The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber Page 5

  This was probably an all-high school party, judging by the girls’ chests and the guys’ goatees. I was feeling rather lost when I saw Sam waving at me from a spiral staircase, where he was sitting with another guy I vaguely recognized from orientation.

  I walked past several of the pimply guys from this morning. They were on a black leather sofa, passing around bottles of champagne. Just as in Texas, nobody was using any glasses, but unlike in Texas, where most parties revolve around beer delivery services and bottles of cheap whiskey concealed in brown paper bags, everybody here was drinking champagne or wine, or champagne in one hand and wine in the other. And, for the record, we’re not talking about the grape juice that comes in a box, either.

  As I reached the middle of the room, a gigantic man with a diamond stud in his left ear barreled into me. “Piggyback express,” he said, and with no further ado lifted me and draped me over his enormous shoulder.

  “Hey, leave her alone, Aldo,” a mature woman’s voice commanded. A few feet below me I saw a middle-aged woman decked out like an expensively dressed lap dancer. “I’m Gayle, Nona’s mother,” she called up to me, then reproached my escort in a flirtatious tone: “Aldo, you are such a monster. Let go of the poor girl this instant!

  “Welcome to our happy home,” she said as Aldo lowered me back to earth. “It’s fabulous you could make it. Do let Aldo get you something to drink—we’ve got champagne, beer—there’s a bartender somewhere. Name your poison.”

  My reluctance to be served by somebody’s mom—even one in a fuchsia halter top—trumped my desire for a drink, so I shook my head. “I’m OK for now, thanks.”

  “Well, here,” Gayle said, handing me an unopened bottle of Veuve Clicquot, which I knew for a fact my own parents had only cracked out once a year, on their wedding anniversary. “Take it. It belongs to Nona’s father. If you don’t feel like drinking it, you can do whatever you want with it. Like this,” she reached into a cabinet, pulled another bottle out, and threw it against a wall.

  I kind of wished Rachel were there with me. This would definitely fit into her “Very Entertaining Moments” mental folder. Only a handful of people, six at the most, even glanced over to investigate the disturbance; a lone stoner voice observed, “Whoa.”

  “She must really have it in for the guy,” a model-beautiful girl with a cool Afro said.

  “Nona’s father and I have a very special relationship—very complicated, you could say, ha ha! Oh, hello, darling, let me help you with that!” With a maniacal laugh she rushed toward another guest who was attempting to dislodge a massive candelabra from the white baby grand piano without tripping over Buddha.

  By the time I reached Sam, open-mike night at the Gray Dog had faded to a dim memory.

  “I told you,” Sam said, practically gloating. “But why didn’t you bring your cell phone?”

  “And I told you—because I don’t have a cell phone. My dad said he can lend me his if I need it, but that’s about it—it’s yet another one of my mother’s million rules.”

  “Well, whatever, I tried calling you back at home, but I ended up talking to some guy who was definitely not your dad. I couldn’t understand most of what he said because he was blaring Aretha Franklin right into my ear. What’s his name—Queen, did he say?”

  “No, no, that was Quinn,” I said. “He’s my dad’s new assistant.” I looked at the guy on the other side of Sam and felt sure I’d seen him at the welcome meeting this morning. Steeled by the half-gallon of Veuve I’d chugged en route, I gave him an awkward little wave. “Hey, I’m Mimi,” I said. “I saw you at orientation this morning.”

  “Huh? Where?” he responded as if I’d mentioned a chance encounter on one of the moons of Jupiter.

  “At Baldwin? This morning? I’m the new girl?”

  “Oh, really?” He shrugged, then hoisted himself up from the stairs. “I’m gonna get some liquids. Later.”

  “What’d I do?” I asked Sam as he edged away. “I don’t understand.”

  “No, don’t worry,” Sam consoled me. “Jebediah’s just going through this funny phase where he’s pretending to be an out-of-work actor. Mentioning Baldwin cramps his style.”

  “But doesn’t everyone here go to Baldwin? How could he possibly . . . ?”

  “But we’re not at Baldwin now, Mimi.” Sam gestured around the loft. “And the only way to survive Baldwin is to behave as if it doesn’t exist. Maybe it doesn’t work that way in Texas, but it’s a total pillar of the Baldwin educational philosophy. There’s a time and a place for everything, natch.”

