Author's Note: Thank you all for the support so far!
Happy reading :)
It was easy enough to fall into a sort of routine. After a couple of weeks of attending Will Rogers High School, I was no longer getting lost and looked as if I had been going there my entire high school career. I had a group to sit with at lunch every day and being with Missy and her friends was starting to feel more and more natural each time I talked to them. We sat in the same seats every time – Vickie and Cherry in the middle on either side of the table, with me, Missy, Penny, and Marcia flanking them – and the five of them took it upon themselves to give me the rundown on how things worked.
"Girls can only wear pants on Fridays," Marcia told me, "and there's technically a rule about how long your skirts are supposed to be, but nobody really enforces it. The trick is to wear knee socks or pantyhose, and that seems to trick 'em into thinking your skirt's longer than it really is."
"And don't even bother with the cafeteria food," Penny warned. I hadn't so far, and neither had anyone else at our table, it seemed. I had brought something from home every day, and there had been a couple of days where a few of them had just had Cokes and gum.
"We never eat out in the courtyard or parking lot, either. That's where all the kids from the other side of town have lunch, and mostly they just dick around," Vickie said. I didn't even know that eating lunch outside was an option, and I thought it sounded sort of nice because the cafeteria could get pretty loud, but it was apparently a big no-no. "Speaking of, they usually hang out by the locker rooms or in the alcoves before the first bell rings, so avoid those areas in the morning. We usually hang out in the lobby or by the library, so you can meet us there."
It became obvious early on that Vickie was not shy about voicing her thoughts. Always. On everything. Wanna talk about music? Vickie would tell you exactly who she thought was in, and who she thought was definitely out. Boys? Easy. Vickie had a list of the cutest boys in school, one through twenty. And you better believe me when I say that Vickie could talk about Tulsa's less fortunate half until she was blue in the face.
The six of us were gathered in the lobby one morning, the sun streaming through the Art Deco windows, surrounded by pictures of Miss Seniors and Boys of the Year from years past. The place was a zoo before the first bell rang, and I came to realize that I had become one of the animals. I was now a part of all…this. The very thing that had overwhelmed me in my first few days was now just my life.
I was talking to Cherry and Vickie about the previous night's math homework when I saw them. We all saw them, actually, because they were impossible to miss, and all six of us stopped our conversations to watch as a group of four girls made their way through the lobby. I realized instantly that they were out of place, that these were the people that were supposed to be hanging around in the courtyard, by the locker rooms, and hiding out in the alcoves.
But they walked through that lobby like they owned the place.
They were tall and skinny, with big hair and short skirts. Three of them were blonde, but only one of them looked to be naturally so. Their chins were held high, their heels were even higher, and as they passed me and my group of new friends, all four of them glanced over at us with a cool look in their eyes.
The moment seemed to pass by in slow motion, and then they were gone.
"Ugh," Vickie grumbled, and faked a gag.
"What's with the ugh?" I asked, but everyone ignored me.
"Did you see their skirts? It's just indecent," Penny said.
Missy stared off in the direction the girls had disappeared in. "But you saw Evie's hair, right? It's amazing. I'm so jealous."
"Oh, c'mon, Missy." Marcia nudged her. "It's just hair."
It's never just hair. Even I knew that.
"Who were they?" I tried again, wondering what the big deal was. I got from my new friends' reactions that they were supposed to be hanging out somewhere else, that they had crossed some sort of territorial line, and I agreed that their skirts were shockingly short and they hadn't even tried to use any of Marcia's tricks. I just didn't see what the big deal was, or what the stare-down between our groups had been for.
"Evie Martin, Kathy Lawson, Sandy Baxter, and Sylvia Capoletti," Vickie recited. When that still didn't clear anything up, Cherry stepped in.
"They're sort of like…us," she said. "But from the East side."
I scrunched up my nose. "So? What is this, West Side Story?" I asked, going for the joke, but none of them found it funny.
"They're totally awful," Marcia said. "I heard that last year, Sylvia keyed Principal Vernon's car just for dress-coding her. They never proved it, but I bet she did it."
"And Sandy's nice, but she's got to be the dumbest girl in our grade," Cherry said. "We were in English together freshman year and she can't spell to save her life."
"You don't think it's Janet Wozniacki?" Marcia asked, and Cherry had to think about it before allowing the possibility that Janet might be dumber than Sandy. I had no idea who Janet Wozniacki was, and nobody explained.
