Even as every atom in my being longed to know what she was saying, I couldn’t not be conscious of the nearby table of upperclassmen, some of whom I recognized, who were looking at me. I realized everyone must have heard about the VP’s car by now. And if they’d heard about the car, they’d probably heard about the three people who’d been called into the office: Nia, Hal, and me.
Would they think the three of us were friends now?
At our school, there are a lot of what I think of as social neutrals in the ninth grade. You know, they’re not popular, but they’re not unpopular. Nia Rivera was so totally not one of those people. The irony of it is, she’d had to work to be the outcast she’d become. I mean, even with her baggy sweatpants and lumpy ponytails and geeky glasses and angry, confrontational attitude, I still think that, if for no other reason than her brother, she could easily have spent her life as a social neutral.
Could have, that is, if she hadn’t turned Heidi and Traci in for cheating on a math test two years ago.
Remembering the poisonous song Heidi had made up about Nia after the cheating incident (the song she’d then taught to the entire grade) made it easy for me to turn my feet in the direction of my usual table. I may have wanted to know what Nia was saying, but this was a perfect example of curiosity having the potential to murder the cat.
Or at least the cat’s social life.
“OH MY GOD!” Heidi yanked me into the seat next to her. “I heard everything!”
“This is the most insane thing ever!” said Kelli.
“Everyone’s talking about it,” said Traci.
“We were, like, freaking out,” said Kelli.
Kelli and Heidi both have long blond hair, and when we’re all out together, people think they’re sisters, which they sometimes pretend that they are. Traci gets her straight black hair from her mom, who’s Chinese, and her blue eyes from her dad. All three of them look like they could be models, which, as you can imagine, does wonders for my self-image. I mean, I’m not a dog or anything, but my legs are kind of on the short side, and my hair’s more frizzy than curly, and even on my best, best day, I could never be taken for someone whose only job is to look good. Which is probably about reason number one hundred and fifty why it’s so incredible that I’m one of the I-Girls and that a popular and great-looking guy like Lee would choose me for his girlfriend. Or kind-of girlfriend. Or whatever we are.
“So first of all, what did he want you for? You don’t even know that girl.”
Heidi always called Amanda “that girl,” refusing to dignify her with a name. Heidi’s mom is kind of a celebrity in Orion because she’s a TV reporter, and her dad is the police chief, so everyone knows her and her family. Even if she weren’t beautiful and rich and popular, Heidi would definitely be somebody because of who her parents are, and everyone at Endeavor is a little intimidated by her. Even the senior girls (even the popular senior girls) always say hi to her in the halls. The four of us were almost always the only freshmen at parties, and no one ever gave us a hard time because we were with Heidi.
But Amanda never acted like Heidi was anything special. Her first article in The Spirit (the Endeavor paper) was called “Do You See What I See? A Newcomer’s Take on Orion,” and she included something about watching the local news and referred to Heidi’s mom as a “small-town TV reporter.” Heidi was furious, but not nearly as furious as she was after she confronted Amanda and Amanda said simply, “Well, that’s what she is, isn’t she? I didn’t mean it as an insult or anything. But Orion’s a small town, and she’s a TV reporter here.” After that, Heidi was happy to take any excuse to say something bad about Amanda, and Amanda provided her with plenty of excuses, like the time she beat Heidi out for a part in As You Like It and then didn’t even take it because she said she was too busy.
For her second article in The Spirit, Amanda exposed a secretary who’d been giving kids late passes in exchange for money. The secretary was transferred, so the whole situation stopped, and Heidi informed us that Amanda was the devil because Mrs. Rifkin had just been providing a service and sometimes you really, really need a late pass but then Amanda went and ruined everything.
Amanda’s third article was all about how teachers are afraid of popular students. It said that if a student had a lot of friends or if the student’s parents had money, he (or she, of course) is less likely to be yelled at in class, get detention, receive bad grades, or be asked to provide an excuse if he (or she) didn’t have the homework or couldn’t meet a deadline. The article, which came out right after February vacation, caused a huge scandal, which I thought was kind of weird since it seemed like Amanda was just stating the obvious. I mean, everyone knows that who gets in trouble and who doesn’t is totally unfair and teachers have favorites and some kids can basically do whatever they want in certain classes.
But I guess even something everybody already knows can cause a scandal, especially since Amanda backed up her argument with tons of statistical evidence. Like Mr. Thornhill said, she’s a math genius, and she’d managed to get all this data she was definitely not supposed to have access to (like who had served detention when and for what). It was this huge deal, and some students (okay, Heidi) who had enjoyed a certain … privileged status—and who, as far as I knew, had never been held to a deadline, or asked to show their work on a math problem (even after said students had been caught cheating, if you can believe it), or told to stop chatting with a friend—found that once Vice Principal Thornhill had finished lecturing the faculty of Endeavor on fairness, their classroom experience was suddenly quite different from what it had been before.
“Is it true? Was she expelled?” Kelli’s face was pink with excitement.
“Expelled? Actually, I—”
“God, I hate that girl,” said Heidi, and she stabbed viciously at a piece of sushi.
Part of me wanted to say something in Amanda’s defense, but when Heidi really hates something or someone, it’s scary to try and defend it. Plus, after the morning I’d had and the disappearing act she’d pulled, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to defend Amanda.
Traci, who rarely eats, snapped her gum thoughtfully. “I still don’t get why they even called you into the office with those weirdos. You don’t even know them.”
“I don’t know,” said Kelli. “Nia’s a weirdo, but Hal’s kind of a hottie.”
Was it my imagination or did Heidi look uncomfortable for a minute as she drew her chopstick through a small pool of soy sauce on her Styrofoam plate?
Traci was too busy brushing some invisible lint off her bright red T-shirt to notice Heidi’s behavior, and she didn’t acknowledge Kelli’s comment. “Was it just some kind of monster mistake or something?” As she pressed her chin into her neck, it was impossible to know if she was checking her shirt for cleanliness or admiring her chest, which she tends to stick out as much as possible. “How’d Thornhill get the idea that you would ever have done anything with Amanda Valentino?”
The thing was, I’d never intended to keep my friendship with Amanda secret from the I-Girls, it had just kind of … worked out that way. In the brief time between my meeting Amanda and our becoming friends, Heidi had started hating her intensely, and like I said, you really don’t want to try and point out the good side of someone Heidi’s decided to hate. Amanda made it easy, always at newspaper or some other activity at lunch, so hard to pin down during the school day that she was practically the invisible friend. Keeping our friendship very low profile was no problem. But what was I supposed to say now? Um, listen guys, the thing is that I actually am friends with Amanda. Really good friends. I hope that’s not weird or anything.
Great idea, Callie. And why don’t you bring Nia Rivera