“I know she plays all innocent with her ‘I don’t swear’ and her ‘I don’t eat red meat,’ but I bet she’s into some kinky stuff,” Elaine says with a vicious smile.
“Actually, she’s a total prude. You know Chase is her first, and she’ll only do it in his bed. She won’t even do it with the light on.”
I try to swallow my food, which has turned to sawdust in my throat. Of course they’ve slept together. Did I expect Chase Fucking London to be a naïve little virgin like me?
Daria and Elaine keep going. It’s sort of like they aren’t really talking to me at all, but to an audience. No one at the table is listening except me, but they keep on like I’m answering. Like we’re having a conversation, but it seems more like they don’t want to talk to each other, so they’re talking through me. I’m the telephone, but what they’re saying is meant for the other, not me.
My brain clicks back in when Elaine swishes her razor-straight hair behind her shoulder and says, “No wonder Chase is looking for something better.”
She seems too smug about this, as if she can’t contain her happiness that her supposed friend is about to be dumped.
“I doubt it. He just has a wandering eye,” Daria says, seeming to lose interest in the conversation. She starts picking at the tab on her soda can.
“I think it’s a little more than hiseyethat wanders.” Elaine grins like she’s been waiting all day to deliver this juicy bit of gossip.
“You’d know,” Daria shoots back.
Elaine raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow, tosses back her perfectly glossy hair with a perfectly manicured hand, and smirks with her perfectly pretty lips. I can’t believe how catty these girls are.
If this is what friends are like, then I’m glad I’ve been missing out all these years. Lindsey is oblivious, eating with Chase at the other end of the table, and her friends are here saying horrible things about her to someone they just met. I’m relieved that Todd chooses this moment to rescue me from the conversation.
“Hey, pretty girl,” he says, smiling at me through a bite of lunch. “Where’d you come from?”
I’m not sure if this is a rhetorical question so I just smile at him.
“I’m Todd,” he says.
“Sky. We actually met last week.”
He looks at me blankly. “You sure? ‘Cause I think I’d remember you. You new here? I can show you around if you want.”
He gives me a more appreciative look, and I can’t help but think of the way he wolfs down his food. He reminds me of a bear—massive and hungry and primitive. I feel a little bad about the thought since he’s being nice and offering me a tour of the school that I’ve been attending for two weeks now.
“I think I know my way around,” I say.
“Can I walk you to class then?”
I smile at how eager and sincere he seems. I don’t have the heart to refuse him again. “Okay,” I say shyly.
We both crumple our trash at the same time. He has even more trouble getting out of a crowded bench than I do. Once he’s out, I slide out. I’m pleased to see that he towers over me, actually making me look small. I’m as tall as a lot of guys, and only an inch or two shorter than the rest of them. But Todd must be at least 6’4. When he smiles down at me, I think maybe there’s hope for making a real friend after all.
nine
Now Playing:
“Disappearing”—The Screaming Trees
Things move so quickly over the next few weeks that I barely have time to adjust. Before I know it, I’m a regular fixture at the popular tables. I’m not sure what I’m doing here—I never really feel like I belong, but I get a little more comfortable as time goes on. I still get awkward when the girls trash each other behind their friends’ backs. But I don’t feel like I’m in a position to defend anyone.
I try to blend in as much as possible, hoping I won’t bring their wrath down upon me. Elaine is the most spiteful one of them, and the one who always gives me accusing stares, like I’m an uninvited guest. An interloper. I find myself wondering what they say about me when I’m not around, but then, I really don’t want to know. After a week or so, I don’t think twice about going straight to their table, if only to avoid the stares I’d get from being bodily escorted by Chase again.
In a way, things aren’t so different from in Connecticut. No one seeks me out between classes, and my friends are just school friends. But instead of talking about classes and teachers, they talk about each other and guys. I find out a lot about them all just from listening to Elaine and Daria gossip every day at lunch. Daria is seeing a guy on the basketball team named Brandon, but she’s not very interested. She likes him because he dotes on her and buys her expensive things. Elaine thinks high school boys are dull and is dating a guy who’s a freshman in college, but she only sees him on weekends and holidays.
Elaine is a junior and may be valedictorian next year. She is in all advanced placement classes, as is Lindsey. Daria tells me that Elaine is jealous of Lindsey and has to be better than her in everything. Still, everyone likes Lindsey better, which drives Elaine crazy.
I can see why, though—Lindsey is sweet as sugar, and she doesn’t gossip nearly as much as the other girls. Whenever she gossips with the girls at lunch, she’s not mean spirited about it. It’s like sharing information, so it doesn’t seem as much like gossip.
I don’t have any classes with Lindsey, but she almost always sits next to me at lunch. Four other girls from cheer share our lunch hour and sit with us, but Lindsey’s two best friends are Daria and Elaine. I notice that everything seems to revolve around Lindsey and Chase, and I wonder if that’s another reason Elaine is jealous of Lindsey. I know I am, although it’s hard to be jealous when Lindsey is so nice to me. I try to be more discreet in my admiration of Chase, although I can’t seem to control the automatic blush response my body sends out whenever he speaks to me.