Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

“Oh, God, I am so glad to see you!” shrieks Alice, disentangling. “It was like I’d been abducted by aliens and was living with creatures with two heads who beeped. I missed you so much.”

“Me too. I can’t tell you how much I missed you. I mean, truly, Al, there’s nothing like a week with your relatives to make you appreciate your friends.” Maya swings her backpack off her shoulder with a sigh. “You wouldn’t believe how soul-suckingly horrendous it was. There were times when I felt like I’d been sent to a penal colony and would never see home again.”

“Oh, I believe you.” Alice slides her own backpack down her arm and sets it on the edge of the sink. “Trust me, the Shimons are a world unto themselves.” She makes the face of someone who understands what suffering is. “And it’s definitely not a better world.”

“They can’t be any worse than the Baraberras. Seriously, you would not believe the junk I had heaped on me in the name of peace on Earth this year. Really and truly.” Words fail her for nearly an entire second. “Everything they give you is made by workers who are virtual slaves. And even if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t want it because it’s, like, so uncool.”

Their eyes now on the wall of mirrors behind the taps, Maya and Alice remove their make-up bags from their packs and set them in the sinks.

“How did they like the stuff you gave them?” asks Alice. “Mine hated my gifts. You should’ve seen them. You’d think I’d wrapped up roadkill or something.” She reaches for her lipgloss. “Like my Gran? I gave her a box of those eco balls? So not only would she be environmentally friendly for a change, but she wouldn’t have to spend a fortune using detergent any more? She thought they were shuttlecocks! You know, for badminton? ‘Alice,’ she says, ‘I’m too old for games like that.’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“I know… I know… They just do not have a clue. If it doesn’t exist in their world, then it doesn’t exist. Which pretty much limits reality to going to work, shopping, and watching TV.” Maya leans into the mirror, eyeing her reflection in a critical, semi-professional way. “I swear, if I’d had to listen to my cousin Petra drone on about her adventures as a cheerleader in the wilds of Vermont for one more minute I think I would have run outside screaming and buried myself in a snowdrift.”

“Ditto.” Alice pouts at her reflection. “I’m not saying that it’s not nice to see them – we do share at least part of a gene pool, and they can be really sweet and everything – but they are so limited.” She puts on a thin, whining voice. “Why are you wearing that? Why did you get your nose pierced? Why are you reading about that? What do you have against this? How can you drink that tea? It smells like boiled flowers!”

“Same thing here.” Maya applies more kohl. “They act like I’m some kind of freak because I care about stuff. My Uncle Morty said that I sounded like one of those fanatical environmentalists! You know, like Clemens the Lemon? I said, ‘Excuse me, but do I look like a nerd?’”

“Exactly,” agrees Alice. “You just have to show a little concern or think a little differently and they get all warped.”

“Two hundred and thirty-six plastic bags,” says Maya. “My grandmother has two hundred and thirty-six plastic bags under the kitchen sink. I counted them.”

Alice whistles. “Jumping Jehoshaphat. That’s got to be some kind of record.”

Maya pulls roughly at clumps of her hair. The effect of her haircut is supposed to be funky and windblown, not flat and blown over. “That’s what I mean, you know? They all act like there’s nothing wrong with the world. It’s like Gran doesn’t even know that we have an environment, never mind that it’s going to be buried in plastic thanks to people like her.”

“What about the food?” Alice stretches her eyes and rolls mascara on the lashes. “Did they get on your case about the food?”

“Are you kidding?” Maya shakes her head in a speculative kind of way. “It was like the soundtrack for the whole visit.” She almost has to heave herself onto the sink to make certain her eyes aren’t smudged. “What do you eat if you don’t eat meat? How do you get any protein? Oh, you have to try the ham, Gran’s been baking it for the last 200 years.”

“Praise the Lord for inventing fish and chicken.” Alice, like Maya, is a practising vegetarian – though some, of course, might say that they could practise a little harder. “I would’ve starved to death or been mercilessly nagged into eating some poor cow if it wasn’t for them. Because, trust me, the Pittsburgh Shimons do not do tofu.”

“The Vermont Baraberras do not—”

Maya breaks off as the door to the restroom is suddenly flung open. She and Alice both turn to see who it is.

