All That Glitters (13 page)

“You're a Flood—you make friends easily,” my mom said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“I guess. It's just getting hard to keep track,” I said. “Yesterday, I accidentally double-booked myself. I was tutoring some Thoney girls and forgot that I'd told SBB I'd go over some costuming options for Jake Riverdale's movie premiere.”

“I'm sure SBB understands,” my mom said. “She certainly knows what it's like to keep up with a busy calendar. And she'll be all right at the premiere—she's always had a good eye for fashion.”

“I know,” I said. “But it was more than that. SBB was also supposed to tutor me on some Shakespeare stuff for my English class. Instead, I was the one doing the tutoring for Dara and Veronica. I wanted to help them, but—”

My mom clucked her tongue. “Flan, you have such
a big heart, but you can't be accountable for everyone else to the point where you forget to be accountable for yourself. I'm glad you're here, so I can be accountable for you just relaxing.”

“I know,” I said, finally feeling myself sink deep into the massage table. “I'm glad, too.”

“If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times: You're my most responsible child. But I know we're not around much to keep an eye on you, and I want you to promise me that you'll take care of yourself.”

“Okay,” I said, letting out a slow yawn. “I promise. It's just this Virgil thing. I think that's why I keep saying ‘yes' to everything anyone asks me to do. I feel like the nicer I am, the closer I get to having it in the bag.”

“I know I've told you about when I was Virgil Host,” my mom said, and I prepared myself to hear, for the hundredth time, about the shell-pink Chanel pantsuit she wore when she was Host, about the debate she practiced for a week—back when Virgil was more than just a party—and about the date she'd had flown in from Andover a few months before she'd met my dad.

Then my mom surprised me when she said, “But I haven't told you how I
won
the election.”

I popped my head up from the massage table. “No,” I said, “you haven't.”

Just then I felt a strong pressure on my head and realized the masseuse was practically wrestling my neck back down on the table. “You will relax,” she said roughly, like it was an order.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said meekly, lowering my head again. “So how'd you win, Mom?”

My mom sighed. “It's not something I'm proud of.” She cleared her throat. “There was this girl. Her name was Harriet Dawson. I still remember—she had these press-on fake red nails, sharp as daggers. I guess you could say she was the Kennedy of my high school years. As you can imagine,” my mom said, “the competition between us was stiff.”

I thought about Willa and the look on her face when she'd told me not to run for Host. “Yeah, I can see that,” I said.

“Well, two days before the election, I'd heard a rumor that Harriet might edge me out. I knew she had a big crush on Uncle Owen—you know he used to have that enormous 'fro.”

I laughed, thinking of the pictures I'd seen of my mom with her older brother, who looked a lot like Patch might look if he let his hair grow about a foot straight out in every direction.

“Well, fortunately,” my mom continued, “Owen had a bad case of laryngitis that week. And I got him
to agree to take Harriet out. They went to Sardi's for dinner, and that poor girl was so into him that she overlooked how contagious the laryngitis was when he went to kiss her goodnight. You can probably guess the rest.”

“You've got to be kidding,” I said.

“I wish I were,” my mom said. “Two days later, she'd completely lost her voice and couldn't make her oration. And that, my dear, is how I won Virgil Host.”

Then both of us busted out laughing, so hard that our masseuses didn't know what to do with us. They tried to chide us with forceful shushes, and my mom's masseuse even whopped her on the head with a towel. But when none of that worked, they just threw up their hands and let us crack up until we could pull ourselves together.

“How could I have lived for fourteen years and not have known that story?” I asked my mom when we finally calmed down.

She looked at me seriously and said, “I don't know.” She shook her head. “Maybe I had to wait to tell you until I knew you wouldn't get any ideas. But listening to you today, darling, and hearing how nice—how utterly opposite—your campaign to win has been, I know that I have nothing to worry about.
Besides,” she said, winking at me, “Patch is in Caracas this week.”

“And I don't think he has laryngitis,” I said, laughing.

