Snark and Circumstance (3 page)

She smirks and says, “You may be the only vegan in town,” as she walks away.

Gary shakes his head and laughs nervously. “That was unreal. Does she know she’s a cultural stereotype?” And for the first time since we moved to Longbourne, I feel like I have found someone to talk to. I smile and nod in agreement. Dave suggests that after I do the anti-dissection essay for the paper, I should do a whole “Ethics of Eating” column and I find myself smiling again because, I have to admit, that sounds like a good idea.

***

On the way to Willow’s party on Friday, Tori and I drop Leigh off at her church in East Longbourne. East Longbourne seems to have started out as the working person’s Longbourne. Except for a handful of small, clapboard houses—old farms that have been swallowed up by the housing developments that make up East Longbourne—none of the homes seem to have been built before the 1950s. There are a lot of ranch houses with aluminum siding and strip malls and chain restaurants, which you would never see in Longbourne proper. In our town, there’s only a boutique selling Vineyard Vines clothing and expensive little wallets made out of quilted floral fabric, the aforementioned Starbucks, and a Brooks Brothers in a tiny shopping area by the only grocery store in Longbourne. Business is done elsewhere; Longbourne is for gracious living, I guess.

And few live more graciously than the Harpers. Their house is three times the size of ours and looks like a French chateau that took a wrong turn at the English Channel and just kept going. As we pull into the smooth, black semicircle of the Harpers’ driveway, I force myself to remember the ideas I had come up with for being more social, many of which, I am embarrassed to say, I got from some of Cassie’s magazines. Though I am not, as Cosmo suggested, going to drop a pencil to bend down and pick up so that people can admire the view inside my strategically low-cut blouse. Instead, I am wearing a black denim miniskirt, my black Chuck Taylors, and my fox t-shirt again, for luck. But as we walk around the house to the party on the terraced lawns below, I start to regret my sartorial choice. But a glance down at the t-shirt reminds me of the psychology project Allison and I did as freshmen together and inspires a brilliant survival strategy. I am going to treat the party as an experiment: a field observation of Homo snobholus americanus in its natural habitat—the suburban garden party.

The thought of taking mental notes throughout the party and reporting back to Allison has me momentarily cheered up. I will combine a clinical study with a test run of popularity-garnering tips from a random sampling of Cassie’s magazines. Maybe I’ll even major in sociology or psychology in college and use Willow and her friends as the basis for my thesis. I’m feeling kind of hopeful, even a little excited, because now I have a purpose.

And then I get within view of the party.

This promised to be an A-list party, and apparently the A-list at LHS is even smaller than I had imagined because there are only a handful of people there, all of them tanned from weekends on the Cape and wearing shirts and shorts the colors of Skittles. Some guys from the lacrosse team are attempting to play hacky sack with a hard white ball around the koi pond a few feet below the grey stone patio. A few people sit on teakwood chairs near a bar that looks like it belongs in some cheesy, tiki-themed, vaguely Polynesian restaurant. Among the guests I recognize Darien Drake, a senior whose sleek black hair, pale skin, and dark blue eyes allow her to look exotic even in a white polo shirt and a short pink skirt with green seahorses cavorting across it. She is sitting on the end of a chaise occupied by none other than Michael Endicott, who is sporting a blue Oxford shirt that looks as if the maid had pressed it for him minutes ago with a pair of similarly creaseless khakis. Michael and Darien look up as we approach, but then immediately go back to their conversation. The hostess, Willow, is in no hurry to greet us either, and instead trails her manicured hand along the arm of the blond boy she is speaking to. He, on the other hand, immediately breaks into a grin that spreads a patch of light freckles across his face.

“Tori!” he calls. “You made it!” He rises and lopes toward us. “And this must be your sister. Hi, I’m Trey,” he says to me, extending his hand. We shake, but he’s still looking at Tori and smiling like he has just won a big stuffed dog for knocking over some milk bottles at the fair.

Willow suddenly appears behind Trey, planting a hand on his shoulder to steer him back to the seated guests.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve already met Trey-eyyy,” she says to us over her shoulder. “He’s the guest of honor—I put this together for him, you know, since he’s new to Longbourne.” She takes a seat next to him and adds, “Oh, and help yourselves to drinks.”

