13

Okay, so, I’m sixteen years old. Yes, sixteen… and this is my first day of school. Ever.

What do you even wear to real school? At the RC, we wore overalls or old shirts and work pants. Whatever we were planning on wearing later while we worked the soil. When I mentioned that to Madison, she turned pale.

“Overalls?” she whispered. “Sure, they’re great if you haven’t turned four yet, but after that they’re a big no-no. Maybe—maybe— if you worked in a traveling circus, like in the sideshow, and you shaved your eyebrows and bit the heads off live chickens for money—maybe then you could pull off overalls. Anyway, I’m sorry, were we talking about overalls? I’m going to have to go wash my brain now.”

So… no overalls. Instead, for my first day as a student at the River School for College Preparation, I’m going with a pair of Rock & Republic jeans, my String Cheese Incident T-shirt (it’s not vintage, but I still think it’s pretty awesome), and a blazer. It doesn’t look too bad. I consider putting my hair up the way Hayes showed me, but then I decide against it. The dreads are my look. I’m not going to change myself just for these snobby, judgmental girls.

Still, I have to admit I’m totally nervous. Even more nervous than before that stupid party, because now, instead of just having to deal with a bunch of new kids, I have to meet with teachers, coaches, a principal… all of whom will no doubt spend a long time telling me how unusual my upbringing has been and how wrong all my mom’s ideas about education were.

What’s important is that I know my education wasn’t weird. After all, do weirdos know that the secret to growing really great kale is old coffee grounds? Or that Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in six weeks because he needed the money? Or that John Wilkes Booth was actually a hot, famous theater star before he shot Lincoln? Actually, these are probably exactly the things weirdos know.

I decide to ride my bike—another miscalculation on my part. MapQuest said the distance to the River School was eight miles. I was down with that; after all, back at the RC I used to ride twenty miles all the time. But after the first pretty stretch, the rest of the route is malls and Quiznos places. Plus, of course, the temperature is scorching, even at seven forty-five. By the time I show up, my fancy blazer is stuffed into my backpack, my shirt (and bra) are soaked, and I have car soot all over my face. Maybe I should have taken Miss Lee up on being chauffeured to school by Josie, but it bugged her so much when I insisted on biking that I had to do it.

“Bicycle?” she said two weeks ago when I told her that was my preferred mode of transportation. “That is just hogwash, Alexandria. No, no. No, no, no. And again, no. Magnolias should travel the way God intended—in an automobile.”

“Um…”

“It would be so much fun to buy you a car. How about a cute little Saab, or—”

“Nah. Just a Bianchi,” I said.

“Is that an Italian coupe?”

“It’s a bike.”

She grimaced, unimpressed. I didn’t get my Bianchi, but she managed to meet me halfway—the next day a truly rad Public M8 in chartreuse showed up in the garage. I’ll say this for my forever-twenty-one-looking grandma: She’s not cheap.

Although now I’m sort of wishing I did have an Italian coupe. Because here I am, drenched, locking my bike to a light pole in front of the River School’s compound of swank brick buildings, and who should walk up looking at me like I’m a salamander that just crawled out of the primordial ooze but Thaddeus, completely camera-worthy in a cranberry-colored shirt and chinos.

“Hey,” I say. “I couldn’t find the bike racks.”

“No,” he says. “No one bikes to school.”

“Huh.” I stand up, rolling down my right cuff to cover the bike grease on my ankle. “How’s the reading?”

“You were right,” he says. “That was an excellent book. Not the easiest to get through, but quite good. Especially the war part.”

“Yeah. And how about those love scenes with Frederic and Catherine? Totally orgasmic.”

“Right,” Thaddeus says, looking at me oddly.

Crap. I can’t believe I just said that.

“Not that I even know what an orgasm is!” I say. “I mean, I do know. I do it all the time! Or sometimes. Whatever.”

Stop talking! my inner voice screams. Stop talking now!

Thaddeus smiles. I finally made him smile! So what if I made an ass out of myself ?

“So, were you okay the other night?” I say, trying to steer the conversation away from this infinitely awkward territory.

“What do you mean?” he asks, his voice snapping back to its usual distant tone.

“After the fire.”

“Of course.”

“It was weird how it was burning and then just went out like that,” I press, determined to get some answers about the other night. “Is that some kind of special Southern fire-making? Because I get the feeling you didn’t find it at all weird that it just sort of extinguished itself when I came close.”

“Thad!” someone yells. A group of people at a picnic table out on the sun-beaten lawn are waving to him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says hurriedly. “Just remember, Savannah’s not like California. Especially if you’re a Magnolia.”

