Chapter Text
By 2009, Sherwood was coming apart by its seams—not torn, but like when you pick out the threads with a seam ripper during Home Ec. Pulling out more and less than you mean to, and you’re never quite sure which you’ll end up getting. The recession didn’t arrive with drama; it came slow and colorless, seeping in through the cracks of grocery store floorboards and the peeling clapboard of the houses, hollowing out everything it touched. The auto plant two towns over had shut down two years ago. The ripple of that closure was still spreading like air pollution—invisible, but insidious, and absolutely everywhere in Ohio. The population: low and getting lower. The mood: the longest funeral you’ve ever been to. Sherwood’s always been the kind of place that you drive through without noticing, maybe stop for gas, if you’re really desperate, then keep going.
The downtown strip has always been quiet. Kincaid-esque, if that was the kind of thing that suited you. Now, it was holding its breath. The “For Lease” signs had been in the windows so long their corners curled. The diner, once upon twenty-four seven for truckers and shift workers, now closed by seven, its neon sign flickering faintly against the early dark. Mom says the town isn’t dead, just “economically challenged,” but when the grocery store started locking its doors at 6pm because hardly anyone was dropping by after dark anyway, it was a bit harder to deny that ‘dead’ was the only word to describe the state of Sherwood.
Every morning, the church parking lot fills up with people waiting for the food pantry. Mrs Duke does a lot of that shit—she’s uptight, like her daughter, and she flits around in perfect hair and makeup, untouched by the mass layoff and foreclosures—handing out canned corn and bags of rice under a mural of the town from the 1960s, when it apparently had color. The mural shows a small river that is now gray, and is nowhere near Sherwood in real life, and smokestacks that don’t smoke anymore, and kids in overalls smiling like they didn’t know any better. I still find it hard to believe people used to believe in this place.
Sherwood is a relic, left behind by time and economics. A decaying time capsule of that old time-y American Dream, where everyone could have that nice three bedroom house and white picket fence. Hell, my mom’s own family believed it. Why else would you come from Beirut to fucking Ohio, of all places? That doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t know anyone my age who doesn’t talk about leaving the moment they graduate.
Since there’s shit else to do, most of my days can be categorized as ‘days I go to school’ and ‘days I don’t.’ Not that Westerburg High could really be called a place of learning. It’s more like a prison with delusions of grandeur—flat, brick-made and hopeless, and it hasn’t been updated since the 80s, when teachers were still allowed to smoke on campus. The parking lot is a pond of cracked asphalt and oil stains that have been there longer than half the students. The flag out front is sun-bleached and flaccid, which honestly just feels symbolic. Inside, it smells like wet mop and expired ambition. The floors are a patchwork of different linoleum squares that never actually look very clean. The ceilings like when it rains, so there are buckets everywhere, lined up like we’re collecting alms from God himself. The fluorescent lights flicker like a low-budget exploitation film. The heaters only seem to work in May.
The teachers are…fine, I guess, if you like martyrdom. Ms. Flemming thinks we’re all destined for some kind of greatness—oration, story-telling, shit like that. It’s adorable, considering we barely have working computers, and I’m pretty sure we’re the epicenter of the American literacy crisis Fox News keeps crying about. Mr. Rawlins in chemistry used two-litre bottles for experiments because the school can’t afford real lab equipment. It’s honestly a miracle no one has blown themselves up yet.
And somehow this is where I spend most of my life. All of it, really, since the building right next to it doubles as the middle school and elementary school. I’m popular enough. I think that’s what makes it tolerable. People smile and wave at me in the hallways; they remember my name (not a feat, given there’s only 130 students in all four years total), laugh at my jokes, ask me where I got my jacket. It’s like being a celebrity in a movie no one wants to watch. The football team still plays even though the scoreboard doesn’t, and Heather M. and her cheerleaders perform like this is all something that even fucking matters. Maybe that’s the trick—pretend hard enough, and maybe you won’t notice how sad the place really is.
Yeah, well, most of the people here have only known Sherwood anyway, and it’s easy to be the big fish in a small pond. I don’t think that wake-up call would be one that gets appreciated.
It’s one of those days that feels like it never really starts. The sky is gray, the kind of gray that makes everything look half-dead, and my alarm goes off at 6:30 even though it doesn’t matter if I’m late—no one cares, least of all me. I stare at the ceiling for a while, trying to feel something. I don’t.
