The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber Read online

  “Then what is it?”

  I looked up at Quinn’s face and something happened. That gorgeous lock of dirty-blond hair falling over his left eye, his dark bow-shaped lips—I saw only kindness and compassion. All I wanted was to spill open my heart to him, red eyes and maple and brown sugar and flying snot and all. I realize it’s idiotic to unleash your problems on your dream guy, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight right then.

  “My mom—dad’s ex-wife, or almost ex-wife . . .” I hesitated. “Well, she called me this morning and told me that she’s letting her boyfriend Maurice move into my old house with her and—”

  “Do you mean—”

  “And Myrtle—that’s Maurice’s know-it-all daughter, who spends all her time on the Internet reading about molecules—she’s probably going to move into my room. Can you believe it? She was once caught writing nasty things about herself on the bathroom wall in junior high, and now she’s going to spend all her time rifling through my personal possessions.”

  “Oh, Mimi!” Quinn understood. “This is a case of serious suckage.”

  “I’m not even going to get a chance to hide my valuables from her creepy graffiti. I’d call Ariel, but she’s in Austin and so wrapped up in her Vanilla Gorilla vs. Kappa Kappa Gamma drama that she probably doesn’t even notice that Maurice is the world’s grossest vitamin-pusher.” I stopped to sniffle. “Even if she did, she’d—”

  “We have to put an end to this,” Quinn cut me off. “Maybe we should tell your father—perhaps he could intervene?”

  “That would be a good idea”—I chuckled bitterly—“except if he ever found out how serious Mom and Maurice have gotten, he’d be too shocked to wiggle his left pinky, let alone ‘intervene.’ I don’t know if he’s told you this yet, but he’s still pretty hung up on my mom. It’s a total disaster, it’s—”

  Before I could finish, Quinn shushed me. I followed his eyes to the doorway, where my father stood shaking a still-wet photograph with a pair of rubber-tipped tongs. “What gives, kids?” he asked. My dad stunk at solitude. He couldn’t stay in the darkroom for ten minutes without wandering around in search of company. He had the worst case of ADD of anyone I knew. I was pretty certain that was the only reason he hired assistants—not to assist, but to entertain.

  “What’ve you got there, Dad?” I gave him my best well-adjusted-daughter smile.

  “Oh, nothing special, just a portrait I took the other day. A friend of the Judys asked me to do a session and I figured I could use some practice in the studio.”

  “I helped out with lighting,” Quinn added. “She wasn’t half bad. An actress. Fiona, right?”

  “Veronica,” Dad said, a little too quickly. He eyed the print with a distinctly gooey expression.

  “Let’s see,” I said. I hoped Dad couldn’t tell I’d been weeping.

  “Here she is,” he thrust the photograph out at us. This Veronica woman was about forty, or a well-preserved forty-five, and had chin-length black hair and sparkly eyes that were either blue or green or hazel (the picture was black-and-white). She was gazing dreamily into the lens—at my father!—with her head tilted back slightly. I was about to wonder if my dad had a thing for this Veronica when it hit me: Veronica looked like my mom, or how my mom would look if she ever actually put on an ounce of makeup and bought the clothes Dad was always begging her to try on. And I mean exactly. Dad didn’t care about this Veronica; it was Mom he was thinking about.

  “Not bad,” said Quinn.

  “Nope, not bad. Not at all,” Dad agreed, talking not about the photo but the model.

  My father was many things, but over my mother was not one of them. What was I going to do? There was no way I could tell him that Maurice was moving in with her. Into her bed. Into Dad’s old bed. Nor could I tell him that Maurice’s pimple of a daughter, Myrtle, was joining the party and setting up shop in what used to be our home. Imagining Myrtle’s drool swirling across my pillow, under my covers, soaking my mattress, I wanted to hurl all four pints of Chubby Hubby straight across the room.

  September 24 or 25 (I’m lousy at dates)

  10:14 a.m.