  What on earth was he talking about? Where was gawky Sam, the one who tied his mother’s silk scarves into turbans and pretended to be a rug merchant? Who doodled skateboarding dinosaurs in the margins of his letters? What had happened to the iced tea enthusiast of that very afternoon, and why was he talking in that slow, seen-it-all drawl? I gave him a puzzled, somewhat unfriendly glance, as if to say: Please tell me what’s going on.

  “We all do it, Mimi,” Sam said in a gentler voice. “Everyone has a very specific role to play out there, and I’m just a guy trying to make it in a cruel, cold world, you know?”

  I wasn’t appeased: Sam was still being super weird. “No need to get all condescending,” I said, as haughtily as I could manage. “It’s not the world, but Baldwin, that’s wack. I swear, what kind of school’s popular crowd rocks out by listening to spoken-word poetry in cheesy smoke-free bars?”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Back up. What are you talking about?”

  After listening to my blow-by-blow description of the fat-free night on the town with Amanda, Sam exploded in raucous laughter. “Amanda? Did you say popular crowd?” he repeated. “You’re joking, Mims, please tell me you’re joking. God, you have been home—home on the range—for too long!” He clapped me on the back like a rental Santa Claus.

  “Let go of me!” I wriggled away. “What’s with this whole making-fun-of-every-single-thing-I-say bullshit? You weren’t like this in the fourth grade!”

  “Yeah, well, a lot has changed since the fourth grade. If you think Amanda and Courtney are the popular crowd at Baldwin, then you need a lot more than a tour of Brooklyn Heights to teach you about New York. Jeez.” He shook his head in disbelief. “This, my dear Mims, this is Baldwin’s popular crowd.” Sam drew in his breath, and with his index finger designated only the weirdest-looking people in the room—the mesmerizingly aloof girls from that morning.

  His finger stopped at the half-Asian pixie I remembered: the black-eyeliner, hole-in-T-shirt, twenty-rings-in-her-earlobes girl. She was drinking pink liquid out of a martini glass. “Like, take her. That’s Vivian. She’s about as popular as it gets around here.”

  I sized up this Vivian girl—her weird body, tiny and curvy at the same time—and compared her to a mental picture of Amanda. It was like a pile of biohazardous material next to a beautiful redwood. “Yeah, right. And she’s also the star basketball player.”

  “I’m serious—Viv’s sister Mia, who is now a performance artist in Long Island City, was this legend at Baldwin, the most popular girl of all time, in the whole history of the school,” Sam insisted. “I’d go so far as to say that Mia was the most popular girl in the whole history of any school, the most popular girl in all of history. There’s not a single person at Baldwin who would disagree—her coolness was legendary. Not that Viv doesn’t have enough going for her by herself,” he went on. “She has fantastic taste in music. She doesn’t care about doing well in school and getting into the same colleges everyone else is competing over. She’s deeper than that. And actually, when she’s not wearing all that makeup, she can be really . . . you know.” Sam paused, swallowed, and studied his lap. “Beautiful.” He coughed, then added quickly: “Vivian’s half Filipino and half Jewish—the best of both worlds, right?”

  I looked at her again, my eyes scanning her face. There was something funny about her nose, which was small and round, like a miniature version of her body; the nose ring
puncturing it seemed off-scale. She had big lips that would probably be pretty if they weren’t smothered in so much dirt-colored lipstick. I saw that Sam had a point: Vivian was kind of beautiful, no matter how much crap was smeared onto—or stuck into—her skin.

  “Yeah, whatever,” I scoffed. “I’ll believe it when I see it. What about her?” I pointed at a hefty girl in ripped jeans and a bulky sweatshirt reading I VISITED ROCK CITY, the same one who had worn the NANTUCKET sweatshirt this morning. Both items could’ve come straight from the Winter 1972 collection of the Judys from upstairs. “Is she another supermodel of the sophomore class?”

  “Good job, Mims, you’re getting it,” Sam nodded. “Lily can be a bit, shall we say, headstrong, but she writes these political opinion columns for the newspaper that even my dad thinks are smart. She’s a total lefty, which everyone thinks is cool. She’s also the daughter of the most famous homemaker in America, so people tend to kiss her ass.”