At school, the halls smell like pencil shavings and cafeteria grease. Everyone looks slightly damp, as if the boredom has started to condense on their skin. Kurt Kelly smiles at me while I pass him; I don’t acknowledge him. It will only make things worse, since he’s decided (after failing to get Heather Chandler’s attention from April to June) that I’m the hottest girl in town, and has been at me like a dog after a bone since then. I don’t know what will make him bored, but I’m hoping it’s soon. Footballers make me feel like a sex zombie, so I’ve sworn off all athletes—high schoolers and college guys alike.
My friends are already waiting for me when I get to Heather’s locker. I can smell them before I see them—vanilla body spray and flat-ironed hair. Warm, surgery, and artificial—sixteen as a signature scent. I’m no different—my nails are just as French-tipped, my lip gloss is just as glittery, and my mascara is just as dark. They dress like a magazine spread that got lost somewhere between Seventeen and a JCPenney clearance rack—in Westerburg, they may as well have just walked off the Paris Fashion Week runway. Heather Chandler is hot as always, dressed in a tight white baby tee that shows off her big tits and skinny arms and a short red miniskirt. She’s always dressed for the club, no matter the occasion. Her hair has that perfect, beachy blowout, but is just messy enough to look like she doesn’t care too much. Her hoop earrings catch the hallway lights like small, aggressive suns.
Heather Duke has mastered the art of looking expensive, though I don’t know how much of it is performance, and how much is real. Light blue skinny jeans tucked into tan Ugg boots, and a long cream cardigan that probably came from American Eagle, and a light green tank top with lace trim. She has a stack of bangles—some jade, some not—that clink every time she types on her phone, which is, of course, a green Motorola Razr.
Heather McNamara is wearing one of those Juicy Couture velour tracksuits in pastel yellow, the kind with “JUICY” splashed across the back in glittering rhinestones. Her hair is perfectly flat-ironed, highlights shimmering under the fluorescents like a halo of split ends. Her smile is brighter than the sun, of course. Maybe wearing yellow is good for the soul, because she’s always smiling.
I’m fatigued before I even get over to say hello—visually, mentally. Heather M. is telling a story about her mom’s new boyfriend, who apparently drives a BMW and “used to work in finance before everything went downhill.” Everyone laughs like they understand what that means. I do, technically, but it still sounds like a line from a sitcom that got cancelled mid-season.
“Are you coming Saturday?” Heather asks, leaning against her locker. Her breath blasts me with minty coolness. She means a party, of course. There’s always a party, since there’s fuck all else to do. Always in someone’s basement, always the same music, same beer, same bad decisions.
“Probably,” I say, because that’s what I always say. If I’m a no show, the town will talk. The adults too, because the kids are all they have to be entertained by. If I do go, there’s a seventy percent chance I’ll hate every minute of it. There’s no winning in Sherwood.
They talk over each other, voice overlapping like the static on a dead channel—the usual shit. Who’s dating who, who got caught smoking in the bathroom, who might have cheated on the chemistry test last week. It’s all shit I already know, but I smile and pretend to care. On days like these, I’m too tired to act like it’s all some high-value blind item to know what Courtney Hawker has been up to (pathetically trying to date Heather Duke’s ex from last year), but I’ve mastered the art of selective listening: keep eye contact, smile at the right time, offer a one word comment to sound engaged—really?, no way, ugh, she would. It’s muscle memory by now.
Heather M. pulls out her phone to show me a blurry picture from last weekend. “You look so hot in this one,” she says, and passes it around. I look at it—it’s me, in a very short short dress, holding a bottle of beer, with my smile frozen and my eyes glazed, like someone digitally edited “fun” onto my face.
“Ugh, you are so cute, Ver,” Heather agrees, nodding her approval. I guess that means I’m permitted to put it on MySpace.
In first period, Ms. Flemming is explaining metaphors again. Sometimes, I think she must have had a secret past as a Shakespearean actress, with the way she delivers our lessons. I watch the clock more than I listen. None of it is hard; our textbooks are all at least twenty years out of date. I already know I’m too smart for this school. The second hand jerks forward in tiny, mocking clicks. Outside, a janitor is scraping ice off the sidewalk, and for a moment I envy him—at least his job looks like it has purpose.
