Pride & Princesses (2 page)

   
That was all I saw that day because my mom arrived about three seconds later and scooped me up in a mom hug.

   
‘Hey girls, I hope you were good while I was in Europe!’

   
‘Of course, Trish,’ Mouche replied like the worldly-wise best friend she was. Mrs Mouche sells houses for a living and for exceeding their half-yearly targets, her entire sales team had been gifted a whirlwind summer vacation culminating in Florence, Italy.

   
‘How exotic,’ Mouche had remarked when we both received photos the previous week, via email, of Mrs Mouche standing outside the Uffizi Gallery. ‘I love exotic places,’ Mouche remarked.
 

    
Later that day Mouche and I were lounging in Mouche’s pool before classes started on Monday. We flicked through the cell phone images of the boys’ arrival at LAX, deleting all but the best ones.

    
‘It’s ridiculous to be fans of guys we didn’t know,’ I said.

    
‘...who aren’t even famous.’ Mouche agreed, but she couldn’t resist the standard comment, ‘mmm...yummy...’ and I totally agreed.

    
‘His friend’s hot too. Sometimes blondes have to stick together,’ Mouche replied.

    
Mouche and I had always been in competition. We had opposing hair colour. As you may have gathered, mine’s dark, Mouche’s is light, but our major contrasts were not just cosmetic. We had different but complimentary personalities.

    
‘Phoebe?’

    
‘Mmm...I said as I applied Spf30...’

     
‘We’ve been friends since we were six and I want you to know there is something truly comforting about this.’

     
‘Uh huh,’ I said. ‘What’s with the deep and meaningful conversation?’

     
‘Well, you know the sweater I borrowed and haven’t returned yet?’

     
‘My cashmere?’ I asked.

     
‘...yeah. It got caught in the dryer and...shrank.’

      
I scowled.
 

      
‘How could you? It was never supposed to go in the dryer in the first place!’
  

      
Mouche looked mortified.

      
‘I know. I’m so sorry. I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell you.’

      
‘I wanted to wear it tomorrow...’

      
‘I know...’

       
After a few seconds, I smiled.

      
‘I suppose I could wear something else...’

      
‘I promise I’ll get you another one when I can afford it.’

      
‘That’s okay...’

       
Money had been tight since our fathers absconded.

      
‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way we could just snap our fingers and get anything we wanted....’

    
‘You mean...conjure up a treasure chest or something? Yeah, that’d be great.’

     
Like sisters, Mouche and I have shared the spoils of our wars all through grade school and now high school. It’s bound to happen in our first year of college. We even worked part-time at the local store all summer in order to save money for the ultimate dream – New York.
 
One day, I aim to be a triple threat on Broadway; Mouche wants to be a lawyer. I have no idea why.
Mouche
loves legal dramas on television.
 

    
Both of our mothers are bachelorettes and quite young and wild and get along famously since they are the only ‘single’ Moms in our tiny street.
 
You can see them now, sitting on the porch together ‘catching up’ on life in Sunrise over the past month, looking like they invented that famous phrase
‘mommies who drink.’
 
  

    
I jumped out of the pool and grabbed a towel. Mouche dived under the water and emerged with a piece of gold – a ring had been left in the water – with a tiny dolphin on it. It probably belonged to someone at last night’s party – we’d walked over to Mouche’s house (next door to mine) to go for a swim.

    
‘Finders keepers,’ Mouche said with a glimmer in her eye, but I knew she’d hand it in to lost property at school the next day. That’s just the type of person Mouche is – loyal and trustworthy.

 
   
If it weren’t for the amazing competition Mouche and I feel at times, our friendship would be truly perfect.

   
I mean, we really are there for each other.

   
We both studied fashion and theatre design at the private school we attended in Bel Air until tenth grade (before our deadbeat dads had financial collapses) and we went loco (meaning local – to the performing arts school in Sunrise). Our daddies also turned gay for each other around that time and that’s when our sisterly friendship became - how do they say it in those old English films? Very handy. Yes, that’s right,
handy.
We might have needed some major therapy when Daddy Mouche and Daddy Phoebe ran off together, if it hadn’t been for the strength of our friendship. We leant on our sisterly bond in our darkest hours and focused on the pastimes we enjoyed, swimming, dancing and talking about boys.

   
Fate played a part in our simultaneous transfers to Sunrise High, after our parents split up.
  
