Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [91]
Manda just argued that no human being could out-hubris a teenage boy, a strange assertion from the former most popular girl in the sophomore class. I swear Bitch and Slut have the boys beat. As the reigning most popular girls in their class, they can outfreeze anyone with an icy stare, or a crackly cackle of laughter. And even if they cannot ensnare their quarry (you, for example), they still think they can, which is close enough.
Whenever I gaze upon these girls—girls shimmering with the power of their sexuality, girls I would have hated when I was their age, girls I have to will myself not to hate right now—I am certain that even if I could fulfill that aphorism about going back knowing what I know now, I still wouldn’t fit into the caste Hope and I coined the Upper Crust. To play off that UK economist’s dire prognosticatians, I am, comparatively speaking, doomed to the Under Crust. I’d never be cool enough, pretty enough, or, most important, innovative enough in the art of adolescent sadism. At sixteen, I would have instinctively crossed the street if these superior specimens were headed in my direction. And though I’m ashamed to admit it, part of me still wants to avoid them now, even though one of the divine advantages of being twenty-two is that I don’t have to surrender to the oppressive, ever-shifting politics of high school popularity.
I watched Bitch and Slut hastily put away their contraband, giggling as they galloped toward a honk coming from the front of the condo. I couldn’t confirm this from my spot in the window, but I imagined that it was Bitch’s boyfriend, a senior, perhaps, who had just rolled up in the driveway in his SUV. It was 6:58 A.M., and if Boyfriend leadfooted it, he would get them to homeroom in time for the last bell. As they sped away in a screech of peeling tires, I asked myself why I was so bound by relationships forged during the zitgeist, the time of teen angst I couldn’t wait to escape, and to which I wouldn’t return even if I could.
fifty-eight
Without getting too gross and Oedipal, joining my dad at breakfast was kind of like seeing last night’s one-night stand in the harsh, morning-after light. His candor had made him emotionally vulnerable, and so I was fully expecting him to return to the defensive subterfuge that has pretty much defined our relationship thus far.
“Good morning,” he said casually as he came down the stairs.
“There is no news in this newspaper,” I said, leaning into my elbows as I scanned the front-page headlines of the Ocean County Observer. (RARE TURTLE “NUKED” AT POWER PLANT; OCEAN-MONMOUTH GIRL SCOUTS MERGE; LOCAL YOUTHS HEAD BACK TO SCHOOL IN STYLE.) “No wonder so many people are moving to Pineville. It’s downright Utopian….”
“If you want to get depressed over breakfast, then go back to New York Times territory,” my dad sniped.
“I don’t want to get depressed, I just want—” I had looked up to see that my dad was dressed in his cycling gear. “Dad!”
“What?”
“What?!”
“I’m fine,” he said, waving his hand as if to shoo away a mosquito. “Gotta get back on the bike. Can’t let one setback stop me.”
“Okay,” I said. “But don’t you think you should take it easy today?”
“I am taking it easy,” he replied. “It’s almost nine A.M. Normally I’ve done twenty miles by now.”
“It’s just…,” I began.
He came over and poked his finger in the wrinkle that always worries itself between my eyes. (Again, at the risk of getting too Freudian, I remember you doing the same thing, warning me