Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here (13 page)

MY DAD HAS THIS EXPRESSION:
IF YOU’RE GONNA BE A BEAR,
be a grizzly bear
. So I blew out my hair and borrowed an outfit from Dawn, and now I’m a grizzly bear in a short, tight red bandage dress that rides obscenely up my thighs when I get in the back of Ashley’s car. I’d never admit it, but this dress makes me feel weirdly powerful and Kardashian-esque. It figures that I’d have to channel a totally different person in order to work up the nerve to go to this dance.

We pull into the class parking lot, and Ave and I both sort of take a second to regroup. Ashley reapplies her lipstick in the rearview mirror, visibly impatient to get inside already. Avery shakes her head in awe.

“I can’t believe your boobs right now,” she says.

“It’s Dawn’s bra.”

In the interior rearview mirror, Ashley’s green eyes creep
predatorily over to me, a spider crawling toward a fly.

“I didn’t know Victoria’s Secret had good clearance prices!”

She shuts off the car.

A touching amount of time and effort has been spent making the gym look Halloween-y. Big black crepe paper covers the walls, and the backboards and basketball hoops are draped with cobwebs. I immediately zero in on Gideon—and so does Ashley, darting over in her tight black dress to back him (with him quite willing) into a corner. I watch them and hate myself for feeling like I’m at that first free fall on a roller coaster and my stomach has just dropped out of my body. He glances at me once, then again in a flickering up-and-down glance. Actually, I am either insane or I feel a lot of eyes on me.

“Oh my God, Scarlett, people are
staring
at you,” says Avery.

I focus on the floor, yanking the bottom of my dress down.

Jason Tous saunters by with his little dude-cadre, reeking of Abercrombie Fierce. We glare at each other. I wonder whether he was even a little bit affected by what I said to him outside Ruth’s house. It’s hard to tell, since his expression is consistently at some unreadable early point on the Darwinian evolution chart.

Mike Neckekis appears from the refreshments table with two Solo cups of punch. He’s wearing a nice gingham shirt and looks higher on the human-evolution chart than usual. He smiles at Avery and hands her a glass.

“Hey! You look really nice.”

“You too,” she says, seeming to relax a little, then lowers her voice: “Tell me this is alcoholic.”

“Maybe a little,” he says, and she makes a “score!” sign with her fist. He turns apologetically to me. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t get one for you. Wait a second.” He disappears again to get a punch for me and returns with one. I sip and say thanks.

“So, like, you want to dance or something?” he asks Avery. She nods hesitantly and looks at me.

“Yeah, go! I mean, if nobody dances to the Black Eyed Peas, do they even exist? Just food for thought.”

She laughs. “Okay. But listen, please don’t feel weird that you came; you’ll have fun. And you seriously look amazing. Everybody’s staring at you.”

I roll my eyes.

“I’ll be back in a little bit.”

The bleachers are reminiscent of Diane Arbus, smattered with a handful of homely Girl Geniuses and a couple of weird guys with pube-y facial hair who haven’t had a growth spurt yet. As soon as I sit down way up on the highest bench, I feel a lot more like myself, in my natural habitat, but in keeping with today’s little forum trauma, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Down below, my classmates are dancing or awkwardly milling around in same-sex groups. The guys seem aimless and
doofy, trying to love-tap one another in the balls. The girls move with more of a purpose. Natalie Wetta and Liz Lanteri jokingly slow dance together.
We’re all going to graduate soon, and go to college, and grow up, and get married
, I think, and realize with a start I’ve said
we
instead of
they
. Usually the only
we
is me and Avery, or me and the Were-heads. Or me and Gideon, before he outed himself as Lord of the Douche. I was so delusional to think he was above this popularity stuff.

I’ve tried to look everywhere except at Gideon and Ashley, but I’m a masochist, so I glance around for them. Ashley’s nowhere to be found, and hearing a few thuds of dress shoes on the bleachers, I realize Gideon’s climbing up toward me. I am still mad at him, no matter how cute he looks.

