eleven
MOLLY RESOLVED TO REMEMBER her conversation with Teddy McCormack if the day ever arrived when someone else was the new kid and she was the old-timer. If she’d left Colby-Randall on her first day without a single cordial moment with anyone, she might never have had the guts to go back for more.
As it was, Teddy’s kindness had staved off any further crying jags or potential killing sprees. Instead, she’d kept her head high, ignored everyone’s muttered taunts and jabs, and resisted the urge to throw a sharp elbow in response to being jostled in the hallway. Laurel would have been proud of Molly—if she weren’t busy convincing Molly to slip an unlucky crystal into the perpetrators’ book bags. Her mother had been a pacifist, but as Laurel was fond of saying, pacifism was the birthplace of passive aggression.
Brooke did her best to thwart Molly’s efforts to rise above it all. Tuesday morning, she threw herself out of the Lexus screaming that Molly’s breakfast Bloody Mary habit was going to kill them both, and her Facebook status on Wednesday—which had been read aloud near Molly by Jennifer Parker about twelve times, all while pretending not to see her—announced that alcohol had broken Brooke’s family and three of her nails. Thursday, Brooke’s brawny friend Magnus actually smacked a Post-it on Molly’s back that said “Breathalyze me,” which had sparked a series of imitators from his circle. Molly’s favorite was, “I’m Molly Dix. Ask me about my middle name.”
So Molly developed a morning routine: Every day, after Brooke made her customary sharp exit from the car, Molly slowly got out and scanned the crowd for one new thing to laugh about to herself whenever she needed to affix a pleasant expression to her face. Today, she noticed a girl in unhemmed jeans talking a mile a minute at her friend, then tripping over her pants and tumbling to the sidewalk. Her companion, that Shelby Kendall girl from CR-One, had simply glanced down at her fallen friend and kept walking without a word. Involuntarily, Molly shivered.
“Dude, this is the fifth day in a row you’ve been standing out here gawking like some freshman loser. Go inside. Face the craps.”
Molly recognized the green-haired girl’s voice. “Face the what?”
The girl grinned, pushing overgrown bangs out of her heavily kohl-rimmed eyes. “It’s an acronym,” she said. “Kind of. Colby-Randall Preparatory School. You’ll see it on signs at football games.”
“Your rivals must love that,” Molly noted.
“So do our students. Our team is terrible,” said a male voice.
Molly turned to see that Teddy McCormack had fallen in step alongside them. His light blue polo was only half tucked in and he was carrying a Pop-Tart.
“Want some?” he asked. “Strawberry. Max here thinks they’re poison.”
“I just can’t believe Mom lets you eat those but she won’t let me get my nose pierced,” Max said, making a face. “They look like someone ran over a roll of SweeTarts.”
“I love them,” Molly admitted. “But I’m okay, thanks. Brick made the cook do eggs Benedict. Or in Brooke’s case, grapefruit Benedict, hold the Benedict.”
“Ah, an anti-Benedictite.” Teddy nodded. “So sad in someone so young.”
“Hey, she’s obviously doing something right,” Molly said. “She’s got the body of a supermodel.”
“Yeah, but how happy can a person be without hollandaise sauce?” Max said. “Seriously, look at Jennifer Parker. I don’t think she’s eaten once in the last two years and she’s always complaining about something.”
As if on cue, the pointy girl and her jock boyfriend from Molly’s first day breezed past them, squabbling.
“You do sometimes use your foot on the ball,” Jake was saying.
“Yeah, but, like, only one or two people!” Jennifer trilled. “Honestly, they should call it handball. I’m totally writing my English paper about this.”
Max shook her head as the couple disappeared inside the school. “Jake tweeted something yesterday about how super hot Scarlett Johansson is, so this morning Jennifer’s Facebook update said that Jake couldn’t spell QB if you said it to him and asked him to repeat it,” she said, sounding slightly awed.
“Jennifer isn’t smart enough to have come up with that on her own,” Teddy mused. “Must have been Arugula.”
“Who?” Molly asked.
“Brooke’s other BFF,” Max explained. “The one who looks like Tyra Banks. Teddy thinks she’s dreamy.” Max batted her eyelashes exaggeratedly.
“Indeed, and Maxine, why are you following Jake on Twitter?” Teddy twinkled, but he’d turned a bit red.
“It’s, um, anthropologically interesting,” Max replied loftily.
“I bet,” he snorted. “Catch you later, Indiana.”
Molly waved as they followed Jennifer and Jake into the school. Max peeled off toward Headmistress McCormack’s office, muttering something about reclaiming the cell phone her mother confiscated on Wednesday, leaving Molly in the familiar position of having to navigate the halls by herself.
