Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomaniacal Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase (8 page)

Rule Four—
Ditto on hairspray.

Rule Five—
Make boys think you’re dumb. That way you can trick them into doing all kinds of stuff, like buying you a pie.

Rule Six—
Your brother doesn’t realize his friends are cute. Try to position yourself in the vicinity of his room when the guys are over. If you can do so in a bathing suit, all the better. (This only works if you have a pool. Try to get a pool if you don’t have one.)

Rule Seven—
No matter how hot they might look, the guys who hang out in the computer math lab at lunch are going to grow up to be total losers who can’t get jobs. Avoid them.

Rule Eight—
If you’re a brunette, Sun-In is not your friend, regardless of how great the results appear on stupid naturally blond Sara Smyth’s head. And it takes over a year for all the orange pieces to grow out.

Rule Nine—
Double-pierced ears are adorable. Triple-pierce them and you may as well find yourself some clear heels and a stripper pole.

Rule Ten—
Plaid is always cute. ALWAYS.

After much debate, we finally pick the right spot to take the photograph. There’s
beaucoup
light coming in from the atrium across the hallway so we’ll be lit perfectly! Robyn wrinkles her nose and I realize we must be close to Mary Jean O’Halloran’s locker. Despite the school custodian’s best efforts, it still smells vaguely of the manure Charlie Shuttlecock stuffed into it when he found out she cheated on him.

You see?
That’s
how messed up rural Indiana is. People don’t express their anger with words; they say it with horseshit.

Robyn is able to vault on top of the lockers in one fluid movement because she was gymnastics star in junior high.
⁵¹
Years of hoisting myself out of the pool have made me strong enough to lift my own weight, but my jeans are so tight I can’t swing my leg up to take hold so I fall backward.

I try again, jumping up first, but I don’t have enough momentum behind me. I completely biff it and land so solidly on the flat soles of my stupid Gloria Vanderbilt riding boots that the shock radiates all the way up my spine. I try a third time with similar results and a thin line of perspiration begins to bead on my forehead.
Merde!

“C’mere, babe, I’ll give you a boost,” Mike says. He puts his newspaper-issued camera down and makes a foothold out of his clasped hands, steadying them on his knee. He lifts me up so quickly
⁵²
I almost bite it again, but luckily Robyn grabs my arm to steady me. He laughs while I scramble to right myself. “You’ll never make it onto the squad if you can’t master a simple lift.”

Ouch,
burn
! The fact that I’m not a cheerleader is a blight on my would-be idyllic high school existence and Mike totally knows it. We’ve discussed this at length when we talk in the darkroom every day after school. I’m an honor student, my teachers are nice, and I’m in all the best activities like newspaper and speech team and school musicals. So it’s not that I’m not known or liked—I’m just
drama club
popular, not
Heather Mueller- cheerleader
popular. And how am I going to snag a boyfriend if I’m not cheerleader popular? Yeah, I’ve got a ton of guy friends from theater, but none of them have ever made a move on me.
⁵³

I tried to be a cheerleader when we moved here. I had excellent enthusiasm and decent moves, but I also had the stigma of being “different” so no one voted for me. Now if anyone ever asks, I simply say there’s no way I’d enjoy standing around some loud, drafty ballgame, being ogled by a stadium full of pervy fathers.

The truth is I don’t actually want to do the work it takes to lead cheers at games. I just want the outfit. There’s something magical about our cheerleaders’ uniforms—buffed black-and-white saddle shoes with slouchy socks, pleated red skirts that show hidden black panels every time someone jumps or spins, and sweetly demure, yet form-fitting, black vests embroidered with a Vikings logo. The vests are paired with thick white turtlenecks in the winter and worn alone in the spring. Something about this outfit turns plain girls pretty and pretty girls stunning and it draws the attention of every person in the room. Even though I have no desire to do a split in front of a bunch of panting strangers, I believe in the power of clothing, so obviously I’d want to wear that which possesses mystical qualities.

Whatever, I’ll be cheerleader popular when everyone reads the article about my fabulous European tour. I’m not going to ruminate on what I don’t have for the moment.

Mike’s grinning when I peer down at him from my new perch atop the locker. I tell him, “Oh, my God, you’re so
gay
!”

Except that he’s not, as evidenced by how he moons over me in journalism. Mike’s on the swim team so his hair has those superglossy blond streaks and his shoulders are borderline dreamy. When he wears his stylish checkered Vans, a Journey concert T-shirt with contrasting baseball-jersey sleeves, and a white bandana around his neck, lots of girls find him handsome. (And last week, when he had to go to the dentist and his mom made him wear an oxford and an Izod vest, I almost got swoony before I realized it was him.)

The thing is, he’s a
sophomore
. He flirts with me all the time, which makes it such a pity that no junior girl would ever date an underclassman. (
C’est so
robbing the cradle.)

Oh, well. Maybe I’ll find a cute age-appropriate guy in France and he’ll fall madly in love with me because I can conjugate over five hundred French verbs. I’m, like, totally fluent. “
Parlez-vous français?”
he’ll ask.
“Mais bien sur!”
I’ll reply.

And how radical would it be if I met some kind of minor European prince at, like, a disco and he was all hot for me because of my sexy American jeans and boss French accent? I’d return to the States ultratan (because he took me to his palace on the Riviera, naturally) and totally thin because we were always dancing and eating exotic French fruit on the beach and my Jordache would practically hang off my hips instead of constricting me so much that lunch
⁵⁴
is never an option. Then when I got back to school, I’d be way continental and I’d kiss Heather Mueller on both cheeks and tell her,
“That’s
Princess
Jeni to you.”
Then she’d really be envious and I’d laugh about how sorry she was for never letting me onto her precious cheerleading squad.