This is the part where I am supposed to be a sparkling, vindictive angel of revenge whose cutting remarks make him feel like shit.

“I like your shoes,” I blurt.

He glances down at them. “Oh. Thanks.” Then he sits next to me, leaning a little bit forward with his hands on his knees, staring straight out at the dance floor like he’s intentionally trying not to look at me.

“So did you get to the Sam Kieth illustrated editions?”

I don’t say anything. I freeze helplessly, torn between wanting to yell at him about his cisgender white male sense of entitlement and whisper to him that he smells like pine needles and dreams.

“It, um, was really stupid, what I did.”

He has now given me permission to go with option one.

“It was pretty spectacularly stupid, yeah.”

“I didn’t know who lived there. Not that that’s better, but if I knew it was, like, an old lady by herself—and that you knew her—then I might not have . . .” He trails off. “I totally forgot you lived in that neighborhood.”

“Well, I do.”

“Can you, um, tell her I’m sorry? For me?”

“I already told her.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, I told her I was sorry I go to school with a bunch of idiots who ruined her garden, and that people do really shitty things to fit in without thinking about it at all. And that I ever thought for a split second that you were cool.”

He looks stunned, which makes me even angrier, because it’s obvious that he chooses to hang out with girls who never tell him off and just let him get away with anything. And I’m so, so annoyed at myself for caring about it.

He turns toward me, his nose crinkled up with irritation, as if I’m being An Emotional Girl™ and missing some major piece of information that makes him not an utter ass.

“Scarlett,” he says.

“What?”

He shakes his head, one side of his mouth twisting in kind of an embarrassed smile.

“The only reason I went with them in the first place was because you said I had no friends.”

He sighs. Then he gets up and walks back down to the dance floor.

That’s bullshit
, I think. Maybe it was partly what I said, but he loves having baller status at school. It’s so unfair—I put on the dress, came to the dance, and actually tried, and nothing worked out the way I wanted it to. I should have known that coming was a stupid idea.

I track down Avery and tell her I’m gonna go.

“No! Why? Did Gideon say something to you?”

“Yeah, but that’s not why. I’m tired. I’m in a shitty mood. I’ve been sucking in my stomach for, like, two hours. I need to go home.”

“Come dance with us.”

I glance warily at Mike, who nods and smiles in a seemingly genuine way. I really don’t want some bullshit charity third-wheel routine.

“Okay. I’ll need some more punch.”

Three Solo cups later, I’m nice and tipsy enough to non-self-consciously dance with Avery in sort of a performative, faux-dirty way that Mike and some other boys nearby who’ve never looked twice at us seem to appreciate. But we’re totally ignoring them. We don’t usually act like this. Our friendship isn’t really very affectionate or physically silly. Most of the time we sit kind of far away from each other and banter because we’re both weird and trapped in our own heads and
uncomfortable with touchy-feely stuff. Like two brains in a jar. But it’s surprisingly fun to just let go.

The Fray comes on, a slow song, and Mike and Avery dance as I go get more punch. Unexpectedly, as I’m ladling punch into my cup, my eyes start swimming with tears. At the Fray. I’m obviously losing it. Or I’m just turning into Dawn, who full-body sobs during Super Bowl commercials about Sprint “framily” plans. It was only a matter of time.

Gideon and Ashley slow dance, but over her shoulder, he’s looking at me. His expression looks studiously blank, like it used to when he was troubled about something, trying to parse out a jumble of thoughts in his head, but who knows what it means now? I wish he’d stop.
Yes, I’m standing alone, as usual. Gawk at me all you’d like when I’m dead and stuffed and posed in the Museum of Natural History as Girl Standing by Herself.

Careful what you wish for, though: He stops looking at me when Ashley pulls him down toward her, tangling her fingers in his slightly-too-long dark hair forever brushing his collar, and they kiss. And I die a little.

They’re still kissing when I leave.

