Inside Girl (12 page)

The rest of the afternoon I spent sprawled up in my room, alternately napping and working on homework. A few days—or even hours—earlier, I might not have
believed it, but it actually seemed like I was balancing my two lives really well. I'd gone out with Meredith and Judith, cemented something real with Bennett, and still basically been a good friend to my runaway pals back home. I felt awesome, confident—like I could take over the world. I should've known it was too good to last forever.

On Monday, I ended up sitting between Meredith and Judith at this lame school assembly that happened in the afternoon. I can't remember what the topic was—something related to students taking a more active role in recycling, or another, even more boring topic—but it didn't really matter, because the three of us stayed entertained the whole time writing notes to one another in the margins of my chemistry notebook. It was like the sleepover all over again: we kept cracking one another up. Fortunately, we were sitting toward the back of the auditorium or else we would have definitely gotten into trouble; as it was, only Mrs. Frisk, one of the librarians, kept turning around and shooting us the evil eye, but other than that, we were on our own.

Flan, have you seen Bennett today?
wrote Judith.
I heard he was looking for you before school.

Crap
, I wrote back.
I was blow-drying my hair and got here super late. Oh well. At least he didn't see me with bed-head.

Not yet!
wrote Meredith, giggling.

I elbowed her in the ribs.
What about you? Any cool guy gossip?

Practically the only guy I've seen today is Principal Leland
, wrote Judith, rolling her eyes at the stage, where Principal Leland was standing at the podium, talking into a microphone and sweating under the lights. He's this short, balding guy who wears bow ties and cardigan sweaters with leather patches on the elbows, and even though I think he's sweet, most of the other kids at Stuyvesant find him annoying as hell.
God, wouldn't it be great if he was as cute as that guy from
The United States of Leland
? Or better yet, Leland Brinker?

Leland Brinker is sooo cute
. Meredith underlined the word
so
about a million times.
I'd kill to see him onstage.

He went out with Sara-Beth Benny for a while
, I wrote, deciding to take a chance. After all, it was in all the gossip mags anyway.
He was even at that famous
Survivor
party she threw. They made a cute couple.

Yeah, right!
Judith drew an angry face next to her words.
SBB looks so scary! Someone should make her
eat a hamburger or something. She's totally starving herself.

Maybe she's on coke
, Meredith added.
Kills your hunger and explains some of the crazy outfits she wears.

Leland Brinker could seriously do so much better. What a skank!
Judith doodled a cartoon of a stick-figure girl with big sunglasses waving a bikini top in the air. Meredith started giggling hysterically. But I just stared down in my lap while my stomach did guilty flip-flops.

Meredith and Judith weren't mean girls—they'd never say stuff like this about someone they knew. But celebrities just weren't real to them. I was starting to understand why SBB found most of the people in the “real world” so scary: they totally didn't treat her like a person. But I didn't know how to tell Meredith and Judith why their words bothered me so much without giving anything away about Sara-Beth living with me.

I think
, I started to write, still trying to figure out how to put it, exactly. But before I could finish my thought, a hand came out of nowhere and closed the notebook. I looked up. It was Mrs. Frisk: Meredith was laughing so hard the old librarian had actually gotten up and come back here to see what was going on.

“Girls,” she hissed, “this is an assembly about
Styrofoam disposal—not a social hour. If I see you writing notes again, I'll confiscate them and send all three of you to detention after school.” She turned on her heel, went back up several rows, and took her seat again.

Meredith, Judith, and I exchanged glances.

“Rrrear,” Judith muttered under her breath, making a claw gesture. I grinned, but I still felt bad about what we'd been writing.

So we pretty much piped down for the rest of the assembly; Mrs. Frisk might be old and persnickety, but that was no reason to get stuck in detention. We sat more or less quietly while Principal Leland did a PowerPoint presentation about the new blue bins they were putting around the school. After what seemed like about three hours, it was finally over.