  Salutations, dearest of Ds. I recently had my first dream about my new chums, which seemed like a landmark of some sort. It’s like what people say about learning a foreign language—you know them only when you can speak them in your sleep. And my darling Freudian mother has always said that the more you dream about something, the more it becomes part of your waking life. (Help me here, Sam. You know what I mean, right?) Anyway, a few nights ago I woke up at three in the morning after this crazy dream about being in the heart room at one of those children’s science museums with Pia. It must have to do with something I learned the other day: Pia’s a closet science freak! Up until a couple of summers ago, she used to spend her Julys in science camp. Lily told me she’s also in advanced chemistry with all seniors, but when I asked Pia about it she tried to downplay it by talking about how much she likes goofing around with Bunsen burners.

  I’m confused about everything. About Quinn, about my dad and mom, about Baldwin and my new friends, if I can even presume to call them that. I’m confused about Maurice, and Myrtle, and the weird homespun rainbow scarf Judy #2 brought down to me last night. No one ever told me tenth grade would be this much of a maze.

  Billyburg Baby

  I ALWAYS SPEND SO MUCH TIME ANTICIPATING events that I can’t help but be disappointed by the events themselves. That’s what I was thinking about on the L-train to Williamsburg Friday night, as (for the tenth time) I consulted the mirror in my lip-gloss kit to apply a final coat of mocha liquid eyeliner. The eyeliner went on smoothly, but I still suspected that all the Artists—to say nothing of the Coolies—would scorn the vintage plaid miniskirt that I’d spent forty minutes safety-pinning. It took me almost as long to choose my tights. (In case you’re wondering: pinstriped, major control top.)

  Then there was the hair (I stood in the mirror until finally figuring out how to get one of those pouffy Katharine Hepburn rolls on top), cover-up (no amount of concealer could weed out that zit garden on my chin!), shoes (dark violet Mary Janes), and the purse (I emptied out some satchel-type thing of my dad’s). All told, at least two hours of work, longer than I’d spent on any Baldwin assignment or even my debut article in the Bugle, a (not overly) personal column about the differences between Baldwin and my old school in Houston.

  I was having one of my more decent-looking moments, but still, that didn’t guarantee that I’d have any fun. That was always how it happened: The longer I fine-tuned my outfit, the less time I ended up wearing it. I’d be home for the eleven o’clock news.

  My optimism didn’t exactly surge as I pushed past a couple of guys loading a white van with band equipment on the street, then squeezed inside a large, derelict warehouse. I didn’t recognize a single person—everyone there looked like an extra from The Man Who Fell to Earth, decked out in Day-Glo unitards, with silver eyeshadow smeared from cheek to chin, and slicked-back hairdos. Avant-garde screeches (it wouldn’t be fair to call the clanging of pots and pans “music”) drowned out all the conversations, and the only snippets I overheard—“Bert’s having his colon irrigated” and “I’m so over Iceland!”—intimidated me more than the ambient noise. Wow. These freaks made my Baldwin classmates seem totally Laura Ingalls Wilder.

  I didn’t see my new friends anywhere, just two rocker guys sipping lime green liquid from science beakers and a slight woman tweeting into a microphone for a crowd of exactly five people. I’d predicted a much more Goth scene, but what do I know about New York? I cursed myself for not having met up with the girls before the party so that we could make an entrance together—not that such a plan had been suggested.

  “Mimi?” I heard a voice behind me. “Mimi Schulman? Is that you?” A male voice.

  I turned around and almost slammed into the dark, mysterious, and very cute boy from my World Civ class, the clever one with perpetually mussed hair. Max Roth: the quiet cowboy of B
aldwin’s tenth-grade class, not to mention its most attractive member. Whenever nobody knew the answer, Stanley would point his finger and cheer, “Let’s hear it, Max!” The sleepy-eyed boy in the back row was never not right.

  How did someone so cute know my name? “Oh, hey, Max!” I was relieved that the warehouse lacked overhead lighting, which might draw attention to my flushed cheeks and the oily chin situation. “What are you doing here?”

  “I do installations with one of the guys giving this party—Dimitri,” Max said. “He’s officially a neon artist, but he’s been branching out into large-scale sand-and-rocks projects lately.”

  “Wow, that sounds totally cool. What kind of stuff do you two do together?” I hoped the dark room also concealed the fact that I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Well, you know Dolby sound in the movies? How there will be different sounds intended for the left and right ear? We’re trying to make Dolby visual art, but with really giant pieces. Dimitri’s been doing the left and I’m doing the, ah . . .”