At lunch, the scene repeats but with worse lighting. Same table, tame people, same topics. Heather D. complains about her bad luck with dating and Heather M. complains about homework, and I complain about the dismal quality of our cafeteria food. Heather M. says, “We should totally go to the lake over spring break,” which is what we always do anyway. Heather is texting who-the-fuck-knows. She always has someone to text, because someone is always desperately trying to reach her. I listen to them talk about plans that don’t exist and futures that sound like TV commercials. They think they’re building memories; I know we’re just filling time.
At some point, Heather D. laughs so hard she spills her Diet Coke (her only lunch, every day—she only eats full meals in her room, where no one else can see it) and it spreads across the table, sticky and sparkling under the flickering light. Everyone shrieks and giggles. I grab napkins, teasing Heather along with the rest, but I’m really just watching the fizz die out on the tabletop, tiny bubbles popping one by one, until all that’s left is a flat brown puddle.
By afternoon, the fluorescent lights start to hum like hornets swarming the inside of your skull. Mr. Rawlins makes us copy chemical equations off the board. I draw a line down my notebook and write nothing on one side, something on the other, just to see which feels truer.
After school, I drive home with the radio off. The roads are empty except for a truck ahead of me carrying hay bales that leave dust in the air. It’s too early to go home but too late to go anywhere else. When I get to my driveway, I sit in the car for a long time, engine still running, staring at the outline of the water tower against the colorless sky.
Life is not supposed to be miserable when you know you’re pretty. Obviously, it’s different when you think you’re ugly, but you’re actually really beautiful. If you think you’re ugly, that means you don’t look in mirrors and don’t have any selfies on your camera roll and you’re always awkwardly off to the side in group photos—almost none of just you. You do all this because you are very preoccupied and your mind is very important, and you’re just so laid back and chill and nice. This makes even your misery beautiful, something to be envied and desired, and it means you have never deserved any of that misery in the first place. When you know you’re pretty, and your MySpace page is full of selfies and posed photos and you wear makeup and do your hair every day and you plan your outfits the night before and do your nails, the only kind of misery you’re allowed to have is being a victim to your own superficiality, but everything else is enviable—you get boys and money and clothes and friends and everybody loves you.
Obviously, I know I’m pretty and I know I’m miserable. My mom told me when I was twelve that I can’t be miserable, because I was too young; and now that I’m seventeen, she tells me that I’m only miserable because I’m so young. Every teenager wants to die, but they all grow out of it, except for the ones that don’t. Dad says I’m the second prettiest girl in my friend group; my parents are honest like that. I don’t mind. Saying I’m prettier than Heather Chandler is laughable to anyone with eyes. Even I would laugh. I think it’s probably a lie to say I’m prettier than Heather and Heather, too, but that part can be left up to taste. They’re not objectively beautiful, like Heather.
Obviously, my life isn’t terrible. That’s what makes it unbearable. I was born in Cincinnati, which means I’m technically a “Cinci girl,” even though I haven’t lived there since before I could spell my own name. My parents moved to Sherwood because my dad got a job at the University of Toledo and my mom decided she wanted to live somewhere “quieter.” Quieter meaning “nothing ever happens here,” which is true. My parents aren’t addicts or divorced or dead. They’re just…fine. Normal. Stable in a way that feels like suffocation. My parents are just those closed-off kind of people that like to live in rural communities, even if it means having to briskly walk past a Confederate flag or two, stone-faced. My mom was happy since she has friends in Toledo whose families had been neighbors with her family in Beirut, also back in the 70s and 80s, before Lebanon also went to shit, and Sherwood was closer to her actual family up in Chicago anyway. My parents aren’t addicts and they don’t yell at me. The worst thing my mom does is read my diary sometimes, and even then, she doesn’t really do anything about what she reads. I only know she must do it, because every once in a while, she’ll leave pregnancy tests and morning after pills in my room. I even tested it, and started writing about fake encounters—and sure enough, that’s what she was doing. I try to give warnings about when I’m writing about sex now, so Mom doesn’t have to view me too differently. I think she’s just bored. She says she’s happy that she quit her old teaching adjunct career so she could watch me and supervise French language literature magazines and look after her big house and big nice yard without worrying about faculty drama, but I think she’s bored. She comes up and talks to me a lot—for long bursts of time, talking about the same things over and over again—sometimes, the same phrasing, beat for beat—and I think she’s getting early dementia.
