“Could you give it a rest?” Alicia said during study hall. She’d been leaning forward, obsessing out loud about her latest cheerleading drama, but now she flung herself back in her chair. “They’re not here, Jane.”
“Who’s not here?” I asked. When she didn’t buy it, I said, “I was listening. I was. You said that for the tryout, you have to be able to do a split or you’re eliminated.”
“I said you
Didn’t see the Bitches in the hall. Didn’t see the Bitches in the bathroom. Didn’t see the Bitches in the library, where I ate lunch in order to avoid pissy Alicia.
I did, however, see Camilla Jones. Camilla was a freshman, like me and Alicia, although she often forgot to act like it. She read battered textbooks on post-modernism, for example, and she used words like “socio-economic” even when teachers weren’t around. Today she wore a dusty rose leotard and a wrap-around skirt, and she’d secured her bun with serviceable brown bobby pins. She always wore her hair in a bun, because she was really serious about ballet. Ballet and weird literature theory shit, those were Camilla’s things.
Looking at Camilla, what occurred to me was,
No. I was sure she didn’t. Which meant that Rae was a big juicy freak, as of course I’d known all along.
I crumpled my granola bar wrapper and stood up. I walked over to Camilla’s carrel.
“Hey,” I said. I didn’t really know why.
She lifted her head. She seemed surprised that anyone was talking to her.
“Um … what are you reading?” I asked.
She flipped her book so I could see. It was called
.
“Huh. Is it any good?”
“It’s all right,” she said. She paused, then added, “Did you know that Barbie dolls can grasp wine glasses, but not pens?”
“Pens? You mean, like to write with?”
“And Astronaut Barbie’s spacesuit is pink, with puffed sleeves.”
Her disgust was apparent, so instead of saying, “Well, that’s to make her look cute,” I kind of laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s definitely what I’d wear if I were an astronaut. Well … see you!”
I left, and my brain spun back to the Bitches. Maybe Camilla was impervious to their charms, but I wasn’t, especially after they’d lavished me with one-on-one attention. Why had they treated me that way only to leave me in the cold?
And then my stomach got spazzy and I had a panic attack right there in the hall. Kyle’s party was only a day away, and what if the Bitches didn’t arrive to pick me up? What if they
“Nossir,” Bob Foskin complained from his desk at the front of the room. “Just ain’t no way a chick can make a baby on her own, goddess or no goddess.”
“Fertility. Creation. Rebirth,” Lurl the Pearl droned in her gravelly voice. “There are mysteries in the world that aren’t meant to be understood.”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Bob said. “What I do know is that every mare needs a stallion, if you catch my drift.”
A few kids tittered, but I tuned them out. I jiggled the computer’s mouse, and the “Lady and the Beast” screen saver disappeared. When I got to Google, I typed in “Sandy,” “Crestview Academy,” and after a moment of thought, “died.” No hits, of course. I tried “Crestview” and “witchcraft,” but again got no hits. I cleared the search line and typed in “bitches,” just for the hell of it. The list I got filled zillions of pages. First came the obligatory “female dog” stuff, and then the entries got more interesting. Tokyo Bitches, IQ Bitches, Cricket-playing Bitches. I found one site called Mature Bitches, which must have slipped past the school’s blocking software, because when I pulled it up, I was bombarded with porn pop-ups. If I ever needed a perverted granny, I knew where to go.
Something brushed my leg, and I jumped. A cat—small and dark with clumpy fur. The feral cats were always prowling around in here, probably because Lurl the Pearl was the sole teacher who didn’t seem to mind. And usually I didn’t either. Usually I felt sorry for them, because they were so mangy and bedraggled. Other students complained—a girl named Alice was allergic and brought in a note from her doctor—but Lurl the Pearl didn’t do anything about it. “Focus, please,” she’d said, blankly surveying both the class and the cats.
The cat nudged me again and let out a squeaky mew. Usually I didn’t mind—but today I didn’t want to touch it. Rae’s story had done that if nothing else. But I didn’t want to not touch it, either, just because of Rae’s malarkey. I gave the cat a quick scratch, then wiped my hand on my jeans and scrolled further down the list on my computer. Chess Bitches, Vegan Bitches, Snarky Bitches … hmm. The description for Snarky Bitches read, “For girls/women who are Bitches, plain and simple.” I double clicked on the address. The screen blipped, and a hot pink site logo popped up.
“Have we finished the assignment?” Lurl the Pearl asked from behind me.
I smothered a cry. She was mouth breathing down my neck. Quickly I clicked the back button, and the list of “bitch” sites reappeared.
Friday night, Bitsy pulled up in front of my house at eight-fifteen.
“My, aren’t we looking glam?” she said when she saw me. “Quite a bit of leg on show there, eh?” She and Mary Bryan went into a titter fest, and my insides gummed up. I couldn’t move.
“Hi, Jane,” Keisha said from the passenger seat of Bitsy’s red car. “Get in.”
I searched Keisha’s face. She didn’t
I tried. I
The others slipped off their shoes and put them on a special rack, so I stepped out of my clogs and did the same thing. My toenails were scraggly. I tried to scrunch them out of view.
“Ladies,” Kyle said, swooping over to greet us. He put one arm around Bitsy and one arm around Mary Bryan. “Bitsy, I adore that halter. And Keisha! Our queen of the Nile!” He let go of Bitsy and Mary Bryan and air-kissed Keisha’s cheek.
“Hi, Kyle,” Keisha said. She returned his kiss and made eyes at Bitsy.
Kyle stepped back. He gave me the once over. “Well, what do we have here?”
My face split into a twitchy grin. “Hi,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me to your party.”
“You’re very welcome.
My smile hurt the sides of my mouth.