I’M STARTING TO GET WHY RUTH WAS SURPRISINGLY NONCHALANT
in the wake of Gardenpocalypse. The flowers are nice, but it’s the actual gardening part that’s cathartic. You’re basically brawling with dirt. I especially need to blow off steam because the BNFs—and other people in the fandom—are starting to write response fics about Gideon and Ashbot and Scarlett, which is simultaneously incredibly cool and more than a little weird. As I sweat it out in shitty dad-style jeans with my hair pulled up in a topknot, getting the November tulip bulbs started, I begin to feel a little better.

“So?”

“Yes?”

“Do you forgive him?” asks Ruth, her tone implying that I’m a complete idiot.

“What do you mean? You’re the one he apologized to.”
The wind blows Ruth’s overpowering weed smoke toward me, and I cough. “God.”

“He’s obviously apologizing to
you
. He doesn’t know me from Adam.”

“I’m not the one he was making out with on the dance floor.”

“You could’ve been.”

“You mean if I’d just acted like everything was totally fine? Like you said, I don’t know how to be fake.” My raking becomes harder and more vicious. “And I learned my lesson. I’m never going to another dance again. Guest starring in one episode of
The Young and the Vacant
was enough for me.”

Maybe I had a sliver, like, a
modicum
of fun. But there’s no way I’d tell her that.

Ruth shakes her head. “You’re so angry all the time. Aren’t you tired?”

“I’m kidding. I mean, I won’t go to another dance, but I’m mostly joking.”

“That’s what’s angry, the jokes.”

I wipe the sweat off my forehead with the back of my garden glove, exasperated.

“How about you try to analyze me when you’re
not
completely stoned.”

“Sure, make an appointment for the twelfth of never.”

I snort. Ruth picks up expressions—what she’d call, offensively, “street”—from Ave and me that she uses wrong half the time and dead-on perfectly the other half. I’m about
to respond to her when I realize she’s looking past me, smiling. A voice pipes up from behind me.

“Scarlett?”

I turn. Gideon’s standing hesitantly at the edge of the garden, holding a potted orchid.

“Oh, wow.” He blinks. “Those are some serious Jerry Seinfeld pants.”

“Hello, Newman.”

“I was wondering if you’d mind if I, like, helped you.”

The surprise and weirdness of him being there makes me docile. I nod. “Okay.”

Ruth clears her throat.

“I think I’m gonna take a nap.”

Gideon looks straight at her and says supersincerely, “I’m really sorry I did this to your garden.”

“Thank you. You’re a nice boy,” she replies without her usual saltiness—instead, like a kindly grandma. Then she goes inside. Gideon points toward the door with a perplexed smile.

“Um, was she just smoking weed?”

“Yep.”

He nods, impressed, and says mildly, “Right on.”

“Your clothes are going to get dirty,” I warn him.

“That’s cool.”

“So . . . um, yeah.” I gesture to the tools stacked up against the side of the porch. “Grab a hoe.”

“There’s nothing I’d rather do,” he jokes.

“I figured. You’re kind of a rake.”

He nods seriously. “Good for you, calling a spade a spade.”

I laugh, surprised, then narrow my eyes and fake-glare suspiciously at him. He smiles back. We’re flirting, I think. It’s sort of a dogs-circling-each-other flirt. He seems to be sizing it up the same way I am.

Then he says, “A hot Jerry Seinfeld is what I meant.”

I might pass out. Instead I say, hopefully coolly: “Right. Obviously.”

I assign him one particular square of the garden, and we work in silence for a while. He starts sweating and takes his fleece off, underneath which is a white T-shirt that fits him perfectly, and I pretend not to notice.

“Remember that time you said I didn’t have friends?” he asks, his tone light and joking but a little wounded.

“I didn’t really mean it that way.”

“I know. But, like, how would you know if I even did? Besides them, I’m, um . . . I take classes in the city at this comedy place? Upright Citizens Brigade? That’s where my best friends are, really.”

My heart twists a little at his nervous uptalk.

