Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [62]
What would my mom do with them if I died? I can’t ask her. Especially today.
Actually, is there an appropriate time to ask that question?
Every year girls like Sara wear their flyest fall clothes on the first day of school. They get all decked out like the September covers of YM and Seventeen in their turtleneck sweaters and wool miniskirts and boots, despite the fact that it’s still eighty-five degrees outside. I used to think that they just wanted to show off how stylish they were. But maybe I’m not the only one afraid that I’ll never get a chance to wear them.
I doubt it.
I know this is stupid, but every time I go back-to-school shopping, I always imagine that my purchases will bring me a new-and-improved life. Like that new T-shirt or lipstick will finally make Paul Parlipiano realize how amazing and offbeat I am. Only I don’t even have Paul Parlipiano to hope for anymore.
Now what will I do to try to get my mind off the fact that you’re gone?
Quixotically yours, J.
september
the third
I was lounging under the covers, bittersweetly enjoying my last Sunday morning free of school-on-Monday dread, when Bridget came bursting through my bedroom door.
"Everything was a lie!" she shrieked.
Wow, I thought. I knew Sara would spill about Burke and Manda, but I expected her to hold out longer than this.
"Like, everything about Hy was a lie!"
"What?"
"There’s an article about her in today’s New York Times!" Bridget yelled, waving a newspaper in my face.
"What?!"
"See for yourself!"
I wiped the sleep crust out of my eyes and took the paper from Bridget. There, on the front page of the "Styles" section, was a picture of a very bored-looking Hy, chin in one hand, cigarette in the other. The caption read: Will Cinthia Wallace Be Gen-Y’s Literary "It" Girl?
"Cinthia Wallace?!"
"That’s what the Park Avenue Posse calls her," Bridget said.
"Park Avenue Posse?!"
"It gets worse," Bridget said, nervously twisting her ponytail around her hand.
I read on, and finally found out the truth about Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace.
Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, daughter of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Wisteria Allegra-Wallace and banking billioniare Nicholas Wallace, who divorced when she was four years old. Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, "the cream of the crop of the hip-hop debutantes who zoom through their young lives at warp speed." Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, who, at thirteen, was caught by her nanny at her father’s Park Avenue penthouse having sex with an underwear model twice her age. Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, "clubber, raver, precocious party girl," asked to leave no less than six chi-chi private schools for smoking, drinking, and drugging. Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, who, by sixteen, "was bored by champagne, cocaine, promiscuous sex, and Prada." Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, who "craved the normal life she never had" and decided to move in with a "normal" family acquaintance (a former maid) and attend a "normal" public high school in a "normal" town in New Jersey just to see what "normal" girls her age were like. Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, who claims that she was shocked to discover that these "normal" New Jersey girls were "just as superficial and sex-crazed as the girls in the Park Avenue Posse—only severely challenged fashion-wise." Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, who just snagged six figures to write her first novel, which she hopes will give her the credibility she needs to get accepted to Harvard on merit, instead of on money and family name. Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, whose fictionalized account of her "normal" New Jersey experience is tentatively titled (GASP!) Bubble-Gum Bimbos and Assembly-Line Meatballers.
"Bubble-Gum Bimbos!"
"I know! It’s like, totally horrible!" Bridget yelled right back. "She’s calling us bubble-gum bimbos!"
My stomach spun around faster than the Himalaya ride