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  I blinked. “I mean—I have school tomorrow, but I guess that—”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much this means to me. This will be so much fun. I can help you get ready for your first day!”

  Shaking my head and smiling, I walked back toward the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water from one of the bottles in the fridge. It was great to see SBB again—she’s really funny and sweet, on top of being glamorous—and I was glad I wasn’t alone in the apartment anymore. I pictured us staying up late, doing each other’s hair and talking about how totally gross Gdansk can be in August. The whole situation was a little funny, though. After all, my first day at a normal high school was tomorrow, and now there was a movie star staying at my house who even on her very best days had only a very loose grip on reality.

  Chapter 3

  Getting Ready for School, the Sara-Beth Way

  That night, while I was loading up my backpack with stuff for school—pens, paper, a binder—Sara-Beth Benny lay on my bed, turning her wig over in her hands and offering me advice about high school.

  “The most important thing is, don’t show them you’re afraid,” she said. “Also, try to dress older than you are. You’re lucky that you’re tall and stuff, but maybe you should put some extra socks in your bra, just in case.”

  I zipped up my bag. “Sara-Beth?”

  “Hmm?”

  “No offense or anything, but did you ever actually go to high school?”

  “Sure. In some of the later seasons I did. That’s how I know about the socks. Because there was this one episode when I wore these Tupperware containers under my shirt—”

  “No, not on Mike’s Princesses.” I tucked a graphing calculator into the front pocket of my bag. “Did you ever go to high school in real life?”

  Sara-Beth yawned. “Well, life imitates art, you know?”

  “That makes sense, I guess.” I picked up my backpack and set it on a chair, then turned toward my closet. “Okay, now I just need to figure out what to wear.”

  “This is my favorite part!” Sara-Beth leaped up. “I love going through your closet.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. The last time I stayed over, I couldn’t sleep, so I tried on all your clothes and pretended I was you. You’ve got some nice stuff in there. And you don’t even have a stylist!”

  “Wait, you what?”

  She beamed. “Method acting.”

  So Sara-Beth and I went through my closet. I tried on half a dozen outfits before we found one that satisfied both of us. I was kind of confused about what would be right, since I’d always had uniforms for school at Miss Mallard’s Day. I knew what to wear to a gallery show, a record release party, a club, and the opening of a new tapas restaurant, but somehow the haute couture for second-period English class seemed less obvious. Basically, I just wanted something that would look cute but wouldn’t draw too much attention to me if it wasn’t quite right.

  Sara-Beth, on the other hand, kept steering me toward the flashiest, strangest stuff she could find in the depths of my closet. She made me put on a grass-green Miu Miu dress I’d bought to wear to my cousin’s wedding, a canary-yellow cashmere sweater that I’ve had since fifth grade, and a pair of moon boots, among other things. Then she started talking about how we should go uptown and raid her wardrobe, since she was on People’s best-dressed list two years in a row, but as much as I’d like to wear some of her dresses, they were way too fancy and probably all too small for me anyway. So instead I finally settled on this really cute vintage crocheted top of mine, which sort of looks hippie-ish but in a clean way, and a pair of these stretch denim jeans that work really well with heels.

  A little bit later, I changed into my pajamas and we lay on the floor looking at magazines. It was nice, just hanging out with her, eating her rice crisps and drinking mineral water. If I didn’t pay too much attention to her perfect skin or the fashion-spread pictures of her in the magazines I was reading, I could almost forget she was a movie star. And more important, she could too.

  I mean, if I thought growing up in my house was weird, how weird must it have been for Sara-Beth, growing up on the set of a hit TV show? If I could make her feel a little more normal by letting her crash in my room, well, that’s what friends are for. Besides, having her around took my mind off my own worries. Sometimes when I’m freaking out, it’s easier for me to think about someone else’s problems instead of my own. And Sara-Beth definitely had her own set of problems.

  “I’m glad you came to visit,” I told her, reaching for a rice crisp. “You know, I’ll be at school tomorrow, but if you want to hang out here for a while and have a friend over for lunch or something, you totally should. I don’t want you to be sitting in your apartment, feeling lonely all day.”

  “Oh, but Flan, I couldn’t do that.” Sara-Beth’s eyes got wide, just like in the mascara ads. “If the paparazzi find out where I am, they’ll swarm.”

  “How would they find out? If you just call one of your friends—”

  “You can’t trust anyone in this business.” Sara-Beth crunched a rice crisp angrily. “I know girls who would sell me out to the tabloids for one positive article and a handful of diet pills. They’re that vicious.”

  “That’s terrible.” It really was. Even if my friends at Miss Mallard’s used me sometimes, for concert tickets or invitations, at least they never turned on me like that. What else could I say?

  “And if that does happen, I can say good-bye to that beautiful apartment on the East Side.”

  “How come?”