"I also heard she's sleeping around," Missy muttered, and Vickie perked up at that.
"Well. Sounds like she and that dropout of hers were made for each other," she said, and the rest of them laughed. I just stood there, confused and a little stunned, as the bell rang.
xXx
As we made our way through our set of problems in pre-calc later that day, Vickie took the opportunity to explain everything further.
"They're all dating guys in the same friend group, so they hang around together," she said, voice nearly a whisper as she erased a mistake on her paper. Vickie blew away the little eraser bits, and I watched them fall to the floor. They mixed with the dust particles sparkling in the sunlight. "They act like their boyfriends, too – loud, swearing, drinking. They think they rule the entire school just cuz they act all tough, but they don't." She got a proud little smirk on her face when she said that. "But I'm dead serious when I say you best look out for them."
"Okay," I mumbled. "I'll be careful."
"I really am serious," she continued. I really just wanted to focus on our problem set so I didn't have to do any for homework because who has time for math, but Vickie was dead-set on explaining this to me.
"Okay," I stressed. "I get it, I get it."
"And if you think the girls are bad, then the boys are a hundred times worse," she went on, clearly not getting the hint. "The guys who sit behind you and Missy in Mr. James' class? All they care about is getting into fights and sleeping around." She was really keeping her voice low now. "All those greasers are the same, trust me."
I had thought the term greaser was sort of going out of fashion, but all of Tulsa – and probably the entire state of Oklahoma – felt a little behind the times.
"That so?"
"Uh-huh," she hummed. "Just avoid them best you can. And if you can't…well, we're the ones with the upper hand. If you know what I mean."
What does it mean to have the upper hand when you're a teenager, anyway? Probably something to do with popularity. That didn't help me, though, because I hadn't exactly been popular before. I had gone through school mostly unnoticed, flying under the radar socially because I had been too shy and awkward with my braces and good grades and big hair. The braces had only come off a year and a half ago, and I was just starting to get the hang of my hair by pinning it back in the same way every day. And I had been too shy to ever make many friends outside of friendships of circumstance.
I had never had the upper hand in my life. But now...it was strange. It was too easy. Missy introduced me to her friends and suddenly I was one of them, just like that.
I guess getting the braces off really did a lot for me.
xXx
For as dangerous as Vickie had made guys like Jimmy Hopper and Two-Bit Mathews sound, the worst I could say for them was that they were obnoxious and rude – not exactly criminal behavior. When I expressed this to Missy before class started and neither of them had bothered to show their faces yet, she insisted that Vickie was right to tell me what she had.
"They're not usually too bad in school," she explained, "but all the boys go lookin' for trouble. Even our guys. Trust me, both Two-Bit and Jimmy have records."
My eyes bulged. "Really?" I asked, and she nodded. "But…I mean, you talk to them."
"Hardly," Missy laughed. "I try not to talk to Jimmy cuz he really is bad news. Two-Bit gets into trouble and all that, but he's also kinda funny. He's actually sorta popular if you can believe it."
"Like the girls we saw the other day," I said, trying to figure out how all of this worked. At my old schools, where just about everybody came from the same background, the popular kids were the most outgoing ones, the most involved, the ones who flashed their wealth the most. Dad and I were well-off, yes, but we weren't ostentatious about it. Maybe if we had been, I would have had more of a social life back in Manhattan. But that sort of behavior is so tacky.
"Sure," she shrugged. "Like, everybody knows who they are – who he is. They're like…the most popular East side girls. And Two-Bit's a real charmer, but I've heard about him and his buddies getting into gang fights and partying on school nights. He just plays it both ways. I dunno, he's good for a laugh."
It was starting to come together for me: there were two distinct groups in this school – kids from the East side and kids from the West side – and the ones from the East side, the so-called greasers, were the scummy ones. Us West side rich kids were the ones, as Vickie had put it, with the real upper hand, but that didn't mean that each group didn't have their own hierarchy. And each side seemed to believe that they were running the show.
Thinking about it all made my head hurt.
Two-Bit and Jimmy eventually sauntered in a couple minutes past the bell. The two of them had been a double act up to that point, but it seemed like Jimmy had slowly started to lose interest in bothering Missy and I – or maybe he was just tired, because when I turned around to scowl at Two-Bit, he was hunched over and appeared to have fallen asleep. Two-Bit, however, was more than happy to keep up the antics, lightly tapping the legs of my chair every now and then and once popping his gum so loud that Mr. James turned around from the chalkboard to stare at him.
