Getting REVENGE on Lauren Wood (6 page)

At the very center of the universe, where no doubt she felt she should be, was Lauren. She was the sun; everyone basked in her light. They would be nothing without her. People circled around her like satellites.

I grabbed a salad (popular girl food) from the café lineup and tried to work up the guts to go over to Lauren’s table. Kyla saw me and gestured that I should join them. I noticed Lauren still talked with her hands. They waved around as if she were directing an orchestra or guiding in low-flying aircraft. I could see that her nails were painted neon pink. I walked over and stood at the end of their table.

“Hey, there you are! Good thinking not getting the hot option. It’s disgusting,” Kyla said, making room for my tray.

Lauren was looking at me. I felt my throat tighten. Her head tilted slightly to the side as she inspected me.

“Lauren, this is Claire. She’s from New York!” Bailey seemed to be the social secretary in charge of introductions.

“Hey,” I said.

Lauren gave a hair flip. I flipped mine. Lauren’s nose was scrunched up slightly as if she was considering something very profound, or maybe she was trying to figure out why I seemed familiar to her. I reminded myself to breathe.

“Sit down,” Kyla said. “I was just talking about how I have
Mr. Weltch, who everyone calls Mr. Wretch, for anatomy and phys ed. I swear he gets off on cutting stuff up for class. I bet if the police raided his place, they would find a basement filled with the corpses of tortured frogs. He even breathes heavy when he talks about dissection.”

“Anatomy is gross,” Bailey added to the discussion.

“Yeah, but Tony Mathis is in my class, so things aren’t all bad.” Kyla turned to me. “Total eye candy. I’ll point him out later.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Lauren asked, finally speaking to me.

“Today’s my first day, give me a week or two.” For a beat no one said anything, and then Lauren laughed.

“I meant back in New York,” she clarified.

I shrugged. “I dated a few guys who went to Columbia, but nothing long-term. I hate to be tied down.”

“Well, then don’t go out with Mike Weaver, I hear he likes the tie-down thing,” Kyla offered, and we all laughed. “If you have any questions on the guys here, just ask us.”

“There was this one guy hitting on me, but I don’t know. He seems sort of white bread,” I said.

“White bread?”

“Looks good, but no substance,” I said.

“Who was he?” Lauren asked.

I looked around the cafeteria and spotted my victim.

“There he is, over by the soda machine.” I pointed out Justin. An awkward silence fell over the lunch table. I widened
my eyes and tried to look innocent. “What? Does he have a reputation, or a disease or something?”

“Uh, no. I mean, he’s, uh …” Bailey’s voice trailed off.

“That’s Justin. He’s my boyfriend,” Lauren said, her lips set in a firm line.

“Oh, sorry.” I picked at my salad for a beat. “I’m probably blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Most likely he was just being nice.”

“Justin is totally nice,” Bailey stressed. Kyla nodded her head in tandem.

I popped a cherry tomato in my mouth and chewed. Poor Justin. Nothing erodes a relationship like some distrust. I mentally placed a check next to the boyfriend-stealing column.

“There you are,” a voice said behind me. Kyla’s nose wrinkled up like she smelled something bad. I turned around and Brenda was standing there holding her lunch tray, which looked like it had an extra heaping portion of the beef stew. “We’re supposed to eat lunch together. I waited for you by your locker.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said.

“We can still eat together if you want.” Brenda looked at the other girls. “I’m her assigned buddy.”

“Wow. Assigned friends. Neat,” Lauren said.

“It’s one of our service programs,” Brenda explained. She looked like she couldn’t tell if Lauren was making fun of her or not.

“Lincoln High should be proud,” Lauren said. “It’s students like you who make us such a happy family.”

“Thanks,” Brenda said. I wanted to crawl under the table on her behalf. Why in the world did she come over here? Kyla gave a quiet snicker.

“I guess you don’t want to eat lunch together then, huh?” Brenda asked.

“You know, I’m almost done so it doesn’t make much sense.” We both glanced down at my tray still piled high with salad, a full drink cup, and an apple.

