Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [90]
For as rebellious as these girls were trying to be (getting high! before school!), they were going about their business in all the wrong way. They were sitting outside, in the early-morning twilight, shivering in the first autumnal chill. That alone would be enough to arouse suspicion. But to be sitting outside, in the early-morning twilight, in the first autumnal chill, hiding underneath a large woolen blanket…Clearly there was something going on underneath that large woolen blanket that they didn’t want anyone to see. And this secret was illuminated every time they flicked the lighter, and again when they inhaled. Despite their efforts to avoid being caught—they lived up the block, and I can only assume they had chosen the patio of this unoccupied condo on purpose—they could not reign in their innate desire to be noticed. They loudly and ludicrously revealed their illicit intentions to anyone within earshot, which I was. I still don’t know their names, only their pet names for each other.
“Pass the bowl, Slut!”
“Bitch, I’ve got the munchies.”
I couldn’t pull myself away.
I’ve watched them other times, too. I’ve watched them catwalking down the sidewalks of my parents’ neighborhood, nearly identical in their ponytails, candy-colored camisoles, and premium denim hemmed a quarter-inch—upward, downward—from obsolescence. They stepped in unison, or rather, assumed a lazy, synchronized shuffle. Conjoined by a shared iPod and a secret song, these two BFFs each wore a tiny white plug inside a perfectly suntanned ear. I’ve watched Bitch yank Slut’s earbud.
“Gimme a cigarette, Slut!”
And I watched Slut silently obey because that’s the downside of being the second most popular girl in the sophomore class.
The last time I saw Bitch—ah, Bitch—she was wearing a pair of oversized, brown bear-claw slippers on her feet. The slippers were a masterstroke, a testimonial to Bitch’s brilliance, and the reason no other sixteen-year-old would usurp her any time soon as the most popular girl in the sophomore class. No one at Pineville High wore bear-claw slippers in public! They enhanced Bitch’s carefully cultivated crazy/beautiful reputation, an image fueled by the rumors that she spent last summer not at summer camp, but at rehab for…Drugs? Depression? An eating disorder? Does it matter? Rumors about Bitch’s mysterious and perhaps imaginary stint in rehab have only helped set her apart from the other merely pretty girls at Pineville High. And when the inevitable happened, when other girls showed up in their furry animal slippers, Bitch would be rightfully recognized not only as the innovator, but as the only female in school who could get away with wearing just about anything without suffering any negative social repercussions.
In that way, Bitch reminds me of you. I wish I could fully embrace your utilitarian philosophy about clothes: You have to wear clothes. So you wear them. Like you, I don’t want to be bothered by clothes, and more specifically, shopping for clothes. I also resent being judged by the quality, creativity, or cost of my clothes. It’s all so superficial, right? And didn’t we learn about focusing on our insides not our outsides in the “Can’t Buy Love at the Mall” self-esteem workshop in middle school? But here’s the major difference: You borrow one of my T-shirts and don’t even notice or care when it exposes the hairy expanse of your midriff like a hoochie drag queen in the Gay Pride Parade. Yet the look still works on you. It contributes to your freaky mystique. I believe your whole not-caring-about-clothes thing is sincere, but it also has the added benefit of enhancing your image, not detracting from it.
A similar sartorial carelessness doesn’t look so good on me because, in truth, I still care too much about how I look. The problem is, I don’t care enough to do much about it, despite my mother’s, my sister’s, and my trendier friends’ best efforts. Which