Two-Bit just held up his hands and played innocent.
I didn't get how Mr. James just let him get away with everything. That wasn't the first time he had caught Two-Bit acting like an idiot, but he let it slide every time. Well, I decided that if Mr. James wasn't going to say anything, then I was going to have to. Yes, he was being rude, but I was also sick of him trying to get a rise out of me, and even sicker at the fact that it was working.
Mr. James usually finished his lecture about five minutes early, and I had never had another teacher who did that, but I was extremely grateful for it that day. Missy tried to talk to me as soon as the lecture was over, but instead of just talking to her or packing up my things, I turned around in my seat and looked that dumbass square in the eye.
"Would it kill you to stop doing that?"
He blinked at my harsh tone but recovered with a smile. Like always. "Doing what?"
"Don't play dumb," I said. "It's rude. You think the teacher likes dealing with you in the middle of class?"
Two-Bit just waved off my concern. "James knows me. This is the second year in a row he's had to put up with my shit, and I think he'd rather just let it slide."
That was so incredibly stupid. "So that's your excuse? He doesn't care, so you keep doing it?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
I glanced at Missy, who gave me a knowing look. "Alright, then," I said, turning back to Two-Bit. "What if told you I was sick of it? You think I want you kicking my chair the entire class?"
Something flashed behind Two-Bit's eyes, and I realized I had just made a grievous error – now that he knew it bothered me, he was just going to double down. Two-Bit turned to Jimmy and said, "Can you believe this chick? Can you believe her?" He looked back at me. "I suggest you get off your high horse, honey."
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the worst creature to walk the face of the earth. Two-Bit Mathews, everybody.
"Lemme give you a suggestion," he continued, leaning forward in his chair. "Just back off, and we'll be fine. Don't make me do somethin' stupid, peach."
I narrowed my eyebrows at him. I didn't quite get what he was saying, to be honest. What did I need to back off for? He was the one bothering me. It was him who was disrupting class. But that's not what I said. "Don't call me that," I scowled.
He smirked. "Call you what?"
"Peach. Or honey."
"Then what should I call ya?"
"Bridget works just fine."
"Bridget, huh? Let's see… B-R-I-D-G-E-T... B, B, B…oh," he drawled, lightbulb going off. "I got it. From now on, I'mma call you Bee."
"Excuse me?"
"Yup. Cuz that's what you are – a li'l' angry honeybee, buzzin' around and annoyin' me."
Two-Bit looked positively pleased with himself as he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. I gaped at him, then turned back around. Missy gave me an apologetic look and mouthed sorry. When the bell rang, she and I shot up out of our seats and filed out as quick as we could, but Two-Bit was right on our tail.
"I'll be seein' you tomorrow, Miz Bee," he called over his shoulder as he walked down the hall, loud enough for everyone to hear. Missy put a hand on my shoulder.
"Good for a laugh, huh?" I asked, and she looked sheepishly down at her feet.
"Well – sometimes he's just lookin' to make himself laugh. Don't even worry about it – he'll forget in a few days. If you hadn't said anything, he probably would've stopped sooner or later."
Yeah, but now he was never going to stop. I had effectively ruined second period for myself all because of some stupid boy. I was starting to see what my friends were getting at about boys from the East side. They liked to look for trouble, no matter how big or small. I was just unlucky – Two-Bit Mathews had apparently decided that I was the kind of trouble he was looking for.
xXx
Now that she had been pointed out to me, I realized that Evie Martin was in my English class. I'd had no reason to notice her before, and she hadn't done anything to draw any sort of attention to herself, besides what she wore and the way she dolled herself up. Other than that, she sat at her desk and quietly did her work and listened to Ms. Tracy's lessons without making so much as a peep.
English class was also the first time I experienced that upper hand that Vickie had told me about.
It all began with Evie Martin and Holden Caulfield.
Let me explain.
We were reading The Catcher in the Rye. My father had told me that most schools don't like their students reading it, so it was a controversial pick, but Ms. Tracy's choice had so far managed to go unnoticed by the administration – they hadn't bothered trying to ban it yet, so they either didn't know or didn't care. I have to admit it is a pretty vulgar book, but that didn't seem to stop Ms. Tracy from having us read it.
It was our first book of the year, and she placed us in groups where we were supposed to discuss the book. That can be an easy thing to do if you either really like or really hate the book, or you like the people you're talking about it with. Unfortunately for me, all I had going for me was that I liked the book; I liked Holden and his story. Even after only a few pages. It made me miss New York, too. Was it vulgar? Oh, yes. That's what pretty much everyone in my group thought, and they weren't too happy about it.