“What do you—”

“Dude!” A ruddy boy in a rugby shirt joins us and slaps Thaddeus on the back. “How was your summer? Did you make it up to Rockville for the regatta? I heard the chicas were bangin’.”

Wow. I am invisible to these people.

Without another word, Thaddeus and Rugby Shirt walk toward the picnic tables. Not even a backward glance.

“Thanks for introducing me to your friends,” I say to his retreating back. I take a deep breath, trying to slow the frantic thumping in my chest. School is swarming with kids, and they all either ignore me or give me the stink eye. A couple of younger boys pretend to hold their noses as they walk past.

“It’s called soap, hippie!” one of them says.

“Look!” someone else yells. “Whoopi Goldberg and a marshmallow had a baby.”

The bell rings. Everyone begins rushing inside as if gathered up by the world’s largest vacuum cleaner. They all seem to know exactly where to go, but I hang back, clueless. For once I sort of wish Hayes and Madison were with me.

“Lost?”

A tanned, tough-looking woman in her mid-thirties stands before me. She’s wearing a khaki shirt and matching pants, and she holds a carved wooden cane. She looks like she’s about to go on safari—all that’s missing is the pith helmet. It takes a moment before I realize what else is different about her: She’s not wearing even an ounce of makeup. After the glamourama look everyone else sports around here, I have to say I’m sort of digging it.

“Not lost,” I say. “New.”

“Name?”

“Alex Lee.”

“Oh, well, I’m Constance Taylor, and you’re assigned to my English class.”

“Cool.” I’m actually looking forward to English class. It’ll be fun to hear what someone other than RC hippies has to say about American literature. At the RC, everything always seemed to come down to the fight against “the system” and—I don’t know—composting.

“Stand here. I’ll get your assigned homeroom.” She disappears into the building, leaving me to wait outside. I wander over to the doors and peer into the hall. Even though this is clearly a fancy school, it still smells a little like disinfectant. The walls are painted a pearl gray. Shiny brushed-steel lockers line the sides of the passageway. It’s all very pleasant and very… sterile.

All of a sudden, the smell and the silver lockers take me back to a vivid memory of my trip to the morgue.

I’m so sorry, honey, but as next of kin you need to identify—

As if bitten, I jump back from the door into the sunlight, bumping into a fat kid dressed in droopy hipster jeans, Buddy Holly glasses, and a completely rad black Save CBGB T-shirt. Sure, it’s a little too tight and, yes, there are man-boobs present, but it looks authentic.

“Easy there, Grace Slick,” he says with no trace of a Southern accent as he bends down to pick up his sketch pad. His skin is refreshingly pale compared to everyone else’s perfect golden tan.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

He looks at me curiously. “You’re new, aren’t you? I’d definitely remember that hair.”

“Yeah. I’m Alex.”

“From?”

“Mendocino.”

“Nice. I’m Dex,” he says. “As in Dexter. Like the show.”

“The show?”

“Yeah. But my parents named me years before the show even came on, so I’m pretty sure I’m the result of hate sex. Dexter is my parents’ expression of verbal regret.”

“Um… ha-ha?”

“Or it was really good sex, and this was their way of expressing their guilt at enjoying it. Which would make sense, because they’re Jewish.”

I’m starting to like this guy. He’s more embarrassing than I am.

“That’s a cool T-shirt.”

“Yeah? I’ve got one in every color.”

“They only made the Save CBGB shirts in black,” I say.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got black, black, black, black, and black too. Not many people would have that particular factoid on file, by the way.”

“I like to keep things old school.”

“No diggity. We’ll have to break out my turntable sometime. I’ve been buying all this vinyl from Daptone, and listening to it is like pouring honey into your ears, only without the ants, and the mess, and any of the horribleness of actually pouring actual honey into your ears. Digital reproduction is like listening to twenty percent of a song played on instruments made of scrap metal. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy. There’s no soul.”

I smile.

“Anyway, I have to go, because I’m late. But I’ll find you at lunch. You’ll need me then. This place is like the sequel to Mean Girls. As in Mean Girls 2: Even Meaner and More Hateful Girls Who Will Burn Your Soul to Death with Their Eye Rays.”

“It can’t be that bad,” I say.

“Oh, really? There’s this one pack of debutantes who will tear off your face and eat it just for fun. They’re like rabid dogs. Their moms are all in this reactionary right-wing group called the Magnolia League. Ask yourself: Who joins something called a league besides supervillains?”

“I’ll be careful,” I say, my cheeks flushing.

