“Yo,” Arthur said. “This is TifAni. She went to Catholic school. Be nice to her, she’s had it bad enough.”
“Hi, TifAni!” the Shark said, brightly. She dragged a plastic spoon around the curves of an empty pudding cup, trying to scoop up any last remnants of chocolate goo.
“Hi.”
Arthur pointed at the Shark. “Beth.” Then the pale girl. “Sarah.” Then her boyfriend. “Teddy.”
An a cappella of hellos. I held up my hand and said hi again.
“Come on.” Arthur tugged my sleeve. I hooked the strap of my book bag over the edge of a chair and approached the line forming at the deli. When it was Arthur’s turn, he ordered a whopper of a sandwich, with roast beef and turkey, three different kinds of cheese, no tomatoes, just lettuce, and enough mayo that his lunch made a squishy sound every time he bit into it. I asked for cheese, mustard, and tomato on a spinach wrap (oh, the days when we thought a wrap had fewer calories than bread). Arthur tossed two bags of chips onto his tray, but I noticed that most of the girls weren’t using, so I didn’t either. I carried my wrap and my diet Snapple to the register and waited in line to pay.
“I like your pants.” The compliment turned me around. A girl who was at once extremely bizarre looking and attractive nodded at my orange cargo pants, which I already couldn’t wait to never wear again. She had strawberry blond hair that was so uniform in color it couldn’t be natural, large brown eyes somehow devoid of eyelashes, and skin the color of a girl who had a pool in her backyard and no summer job. In her hot pink button-down and schoolgirl-style plaid skirt that most certainly broke the fingertips rule, she was dressed in a way that defied the androgynous prep style that seemed to be so dominant among Bradley girls, but she carried herself with the air of someone who ran the show.
“Thanks.” I beamed.
“Are you new?” she asked. Her voice was husky, like the voiceovers in those commercials urging you to call 1-900-GIRLS now.
Off my nod she said, “I’m Hilary.”
“I’m TifAni.”
“Yo, Hilary!” The booming voice came from the center of the most esteemed table in the cafeteria, crowded by boys with hair on their legs—real hair, coarse and dark like my father’s—and obedient girls to laugh when they accused each other of being any one of the following: pussy, ’tard, cocksucker.
“Yo, Dean!” Hilary met his call.
“Grab me some Swedish fish,” he demanded. Without a tray, Hilary’s hands were full. She tucked her Diet Coke underneath her chin and cradled a bag of pretzels in the crook of her elbow.
“I got it!” I was up at the register and I grabbed the sack of candy before she did, paying for it along with my wrap and drink over her protests.
“I won’t forget that,” she said, hooking her pinkie around the fish, somehow able to carry all of her purchases with just her hands now.
I caught up with Arthur, lingering a few feet away from the cash register. The encounter, Hilary’s curiosity about me, had left my face flushed. Sometimes, a momentary truce in girlhood is much more precious than a guy you really like asking you out, sticking around even after he got the milk for free.
“I see you’ve met one half of the HOs.”
I looked back at Hilary tossing the bag of Swedish fish onto Dean’s lunch tray. Guys could use lunch trays. “Is she slutty?”
“It’s an acronym for Hilary and her best friend, Olivia. That one”—he nodded to a girl with curly brown hair, laughing appreciatively as the Hairy Legs constructed a fortress out of empty French fry boats—“came up with it for their names. I don’t think they even know what an acronym is.” Arthur sighed, pleased by their ignorance. “Which just makes the whole thing even more brilliant.”
I may not have realized that Holden Caulfield was having a mental breakdown at first, but so help me God I knew what an acronym was.
“Are they really HOs?” I’d never heard of a girl willingly co-opting a word like that before. I’d been called a slut once, the natural jump everyone makes when you have adult breasts by the time you’re twelve, and I wept in Mom’s lap for an hour.
“They wish they were.” The skin crinkled on the bridge of Arthur’s slick nose. “But they wouldn’t know what to do with a dick if it punched them in the face.”
After lunch I had Chemistry, one of my least favorite subjects but exciting nonetheless because the HOs were both in my class. That excitement quickly faded when the teacher told us to pair up for an experiment that would prove that Chemistry can be cool. I looked desperately to my right, but my neighbor was already twisted in his seat, signaling to someone he wanted to be his partner. It was the same situation on the left. Happy twosomes meandered to the back of the room, and this migration revealed a fellow straggler, a boy with light brown hair and eyes that were visibly blue even from across the room. He gave me a nod and raised his eyebrows, a silent request to be his partner even though that was the only option. I nodded back and we made our way to the stations behind the rows of desks.
“Oh good,” Mrs. Chambers said when she noticed the two of us standing next to each other, still a little unsure, “Liam and TifAni, take that last table by the window.”
“Like we had any other choice,” Liam muttered softly, so Mrs. Chambers wouldn’t hear. “Thanks for looking out for the new people.”
It took me a second to realize that he was also lumping himself into the “new people” category. I glanced at him. “You’re new here?”
He shrugged, as though he assumed it was obvious.
“I am too!” I whispered excitedly. I couldn’t believe my luck I’d ended up with him. New people are contractually obligated to look out for each other.
“I know.” He lifted one side of his mouth into a half smile and the afternoon light caught a dimple in his cheek. Frozen like that, he could have been a poster you tear out of Tiger Beat. “You’re too pretty to be the last one picked.”
I squeezed my thighs together, trying to smother the heat.
Mrs. Chambers started in on a lecture about safety that didn’t interest anyone until she mentioned that if we weren’t careful, we’d walk out of here with our hair and eyebrows singed right off. I looked over my shoulder at her, realizing when I did that Hilary was watching me with her large, lashless eyes, as though she had already suffered the fate that so concerned Mrs. Chambers. I had a split second to make a decision—look away and pretend I hadn’t caught her, or smile and have some kind of nonverbal exchange that could further endear me to her. The instinct that had garnered my fleeting popularity at Mt. St. Theresa’s kicked in and I chose the latter.
To my delight, Hilary smiled back and nudged Olivia, whispering something to her as she leaned in close. Olivia smiled too and signaled to me. “He’s hot,” Olivia mouthed, stretching her lips widely around the word “hot” and giving the slightest of nods to Liam. I quickly glanced at him to make sure he wasn’t looking and mouthed back, “I know.”
My God, was I pleased with myself by the time the bell rang at 3:23 P.M. Only my first day, and I’d established a flirtation with the hot new guy, laid claim to him in a way that only our mutual newness could allow, and I’d bonded with the HOs. I felt like sending a flowery Hallmark card to that beast Sister John: “Dear Sister John, I’m doing so well at my new school and I found someone who I would like to take my virginity. I only have you to thank!”
CHAPTER 3
Twenty-five, twenty-six—lift your chins!—twenty-eight—two more, make them your best!—twenty-nine, thirty.” I rocked back and rested my butt on my heels, stretching my arms out in front of me in a bid to elongate them after “running toward the burn,” the prodigal promise that I paid $325 a month to hear. I probably would have that longer, leaner body, too, if only I wasn’t so desperate to get food into my mouth by the time I get home that sometimes I don’t even take off my coat before I start pillaging the kitchen.