By then, our masseuses had literally thrown in their towels and given up on creating any sense of serenity in the room. But to me, it didn't matter. I felt more relaxed than I had all week.

Battle of the Ballot Casting

“Vote for Willa. Vote for Willa. Vote for—” Kennedy froze in her orange Hollywould flats when she turned to face Camille and me outside the assembly hall on Monday morning. It was just before the first bell rang, and Team Flan had agreed to meet early so we could make one last-minute push before everyone cast their ballots for Virgil Host at lunch.

Apparently, Kennedy and Willa had the same idea. From where I was standing, I could see only the bottom of Willa's snakeskin boots-of-death on the stairwell, but I could hear her voice talking to a group of girls gathered around her.

“I'm just looking out for the well-being of our class,” she said, making no attempt to lower her voice. “Do you think Flan Flood even knows what it means to host a Thoney event? A month ago, she was a public school nobody!” I could hear the
laughter surround her. Then she said, “I mean, I'm just
saying
.”

Now, Kennedy stood before me, with an armful of tiny bouquets of calla lilies tied with a ribbon and fastened with a business card that Willa had produced for the election. Kennedy returned the flower she had begun to hold out to me back to the bunch.

“On second thought,” she said, making a big display of pursing her lips together. “Better not waste these.” She smiled innocently. “Vote for Willa,” she said, her voice dripping with her trademark fakeness, before disappearing around the corner.

“Ugh.” I rolled my eyes at Camille. “It's a good thing I had this weekend to unwind. Otherwise, that might have just made me snap.”

“I mean, seriously,” Camille said, shaking her head. “Who makes a
business card
for this type of thing? I was this close to grabbing that lame bouquet out of her hands and tearing it apart, petal by petal.”

I nodded, pantomiming the scene of ripping up the flowers. “Vote for Willa. Vote for Willa.
Not
.”

Just then, Harper, Amory, and Morgan waved from across the foyer. As they got closer, I could see that each of them was carrying a differently shaped cardboard box. All three wore buttons in Thoney colors—gold
background and forest green letters—with different fonts reading GET FLOODED.

“Omigod,” Camille said, grabbing two more buttons from the box Harper was holding and handing me one. “Amazing. I love all the different fonts. What's in the other boxes?”

Amory opened her box to show stacks of tiny breath mint tins with FLAN FLOOD: A FRESH START spelled out across the top.

“So fun, you guys,” I said, truly touched that my new friends were taking this election so seriously.

“And so much more functional than the Willa lilies going around,” Morgan said. “Check out my contribution.” She opened her own box to reveal a box of burned CDs. The album art was a picture of me scoring a goal on the hockey field, and the title read, FLAN'S GOT YOU COVERED. “It's all cover songs by cool female artists,” she explained, handing each of us one.

“Way to go, Morgan. These totally rock.” Camille turned to me. “Okay, Flan, show us the real pièce de résistance.”

I felt for the invitations to the fashion show that I'd slipped in my messenger bag this morning. Jade Moodswing had brought them over last night in an engraved pewter box, and there were enough gold
calligraphed invitations for every girl in our class—even Kennedy and Willa. I opened the box to show my friends.

“Whoa, Pandora,” Amory said. “I think you have the Virgil vote in the bag.”

“Can I just say how refreshing it is that not only are you part of this totally swanky event, but you're inviting
everyone
to come to it?” Harper said, turning to hand out a few buttons to some girls walking past us. “That
never
happens at Thoney. There's always someone being intentionally left out.”

I shrugged. “What's the point of leaving anyone out? Everyone's invited to Virgil, so why shouldn't the host be the kind of person who actually
wants
to hang out with the whole grade?”

“Hey, Flan,” I heard a voice call from behind me. It was Shira Riley and a few of her senior friends, including Anna, whose Comptoir bag I had complimented last week. “Anna and I just wanted to swing by and wish you luck today. We heard you've got some vicious competition.”

