The Diamonds (18 page)

“OMG,” Dana said. “Clarissa is gonna be so effing pissed.”

I had no clue how I'd been chosen. Everyone hated me. Unless the list had been compiled before the Closet Incident, a time when my name was uttered in sentences that didn't also contain the words “cheap,” “skizank,” or “monkey whoreface.”

The other possibility was that a teacher had selected me. The problem, however, was that I had no clue which faculty member liked me enough to have done so.

Being nominated for Snow Court may sound like a good thing, but it wasn't. As soon as my name was announced, the girls who hated me did so even
more
, and the girls who were on the fence in
von Dyke v. Valentine
were immediately tipped over, landing directly in Clarissa's lap.

In AP Bio, someone threw a paper airplane at me (believe me, I know), and someone tried to trip me in the hall. Then, thirty seconds later, someone else actually
did
trip me. I thought it was Buck Harrison, a junior on the soccer team with silly-string hair, but I wasn't sure.

Sixth period I had off; I usually went on a Dunkin’ Donuts run with Clarissa, but since that wasn't exactly on the day's agenda, I decided to make a pit stop at
Principal Newman's office and see if he had time for a little chat. There was only so much a girl could take.

“He'll be with you in a minute,” said Ms. Rose.

Fact: Ms. Rose looks like a carnie. Her teeth resembles a chessboard (alternating black and white) and I swear her left eye is made out of glass. Her hair is practically glued to the top of her head and then puffs out around her shoulders like a dress from the eighties.

She was also Principal Newman's secretary.

“Thanks,” I said, sitting down in a beige chair.

While I waited, I thought about Anderson. Things hadn't exactly been easy for him, either. Three days earlier, someone had hot-glued the edges of his locker overnight. (We thought it was Paul Warden on the football team.) One of the janitors had to slice through the glue with a razor blade.

At least we had each other.

“He'll see you now,” Ms. Rose said, gnawing on one of her fingers as if it were a chew toy.

Inside Principal Newman's office were fancy pictures of Bennington in brown frames. Windows overlooked the football field. Principal Newman sat in a tall, leather chair, leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

“Hello?”

“Marni”—his gray eyes met mine with a smile—“how are you?”

“Oh, I've been better.” I took a seat in front of his
desk and launched into my Diamonds spiel. It wasn't that I wanted to get the girls in trouble, per se, but I wanted them to be stopped. If anyone had the power to pull the plug on the Bennington mock trial team, it was Principal Newman.

Too bad he was a total kook.

“Oh my,” he said once I had finished, looking terribly displeased. “How horrible for you.” He blinked and noticed a jar of candies at his side. “You simply
must
have one of these, by the way,” he said, taking out a pink sucker and skipping it across his desk. “They're outrageous.”

I slipped it into my pocket. “I'll try it later,” I said. “Back to what I was saying, Principal Newman—”

“Oh no,” he said, rubbing the creases of his forehead with withered fingers. “I can't hear any more about that, I'm afraid. Not today.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because, my dear, you have no proof.”

A minor detail.

Principal Newman shook his head. “You are making very grave accusations against three fine young ladies, Ms. Valentine. Where is your evidence?”

I shrugged. The only evidence I had was my personal knowledge of the Diamonds’ agenda and my experience on the team with them.

“What do you think Clarissa would say if I called her into my office right now?”

“Probably that I was lying,” I said, trying to imagine the scene. I barely could. “But I'm telling the truth.
Clarissa, Priya, and Lili are
not
who you think they are. They're using the mock trial team to—”

“Marni,” Principal Newman said, cutting me off. “Get your head out of the clouds! You'll only wind up wet, and with cloud dust on your face. I've seen a great deal in my years here at Bennington. I try not to get involved in minor disciplinary matters unless I get multiple complaints and really, really have to. Parents get so huffy and puffy, you know? So much drama. If you can support your case with solid evidence, come back and see me. Until then, however, I must insist that we speak of this no further.”

Fact: Once the clock hits two-forty-five, the student parking lot at Bennington becomes a madhouse.

