Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [72]
Me: I’m not your girl. Don’t ever call or E-mail me again.
Click.
After everything she’s done, Hy had the audacity to impersonate my best friend in the universe. What makes this even dirtier is that Hope is someone who has never intentionally backstabbed anyone in her life. (And do I even have to point out how sad it is that my dad fell for it? He’s so out of touch with me that he doesn’t even know the sound of my best friend’s voice on the phone. Pathetic!)
I don’t know why I was so surprised. Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace is just living the footloose, fucked-up, and fancy-free lifestyle of a NYC trustafarian. Her suburban experiment was just an extreme example of her feeling entitled to whatever she damn well wants. Only, in this case, she couldn’t use her parents’ names or bank accounts to get it. No, she needed us to get the one thing that eludes pampered, privileged girls with famous parents: Credibility.
Boo-hoo! What a burden being born into a high-class caste. Everything comes too easy for me! Sex. Drugs. Manolos. Boo-hoo! I’m such a cliché! No one takes me seriously. If only I were … middle class. Then my life would be simple and rosy! So you know what I’ll do? I’ll slum in (ick!) New Jersey and pretend to befriend some poor mallrats who have no idea what it’s like to live on the right side of the VIP velvet ropes. I’ll win their confidence, learn their secrets, then exploit the hell out of them. While the rest of the Park Avenue Posse fucks and snorts and shops, I’ll write a novel about how my suburban nightmare was far worse than anything I saw after-hours in the meat-packing district. The world will be so impressed by my transformation from addict to author that no one will accuse me of getting into Harvard because of my parents.…
The upside of the conversation is that I now know the subject for my essay. "Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace: Park Avenue Poseur."
the seventeenth
Are we ready for a World War?
In homeroom this morning, I told Sara all about how I’d dissed Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace on the phone. She’s the perfect person to share these types of triumphs with, if only because she asks for so many details that the retelling lasts a bizillion times longer than the actual event.
Omigod! She said what? Omigod! You said what? Omigod! What did you do then? Omigod! Didn’t you want to strangle her? Omigod! You’re really gonna write an editorial about her? Omigod!
And so on.
With five minutes left, I put on my backpack and picked up my crutches to get a head start on the PHS student body. That’s when I saw his hand go up in the air.
"Mr. Flutie?" said Rico Suave with the condescending, mock-polite tone teachers use to mask their dislike of certain trouble students.
"I have to tell Jessica Darling something before she leaves," Marcus said.
"Okay. But be quick about it," said Rico Suave.
Marcus got up from his seat and walked right up to me. Then he deliberately turned to look at Sara, whose eyes were springing out of her head like a pair of novelty googly-glasses. He looked at me again and said, "Ask yourself this: Who’s the real poseur?"
Then he walked back to his seat.
He had no idea how long I had waited to hear those seven words. Well, not those specifically, but just words in general.
Needless to say, I tried hobbling out of there before Sara had a chance to pick her chin up off the floor. But I couldn’t limp fast enough.
"Omigod! What was that all about?" asked Sara, who had snuck up behind me.
"Jesus Christ!" I yelled, twitching with shock. "What are you doing here? You scared the crap out of me."
"I told Suave you forgot your Chem book," she said. "What is up with you and Krispy Kreme?"
"I have no idea, Sara."
"Really?" she said, her tongue dripping with venom. "If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you actually understood what he was talking about."
"Well, I don’t."
"If you don’t ask Krispy what the hell his problem is, I will," she said with a steely determination I knew she would make good on.
It didn’t take too long. Six minutes later, before the start