Where It Began

It occurs to me that maybe this whole thing really is a Personal Growth Opportunity, just like everyone says, and I have developed the useful new skill of telling people whatever they want to hear, pretending to be whatever they want me to be, while appearing to tell the truth, aka lying, and getting them to do what I want whether they like it or not.

Then it occurs to me that this is what I had been trying to do with Billy pretty much the whole time.

Then I have to go to art, which is fine, because this isn’t exactly what I want to be thinking about.

Ever.

LI

BRYNN MCELROY IS A SLUTMUFFIN PEON. THAT’S JUST the way it is, and even her dad calling her “my gorgeous daughter, Bry

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

“So,” she says. “Charlotte says you’re still on Council, and you’re still on decorating committee, so I wanted to see if you were still coming to Fling committee.”

“Yeah.” Three beats of leaving Bry

You can tell, even on a cell phone with the bad reception you get in a canyon, that Bry

“Um, I guess everyone was hoping you were up to it,” she says.

And then I say to myself, Shit, Gabby, even though you are now the reigning queen of assertiveness and will no doubt soon be the elected idol of Winston Women for Equality, you have to stop it. Do. Not. Get. Carried. Away. You do not want to get into a pissing contest with Charlotte Ward and Aliza Benitez.

Close your mouth and stop screwing with the Fling committee.

“That’s really nice,” I say, trying to figure out how I’m going to fix this when she knows and I know and whoever forced her to make the phone call knows what’s going on and how not nice it is. “I’m doing great. Thanks for the concern.”

“Oh. You’re welcome,” she says. “You know that Charlotte scheduled the meeting for six thirty in the morning, so it wouldn’t conflict with the jazz ensemble dance rehearsal, right?”

And also so a person with no legal means of transportation other than legs can’t actually get there because last time I looked, there was no six a.m. bus. “So what’s happening at six thirty, anyway?”

“No big deal,” Bry

“You’re getting up at five thirty in the morning to set up another election? You just need someone who can count to two hundred. Get Kaplan and sleep in.”

“Kaplan? Not likely. No one is up for another election this late in the year. People just nominate themselves and Charlotte picks.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“It makes Piersol happy because he doesn’t have to force any teachers to monitor the polls and okay the election posters.”

“You know what,” I say, which seems kind of anticlimactic after vanquishing Piersol and hanging on to Council, but there is only so much unhappiness a person can create in Muffin World and survive. That and I feel so kind of past it. “I’m going to sleep in. Finalize it without me.”

“You do know we went back to classic colors, right?”

“Disco balls and tinfoil?”

“I know,” she says. “I voted against it. They redid the posters with baby pink.”

“They put pink on my posters?”

“Sorry,” she says. “They’re still good posters. They’re at the printers.”

“I was supposed to take them to the printer to do the color check.”

“Gabby, you weren’t here and Nash didn’t know if you were ever coming back. We didn’t know what else to do.”

gabs123: did u tell bry

pologuy: y would i even talk to bry

gabs123: fling committee screwed up my posters.

pologuy: ok I get this. char wanted to know how long she had to get disco balls or something rammed through committee before u got back and stared her down. this is y u can’t talk to people. info gets twisted. everything gets twisted

gabs123: i wish someone had told me this.

pologuy: babe u were in the hospital. ur mom was telling people u were in a coma. didn’t think you’d care about party decorations. y do u want to b on that committee anyway? i’m not even on it

gabs123: exactly. i’m not going to their lame meeting. too early anyway.

pologuy: smart move. shit. gotta bounce. AP tutor barking at the gate. FML. miss u

LII

WHEN I AM SITTING IN FRONT OF MY COMPUTER screen, I can somewhat get myself to feel that pologuy is missing gabs123. But seeing Real Live Billy gri

The Aliza and Billy sightings—which he says, in his backhanded way, mean nothing because I’m the one, that it just makes the world at large and his mother in particular believe that he’s down with his probation and not with me so maybe someday she’ll loosen her Satanic grip and we can sneak around—are still miserable. And the Courtney Yamada Phillips and Billy sightings, even though I guess they prove he isn’t really with Aliza Benitez, which is supposed to make me feel fine when he pats Aliza between the knees for godsake, are not much better.

Courtney, even though she’s a sophomore in the very firm, very young flesh category, is in my Honors Spanish class and I have to watch her heated up and panting about him with Rose Lyons when she comes racing in from the semi-hidden nook behind the teachers’ lounge.

“He is so hot,” Rose says.

“Awesome,” Courtney says.

Awesome. Great. He’s publicly nibbling lips that say “awesome” constantly.

And I go, Suck it up, Gabriella. Wake up and smell the chocolates. You’re the one.

But it is actually a relief to go into painting with Mr. Rosen, who at least doesn’t want to have a meaningful dialogue about anything, and whose studio windows face the soccer field so there is no risk of a Billy sighting. Even though I never feel like I’ll ever paint anything good enough for Mr. Rosen, at least I’m better than everyone else in there, and he seems to be fine with that.

Mr. Rosen, you have to figure, is just going to keep sitting there in by-permission-only advanced painting, not noticing who I am, having no idea whatsoever about what’s going on with me apart from my portfolio.

Not that we’re actually painting in Mr. Rosen’s eleventh grade painting class. Since last semester, we aren’t. Just before Christmas break, Mr. Rosen told us that we sucked and we had to start drawing again before we were ready to paint because we had no sense of form. Therefore, we’ve spent this whole semester drawing a succession of objects Mr. Rosen throws on the little tables in front of us, and there are no paints in sight.