quite right. “Sorry, I don't know where Harper is. I saw her earlier though, with Stephanie.”

“Oh?” Mrs. Carina's dazzlingly serene facade drooped for a second, and she looked almost confused. If that level of emotion was manifesting on Mrs. Carina's immobile face . . . well, who knows how worried she really was. “Well, it's just as well,” she said, matching my forced smile with an overly cheerful one of her own. “I've actually been hoping to get a chance to talk to you alone, anyway.”

Now it was my turn to look confused. Despite what Harper always said, I never thought Karen had really shown much of an interest in me, other than in what she called my “unique” sense of fashion. Don't get me wrong, I liked Harper's mom and we got along, but while I couldn't imagine not telling my mother everything about my life, Harper's mom seemed more like a distracted, bubbly aunt than someone to give you advice about life.

“Darling, I know you like your little surprises,” Mrs. Carina simpered, putting one red fingernail against my cheek. “But I simply have to know what you plan on doing for Harper's big Saturday birthday event! Last year I ended up having to distract her with a Cold Stone run so you could put the finishing touches on your little funhouse, remember?”

“How could I forget?” I said, trying to keep my voice at a normal tone. Creating a human-sized doghouse, complete with tunnels to neighboring “kennels” had taken the good part of three months. With a sudden jolt of anxiety I realized that I had less than a week to plan something new.

“So, Lily,” said Mrs. Carina, scratching at her thumbnail, “what can I expect from you this year? Please tell me you haven't booked that horrible singer from those rescue commercials I keep seeing on TV.” Harper's mom had a bad habit of peeling off her gel manicures in public, like a nervous tic, which was something I could relate to.

“Ha,” I said, trying to force a laugh. “Not quite.” Translation: I've been so busy figuring out how to cope with being popular and with the fact that I was maybe a terrible friend and I hadn't even begun to think about what I was going to do for Harper's birthday.

Brushing little scraps of nail polish to the ground, Karen went in for an “aw, you!” hug. She must have noticed something in my expression though, because when she stepped back she kept her hands on my shoulders, studying me from an arm's length away. Her gaze softened.

“Lily, you know, if you're feeling overwhelmed this year, I'd be more than happy to help with the party.” It was like she had read my mind! I should have been paying attention to more of those MomTips Harper was always spouting off sarcastically . . . maybe they actually helped! “Of course I won't actually be able to
be
there,” she continued. “I'll be traveling—the life of a life-coach is never restful!—but I would still love to give you a hand.”

I was about to gratefully accept her offer, but Karen immediately snapped her four-fingered manicure. “In fact, I know this amazing botanical healer . . . she's worked with Gwyneth . . . and I bet she'd be more than happy to come up with some feng-shui designs for the garden if you wanted to have a little tea party!”

“Drat, that sounds great, but I've already got this really special event planned for this year,” I lied. “Thank you so much for the offer!” I couldn't bear to hurt Karen's feelings by bringing up her daughter's severe pollen allergies . . . and the fact that she hated tea parties.

“Well, whatever you do,” said Mrs. Carina, “I'm sure it's going to blow us all away. You're just
so creative
, Lily! I'm sure you'll come up with something magical!” Then, like a woman without a care in the world beyond the topic of her next TEDxMom Talk, Karen Carina clacked back down the sidewalk and hit the
beep beep
noise on her car lock.

I hoped Mrs. Carina was right about me being magical. Because it would take something extraordinary just to get me through the next week.