  Sara-Beth sighed. “The board doesn’t want a bunch of crazy stalker paparazzi lurking outside their building all the time. If they see I’m always in the tabloids, they won’t want me living there. And then I’ll be homeless.” Her lower lip stuck out. “I don’t know where I’d go, or what I’d do. I’ll have to buy a car and park outside your house and just live there forever. Maybe you could bring me out some water from time to time.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “But it’s true. It can be a mean world out there. You’re lucky you haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Well, actually, I was meaning to ask you something.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Please tell me if you don’t have time, but I was wondering—okay, so the co-op board says that I can submit a peer recommendation along with my application. You know, someone who knows what it’s like to live with me. I was just thinking that maybe, if it wasn’t too, too, too much trouble—”

  “Of course, Sara-Beth! I’d be happy to.”

  “Oh, thank you so much. You don’t know how much this means to me. You’re the only one who knows what I’m really like, underneath.” Sara-Beth folded back the cover of her magazine, then looked over at me, suddenly all serious. “That’s what I like about you, Flan. You’re not my friend because I’m beautiful, or famous, or because of what I could do for you. You’re my friend because—because of who I really am.” Sara-Beth sniffled, and all her little bones trembled. She reminded me of a skinny kitten left out in the cold. “I know I can trust you.”

  “Of course. I’m glad I can help you get the apartment. And I won’t tell anyone that you’re staying here either. I promise.”

  “Wonderful. A secret!” She smiled. “Oh, this is going to be cr-azy fun!”

  And then—and I’m being totally serious—SBB meowed at me and sort of wriggled around and then threw herself on my bed and kicked up her feet.

  Chapter 4

  Hello, High School, Here I Come

  The next morning, when my alarm clock went off, I felt like I was still dreaming. Was it possible that the time had really come? My first day at Stuyvesant?

  After twisting and turning in front of the mirror for about twenty minutes, I finally did my hair up in a messy bun, put on some watermelon-flavored lip gloss, and gave myself a final once-over. I looked good, I
thought: the heels I’d picked really dressed up my jeans, and my skin, which is normally super pale, actually had some color to it since I’d spent all summer biking and hanging out down by the shore. And at this point, there was nothing else I could do to make myself look cooler or older. So I grabbed my backpack and went downstairs. SBB was still asleep in one of the bedrooms upstairs—I’m not even sure which one.

  When I went down to the kitchen to drink a quick glass of orange juice before school, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: a message on the answering machine. I pushed the button and it played into the room.

  “Hey, Patch? Flan? It’s Feb. So, it’s Saturday night, and I’m just calling to say I might be gone for a few days. This friend of mine’s shooting a music video in this abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn and I’m going to chill out there for a while. Don’t tell Mom and Dad. Obviously. I hope everything’s cool. Keep the peace while I’m gone.”

  I sighed and walked out the door. I wondered if Feb ever felt nervous or awkward or uncool. Probably not.

  Unlike Miss Mallard’s, which is a long cab ride away, Stuyvesant is actually within walking distance of my house. So I took my time on the walk over. I love my neighborhood in the morning. Everything looks so fresh and pretty. Sometime either late at night or really early, somebody must hose down all the sidewalks, because they’re always wet and sparkly in the morning sun, and even though I live right in the middle of New York City, the air smells like window-box flowers and tree leaves instead of garbage and taxi exhaust. As I walked down the street, I saw store owners pulling up the metal gates in the fronts of their stores and turning on the lights in the display cases, and I started to feel a little happier for some reason, like maybe today wasn’t such an awfully big deal after all.

  As soon as I started walking down Chambers Street, though, I started to feel super anxious. Stuyvesant takes up a whole big building—ten floors, with escalators—and I could see it looming up from more than a block away. The doors to the building hadn’t opened yet, but already there were a million kids milling around on the sidewalk outside, and even more coming down the street or across the Tribeca Bridge. I didn’t know any of them.

  It couldn’t have been more different from Miss Mallard’s Day, where everybody wore a uniform and knew everybody else. Here all the students were divided up into cliques that couldn’t have been crazier or more different from one another. There were guys all thugged out in baggy jeans and sports jerseys, kids with white faces and black lips who looked like they were auditioning for a Tim Burton movie, girls in professional-looking skirts and blouses who could have been in law school, plus raver types in bright colors and kids in dark baggy T-shirts with anime characters and computer jargon printed on them. My outfit had seemed so cool back at my house, but now I wasn’t so sure. I felt really out of place—and young looking. Sara-Beth was right: everyone in high school seemed like they were trying to look as much older as possible. Some of the guys even had beards.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just sort of wandered through the crowd like I was looking for someone I knew, which I kind of was, in a way. I passed a really chesty girl in a glittery BOYS LIE T-shirt and tight short-shorts, a punked-out kid who had so many piercings he looked like he’d fallen asleep with his head down on a sewing machine, and a really cute guy in a polo shirt who looked old enough to be in a frat before I finally gave up and sat down on the sidewalk with my back against the wall, all by myself. Even then I felt like just a speck in the crowd.

  It was weird: I’d been to a million parties where the other kids were older, but everyone always recognized me. I was usually with my sister or my brother or my ex-boyfriend, Jonathan, but even when I was alone, I was always Flan Flood, and people knew that. I never just blended in—I was always getting noticed and singled out, interrogated, practically, by gossipmongers and hangers-on. At the time I hated it, but sitting there on the sidewalk outside the high school, I started to think that maybe Angelica and Camille and the other girls from my old school were right—maybe I was giving up something pretty special by leaving Miss Mallard’s Day. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to strike off on my own like this. Maybe I’d found my true self—and she was a wallflower.

