“You don’t want to be his dream come true?” I asked.
Bitsy rolled her eyes. She was gorgeous even when she was fed up, and in her low-cut red dress, she was every guy’s dream come true. “It was a kiss. A simple, ordinary kiss. I swear, I thought he was going to break out in song.”
“Then why’d you come on to him?” Keisha said. Tonight her dress was teal. It shimmered as she took a sip of her Diet Coke. “You knew what would happen.”
“Bloody hell,” Bitsy said. “Pammy can have him. They can slobber all over each other and leave me out of it.” She pulled a compact from her tiny red clutch and checked her makeup. She uncapped a lipstick and applied a fresh coat. “He asked me to go to the Fall Fling with him, can you believe it?” She dropped the lipstick back in her bag. “I told him sorry, but we girls are going together.”
“We are?” Mary Bryan said.
“Fine with me,” Keisha said. “L’Kardos has an away meet that weekend, anyway.”
Mary Bryan shrugged. She was dressed as a flapper, her hair swooped back in adorable pin-curl waves. “I guess it’s okay with me, too.”
They looked at me expectantly.
“Jane?” Bitsy inquired.
I smoothed my new skirt, which I’d bought with Mom’s credit card. “The thing is, I kind of already have a date. With Phil Fleischman?”
“Phil Fleischman?” Mary Bryan said.
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong with Phil?”
Bitsy smothered a laugh. “Oh, sweets. Phil may be a nice lad, but come on. He’s puny.”
My cheeks burned. “Puny” was a terrible word.
“Come with us,” Mary Bryan said. “Phil will understand.”
Bitsy looped her arm through mine. “Girl power and all that. Tell him it’s a unity thing.”
Keisha watched my face. “You don’t have to, Jane.”
“Yes, you do,” Bitsy said. “Otherwise there’d just be the three of us, and how sad would that be?”
I bit my lip. I imagined being at the Fall Fling with Phil, watching as Keisha, Bitsy, and Mary Bryan frolicked about without me. Then I imagined it the other way around, with Phil watching from the sidelines. Only he probably wouldn’t come on his own. It’s not as if he really liked school functions, anyway.
“I guess I could do something with Phil another night,” I said. I was just trying out the idea, but Bitsy squeezed my arm approvingly.
“That’s our girl,” she said. She sat down on a wicker bench and patted the cushions to show that we should join her. “And now for more pressing concerns. What in heaven’s name shall we wear?”
On our way back through the house, we were waylaid by Elizabeth Greene and several of the other cheerleaders. They were perched on one of the living room sofas, cackling at something on somebody’s laptop.
“Check it out,” Elizabeth said, grabbing Bitsy’s arm. She pulled Bitsy over and pointed midway down the screen. “Look what we put for ‘favorite movie.’”
“Bad Girls’ Dormitory,” Bitsy read. Her lips curved into a smile. “Is that the one with Alyssa Milano?”
“And for favorite Web rings, we put ‘Naughty Professors,’ ‘Prince Edward’s Lesbigay Social Club,’ and ‘Asian Sluts.’”
“Brilliant. Only she’s not Asian,” Bitsy pointed out.
“What, she’s not allowed to have a fetish?” Elizabeth said.
“Who’s not allowed to have a fetish?” Mary Bryan asked. She squeezed past me to get closer to the computer.
Until now, I’d only been half paying attention. Keisha had spotted L’Kardos slipping a bill into the bra of one of the showgirls, and she’d marched over to slap his hand. Seeing him had made me think of Nate, and I’d been scanning the dimly lit room for his lean frame.
But then Elizabeth said, “Camilla Jones,” and the back of my neck prickled. At least, I thought she said “Camilla Jones.” Did she say “Camilla Jones”?
I shook my head to clear it. “I’m sorry. Who’d you say you’re talking about?”
“For favorite music, how about this,” Elizabeth said. “Up with People, Backstreet Boys, and the Sex Pistols.”
“What about that guy who plays the pan flute?” Mary Bryan suggested.
