Keisha stood up and began collecting Diet Coke cans. “Our decision’s not final until tomorrow.” She glanced briefly at me. Almost as if she were apologizing, she said, “We had to meet with you one last time. You understand.”
“Sure,” I said. “Okay.”
“So we’ll let you know.”
“Great. Sounds good.”
I hesitated, then got to my feet and helped clean up. As I was collecting Diet Coke cans, Mary Bryan approached me.
“I’m not that girl anymore,” she said.
“I know,” I said, because I got it. Mary Bryan had changed, and I wanted to, too.
Bitsy took me home, with Mary Bryan and Keisha in tow. We stopped at Steak and Shake for dinner, which surprised me, but I didn’t complain. A few other kids from school were there, too. Sukie Karing. Josh Barnett. I tried to act nonchalant, but I was puffed with pride that I was the one entering with Keisha, Mary Bryan, and Bitsy. Sitting at their table. Sharing their conversation.
“Double cheeseburger, fries, and a Sprite,” Bitsy said when our waitress approached. “No, strike that. Chocolate shake.”
“Whipped cream?” the waitress asked.
“Hell yeah,” Bitsy said. She looked at the rest of us. “What? A girl’s got to eat.”
“Right, which is why your fridge is stocked with pita bread and Diet Coke,” Mary Bryan said. I could have been wrong, but it seemed like a bit of a payback.
“Hey, that’s my mum’s food,” Bitsy said.
Mary Bryan made a face. “Hate pita bread.”
“So shove it up your ass,” Bitsy suggested.
“The rest of you know what you want?” the waitress asked.
We ordered. As soon as the waitress left, Sukie Karing slid out of her booth and came over to ours. Her eyes lit briefly on me—curious, I could tell—but it was Keisha she directed her comments toward.
“Oh my god. Did you hear? About Mr. Cohen?”
Keisha lifted her head.
“What happened?” Mary Bryan asked.
Sukie gripped the edge of the table. “He might have
Three messages waited for me at home, all from Alicia. “Jane, pick up,” came the first one. “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.” Then came, “Jane! Where are you! Karaoke, remember?” And finally, “You better not have blown me off. I mean it. We’ll swing by your house just in case—you better be there!”
I leaned against the counter. Crap. Guilt knuckled down inside me, along with frustration at the unfairness of it. I
The next day I made a point of getting to my locker way early so that I wouldn’t run into Alicia, and I managed to dodge her between classes as well. After French, I met up with the Bitches. Me and Mary Bryan and Keisha and Bitsy. They didn’t say anything to me, just, “Right, let’s go.” When we got to Bitsy’s, it was like total deja-vu. Same empty house, same white sofas. Although this time we had Perrier and soy nuts, so it wasn’t completely the same after all.
I sat down on one sofa, and the three of them sat across from me on the other. I twisted my fingers in my lap.
“You know why you’re here,” Keisha said.
I did, but I wasn’t so dumb as to say it out loud.
“We’re very careful whom we pick to join us,” she said, “and we’re impressed with your qualifications.” She ticked off points. “You’re a freshman. That’s essential, of course. You’re not in any remedial classes. Your looks meet the minimum requirements.”
“Which is to say you’re not a dog,” Bitsy said. She winked.
“But mainly, we like your attitude,” Keisha said. “You appreciate what we represent, and we know you’ll make us proud. Am I right?”
“Um, yeah,” I said.
“Because we’ll be investing an enormous amount of energy in you, Jane. You’ll have to work hard to be worth it.”
I felt silly, but I nodded anyway. “I will. I promise.”
Bitsy leaned forward. “And everything we tell you remains secret. Do you understand?”
“Of course.”
She arched her eyebrows. “Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s a forever kind of thing, luv. So think about it before you give your answer, because you better be one-hundred-percent sure.”
I gazed at their faces. They all looked so serious. Mary Bryan smiled encouragingly, but she was gripping her Perrier harder than she needed to. For no good reason I thought of cats. Of black magic and girls who were dead. Fear twanged in my stomach, and I had an out-of-body sensation of standing over a pit, about to fall in.
“I want in,” I said. “I want to be a Bitch.”
Time stopped. And when nothing happened, I had a moment of panic.
Keisha picked up her backpack from the floor and withdrew a small box. She walked to my sofa and stood in front of me. I stood, too.
“In that case, we ask you to be one of us,” Keisha said. “Do you accept our invitation?”