Even at grade school Mouche had saved me from the evil, fashion-challenged bullies who tried to steal my lunch, my purse and our collective sanity. Those nasty girls morphed into a select group known locally as The Princesses and they inhabited Sunrise High, as luck would have it, around the same time as us.
   

    
But before I tell you more about the people, I should describe the place.
 

   
Near Los Angeles you can locate the gated community of Bel Air (where Mark Knightly would later reside) and at the foot of the hill, our world – a tiny little satellite suburb known brightly and only as Sunrise, population three thousand and nineteen people, exists.

   
Amongst these people there were the usual small town individuals: the local dentists, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, diner and shop owners, as well as a fair array of eccentric teenage characters, many of whom attended Sunrise High. The school was known for its ‘Centre of Performing Arts Excellence,’ the program in which Mouche and I and twenty-eight other students were enrolled.

   
Six of these so-called ‘creatively gifted’ students were boys. I’d kissed all six of them but only because we’d participated in ‘scene studies’ for different plays we’d workshopped in theatre class over the past year.

    
‘We’ve never kissed anyone as hot as Mark and Jet,’ Mouche said, taking another glance at the image of Jet on her cell (she’d sent me the one of Mark). Mouche had at least six photos of the boys from LAX taken from as many different angles.

    
‘That’s bordering on obsessive,’ I joked to Mouche, knowing we’d both faint if anyone found out we’d taken pictures of boys we’d never even met.

   
‘Touché,’ I replied using Mouche’s newly acquired French, ‘I’ve never really kissed anyone I was totally into.’

   
‘It’s all about the kiss,’ Mouche said, ‘the kiss has to live up to your expectations or it’s just never going to happen. I’ve been doing some private research. Some of the boys didn’t want to be used for practice, if you know what I mean. Some were shy, some were confused or just bored or uncertain of the right way to go about it....I’ve been thinking there should be a manual...’

    
‘You mean, like Teegan’s blog?’

    
‘Not really, I mean, Teegan’s blog is just gossip. I think we need more actual research less filler...’

   
‘You mean, like a dating manual for teenage girls?’

   
‘Something like that, but more Sunrise specific...’

    
‘You mean, like a date and rate?’

    
‘Or maybe like a date and run. Remember when your mom went on her first date after the divorce? And the guy was such a sleeze she excused herself to go to the ladies room and crawled out of the bathroom window?’

    
‘How could I forget?’

    
‘Well, since we haven’t had that much dating experience we should be open to research – our own and other people’s...’

   
‘True.’

   
 
That was the first time we discussed the idea of a dating manual for teenage girls. But we never expected, in the course of our ‘research,’ that we’d actually fall in love with Mark Knightly and Jet Campbell.

Chapter 2

Best Friends and Sisters

    
When we arrived at school the next morning, Mark and Jet were nowhere to be seen. The boys were hanging out in packs.
 
The girls had already formed their own little cliques: the usual stuff - sporty, indie, nerdy, skeezie, emo-wearing black. Study an ancient DVD of an eighties teen film and you’ll get the idea. The Sunrise High general studies stream was a fusion of select public school purgatory. Only the fittest would survive.

   
Mouche and I had first walked the halls of Sunrise in sophomore year. We were transfer students and dance majors from the academy we attended in Bel Air: The Los Angeles High School for Young Ladies. Back then, we wore uniforms that made us look like little nuns. Public school was a big contrast. Huge. We barely had a dress code but were well
acquainted
with the Princesses when they appeared in the hall: a mirage, as if like magic.

    
‘Magic? They are clearly bad girls in disguise,’ Mouche stated.

    
‘Just
bad, bad, bad
,’ I reiterated. ‘I think boys like bad girls though, don’t you?’

    
‘Probably,’ Mouche conceded. ‘But who knows what the boys in this place are looking for?’ Mouche said as we observed a Harry Potter obsessive adjusting his fake glasses and etching a lightning scar on his forehead with charcoal in preparation for an acting class.
   
Mouche and I had lain low as transfer students and couldn’t believe how unlucky we were when Teegan, Tory, Brooke and Freya were expelled soon after we were politely shown the door at the Los Angeles High School for Young Ladies. Oh, did I say ladies? It’s not the most appropriate word.
 
The Princesses were fairly considered to be the most evil teenage girls Sunrise had ever produced; two sets of non-identical twins with plans to take over their new school, safe in the belief that since their fathers
owned
half of Sunrise, the school was theirs for the taking.