Squaring her shoulders, Molly marched over to her locker amid the now customary sea of faces glaring in her direction. Everyone wanted to see how she’d greet whatever new indignities were foisted upon her. This morning it was a flyer for a binge-drinking symposium at UCLA, taped to her locker next to a brochure for the famed rehab center Promises. But today she felt immune to it.
“Excellent,” she said aloud to no one—and everyone—as she tore them off and pretended to read them with interest. “At least at Promises I’ll have my own room.”
As she opened her locker, she heard nothing. No taunts, no whispers, no barn-door jokes. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Buoyed, Molly decided to take things one step further and eat outside with the rest of civilization.
Colby-Randall’s landscaped garden cafeteria was, in a word, ridiculous. With a hand-dug stream skimming the edges and a retractable roof in case a whiff of frost or rain dared penetrate their utopia, it was closer to a man-made Eden than a dining hall. Most of the best tables were taken: Brooke’s was in the prime spot, of course, close enough to enjoy the giant fountain but far enough away that its trio of spitting mermaids didn’t rain on her carefully shaped curls. From her central nexus radiated the social strata of people in her circle: devotees, casual followers, and then fringe riffraff. Molly noticed a similar pattern down at the end with the rock garden, which was populated mostly by student government types and academic clubs, at the center of which usually sat the mysterious Shelby Kendall—who still hadn’t said a word to Molly, despite appearing to watch her intently from afar.
Molly chose an empty table as close to neutral territory as possible and sat down with her food. She fished around for her phone and sent Danny a quick text:
BREATHING FRESH AIR AT LUNCH. YOU’D BE PROUD.
Across the way, Brooke looked up from her conversation with Mini Tyra—who Molly gathered was Arugula—and narrowed her eyes. Molly ignored her and bit into her apple.
“So what’s the deal? Are you radioactive, or just antisocial?”
Molly looked up at Max. “Nope, I’m a crazy, violent, unrepentant drunk. Haven’t you heard?”
“That’s to be expected. You’re the new kid at a private school,” Max said. “People here do not embrace change.”
“I know the feeling,” Molly said. “Do you want to sit down, or are you afraid I’m going to corrupt you?”
Max paused, her head cocked. “Well, I’m definitely bored of all the old drama,” she said, her eyes flicking over to Brooke’s table, where Jake had picked up Jennifer and was pretending to throw her into the fountain. “But it would make my mother, like, all tearful and proud to see me reaching out to the new kid, which could be irritating.”
“She might let you get your nose pierced as a reward, though.”
Max considered this. “Sold,” she said, dropping her bag and sitting down next to Molly.
“So, who were you texting?” she asked.
“My boyfriend. I think.”
“You think you were texting him, or you think he’s your boyfriend?”
Molly shrugged. “Both, at this point. We never actually broke up, but he missed our Skype date last night.”
“Skype anagrams to ‘pesky,’ ” Max said. Then she flushed. “Sorry, dumb habit. But it fits.”
“It does,” Molly said, impressed. “Got one for Colby-Randall?”
Max wrinkled her nose. “Not really. The best one so far is ‘carnally bold,’ although sometimes when I’m talking to my mother, I prefer ‘cornball lady.’ ”
Molly cracked up. “That’s awesome. I was going to ask if there was anyone normal around here, but I think you just answered that question.”
“Oh, this place is a hotbed of abnormal,” Max said, cracking open a Tupperware container of what looked like wilted greens and sweet potatoes. “See that dude over there, by the soft-serve?”
Molly turned around to see a very short kid with a Mohawk apparently attempting to find out how high he could fill a cone with vanilla fro-yo before it overflowed.
“His dad is some bigwig at NBC, and last year, I swear to God, he brought a peacock to school,” Max said. She tilted her chin toward the black-haired beauty Molly recognized from the school news. “Shelby Kendall’s dad runs Hey! so she’s all up in the TV station trying to break news, like it’s genetic or something. And Jennifer Parker used to be some kind of sitcom child star.”
Molly followed Max’s gaze to Brooke’s swatch of grass, where Jennifer was now combing through Jake’s hair with her nails while he napped against her legs.
“I thought she looked familiar,” Molly said, taking a bite of her sandwich.
“How could you tell? She never makes eye contact with anyone. She’s like Audrina from The Hills. It’s creepy,” Max complained through a mouthful of spinach. “I don’t know how Jake puts up with it.”
“How long have they been going out?”
“One year, seven months, and a week,” Max said automatically. “Or, you know, so I hear.”
“So where do all the kids of, like, accountants and insurance agents and stuff go?” Molly asked. “Is there a special school for normal people in L.A.?”