Well, except Evie Martin.
The girl I sat next to in class was named Lucy Radner, a girl who I learned lived in my neighborhood and had heard about me from our realtor when she went around the neighborhood telling everybody about the new family – mine – that had moved in. She was nice enough, if a bit dull. As she and I split off to join the rest of our group, she leaned over to me and whispered out of the side of her mouth, "Just our luck – Evie Martin's in our group."
I raised an eyebrow. "What's so wrong with that?" I knew I was supposed to find a problem with that because of the side of town she was from and who she dated, but she wasn't nearly as annoying as Two-Bit Mathews was, and I had no reason to believe she was some sort of idiot who wouldn't have anything to contribute.
Lucy sighed. "I keep forgetting you're new. Just look at her," she mumbled, her eyes darting towards Evie as she made her way over. She was wearing a neatly-hemmed (read: short) pink dress and heels, and I considered my own socks and saddle shoes. Evie was decidedly more glamourous than I was, and I couldn't imagine waking up each morning and putting that much effort into my appearance.
Evie Martin looked more woman than I'd ever had.
She looked out of place in our group, though. The rest of us – including the two boys – were a lot more prepped-out than Evie was. She just didn't fit.
One of the boys, Rodney, looked at the questions on the board and read the first one out. "Alright. 'What do you think of Holden's voice?'" He read.
"He's far too vulgar for my liking," Lucy immediately responded. "And a pest, too. I couldn't put up with someone like him, honestly."
Evie gave her eyes a big, obvious roll, clearly thinking the same thing I was, that Lucy was an idiot and had clearly missed the point. "I like him," she proclaimed. "I like Holden just fine. He speaks his mind. Ain't that a good thing? I don't mind him swearing, either. And don't go acting like it's nothin' you've never heard before."
The boys shrugged, but Lucy looked at Evie like she was the gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Evie stared right back at her, though, and I sat there thinking about how I agreed with everything she had just said. It occurred to me then that I was someone who took honors classes, and this was the honors English class, and Evie was in there with us. She was clearly smart; she could keep up. I wanted to tell her I thought the same thing, but Lucy shot me a look like she was looking for backup. And then I started thinking about friends, and having a table to sit at during lunch, and how my friends had looked at Evie and her friends like they were the competition.
And so that is why I delivered the lamest comeback in the history of comebacks.
"That isn't a surprise, Evie," I said coolly. "I mean, listen to you. You're the female Holden Caulfield."
Lucy laughed, and the boys seemed to like it, too, but even I knew it wasn't all that funny – just mean. That was the first thing I had ever said to Evie Martin – a girl I knew almost nothing about – and I had basically just called her a vulgar pest by siding with Lucy and made myself look just as dull as she was in the process. Evie's face momentarily crumpled, like for some reason she had expected me to side with her, but it hardened right back up.
"Ouch," she drawled. "That the best you got, new girl?"
I felt my face go red. I wanted to apologize, but I could feel the eyes of the rest of our group on me, and I just couldn't. I cleared my throat and turned to the board, ignoring her. "So – what about the next question?"
Evie rolled her eyes again and tuned out the rest of our discussion.
xXx
My room was now the same soft baby pink it had been in our townhouse. It was a pink-and-white paradise, just like always – I was incredibly consistent in my decorating. The room was finished now that the walls were done. All of the furniture and my clothes and albums and books and knick-knacks were in place, and even if there was still something off about it, it was at least starting to feel more settled – more like a place where I could be alright with being. Just being. My own little sanctuary, surrounded by pink. I could listen to Simon and Garfunkel or The Beatles on my record player and think happy pink-and-blue thoughts.
If only it were that easy.
As I read my chapters for The Catcher in the Rye that night, I kept catching myself staring out the window. I couldn't focus; I couldn't stop thinking about that flash of hurt on Evie Martin's face, the way what I had said to her had clearly made her feel lousy. Saying it had made me feel lousy. I had turned around and done the same thing to her that Two-Bit had been doing to me – I had said it just because I could, the same way he kept tapping my chair and smacking his gum because he knew it bothered me and Mr. James was too fed up with him to care.
I couldn't read anymore. I marked my page and threw it down on my desk, then got up and threw myself down on my bed so I could scream into my pillow.
AN: Thanks for reading!