Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [5]
Bridget is the only other student from Pineville High who was accepted to this “highly competitive, nationally recognized program,” so it’s pretty much impossible to buy into all the brochure’s rah-rah, change-the-world rhetoric. Bridget would rather shape up her ass than shape the cultural landscape.
MEOW-ZA! Got any nip for my cattitude?
Bridget is still offended by my decision not to room with her. When she found out that we had both been accepted, she automatically assumed we’d stay together, exhibiting the special kind of naïveté that is sometimes refreshing—but more often annoying—in this cynical world.
“Don’t you want to make a new lifelong friend?” I said, intentionally hitting her weak spot, which is her unwavering need to “connect” with people.
“And, like, you do?”
Valid point. But I was not going to cave in. The mysterious Mary DePasquale was better than the certainty of living with Bridget. I know exactly what my summer would be like if I lived with her. Until I bonded with Hope in middle school, I spent the first dozen years of my life playing the quirky best friend to Bridget’s leading lady—you know, the comic sidekick whose average appearance seems downright troll-like when sharing the frame with the incandescent, above-the-marquee beauty. Like Lili Taylor in Say Anything. Or Lili Taylor in Mystic Pizza. Or Lili Taylor in any movie, ever.
But turning her down did me little good. This dorm has forty rooms on four floors. Yet is it any surprise that Bridget has been assigned a room just two doors down?
“You can ignore me if you want to,” she said with a pout.
I should give Bridget more credit because the acting program had more applicants than any other, but I probably won’t. I’m pissed at her for crashing what was supposed to be my summertime banishment. Dropping out of Pineville society had a purpose, you know. This was supposed to be my test run for college, my only opportunity to practice spinning my personality into a more alluring and/or amusing alternative to the Real Me. I could’ve worked out all the kinks this summer so I don’t waste a moment of real college life next September.
For example (and this is just an example, one of many possibilities), I could’ve written erotica and transformed myself into suburban New Jersey’s jailbait answer to Anaïs Nin. No one would’ve known any better to question the authenticity. I mean, what kind of starved-for-attention sicko would make up a whole new identity for herself just for amusement’s sake? Oh, yeah. That’s right. One who wanted to score a book contract, a movie deal, and an acceptance letter from Harvard. None other than the trustafarian turncoat herself, Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace. Ack.
Too bad Bridget’s pathological honesty makes such a temporary image makeover impossible for me. I can just imagine her calling out my bullshit in front of my SPECIAL classmates. “Jess is a virgin. Like, what does she know about throbbing, pulsating passion?”
While I don’t look forward to exhausting the energy it will require to ignore Bridget all summer, I do look forward to all the possibilities of getting out of Pineville, mostly (as much as I hate to admit it because it gives in to my girliest tendencies) the chance that I’ll meet the magnetic, brilliant boy who proves once and for all that a particular Pineville High student, He Who Shall Remain Nameless, does not corner the market on magnetism or brilliance.
the fifth
The first two days of SPECIAL are devoted to Orientation, during which we’re supposed to meet people and get cozy with the campus. Instead of just letting us meet people