Tell Me Three Things (2 page)

That’s what she said.

See, that’s the thing with email. I’d never say something like that in person. Crude. Suggestive. Like I am the kind of girl who could pull off that kind of joke. Who, face to face with an actual member of the male species, would know how to flirt, and flip my hair, and, if it came to it, know how to do much more than kiss. (For the record, I do know how to kiss. I’m not saying I’d ace an AP exam on the subject or, you know, win Olympic gold, but I’m pretty sure I’m not awful. I know this purely by way of comparison. Adam Kravitz. Ninth grade. Him: all slobber and angry, rhythmic tongue, like a zombie trying to eat my head. Me: all-too-willing participant, with three days of face chafing.)

Email is much like an ADD diagnosis. Guaranteed extra time on the test. In real life, I constantly rework conversations after the fact in my head, edit them until I’ve perfected my witty, lighthearted, effortless banter—all the stuff that seems to come naturally to other girls. A waste of time, of course, because by then I’m way too late. In the Venn diagram of my life, my imagined personality and my real personality have never converged. Over email and text, though, I am given those few additional beats I need to be the better, edited version of myself. To be that girl in the glorious intersection.

I should be more careful. I realize that now.
That’s what she said.
Really? Can’t decide if I sound like a frat boy or a slut; either way, I don’t sound like me. More importantly, I have no idea who I am writing to. Unlikely that SN truly is some do-gooder who feels sorry for the new girl. Or better yet, a secret admirer. Because of course that’s straight where my brain went, the result of a lifetime of devouring too many romantic comedies and reading too many improbable books. Why do you think I kissed Adam Kravitz? He was my neighbor back in Chicago. What better story is there than the girl who discovers that true love has been waiting right next door all along? Of course, my neighbor turned out to be a zombie with carbonated saliva, but no matter. Live and learn.

Surely SN is a cruel joke. He’s probably not even a he. Just a mean girl preying on the weak. Because let’s face it: I am weak. Possibly even pathetic. I lied. I don’t have a black belt in karate. I am not tough. Until last month, I thought I was. I really did. Life threw its punches, I got shat on, but I took it in the mouth, to mix my metaphors. Or not. Sometimes it felt just like getting shat on in the mouth. My only point of pride: no one saw me cry. And then I became the new girl at WVHS, in this weird area called the Valley, which is in Los Angeles but not in Los Angeles or something like that, and I ended up here because my dad married this rich lady who smells like fancy almonds, and juice costs twelve dollars here, and I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

I am as lost and confused and alone as I have ever been. No, high school will never be a time I look back on fondly. My mom once told me that the world is divided into two kinds of people: the ones who love their high school years and the ones who spend the next decade recovering from them. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, she said.

But something did kill her, and I’m not stronger. So go figure; maybe there’s a third kind of person: the ones who never recover from high school at all.

I
have somehow stumbled upon the Only Thing That Cannot Be Googled:
Who is SN?
One week after receiving the mysterious emails, I still have no idea. The problem is that I like to know things. Preferably in advance, with sufficient lead time to prepare.

Clearly, the only viable option is to Sherlock the shit out of this.

Let’s start at Day 1, that awful first day of school, which sucked, but to be fair probably sucked no more than every other day has sucked since my mom died. Because the truth is that every day since my mom died, she’s still been dead. Over and out. They’ve all sucked. Time does not heal all wounds, no matter how many drugstore sympathy cards hastily scrawled by distant relatives promise this to be true. But I figure on that first day there must have been some moment when I gave off enough pitiful
help me
vibes that SN actually took notice of me. Some moment when the whole
my life sucks
thing was worn visibly on the outside.

But figuring that out is not so simple, because that day turned out to be chock-full of embarrassment, a plethora of moments to choose from. First of all, I was late, which was Theo’s fault. Theo is my new stepbrother—my dad’s new wife’s son, who,
yippee,
is also a junior here, and has approached this whole blended-family dynamic by pretending I don’t exist. For some reason, I was stupid enough to assume that because we lived in the same house and we were going to the same school, we would drive in together. Nope. Turns out, Theo’s
GO GREEN
T-shirt is purely for show, and of course, he doesn’t have to worry his pretty little head about such petty things as, you know, gas money. His mom runs some big film marketing business, and their house (I may live there now, but it is in no way
my house
) has its own library. Except, of course, it’s filled with movies, not books, because: LA. And so I ended up taking my own car to school and getting stuck in crazy traffic.

When I finally got to Wood Valley High School—drove through its intimidating front gates and found a parking spot in its vast luxury car–filled lot and hiked up the long driveway—the secretary in the front office directed me to a group of kids who were sitting cross-legged in a circle in the grass, with a couple of guitar cases spread around. Like this was church camp or something. All
kumbaya, my Lord.
Apparently, that can happen in LA: class outside on an impossibly green lawn in September, backs leaned up against blooming trees. Already I was uncomfortable and sweating in my dark jeans, trying to shake off both my nerves and my road rage. All of the other girls had gotten the first-day-of-school memo; they were wearing light-colored, wispy summer dresses that hung off their tiny shoulders from even tinier straps.