My parents used to read me poetry when I was little. Other things too, of course, but mostly poetry. And almost never books with any pictures in it, like they couldn’t bear the idea of reading something that they’d personally find unengaging, even to the child they chose to have, but I don’t mind anymore. I think it’s made me very refined. They’ve never been too strict, but they’re not too neglectful either—Mom makes food, does all of my laundry, does basically all of the cleaning except for a few things that I do, and they always make sure to check my grades and look over my homework and call my parents friends before sleepovers to make sure they’re ‘good people’ before they’d inevitably just agree anyway. I don’t have a curfew because they trust me, but I think that means that beyond my grades and college apps, they don’t really care. Just as long as I keep my 3.8 GPA, they’re pretty pleased.
Sometimes people ask, “What happened to you?” I have to tell them the truth, since there’s nothing else to say, and I’m not even interesting enough to come up with a convincing lie: I’m just like this. I know it’s ungrateful and bitchy, but sometimes I really wish something awful could have happened when I was younger. That I could be anorexic or addicted to opioids or have gotten raped or that my parents would beat me or even that someone important to me died. Something truly, undeniably terrible. Something that gives me a reason to feel the way I do. But why would that even matter? Even if something awful happened to me right now, that wouldn’t change the fact that I was just born like this. That this is just the way I am. Maybe I just wish I could have a reason to be worse, for everyone to look at me and think, Oh, poor Veronica! She’s so strong and so poise; she’s so tough and brave or that I need to be put in a hospital and everyone thinks, We underestimated our girl; she’s truly suffering more than any of us and we brushed it aside and never saw her real true inner pain. Oh, the humanity! Something like that. Maybe I just wish there was a time where I could call myself ‘better.’
Heather thinks I’m pretty, too. That’s why I’m allowed to be friends with her. It’s a meritocracy, she tells me. She doesn’t believe in that ugly duckling bullshit. You’re either hot or you’re not—there’s no fixing bad genes. My genes are perfect, in her opinion: my face is symmetrical, my hair is thick, my skin is clear, and I don’t carry much weight anywhere, except my ass and tits, and still not so much that it becomes a problem. My eyelashes are naturally long—I don’t need extensions for length, just shaping. To Heather, all of this is of the utmost importance in being her friend. She likes me for her Instagram photos because she likes the way we contrast when we’re together. I think that makes the others mad, but no one has said anything to me. Plus, they hang out without me all of the time.
I know I’m lucky to be one of Heather’s friends. Especially since I’m pretty sure she has an OCD-type compulsion to make sure all of her friends are perfectly balanced in every way, and my name doesn’t even start with an H. I guess this doesn’t bother her as much as we lowlives joked about it in middle school. She likes that I have high-contrast features—almost-black hair, almost-black eyes, porcelain-white skin—and that I’m smarter than Heather and can forge her homework perfectly. Heather isn’t even that smart for an Asian, she’d joke sometimes. That always made me feel a little awkward, but she stopped telling that joke when we were fifteen, so I think it’s fine now. She likes dressing me up much more than the other two. I think I must be a project for her sometimes. Or maybe she just thinks I’m a doll. Which is crazy because she’s the one that looks like a literal Barbie.
Either way, it means she picks out my clothes most days. It’s one of my favorite things about Heather. When you’re with her, you never have to make decisions for yourself. She is the sole deciding factor on literally everything we do—individually and as a group. I know that sounds culty, but I promise it’s not. We’re more like groupies, which is just sad, not demented. But I was going to be sad no matter what I do, so this is still a step up.
At least now, I have somewhere to sit at lunch, and don’t have to sit on the ground with Betty and the other nerds, balancing my tray on my knees next to the garbage cans. I didn’t get along well with those guys anyway. Moving up to sit with Heather was better for all of us, I’m pretty sure. Betty looks happy enough whenever I wave to her in the halls or catch up during class. I think Dwight is mad that he thought I was such an ugly runt during seventh and eighth grade, because I was wearing braces and glasses at once, which is never easy on the eyes. Even if he thought I was pretty back then, he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, but he thinks he would have, and that’s what he’s upset about.
I think Heather is lying about not believing in ugly duckling shit, because she definitely didn’t think I was pretty in middle school. Doug Hilton and Country Club Keith started calling me a lesbian because it sounded like Lebanese. Heather didn’t do anything to defend me then, but when Courtney started her campaign to convince everyone that Veronica is just an inherently slutty name in Freshman year, Heather almost made it bad enough that Courtney had to be homeschooled. To me, these situations were identical, except that in the first one, I was ugly, and in the second, I was pretty, and that changed everything.