“Yeah, of course. Avery and I try to go every few weeks. I’ve seen a lot of shows there.”

“Really?” He’s relieved and, judging by the sudden grin, delighted. “That’s cool! And, like . . . most of your friends are on the Internet, right?”

He doesn’t sound judgmental, just curious. Ashley must’ve told him.

“Um, when you say it like that, it sounds pretty creepy. But, yeah, some of them.”

“What do you talk about with them?”

“Lycanthrope High
, obviously
.”

“But the show’s over. So what about now?”

I begin to feel the blood rush out of my head, the start of a small panic attack.
Right now we’re discussing the speculative fiction I’m writing about you and your maybe-girlfriend.

“Nothing important,” I say.

He nods.

“And I hang out with people here, too. I have hang partners,” I add.

“Well, there’s Ashley’s sister,” he says, teasing.

“Yeah.”

“And there’s . . .” He pretends to think. “An old woman.”

I laugh again, my anxiety dissipating.

“Seriously, though, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I mostly hang out with other kids in my improv class. We just get along really well. School isn’t really where most of my friends are.”

“Well!” I say brightly, trying not to come off too caustic. “You really seem to be spreading your wings this year, you li’l social butterfly.”

“Yeah. I know.” His response is weirdly ambivalent, and he hangs his head a little. Good! He should. Or: I like him, and he shouldn’t. Depends on what precise second you ask me.

“You’re like the boy
She’s All That
,” I say. “The glasses come off, and bam.”

“Yeah, I’ve got that little red dress, too.” He shovels dirt over a bulb, then goes: “Wait, no, that’s you.”

I blush. Then I surprise myself by asking, with pure curiosity: “How does it feel?”

“How does what feel?”

“To be popular.”

He scoffs. “I’m not p—”

“Shut up. Don’t do that bullshit; we’ll all be dead someday, and you’ll have wasted time.”

He stands, thoughtful, for a moment.

“Weird,” he says. Then admits, “Good.”

I nod and wait for him to elaborate. Mostly for him to admit to aiding Jason and co. in their reign of terror. He doesn’t.

Instead, he asks, “How does it feel to be smart?”

“Um, hello. Thirty-seven. A score not found in nature. You’re asking the wrong person.”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t mean good in school. You’re the smartest person I know.”

“Not really,” I mumble, uncomfortable.

“I’ve always thought . . .” He blushes. “Like, there’s one thing you’re really, really good at, but you don’t talk about it or tell anybody. I’ve always thought you were hiding some giant thing.”

Always thought.
My face burns.
He thinks about me.
For some reason, I feel exposed and immediately want to shock him or put him off as much as possible.

So I say, “It’s my giant cock.”

“Very funny.”

“My huge, veiny monster cock. It’s incredibly unwieldy.”

“Scarlett,” he says, sort of chastising, looking straight at me.

My face burns like I’m divulging some enormous shameful secret. “I like writing.”

“Like poetry?”

“
God
no.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Stories, I guess. Maybe . . . novels? I hate how that sounds, though. I don’t know. Let’s not talk about it.”

“Okay.”

We dig in silence some more, until he says: “So are we going to plant this Georgia O’Keeffe steez, or, like . . .”

“Totally, bring that vagina flower over here.”

His turn to blush. He brings it over, and we plant it together, like some weird on-the-nose sex metaphor. I wonder if he’s slept with Ashley. As if he can tell what I’m thinking, he gives me a frustratingly inconclusive nonanswer.

“We’re not official. Ashley and me, I mean.”

“Like, not BF-GF.”

“Definitively. No. Not.”

“What do you want me to do with that information, exactly?”

He shrugs. Guys are so unfair. One shrug, and I’m lying in bed that night replaying the whole scene, every look he shot me, feeling a weird and very real glow I’ve never really felt before.

So I do what I always do when I have two feelings that are pulling me in opposite directions: I write it for the BNFs.
Basically the exact conversation Gideon and I had in the garden, albeit continuing the Ordinaria metaphor I’ve built into the previous installments.

