Hancock Park (18 page)

S
unday night I was back at the Four Seasons when I received an instant message from Courtney.
I just thought I should let you know,
she began,
that I'm going out with Aaron.

What the hell?
I wrote.

I've liked him for a while now, and, well, this weekend, things just sort of fell into place.

Fell into place? Meaning that I broke up with Aaron, so now she could go out with him?

Okay?
Courtney added.

Furious, I dug through my backpack for my journal. Pausing to uncap a pen, I began a new Shit List.

Not okay. I was not okay. This was not okay. Friends
were supposed to come before boys. And this wasn't just any boy, this was the boy that I broke up with yesterday and who had since proceeded to launch an attack against me. I started the list by writing
Best friend (former?) going out with ex-boyfriend
. It hurt even more that Aaron—who was my first…everything—had presumably also given Courtney her first kiss.

Fabulous. I couldn't wait for school on Monday.

 

I wanted it to die down, to go away. I wanted Aaron to apologize for trying to sabotage me at the conference, and I wanted Courtney to break up with Aaron. I wanted Aaron to admit that he was only going out with Courtney because he thought it would get to me, and that he didn't really like her.

On Monday, seeing as I hadn't slept all night anyway, I started getting ready for school half an hour early. Sure, I had been through a thunderstorm and everyone knew about it, but that was all the more reason to take extra steps to look fabulous. Besides, Aaron had moved on to Courtney, and with her long red waves and acne-free face, I had a lot to live up to.

After biology, I made my way to the Room, where I found Alissa, Kim, and Courtney huddled around a laptop. I weaved my way through the room, over to them. As I walked, everyone was silent. Or maybe I was just imagining that. “How's it going?” I said to Alissa and Kim. I faced away from Courtney.

Alissa closed the laptop. “We're fine,” she said. “And you?”

“I'm good. Everything's fine.” Could she see me sweating? Was it in my mind, or did Alissa seem more hostile than usual? There was silence as we stood staring at each other. Finally, I said, “Well, I guess I should go to class. See you later?”

“Bye.”

I didn't actually have class—it was my free period. But I couldn't stay in the Room. As I walked out, I caught Taylor's eye. She had been sitting on the opposite side of the room, toward the door. Had she seen the whole thing? She quickly looked away.

That day, I spent my break, lunch, and free periods in the library, reading a plastic-covered copy of
The Bell Jar
. Sylvia Plath was the marker that let me know I was sinking into depression. When I was depressed, I liked to read about others who were more depressed than me. It made me feel less alone, but it also didn't help my emotional well-being. In the seventh grade, we had to create a poetry anthology on a subject of our choice. I chose depression. I included Sylvia Plath poems, mostly, but I also wrote a few of my own. One was about paralyzing anxiety, another about feeling suffocated by darkness. I maintained the position that my poetry was fictional; I was trying to take on the persona of someone—not me—who was depressed.

Now, I felt both darkness and anxiety taking hold of me. I hadn't changed my pharmaceutical cocktail, but in
my mind things were growing bleaker.

 

Taylor was the only other person in English class when I arrived later that day. I set my books down on the table and walked over to her. “I'm really sorry about what happened on Facebook,” I said. “I should have said something, I know. I knew Aaron was wrong, but I guess I was just so excited about having a boyfriend, and I was afraid of screwing it up.”

“So you wait until now—now, when you've got nothing else to lose—to say something. That's very sweet of you.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Don't think I didn't see it. I knew I was second banana to those whores. And I knew you didn't like them to see you hanging out with me because you were afraid it would reflect badly on you. So don't think that now, when you've got no friends left, you can come crawling back to me and I'll accept you.”

 

After school, desperate for a friend, I called Amanda. We hadn't talked on the phone since Halloween. She didn't even know much about Aaron. We had instant messaged back and forth, but usually, Amanda was so busy telling me about all the parties and openings she was attending that she forgot to ask about my life and how I was doing. This afternoon, I told her about the breakup situation. Her advice to me? “Just drop it. If you want to stay friends with them, you have to suck it up. You shouldn't be mad about Courtney going out with him; you should consider
yourself lucky that you managed to land them as friends and that someone as pretty and popular as Courtney would go out with your ex-boyfriend.”

“What?” I said. “Are you joking?”

She wasn't. And then she got off the phone as quickly as possible with an excuse about her dad needing her to run lines with him in the other room.

Now, when I was explaining the weekend to my mom, I added Amanda to the list of people who were currently making my life difficult.

