Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here (6 page)

A collective slap as two hundred high fives were given.

“
Attention!
” snapped Dean Jacobs, stomping her designer heel once, hard.

Everyone was quiet again.

“This is still Pembrooke, and I fully expect every one of you to act accordingly,” she barked. Underneath, her defeat was audible.

“Oh, lighten up, Shelly!” said Dean Arnolds, slapping her on the fragile back so heartily that she stumbled forward. She tugged the hem of her suit back in place and glared daggers at him. He didn’t care.

“I hope you all know who to thank for this,” bellowed Dean Arnolds cheerfully. “Because his son is among you. Right here . . . in . . . this . . . room. Gideon Maclaine, where are you?”

Then 999 eyes (those of all five hundred students, including Kenny Adaire, who’d lost an eye last summer in a freak racquetball accident) flaring with all sorts of emotions turned toward Gideon at once.

For a second you could hear a pin drop, if anybody had a pin. But nobody had a pin, so the only thing plummeting was Dean Jacobs’s patience.

The sobbing girl broke the silence by crying harder while glaring at Gideon, which was terrible. Whenever he saw a girl
crying, even a random one in the quad, he felt weirdly guilty, like he was somehow responsible. This time, he actually
was
responsible.

“Son of Mitchell Maclaine,” Dean Arnolds continued. Gideon felt like he was in the Bible. “CEO of Ordinaria Inc., who’s an entrepreneur, an innovator, and a massive donor I’m sure we’re
all
incredibly grateful for.”

That last bit was pointed, clearly addressed to the girls:
Remember the name of this hall. Remember who funded your equestrian classes. Where you should have learned to REIN IT IN.

* * *

The delivery was the following Thursday. It was the first day in Pembrooke history that nobody, not even the stoners, cut class—but attendance didn’t matter because class was shot to hell. Students and teachers alike gathered by the window to watch as the Ordinaria Inc. truck pulled around the school’s cul-de-sac. Gideon was the only one in SAT Prep who didn’t leap up to watch the action—even Mrs. Greer, who was ancient and seemed surprised by nothing, was straining at the window like the rest of them.

Gideon didn’t have to run to the window because he had seen it a million times. He knew the deal. Right on cue, all the guys in class sighed and groaned with disappointment when the Ordinarias weren’t pulled out of the truck in clear Barbie-like casing, naked and on display.

It was marginally classier than that. Each one came in a
long white rectangular container—sort of a coffin/pastry-box hybrid. As per usual, overlaid on a big pink lipstick kiss print, in the company’s iconic cursive font, was
AUTHENTIC PRODUCT
,
ORDINARIA INC.
On each of these, though, was a hastily stuck-on label in standard type instead:
MISS ORDINARIA—TEST PRO
DUCT
.

“You think they’re naked in there, bro?” Dylan Dinerstein asked Paul Watts, because of course.

“No,” Gideon said reflexively. Everyone looked at him. He bit his tongue.

Homely, sweet Lisa Lerner turned to him, her cowlike eyes enormous and pleading.

“They’re gonna be nice, right?” she asked.

It was at this moment that Gideon remembered when his father had once described
2001: A Space Odyssey
as a slapstick comedy.

“Yeah, um. Of course they will,” he said.

* * *

Even Gideon had been wondering exactly how much would be different from the Ordinaria proper model, with which he was very well acquainted—a beautiful thirty-to-fifty-year-old ersatz woman, brightened, less weary, and not as caustic as a human female of her age. Sometimes they were so lifelike it was uncanny. But Gideon could always tell by their eyes, the one feature that had frustrated his father to no end. No matter how many new developers or how much money he threw at it, there was something impossible to get just right.

The classroom door swung open, and Gideon noticed the
absence of the familiar whirring noise that Ordinarias made. But there in the doorway was a Miss Ordinaria.

The class fell silent, but their expressions were united:
Holy shit
.

Gideon’s breath caught in his throat very unexpectedly. She was gorgeous, in a totally different way than the Ordinarias Gideon had grown up with. Her skin was glowing but still seemed real; her face was just unique enough to pass for a real girl’s. She had a little bit of (improbably becoming) rosacea. She was . . . God, just
really sexy
. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he was furious with himself, like his father had just scored a point.

She came in and stood at the front of the room, wearing a slightly outdated tank top and jeans, but she was all the more beautiful for it. The girls glared.

“What’s . . . um . . . what’s your name, sweetheart?” asked Mrs. Greer, who barely knew how to use a smartphone and was trembling ever so slightly.

