The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [7]
Back in the spring, one of the posters that Blue had made to advertise Arwing displayed a group of gaming characters and announced, I’M NOT LONELY.
But he was.
WHITNEY, NEW YORK | THE POPULAR BITCH
Before leaving home for her last first day of high school, Whitney glanced at herself in all of her mirrors for the seventeenth time: the large mirror above her dresser, the small one by her TV for scrutinizing hair and makeup, and the full-length one behind her door. She had spent two hours getting ready this morning. Her white-blonde hair, highlighted from a summer of lifeguarding, cascaded to her shoulders in meticulously crafted, loose, bouncy curls behind a funky knit headband that she wore so she’d have an excuse to brag that members of a famous rock group had complimented her on it. Several bracelets dangled from her wrist, still tan from cheerleading camp the week before. Her makeup was flawless, accentuated by a smattering of glitter above her eyes; it looked good now, but she knew she would check her makeup again in the school bathroom three or four times that day, hunting for imperfections and correcting them with her Sephora-only arsenal.
People told Whitney all the time that she was pretty, as in beauty pageant pretty or talk show host pretty. Whitney thought this was because of her smile. In her opinion, her straight white teeth slightly made up for her body, which dissatisfied her when she compared it to her friends’. When they went to the local diner together, the girls did not eat; they only sat and watched the guys stuff their faces. If the girls were really hungry, the most they would order in front of the group was lemon water.
Whitney checked her makeup again in the kitchen mirror, forced herself to guzzle a Slim-Fast shake to jump-start her metabolism, grabbed her Coach purse, lacrosse bag, and book bag, and ran out the door, pausing briefly at the mirror in the foyer. She drove too quickly into the school parking lot, unapologetically cutting off people on her way, and parked her SUV crookedly, taking up two spots, but leaving it there anyway because she could. She met up with Giselle, her best friend until recently. Giselle, who had been the schoolwide Homecoming Queen as a sophomore, had become popular through cheerleading and by dating a popular senior—when she was in the eighth grade. “Well, this is it!” Giselle said, and they stepped into the building.
Riverland Academy, located in a small town in upstate New York, catered to a mostly white, Christian community. Its four hundred students crowded into the gym, standing in small groups or lining the bleachers. Amidst the chaos, the girls easily spotted their group, which other students called the “preps” or the “populars,” in the center of the gym. Bianca, the queen bee, thin and tan, stood with Kendra, a senior; Peyton, a junior; and Madison, Bianca’s best friend. Chelsea, the only brunette standing among the populars, had worked her way up from “being a loser,” according to Whitney, by “sucking up to Bianca like crazy and giving her information about people.” The preps tolerated Chelsea, but didn’t include her as a stalwart member of the group. This meant they didn’t allow her in their Homecoming limo, but they did invite her to take pictures with them.
A few of the prep boys orbited the girls: Chip and Spencer, hot high-society seniors; Bobby, a chubby, boisterous football star; and Seth, an overachieving junior. The preps were each on two or more sports teams, partied with college students, and in Whitney’s words, “just own[ed] the school.”
The girls appraised the surrounding students and whispered to each other, standing as they typically did, one hand on a hip, one knee bent, in what the cheerleading coach referred to as “the hooker’s pose.” Their long hair hung stick straight. They wore heels and dark skinny jeans. Whitney was the only one not dressed in what she called “country club urban prep,” with which