I couldn't believe that these senior girls would even keep up with the relatively small happenings of the underclassmen. Then I wondered: “Did Patch tell you I was running?” I asked Shira.

“Actually,” Anna said, giving me a wink that looked
familiar. “My little brother told me all about it after you two hung out at Wollman the other day.”

“
You're
Alex's older sister?” I asked, feeling so totally dumb that I hadn't put the pieces together before. He'd definitely mentioned her a couple of times in relation to Thoney and Virgil.

“He's
my
little brother.” She corrected the emphasis jokingly. “And he seems to think you'd make a pretty good Host.”

Shira nodded. “So do we. We'll do what we can to spread the word. See you around,” she said, and the two of them headed down the senior locker hall.

“Way to pick the right boy du jour, Flan,” Camille said. Then she pointed to a sign on the door next to the assembly hall. “Hey, check it out. They posted the details about how voting works today.”

Morgan learned forward and read aloud from the sheet of tacked-up paper. “Morning assembly has been rescheduled for three o'clock this afternoon. Cast your ballots for Virgil Host in front of the cafeteria during lunch. After an announcement from Headmistress Winters, this month's Host will be revealed.”

“I wonder what the announcement from Winters is all about,” Camille said. “She usually only makes one appearance at the beginning of the semester to scare the crap out of everyone.”

Harper shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it has something to do with Virgil?”

“Or the spring fund-raiser,” Amory said, hoisting her Coach tote higher on her shoulder. “Sometimes she comes out of seclusion to give us some money-grubbing sound bites to send home to our parents.”

“Or maybe,” Morgan chimed in, “she anticipates wanting to congratulate Flan and her loyal supporters for running the first anti-smear campaign in Thoney history?”

“Speaking of which,” Camille said, taking half of the fashion show invitations from my hands. She looked at her watch. “We've got three hours until lunch, girls. Let's go out and spread the word just so we make absolutely sure Flan is the one we're congratulating in assembly this afternoon.”

And the Winner Is …

At three o'clock, as requested, the freshman class filed into the ornate, high-ceilinged assembly hall. All day, I'd been jittery, waiting for this moment with a combination of anticipation and nervousness. At lunch, I had to sit with my back to the voting table so I wouldn't see the other girls' faces as they went up to cast their ballots.

My friends had been great about it. Amory, Harper, and Morgan spent their lunch periods passing out our propaganda until the very last minute, while Camille sat with me, trying to distract me with a very original theatrical performance starring animal crackers purchased from the vending machine.

My hands down favorite was: “Here's Willa, the lion on her way to the River Styx for a drink—whoops—she just got her head bit off. Mmm, tasty.”

Now, I filed into the third row of the assembly hall,
flanked by my friends and trying not to make eye contact with the real-life version of Willa Rubenstein, whose head was still intact and even more haughtily set than usual.

I looked around the room that just last week had seemed to be filled with girls I didn't know and was slightly intimidated by. But today, almost everywhere my gaze fell, I recognized a girl I'd taken the time to get to know. There was Mattie Hendricks, nose deep in her folder of Student Senate supplies. There was the Dara, Veronica, and Olivia trio, giving me the thumbs up from their row. There was Faiden, flipping her hair in the front. There were the Nail Filers from my English class to whom I'd lent my Burt's Bees cuticle cream on Friday. There was Ramsey, looking up at the ceiling with that concentrated look on her face that I could tell meant she was working out field hockey strategies in her head.

It was definitely a big change from last week, and it made me think about how much fun I'd had getting to know everyone. Even though I'd been making a lot of these efforts so that I could count on people for votes today, I knew that there was more to it than that. If I didn't win Virgil Host today, all the insanity of last week would still have been worth it, because I'd made some real connections with these girls.

Then again, it
would
be really nice to win….

“Attention, attention,” Headmistress Winters called out from her podium. I realized I'd been so consumed by my own thoughts that I hadn't even heard the auditorium hush up when the headmistress walked in.