Elizabeth giggled. She typed in, “And that guy who plays the pan flute.”
“I’m totally lost,” I said.
“It’s a ‘Friendies’ profile,” Elizabeth said proudly. She scrolled to the top, where sure enough, there was Camilla’s name, along with her measurements, her favorite food, and her favorite color. For that one, Elizabeth had entered, “The rainbow.”
“You know, a hook-up club,” Elizabeth explained. “We gave out her home phone, too. And her street address. Want to see the photo we submitted?”
She clicked on another link, and up came the picture. Camilla’s hair was pulled back into a severe bun, and her lips were pursed. Offering contrast to Camilla’s scowl was a flock of doting bluebirds, which Elizabeth had pasted in so that they appeared to be sitting on Camilla’s shoulders.
I battled with my natural impulse, which was to laugh. Only in reality it wasn’t my natural impulse, and I knew it. My breathing grew shallow.
“I took it on my camera-phone yesterday during lunch,” Jerri Skyler volunteered. “First I made Clark throw a cherry tomato at her.”
“But why?” I said.
“To make her look up,” Jerri said.
“No, I mean why are you doing this in the first place? What if some weirdo actually tracks her down?”
Elizabeth winked. “Then maybe she’ll make a friend.”
“A friendie,” Jerri corrected.
They all cracked up. I didn’t want to be there, so I left. Bitsy followed me into the hall.
“Chill,” she said. “It was my idea. I thought it would be good for a laugh.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest. I was a bad person, but at least I tried to rein myself in. And I knew I was indebted to Bitsy, but why did she always have to make things harder?
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You’re, like, the most adored girl in the school. You’ve got everything you want. Why do you have to make everyone be mean to her?”
Bitsy wagged her finger. “You’ve got to admit, Camilla is very antisocial. It’s not healthy.”
It pissed me off that she was being so flippant. The whole situation pissed me off, my own reaction included. “And this is your way of bringing her out of her shell? Signing her up for an online stalker service?”
“She’s a stuck-up cunt. If she didn’t think she was so much better than us, none of this would be happening.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I said. My anger flared higher. It was her fault I felt so ragged inside. So I said, “Why do you even care what Camilla does? Seriously, does it bug you that much that she knows about your dad?”
Her face went slack. Then her eyes flashed poison and she said, “What did you say?”
I realized I’d screwed up, but it was too late to recant. “Nothing! Just that …” I threw up my hands. “Dads leave. That’s what they do.”
She lifted her chin. “And of course you know all about it, being the resident expert. How long’s yours been gone, two years now?”
“Three,” I threw back. “But you don’t see me ruining people’s lives just for the fun of it.”
“Oh, so you did your friend Alicia a favor, then, did you?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t—”
“Face it, Jane. You’re no better than I am.”
“Maybe not. But at least I want to be.”
She stepped closer. For a second I thought she was going to—what? Slap me? Then a movement at the end of the hall drew her attention. It was Mary Bryan, wandering out of the living room.
“There you guys are,” she said. She glanced from me to Bitsy. “What? What’s going on?”
“Jane’s been prattling on about how virtuous she is because she feels sorry for poor Camilla,” Bitsy
said.
Mary Bryan wrinkled her forehead. “Camilla? Why?” Then, as if it honestly that second occurred to her, “Oh. Because of the ‘Friendies’ thing?”
“And you need to keep your blabbing mouth shut,” Bitsy added, making Mary Bryan flinch. Bitsy spun on her heel and strode down the hall. Halfway to the front door, she turned around.
“By the way, it was her bobby pin,” she said, way too casually. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? Look deep into your saintly heart and tell me you didn’t know.”
Bitsy left, leaving me and Mary Bryan alone in the hall. After a moment, Mary Bryan looked at me.
“Thanks a fucking lot,” she said. “There goes our ride.”