“Hi, I’m Ashbot.” She faced the class and waved a little, tossed her red hair. “I’m here to get an education, I guess, or whatever.”

“I’d like to educate her so hard she can’t walk tomorrow,” mumbled Chris Thompson, and two boys behind Gideon snickered.

“Have a seat, dear.” Mrs. Greer was so freaked out that she was almost imploring Ashbot.

She whirred softly down the third row of desks, toward
Gideon’s, and he got a whiff of a super-girlie Bath and Body Works perfume that must have scored high on the Preferred Scent of Eighteen-to-Twenty-Five-Year-Old Men Test. Gideon’s demographic.
They were dead on
, he thought, stupefied.

She stopped at his desk and stood over him, her green eyes wide and loving. The whole class stared.

“Hey, Gideon,” she said. His name sounded very personal in her mouth. He swallowed hard.

Then, smiling, she cooed, “I’m your eighteenth birthday present.”

* * *

“I need to talk to you!”

To his credit, this was the first time that Gideon had dramatically stormed into the Ordinaria Inc. boardroom. He had disregarded the secretaries’ protests but tried his best not to be a huge dick about it.

His father was mid-meeting, in one of the many that made up his day. Seventeen men and two women sat around a long conference table. They all looked up when Gideon burst in.

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m busy right now,” his father replied, gritting his teeth, obviously surprised by his son’s gall.

Gideon ran out of steam and complied, just one of the latest series of compliances that made up his whole life. He seemed to be getting closer and closer to asserting himself but never quite going the distance.

He sat in the waiting room until his dad came out, then stood up and walked toward him with resigned determination, like someone ready to argue with a doctor about a loved one’s fatal prognosis.

“So you got my gift,” said his dad.

“Yeah. In front of my whole class. This is bullshit, Dad. You need to get me out of it,” Gideon snapped, turning bright red.

“I thought you’d be happy.”

“You’re not doing this for me; you’re doing this so I can be the, like . . . unofficial ambassador of integration. The first one to actually date
it.
The least you could do is be honest.”

His dad shrugged. “Gid, you’ve got to lose it sometime.”

Gideon winced. The secretaries studiously pretended not to hear.

“You could stand to be a little more appreciative, you know. She’s designed especially for you. My team and I pretty rigorously studied a couple of years’ worth of your, uh, browser history—”

“You. Are. Not. Saying. This. To. Me.”

“She’s about half a mil on the market. Rent her out if you want. Hell, you could sell her on eBay and buy a house on Nantucket with that kind of money.”

“I don’t give two shits about Nantucket,” snapped Gideon.

“The Cape, then.” His dad looked around, exasperated. “I have to get back in there. We can talk more about this at home, if you really want to.”

This was his father’s way of saying
End of discussion
.

Gideon slowly closed his eyes and took a very, very deep breath. “So you’re telling me it’s done.”

Then his dad did something incredibly strange. For the first time in a decade or so, he reached out and tousled Gideon’s hair. Gideon was so taken aback that he didn’t have the reflex to smack his hand away.

His dad looked at him, bemused, and chuckled as he headed back to the boardroom.

“Oh, kid. Is it ever done.”

* * *

Later that week, Ashbot was pouting. It seemed to be her default.

“Are you gonna touch my boobs soon?”

“No,” Gideon said, for the seventeenth time that day. He was at his locker, and she was leaning up against the one next to his—a locker whose male freshman owner was standing awkwardly next to them, gawking too hard to ask her to move.

“Why?”

“I, um, I can’t. I just can’t.”

Ashbot sighed.

She had not left his side since the day she arrived at school. Partly because she was absorbing how Gideon walked, talked, and seemed to think, in order to better simulate a real teenager. Gideon had seen enough newly manufactured Ordinarias following his mom around the grocery store and asking inane questions to know that much.

He just wished Ashbot’s hair didn’t smell so good.

“So after school, are we, like, gonna go somewhere or something or whatever, yo?” she asked.

Ashbot’s language had been programmed with research adults had done on how teenagers spoke. It was bad.

“Ashbot.” He tried to sound kind, but firm. “Nobody at this school talks like that.”

She tilted her head, listening intently.

Then, guilelessly, she asked, “How do they talk?”

He thought about it.

“Like . . . God, I don’t know. Not like in the movies. I know that isn’t very helpful,” he said apologetically.

Ashbot nodded understandingly. “Word.”

xLoupxGaroux: Rolling with the robot subplot! Ho-LEE-Shit. Ballsy move. But I think you actually made it semi-interesting. Solid work.