Just then Constance approaches, carrying a sheaf of papers. “Hello, Dexter,” she says pleasantly. “The first day, and already—”

“Late,” he says. “I know. Would you expect anything less?” He grins and dashes down the hall.

“You’re due for a placement exam, I understand,” Constance says to me. “Because of your lack of traditional schooling.”

Here it comes.

“I don’t know, it felt pretty traditional,” I say. “I mean, we read Shakespeare. And Bob Dylan’s autobiography. There was a breadth to our learning that I might not have had in a more traditional environment.”

Constance raises one eyebrow. “Then I’m sure this exam will be a breeze for you. You’ll take it in my homeroom.”

I follow her into the dreadful hallway, keeping my head down. She leads me to a classroom and closes the door. Someone’s gone crazy with a bunch of bright turquoise-blue paint, and the walls are lined with huge National Geographic –worthy photos of families all over the world—Australian bush people, what look like Eskimos on the tundra, Tibetans in traditional dress.

“Did you take all of these yourself?” I ask.

“I did,” she says. “When I’m not teaching, I travel.”

“Cool.”

I look around some more. There’s a quote painted in black near the ceiling:

I confess I do not believe in time.

—Vladimir Nabokov

“He wrote Lolita, right?” I ask. She nods. “That’s a pretty creepy book.”

“Particularly for a teenage girl,” she says, handing me my test. “So, you’ve read Lolita? That’s either a good sign or a bad one—I’m not sure which.”

I nod. And then shake my head. I have no idea why it would be a bad sign.

She looks at me curiously. “You came here from California?”

“Yeah. I came to Savannah because my mother died. I live with my grandmother.”

“Oh,” she says, frowning. “I’m sorry for your loss.” She looks down at my file, and her face tightens. “Your grandmother is Dorothy Lee?”

“Yes.”

“So your mother was—”

“Louisa,” I say. “Louisa Lee.”

Constance looks stricken. “I knew your mother,” she says finally. “I knew her in high school. I wasn’t aware that…”

“Car accident,” I say quickly, to get us off the topic.

“I see,” she says again, recovering her composure. “Are you ready for the test, then?”

I sit down and fill out answers. It’s not too bad, and I must do okay, because the next thing I know it’s third period, and I’m being shuttled to junior history.

“This is Mr. Roberts’s class,” she says before opening the door. “If you do well, he’ll let you take the AP exam.”

“Cool,” I say, wondering what the hell an AP exam is. “Thanks, Constance.”

She hesitates, looking at me strangely. “We’re pretty formal here at the River School. Let’s stick to Miss Taylor, okay?”

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

She opens the door. Inside, class is already under way. I spot Madison near the back of the room.

Mr. Roberts, an extremely square-looking teacher with a salt-and-pepper bowl cut and a short-sleeved yellow button-down shirt stained with sweat around the armpits, looks over, obviously annoyed by the interruption.

“Hello,” Constance—I mean, Miss Taylor—says. “This is Alex Lee. She’ll be joining class this year. I’m sure you’ll all make her welcome.”

Everyone stares. I feel like I’m in a zoo.

“There’s an empty desk next to me,” Madison says.

I scuttle over and plop down. Maybe I’m wrong after all. Maybe she’s actually pretty cool.

Um… not so cool, though? This class. Mr. Roberts drones on and on about the syllabus—mainly reading out of a heinous-looking textbook. I’m so bored that finally I raise my hand.

“Yes?” he says tersely. The other kids turn and stare.

“Will we be reading Lincoln’s letters?” I ask. “Like, when we get to the Civil War?”

“Is the syllabus not sufficient for you, Miss Lee?”

I look around at the increasingly hostile room. “No, I just thought… well, if we’re learning about that time, we’d want to… uh… read what he wrote about it. I mean, that’s what we did where I used to—”

“Primary sources?” Mr. Roberts barks. “Is that your suggestion?”

“This girl’s a runaway truck,” Jason—Hayes’s boyfriend—blurts. The class bursts out laughing.

“I guess…”

“Then I’ll add that to the reading list.”

From my new peers, a collective groan.

“By Monday, I want everyone to have read the first eighty pages of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume Two. I’ll put copies on reserve in the library. And while you’re reading, I encourage you to think hard about Miss Lee and her hunger for knowledge.”

No one looks at me for the rest of the class. But when the bell rings, a hand reaches out and slides my papers and books onto the floor.

“Way to go, hippie,” Gilroy, the boy from the party, mutters.

Jason gives my shoulder a reassuring, pitying pat as he passes.