Tori thanks her and takes the chair on the other side of Trey, asking him about his first week at school. As I walk over to the bar, I notice Willow and Darien exchange a look. There are lots of fragile-looking glasses in different shapes and sizes and bottles of beer and wine and some things I would have to mix, which all seems too complicated. I decide to just pour a glass of soda and put some homemade-looking tortilla chips and salsa with huge chunks of tomato and jalapeno on a plate—a real plate, not paper. And then I make myself walk over to Michael and Darien, since Michael is the only person I know at all besides Tori. This thought does not exactly settle the tsunami forming in my stomach.

“Hey, you’re here, too!” I say to him as brightly as possible.

“Your powers of observation are formidable,” Michael says and Darien giggles behind one perfectly manicured hand, like some sort of preppie geisha.

“I have a couple of ideas about the bio-lab thing,” I say as I sit down on a stray paisley seat cushion that is as thick as my mattress at home; so thick I almost topple off of it backward, getting salsa all over my face. I can picture this so vividly I cringe a little. So much for Cosmo tricks and clinical detachment.

Michael raises an eyebrow and just looks at me. I assume this is an invitation to keep speaking, so I say, “There are these great apps now for dissection that could be used instead—”

“What if someone wants to get into medical school?” he asks and takes a quick sip of his drink. “They need to do actual dissection, not move their finger across a screen.”

Not in eleventh grade, I want to point out, but I don’t. Across the patio, Tori smiles at me as she pulls on one of her curls and then turns back to Trey.

“I guess, but it could be an alternative for other, less ambitious people. Or, like I said before, I could do all of the write-ups and drawings. I can’t draw people at all—they come out all wonky, like monsters, somehow—but I am actually pretty good at drawing just about anything else.” I smile lamely and get no indication that he’s heard anything I’ve said, so I finish with, “I mean, I think I can handle drawing a frog intestine, if that helps. Assuming frogs have intestines . . .”

I can’t be sure, but I am willing to bet that Darien rolls her eyes behind her big Chanel shades, and she says something to Michael too softly for me to hear. They’re a perfect match, those two, and they don’t need me to witness their patrician perfection for them, so I walk over to Tori and Trey and Willow and try my last magazine ploy.

“Those sandals are gorgeous, Willow,” I coo as I set my plate down on the nearest hard surface. I am pretty sure I am going to spill it if my hand shakes any harder.

She smiles slightly and looks down at my battered high tops. I take a perch on the wide armrest of Tori’s seat and resolve to ditch the stupid Cosmo advice and try instead to maintain an objective eye for observation. But I can feel that clinical distance withering by the second.

“This week has been really great,” Trey is saying. “Everyone has been so friendly here, I already feel like I’m part of things.”

I say, “It must be hard, moving in your last year, as a senior. We moved here last year too.” I don’t say, though, that last year no one was throwing any parties for us.

“Yes, where did you come from again?” Willow asks me.

“Colorado,” I say. I can feel Michael’s dark eyes on me now as Darien leans in and whispers to him again.

“Oh, that’s right.” Willow traces the rim of her glass with a long finger. “Well, we have a house in Vail.”

“It’s beautiful up there!” Tori says and they talk for a while about the Rocky Mountains and how Willow finds them to be inferior to east-coast mountains in their shocking lack of vegetation, something she seems to take as a personal affront. Tori says how excited she is to see the leaves starting to change color again, since it had been years since we saw that before last fall, and I start to agree, but I feel Michael’s eyes on me again.

It is truly disturbing that such a cool stare can make me feel like I’ve been singed somehow.

When I can’t take his voiceless stare any longer, I ask him how his first week at LHS has gone. Maybe I can get him to reveal what a pompous snobhole he is. For research purposes, of course.

“Fine,” he says.

“You don’t miss your other school—what was it . . .?” I ask. Even though I can remember the name, I like the look of annoyance that crosses his face, as if I had forgotten the most obvious thing in the world, like my own name or the state capital or something.

“The Pemberley School,” Darien answers for him.

But Michael keeps his eyes on me when he says, “No. I don’t.”