As I hit Post, I felt weirdly exposed, like all my sentences were stripped of their woolen layers and stood there naked, unprepared for the elements.

But the BNFs had asked for it. Instead of lofty fights about morals or ideals, they seemed to want me to write . . . what happened, and how I felt about it. That is, how Scarlett felt about it. I mean,
that
Scarlett. Or—you know what I mean.

xLoupxGaroux: Good stuff.

DavidaTheDeadly: all right, i’m coming around on this pairing. there’s def some meaty stuff here.

WillianShipper2000: idk i don’t really see sideon . . .

DavidaTheDeadly: it’s all about the character-building now! ashbot still has the furthest to go . . . but that’s by design, clearly. i mean it’s all there on her twitter

Scarface: wait what twitter?

DavidaTheDeadly: Ashbot’s twitter, isn’t it you?

Scarface: no . . .

DavidaTheDeadly: whoa i guess it’s a stan. it has like 50 followers.

MorwennaWraith: Here’s the problem: People keep
asking for Sideon fanart, but Scarlett doesn’t sound that pretty

Scarface: WTF

DavidaTheDeadly: dude OTPs aren’t determined by “who’s the hottest person”—just look at greg and becca. john, like scarface, is a feminist. he very well would want gideon to end up with whoever was the best on the *inside.*

Scarface: haha guys, she’s not like

Scarface: an absolute gnarled crone who lives in a hole but manages to get by because of her amazing personality

Scarface: she’s like . . . okay-looking and has a pretty good personality

Scarface: i think

xNorthStarx: Hi! Longtime lurker, first-time poster here. Really into this chapter. But . . . does Ashbot know about any of this? She may not have female intuition, but she has a built-in GPS, which is sort of the same thing. If Ashbot and Gideon have been hooking up and he hasn’t mentioned this, he’s kind of being a dick.

Werehead66: Hi, same, never posted here before. Sideon OBVIOUSLY makes more sense. They obviously have a connection, plus a pretty epic backstory. Besides,
I don’t know if Gideon’s really beholden to Ashbot! I think he’s just going with the flow.

Scarface: I mean maybe he hasn’t hooked up with her though

WillianShipper2000: yea, who’s to say? ppl wait to have sex for all kinds of reasons

xLoupxGaroux: Willian, babygirl, we know your deal. But what most teenagers do at afterprom isn’t getting a hamburger with your dad after the Purity Ball.

Willian goes to one of those schools where “sex ed” is when the health teacher passes an unwrapped Peppermint Pattie around the classroom, finally grosses out a student by asking him to eat it, and compares it to a girl who won’t wait until marriage.

xNorthStarx: I’ve been sending my friends Ordinaria chapters and one of them was pretty indignant about the emotional cheating.

xLoupxGaroux: “Emotional cheating??” God, that is such a hetero conceit I want to vom.

xNorthStarx: Anyway, my friends want more! And they’re not even Lycanthrope fans.

Werehead66: I just want Gideon to be HONEST with both of them. No more of this ambiguity. You know??
The longer he drags this out, the easier he is to dislike. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, you know?

Scarface: What a weird idiom though because what else can you do with cake? But I get what you mean. Believe me.

Werehead66: John St. Clair only waited two seasons to hook William and Gillian up. Enough with the will-they-or-won’t-they, I want a true love scene.

xLoupxGaroux: OK, fine. If I have to live vicariously through the shipping of a straight couple, I’ll do it. Just consummate one of them already.

WillianShipper2000: maybe he’ll realize ashbot is the ONE (and also prettier but I know i know it doesn’t matter because #feminism)

Werehead66: No way! #Sideon-shipper for life!

xNorthStarx: IDK, guys, I’m kind of still #Gidbot.

WillianShipper2000: hell yeeeeeaaaa

xLoupxGaroux: I’m gonna need more chapters

DavidaTheDeadly: Same.

xNorthStarx: SAME.