Where It Began (29 page)

“Could we please never talk about this again?” I say. “I just want to live through this, so could you just be like my friends and shut up? I feel bad enough, okay?”

Unfortunately, after this, nothing can prevail on Lisa and Anita to stop glowering at Billy. You would think they were planning to track him down, bare their teeth, and bite him. Which is kind of horrible because it makes Billy think I’m talking to them about him, which I’m
really
not.

gabs123:
really, it’s nothing. they’re just pissed off we aren’t the 2nd coming of the andies.

pologuy:
we were never the 2nd coming of the andies

gabs123:
thanks a lot nash. bite me.

pologuy:
that’s not how i meant it. and here i thought u were biting into 2½ pounds of belgian chocolate—to think i bought that crap about expressing my undying love with candy! was i supposed to tie it with a bow or something?

His undying
WHAT?

And I go,
Breathe, Gabriella. It’s a joke. LOL. Hahaha. Get a grip.
But he said it. You would think, if he said it, it had to be on
his mind, on the tip of his brain, to just slip out like that. And I go,
Gabriella, if you spill, if you give even the slightest hint you’re taking this as even slightly meaningful or slightly slightly serious, you are a literal moo cow. An intellectually challenged cow that can’t figure out how to chew grass.

Undying love undying love undying love . . .

And I go,
Gabriella: Get. A. Grip.

gabs123:
r u kidding me? nash it was perfect. not that i would mind if u showed up tied with a bow. or even completely unwrapped.

pologuy:
i wish. just b glad i’m up the street. if it wouldn’t screw up my transcript for the Big P i’d be in a bunk bed with my cousin henry going to public school in santa barbara right now and i’d never get to c u

gabs123:
well that would suck. no me and public school. boo hoo hoo nash.

pologuy:
not funny. can’t u get those bitches to back off? they’re scaring me

gabs123:
not bitches. bff’s. i just keep telling them i don’t want to talk about it. they get it.

pologuy:
good. maybe u should put them on hiatus. u don’t need to listen to their estrogen crap

I can tell how pissy he’s getting, but I totally don’t care.

I am the one with the Undying Love candy, and every time his screen name shows up on my screen, which is happening
with reassuring regularity, it’s like an electronic aphrodisiac demonstrating for all eternity why porn sites gross more than mediumsized countries. And my Billy sightings at school make my heart pound like Cheesy Railroad Girl, and I don’t mean in a metaphorical, heart-nailed-by-Cupid’s-dinky-arrow kind of way. It is actual weird tachycardia (SAT word) and I feel like some ditz who is going to keel over with a mere glance at Perfect Hot Boy.

It isn’t clear if I’m going to live through the rest of chemistry with him in the same room ignoring me. That’s how bad it is.

That and the less-than-pleasant daydreams. For example:

Agnes won’t let him out of the house after six p.m. so I know he isn’t taking Aliza Benitez out for Baby Blues ribs and sweet potato pie on Lincoln Boulevard, listening to Johnny Cash and cuddling up to her, and it’s even hard to imagine Aliza as a Johnny Cash–and-ribs kind of a girl. But then it starts bothering me that the place he isn’t taking her but would if he could is probably some elegant, expensive place on Melrose or a cute little organic forty-dollar snack at Urth Caffé on Beverly, and not the rib joint where he takes me down in Venice. Even though I somewhat dread going there because did you ever try to look reasonably appealing while gnawing on a slab of ribs with your fingers and chin coated with barbeque sauce?

I am in a complete paranoid snit.

But the fact that he can’t leave his house after dark to go out, slumming
or
elegant, doesn’t make up for how godawful it is to see him gazing down Aliza’s skanky little tank top under her unbuttoned uniform blouse in the Class of 1920 Garden every day, and
how totally cat-full-of-cream-and-mice-stew smug she looks.

She is one happy Slutmuffin and I, for all anybody knows, am history.

Within a couple of days, the other Muffins have stopped scurrying off in the other direction whenever I walk by and are actually saying hi to me. This is not a good thing. You can tell that it is only because they feel sorry for me, as opposed to when I was Billy’s formerly invisible girlfriend, when they barely even nodded in my direction.

And you have to wonder if being a pathetic delinquent girl with no visible boyfriend is enough to make them start feeling sorry for a person, or if they have actually looked up from their makeup mirrors long enough to see the even more pathetic fact of my life as spectator to Aliza Benitez’s bliss.

AFTER SPENDING THE REST OF THE WEEK SKULKING
around Winston School in my new role as a human magnet for unwanted self-revelations, I get a note from Mr. Piersol at the end of Honors Spanish, and it occurs to me that probably he wants to tell me how he spent
his
teenage years addicted to pornography and smoking crack. Actually, it’s kind of amazing to think he would have had enough gumption to drive to a crack house or to do whatever it takes to acquire all the porn you would need to be successfully addicted in the first place, given that he is famous for basically doing nothing but spouting clichés, suspending kids for no apparent reason, and sucking up to parents with checkbooks.

But no, that isn’t it. He wants me to resign from Student Council. Not that anybody but the decorating committee will notice I’m gone.

Still, I can’t believe it. There I sit in his enormous office in his enormous club chair watching the sun shine through the enormous stained glass window and reflect its colors on the Persian rug. And it sounds as if the tide is coming in inside my ears.

I so didn’t see this coming.

The thing is, I am actually sort of good at what I do for Student Council, even though I don’t need the Leadership in Party Decoration ribbon for my application to (fog descends, parents moan) Some Random College. Not only that: At the rate I’m going, Student Council is the only place at Winston I’ll ever get to sit at the same table as Billy and talk to him, assuming I stop feeling so insane every time I see him and I actually open my mouth and speak coherently, even if it is only about the budget for the homecoming dance and to okay the Junior Spring Fling posters.