We seem to be locked in a creepy version of the elementary school staring contest, holding each other’s gaze until the other one cries “uncle” or something. His mouth twists slightly at the corner; otherwise his face is blank. I don’t know if he is challenging me to ask him why he left Pemberley or if he is inviting me to beg him for all the thrilling details of his first week at Longbourne. Either way, I don’t feel like playing. I just sigh and look away. This experiment is over and I just want to go home and eat some coconut milk ice cream right out of the carton and watch a stupid movie with one of the cats.

As I am planning an escape, Tori asks to use the bathroom. Willow gives her directions, and then turns to me as Tori departs, saying, “Sooooo . . . Cassie? That’s the sister who’s joined the cheerleading squad, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, she certainly seems, um . . . perky.”

“That’s what you want in a cheerleader, right?” I answer. I can imagine what Willow thinks of my boy-crazy, future-car-show-model sister. Same thing everyone else thinks of her, but no one outside the family has any business thinking it. And I don’t even want to imagine what they think of Leigh. But they’re my sisters, and no one else is allowed to say stuff like this about them.

Michael asks me suddenly, “What school activities are you involved in, Georgia? Sports? Music? What did you do back in Colorado?”

I wonder why he’s decided to be Mr. Conversationalist all of a sudden. I take a sip of my drink and say through the chip of ice that wedges between my teeth, “I was a rodeo clown.”

“Really.” Willow crosses her arms and assesses my party attire. “You look like you should write for that alternative paper the administration is always trying to shut down.”

“Sick!” Trey enthuses as he plunks some ice cubes in a glass and pours himself something brown.

“It’s not shutting down. Mr. Mullin is going to be the faculty advisor,” I say. I don’t mention that I am working on an article for the first edition of the semester. There is no reason to let Willow know that she has pegged me so easily.

“Maybe you should start a local branch of PETA, Georgiana,” Michael says as he rattles the ice in his glass. “I’m sure you could find lots of people who want to make the world a better place for earthworms.”

“Earthworms?” Darien gasps, nose wrinkling, and Trey cocks his sandy head to the side like a puppy and asks, “You like earthworms? Wow.”

“Yes. Georgiana likes earthworms. Even dead ones. She—”

Michael is cut off by a piercing cry and I am so irritated by him that it takes me a second to register that the cry comes from the terrace behind us. Trey, on the other hand, is out of his seat and bolting toward Tori’s crumpled body in an instant, taking the wide stone steps two at a time. Soon I am there, too, beside Trey, leaning over her and looking down at her foot, which is already starting to swell around her sandals.

“I fell,” she says with a weak laugh. “I’m such a spaz.”

“Does it hurt?” I ask, but I’m cut off by Michael, who is climbing along the orange-and-rust colored mums over to Tori’s other side as agilely as one of those donkeys that climb along the sides of the Grand Canyon.

“Don’t move,” he barks. “Don’t try to get up on your own.”

Tori smiles grimly and nods. I can tell she is holding back tears.

“Does it hurt bad?” Trey asks.

“I’ll be okay.”

“You should definitely have that looked at,” Michael tells her, then turns to Trey and says, “It’s probably a sprain but it could be a fracture. You should get her to the urgent care place in East Longbourne.”

“Shouldn’t she go to the ER, just to be sure?” I ask.

“No,” Michael tells me. “You don’t want to go into Netherfield tonight.”

“Look,” I spit out, “I know everyone in Longbourne acts like going into Netherfield, the big bad city, is like a trip into downtown Kabul, but shouldn’t she see a doctor as soon possible?”

Michael gives me a look that could curdle milk. “I am not passing judgment on Netherfield. You just don’t want to sit in the ER for hours while they take care of all the gunshot wounds and car accidents first. Or do you, just to prove how much more worldly and enlightened you are than the rest of Longbourne?”

“Owwww!” Tori wails, which at least turns Michael’s attention from me. He says in a voice that is surprisingly gentle, “Tori, can you wiggle your toes?”

She gives toe wiggling a brave attempt but winces so hard Trey and Michael nod to each other. Supporting her under her upper arms, the three of us get Tori to the driveway and into Trey’s red convertible. Willow, meanwhile, is apparently still too absorbed in her conversation with Darien below to recognize that one of her guests is injured—or that Trey is leaving his own welcome party.