The fly, the fly. The fly in the ointment. The fly in the ointment was this: The key Keisha gave me was to Lurl the Pearl’s private office. Not her classroom, where she held office hours and gave tutorials, but a separate office in Hamilton Hall. And the Bitches had instructed me to go there with an item from the girl whose popularity I was willing to suck away, because for me to rise, I had to knock down someone else … or something like that. My memory of Keisha’s instructions was more than a little muzzy. But anyway, only then would I become the Jane I was meant to be. Uber-Jane, with bonus molecules of charisma bouncing from my cells.
It was crazy, of course. Crazy enough to make my skin prickle. Although of course I’d hidden my reaction.
I had slept hard after yesterday’s induction ceremony, but this morning I replayed it all over again. How Keisha had explained the rules with a straight face, and how she frowned when I kept giggling. But I couldn’t help it. It was either giggle or fall into the pit, and I chose to giggle. Because it made me feel better … and because by that point I’d had two glasses of champagne.
“So it’s like an initiation,” I’d said. “You want me to steal something from someone to prove I’m, like, loyal.”
“It can be a Chapstick,” Mary Bryan said. “Or a ribbon. It doesn’t have to be something big.”
“But it’s not to prove your loyalty,” Keisha said. “Like I said, it—”
“Close enough,” Bitsy intervened. She smiled to show that she knew Keisha was going a little overboard. “Jane gets the picture. Right, pet?”
I didn’t, because I refused to. “The thing is, there’s really no need, because I’m totally yours already,” I said. “So we can skip the rite of passage dealie, okay?”
Keisha looked pained. Bitsy blew air our of her cheeks. She went to replenish the soy nuts. Mary Bryan bit her lip, then grabbed the bottle of Veuve Cliquot Grande Dame and topped off my glass.
“The thing is, you kind of have to,” she said. She grimaced, like,
“
Keisha turned back to me. “And then you have to deliver it to Lurl the Pearl. If you want to be one of us for real, that’s what you have to do.”
“Ohhh,” I said. The giggles started up again. “So let me see if I’m getting this. I’m ‘officially’ a Bitch, but I’m not officially a Bitch until I pass the test. Is that it?”
“You have to steal something and give it to Lurl,” Keisha repeated.
“But why Lurl the Pearl?” I said, remembering how she scolded me for my Internet hanky-panky. “Anyway, she’ll turn me in. Unless she doesn’t know the thing isn’t mine, in which case she’ll be like, ‘Why is this freak giving me her Chapstick?’” I covered my mouth with my hand. “Oh my god, she’ll think I’m hitting on her.”
Mary Bryan sighed.
Bitsy wiped salt from her fingers onto her jeans. “This is getting extremely old.”
“Well, what do you suggest?” Keisha said. “If she doesn’t come through, you’re screwed, too, you know.”
Mary Bryan leaned back on the sofa so that her head was resting on the cushion. She stared at the ceiling. “It’s been a long summer,” she said. “I feel like I’m changing.”
“Well, you’re not,” Bitsy snapped.
“That’s what I tell myself, but …” She lifted her hands, then let them drift back to the sofa.
“Oh for crap’s sake,” Bitsy said. She put down the bowl of nuts and stood before me. “Look, Jane. You’ll take someone’s bloody Chapstick and you’ll give it to Lurl. Got it?”
“Bloody Chapstick,” I said. “Ick. Bad image.”
“Unless you’re afraid to,” Bitsy said.
I grinned. This was classic. “Afraid?
Mary Bryan shot a swift, startled look at Keisha.
“Of course not,” Keisha said sharply.
Mary Bryan trained her blue eyes on me. “I love dogs,” she offered. “I wish I could get one, but my mom won’t let me.”
Bitsy studied me. I couldn’t read her expression. “Come on, luv,” she said. “Throw us a bone.”
I downed the rest of my champagne, which really was delicious. Like fat yellow bumblebees. “Oh o
But today, as I trudged to my locker, the giddiness was gone. In its place stirred an unsettling confusion. Because hahaha, great joke and all that, only they’d never broken character. Not once. No smirks to show it was all a game, no shared looks when they thought I wasn’t watching. They were good, those three. Either that, or …
No. A girl couldn’t really siphon away someone else’s popularity. Could she?
It didn’t escape me that Lurl the Pearl did, in fact, have a sideways connection with all that was spooky. Her early religions course, for one, with its focus on age-old rituals and mythologies. And she herself was weird as hell.
Then again, if the Bitches wanted to shroud themselves in mystery—while at the same time putting me through the paces—then Lurl was the obvious choice. I’d read more than just Ramona books, and I knew how this stuff worked. The crusty old man in an antique store; the wizened librarian with owlish features; the pale, silent comic-book collector living forever in his parents’ basement—this was the stuff that rumors were made of. Lurl the Pearl was Crestview’s creepiest option, and of course the Bitches were willing to take advantage.