  “The right?”

  “Right.” Max laughed nervously. “Sorry about that; I get distracted at parties and find it hard to have real conversations. I’m much more at ease in World Civ, ha.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” I nodded sympathetically, then—noticing the irresistibly braidable length of his eyelashes—threw in, “Your work sounds really cool. My dad’s a photographer, so I’m used to all these freaky artsy types wandering around my house.”

  I couldn’t believe that I had just used the expression “freaky artsy types” with the brooding genius of my World Civ class. There should be federal laws prohibiting me from leaving my bedroom.

  “I know who your dad is—I saw some of his stuff at an ICP show.”

  “ICP?”

  “The International Center of Photography. It was a group show and they had a few of his old pieces. I’d love to meet him sometime. I’ve been getting into big-scale collage installations lately, using digital photographs that I blow up really—”

  “There you are! We thought you’d bagged on us—oh, hey, Max.”

  Max shrunk back as Lily swooped down on us. The rest of the gang appeared right behind her. Pia, whose olive skin glowed under the warehouse’s phosphorescent light, looked particularly angry and glamorous in skintight black leather pants and only a lacy camisole-type thing, also black, on top. Jess, resplendently blonde as ever, was wearing the same preppy sweater sets she sported at school every day, only slightly tighter and lower-cut. Her eyes, as usual, surrounded by thick smudges of eyeliner, Viv looked carefully scrappy in a cutoff Ramones T-shirt and shiny tasseled combat boots. Only Lily was underdressed and unfabu-lous, with her dirty-blond hair slung back into a ponytail and her dirt-stained sweatshirt looking as if it hadn’t been washed in a week—no, make that a month.

  “Fabulous outfit,” Pia said in place of hello. “So Riviera, circa a long time ago.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Someone handed me a drink. “Yours, too. Is that—black patent?”

  “Hey, hey, my, my,” Jess said, jabbing my shoulder and lurching forward.

  “Jess’s very wasted,” Lily apologized, pulling the disheveled blonde off me. “Though we have no idea how, since we all got here together.”

  “Omigod!” Jess yelped suddenly. “Preston!” Removing from her tiny handbag a phone no larger than an Am Ex card, which was lighted up blue and vibrating, she careened toward the exit.

  “Jess, come back here! Stop!”

  With Lily pursuing Jess, Vivian swung a protective arm around me. “Mimi,” she said, “it’s high time for the introductions. My sister was so intrigued by what you did under the bridge the other day—I described you as the greatest thespian of the sophomore class. You know she does spoken-word performance pieces?”

  “Mia is very cool,” Pia said. “Unlike Preston, who expects Jess to accompany him to every single professional sporting event that passes through Madison Square Garden! Ugh—there’s a lot I’d do for love, but not professional basketball. Thank God Francesco’s not American!”

  “C’mon—she’s over there!” Vivian pointed across the room at a girl standing motionless on an egg crate. She was wrapped in aluminum foil. Something bright yellow—a feather, maybe?—stuck out from her forehead. “Let’s go.”

  “OK, just hold on a sec,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder. “I was talking to—”

  But Max had vanished, absorbed into the crowd of pale-faced twentysomethings, leaving me to trail behind Vivian and Pia across the immense former sugar-cane refinery.

  “Hey, Mia,” Vivian called up to her sister when we’d finally made it across the room. “This is Mimi—the one I told you about. I told her you wanted to meet her.”

  Up close I understood Mia’s legendary status better. She wasn’t pretty exactly, but she had mile-high cheekbones and the most intense eyes I’d ever seen. No wonder every guy at Baldwin wanted to get with her.

  Mia didn’t budge. Not only did she not reach down to shake my hand, she didn’t smile or even blink; Vivian might as well have introduced me to the Statue of Liberty. “Whoops.” Vivian shrugged, as if her sister’s nonreaction was completely normal. “I guess she’s not breaking character yet. C’mon, we’ll find her later.” As we resumed zigzagging through lines of crates used as couches, Vivian clarified: “It’s a new piece she’s working on, called ‘Newfoundland Winter.’ About space and stillness. She rehearses a lot.”

  Soon after we’d colonized three adjacent crates, Pia drew a silver cigarette case from her purse, which contained rolling paper and what bore a startling resemblance to marijuana. She pushed her thin thighs tightly together and began to roll a joint.