“Yeah,” Brenda murmured, shuffling off, her head down again. She walked as if the lunch tray weighed at least a thousand pounds.

“Catch you later,” I said softly, but she didn’t turn around.

“God, there’s a buddy program? How could I guess that Brenda Bauer would sign up for it? It’s like her best chance to make friends.” Lauren broke off a piece of her rice cake to eat it.

“She doesn’t have any friends?” I asked. I had assumed she had her own crowd.

“She used to hang with some other nerdy girl, I can’t remember her name, who moved away at the end of last year.”

“So she just hangs out on her own?”

“Her and the voices she hears in her head. She’s seriously weird if you ask me,” Lauren said.

“What is with her hair anyway? How is it possible to have hair that bad?” Kyla added. “It’s like she must deep-fry it to get it that dried out.”

“She’s been really nice to me,” I said. I mentally kicked myself under the table. Sticking up for Brenda was not part of the plan.

“Oh, I’m sure she’s really nice,” Lauren said, before dismissing Brenda’s existence altogether. “So, Claire, are you going out for any school activities?”

“I’m not really sure. At my old school my friends and I didn’t do a lot of organized activity stuff.” I gave a hair flip, trying to look like I was above school activities. Let them think I hung out at nightclubs or other big-city diversions that weren’t even possible here.

“Well, if you’re interested, you should check out the drama club. The school musical is huge. We go all out with professional sets and costumes. We’re doing
My Fair Lady
this year. It’s going to be great.”

“You are going to make the best Eliza,” Bailey told her, and then looked over at me. “Lauren has had a major part every year, even freshman year when no other freshman was even in the play.”

“There’s no guarantee on anything,” Lauren said. “I don’t know who else might try out.” She looked over at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about me. I can’t sing. I sound like a reject audition for
American Idol
. You know, the ones they air just for laughs?”

“I can’t sing either,” Bailey said softly, as if to assure me that
my lack of ability was okay, in fact preferred, so that there would be no chance of getting in the way of Lauren.

“Do you want to be a professional actress?” I asked, facing Lauren.

“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, it’s fun, but the business is so difficult if you want to pursue it as a career.” Lauren waved her hand dismissively.

“But you’re so good! I mean you are way better than most of the people on TV. I can totally see you walking the Oscar red carpet,” Bailey gushed. I wondered if her lips chapped from the amount of ass kissing she did.

“Duh, Bailey, theater stars don’t go to the Oscars, they go to the Tony Awards,” Lauren said, and I saw Bailey’s face flush red hot in embarrassment. “Anyway, I’m not sure about making acting my career. I’ve thought about majoring in theater in college and giving myself more time to think about it. It’s important to keep my options open, but I would never skip college and go straight to Broadway. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I went into acting because I couldn’t get through college.”

Right. God forbid you follow your dreams—what if people think that’s the best you could do? I only half listened to Lauren talking about the pros and cons of different theater programs and instead looked around the cafeteria to see if I could spot Brenda. There was no way she could have eaten all that stew so quickly.

I pushed back from the table. Lauren stopped talking,
looking surprised. I had the sense she was used to people hanging on her every word. Well, it was time for her to get used to a new reality.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go.” The three of them looked up at me. My brain scrambled around for a good excuse. “I told my friends in New York that I’d give them a call. We used to have lunch every day at this sushi joint near Times Square, and this is the first time I won’t be there.” I give a halfhearted shrug. “I told them I would let them know how things are going here.”

“God, it must suck having to start over senior year,” Bailey sympathized.

“I was really hating it, but I have to say I feel so much better after meeting you guys today. I was afraid I wouldn’t meet anyone cool.”

Lauren’s smile spread slowly across her face and both Bailey and Kyla sat up straighter. Flattery will get you everywhere. Add this to the secrets of popularity: Popular girls are insecure. They act like they aren’t, but they are, and a bit of kissing up never hurts.

“Give me your number. We go out all the time. We’ll text you and let you know where to meet up with us next time if you want,” Kyla said.