“Mavis Moore’s dad is an accountant,” Max offered, pointing to a girl about twenty feet away who was making origami tacos out of graph paper. “But he counts the votes for the Oscars, so I guess that doesn’t count. Every year he sits in a locked room for three days.”
In the distance, Mavis began crushing her tacos one by one.
“I think it explains a lot,” Max added. “Arugula’s dad is a botanist, so that’s kind of normal. Although her mom is Brick’s agent, so…”
“She’s the one your brother likes, right?” Molly asked, gazing at Arugula, who was splitting time between reading a chem textbook and listening to Brooke.
Max grinned. “He’ll deny it, but he’s totally had a crush on her since his sophomore year. She’s in all the senior science classes with him, but he’s too chicken to ask her out.”
Molly watched Brooke and Arugula chuckle over something together. The idea that Brooke had a genius for a friend was sort of intriguing, if unlikely. Maybe there was a Cosmo hidden behind the textbook somewhere.
“Excuse me, do you want this?”
Max’s jaw swung open lightly. Shelby Kendall, clad in a fitted navy blazer, black leggings, and black leather knee-high flat boots, was standing over them, holding out a coffee cup. Her sleek hair was braided. She looked like she was about to grab her Thoroughbred for some show jumping.
“My driver accidentally brought me two nonfat mocha lattes with foam, and it seems everyone else around here is lactose intolerant,” Shelby continued. “Can you imagine?”
Molly looked at Max, then back up at Shelby. “Oh, are you talking to me?” she asked stupidly.
“I doubt she’s talking to me.” Max snorted.
“Please do take it. It’ll just go to waste,” Shelby said, smiling very wide. “Coffee is the number one social lubricant for youths aged fifteen to twenty-one, according to a piece I’m doing for CR-One next week. My source is Dr. Oz.” She lowered her voice. “Old family friend, you know.”
“I’ll take it,” Max said loudly, reaching for the paper cup.
Shelby steadfastly ignored her and waggled the cup in front of Molly’s face.
“Um, of course, yeah,” Molly stammered, getting to her feet. “Thanks for—”
“Magnus!” Shelby shouted, as heads turned to stare at her standing with Molly. “Magnus, we need to discuss your dad’s lawsuit against ESPN.”
Shelby swept away, straight through a bespectacled girl juggling a clipboard, some books, and her lunch tray. Everything, including her glasses, crashed to the ground. Molly saw Brooke look up and snap her fingers, dispatching a burly athlete to the kid’s aid.
“Very interesting,” Max breathed.
“I know, I can’t believe people actually answer when Brooke snaps,” Molly said, distracted by sitting down without dumping steaming hot coffee in her lap.
“That’s not what I meant.” Max pointed at Brooke. “That is.”
Brooke was still staring right at where Shelby and Molly had been, and she looked distinctly unhappy. Nervous, even.
“Oh, crap. What did I do?” Molly sighed.
“Those two are mortal enemies,” Max explained. “Damn, Shelby must be loving you right now. Brooke looks like she just ate a brain tumor.”
The bell rang, prompting everyone to clear up their lunches. Brooke and Arugula hustled off, whispering furiously.
“Why do they hate each other?” Molly asked.
“Who even knows.” Max shrugged as they walked back inside. “Brick is an actor, Shelby’s dad is a tabloid guy. Never the progeny shall mix, or some shit like that.”
“Well, far be it from me to look a gift latte in the mouth,” Molly said, stopping at her locker. “At least Shelby isn’t treating me like I’m diseased. That wins her a few points.”
Molly tried to open the locker door, but it was jammed. She gave it a vicious tug, and it flew open, dumping a cascade of corn husks all over her feet and the floor.
Raucous laughter came from her left. Molly looked up and saw Brooke and her friends giggling while Magnus high-fived another giant jock type.
Molly just shook her head.
“Seriously, corn husks? That’s so fourth grade,” Max shouted in Brooke’s direction. “Okay, I can see why you’re so fixated on normal. You need a break.” She grabbed Molly’s notebook and scribbled something on the page. “Come over for dinner tonight. We may not be any more normal than anyone else, but at least we’re sane.”
The PA system crackled. “Molly Dix, please report to Headmistress McCormack’s office.”
Molly waved a hand at the heavens. “You sure she’ll want me for dinner? Maybe whatever I’m about to get busted for is really bad.”
“She’s working late,” Max said triumphantly. “You’re in the clear. And look, other than how you totally just tried to peer pressure me into chugging Miller behind the bleachers, you haven’t done anything wrong, right?”
Molly laughed grimly, then trudged off toward the headmistress’s office as just about every guy in the hallway tried to hide a joke about her last name inside a coughing fit. She hadn’t done anything. So why did it feel like she was going to spend her entire L.A. life in trouble?