Either way, the message was clear: the only person allowed to call me a slut was Heather herself, and she applied this label to me liberally. I didn’t mind this arrangement. It’s better to be a slut and one of Heather’s friends, than to be frigid and a complete loser. In fact, being a slut and one of Heather’s friends is basically a compliment. It means you're hot and that guys want you. It’s a net positive.
Being untouchable and one of Heather’s friends is best, by the way. This is easy for me because I’ve sworn off most types of guys, even though I’ve kept my standards low on purpose. I only go for college guys, and I only go for them if they can string a proper sentence together. These standards are kind of high for Sherwood and the Greater Toledo Area as a whole, but it means I don’t have to put up with as much boring male conversations. You know, football and beer and shit. I already tried guys like that in Freshman year, and none of those football guys took the bait. They missed their chance with me. I’m a scarce resource on the market now. They’re going to have to settle for knock-offs like Lily Blumfeld or Courtney Hawker.
I lost my virginity when I was exactly fifteen, since it was on my living room couch on my birthday. It wasn’t because I wanted to, but because it was necessary. Heather Chandler had lost her V card when she was thirteen to an 18 year old lacrosse player. That meant that she knew everything there was to know about guys and life, which are the two most important things to know about in high school. Heather McNamara had lost hers next with a guy during seven minutes in heaven in Kyle Long’s basement when she was fourteen. Heather Duke had fucked the pastor’s son in the church parking lot in his mom’s sedan. They were all mature, and I wasn’t, so it was necessary because Heather doesn’t hang out with babies. ‘We’re not playing Barbies.’ So I let Keith do some pathetic shaky push-ups on top of me on my living room couch, and we laughed about how sad he was. You would think it would be shameful of me to lose my virginity to such an overall loser, in Heather’s world, but it wasn’t actually. According to Heather, it was good to have at least one embarrassing hook up to talk about. It’s a cornerstone for late night girl talk, once it was time to start talking about our most entertaining sex stories. There was nothing too personal, as long as it made everyone else laugh or squeal or scream. Heather says I’m lucky to be desperate enough to have so many. I think she’s just projecting, because I know I have the least, since I’m so picky. Plus, I don’t think it’s too embarrassing on my end; most of the time, I just stare at the TV while the guy does whatever, since it’s not like I’m going to cum ninety percent of the time anyway. He says, “Was that it? Was it good?” and I say it was mind-blowing and that he’s a sex god.
The ten percent is Martin, by the way. Martin Pagonis was a philosophy major at Remmington. Said it was in his bloodline, since he’s Greek. He tells me he likes smart girls, and that I’m smarter than all of the girls that go to Remmington. He likes that I’m Levantine, that my family comes from Beirut. He’s a Greek chauvinist, I’m pretty sure, but that’s definitely not as bad as Emmett Braun, who had a Metallica poster in his room. Now whenever I see the Metallica logo, all I can think of is bongs that never got cleaned properly and Emmett’s raggedy fingers clawing at the inside of my sandpaper-dry vagina while he exclaims in his political science major way that there was no way I was a real Jew, because my nose is too small and my pussy is too pink and tight. But Martin is a Greek chauvinist, which I don’t mind as much. He tells me that Beirut was named Berytus after a Pheonician port during the Hellenistic Period, becoming a pivotal Roman colony with a celebrated law school, and later served as a site for the Greek War of Independence in 1826. Stuff I all obviously knew because my mom was born in Beirut and had told me about school there, but I could imagine bringing him to a family gathering like Pesach or Purim or Sukkot or whatever, and impressing my grandparents with his surface level knowledge of Greek influence in Beirut. I think I could be proud of bringing him over, since he’s tall enough with thick curly hair and an anesthesiologist father. I’d just have to pretend he’s majoring in something smart, like economics or law. I think the family would be pleased.
