Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [15]
Q. Where did you get your T-shirt? (A. A friend attending the Fashion Institute of Technology made it for her.)
Q. Where did you get your skirt? (A. At a vintage clothing store in the Village—that’s Greenwich Village to you and me.)
Q. Where did you get your boots? (A. From "the world’s best" Salvation Army.)
By the end of the interrogation, Bridget, Manda, and Sara were swearing off the Ocean County Mall.
Oh. There was one crucial non-wardrobe-related question:
Q. Do you have a boyfriend?
I must admit that I too breathed a sigh of relief when the answer was "Yes." No competition. He’s a nineteen-year-old DJ she met at a rave. His name is—get this—Fly. Fly and Hy. I think this is hilarious.
I doubt I’ll ask Hy over to my house. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s cool. But Hy is way too happening to cozy up to a suburban loser like me. I’d constantly be looking over my shoulder for the cooler friends she’d ditch me for.
the tenth
Tonight was the indoor track awards dinner. Girls’ team only. The boys decided to have a separate banquet, so I didn’t have the pleasure of having my second mortifying "conversation" with Paul Parlipiano.
I got the Scholar Athlete Award. My GPA has risen to 99.66. The crazy thing is, the higher my GPA gets, the more I realize that high school is useless. I’m serious. I forget everything I’m supposed to have learned immediately after the test. For example, I got back a Chemistry quiz I took last week. I nailed a 95. But when I looked over the formulas today, they meant nothing to me.
All subjects are the same. I memorize notes for a test, spew it, ace it, then forget it. What makes this scary for the future of our country is that I’m in the tip-top percentile on every standardized test. I’m a model student with a very crappy attitude about learning.
It’s a good thing I’m smart. My parents won’t let me know just how smart I am, though. I had my IQ tested in first grade but they would never tell me what the number was. I assume it’s because they found out I was smarter than they were. I know this because I overheard my mom saying to my dad, "How are we supposed to feel knowing our kid is smarter than we are?" (I knew they weren’t talking about Bethany—a straight B-minus student who only applied to bantamweight state schools and had the good fortune of getting hit on by G-Money at the Bamboo Bar in the summer of 1993, an event that guaranteed she’d never work a steady job in her life.)
My parents aren’t dumb. My dad is a high-school network administrator (not at PHS, thank God), so he knows a ton of I.T. mumbo jumbo. And my mom was the top broker associate at Century 21 last year. But still I wonder where I inherited my overactive brain. They think about things waaaaaay less than I do. Their boring suburbanness doesn’t cause them any existential angst that keeps them awake at night. Nope, they do their jobs, come home, eat dinner, drink a few glasses of wine, watch whatever is on TV from eight P.M. until midnight, go to sleep, and wake up at six A.M. to do it all over again. The most exciting things going on in their lives aren’t even going on in their lives. My mom lives for Bethany’s wedding appointments. My dad lives for my meets. And that seems to be okey-dokey to them.
I can’t settle for such a lackluster life. Which is why it bothers me that this award was no big deal. Or that the whole indoor track season was no big deal. Maybe I feel this way because I’m naturally good at it. I work hard at practice and all, but I don’t put in any superhuman effort to be the top distance runner on the team. I just am. Scotty has told me that he isn’t a natural athlete. But he’s gotten so good because he puts his mind, body, and spirit into every workout. There’s a history of hard work behind every touchdown, every basket, every run, and that’s why sports