WillianShipper2000: agree!!

xLoupxGaroux: I could use some more hot guys. But, yeah, some simmering (boring hetero) sexual subtext in here . . . Get thee to a nunnery, Scarface.

WillianShipper2000: wait y should she be a nun??

xLoupxGaroux: SMALL FRY. Google it.

WillianShipper2000: don’t call me a fry

DavidaTheDeadly: guys!!!!

xLoupxGaroux: Hiiiiiii!

DavidaTheDeadly: scarface, this is . . . unsurprisingly . . . a weird story. but i’m into it! at the very least, it’s making my work day go a little quicker.

xLoupxGaroux: Ehh . . . I dunno how much robot I’m down for at this point.

DavidaTheDeadly: but think about where John would take something like this! Ashbot would totally transcend her origins. look at Davida, she was a werewolf raised in loup garou culture, but she learned how to be a girl.

I roll my eyes.

DavidaTheDeadly: in any case, I am into it. if you need a beta reader LMK. More pls.

WillianShipper2000: me too!

xLoupxGaroux: Agreed. Featuring more hot guys. And a shirtless Gideon please.

DavidaTheDeadly: Ditto.

WillianShipper2000: ditto.

Ditto.

MR. RADFORD PASSES OUR TESTS BACK AND MINUTELY SHAKES
his head at me as he slides mine onto the table. Thirty-seven. A disgruntled noise comes from behind me. Gideon’s glaring at his test. Also thirty-seven. He glances at me, and when I catch him looking, he looks away. Then when he thinks I’m not paying attention, he looks at me again.

When the bell rings, he catches up to me by the door.

“Hey!”

I stop, my heart pounding hard enough to shake my brain. Even before we got our tests back, for some reason, I could feel him looking at me the whole period, boring holes in the back right side of my head. And it’s not a good feeling, it’s that nauseous fight-or-flight feeling I get when I see Ashley and Natalia looking either near me or at me and whispering something and laughing. But that’s not fair, because
he’s
the one who did something wrong.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have cheated on me,” I blurt. “Oh. Ha, cheated
off
me. Is what I meant.”

He stares.

“Because, like, I didn’t do the reading,” I add.

“Yeah, I got that.” He waves the test he’s still holding.

“Well. I never promised you a rose garden. So. Okay. Um.” I awkwardly slip by under his armpit and speed-walk to my locker, wishing for the first time that I’d done the reading and his A+ on the test had helped him get into Dartmouth. Then he’d owe me one. Then . . . that is the end of the plan, really. I’m so lost in fantasies that I don’t notice him following me to my locker.

“Scarlett, hold up.”

My name coming out of his mouth so casually gives me a head rush, like emotional brain freeze. He pauses in front of my locker, running his hand through his hair.

“I was kind of a dick the other day, I know. But it was weird, what you said. I do have friends.”

“What?” It takes me a second before I realize that he’s talking about my verbal brain fart from the other day.

“I mean, they don’t go here. I know that sounds fake, like how girls are like”—he does a girl voice—“‘I have a boyfriend, but he doesn’t go here,’ and actually they’re just making it up. But I’m not.”

“Okay,” I say.

He shifts, irritated. “Don’t just say okay if you still don’t believe me.”

“I do believe you!” I mean it.

“I have friends,” he says again, then makes a face that’s like
Oh shit, the more I say that, the faker it sounds.
At that moment, I am even more positive that Gideon and I have a lot in common. I feel protective, like I need to rescue him.

“Um, so why did you copy off me in the first place?” I strike a come-hither pose I see Dawn use with her boyfriends—hip jutted out, head cocked to the side, back arched a little more than is natural. It feels, and probably looks, quite strange.

“I thought you were good in English. I always see you reading.”

He has noticed me. Reading. But still. Noticed me!

“Have you ever seen me reading any books on the English syllabus?”

He shakes his head. I raise my eyebrows, and he smiles a tiny bit, and I might actually die right here.

“Only
Lycanthrope
graphic novels. Which are you on?”

“Number fifty-five,” I manage.

“Oh, right before Sam Kieth starts illustrating. He’s awesome. Do you know him?”

I shake my head.

“Well, you’ll see. I bet you’ll like him a lot.”

I nod emphatically like seventeen times in a row. “Yeah! Yeah, that sounds cool; I’ll check it out.”

“So you’re pretty bummed about the show?”

“I mean, yeah, sure, I thought it was good, didn’t you?” I barely recognize the faux-casual voice coming out of my mouth. (So this is how it happens. This is how girls change for boys.
I am simultaneously annoyed at myself and mildly amazed that I have the ability.)

