The Diamonds (20 page)

Inside, my father was still in his work clothes—a cream-colored shirt and a dark tie, hair brushed to the side.

“Dad?”

He looked up from his book. “Marni? Why aren't you in bed?”

Dad and I usually ran on different schedules; it was rare that we had solitary moments without Mom
yelling for one of us to clean the dishes or cook dinner or change the TV channel. I lifted a stack of papers and settled into the black leather couch I'd used as a hiding place for Milky Way wrappers when I was younger. “I couldn't sleep, I guess.”

“Me either,” he sighed, motioning to the clutter on his desk. “Too much work.”

“Need any help?”

Dad raised a thick eyebrow. “Don't you have school in the morning?” He glanced at his watch and whistled. “It's late.”

I shrugged.

Dad studied me with focused intensity. “Here,” he said, reaching into a ceramic mug on his desk (
BEST DAD EVER!
) and tossing me one of his favorite red pens. “You know what to do.”

We worked in silence for what must have been an hour, the only sounds in the room coming from the scratching of pens and the flipping of pages and the coupled heaviness of our breath. I had graded approximately fifteen papers (only two A's—I'm pretty tough) when Dad leaned back in his chair and said, “What ever happened with your foray into mock trial?”

It seemed childish to beat around the bush. “I'm not on the team anymore.”

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

Not really
, I thought. I knew he would be disappointed in me. Before I knew it, though, I found my-self dropping the pen to my side and recounting the
traumatic events of the past few weeks. (Not the part about almost losing my virginity, but everything else.)

After a few moments of waiting, he said, “You reinterpreted the Bill of Rights?”

I nodded.
Sort of
.

“And the people at your school, they voluntarily show up to this court you helped create?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” I said. “I hardly believe it myself.”

Dad cupped his hands behind his head. “I'm so proud of you,” he said in an almost-whisper.

It wasn't exactly the response I'd been expecting. “For what? I lied to Clarissa and hurt her feelings. Priya and Lili, too. I helped punish kids at school who didn't do anything wrong. I probably deserve all of this.”

“You've made a few mistakes,” Dad agreed, “but that's life, Marni. And the important thing is that you actually
did
something.”

I didn't understand.

“So many people wander through their days,” he said, “doing what is expected of them and nothing more. Sometimes much less. But you have so much going for you. You used your knowledge to create something that made a difference at your school. Maybe it didn't work out like you expected, or for the right reasons, but if you can do it once, you can do it again.”

Dad stood up and crossed over to his bookcase. He grabbed something as thick as a dictionary and placed it in my lap. I sighed. It was
The Constitution for Dummies
,
the book that had helped me create the Diamond Rules, which had propelled my very own downfall.

“Use it,” Dad said, and I looked at him curiously.

“For?”

Dad locked his jaw, and his ever-ruddy cheeks tightened. “Why was the Constitution created in the first place?”

I never liked when Dad asked me questions he already knew the answers to. “To protect the rights of the people,” I said.

“The important part of what you said is ‘protect.’ After freeing themselves from the reign of the British, our founding fathers created the Constitution to
protect
the rights of the people, not
exploit
them.”

“No offense, Dad, but what's your point?”

“My point,” he said, “is that every answer you will need is in this book. You must remind your friends that this country is a
democracy
. It sounds to me like they are running your school amuck mostly because no one is there to stop them.”

“They're running the school because they're
popular
, and I was popular, too, until I screwed it all up.”

“Then fix it,” Dad said. He stepped closer and crouched on the floor, staring at me eye to eye. His breath smelled like butterscotch candies. “Take back the control.”

“How?” I asked, my fingers folding into fists.

“By doing what every important man and woman in our country has done before you,” Dad said. “By fighting.”

The next day, I arrived at school early. I walked through the halls until I reached the technology room, where the
Bennington Press
staff met before and after school.

Tommy was there, alone.

I approached him and dropped
The Constitution for Dummies
onto the table. It landed with a smack. Tommy glanced up from the layout he was working on.

“Remember that article you wanted me to write?”

The circles underneath his eyes seemed to pulse. “What about it?”

“I'll do it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. If
you
do something for
me.”

