"If you keep craning your neck like that, you're going to break it someday," Damian remarked. He was looking up from filing his nails, watching Cady peer up and down the hallway. She was on the lookout for the plastics.
"For real Caddy, stop moving, I just need your profile," Janis squinted at her sketchpad, erasing a line she had drawn. She was working on quick-sketching, drawing Cady and Damian where they stood in the hallway before school started.
"Sorry guys, I just need to find Regina and make sure everything's ok." Cady didn't stop turning, checking the ends of the hallway robotically.
"You think after Friday that you'd want to avoid Regina, but no," Damian bit his lip as he yanked on a hangnail.
"I mean, I just have to make sure that she's not like, mad or anything. About the Aaron thing. And that Gretchen didn't tell her anything," Cady reached down and itched at the side of her foot. She had worn the heels today that Regina had bought her on that first mall trip—the one where she had fatally revealed to Gretchen that she thought Aaron was cute. So far, Gretchen had kept her promise not to tell Regina about her ill-placed affection, but Cady didn't trust her as far as she could throw her. And the heels were massively uncomfortable too.
Cady needed them though, to fit the part of a plastic. She knew that once people from the party showed up, she'd have to look physically flawless. Then they'd think her fall was cute and endearing—like if it had been Karen. Karen had been right when she said people laughed with her—or at least, they seemed to indulge her clumsiness, if it meant seeing more of her happy, bouncing chest.
Cady had worn the lacy pink push-up bra again as well. She flashed back to picking it out with Karen, and then to wearing it Friday night. . .
No. Janis was being great about dropping that, and Cady needed to be that good as well. The bra made her boobs pop and would make Regina think she was one of them. And she desperately needed that—if she didn't have chances to hang with Aaron, she'd die. And if people saw her as some pathetic thing fallen from the grace of the Plastics… she shuddered at the thought of ending up in the Burn Book, the laughing stock of the school.
"Dear god Caddy, hold still!" Janis whined.
Just then, Cady spotted Regina at the end of the hallway, rounding the corner, Gretchen just behind her and to the right, exactly like a heeling dog.
"Bye guys!" Cady exclaimed, rushing off to meet them.
"God forbid she be seen with us," Damian huffed, blowing on his nails to remove any particles.
"Done!" Janis exclaimed, turning and showing Damian her sketch. He couldn't help but let out a laugh—he was drawn rosy cheeked and cherubic, looking like a total twink, and Cady was drawn in Barbie proportions, her head inflated like a balloon.
"You're evil," Damian teased Janis. She tried to laugh as well, watching Cady's receding back as she hobbled to greet Regina. It didn't sound real.
"Hey guys!" Cady called. She should have thought through wearing the heels a little more—it wasn't even first period yet, but she felt like her feet were being sliced in half with every step.
"Careful," Regina scoffed. "Don't fall."
"Ha ha, very funny," Cady pulled up in front of Regina at her locker, leaning against the wall to relieve some of the weight on her feet.
"I wasn't laughing," Regina remarked.
"Hey Gretch, how's your eye?" Cady turned to Gretchen, trying to brush off the rejection.
"My eye? Oh, that. It's fine," Gretchen's face was buried in her phone, thumbs moving at a blurred pace as she texted someone. Cady's stomach sank. She was being treated like the low man on the totem pole.
"So. . ." Cady started awkwardly, desperately searching for something to say. "How was the party Friday, after I left?"
"You left?" Regina continued eying the hallway like some sort of queen surveying her kingdom.
"Uhh, yeah. After I fell. I was like, soo embarrassed!" Cady pitched her voice higher, trying to play off the shame she had felt.
"Oh," Regina replied absently, pulling her phone from her pocket as it buzzed. The taste in Cady's mouth soured. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and looked at it's empty screen for a moment, mimicking Regina. She needed something to put her back in Regina's good graces—she couldn't live with this icky feeling of being the odd man out.
Gretchen was wearing some sort of statement outfit; red stilettos with a pair of jeans that was super low-cut and some sort of faux fur coat that rode up, revealing an inch or so of underwear at the small of her back. Were those bunny rabbits?
"Gretch, those bunnies are so cute!" Cady fawned. Perhaps not anatomically correct, the little buns had massive ears and some of them were eating carrots. Gretchen turned, her attention drawn from her phone, and yanked her jeans up, hiding the inch of underwear from sight, her cheeks red. Cady noticed the response she had caused and immediately paled.
"I'm so sorry, it was meant to be a compliment—"
"You have rabbits on your underwear? What are you, a middle schooler?" Regina giggled a bit, as though rabbits on underwear was pathetically hilarious. Gretchen shot Cady a dirty look.
"Cadyyyyyy!" Karen squealed from across the hallway, trotting towards the girls in her signature, bouncy style.
"Hi Karen!" Cady couldn't help but laugh. Even if Gretchen and Regina were icing her, she could always count on Karen to be sweet to her.
"Look at what Shane Oman sent me! It's so adorable!" Karen thrust her phone out to Cady.
It was a pixeled photo of her and Karen from the party.
She was on the ground, in the process of getting up from her fall in a way that made her look the furthest thing from graceful. Her shirt had draped away from her chest, revealing the embarrassing pink details of her push-up bra. Karen was above her, clearly trying to help her up but looking equally drunk and stupid in the process. The way she was bent over also revealed her bra—a more sensibly sexy piece that still left little to the imagination. At the bottom of the photo, somebody had put in glittery pink text "Klutz Slutz".
