The Diamonds (17 page)

“What are you doing?” he asked between kisses. He was still on top of me, but my fingers were clawing at his jeans. I unzipped them. I couldn't see anything, it was so dark. The heat between us was incredible.

“Hold on,” he said, reaching underneath my arms and tugging at my sweater. Before I knew it, his hands were behind my back, slipping off my jeans and resting on my hips, just above my underwear.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

For that moment, there were only two people in the world: Anderson and me. Everything else faded into black and white, into gray, into nothingness.

“Yes,” I said, and then his face was in my breasts, and I felt him in my hand. “Wait,” I said, resting against his chest, which was bare and exposed, tense beneath my fingertips, his shirt crumpled on the floor. “Do you have a condom?”

“Yeah,” he said, which surprised me. I heard him reach into his jeans and rip the foil. He kissed me again, slipping off my underwear, and I thought,
This is it. This is everything I've ever wanted
.

Then the light flicked on, and I was blinded by my nakedness, and his nakedness. The door flew open. Before I could move (there was no time to do anything but freeze), a sea of faces stared down at me—Duncan's, Priya's, Lili's, Ryan's, faces I had never seen before, shocked faces—and in the center of them all was Clarissa's, eyebrows arched in surprise, mouth pulled together in a tiny O that said a million things and nothing at once.

And I remember thinking:
My life is over
.

The next day, nobody returned my calls.

When I stopped by each one of the Diamonds’ houses on Sunday afternoon, they were conspicuously “unavailable.” I even went to our regular brunch at
Bistro, but they were nowhere to be found. By Monday morning, what had happened at Ryan's party was all over school. For discretionary reasons, I won't repeat the gossip here, but know that it was awful, and that by third period, the entire school was under the belief that there was a sex tape of me, Anderson, and a live chicken floating around the Internet.

AP Lit with the twins was the worst.

“I heard she has ‘I heart Anderson’ tattooed across her back,” Dana said while Mrs. Bloom drew stick figures of Romeo and Juliet on the board. “And underneath that, ‘I heart balls.’”

“
I
heard that Lili and Priya never even liked her,” said Dara, “and the
real
reason Jed dumped her is because she has warts. Not the kind on your feet, either.”

The Diamonds weren't at lunch; they didn't show up for government, either.

Nobody was outright rude to me, but everyone stayed far, far away. The only human contact I had that entire day was two seconds with Anderson after art class, when he whispered, “Call me later, it's gonna be okay,” into my ear and fled down the hallway before I could follow.

After school, Duncan was waiting for me at my locker with an incredibly peculiar expression on his face. “Hi, Duncan,” I started, “I'm really—” He held up his hand. “Whatever, Marni. I'm just here to give you this.”

Duncan handed me a thin slip of paper, which I
immediately recognized (I'd helped design them, and conceived the entire text): it was a subpoena, the kind the Diamonds slipped into peoples’ lockers if they were supposed to appear at a trial.

“It's for today,” he said, leaving before I could reply.

That was okay. I didn't feel much like talking.

There were more people in the chorus room for my trial than for all the previous ones combined. People were clumped around the doorway, balancing on their toes to see inside. To see me.

Clarissa, Priya, and Lili looked formidable and gorgeous in their chic black robes; I thought about mine lying in its garment bag somewhere, and about how—now more than ever—all I wanted to do was put it on and stand beside them.

Members of the jury scowled at me. Neither Mr. Townsen nor Principal Newman was anywhere to be found. Only the Diamonds and me, separated by a judges’ bench and an apology.

Clarissa looked stone cold. “You are being charged with multiple offenses, Ms. Valentine, including First-Degree Backstabbing with Intention to Hurt, Second-Degree Being a Huge Slut, and Third-Degree Fugliness. How do you plead?”

Despite everything, I couldn't help laughing at the ridiculousness of the entire scenario. “Is this for real?”

“We need your answer,” Priya said.

“Why didn't you return any of my calls?” I asked.

“Please note that the defendant refuses to answer
the question,” Clarissa said stiffly, “which automatically enters a default plea of guilty.”

I could tell I needed a better tactic. “Look, I have absolutely no desire to talk about this with you guys in front of all these people”—I glanced around the room—“but you're making it impossible to do otherwise, so here goes: I'm sorry.” I locked eyes with Clarissa. “This thing with Anderson just… happened. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to be upset. I don't want to lose your friendship over something like this.”

For a moment Clarissa's face softened, but then she said, “So you admit to having a secret relationship with Anderson behind my back, and behind Priya's and Lili's, too?”