By that point, Tommy's mouth was opened slightly, as if he were about to take a bite from a thick sandwich only to realize it had suddenly vanished from his plate. I had his full attention.

“Here,” I said, flipping open the book—which I'd stayed up all night rereading—and pointing to the pages I'd dog-eared and decorated with Post-its. “Read this.”

Tommy's reactions were stock-exchange swift: confusion, skepticism, fear, and, ultimately, what I interpreted as utter rapture. It could also have been constipation, though. Tough call.

When I couldn't wait any longer, I said, “So? What do you think?”

Tommy stared at me but said nothing. He slipped
the hardcover monster into his backpack and jumped to attention.

“I'll have to cancel today's newspaper meeting,” he said.

Then he smiled.

Everyone has the right to refuse housing a foreign exchange student unless the aforementioned foreign exchange student is hot.

—
The Diamond Rules

While the idea of forming a rebel group of vigilante misfits to battle the girls I used to call my best friends and overthrow the stronghold they had on the Bennington student body had never occurred to me before my father/daughter chat, once the (proverbial) seed had been planted, I felt it grow and blossom into the sort of idea that inspires millions. Or if not millions, hopefully one or two others.

This was an endeavor I had to be smart about. Secretive. Discreet. Which, apparently, was
not
my specialty.

Enter Tommy.

My loserdom was still new, like a fresh cut. Tommy, however, was secure in his lameness. Dorks trusted him. Ugly girls adored him. The Diamonds had yet to prosecute him. For this plan to work—and yes, I
will
tell
you what the plan was, give me a minute—I needed a buffer to convince others to join up with our cause.

Mostly, this was because the kids at Bennington hated me. The popular ones, of course—my former friends who had discarded me like unwanted carbohydrates—despised me. The other group of people (including JeDarcy, the Audio-Visual Squad, the Chess Team, the French Club, the Spanish Club, the Korean Club, the wannabe mafiosos, band kids—except Anderson—the entire orchestra, and the Drama Club) equally hated me. I was a Diamond. Well, an ex-Diamond, but still: for the past three years, I'd been absolutely horrible to them.

Most recently, I'd been on the opposite side of the judges’ bench; I'd worn my pretty robe, glossed my lips, and agreed with Clarissa & Co., handing out judgments like Halloween candy and making life for Bennington's lower class worse than they ever imagined it could be.

People were happy to see me disgraced. And how could I blame them? I deserved it. But I wanted to change. To reverse the many wrongs I had helped perpetuate. All I could do was try and hope that Tommy had enough clout as an outcast to convince our potential recruits that I wasn't the person they believed me to be.

The only problem was, what if they were right?

More people at Bennington than I could count had suffered at the hands of the Diamonds. Part of me
wanted to invite them all to join our crusade, but that was impossible. As Tommy reminded me, we needed to keep this quiet. We had to be selective.

We decided to invite four individuals, plucked from the four corners of the social stratosphere, to meet with us and hopefully join our cause. (There weren't actually four corners. Just go with it.)

NAME: Boyd Longmeadow
ROLE: President of the Bennington Drama Club

I think Boyd's downfall was pretty much that he wanted to
be
Clarissa von Dyke, while Clarissa wanted him to die a slow death (by jazz hands). Boyd was the sort of boy who everyone knew liked other boys but, since we attended the kind of private school where a clique of girls could call themselves the Diamonds and lay down social law, had not come out of the closet.

We chose Boyd because, well, he was dramatic, and because he had a really high-pitched scream that sounded like a whistle. And also because he could cry
on command, which is an important weapon in preparing for a revolution.

Boyd had suffered a huge blow when the Diamond Court was first getting started. He'd asked Clarissa if he could be an honorary Diamond; she'd said no, of course, and told everyone that Boyd wore thong underwear to school. (This may have, in fact, been true.) Either way, it didn't make life easy for him.

NAME: Mike Samuels, aka “Turbo”
ROLE: Semiprofessional Skateboarder

Mike was someone who'd pretty much slipped under the radar during my time at Bennington. He had the appeal of a surfer, complete with bleached-blond hair, manufactured tan, and a vocabulary consisting of words like “dude,” “radical,” and “kewl.” (I'm not sure how I knew that it was spelled “kewl” and not “cool.” But I did.)