Rhymes with Witches

“Well,” she said at last. “Lucky you.”

On Friday, we ate with the debate team. Boiled chicken breasts for them, Duck à l’orange for us. I had never tasted duck before. It was delicious.

However, the debaters weren’t as fun as the cheerleaders. They were at first, when they told me how wonderful I was using phrases like, “as evidenced by your superior mental endowment” and “proven without contest by your taste in dining companions.” But then they fell into an argument about the importance of peer group interactions, and it got really boring.

“Why?” moaned Bitsy as Rutgers Steiner pressed Callie Winship about the multiple definitions of “social intercourse.” “Why, why, why?”

“Just tune them out,” said Mary Bryan. She plucked a marinated orange slice from my plate. To me she said, “The stoners are even worse. All they do is gaze at us and stroke our hair.”

“So why do you—” I made a dumb me face. I started over. “So why do we bother? Why don’t we sit with whoever we want?”

“Yes, Jane,” Bitsy said. “Excellent question.” She turned to Keisha. “Why don’t we?”

Keisha telegraphed her disapproval. “Because it wouldn’t be fair.”

I waited for more. Bitsy rolled her eyes. Finally, I said, “Oh.”

“At least we get to be together,” Mary Bryan said. She appropriated another orange. “You know, the four of us.”

I scooped the remaining orange slices from my sauce and slid them onto her plate. “Here.”

She gri

Bitsy nudged my elbow. “What’s this, pet? A friend of yours come to visit?”

I glanced up to see Alicia walking toward us with a wavering smile. I looked beyond her at the drama table. Tommy Arnez was shaking his head, his face flushed. His friend pushed his shoulder and laughed.

“Hi, guys,” Alicia said in a wobbly voice. “Can I sit with you?”

It was the first time I’d been around her since the lip balm incident, and I was hit by an unreasonable a

But I said, “Uh, sure. Of course. But … why aren’t you sitting with Tommy?”

“He’s helping Bryan rehearse his lines for Our Town,” she said. “I didn’t want to mess them up.”

“Lovers’ spat, eh?” Bitsy said. She seemed perkier than she had all meal.

“No,” Alicia said. She pulled her chair in beside me, so close that her leg brushed mine. I inched my chair farther to the left.

“But something’s going on,” Bitsy said. “I can tell.”

Alicia hesitated, then blinked two times. “We’ve got a date for tomorrow night.”

“Do you now?” Bitsy exclaimed. She selected a French-cut green bean and waved it in the air. “Go on.”

Alicia started telling us detail after pathetic detail, all in a nasal, wheedling voice, and I squeezed my napkin into a ball. Gone were the warm fuzzies from our chat outside Hamilton, replaced with an urgent desire for Alicia to shut the hell up and stop embarrassing me. I knew I wasn’t being fair—this was Alicia, not some toad, slimy with need—but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want her touching me.

“But it’s not like you’re a couple,” I said.

Alicia blushed. “I never said we were. I said we have a date, that’s all.”

“Yeah, but it’s, what, to some performance-art thing?”

“So?”

“So?” I laughed. If she would have let it go, then I would have, too. But no. She had to ooze in where she wasn’t wanted. “You said that part of their act involves a tampon dispenser.”

Her blush deepened. “I told Jane she was going to change if she hung out with you all,” she said. “And now she has. She’s just acting this way to impress you.”

“Oh please,” I managed. My face went hot, and I felt blindsided by her disloyalty. “Why don’t you tell them what you really told me? How I should stay away from them because they’re—” I clamped shut my mouth. I’d almost said “witches.” Witches, bitches, I had an insane desire to smack the whine right out of her. I shoved my hands beneath my thighs.

Alicia glared at me. “Anyway, it’s for poems,” she said. “It dispenses poems.”

“Poems in a tampon dispenser,” Bitsy said lightly. “How clever.”

Alicia squished up her mouth, not knowing if Bitsy was making fun of her. And then all at once her shoulders slumped. “It’s not like I had anything to do with it,” she said.

Mary Bryan’s eyes met mine. I knew I should feel ashamed, but I didn’t.

“Well, I think it sounds really fun,” Mary Bryan said. “First dates are exciting no matter what you do.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Alicia said.

“And if things go well, maybe he’ll ask you to the Fall Fling,” Mary Bryan went on. “It’s only two weeks away, you know.”

“The Fall Fling,” Rutgers Steiner said, diving back into the conversation. “Now there’s an example of authentic social intercourse. Do you agree, Callie, or do dances fall into your category of ritualized teenage ca

“The Fall Fling isn’t a dance, Rutgers,” Callie said. “It’s an event. Which you would know if you had your finger on the pulse of actual high-school dynamics.”

Off they spun into another argument. Alicia scooted back her chair.

“Call me tonight?” she muttered.

“Sure,” I muttered back.

“Bye,” she said to the others. “I didn’t … I mean, I hope I wasn’t …”

“No worries, luv,” Bitsy said. She smiled breezily and took a sip of Perrier. “I just hope you and Timmy work things out.”

“Tommy,” Alicia said.

“Tommy. Right.”

Alicia took her tray and left.

“Sorry,” I said. I glanced up at Keisha, Bitsy, and Mary Bryan, and the rage I’d felt began to drain out of me. Now I felt shaken by my own reaction. “She isn’t always such a toad.”

Mary Bryan frowned. Bitsy laughed. Keisha said nothing at all.

On Saturday morning I IMed Bitsy for party fashion advice. I was too chicken to call her in person, but I needed her input. Plus, I wanted the thrill of IMing Bitsy McGovern. Of knowing I actually could.

It’s your coming-out party, she IMed back. Wear something sexy.

So I did. I wiggled into my shortest denim skirt, which I’d bought in a moment of summer madness and had never worn. It covered my crotch and not much more, and if I’d seen it on another girl, I’d have tsked with jealous scorn. But hell, I had good legs. More importantly, I was a Bitch. The knowledge unleashed me.

“Another party?” Mom said when I jogged downstairs.

“Yep,” I said, moving quickly behind the sofa so she wouldn’t comment on the skirt. “It’s my coming-out party.”

Mom looked confused. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said. Bitsy’s horn beeped from the driveway. “So … bye! See you when I see you!”

The party was in an abandoned warehouse that somebody’s brother had rented or something like that. I didn’t get all the details, and when we got there, I didn’t care. It was a huge open space, like a barn, and the cheerleaders had decorated it with strands of silver star lights and red Chinese lanterns. Velvet cushions were piled in the corners, and along one wall sat a gold brocade sofa with dark green throw pillows. A rent-a-hot-tub bubbled away in the center of the room, and a full bar was set up ten feet away. Kyle Kelley held court with a bottle of Tanqueray and a lemon. When he saw us, he raised the bottle in salute.

“It’s amazing,” I breathed.

Mary Bryan seemed pleased, as if it were a present she was responsible for.

“They did a nice job,” Keisha acknowledged. She wore a pale sage dress that matched her eyes, and she looked like a creature from a fairy tale. Compared to her I was a vamped-up club girl, but I hardly cared.

“Knock ’em dead,” said Bitsy. She used her thumb to soften my sparkly eyeshadow, which she’d applied for me in the car. “You’re the belle of the ball.”