So far, that’s the number one difference between LA and Chicago: all the girls here are thin and half naked.

Class was already in full swing, and I felt awkward standing there, trying to figure out how to enter the circle. Apparently, they were going around clockwise and telling the group what they did with their summer vacation. I finally plopped down behind two tall guys with the hopes they had already spoken and that I might be able to take cover.

Of course, I picked wrong.

“Hey, all. Caleb,” the guy right in front of me said, in an authoritative way that made it sound like he assumed everyone already knew that. I liked his voice: confident, as sure of his place as I was unsure of mine. “I went to Tanzania this summer, which was totally cool. First my family and I climbed Kilimanjaro, and my quads were sore for like weeks. And then I volunteered with a group building a school in a rural village. So, you know, I gave back a little. All in all, a great summer, but I’m happy to be home. I really missed Mexican food.” I started to clap after he was done—he climbed
Kilimanjaro
and
built a school,
for God’s sake, of course we were supposed to clap—but stopped as soon as I realized I was the only one. Caleb was wearing a plain gray T-shirt and designer jeans and was good-looking in a not-intimidating sort of way, his features just bland enough that he could be the kind of guy who I could possibly, one day,
maybe,
okay, probably not, date. Not really attainable, no, not at all, too hot for me, but the fantasy wasn’t so outrageous that I couldn’t revel in it for just a moment.

The shaggy guy sitting right in front of me was up next, and he too was cute, almost an equal to his friend.

Hmm. Maybe I’d surprise myself and end up liking it here after all. I’d have a great fantasy life, if not a real one.

“As you guys know, I’m Liam. I spent the first month interning at Google up in the Bay Area, which was great. Their cafeteria alone was worth the trip. And then I backpacked in India for most of August.” A good voice too. Melodic.

“Backpacked, my ass,” Caleb—Kilimanjaro-gray-T-shirt-guy—said, and the rest of the class laughed, including the teacher. I didn’t, because as usual I was a moment too late. I was too busy wondering how a high school kid gets an internship at Google and realizing that if this is my competition, I’m never getting into college. And okay, I was also checking out those two guys, wondering what their deal was. Caleb, his climb up Kilimanjaro notwithstanding, had a clean-cut frat-boy vibe, while Liam was more hipster cool. An interesting yin and yang.

“Whatever. Fine, I didn’t backpack. My parents wouldn’t let me go unless I promised to stay in nice hotels, because, you know, Delhi belly and all. But still, I feel like I got a real sense of the culture and a great application essay out of the deal, which was the point,” Liam said, and of course by then, I had caught on and knew not to clap.

“And you? What’s your name?” said the teacher, who I later found out was Mr. Shackleman, the gym teacher SN warned me likes to stare at girls’ asses. “I don’t recognize you from last year.” Not sure why he had to point so the whole class looked at me, but no big deal, I told myself. This was a first grader’s assignment: what did I do with my summer vacation? No reason for my hands to be shaking and my pulse to be racing; no reason for me to feel like I was in the early stages of congestive heart failure. I knew the signs. I had seen the commercials. All eyes were on me, including those of Caleb and Liam, both of whom were looking with amusement and suspicion. Or maybe it was curiosity. I couldn’t tell.

“Um, hi, I’m Jessie. I’m new here. I didn’t do anything exciting this summer. I mean, I…I moved here from Chicago, but until then, I worked, um, at, you know, the Smoothie King at the mall.” No one was rude enough to laugh outright, but this time I could easily read their looks. Straight-up pity. They had built schools and traveled to foreign locales, interned at billion-dollar corporations.

I had spent my two months off blending high-fructose corn syrup.

In retrospect, I realize I should have lied and said I helped paraplegic orphans in Madagascar. No one would have batted an eye.

Or clapped, for that matter.

“Wait. I don’t have you on my list,” Mr. Shackleman said. “Are you a senior?”

“Um, no,” I said, feeling a bead of sweat release and streak the side of my face. Quick calculation: would wiping it bring more or less attention to the fact that I was excreting a massive quantity of water from my pores? I wiped.

“Wrong class,” he said. “I don’t look like Mrs. Murray, do I?” There were outright laughs now at a joke that was marginally funny, at best. And twenty-five faces turned toward me again, sizing me up. I mean that literally: some of them seemed to be evaluating my size. “You’re inside.”

Mr. Shackleman pointed to the main building, so I had to get up and walk away while the entire class, including the teacher, including fantasy-worthy Caleb and Liam, watched me and my behind go. And only later, when I got to my actual homeroom and had to stand up and do the whole summer vacation thing all over again in front of another twenty-five kids—and utter the words “Smoothie King” for the second time to an equally appalled audience—did I realize I had a large clump of grass stuck to my ass.

On reflection, the number of people who may have sensed my desperation? At least fifty, and I’m estimating on the low side just to make myself feel better.

The truth is SN could be anyone.