Outside, it was the sort of weather I loved—sunny but cool, and the slightest bit windy. I felt dejected that Principal Newman had basically dismissed my case, but determined to garner some “evidence” and go back to him. The only problem was how in the freaking world I was going to do so.

I'd parked in a pretty secluded spot, nowhere near Clarissa or Priya (Lili didn't have a car), underneath a cluster of trees that slouched like a bunch of elderly women with scoliosis. That hadn't stopped someone, however, from spraying my entire car with shaving cream—at least, I thought it was shaving cream—spelling “loser” on one of the sides.

“Fuck!” I said out loud, banging my fist on the hood in frustration and getting shaving cream all over my arm.

I dropped my bag on the pavement and stood staring at my Taurus. I could either drive it home and explain to my mother that everyone at Bennington hated me, or go back into school—an equally awful proposition—and secure a bunch of paper towels (how many would I need?) to wipe the entire car clean right there in the parking lot.

“Whoa.”

I turned around. Tommy, in his chinos and his tucked-in shirt and his skinny black belt. I immediately noticed the marble notebook underneath his arm and the pencil behind his ear and came to the conclusion that he wanted to write an article about my sad social state—to jump on the I Hate Marni bandwagon and ride into the sunset.

“Leave me alone, Tommy,” I said. “I'm not in the mood.”

“Not in the mood for what?”

The sun reflected off his glasses, forcing me to squint. “For anything, really.”

“Can I help?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do me a favor—just
leave
me
alone
. Don't write anything about this in the paper.” I motioned to my car with my free hand. “People don't exactly need any more reasons to make fun of me right now.”

Tommy opened his bag and dropped the notebook he'd been holding inside. “How are you gonna get home?”

“I don't know. Why do you care?”

“Because”—he took a set of keys from his pocket and jingled them in the air—“I was going to offer you a ride.”

“It's okay. I'll be fine.”

“Come on. Let me drive you home, and later, if you want, I can help you clean this baby up.” He gave a half smile. “It wouldn't even take fifteen minutes.”

“I don't know,” I said. Knowing Tommy, he probably wanted me to owe him a favor so that the next time he wanted to write an article about me, I'd feel guilty enough to cooperate.

“It's the least I can do,” he said, this time smiling an entire smile, one that showed all his teeth and hinted at the pink of his gums.

I glanced back at my car, which was officially the Biggest Mess Ever. “Okay,” I said, grabbing my bag off the ground. “But no talking.”

Tommy drove an even older car than I did (a '98 Buick), which at a school like Bennington was a rarity. Everything about it reeked of Tommy: stacks of papers and colored folders littered the backseat, pens and pencils were strewn everywhere—the dashboard, the floor, the seat cushions—and the interior, a washed-out leather that once, perhaps, was a burgundy color, smelled like burnt coffee. A vanilla-scented air freshener (which definitely did
not
work) hung from the rearview mirror.

After a few minutes, Tommy said, “Am I allowed to speak yet?”

“Whatever,” I said as we made our way down Dover Avenue. I didn't live far from Bennington. I should have just walked.

“I'll take that as a yes,” he said, one hand on the wheel, the other fiddling with an old Bob Marley cassette. “So, how are ya?”

“Just make a right here,” I said, pointing to the green sign that said
JOHN STREET
,“and then—”

“A left on Clover,” he finished. “I know.”

Was Tommy stalking me? Did he park his car outside my window and keep detailed surveillance notes about when I left the house and snoop through my garbage to see what sorts of things I was throwing out? What if the phones in my house were tapped and he'd known all along that I was seeing Anderson and
he
was the one who'd tipped Clarissa off that we were in the closet at Ryan's party?

My expression must have given me away. “I'm a reporter,” he explained. “I know everything.”

“You're not a reporter, Tommy.”

“Oh no?”

“You write for the
Bennington Press
. It's not exactly the
Times
. Or even the
Post.”

