A Tale of Two Besties (5 page)

“Carina . . . Carina, comma, Harper?” she asked, actually saying the “comma” part out loud. What was it with the teachers at this school?

“That's me,” I said.

“You're late, Harper,” she said. My face turned red-hot-cherry bomb. Lily calls it “flushed” but I call it “pre-acne” because guess what? Tomorrow my skin is going to hate me.

There was a swell of noise from the back of the class, and I pretended to drop a book so I could turn around and see who I'd be dealing with all year. Because staring isn't polite, I've learned some tricks about how to look at people without them noticing, like focusing at one spot in front of you and letting your eyes glaze over so you can pick up motion and colors from the sides of your vision. My mom calls it “assessing the room,” and she does it at conferences all the time to get a feel for her audience without seeming judge-y. Mom is a professional public speaker—a self-help coach/lifestyle blogger (“just like Gwyneth!”)—and people pay thousands of dollars to hear advice on how to do everything right. Or at least that's what she reminds me of every time we fight about something stupid. “You know, Harper, there are lots of people would pay good money to hear what I have to say about keeping their bedrooms clean, and you get to have all of my wisdom for free.” I seriously don't know what is wrong with some people—who would throw away good money just to have another mom tell them what to do? Especially
my
mom, whom I've personally seen peeling off her gel manicure out of sheer anxiety while waiting in line to buy groceries.

Still, sometimes MomTips actually come in handy—though I'd never admit it to Mom. Like “engaging the room,” which pretty much just means “how to make people pay attention to you,” or “purifying your vibe” which just meant smiling a lot to make people think you're chill no matter what you're really thinking.

So I assessed the room to find a whole lot of unfamiliar faces staring blankly back at Ms. Miller. I did recognize a couple people, though. Derek Wheeler, Katie Donahue, and Paul Gilmore. There was Stephanie Adler. It was weird to see Steph without Jessica, but there she was, by herself, in ripped jeans and a faded Rolling Stones tee, her ears studded with crosses and crossbones. One person I was not at all surprised to see was Tim Slater, Lily's ex and the only person outside my family whom I've known for my whole life. He's been an annoying but familiar presence behind me in homeroom since they started putting us in seats, but today I almost didn't recognize him. Tim must have grown at least a foot over the summer while working at his cousin's farm in Sonoma, and with his preppy J. Crew khakis and skin tanned past its usual eggshell-white, he now looked less like a video game nerd and more like he'd be right at home with the sailing team. A huge surprise, since I was so used to thinking of Tim as the little brother I never asked for. The Slaters lived next door to us, and Tim's dad and my dad own a record company together, so we're basically family. I think Rachel always felt a little left out: Tim and I were the same age, and even though he was nerdy and way too into comic books, I was way more open to looking at Superman issues with him than spending time with her. At least Tim wasn't actively wishing for my long and painful demise.

“Ms. Carina,” Ms. Miller prompted. I swiveled my head back and she smiled, showing off an uneven row of too-white teeth. “Thank you for joining us. As I was just telling the class before you arrived, I give a grace period for tardiness for the first three days of a new year. After that, I expect all my students to arrive at class on time. Otherwise, detention.”

“Oh, okay.” My face felt nuclear-hot as I stuffed my backpack under my chair. Detention, the dreaded D word! I don't get rattled that easily, but the idea of spending my first week in school pegged as one of the bad kids was enough to give me a panic attack. Maybe Tim would lend me his inhaler.

After she was done berating me, Ms. Miller dove right into her lecture about early exploitation of Chileans in California mines. I was fighting hard not to pull out my phone and text Lily when I felt something brush against my shoulder and fall into my lap. It was a note, folded up into a little origami swan. I opened it up to find one of Tim Slater's patented Lily-and-Harper superhero comics.

In it, a girl that looked a lot like me was dangling precariously over a cauldron. “Help me, Gawkward Fairy!” read the caption. An evil witch cackled below, looking suspiciously like Ms. Miller in a cape. “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!” read the sign above the witch's head.

I turned around to see Tim smiling shyly right behind me.

My biggest issue with Tim was that he was constantly trying to hang out with me during school, which was a definite violation of the Home vs. In Public code of conduct I had drawn up in crayon on our first day of kindergarten together. If I felt any sort of Empathy Power for Tim, I saved it for after classes. I told him he could call and come around as much as he wanted after school if during the day he would promise not to follow me around like a sad-eyed puppy. I know it sounds lame and superficial, but if he hadn't followed that promise to a T, Jessica and Stephanie would have un-friended me faster than I could say “World of Warcraft.”

Of course all bets were off when Tim started dating Lily. I never understood what Lily saw in Tim—to me he'd always be an uber-dork, and then there she was, mooning over him for months. I couldn't say I was surprised when they broke up—Tim is about as romantic as an old retainer, and Lily was the type of girl who was saving herself for Mr. Darcy from
Pride and Prejudice
. (“But only the second half of the book, when he's being nicer,” she would always add.) The only thing Lily and Tim both had in common was a total disinterest in what the rest of the world thought of them. I could just imagine them being voted “Most Creative Couple” or something, had they made it to high school. And Lily was so head over heels for Tim most of junior high that I was totally taken by surprise when they announced their breakup after barely two months of boyfriend-girlfriend status. “We just wanted different things” was all Lily would ever say on the topic, and I never pressed her further because they never made sense together in my mind anyway. We were all better off going back to everyone being friends, and after an appropriate three-day “cool down” period where the two of them avoided each other in the hall, that's exactly what happened.