“That would be great.” I scribbled my number down and passed it over to them. I could tell the people at the tables around us were paying attention to the exchange. Lincoln High’s caste system was looking to slot me where I belonged. The way I was
dressed helped, and being from New York was a bonus for sure, but what was slotting me into place more than anything else was the fact that the three most popular senior girls wanted to hang out with me. It wasn’t even the end of lunch and the popularity project was already a success.

Chapter Ten

I pushed open the bathroom door and heard a juicy sniffle and then silence. I peeked under each of the stall doors. Only the last one had anyone in it—brown, lace-up shoes that looked like they belonged on an orphan in a Third World country. I knew it.

I heard the smothered sound of a choked-back sob. There is no dignity in having a good cry in a public bathroom. My stomach sank as I remembered what the last two weeks of my eighth grade year had been like. I tapped on the stall door with a fingernail.

“Brenda?” I asked softly. She didn’t say anything, but I heard another sniffle from behind the stall door. “Brenda, I know it’s you. I recognize your shoes. Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

My eyebrows went up in disbelief. Brenda was a lousy liar.

“You’re not okay. You’re crying.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“Look, I’m sorry about the lunch thing. I should have waited for you at my locker.”

Brenda didn’t say anything.

“I met those girls in one of my classes and they invited me to eat with them.”

“And you would rather eat with them than me. It’s fine. I understand. I totally understand.”

“You don’t understand. There is way more going on than you’re imagining. It has nothing to do with you.”

“It never does,” she said, and then gave a loud blow on her nose.

“Look, come out of there so we can talk.”

“No.”

I tapped on the door a bit more firmly this time. “You have to come out, classes are going to start.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” she said.

“You’re supposed to be my buddy, Brenda. Locking yourself in the bathroom and refusing to talk to me is almost certainly against the buddy code.”

“Stop making fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you. I’m trying to apologize, but it’s sort of hard to do talking to a bathroom door.”

“Fine, you’ve apologized. You can go now.”

I backed up and leaned against the sink, thinking over my options:

1.
Leave Brenda
. I just met the girl. It wasn’t my responsibility to make sure she was okay. I was here for revenge, not to be the Mother Teresa for unpopular girls.

2.
Do something nice
. It wouldn’t kill me to be nice to her. It wasn’t that long ago that I was the one crying in the bathroom. Besides, no one could see us in here. It wasn’t like she was going to derail my popularity plan.

I sighed and got down on my knees, then lay down on the cool tiles and slid my head under her stall door. Brenda looked down at me. Her eyes were red and swollen.

“What are you doing?” she sputtered. For a second I thought she might step on my face as if I were a bug, but instead she scooted over so she was as far away from me as she could get without climbing onto the toilet.

“You don’t think I’m serious. I really am sorry. I’m lying on a disgusting bathroom floor so I can show how sorry I am. My hair is touching the floor, Brenda.”

“What if someone comes in here?”

“Then no doubt they will call us weirdos for the rest of the year. I’m taking a lot of risks here.”

“What do you want?”

“Come out of the stall so we can talk.”

Brenda gave me another long look and then unlocked the stall door. Thank God. I stood, brushing off my pants. I went over to the sink and washed my hands. Brenda leaned against the towel dispenser, a long trail of toilet tissue clutched in one hand. She gave a hiccupping sigh, and as she exhaled, a giant snot bubble grew at the end of her nose. It just sat there like a soap bubble perched at the end of her nostril. She didn’t seem to notice it was there. It was the saddest thing I could imagine. I took the tissue out of her hand and blotted her nose and then tossed it in the trash.

“It was wrong of me to blow you off today. I never meant to make you feel bad.”

“They like you. I could tell. They’re the most popular girls in our school.”

“I figured. They got the look, you know?”

“Yeah.” Brenda went back into the stall and grabbed another wad of tissue, giving her nose a huge blow. She washed her face in the sink and I handed her some paper towels. She tucked her hair behind her ears.

“Wait a minute,” I said fishing around in my bag. I pulled out some MAC lip gloss and handed it over. She looked at it as if she had never seen such an item before.

“Put some on.”

“My mouth?” She peered at the end of the wand with distrust.

“I don’t have rabies or anything. Trust me, it’ll look nice.”