Cady's stomach dropped out of her body as she took in the image in front of her. She was speechless. Karen pulled her phone back and tapped out a text before putting it back in her pocket.
"Isn't that hilarious?! I like, literally died when he sent it to me. It's like, you and me! Now we're the klutz slutz! Together!"
Was this what it was like for Karen, being the ditzy hot girl? She was supposed to laugh at that? She had wanted to channel her inner Karen to get through the embarrassment of the fall, but laughing about it like that didn't make her feel better. It just felt. . . humiliating.
The bell rang and Cady fought her reflex to run to her first class of the day, to hide from the shame of the fall and her new moniker. If this was what it meant to be plastic—having Regina dismiss her, Gretchen fighting with her for Regina's affection, and Karen rejoicing in the fact that they were called 'slutz', she wasn't so sure she wanted to buy in anymore.
"So Cady, you need a boyfriend."
Regina dipped a tater tot into ketchup on her tray before dropping the tot back among its peers. It was part of her latest fad where she did all the rituals that went with eating, besides actually eating.
"Sorry, what?" Cady set down her bitten tot, only realizing as she did so that she was the only one who had eaten any of her food at the table. Gretchen and Karen both dissected the greasy food in front of them without ever putting any in their mouths. Cady self-consciously shoved her tray away.
"You need a boyfriend to dress up with for Halloween. Duh. Do you prefer black guys? Because of, well, Africa?" Regina tittered as though it was a forbidden word. Cady blanched.
Regina wasn't actually trying to help her, she was just trying to shame her. Or maybe, she was remembering the party, and how she had noticed Cady watching Aaron? Cady couldn't be sure; Regina would be the kind of person to do something like this just because she was bored. But she would also do something like this as a cruel joke, or to get Cady to stay away from Aaron.
"Uh, yeah, totally! I mean, all guys are cute—there are a lot of cute football players," Cady quipped.
"So you are? Into black guys?" Regina asked drolly.
"Sure, I guess."
"Cady, Jesus, what did you eat last night? A block of Himalayan salt? I've never seen you so puffy!"
Regina reached out and pinched Cady's cheek, poking her perfectly manicured nail at the bags under Cady's eyes.
Cady had eaten a lot of salt last night—she had gotten fast food with Damian and Janis.
Janis had awkwardly manipulated it so she didn't sit in the booth next to Cady. Afterwards, she had responded to Cady's text that she had had fun with an overly enthusiastic, "yeah, me too!" and then ignored all the memes that Cady sent her.
Typically, she would send some back, or at least send some reaction gifs (usually sarcastic reactions to Cady's favorite puns). Cady had thought things after last Friday were getting better, but the whole night had made her think twice about that.
She had tossed and turned afterwards, trying to get to sleep, worrying that Janis didn't like her anymore and was going to stop being friends with her. It seemed so stupid to think about, but the churning in her stomach made it feel so real and terrifying.
That was probably why the circles under her eyes were so dark—the next thing Regina pointed out in their now weekly ritual of self-criticism in her massive bedroom mirror.
"So, how have you been lately?"
Cady sucked on the straw of her smoothie awkwardly, trying to suck out the overly thick mix.
"I've been fine," Gretchen replied testily. She had opted for a juice instead of a smoothie—some sort of cleanse—and watched Cady slurp at her straw with condescension.
"I wanted to ask you for some advice," Cady began hesitantly. In reality, she didn't need any advice, she just felt like Gretchen had been acting weird towards her and wanted to do something to bridge that gap before it got weird. Plus, Gretchen could choose to reveal her Aaron secret to Regina at any moment, which would totally ruin Cady.
Gretchen perked up immediately, looking at Cady with interest. Advice giving typically came along with stories, which were typically secrets, and Gretchen thrived on secrets. Cady knew that, and was hoping the yarn she'd spun about some convoluted romance would help mend whatever was off between her and Gretchen. Plus, it would lead her off of thinking about Cady and Aaron.
The way Gretchen looked at her, attention riveted, just confirmed that she was right.
Cady always hated balancing Janis and Damian and the plastics at school. It was Thursday afternoon and she was walking with the plastics down the hallway towards the parking lot so they could go to the mall in Regina's car. She was doing her best to keep up in the heels—she was wearing them again, after allowing Gretchen to help her 'learn' to walk in the them the night before—and smile and make it look effortless and laugh with Gretchen about something stupid.
She saw Janis and Damian way too late, standing by Damian's locker. They glared at her as she passed, ignoring them. As she walked (painfully) away, she heard a locker door slam louder than it needed to. She knew they hated it, but weren't they also the ones who wanted her to spy on Regina originally?
She fed them constant stories about the gossip Regina heard and the mean pranks she played—if anything, they seemed to be getting bored with it. Cady's refusal to prank Regina in return seemed to bother them too. Saturday was Halloween—Karen had helped her choose a costume, and she was going to go trick-or-treating with Janis and Damian before watching a scary movie and getting drunk at Janis's place. It was going to be a fun night, and Cady hoped some quality time would help mend the awkwardness caused by the way she had to act at school. Plus, she was having another tutoring session with Aaron tomorrow, and she would be able to debrief with them about how it went after. They couldn't still be upset with her, not then.