“Gilroy,” Madison says smoothly, putting her hand on his arm, “leave Alex alone, please. She’s one of our best friends.”

Gilroy squints his beady eyes at me.

“So what?”

“So, you mess with her and you’re messing with all of us, knuckle dragger,” Madison says curtly.

Gilroy shakes his head and stomps off.

“Are you completely suicidal?” Madison demands, ushering me out of the classroom and dragging me toward the lawn. “That hair is bad enough, your dirty clothes aren’t much better, and then you make us do more mind-numbing reading? Even I hate you, and I like you.”

I shrug my shoulders defiantly. “I don’t know.”

Just then I feel a presence at my other shoulder. It’s Anna, the radioactive blond girl from the party. She seems to have gotten a fresh coat of orange fake tan for her first day of school. Mary, the busty redhead, is trailing after her.

“Y’all eating on the lawn?” she asks.

“The lawn is for sophomores, Mary,” Madison says impatiently. “Juniors eat at the benches. What are we? We’re juniors. Now, go clean off the bench in the shade.”

“But kids are already sitting—”

“That’s what I mean. Clean it off.” Mary frowns uncertainly and trots away. Madison rolls her eyes and turns to me.

“Alex, as Magnolias, we are respected at this school. People look to us for guidance on what is and isn’t the proper way to do things. We are paragons of virtue because everything we do is always appropriate. This will not work if you insist on acting like a total spaz.”

“I’m not a spaz, okay? And that’s a really inappropriate word to use. Think of all those kids with cerebral palsy.”

“How about bonehead?”

“I come from a place where kids don’t judge each other,” I say. “Sure, I didn’t go to a traditional school, and that’s weird. I get that. But from what I can tell so far, real school sucks.”

Madison laughs. “ ‘School sucks’?’ ” she says. “How original. What’s your next brilliant academic observation? Cheerleading uniforms objectify women? Of course school sucks. It’s a rigid hierarchical pyramid with the losers on the bottom, an enormous mass of irrelevant people in the middle, and the important people at the pinnacle. The trick is to be at the pinnacle.”

“What about the idea of revolution? Changing the system? Instead of being part of the problem, you could be part of the solution.”

“Alex,” Madison says through clenched teeth, “if you keep talking in bumper stickers, I am going to stab you in the face.”

“You don’t have to hang with me. It’s not like we’re the Three Musketeers or something.”

“Actually, I do have to ‘hang’ with you,” she mutters.

Hayes joins us with Jason in tow. “Hey, girls. What’s happening?”

“Damage control,” Madison says. “Alex is trying to completely sabotage her River School career within the first three hours.”

“That was pretty ugly in there,” Jason says.

“Well, I brought bacon mac-and-cheese for everybody,” Hayes says brightly. “Mom made it last night.”

“Cool,” Madison says. “I had Mary order Reubens.”

I grin, in spite of myself. At least these girls aren’t anorexic.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a commotion at one of the benches on the edge of the lawn. Dex, my new friend, is working on his sketch pad under a tree. Or he’s trying to, but Mary is frantically pulling on his arm.

“Looks like Mary’s about to burst something,” Madison says. “Hope she chose saline over silicone.”

“What’s she doing?” I ask.

“That dweeb is on our bench. Mary’s explaining the rules to him. It’s killing two birds with one stone, really. She’s proving her loyalty to us, and he’s learning about our territory.”

“He’s not a dweeb—he’s my friend.”

“Alex,” Hayes says sweetly, “I don’t think you’ve been here long enough to have friends besides us.”

I stand up and march over to the bench where Mary is having a meltdown. Her face is red and sweaty, and her eye makeup is smudged.

“Dexter, you have to move, you fat fag!” she screams. “They’re coming! They are! Look!” It takes me a minute to realize she’s pointing at me.

Dexter looks up coolly and smiles. “Hey, Slick,” he says to me. “This is what I was telling you about. Crazy debutantes.”

“Don’t talk to her directly,” Mary screeches. “She’s a Magnolia.”

Dexter looks at me, confused. “What?”

“Well, not really,” I stammer. “I mean, my grandmother’s making me do it. It’s a family thing. But—”

“Oh,” he says. “Well. Sorry I bashed them. I mean, you seem all right, but…” He looks at Madison and Hayes, who have now appeared behind me.

“Good-bye,” Madison says to the staring kids. As if possessed, they gather their books and lunches and shuffle off. “Dexter. Off.”

“This is stupid,” I say. “There are, like, twenty benches. Or we can just cop a squat on the lawn.”

“Yes, but this is the junior Magnolias’ bench,” Hayes says patiently. “It always has been.”