After Stuart’s party, things weren’t the same between me and the others. Still, I kept my word and canceled my date with Phil so that we could go to the Fall Fling as a holly jolly foursome. Because what was I going to do, walk away from the Bitches in protest of Bitsy’s fucked-up-ness? Let them reap all the glory while I glowered from the sidelines? They were stuck with me, and I was stuck with them. I wasn’t about to give up what I’d worked so hard to earn.
“Tell me you’re kidding,” Phil had said when I called him. “Please tell me you’re not ditching me to be with them.”
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s just, you know, a girl thing. A ladies’ night out.”
“In other words, you’re ditching me to be with them.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Janie, come on,” he said in a wheedling voice that made him seem spineless. “This is me.”
“Yeah, and you hate school functions. That’s what you’ve always said, that you can’t even stand going to them and—”
“Fine,” he said. “Forget it.” The wheedling was gone, replaced by a stiffness that cut right through me. “But I never would have done this to you, Jane. And you know it.”
My heart felt bruised. “Okay,” I whispered.
He hung up.
Keisha, Mary Bryan, and Bitsy all tried to shake some sense into me. They each did it separately, as if they didn’t want the others to know. It would have been funny under different circumstances. Instead it was just pathetic.
Mary Bryan approached me on Monday afternoon. She tracked me down in the farthest back library carrel, where I’d retreated after our lunchtime schmooze-fest with the girls’ soccer team.
“Oh, Ramona the Brave!” she exclaimed, nudging down the spine of my paperback so she could see the title. “I loved that book when I was little!”
I regarded her from under my bangs. I’d done my bit in the cafeteria, playing to our audience as was expected. But one-on-one, I’d resolved to play it cool. It was hard, though, because just being near her made those waves of liking swell back up again.
“That’s the one where those boys call Beezus ‘Jesus Beezus,’ right?” Mary Bryan said. “And Ramona gets all tough and tells them off?” She put her fists on her hips and scowled a six-year-old’s scowl. “‘Do not take the Lord’s name in vain!’”
“What do you want, Mary Bryan?”
She dropped the cutesy act. She pulled up a chair, its front leg knocking against the edge of the carrel. “Why are you mad at me? That ‘Friendies’ thing was Bitsy’s deal, not mine.”
“You thought it was hilarious.”
“So? It’s not hurting anybody.”
“It isn’t?”
She fiddled with her bracelet. It was silver, a chain of tiny flowers. She let it go and changed tactics. “You know, it kind of pissed me off what you said about Bitsy’s dad after swearing you wouldn’t. I called Bitsy the next day. She told me everything that happened.”
My stomach tightened despite myself. “I didn’t mean to. It just came out.”
“Well. Just so you know.”
The library was empty except for the two of us and Ms. Cratchett, who was trying to get one of the feral cats off her desk. The cat lay draped over the top of the computer, and Ms. Cratchett’s “scats” were having no effect. If she were a good librarian, she’d forget the cat and scold us instead.
“Look,” Mary Bryan said. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We all go through it, the whole ‘Is it right?’ thing. But that’s why we picked you, Jane. You’re, like, a force for the good.”
“Mary Bryan, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She looked annoyed, as if she wanted to call me on it. But I was telling the truth. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Keisha’s careful about who she picks,” she said. “And so am I.”
“To steal from, you mean?”
Mary Bryan’s eyes flew to Ms. Cratchett, who was now nudging the cat’s haunches in a series of tentative jabs. The cat regarded her with lids at half mast.
“Shhh,” Mary Bryan said.
“She’s not paying attention,” I said. I waved my hands, went “la, la, la” in a medium-loud voice. “See?”
Ms. Cratchett looked up. Her expression was frazzled and a little wild. “Girls. Keep it down.”
I blushed. The cat swished its tail.
In a whisper, Mary Bryan said, “The three of us can band together, you and me and Keisha. We’ll tell Bitsy that she has to rotate around. And that she has to pick people who are already popular, like we do, so that it doesn’t matter so much. It’s only fair.”
My stomach went rock hard, because I suddenly knew where she was heading. And I didn’t want to hear it.