“That's awful about Amanda,” Mom said when I finally broke down and told her about what had been happening. “But that Taylor situation—that's really tough. You apologized, which is all you can do. Now you'll just have to see if, with time and effort, you can build back that relationship. Taylor seems like a sweet girl, and God knows you could use more of those in your life right now.”

Pam Michaels was on her way up, so I excused myself to my room. I didn't want to see anyone right then. I opened up one of the bags I had packed at my dad's house—it was always an elaborate production each week, packing up and hoping that I remembered everything I needed, like Prozac, for instance—but I couldn't find my biology textbook. I looked through my backpack and then in the drawers of my desk, but the book wasn't there. I had a test the next day. I didn't usually do the nightly worksheets for bio, but I found that if I just read over the chapter the night before the test, I could get an A. It was pretty easy to
remember what I'd read; I could even visualize the pages and what information had been on which particular page. But if I didn't have the textbook, I would have no way of knowing what I had to know.

I could have left the book at school, but I didn't think I had brought it that day. I called my dad to see if I had left it at his house. I didn't usually forget or misplace things; I was always good about keeping track of my possessions. In fact, sometimes I was even
too
good at it. But ever since this whole Aaron fiasco had erupted, I felt less and less on top of the goings-on in my life.

Finally, Dad picked up. I asked about the textbook. “Becky,” Dad sighed, sounding as if I had caught him at a bad time. The trouble was, with my dad, it was always a bad time. “I don't even know what your books look like!”

“Of course you don't!” I stood up, suddenly enraged. “You don't know anything about my life! God forbid you might actually act like my
father
and pay attention once in a while!” I hung up and fell face first onto my bed, trying to stifle my tears.

My mom and Pam were in the other room, probably talking about ways to make this hotel room more of a home. I had to get out of this place.

I gathered my wallet, keys, and cell phone, dumped them in a purse, and hurried through the room. Mom called my name. I just told her I'd be back and kept walking, out the door, down the hall, and into the fresh air.

The valet brought me my car, but I had no idea where
to go. I couldn't go to my dad's—not after I had yelled at him. I didn't want to deal with that. I couldn't call the Trinity, I couldn't call Amanda, and I couldn't call Taylor. So I just got in the car and drove, and before long, I found myself cruising through the streets of Hancock Park. I drove past my dad's house and past Amanda's old house. I drove down Larchmont, but I didn't get out for a coffee because I was afraid that I would run into someone I knew, and I was afraid that I might burst into tears at any moment.

As I drove past Whitbread, I dialed June Kauffman's emergency number, half expecting to get her answering service. But she picked up immediately. I was so relieved to have her on the phone that I let out a long sigh. It felt like I'd been holding my breath forever. After I confessed to her that I hadn't slept in the past three days, she scheduled me for an extra appointment, on Friday.

A few minutes later, Joey called me. “Hey,” he said. “My mom called me and said something about you rushing out of your mom's place and not telling anyone where you were going. Are you okay?”

I felt tears welling up in my eyes.

I shook my head, even though I knew Joey couldn't see it. “No,” I said finally. As June had warned me, if I didn't own up to my emotions, I might be forever trapped inside myself. And I didn't want that. I started to cry, my breath coming in short bursts, my nose sniffling.

“Where are you?”

“I'm in Hancock Park.”

“Come to my house.”

Joey was sitting on the chair swing in his front yard when I arrived. Self-conscious, I got out of the car. I was still in my uniform, but it was all wrinkled, and my eyes were all red. “I'm a mess.”

“No. No, you're not.”

I sat down next to Joey and collapsed into his arms.

J
une had told me that part of the reason I detached myself was that real life was too uncomfortable, and I suppose she was right. Take social situations, for instance. I couldn't stand the awkward silences or the grammatical flaws. I was aggravated by the petty discussion topics and the exaggerated dramatics of teenaged girls. I couldn't believe that I was actually one of them.

I was doing pretty well at keeping myself occupied during school. I got all my homework done during the school day and sat in the Room only when the Trinity weren't there. It was two weeks away from winter break, and MUN meetings were on a break until second semester.

I ran into Courtney in the bathroom one day. When
I walked in, I heard her voice drift over from one of the stalls. “I know!” she said, aggravated. I thought there might be another person in the stall with her, but then I realized that she was only talking on the phone. “But Marisa, I'm doing better in science this year,” Courtney said.