“I’m done, anyway,” Dexter says, throwing his sketch pad and pencils into his messenger bag. “Alex, you want to eat in the art studio? It’s air-conditioned.”

“Sweet. Thanks.”

“Alex,” Madison says, “it’s really not cool to abandon us on your first day.”

“I’m not abandoning you,” I say. “I’m just expanding my horizons.”

“Just remember, we’re your real friends,” Madison snaps. I look to Hayes for a token bit of reason, but to my surprise, her face looks oddly dark.

I shoot Dex an apologetic look. “Guys, it’s not a cult. It’s a social club. That our mothers and grandmothers belong to. It’s not a lifestyle. I’ll see you later, okay?”

I turn and follow Dex across the lawn. The one time I glance back, Madison is huddled with the other girls around her, whispering. Hayes is still staring at me as if she expects that at any minute I’ll come back.

During lunch in the art studio, Dex gives me the dirt on the politics of the River School. “Madison and Hayes run the school,” he says between bites of a microwaved Krispy Kreme. (Dex has the same appetite as Madison and Hayes but seems to lack the metabolism.) “You know the type. They’re the queens, and all the other girls are their subjects.”

“What makes them so special?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t know, really. I mean, they’re pretty, but there are a lot of pretty girls here. I don’t know—the kids just… follow them around. It’s like they have some special social power or something.”

“What about that Sina person? Do you know her?”

“Of course. She’s notorious. A total fox.”

“Where does she come from?”

Dex narrows his eyes while wiping frosting from his mouth with a napkin. “I don’t know. The boonies somewhere.” He eyes the lunch Josie made me—deviled eggs, fried chicken, some kind of “salad” consisting mainly of bacon and mayonnaise. Not an organic veggie or fruit in sight. “You gonna eat all that?”

“No way,” I say, sliding the bag toward him.

“Thanks.” He pops a deviled egg into his mouth, rolling his eyes to the ceiling with pleasure. “I’ll tell you what, though. Those Maggots really don’t like her.”

“Maggots?”

“No offense, but that’s what we underlings call you Magnolias. At least until now.”

“None taken.” I try not to look bothered. Oh God. What has my grandmother gotten me into?

“Sina’s the only one who holds a candle to them socially. She’s at every big party, and they just shrink from her. Personally, I’m glad she’s around. She’s totally hot, and interesting. Although she might be even worse than they are.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, she can be really mean. She plays tricks on people just for fun. Like, this one guy who said Madison was better looking than Sina? Sina slipped him some kind of drink that made really weird things happen. He sprouted hair on the back of his hands, man. Instantly. Like, we were all watching.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was Propecia or something. Or some kind of antidote to Nair.”

“That’s the trippiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s nothing, friend. Savannah is a weird, weird place. I’m telling you. The city was founded by pirates and runaway slaves straight from African tribes and shit. There’s black magic everywhere.”

“Come on.”

“I just moved from Iowa two years ago. Things are normal there. You don’t like someone, you don’t like them. Girls are mean to one another, but it’s normal mean. They just hate-text or videophone each other buck naked in the locker room and throw it up on Facebook.”

“People do that?”

“Welcome to high school, Alex. It’s the land of the mean-girl tricks. Only in Savannah, the hoaxes are weirder.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there was that hand hair thing. Oh, and last year, that Orang-Anna girl tried to start her own posse. Then she got, like, majorly spooked. She said a gray man was following her everywhere.”

“Gray like old?”

“Like the color. He was transparent or something. I don’t know. She told the police and everything. But no one could ever figure out what she was talking about.”

“Was she high?” Plenty of people saw weird stuff at the RC, but it was always with the help of organic mushrooms.

“No way. That girl is as squeaky clean as they come. She won’t even drink soft drinks. She goes to parties only because Madison makes her, to pad her group.”

“So, you’re saying Madison and Hayes hired a henchman to follow her around or something?”

“I’m just telling you what I heard. I don’t have concrete theories. All I’m saying is, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Or California or Iowa. These rules are different. Like once at a bonfire, I ran into Sina. I don’t ever talk to her. I mean, she’s way too hot for normal dorky conversation. But I was taking a leak in the woods, and I bumped into her by accident. She looked… weird. Like old. Really old. Then she kind of hissed at me, and I blinked, and she was totally gone.”

“You sure it wasn’t just something you ate?” I say, watching him pop another egg into his mouth.

“Fine, it’s true. I’m a human garbage disposal,” he says, still chewing. “But this is a weird, weird place, dude. I’m telling you—beware. Almost nothing in Savannah is what it seems.”