Once again, I had to give Tim a double-take. I might not have even recognized the guy behind me as my old, nerdy friend if his
Iron Man
shirt hadn't been a dead giveaway. Even his hair looked better, no longer gelled and spiked like he was trying to be an anime character, but longer and soft-looking. Forgetting the circumstances and the fact that I was pretty sure Lily was still (inexplicably) into him, I grinned gratefully at the familiar face. Then I watched his eyes shift over my shoulder and his smile fade.

I followed his gaze to find Ms. Miller herself reaching right for the note. Did I have time to think
oh, no
? Maybe—I can't really remember because I was internally freaking out so hard. I definitely remember reaching for the comic to try to hide it in time, but Ms. Miller plucked it from my lap while I was still grasping at it.

“I didn't know we had such an accomplished artist in the class.” She sneered at me. “Let's see what you were doing while I was talk—” She made a strangled sound in her throat, which I'm sure coincided with her realizing that she was playing the character of “warty witch” in Tim's comic. She looked up at me with a face so red I thought it might actually start melting. Is that what I look like when I'm upset?

“See me after class,” she croaked.

“But Ms. Miller—” Tim started. I could tell he felt really bad about getting me into trouble.

“Quiet,” Ms. Miller said. “Out-of-turn talking ends now.”

“But—” Tim tried to go on, but Ms. Miller shot him a death glare and put up her palm in the STOP position. He looked at me with such an intense guilty-puppy face that I almost felt bad for him, until I remembered he was the whole reason this was happening in the first place.

“I'm sorry!” He mouthed to me once Ms. Miller's back was turned.

I spent the rest of first period with my face buried in my desk so no one could see that it was the color of a Benadryl.

I had never had detention before, not ever, and certainly never at lunch. Who's even heard of lunchtime detention? Did that mean I wouldn't be able to eat? Was that even legal? All these thoughts and more zapped around my brain until noon, when I had to report to the library and serve my mealtime sentence by shelving books.

To make matters worse, Lily was taking forever to answer my freak-out texts. It was a good thing, maybe, that I wasn't able to vent to her how mad I was at Tim, who followed me around for the rest of the day trying to apologize. I swear, sometimes I wish I could go back in time to stop Dad from founding ThrashFocus Productions with Mr. Slater while they were both interning at UCLA's college radio station. Then I'd never have Tim stuck to my back like a giant target that said “Kick me.” And I wouldn't have detention on my first day of high school.

I had been the only one to get in trouble during first period—(how humiliating), so I was surprised to see Derek lounging with Matt Musher and three girls from history whom I'd never met before in the same area of the stacks that the creepy Library Gnome whom I'd reported to after Home-Ec had assigned me to.

A crop-topped girl in head-to-toe American Apparel glared at me as I approached. I was about to veer left and sit alone at an empty table, but Derek stood up and intercepted me before I could isolate myself.

“Come to join our little party, Carina?” he asked, cocking his right eyebrow and throwing an arm around my shoulder. “You guys better not mess with Harper here,” he said to the girls. “She once turned a hose on me because she thought I smelled bad.”

I strangled out a laugh, even though that's not exactly what happened. I've known Derek since elementary school, and we've barely spoken two words to each other. He always ran in a different crowd of really boy-boys, the kind that listened to Lil Wayne Mixtapes. Actually, the only conversation I remember having with him was in sixth grade when he expressed shock over the fact that I knew all of Lil Wayne's verse in “Lollipop.” Then he made me perform it for him or I was a dirty liar.

Derek wasn't really mean, but was really lazy and had a sense of humor that really appealed to the lowest common denominator, comprised of the same fart and boob jokes he'd been recycling since first grade. But mostly he was just lazy. He once wore the same D.A.R.E. T-shirt to school for three weeks in a row, and then had the nerve to try to tackle me while I was waiting for my parents to pick me up at the end of the day. Okay, so I might have overreacted . . . and it was not a pretty scene when the janitor, Mr. Kalinski, found Derek shivering on the ground, soaking wet in all his clothes, and me standing over him holding a dripping garden hose left out by the crew team fence. Mr. Kalinski ended up driving Derek home with a bunch of borrowed gym towels on the seat underneath him. I don't know if Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler ever found out why their son had come home drowning in month-old dirty laundry, but the next day he was wearing a new rugby shirt and dorky pressed-pleat pants, and after that he never came in smelly again. We hadn't really discussed the incident—or anything else—since.

Derek's arm was still around my shoulders. He gave them a squeeze. I'd always been a big hugger in my class, so maybe it wasn't that weird. Or was it weird? Wait, did I even care? I had witnessed this kid eat someone else's boogers (not even on a dare), so why was I suddenly admiring the way his high-tops matched his T-shirt or the way his back arched into his jeans?

“You okay, Carina? You looked a little flushed.” Derek led me over to a chair by the window and pushed my shoulders down. “Loosen up!” I felt a lot of different things at the moment, but loosened up wasn't one of them. “So, who are you going to torment next period? You've already got Ms. Miller covered.”

“I haven't really given it any thought,” I said, trying to own the “bad kid” persona I suddenly felt strapped with. “Maybe I'll just skip the torment and work on my Tweet strat.”

Everyone laughed, even Matt, who I am 100 percent positive had never stayed still long enough to read 140 characters of anything. American Apparel girl had a high, fake laugh, like she was a professional game show audience member.

“Hey, you and that girl Lily put up that crazy art video last year, right?” said one of American Apparel's friends. “The one with you as a princess?”

“Actually, I was a ghost,” I told her. “It was kind of this ongoing film project we were trying to do.”

“Oh, well I don't really get ‘films,'” she said. “I'm more into movies.”