He nods.

“How come you didn’t want to talk to me about it the other day?” I ask.

“I didn’t not want to; you just caught me off guard. I mean, we haven’t talked in years. . . .”

I can feel the conversation heading south, but I can’t stop myself. “Weird. Because I saw someone else come up to you right after that, and I don’t think she’s spoken to you
ever,
and you seemed pretty okay with it.”

He looks freaked out. “What are you talking about?”

From down the hall, a pair of padded boobs turns toward us and actually seems to
aim
, like they’re preparing to fire stealth missiles. The girls around her, dressed almost identically with slight variations, are either staring at me or at their phones.

Ashley says something to Natalia, smirking, and walks toward us. I’m suddenly conscious of what I’m wearing: a T-shirt, baggy jeans, a headband I borrowed from Dawn’s Blair Waldorf–inspired headpiece collection hastily pushed over my two-day-unwashed hair.

When Ashley draws close enough, she leaps into Gideon’s arms and curls up. She is like the opposite of those animals who puff up to scare away predators; she shrinks herself into something as delicate and girly and palatable as possible to snag her prey. My stomach starts to burn. Crushes are so stupidly physical sometimes, like colds.

“Hiiii-yyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeee,” she croaks, torturing out the salutation into seven million syllables, then slides down him like a pole and looks at me. “Hey, Divider!”

“Hi.”

She turns to Gideon. “Did I ever tell you this? Sophomore year I was driving to a party, and I saw Scarlett on Route 9 by the Walmart, dancing on the divider.”

(This is what actually happened: Dawn called me crying after some guy dumped her in the parking lot of Stop-n-Fresh. I had to take the public bus from the stop on our street to that strip mall that lets out on the highway, and then was running—
not
dancing—down the divider toward the parking lot to physically drag her away from a lonely pink-drink bender at a shitty bar. Ashley was making an unfortunately timed turn into the parking lot when she saw me “dancing.” The good news is that I now know the stories behind every tattoo inked on some dude named “McG.”)

“I wasn’t dancing,” I say, for the twentieth time, bracing myself as I feel her slowly pulling the guillotine up.

“Oh, hey!” Her sea-green eyes sparkle maliciously. “Can you tell your mom she did
such
a good job cleaning our bathroom?”

My head rolls down the hall.

She laughs, tinkly like a fairy’s cough. “Sorry, I’m
so
random, it’s just that we’ve had so many housekeepers, but she’s really above average. She even speaks English!”

“It’s true!” I say.

“Maybe the hotel staff in Cabo can pick up some tips from her when we’re there!”

I’m confused. “In . . . Cabo?”

“Yeah, she better have her bag packed! She—” Her face drops. “Oh my God, I’m sooooo sorry. My mom organizes this trip to Cabo every year for people who live in the Manor and have kids in Drama Club . . . but you guys don’t live in the Manor, do you?”

“Sure don’t!”

Melville Manor is not as rich as it sounds, but Dawn would call it comfortable, which is her euphemism for “richer than us.” Almost all the popular girls at school live there, two minutes apart, and throw house parties every weekend. Every year since 2012, when Megan Mullen died in a car accident biking home from one of those parties, local cops have staged a graphic bike-car accident on the football field for us all to internalize. Last year, Natalia Zacoum lay on the five-yard line in front of a Ford Taurus, half-on and half-off a Schwinn, smeared with fake blood. All the popular girls cried. Jessicarose Fallon passed out. It was hilarious.

“Sorry, ugh, I’m
sooooo
awkward,” she says, leaning casually against Gideon’s shoulder as if she is too top-heavy to support herself on her own, and asks him, “Are you going to the Halloween dance?”

He shrugs.

“I was on the decorations committee. So much drama, I can’t even.” (From overhearing snippets of conversation since
freshman year, it seems that Ashley has a chronic condition of not being able to even.)

He glances down at her, then looks away and rolls his eyes in sort of a fond way, with an enigmatic little laugh. She links her arm through his and starts pulling him away from me like a determined little tugboat wearing Tory Burch flats. He turns back, once, and points at me.

“Hey. Don’t forget. Sam Kieth.”

“I wo—”

“You’re such a dork,” Ashley tells him sweetly, stepping on my words.

“
You’re
a dork,” he teases her back, their flirting irritatingly effortless. They start walking away, linking up with a bunch of other popular kids, Gideon looking irritatingly at home with them.

But then he turns around and looks back at me one more time.