to be popular.
Perhaps there are no cliques here. Perhaps they’re progressive enough at Cania Christy to ban bullying and the exclusionary cliques that help create it.
“Now what’ve we got here?” a girl with a drawl says.
I turn to find four girls in uniform watching me with their arms crossed. They’re impossibly well groomed and flawless. Obviously besties. Proof that I was dead wrong about my anticlique idea.
Their cool gazes roll up and down my body, assessing me in a way with which I’ve grown unfortunately familiar. Every girl knows this drill. These are the cool girls, ostensibly, and they have come to weigh and measure me. Their bodies, hair, makeup—even the way they rock their uniforms—are undeniable signs of their power on campus and their expectations of a perfectly charmed life, which their daddies will guarantee them. Like four slightly oversexed dolls, they stand at arm’s length from me, thrusting out their cleavage, tossing their straightened silky hair over their shoulders, and pursing their pouty, glossy lips. Their skin is so unblemished it glows. Their eyes are so clear they might see right through me.
With my curls, crooked tooth, and stunningly empty bank account, I am their antithesis. Or, as I prefer to see it, they are mine.
I’ve never gotten along well with the popular girls. And something in their collective scowl tells me I’m not about to become the fifth member of this particular clique.
“You must be the new girl. The junior?” the ginger begins frostily, her tone warm like a Savannah summer but her eyes dead cold. Her followers—a Thai girl, an Indian girl, and a stark blonde—glare at me. “The California chick who thinks she’s some sort of artist?”
“Unless there are two of us,” I reply. My years of dealing with rich, bitchy, and beautiful girls have given me a bit of a bite. “Why? Are you the president of my fan club?”
“As if Harper would ever be your fan!” the Thai girl exclaims and looks at the ginger—evidently named Harper—for approval.
I narrow my eyes. “I just meant how do you know so much about me?”
With her friends mirroring her every move, Harper curls her lip and glares up at me. She’s barely five-two but is filled head to toe with piss and vinegar. “Everyone knows about you.”
“And not in a good way,” the stark blonde adds, her words thick with a Russian accent.
“It’s like when a circus freak walks into a room,” Harper drawls. “It’s hard for everyone else not to notice.”
“Gee,” I begin, “I’d love to hear more about how your parents met, but I’ve got to get to school.”
I try to cut through the foursome, but Harper shoves her hand against my chest, stopping me. Not cool.
“Truth is, Merchant, we know who you are because it’s not every day Headmaster Villicus lets in some poor chick with a crazy mom who killed herself.” Harper smirks. “Word gets around.”
“Well, you know nothing about my mother. But I’m sure you know all about getting around.”
Removing her hand and pushing through their stunned crowd, I take the stairs into Goethe Hall two at a time and ignore the girls’ voices as they tell each other that I’m not worth the hassle, that I’m ugly, that I totally need braces, and that I’m never going to get the “Big V,” which sounds like something sexual but hell if I know. Inside the ornate Goethe Hall, I somehow find my way into the long queue where I try to shake off my encounter, try to stop seeing red, and wait impatiently to collect my orientation package from an old, wrinkled secretary who spits when she speaks.
“Did you say your name’s Martha Cennen?” the secretary asks me as she shuffles through disorganized stacks of orientation packets. She smells like the bottom of an ashtray. She is wearing an enormous emerald brooch. Behind her, a dozen secretaries, also wearing massive pendants, type on typewriters, one finger at a time.
“No, it’s Anne Merchant.”
“Maybe you remind me of someone I used to know.”
I sigh. “I’m a junior in the Fine Arts stream.”
“A junior. Fine Arts. Tanner Chanem.”
“Anne Merchant,” I correct.
“It’s not Nate N. Nemrach?” Her gaze meets mine.
There’s an odd, out-of-place playfulness in her expression. And then I realize where she’s getting all those other names from.
“Are you just turning my name into anagrams?” I ask.
Like a caught child, she quickly shakes her head no and dives, with a giggle, back into searching the stacks. Or at least putting on a show of searching.
The ticking of single typewriter keys quickly becomes grating. Behind me, a Mandarin guy and an Italian girl—who are, like everyone else in the queue, coldly ignoring their peers—have started grumbling in their respective languages. I assume the wait and the maddeningly slow secretary are getting to them like they’re getting to me. At last, the secretary pokes her head out of the pile of packets, lifts one victoriously, and yanks a sticky note off the front of it.
She reads the note, and a slow smile spreads across her face. “Message for you, Anne.”
“From my dad?”
She shakes her head, but, before she can explain, a PA announcement interrupts her: “All new students, meet at Valedictorian Hall by nine o’clock for your campus tours. All new students.” A glance at the clock shows it’s nearly nine already, and I don’t even know where Valedictorian Hall is. I look expectantly at her.
“You wanna go on the campus tour, don’t you?” she asks me. I don’t have much patience at the best of times, but she’s killing me. She knows I have to go. It’s like she’s taking pleasure in dragging this out and watching everyone in line squirm as we wait helplessly for her.
“I’d like to go, yes.”
She glances at the sticky note. “Is your dad named Mr. Merchant?”
“Yes.”
She glances at it again. “Well then your dad didn’t leave a message for you.”
“Who did?”
Her grin spreads. It’s yellow enough to be pure gold. “Headmaster Villicus. He’d like to see you. Which I guess means you won’t be going on the campus tour.”
Handing me my packet, she points me down a long, dark hall, which brings me to a set of empty wooden benches outside the headmaster’s closed door. I take an uncomfortable seat, wait to be called in, and briefly admire a selection of Beksinski’s beautiful nightmares condemning me from their frames on the walls. I start absently reviewing my class schedule and syllabuses—all while trying not to stew over my encounter with the girls outside and failing miserably. It sucks to have already made enemies of what are surely the most popular girls here, but it’s not exactly new territory for me. I thought it’d be different at Cania—I thought I’d have a clean slate and the protection of this