  “My parents are in town next weekend,” she told Vivian with that haughty eye roll that I had already come to recognize as more habitual than bitchy. “They’re having this huge party at our place in the Hamptons—it’s always such a hassle.”

  “Whatever,” Vivian said. “You know their parties rock. Our pilgrimages out east are always totally worth it. Are they going to let you bring Francesco?”

  “Shh!” Pia narrowed her eyes at Vivian. “Well, duh, Viv, Francesco does work at the embassy, so he’ll probably be there, but not as my date. How many times do I have to tell you not to broadcast my personal life to everyone and their mother?”

  I was feeling very left out during this exchange, perhaps because Pia had turned her back to me. Once the joint was lit, though, I mustered the courage to squirm back toward Viv and Pia. Across the room, past several unshaven hipsters who were engaged in a mile-long game of Twister, I spotted Max leaning against a concrete wall. When he saw me see him, he raised his arm and waved slyly. Adorable.

  “What’s up, Mims?” asked Viv.

  “Nothing,” I said. Part of me wanted to tell the Coolies how cute I thought Max was, but I had no desire to humiliate myself. Because weirdly, though the Coolies all seemed to get action, unlike Rachel they never talked about it until after the fact. There was no dignity in obsessing over a guy—especially a fellow tenth-grader.

  “This shit is killer,” Pia announced, a huge puff of smoke exiting her impossibly small nostrils.

  “Hell yeah,” Vivian agreed, and took a hit.

  Watching the girls pull at the joint, I took mental notes so I’d know what to do when my turn came. The thing was, I hadn’t actually smoked all that much pot before, as in, actually, ever.

  “Here you go,” said Vivian, handing me the joint. It looked wet and limp, like the worms that used to swarm the sidewalks after big rainstorms in Houston. Not, in other words, all that appealing.

  You would think that this would be a big moment for me. And what was I thinking about as I brought it to my lips? That I was doing something illegal? No. That I was about to smear grease all over my brain, risking writing truly horrible columns and never getting into a college anybody’s heard of? No. That I was going to look like a big fat dork who barely goes near smoked salmon, let al
one smokes pot? Bingo.

  Luckily, right then a cute indie-rock guy appeared out of nowhere and sat down on Viv’s crate. He was wearing a bomber jacket and a baseball hat that said VERN’S FISH. Viv snuggled up to him in a way that implied, well, something.

  I sealed the joint with my lips and pulled. The warm smoke filled my mouth and tickled the back of my throat. I swirled the smoke around there, let it swish up against my teeth and sink into the pores of my cheeks. I started coughing, and as soon as I had stopped I blurted out, “This is definitely weird.” I regretted it the moment I opened my mouth. “Weird pot,” I corrected myself, taking another toke. “The stuff we have in Texas is way different,” I lied, and began coughing again. “Total embarrassing inexperience” might as well have been tattooed on my forehead.

  “We don’t have all night, Mimi,” snapped Pia. “Give it up.”

  “Sorry.” I started to hand her the joint, but she put out her hand and pointed behind me. “Not me. It’s his turn.”

  And who was huddled over me? None other than Max Roth, his sweatshirt hood cinched around his face. He looked adorable—and amused. I noticed that there was a tiny cat embroidered on his sleeve, bright orange like my baby Simon back in Houston. I glanced admiringly back at Max: Anyone with cats on his sleeve won major points with me.

  “Thanks, Mimi,” he said, accepting the joint and drawing it expertly to his lips.

  “What was the stuff in Texas like?” he asked after a couple of tokes.

  “Well,” I stalled, trying to think of suitable adjectives. Unfortunately, the only word I came up with was green.

  “Green?” Max’s eyes crinkled.

  “Mimi’s so busted!” Viv exclaimed, slapping her knee. “She’s a pot virgin, ha!” With the exception of Lily, everyone else cracked up even more at that. I had to join in, lest I seem even more of a schmo, but I couldn’t help thinking that Viv enjoyed her joke a little too much.

  “It’s cool, Texas,” Max finally said, ending the laughter and my displeasure. “Even the bad seeds need somebody to hang around with who can be a good influence.”