At the rate I’m going, if I get kicked off Student Council, our only connection will be at one a.m. on a computer monitor, and he’ll forget what my voice even sounds like unless I start raising my hand in chemistry.

“Gabby,” Mr. Piersol says, playing what looks to be several rounds of here-is-the-church, here-is-the-steeple with his folded hands, “you have to understand. Eleventh grade rep is a leadership position.” Actually, it’s about fourteen leadership positions, since Winston has the biggest student council possible with representatives for everything the college counselors could think of so everyone can stick some leadership position on their application to (Hands of God applauding through the clouds) Harvard, but this seems like a bad time to point that out.
“Blah-blah set an example. Blah-blah uphold reputation. Blahblabitty-blah.”

The tide in my ears gets so loud I’m afraid that I’m going to pass out, and it becomes increasingly difficult to make out exactly what he’s saying except that it’s pretty obvious I’m the bad apple that’s going to spoil the bunch, the jailbird that doesn’t get the worm, the poor example who is therefore here today and gone from Council tomorrow.

It’s just so unfair that
I’m
the one getting beat up with his mindless clichés. Billy is the one whose middle initials are DUI and there is no way Mr. Piersol doesn’t know that. I am sitting there thinking how Billy is lucky the Mothers Against Drunk Driving haven’t made him their international poster boy, and nobody is asking
him
to resign from Student Anything.

I
would never drive drunk.

I would never even let him drive me drunk.

And then I think,
Wait a minute. That can’t be right, can it, because I did, didn’t I? Somehow I managed to get plowed and wrap a car around a tree.

But it is still hard to see how any of this makes me unfit to plan how to decorate prom given that I’m the only person on the committee who can see that doing the whole room in iridescent pink and black and silver that looks a lot like tinfoil would be both tacky and disgusting, not to mention I’m completely responsible for the Youth League shelter looking cheery for Christmas.

Which makes this totally unfair.

I look straight at Mr. Piersol, who seems somewhat uncomfortable, his mouth in this tight little straight line, and I just don’t want him to be able to do this to me. And I say, “I don’t think this is right.”

And then I almost do pass out. Because: I don’t generally spend my time confronting people. But all I can think is:
Have to stay on Student Council. Billy is on Student Council. Have to see Billy on Student Council
.

“Mr. Piersol,” I lie really well after all this endless practice with helpful helping professionals who are supposed to keep me out of jail. “I have a Problem.”

He doesn’t seem quite as happy to hear this as all the helpful helping drones I am supposed to say it to, but I’m completely shameless.

“I have a Problem and I’m Dealing With It. But the thing is, I’m not the only student here who has a problem, even this particular one. And I think . . .”
Oh God, what do I think? Think think think.
“I think, actually, that this makes me, um, a better leader than I was before when I, uh, wasn’t dealing with it.”

He is leaning forward in his chair, from the look of it trying to figure out what the hell I’m talking about.

“And frankly, Mr. Piersol,” I say very quickly before I pass out or he interrupts me or I completely lose my nerve, “I don’t even think I was a true leader before. Like I am now, I mean.”

Mr. Piersol just stares at me in absolute silence. It is hard to imagine what cliché he is going to come up with to bash me back into my place as if I were a presumptuous rodent sticking
her nose where it doesn’t belong in a game of Whack-A-Mole. But then he starts to crack, just a little, and then he’s absolutely leering at me like a seriously stoned clown. There it is. The total smile. Mr. Piersol is just sitting there loving every inch of my lying fictional self.

Not that I have turned into a total moron who thinks the man actually likes me, but now he doesn’t have to do anything to me—in fact, he doesn’t have to do anything at all (an added bonus)—and he can still be Mr. Responsible Headmaster.

I feel like a complete lying genius-child.

Now Mr. Piersol can jump on the bandwagon with my entourage of high-priced rehabilitation experts and embrace my lying fictional self and it won’t disrupt his day.

There he sits, embellishing my fictional sad story, and there I am, gazing into my lap and waiting for it to be over. New respect blah-blah . . . thoughtful self-reflection blah-blah . . . newfound maturity blabitty-blah.

Not only am I still on Student Council, but I can see a college recommendation forming before my very eyes, even though you can tell that, deep down, he really hates me and isn’t all that happy with himself for getting carried away with the happy idea of just staying inert and not sticking with the original program and tossing me off Council.

It occurs to me that maybe this whole thing really is a Personal Growth Opportunity, just like everyone says, and I have developed the useful new skill of telling people whatever they want to hear, pretending to be whatever they want me to be,
while appearing to tell the truth, aka lying, and getting them to do what I want whether they like it or not.

Then it occurs to me that this is what I had been trying to do with Billy pretty much the whole time.

Then I have to go to art, which is fine, because this isn’t exactly what I want to be thinking about.

Ever.

BRYNN MCELROY IS A SLUTMUFFIN PEON. THAT’S JUST
the way it is, and even her dad calling her “my gorgeous daughter, Brynn” when he thanks her from onstage at the Golden Globes can’t change it. She’s welcome in the Class of 1920 Garden but not someone whose offer of a lift home confers the possibility of popularity. But she is on Council with her football-playing boyfriend, Jack Griffith, and she is the lowest status girl working on the Fling committee. Except for me. So it makes sense that she’s the one who gets stuck calling me to see if they can get me off it after Charlotte Ward tried and failed.