He’s annoying, though. They can’t all be perfect. He talks a lot and he talks a lot about the same stuff over and over again. I think he must not have a very interesting life, because he tells me the same three stories once every month, which is when I go to hook up with him in his apartment near Remmington. The first one was when he went to by a new suit for his brother’s wedding, which he claims made him look super hot, but he thought it would really elevate the whole look if he had a pocket square to go with it, so he went to Macy’s to get one on his lunch break (he works at a bookstore, of course, and lets me and Heather Duke use his store discount). He went and found the pocket squares and saw that they were $50. For a two inch square piece of silk! He was like, “Fuck that.” And that’s the time he didn’t buy a pocket square at Macy’s. I think he took my saying, ‘Fuck Macy’s anyway,’ as genuine interest in the story, or maybe he just has early onset dementia. He has another story about how when he was fifteen at some kind of summer camp at Lake Eerie, he called a kid fat, so that kid picked him and hurled him into the lake. And finally, he tells me about his senior prank where he TP’d his principal’s house and almost got caught and had to hide in the bushes for several long minutes while his friends had driven off without him, and then when the principal went inside, he had to sprint down the street and catch up with his friends. Lucky he was such a track star in high school. I mostly like hearing about what he’s reading and what he’s studying in school at the moment, and he likes feeling smart, so it’s easy to push him there. He thinks I’m the best listener he knows, better than his mom. He talks about his mom a lot, but I think that’s just a thing Mediterranean guys do no matter what. Then after he feels sufficiently smart, he fucks me and it’s pretty good compared to most of my other experiences. I don’t get bored enough to space out most of the time. He’s a gentleman enough to pay for the gas it takes to visit him. David doesn’t do that for Heather.
Like all of the guys I actually like, he’d eventually gotten tired of me. By Sunday, September 21st, he had only seen me once in three months, when in the five months before then, he’d seen me every month. I’m intense, I guess. I have high expectations, like that after five months of fucking once or twice a month, and texting about forty-three percent of the week for those five months, he might be ready to be more exclusive, so I don’t keep having to worrying about STDs and shit (condoms are too small for him, which was hard not to laugh about since he’s average), but immediately he dropped to texting for only 28.6 percent of the week, and then only to 14.3 percent. He invited me over randomly, and I sort of thought he’d changed his mind and realized I was the love of his life, which had me rehearsing how I would turn him down the entire thirty-minute drive over. I didn’t want forever, just not STDs. We didn’t talk about anything. He told me that he liked that my mouth was small and soft and the only thing I got back from him was oral chlamydia.
Like I said.
The first day back after Labor Day smells like cheap body spray, burnt coffee, and freshly waxed linoleum. The air in the hallways feels sticky with hairspray. Mostly my own. Today, I’m an American Apparel ad that was never made. Moody, the kind that would have launched a tie-in with the new Twilight movie. It’s early enough in September to still be a bit too hot for layers, but I don’t really notice the stuffiness anyway. I’m lazy today—a fitted tanktop and a long black cardigan, dark-wash skinnies, slightly distressed at the knees. My boots are short, slouchy, slightly scuffed—urban decay, by design. I got them at a mall in Toledo with Heather Duke, who said they make me look like I read Bukowski, but in a hot way. Around my wrist is a stack of bracelets—-one from a warped tour I didn’t actually go to, one that says LOVE IS LOUDER, and another that I got from Betty. My eyeliner is thick, precise, almost architectural, but the rest of my makeup looks like an afterthought—just a smudge of balm and a flicker of blush. My hair took so long to straighten that my arm is still sore from the effort, but my bangs look good—I did them myself at 1 am. Boredom in the summertime.
I tried hard, but I’d die before admitting that.
Heather sits on top of the lunch table, legs crossed, sipping her iced latte like she’s in a commercial about confidence. Today, her hair is straightened and perfect—not a flyaway in sight. Heather and Heather hover nearby, laughing about something on their phones. It’s not even 8am, and we’re already performing.
“Ram told me he has a new neighbour,” Heather M informs us, stretching the words like taffy. She is wearing a halter-top and a skort today. It’s cute, but so beachy for a place that’s nowhere near the ocean. It almost makes me sad. “I heard Coach talking about it with Phlegm, too. So it’s deffo a new student.”
Heather’s face immediately falls in disappointment. “He?” She’s not interested in new guys. That’s jock territory. That’s in Kurt and Ram’s sphere of influence. Maybe Keith’s, if he’s unlucky. After that, they’re just decor. Maybe an accessory, if she deems them hot enough.
I shrug, opening my fake leather tote. It’s supposed to look like something Kate Moss once threw on the floor of a cab in London—distressed, but not so much that I look poor. Just chic. It’s a mess inside: a tangle of earbuds, lipgloss, a cracked iPod Nano, my diary, gum. I want to look unbothered, but I can’t deny—my interest is piqued. “So what’s wrong with him? No one transfers to Westerburg.” No one normal, anyway.