“I know,” Mary Bryan said, reading my face. “It’s terrible. Because with Camilla, it’s like she doesn’t even have any popularity left to be taken. At this point it’s probably more like anti-popularity. Going deep into the negatives, or something like that.” She squeezed my knee. “That’s why it’s so important that you’re on our side.”
Something foul rose in my throat. I’d seen what taking Alicia’s lip balm had done to Alicia—and that was just one time, with Alicia being allowed to bounce back after the fact. At least, hypothetically, although I’d yet to see much improvement. But Camilla was never allowed to bounce back, because Bitsy stole from her every single week. That’s what Mary Bryan was talking about. Sometimes she even enlisted assistants.
“Jane, are you okay?” Mary Bryan asked.
“I need to go. I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh. Oh! Okay, sure.” She slid back her chair. “So … you’re not going to bail on us?”
I stumbled past her, noting as if from far away her look of concern.
“Jane?”
I pushed down my nausea as best I could and told the truth. “God, Mary Bryan. It hadn’t even crossed my mind.”
Keisha’s appeal came as an e-mail:
Jane,
I know you’re going through a hard time right now. You’re questioning all sorts of stuff, and maybe you’re even wondering what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s okay. It just means you’re a good person.
But there’s something you should know. The other girls need us—and I’m not talking about Bitsy and Mary Bryan. I’m talking about everyone else. Even your friend Alicia. Even Camilla.
We’re their royalty. We make their lives special.
I know it’s hard sometimes, but that’s why we have each other.
Keisha
I rested my forehead on the base of my palm and closed my eyes.
The whole thing made me so tired.
I lifted my head and typed in, “Got your message. Thanks.” I hit the send button, then deleted her name from my inbox.
Out of all three, Bitsy was the most straightforward. She must have sweet-talked one of the administrative assistants into giving her my combination, because on Tuesday I found a black VHS tape in my locker. It was unlabeled, but I knew what it was.
I didn’t plan on watching it. I was going to throw it away unviewed. But when I got home, I pulled it from my backpack and turned
it over in my hands. It looked harmless, like the cassette on top of our television labeled “Jane’s Tacky TV Tape,” on which I recorded episodes of The Gilmore Girls and Survivor: Senior High.
I knew the tape from Bitsy wasn’t harmless. But some fatalistic part of me made me walk across the room and pop it into the VCR. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think, I reasoned.
There was Kyle’s living room, just as I remembered it. There was Sukie Karing, laughing with Pammy Varlotta. And there was me, horrible in that peasant blouse that definitely was too see-through, despite Mary Bryan’s assurances. Heat pricked my scalp as I watched myself edge up to group after group of glossy partiers, only to slink away like a scolded puppy.
“Yo, dude,” Stuart said at one point, catching me on film after swinging away from a shot of Bitsy and Brad. “Check out Freaky Freshman. Where you going now, Freaky Freshman?”
Freaky Freshman—that was me—was sneaking into Kyle’s kitchen. Glancing around, then darting past the counter. Ducking behind the island. Gone.
“Holy shit, she’s hiding!” Stuart crowed. “I gotta tell Bitsy!” I punched the off button, shame washing over me in scalding waves. Punched the button again to eject the cassette, then yanked it from the VCR and dug at the shiny tape. It spun loose and pooled in my lap.
She’d known I was there. She’d known I was there and had never said a word.
I ripped at the tape, but it wouldn’t tear. It only stretched and ruffled at the edges.
“Dammit,” I cried.
“Jane?” Mom said. “What’s going on?”
My eyes flew to Mom, who stood in the doorframe with a chubby manilla envelope in her hand. My heart beat crazily in my chest.
“Wild guess. VCR troubles?”
I lowered my hands, still twined with tape. I tried to clump the whole jumble into a pile.
“It’s been a little temperamental,” she said. “One of these days I’ll take it to a fix-it guy.” She came in the room, put down the package, and squatted beside me. “Here, let me help.”
“No!” I said. “I mean, no, that’s okay. It’s my mess. I’ll clean it up.”