So it was Courtney who had failed science, which meant that it was Courtney who had gotten a boob job. But more than that, it meant that Courtney, the one girl in the Trinity who had seemed most genuine about joining MUN, had really only joined because her stepmother had forced her to. I bet that Aaron didn't know about the plastic surgery. I wondered what would happen if he found out. Would it be so wrong for me to casually slip that Courtney Gross had gotten her boobs done? After all, she had been spreading rumors that I was a slut, no doubt with the help of Kim and Alissa.

I
had to make an appearance at the mandatory Junior Class Winter Tea on Saturday afternoon. The tea was held at the sprawling Brentwood mansion of Autumn Fielding, a ballerina in my class with whom I had little contact. The invitation emphasized that there would be very little parking available, so my mom dropped me off on her way to a location shoot. Unfortunately for me, she was going to be busy for at least two hours, so I wouldn't be able to leave the tea until, at the earliest, five o'clock. I braced myself and tried to put on a happy face.

Everyone was dressed up and chitchatting over cups of tea, delicate miniature scones, and strawberries and cream. The party frocks and peacoats made me almost forget that
we were, in fact, in Los Angeles. Some of Whitbread's traditions seemed to be directly lifted from East Coast prep schools. I stood by a cluster of girls to whom I rarely spoke and made small talk about winter break plans and the difficulty of last week's biology test. The truth was, the girls I didn't know well were more willing to talk to me than those I did know. The first half hour went just fine, and I almost relaxed, realizing that not everyone read Facebook or knew Aaron Winters or listened to the Trinity's gossip.

But then Alissa arrived, fashionably late as always. She teetered in the door, a stick figure in a wrap dress and heels. I smiled, trying to show that I simply wasn't afraid of her. Hating this, Alissa made a beeline across the room for me.

“Becky.” She looked me up and down with a scathing eye.

Kimberly, followed by Courtney, walked by me next. Kim “accidentally” bumped into me as she passed, sending hot tea sloshing out of my cup and onto the front of my white dress. “Slut,” she hissed. Courtney gave me a hard look. I squinted my eyes to meet hers.

At first, I thought that leaving the party early would be a sign of weakness. To leave early would be to show that, no, I couldn't handle the whispered gossip on the other side of the room or the fingers pointing toward me as the rumors spread. But then I realized that this wasn't a game that I could win by just sticking it out to the end. This was my life, and it was my well-being that was at stake. And
even if I did make it to the end of the tea party, neither the Trinity nor anyone else would acknowledge my strength. All that would happen would be that I would just feel even more beaten up. And I certainly didn't need that.

But once I decided that I wanted to leave—really wanted to leave, in fact—then there was the issue of how the hell I was going to get out of there. After another insult was whispered in my direction by Alissa as she soared across the room, I decided to text message my dad.
SOS,
I wrote.
If you get this, please come pick me up at Autumn Fielding's house. Please.
My dad had a business cocktail party that afternoon, and I doubted that he would leave it to come pick me up. Work was far too important.

“I'm so sorry to have to cut out early, but I have an event tonight,” I said to Autumn, loudly enough, I hoped, that one or all of the Trinity heard. I wanted them to know that I had better places to be than at the stupid tea party. I excused myself and walked outside. My dad hadn't messaged me back; I had nowhere to go. I began to shiver. I had a shawl over my sleeveless dress, but that really wasn't helping me retain any heat. I walked far enough down the block that anyone leaving the party wouldn't see me, and sat down on the curb. Ten minutes passed. I contemplated going back inside, but the hatred on the Trinity's faces stopped me. Closing my eyes didn't help the dejection I was feeling. But because my eyes were closed, I didn't see my dad's convertible pull up across the street.

“Come on, hop in. You must be freezing,” he called
through the open window.

“You came!” I said, surprised and grateful. “I thought you had that work event.”

“I did. But you sent me an SOS.”

That night, Dad canceled his date with Darcy and went out to dinner with me instead. I filled him in on bits and pieces of what I had been going through—excluding, for example, being called a slut. “Sweetheart, I can't believe you've been going through all this and I had no idea,” Dad said. “I want to be there for you and to support you, but I can't read your mind. I have no way of knowing what's going on with you unless you tell me.”

“I know. And I'm going to try to get better at telling you things and keeping you in the loop. It's just hard because, well, when you and Mom split up, I think I sort of blamed it on you. And I know that was wrong, but I thought I had to blame someone. You guys were mad at each other, and I guess I was mad at you.”

“Oh, honey. Your mom and I aren't mad at each other, and neither of us wants to make you choose sides. We're still adjusting to this new life, but we are going to get it all figured out. We are. Everything might not be perfect, but it will be okay.”

Okay sounded pretty perfect to me.