“Talk about what’s wrong with the world,” mutters Alice.

“The Barbie doll made flesh,” mumbles Maya.

Strictly speaking, the new arrival is neither of those things. It is Sicilee Kewe.

Although Maya and Alice are staring right at her, they don’t acknowledge her presence by so much as the flicker of an eye. There is nothing unusual in this. They may live in the same country, in the same state, in the same town and go to the same school as Sicilee Kewe, but they might as well live on different planets. And rather wish that they did.

Sicilee is smiling, of course, but it is a smile that goes a long way towards redefining both loathing and insincerity.

“Sweet Mary,” Sicilee says, not quite under her breath. “The dipster hipsters.” And for the second time that morning, turns and flees.

It is almost time for the school day to officially begin. People are shuffling down the corridors towards their classrooms, but the main hall still reverberates with talk and laughter, punctuated by the slamming of lockers and the hurrying of feet on the stairs. Just like on any other morning of the school year.

Indeed, up until now there has been nothing to suggest that this day is anything but a normal day. No cauldron of witches muttering prophecies behind the library. No shower of tree frogs over the football field. No abnormal celestial activity of the sort that suggests some earth-shaking event is about to take place. Even Maya, who is sometimes known for them, hasn’t had one of her hunches.

But then, only minutes before the homeroom bell, the door to the office suddenly opens and a boy steps through – rather like the last person arriving at a party being held in his honour.

For the sake of our story, I have to say here that – based on first impressions – this boy is no ordinary boy. Not an ordinary Clifton Springs boy, at any rate. It could be argued, of course, that any newcomer is going to stand out next to boys you’ve known since kindergarten, but it isn’t simply a question of novelty. To begin with, he is closer to beautiful than handsome: full, sensuous mouth and nose; large eyes so heavily lashed he might be wearing mascara; strong chin and brow; straight black hair. His are the kind of impossible good looks that make even the least impressionable of people think, My God! Is that what humans are supposed to look like? To match that, he has an air of effortless, almost alien, cool, standing there among the jeans in his vintage pinstriped suit (no tie) and plain black T-shirt, like a visiting prince – a canvas book bag casually flung over his shoulder and a class schedule, personally filled out for him by Mrs Skwill, the overworked administrative assistant, in his hand. He shows none of the awkwardness or nervousness most of us exhibit when we walk into a crowd of strangers, but pauses for a few seconds, his eyes calmly scanning his new schoolmates, smiling amiably if vaguely, apparently completely at ease. As he starts to stride nonchalantly across the hall, one eye on the schedule he’s holding and the other on the sign that says Rooms 1–20, his new classmates turn – very much as though he is a magnet and their heads are made of iron filings – as their attention is caught. It would be an obvious exaggeration to say that jaws drop and breaths are held, but it wouldn’t be much of one.

It is, of course, a gloomy day, at a gloomy time of year. Which may explain why news of the arrival of a mysterious stranger in their midst will spread through the school like a wildfire raging across drought-dry plains. Speculation about the new boy starts spontaneously and immediately. He’s stinking rich. He’s a world-class athlete. His GPA is 4.0. He only dates models and movie stars. His mother’s really famous. His father’s in the CIA. He isn’t from America. He speaks ten languages fluently. The only word he knows in English is “hello”. Within an hour, boys who haven’t seen him yet are making jokes about him; boys who haven’t met him have decided whether they like him or not. Within an hour, girls who haven’t seen him yet could pick him out of a police line-up. Girls who have seen him walk through the hallways tense as a dog that’s just caught a whiff of rabbit.

In time, of course, the speculation will be replaced by facts. They will know his name, where he comes from, where he lives and his ethnic background – plus enough trivial information to fill a quiz – but for now all anyone knows for sure is that he wasn’t here before, and now he is.

Maya, descending the stairs with Alice beside her, comes to an abrupt stop. The moment she first sees the new kid is like no other moment in her life. She feels the way someone who has never seen a body of water bigger than a wading pool might feel when she first sees the ocean. And to think how close she came this morning to putting on her silver feather earrings instead of the empowering crystals. She actually had them in her hand. It’s as if some part of her knew that today would be special and she should be prepared.