Now, a whole fourteen days later, I stand here in the cafeteria with my stupid brown sandwich bag and look around at this new terrain—where everything is all shiny and
expensive
(the kids here drive actual BMWs, not old Ford Focuses with eBay-purchased BMW symbols glued on)—and I still don’t know where to go. I’m facing the problem encountered by every new kid ever: I have no one to sit with.

No chance of my joining Theo, my new stepbrother, who, the one time I said “hey” in the hall, blanked me with such intensity that I’ve given up even looking in his direction. He always seems to hang around with a girl named Ashby (yep, that’s really her name), who looks like a supermodel mid-runway—all dramatic gothy makeup, uncomfortable-looking designer clothes, blank wide features, pink spiked hair. I’m getting the sense that Theo is one of the more popular kids at this school—he fist-bumps his way down the hall—which is weird, because he’s the type of guy people would have teased in Chicago. Not because he’s gay—my classmates at FDR were not homophobic, at least not overtly—but because he’s flamboyant. A little much about muchness. Everything Theo does is theatrical, except when it comes to me, of course.

Last night, I ran into him before bed and he was actually wearing a silk smoking jacket, like a model in a cologne ad. True, my cheeks were smeared with zit cream and I reeked of tea tree oil, looking like my own ridiculous parody of a pimply teenager. Still, I had the decency to pretend that it wasn’t strange that our lives had suddenly, and without our consent, become commingled. I said my friendliest goodnight, since I can’t see the point of being rude. It’s not like that’s going to unmarry our parents. But Theo just gave me an elaborate and elegant grunt, one with remarkable subtext:
You and your gold-digger dad should get the hell out of my house.

He’s not wrong. I mean, my dad’s not interested in his mom’s money. But we
should
leave. We should get on a plane this afternoon and move back to Chicago, even though that’s an impossibility. Our house is sold. The bedroom I slept in for the entirety of my life now cradles a seven-year-old and her extensive American Girl doll collection. It’s lost, along with everything else I recognize.

As for today’s lunch, I considered taking my sad PB&J to the library, a plan that was foiled by a very stern
NO EATING
sign. Too bad, because the library here is amazing, so far the only thing I would admit is an improvement over FDR. (At FDR, we didn’t really have a library. We had a book closet, which was mostly used as a place to make out. Then again, FDR was, you know, public school. This place costs a bajillion dollars a year, a bill footed for me by Dad’s new wife.) The school brochure said the library was donated by some studio bigwig with a recognizable last name—and the chairs are all fancy, the sort of thing you’d see in one of those high-end design magazines Dad’s new wife keeps strategically placed around the house. “Design porn,” she calls them, with that nervous laugh that makes it clear that she only talks to me because she has to.

I refuse to eat in the restroom, because that’s what pathetic kids do in books and movies, and also because it’s gross. The burnouts have colonized the back lawn, and anyway, I don’t want to sacrifice my lungs at the altar of fake friendship. There’s that weird Koffee Kart thing, which would normally be right up my alley, despite its stupid name: Why “Ks”? Why? But no matter how fast I get there after calculus, the two big comfy chairs are always taken. In one is the weird guy who wears the same vintage Batman T-shirt and black skinny jeans every day and reads books even fatter than the ones I tend to like. (Is he actually reading? Or are the books props? Come on, who reads Sartre for fun?) The other is taken by a revolving group of too-loud giggling girls who flirt with the Batman, whose real name is Ethan, which I know only because we have homeroom and English together. (On that first day, I learned he spent the summer volunteering at a music camp for autistic kids. He did not, in any way, operate a blender. Plus side: he did not give me one of those pitying looks I got from the rest of the class when I told them about my super-cool smoothie gig, but then again, that’s because he couldn’t be bothered to look at me at all.)

Despite the girls’ best efforts, the Batman doesn’t seem interested in them. He does the bare minimum—a half-hug, no-eye-contact brush-off—and he seems to shrink after each one, the effort costing him in some invisible way. (Apparently, there’s a lot of hugging and double kisses at this school, one on each cheek, as if we are Parisian and twenty-two and not American and sixteen and still awkward in every way that matters.) Can’t figure out why they keep coming back to him, each time in that bubble of hilarity, as if being in high school
is so much fun!
Seriously, does it need to be repeated? For the vast majority of us,
high school is not fun; high school is the opposite of fun.

I wonder what it’s like to talk in superlatives like these girls do:
Ethan, you are just the funniest! For reals. Like, the funniest!

“You need some fresh air. Come walk with us, Eth,” a blond girl says, and ruffles his hair, like he is a small, disobedient child. Sixteen-year-old flirting looks the same in Los Angeles and Chicago, though I would argue that the girls here are even louder, as if they think there’s a direct correlation between volume and male attention.

“Nah, not today,” the Batman says, polite but cold. He has dark hair and blue eyes. Cute if you’re into that
I don’t give a crap
look. I get why that girl ruffled his hair. It’s thick and tempting.

But he seems mean. Or sad. Or both. Like he too is counting the days until he graduates from this place and in the meantime can’t be bothered to fake it.

For what it’s worth: 639 days, including weekends. Even I manage to fake it. Most of the time.