  “Give me a break, Sam—if her mom’s so famous, how come I’ve never heard of her?”

  “You’ve never heard of Margaret Morton? The hostess of House and Home, celebrated television star and affordable linens endorser? Oh, come on, surely they have cable in Texas these days?”

  I was flabbergasted. “Margaret Morton? Are you serious? My mom has every single one of her cookbooks, and my mom’s never cooked in her life! That girl’s mom is Margaret Morton? How could the greatest domestic goddess in America have given birth to that!”

  “Easy now, calm down,” Sam hushed me as a ghoul-faced girl in leather pants and a ripped-up tank top stormed up to Lily. Even with her perfect makeup, Miss Leather Pants resembled an early-eighties girl rock star the morning after a bar brawl.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Miss Pia Pazzolini,” Sam said. “She can be a tad bitchy, but her parents totally neglect her, so who can blame her? They’re diplomats from Italy, which explains why Pia has her own chauffeur and goes out of town twenty-five days a month. She’s also some kind of math genius, but she’d wear overalls before admitting it—she’s much more into her Eurotrash persona. Hmm, who else?” Sam surveyed the room thoughtfully.

  “Oh, yeah, Jess Gillespie,” he said, his eyes resting on the exhausted-looking blonde, who was wearing the same sweater set as this morning. “She’s the toast of every varsity team at Baldwin. She’s the prettiest of the coolie crew, traditionally speaking. I guess.” Sam shrugged. “She’s extremely nice, and not at all in an annoying way, but unfortunately she’s also a little insecure—spends too much time thinking about sporting events, if you know what I mean.”

  Sam winked, but I didn’t get it. “Well, isn’t that precisely what Amanda and her friends do? What’s wrong with sports?” (Though, to tell the truth, I wasn’t a huge fan.)

  “No, no, Mimi, I don’t mean athletics, but athletes. Jess is a girl who likes a boy in a letter jacket—not that Baldwin has letter jackets, but you know what I mean. Her boyfriend Preston’s one of the dumbest jocks around. She’s dated practically every athletic dude in the tri-state area. By the time she’s twenty, I’d bet fifty bucks that she’ll be married to some world-famous Super Bowl quarterback.”

  He laughed, and I studied the delicate blonde girl, who was wearing the most conservative job-interview outfit I’d ever seen, far preppier than even the racquetball team. Jess seemed the human equivalent of Connecticut: pretty but bland, symmetrical if forgettable. She looked like the kind of girl who wore matching bras and panties every day of her life. The kind of girl who could get any guy she wanted.

  “She’s on scholarship,” Sam was saying, “which probably explains her unfortunate inferiority complex.”

  “Um, hello, classism?”

  Sam was unapologetic. “You know. It must be tough, sharing a tiny apartment in Park Slope with your mom when those girls are your best friends. Seriously. Vivian’s dad, George Steinmann, is on the news like every night, raging about corporate scandals, and meanwhile the guy’s buying oil companies in his spare time. And Lily’s mom is, well, Margaret Morton, and Pia’s parents are crazy Eurotrash ambassadors who are so busy partying they probably don’t even look at the newspaper. And Jess is . . .” Sam threw up his shoulders. “Well, she may be hot, but wouldn’t you feel shitty if your dad never paid alimony and your mom worked in a bank? And I don’t mean investment bank, either. She’s, like, one step above a teller. And, last but not least, there’s our hostess—”

  “Um, excuse me, but how do you know all these intimate personal details of everyone’s lives?”

  Sam became grave again. “At Baldwin,” he announced, “we all know everything. But, ahem, as I was saying”—he cleared his throat—“there’s one more member of the clique—a girl to give royalty an inferiority complex. Our hostess: the lovely Miss Nona Del Nino.”

  She needed no further introduction. In one synchronized motion, Sam and I turned to watch the dreadlocked girl, who was leaning languidly into the DJ booth. With her creamy skin and overblown lips, she was totally and completely gorgeous in an obvious, uncomplicated way. Why hadn’t I seen it this morning? Probably too preoccupied with my own wardrobe difficulties. All of a sudden my throat clenched up. Even without an Academy Award—winning father, this girl would’ve been special. “And she’s the most popular girl at Baldwin?”