Heather M shrugs. “I heard he’s from Jefferson. Crazy, right?”
That is crazy. Jefferson High is the richest school in the district. The kind of high school where people go on to state universities and get nice IT degrees with cushy office jobs; Westerburg is a place where you peak in high school. The classrooms smell like chalk and disinfectant and black mold. The walls are plastered with faded motivational posters— “DREAM BIG!” “YOU CAN DO IT!” —all curling at the corners. No one actually can. Transferring here—when Jefferson actually cares about grades? When students have more than debt and trauma? Where people wear perfume that costs more than my car? I can’t understand the logic.
“Do you think he’s hot?” Heather D asks me, eyes wide with hope.
I snort. “Actually hot, or doesn’t-have-a-tribal-tattoo-on-his-bicep hot?”
Heather huffs, annoyed to still be bothering with this new guy business. He’s a lamp, a bug, a doily—he doesn’t matter. He’s just texture for her memoirs one day, when she’s retired from her modeling career, and is paid to just show up to places and look hot. “Yo, Sawyer,” (I look up at her), “my place. Well, technically David’s place, but he says I can co-host, which means I’m practically planning the entire thing.”
Heather D. sniffs. “David’s parties are always the same, anyway. Everyone drinks Natty Light and ends up crying by the fire pit.”
Heather M. smirks. “That’s only because your ex showed up with, like, three other girls.”
Heather D narrows her eyes at her. “They were cousins!”
Heather smirks, sipping her latte that smells increasingly more like anxiety than carbs. “Sure, babe. Kissing cousins. Doesn’t matter, because neither of you bitches are coming. Just Ronnie.”
Heather M rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t actually mind. Cheer keeps her schedule pretty full. And it’s never much of a surprise when Heather D. can’t make it. Mrs. Duke watches her like a hawk—rescuing her from out of her second storey window is always a scene from Mission Impossible, and almost always gets busted anyways.
I sigh. “A dorm party? Isn’t that just another word for drunk disaster?”
Heather tsks at me. “Yeah, obvi—but this one’s gonna be different. I told David we need a theme.”
I sigh. “Please don’t say ‘toga.’”
Heather scoffs. “God, no. Check this out: Gossip Girl, but rural. Country club meets credit card debt.”
I lift my eyebrow. “So normal life?”
Heather D perks up. “What, so, like, wearing pearls, but ironically?”
Heather waves her off. “Pearls are never ironic. They’re aspirational.”
I pull on my sleeves. “I’ll go if there’s actually alcohol this time. Last time it was Zima and some guy’s half-drunk bottle of Jager.”
Heather smirks at me. “David’s twenty-one now, remember? So, yeah. It’s going to be the real stuff.”
Heather M giggles. “Oh, my God, remember when Heather cried because someone called her MySpace basic?”
Heather D shoots a wary look at her, but before she can say anything, Heather’s already talking again. “Exactly why you guys aren’t coming. College party standards are way higher. Oh, my God, Ver, I almost forgot!” She leans in, smiling wide, like she’s about to say I had the winning answer and I’d one one million dollars as a prize. “And David’s roommate—Brock, Bryan, something with a B—saw a picture of you.”
I frown. “Where?”
Heather rolls her eyes. “David showed him your MySpace. He said you’d be the perfect blind date.”
“How is it blind if he’s already seen my face?”
Heather wrinkles her nose at me like I’d just flung my used gym sock on her lap. “It’s metaphorical, babe. God, you’re so literal.”
Heather M’s eyes widened. “Wait, is this the guy with the fake Ray-Bans and the black Camaro?"
Heather shakes her head. “No, no—the guy with the Greek-looking tattoo that’s actually his frat letters.”
Heather D giggles. “Oh, he’s hot.”
Heather smiles triumphantly at me. “So, are you going or what?”
I sigh, but it’s not like I can say no to anything Heather throws at me. “I don’t know. Probably. If I’m bored enough.”
Heather smirks. “You’re always bored enough.”
I roll my eyes. Heather D. spritzes her body spray like punctuation, the cloud of fake vanilla sweetness hanging in the air.
Heather slides off the lunch table. “You should wear that cute black shirt. The one that makes guys apologize just for looking at you.”
“Which one?”
Heather links her arm with mine. “Exactly.”
The bell rings. None of us move right away, but when Heather guides me out, the others fall into step immediately. We glide down the hall together, a glossy little storm of laughter, perfume, and practiced indifference.