I don’t even bother trying to talk to Royal the rest of class. I do the lab we’re assigned even though I have to touch giant hissing cockroaches. I don’t complain when he does nothing. He doesn’t have to do anything. He could probably turn in blank pages for every assignment and get a better grade than me. His father paid for my scholarship, and he no doubt pays for their grades.
I hear my mother’s voice in my head.
That’s just the way the world works, Harper. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you’ll stop trying to change things that will never change. This is our place in the world. You might as well have some fun before you die.
It’s not fair, but no one ever claimed life was fair. Maybe once, Mom had dreams to get out, too. She grew up hearing and probably believing the same lies we’re all fed, that she could be a doctor or an astronaut or a rock star if she just worked hard and believed in herself. I’m sure she didn’t grow up thinking she’d work at a gas station when she was forty.
Maybe one day, I’ll let go of my dreams and wind up like her, with a kid she never wanted, a drinking problem she can’t afford, and a string of boyfriends that for a night or a week or a month, make her laugh and hope and feel alive again before she comes crashing back down to earth, and her dreams are shattered all over again.
*
At lunch, I’m torn. I want to eat, but I’m not keen on facing the whole school at once— Duke with his revenge scheme, Baron who might be Mr. D, and the girls who told me I couldn’t sit with them if I was planning on standing up for myself.
In the end, it’s the Waltons who convince me. They mince by in their red-soled stilettos, stopping to stare at my garage sale jeans and fading black tee.
“Oh my god, weren’t you wearing that shirt yesterday?” Gloria asks.
I wasn’t, but I only have so many plain tee shirts, and we can only wear jeans on Fridays, so my wardrobe choices are severely limited.
“Don’t you have anything that doesn’t look like you found it in someone else’s trash can?” Everleigh asks, wrinkling her pretty little nose.
“What are you even wearing?” Eleanor says. “Those jeans were in style, like, ten years ago.”
“I didn’t realize school was a red-carpet event,” I shoot back. “But if you really want to know who I’m wearing, my shirt is probably Faded Glory, and my jeans are by Levi. But your stylist might have to get on the waiting list for a pair—apparently, it’s liketen yearslong.”
The girls huff and exchange looks, probably because they’ve never heard of that brand. I roll my eyes and turn away, exiting through a short hallway off the café and finding my way outside instead of sitting through another lunch with a bunch of insufferable snobs. At least that’s what I tell myself as I cross the grass toward the football stadium. In reality, maybe it’s starting to get to me—the looks, the cutting remarks, the insults. I have thick skin, but it’s still skin.
The truth is, it sucks to walk around feeling like everyone’s staring at my dated, thrift store finds. At Faulkner, they were invisible. No one batted an eye. Lots of girls there shopped at thrift stores just to be quirky and cute. Once, I ran into Zephyr Hertz at a Goodwill. He complimented me on my find—a real leather jacket—and suddenly, we were co-conspirators, searching for steals in the shoe aisle. I actually felt cool for being there.
That would never happen here. First off, I’m sure even the other scholarship kids aren’t as dirt poor as we are, and even if they are, it’s the kind of place that magnifies your shame for being poor, so we’d probably just hide and hurry away, pretending we’d never seen each other.
A sweet, earthy aroma finds me when I’m almost to the bleachers, and I can’t help but smile. So maybe I won’t hang out with the scholarship kids or the gossip girls. But apparently there’s one more group I hadn’t considered, a group I didn’t expect to exist at ritzy Willow Heights. Stoners.
I round the end of the bleachers and stop short, colliding with a pair of big, soft tits. I stumble back, and Dixie stumbles the other way.
“Dixie?” I ask incredulously. “You’re a stoner?”
“What? No,” she says quickly.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I—I’m on my way to my student council meeting,” she says, smoothing her skirt and rubbing her lips together like she’s smoothing out her lipstick.
I narrow my eyes. “You meet on the football field?”
“I just came out to get a minute in the sun, okay?”
Total lie. She came from under the bleachers.
“What are you here for, anyway?” she asks.
“Needed a break from the assholes,” I say with a shrug.
“Well, I’m going to be late if we don’t hurry, but I’ll walk in and get food with you,” she says. “No one bothers me.”
“Right,” I say. “Because of the blog.”
As tempting as her offer is, I already accepted that I’m not eating lunch. I’m pretty used to skipping meals, and I’ve been eating breakfast here, which means skipping lunch isn’t a huge deal anymore. Besides, just because no one messes with Dixie, that doesn’t mean they’ll leave me alone. I was at her table yesterday, and they pulled me away and gave me the royal treatment.