  Sam’s tone was reverential. “Just watch her. Watch the way she works it.”

  For a few minutes neither of us spoke. We just sat there, drinking in Nona’s splendor as her hips swayed carelessly to the music and her eyelids continually drooped and raised themselves, like automatic window shades going berserk. Any lesser being gyrating solo to a trashy techno remix would have looked like a total loser, but this girl could pull anything off. She was a goddess in her own living room. I don’t know what this girl had, but I wanted it.

  “She is pretty amazing,” I sighed. “Do you think I should go and introduce myself? Maybe she’ll fall for my new-girl-in-town routine?” (I’m not usually that outgoing—not at all—but by that point I’d polished off a half bottle of bubbly and all I’d eaten for dinner was a chunk of chocolate muffin.)

  “Not so fast, Mims. You don’t just go up to Nona Del Nino and talk to her.” As Sam spoke, a tall guy in a hooded sweatshirt approached Nona and pressed something into her palm. Nona was looking at him with an intensity that expressed profound appreciation. He was a normal-looking guy, with baggy jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a backwards Yankees cap. I was pretty sure he was giving her drugs. Not pot, either. This was pretty clearly drugs drugs.

  “Should I go introduce myself to her?”

  “Darlin’, the rule is pretty simple: you do not talk to Nona unless you’re one of the four other popular girls in the grade. Or if you’re delivering her illegal goodies—in which case she might acknowledge you for a split second or two,” Sam said, pointing at Nona right as she turned her back on the hooded guy.

  “How’s that possible?” I asked. “Like it’s so formal!”

  “Yep—for a hyperliberal institution like Baldwin, the politics of popularity couldn’t get any more formal. Allow me to fill you in on a little something,” Sam said, taking this opportunity to lean toward me again. “Every year, the most popular girls of the sophomore class go on a Christmas break vacation together—the same destination every year, and always top secret.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “How would I know? Am I one of the popular girls? It’s highly confidential, I said—a tradition that traces back to the beginning of time. Each year the junior girl who led the previous group tells the new chosen ones.”

  “But who chooses? How does the junior girl know who the popular sophomores are?”

  “Mims, what makes the rivers flow to the sea? She just does.”

  “Well,” I said, bristling, “I’ll have to find out. I’m going to be chosen.”

  I don’t know why I said it, and Sam seemed to think this claim the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. “Mims, I don’t k
now how to break this to you gently, but it’s just not going to happen. You know I think you’re swell, but convincing the rest of the student body might take a little more work. Not to be crude, but if your dad were some big-deal photographer, you might have a chance attracting friends—you could bring them to cool parties at modeling agents’ houses or other equally thrilling events. But as things stand, what can you do for these people? You’re not rich or powerful or—no offense—a dead-ringer for Grace Kelly.” Sam used his chin to gesture at the crowd, which was quite elegant considering that it consisted of drunk sixteen-year-olds and one very angry middle-aged mom. “Invite them to your dad’s darkroom?”

  “How dare you!”

  “Apart from me, you don’t know anyone in the city. You don’t have any friends at other private schools who might invite you to parties. You don’t have any cool ex-boyfriends who can get you into clubs. Your dad doesn’t have a country house, or even a townhouse. Your southern girl thing could be somewhat unique, but I wouldn’t bank on it.” Sam considered. “It’s too bad you weren’t born down in Texas—that might’ve been more of a selling point. Authenticity goes a long way before hollow eyes.”

  “Just so you know, Sam, a lot has changed since the fourth grade! I wasn’t exactly a total social reject at my last school.” Granted, Rachel and my older sister’s party-girl reputations had always come in handy bigtime, but still, I had been popular in Texas, extremely. Or popular enough. Popular with potential.

  Sam encircled my shoulder again. “Look, I’m not trying to be a hard-ass, but there’s a difference between lording over a bunch of prepubescent Texan debutantes and getting in with, well—with these people.”

  I shoved him off again. “I can wear dark eyeliner with the best of them! You really think I’m not cool enough for this stupid wacked-out school?”