  Just when I was feeling about ready to cry, though, I saw them: two other girls who looked just as lost as I did. They were both kind of tall, like me. One of them had wavy light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and an awesome skirt made out of men’s ties stitched together lengthwise. The other one was sort of preppy, with long blond hair that she kept flipping back over her shoulders while she looked around the crowd. They were whispering to each other and their mouths were just barely moving, as if they were afraid they’d get in trouble if anyone figured out what they were saying.

  I wanted to go talk to them, but for a minute I couldn’t make myself get up from the spot I’d claimed on the sidewalk. What if I went over and said hi, and they thought I was some desperate loser and totally blew me off? I’d feel so lame. But then again, the only way to stop being a desperate loser was to make some friends. High school was supposed to be my big opportunity to meet new people, right? So I stood up, literally dusted myself off, and made my feet move in their direction.

  I knew right away I’d made the right decision, because when they saw me, they both looked over with really friendly, relieved-looking smiles.

  “Hi,” said the girl in the tie skirt, smiling at me. She had really pretty little teeth, and now that I was closer I could see she was wearing a shirt with flowers embroidered all over it in different colors of ribbon. “I’m Meredith.”

  “I’m Flan. Flan Flood.” I figured I might as well get it out of the way—but when I said “Flood,” they didn’t react at all. They just kept smiling at me in the same relieved, friendly way. So they hadn’t heard of Patch and Feb? It was a thrill and sort of unsettling at the same time—like walking around on Halloween in a mask and discovering that people really can’t tell who you are. “I really like your skirt,” I added, to cover my confusion. “Did you make it?”

  “Oh, no. My grandma did.” Meredith gave her skirt a little twirl. “Isn’t it great? She designs clothes. She has a little shop in Soho—my mom works there too.”

  “That’s so awesome.” I grinned, but inside I panicked a little. What would I say if they asked me what my parents did for a living? “They like to travel, and sometimes my dad buys cars or boats if he’s bored”? If I wanted to seem normal, that was not the best way to start out.

  “I’m Judith,” said the other girl. She talked like she’d had voice lessons or something, and she kept flipping her long blond hair over her shoulders, but she seemed nice and I decided to like her anyway. “Are you new here too?”

  “Yeah, this is my first day.”

  Meredith pushed her hair off her shoulders. “Well, except for orientation, of course, but I guess that didn’t really count.”

  “Orientation? What?” I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, like when you find out there’s going to be a test you haven’t studied for.

  Meredith and Judith exchanged a glance.

  “I thought we hadn’t seen her before,” said Meredith.

  “I just got back from Connecticut yesterday,” I said.

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” said Meredith, squeezing my arm. “It was mostly just a tour anyway. And we made ugly friendship bracelets.” She and Judith held up their wrists, and I looked. They really were the ugliest friendship bracelets I’d ever seen. “Judith and I can show you around the building and stuff.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course,” said Judith. “I’ve got a terrific memory for these things.”

  We took out our schedules and figured out that we were in most of the same classes, except Meredith had gotten into honors English, which seemed to irritate Judith a little, since, as she pointed out, she was normally the better student. We all sat together in the back of the auditorium for the first-day assembly, and I found out all
about the two of them.

  Apparently, they’d gone to an all-girls private school on the West Side all through elementary school and junior high, and they’d been best friends since either of them could remember. Meredith was really into arts and crafts, and from what she said it sounded like she’d wind up working in her mom and grandma’s clothing store before too long, unless she decided she liked painting or photography better. Judith was more into getting good grades, especially in math, and she told me twice that she’d been the valedictorian of their eighth-grade class. Her father was a personal injury lawyer—“You’ve probably seen his ads on the subway,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. The last time I’d been down in the subway was this one night when Feb took me out with her friends and we got stranded down near Battery Park at two in the morning with no cabs anywhere in sight. Feb and I had walked down into the subway station, taken one look at the dripping ceilings of doom and the sketchy fat drunk guy passed out on a bench, and called a car service.

  I didn’t pay much attention during the assembly, since Meredith and Judith and I were talking the whole time, but I did find out that in the afternoon we were supposed to have quick meetings in all of our classes so the teachers could tell us what books to buy and what the first assignment would be. After representatives from all the different clubs and sports teams and study groups got up and talked about themselves, they finally let us take a break—to go have some lunch in the cafeteria.

  “So, Flan, we’ve been talking about ourselves forever,” said Judith as we sat down to eat by one of the windows. The cafeteria at Stuyvesant is beautiful, and you can see right out to the Hudson River. It’s so different from the stuffy old tearoom where we ate lunch at Miss Mallard’s; instead, we were on the first floor, and we could see ladies walking past the windows with their little dogs, and beyond them were boats and ferries and maybe even the QE2 out there in the Hudson River. “What about you? Where did you go to school before? What’s your story?”