We were supposed to file out of the auditorium row by row, but everyone was so desperate to get out of there that it wound up being a mad crunch. Meredith, Judith, and I got sort of separated in the aisle, and I was feeling really claustrophobic—until I realized that the guy I was stuck standing next to was none other than Bennett Keating.

“Flan!” He looked like he couldn't be happier to see me. His hair was all tousled and adorable, and he was wearing this khaki jacket that made his shoulders
look even broader and stronger than they did normally. “I was looking all over for you earlier!”

“Really?” I blushed. “Well, it's good to see you too.”

“Yeah. So, listen, I had such a great time at Devon's party, I was thinking I'd throw one at my dad's apartment this weekend. He's going to be gone on Friday night. Do you think you'd be able to come?”

“Of course,” I said, but inside I started to squirm a little. That was the night I was supposed to hang out with the girls at home. “Only, do you think it would be okay if I brought along—”

“Oh yeah, Meredith and Judith are invited too. Where did they go? I just saw them.”

I glanced around. “Well, I'll tell them anyway.”

“Great. Maybe I'll find you guys in the cafeteria at lunch.” Bennett grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze, then disappeared into the crowd.

Which left me feeling giddy and wonderful, but with just one very disturbing question on my mind: how was I going to explain this one to SBB, Philippa, and Liesel?

My temporary solution wasn't a very good one: I just didn't tell them anything. It was easier than it sounds, because that week all three of them were going crazy, especially SBB, whose realtor had set up an interview with another co-op board late Friday afternoon. Sara-Beth didn't want anything to go wrong this time, so she was in full hide-from-the-paparazzi mode. She even wore her big dark glasses inside the house.

Early in the week, I was able to kid myself into thinking that the girls had forgotten all about our plans to have girl time on Friday night. But then on Thursday, when we were all sitting around the coffee table eating the Thai food we'd ordered for dinner, Philippa said the words I'd been dreading: “So, I've been thinking about our sleepover tomorrow. Should we rent some movies or something?”

“Don't even talk to me about anything Hollywood.” Sara-Beth nibbled at a noodle from her pad Thai. “They chew you up and spit you out. That's how the business works.”

“One of my friends from Cube works for the Sundance Channel,” Liesel offered. “He could get us some films that haven't been released yet. Or we could do each other's nails. There's this wonderful store that just opened, and they sell the most unusual colors—”

“Let's hear it, Flan.” Philippa turned to me. “You're the sleepover expert. What do you think would be the most fun?”

I swallowed a mouthful of my green curry, but it didn't go down easily.

“Listen,” I said, “do you think we could do this sleepover thing another night? Like … Saturday?”

All three of them looked at me like I'd just fallen in through the ceiling. I hunched over my food and continued, “I mean, it's just that … I have this other thing I'm supposed to do.”

Total silence. Liesel was the first to speak, and when she did, she sounded horrified, like this was a nightmare beyond her worst imaginings.

“You … double-booked?” she whispered. “You double-booked … us?”

“I didn't mean to,” I said, feeling pretty awful. “I
mean, seriously, I didn't. But then, the other day, Bennett said there was going to be another party—”

“Another party?” Sara-Beth shrieked. “But Flan, you promised you'd bring us along next time.”

“I know … but … I didn't want to tell you about it, because, well, because …” I had to think fast, but I just kept picturing Meredith and Judith and how shocked they'd look if I showed up at the party with three older girls they'd never seen or even heard about before—including SBB. “Because I know you have that board meeting on Friday. What if it goes really well, and then you turn around and get your picture snapped when we're out that night? You'd lose the apartment, and all for the sake of some dumb Stuyvesant party? I don't think so.”

Sara-Beth still looked hurt. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“That's no reason why we can't go, though,” said Philippa. “Liesel and me, I mean.”