I felt my heart fold itself in half. “Yes,” I said, because really, what else was there to say? Someone behind me whispered, “Slut,” and someone else whispered, “Dumb tranny,” which I hoped wasn't about me (but probably was), and before I knew it, Clarissa slammed down her gavel and said, “The Diamond Court finds you guilty of all the above charges.” Apparently, she didn't even need to check in with the jury for this one. “You betrayed our trust and you're never to speak to us again. If you see us in the hall, look the other way. Delete our numbers from your phone, and forget our e-mail addresses. Don't sit next to us in class.” She leaned forward and scowled. “From this moment on, Marni, you no longer exist.”

I was speechless. Lili stepped down from the bench
and walked toward me. She looked the same as always, only there was something meaner, something crueler, that lay just beneath her skin. “Hand over your necklace, Marni.”

My hand involuntarily went to my collarbone, where my diamond pendant lay against the base of my throat. “You can't be serious,” I said, waiting for her to apologize for this outrageous scenario.

“Give us the necklace,” Lili said. “Now.”

Slowly, I reached behind me and unclasped the one tangible item that proved I was a Diamond, the daily reminder of who my friends were and what my place at Bennington was.

I dropped it into Lili's hand and held on to her fingers before letting go.

“Case closed,” Clarissa declared.

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.       

—
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Any student has the freedom to pass notes, post flyers, and talk shit about his or her BFF in retaliation for said BFF talking shit about him or her first, as long as the above individuals do not include any member of the Diamond Court.

—The Diamond Rules

A week or so later, the shroud of mystery around me had evaporated and everyone was just really, really mean.

Now that I'd been publicly stripped of my Diamond status, no one complimented me in the hall or told me I looked pretty or asked where I'd bought my dress or shoes or bracelets or [insert accessory here]. It was even worse than when Jed had dumped me, because then I'd still been a Diamond; now I was a
nobody
. Clarissa didn't yell for me to hurry up so we could walk to class; Priya didn't pull me aside on my way to Spanish to tell me about what Todd Jericho had said to her during physics; Lili didn't sit with me at lunch and listen to me complain about JeDarcy or help me with my calculus. I was alone. The one person I had was Anderson,
and we only had art class together, which was nice—don't get me wrong—but it wasn't everything.

Fact: It's amazing how fast one's social life can deteriorate in private school.

Since all the days at Bennington pretty much sucked, it's hard to distinguish them from one another. My memory of those first few weeks is like a watercolor painting done by a four-year-old. One day, though—November 12, a Tuesday—stands out because it was quite possibly the worst day of my entire life. Among other things, it was the day I went to Principal Newman for help and he denied me. (It was also the day I discovered that one Starbucks Frappuccino exceeds the amount of calories you're supposed to have for an entire meal.)

That morning, when I arrived at school, I avoided Café Bennington and headed straight for my locker, where I found my first surprise: someone had written
SLUT
across the blue paint in black Sharpie. I tried rubbing it off (I even spat on my thumb), but that didn't work. I willed myself not to cry, because it would only make things worse.

First period was AP Lit, which meant morning an-nouncements. I tried to ignore the twins as much as possible (“Marni looks like someone dipped a baseball bat in a jar of
butt ugly
and smacked her with it, and then made, like, an omelette with the rest of the
butt ugly
jar and fed it to her for breakfast.”) and actually found myself relieved when Mrs. Bloom turned on the television.

Lili's face appeared on the screen and she began to read the pressing news. (After Jed's impeachment, Lili had replaced him as student body president. Go figure.)

“And, as you've all been waiting for, the votes for Snow Ball top twenty have been tallied. We now have your official top ten guys and top ten girls. Remember, seniors, only five of each make up the Snow Court, so vote wisely. You'll be hearing more from me about this in a week or so, when you'll be handed your ballots in homeroom and asked to turn them in by the twenty-third.”

The screen went blank for a second and then turned blue. In white lettering, it read
GENTLEMEN
, and a list of ten names appeared. My eyes immediately focused on Anderson's name, which was no surprise. Ryan, Duncan, and Tiger were there, too; Jed was on the list, which shocked me for a second because of his plunge in popularity, but then I remembered that faculty members picked five of the ten names. Even though he was no longer student body president, pretty much every teacher at Bennington was a Jed Brantley fan.

I hadn't had a chance to take in the other names when a new screen flashed
LADIES
, and before I knew it, I was staring at the list of potential Ice Queens. There were Clarissa, Priya, Lili, Jenny Murphy, Kara Rudolph, Sharon Wu, Leslie Durall, Ali Roberts, Anna Ford, and …
me
. I inhaled sharply and looked again. My name was on the list, at the very bottom, in what seemed like smaller print.

“Look,” said Dara from behind me, not even trying to whisper, “
Marni
is on the list.”