Tommy didn't say anything, and before I knew it, we were in my driveway. He shifted the car into park and the two of us sat together, listening to the music on his radio.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You can't take anything I say right now to heart. I'm a mess. My life is…”

“Difficult.” He moved his hand toward my shoulder, as if to give me a comforting pat, but then seemed to change his mind.

“Yes. Difficult.”

“If there's anything I can do to make it easier, just let me know.”

I was taken off guard by his kindness.

“So,” I said, leaning against his window and staring at my house. The kitchen light was on; I could see the outline of my mother moving back and forth between the windows. “The other week, when I was with Duncan—what did you want to talk about?”

“Do you really want to know?”

The sky outside was losing its brightness, and Tommy looked older, somehow, and more handsome than I'd expected.

“I asked you, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, shifting in his seat. “You did. I wanted to ask you about writing an article for the paper.”

“You wanted
me
to write an article? About what?”

“You know,” he said carefully, “about being a Diamond.”

“I thought
you
were the one who wanted to write an article about
me
.”

“I did.”

“What made you change your mind?”

Tommy took off his glasses and rubbed them with the bottom of his shirt. There were slight purple bags
underneath his eyes; I wondered how late he stayed up writing articles now that there was an issue of the paper coming out nearly every other day.

“When Jed dumped you, I was going to write about it.” He said this unapologetically. “It was, as I'm sure you know, a pretty big deal. I thought if I published an article about it, maybe got a few quotes from you and Jed, people would start actually
reading
the paper. It seemed pretty foolproof.”

“But you never wrote that article. I would have heard about it. Or read it.”

“You're right.”

“Why not?” I asked, but it took only a moment for me to realize the answer.

Clarissa.

“When Clarissa turned our trial around that day in Townsen's class, I realized there was a lot more to the story than just your breakup,” said Tommy. “People actually stopped talking to Darcy and Jed after Clarissa more or less told them to. When Jed was kicked out of student government, I was like,
‘Damn
. There's something explosive here.’”

“Which is why you started writing about the mock trial meetings?”

“It was history in the making! The most popular girls at school putting their peers on trial… I mean,
what?
And the fact that Townsen endorsed it, and the entire faculty actually seemed to approve of what was going on, well, it was incredible journalistic fodder.” He paused. “Sorry. I know it's a sensitive topic for you.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said.
“If my
entire life was a student-run newspaper, I would have exploited the kids I went to school with, too.” Tommy widened his eyes, and I quickly added, “That came out wrong. It's not your fault my friends are power-hungry bitches.”

Tommy laughed. It was a nice laugh, and it made us seem like we were friends instead of two random people inside a musty car.

“Anyway,” he said, “I wanted you to write an article about what it was like to
be
a Diamond. An insider's perspective. I figured you'd say no, but of all the girls, you'd be the best one for the job.”

“You wouldn't want to hear from von Dyke herself?”

“People can't relate to Clarissa,” Tommy said. “They can relate to
you.”

My cell phone picked that moment to start ringing; I dug into my bag and saw that it was my mother calling. I didn't answer.

“Do you have to go?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I'm sorry I can't help you. Pretty much everyone at school thinks I'm a huge loser. I don't think anyone would want to hear what I have to say about Clarissa von Dyke.”

“That's where you're wrong,” Tommy said, slipping his glasses on. “Now would be the
perfect
time to write something! A tell-all. An exposé about the Diamonds, what they're
really
like. It would help people see you in an entirely new light. You could explain your side of the story, and—”

“I can't,” I said before he went any further. “I'm sorry, Tommy, but no.”

Tommy rested his elbows on the steering wheel. “Why not?”

“Because,” I said, “I'm not exactly guilt-free. I did something awful to Clarissa and I'm not going to compound that by writing an article about how terrible she, Priya, and Lili are. I still believe that with time, they'll come to their senses.” I opened the car door. “You understand, right?”

“Sure,” Tommy said, deflated. “Of course.”

“Thanks for the ride.” I was about to leave when Tommy pressed his hand against the window. “Marni?”

“Yeah?”

“Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and removing a business card. He handed it to me, and the card stock felt heavy in my fingers. What senior in high school had a business card?