“Yeah, but I don't know. It's not going to be anything great. I mean, they might play spin-the-bottle, but it's the beginning of flu season, you know. So I bet it'll mostly be other stuff … like Yahtzee.” I tried to think of all the lamest stuff I could imagine. “And I think Bennett said there were going to be charades. Yeah, loads of charades.”

“If this party's so dumb, why are you going?” Sara-Beth didn't wait for me to answer. She got up and went up the stairs.

“Sara-Beth,” I called after her. Philippa and Liesel exchanged a look. I could tell they were totally disgusted with me.

“Well, I suppose we can amuse ourselves,” Liesel said to me, really coldly.

“Yeah. Besides, we shouldn't leave Sara-Beth trapped at home all alone,” said Philippa pointedly. “That would be really mean.”

I'd pretty much never felt worse—that is, until I went upstairs and found Sara-Beth curled up on my bed, holding my teddy bear to her face and crying her eyes out. Noodles was nuzzling into her neck, then panting and looking concerned. At that point, I would have gladly changed places with anyone in the world. But since that wasn't an option, I went and perched on the edge of the bed until Sara-Beth finally rolled over and looked up at me with big red accusing eyes.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean to make you feel left out.”

SBB sniffled. “I don't hate you, Flan. Don't think that I do. I just don't understand how you can be so cruel to me.”

“Sara-Beth, that's really not fair. I'm not doing this
to hurt you. I'd take you with me if I could.” At that moment, it really was almost true. I would have done anything to stop her from crying. I pulled Noodles over onto my lap, and he started licking my hands. “But you said yourself, you can't go out to parties. The paparazzi would see you, and then you'd never get in the co-op. It sucks, but I mean, that's the way it is, right?”

“You just don't understand,” she wept. “I'd give anything to just be normal. Like you.”

I blinked. Me, normal? “What do you mean?”

“I can't make any friends…. I'm always hiding out … and now you're running away from me! I'm going to end up all alone, just like that mean old gypsy said!” She wiped her nose on my bedspread. “Oh, Flan, wouldn't it be perfect if we were sisters? Then we could do each other's hair … and stay up all night talking … and go to each other's graduations … and do all the wonderful things that sisters get to do!”

“But we can do all of that already,” I said. A little calmer now, Noodles jumped down from my lap onto the floor. “We stayed up all night talking, like, three days ago.”

“Oh, Flanny, do you mean it?” Suddenly, Sara-Beth perked up. She looked at me intently. “You're not just saying it?”

“Umm … saying what?”

“You really think of me as a sister already?”

“Sara-Beth, do you have any brothers and sisters?” I asked.

“Well, on
Mike's Princesses
—”

“No, but
real
brothers and sisters. Ones you're actually related to.”

She shook her head.

I got up and grabbed a box of Kleenex from on top of my dresser. “Well, I think maybe that's why you have this … weird idea of what siblings are like. I mean, it's not like sisters are best friends all the time.”

“They're not?”

“No. My sister February is six years older than me. When we were growing up, we hardly ever played together.” I handed her the tissue box. “Sometimes she'd dress me up and put makeup on me like I was her little doll, but that was about it. Most of the time I'd just do stupid stuff, like drool on her new shirt or break her lipstick, and she'd yell at me.”

“But we wouldn't be like that. You're hardly three years younger than me. And you don't drool anymore. At least I don't think you do.”

“Yeah, but we'd still fight. The reason you and me are such good friends now is that we have, I dunno, a little distance from each other. Like, you can leave anytime
you want. We never feel trapped together. If we were on one of the family vacations I took as a kid, where we'd be on my parents' sailboat for, like, four weeks straight, you can bet we'd start getting annoyed with each other. Maybe even majorly annoyed.”

Sara-Beth was silent. She plucked at the pillowcase thoughtfully. “I never thought about it like that.”

“But it's totally true. I think the best friends are people who spend a lot of time together but then get to be apart too. That helps make the times they're together more special.”