Sealed with a Diss (29 page)

Back to my skinnyness.

Karess recommended protein bars and energy drinks to keep the baby weight off, and ready for this: Five months pregnant and I’ve already lost 11 pounds. Kan you believe?

Once I “show” we’ll Greyhound it to L.A. and open a gym called Kut. It will kost a million dollars to join so we kan get rich in one day. Karess wants to name the kids Karb, Kalorie, and Kardio. Luv it. Luv him. Luv the kreativity.

School is for unpregnant losers. Like what’s the point of this journal assignment if I’m going to open a gym? Also my hand is shaking kuz I’ve had seven energy drinks on an empty stomach. Well, empty of food, not triplets. Point is it’s hard to write.

Klass is over! Next stop, kemistree.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

(Midnight)

I left my journal on the kitchen table for six whole hours. Mom made two attempts to bust the lock, first at 4:27 PM and again at 7:19 PM, but she couldn’t guess my combo (A.D.’s b-day). Even if she did, and then managed to hide the clues, I’d know. That fake entry about Karess would shock her blind. She’d circle the living room like a mad cow, slamming into bookcases, knocking over newspaper stacks, tripping on lamp cords. Believe me, I’d know.

Thanks to this sturdy locking mechanism, I can be free. Free to discover the real Lily Bader-Huffman. Not the A+ student, with the male best friend, who has been homeschooled for eight years. The one who is forming beneath her. Growing like a shadow. Faceless and distorted; elongating and reaching; determined to make her secret dream come true. Determined to be normal and popular and kissed by—

Uh-oh… footsteps.

September 4th

The English assignment given by Ms. Silver on September 4, 2012, @ 1:47 PM is as follows: Each student must record his or her innermost thoughts and feelings during freshman year at Noble High. The goal is to have a safe place to connect with ourselves. The challenge will be finding our voices and the courage to embrace them. These journals will not be graded or read. Ms. Silver will inspect them at the end of the year to make sure we filled all 250 pages. That is it. We will also have to write an essay about self-discovery and what we learned. But we are not supposed to focus on that now.

At 1:49 PM I inquired as to whether we would benefit by filling additional journals. To which she responded, “Not in the form of grades.” To which I asked, “Will our GPAs benefit?” To which she replied, “No. Your soul will.” To which I thought,
Forget it, then
.

Thusly, my strategy moving forward is to pen one journal’s worth of “innermost thoughts and feelings” while focusing primarily on reward-based endeavors. I will, however, transcribe all feelings and thoughts associated with said endeavors here. Since that’s the whole point of this exercise.
¹

I will commence with a brief character profile.

My name is Vanessa Charlot
²
Riley. I am fourteen. My hair is light brown and as curly as an old-fashioned telephone cord.
³
I have green eyes and caramel-colored skin. My mother hails from Haiti, my father Queens. I’m told I look like a much, much, much younger Vanessa Williams.
⁴
Better than Venus Williams. Ha.

As columnist Gina Simmons from the
Noble High Times
put it, “Exotic and striking, even Vanessa’s features overachieve.” My middle school principal signed my yearbook with, “Beauty and Brains, you are proof that girls can have both.”

I prefer using quotes to characterize myself for three reasons:

My favorite hobby is winning.
⁵
The endorphins feed my heart and carbonate my blood. It’s a euphoric rush, but it ends as soon as I get my prize. The only way to get it back is to win again. I compare it to the ever-stale Bazooka bubble gum—tough work for a moment of sweetness. But, oh, how sweet that moment is. Hence, the reason I’m always chasing that next piece.

Well, it’s half the reason.

Veritas
⁶
? It goes deeper than endorphins and carbonated blood. I’m just not sure how to explain it, since “it” is more of a feeling than an actual thing.

Actually, it’s fragments of a feeling. Fleeting fragments like scattered dandelion fluff. Fuzzy bits drift by but I’ve never tried to grab them or piece them into thoughts. Maybe because thinking them in full would make them real. And I don’t want them to be real because they have to do with my parents.
⁷

But Ms. Silver asked for innermost so I’m going to connect the fuzzy bits and tell you what I try not to think about. Ready?

It’s my parents. How much they fight. And why that affects my grades and wardrobe.

This morning began with a screaming match about my older brother, A.J.
⁸
Then it became about Dad and how he’d rather dissect computers than listen to stories about Mom’s evil boss at the hotel. Which transitioned into the things Mom flushes down the toilet. Nothing says “Good luck on your first day of high school” like an argument about clogged pipes.

I’m never involved in these squabbles but I am allergic to conflict, so I suffer. Veritas? Fighting sounds make me itchy. I have red marks all over my arms and legs to prove it. Like I was jumped by the Real Housewives of New Jersey on Acrylic Day.

Peers assume I’m modest because I wear long sleeves to keep from scratching. Modesty on a girl with features that “overachieve” does make her more likable, so it’s not all bad. But it’s not all good, either. Obvious frump factor aside, running track in sweats leads to heatstroke. In 98 percent humidity, hallucinations. But it’s worth it. First place means my parents will stay together another day. So I cover up and run like a nose in flu season.

You see, every time I get an A, or win something, or am elected, crowned, honored, published, or profiled, we celebrate at Benihana.
⁹
A.J. and I can order anything we want. Wear whatever we want. We’re even allowed to get double desserts. The only thing we can’t do at Beni’s is fight. It’s our family rule. And it sticks like chewed Bazooka.

In summation: Overachieving = Benihana = Peace = No divorce.

Simple.

Sept. 4.

One more thing.

A FemFresh case with a lock is not gonna happen.

I’d rather hide my journal in dirty boxer shorts.

Safer that way.

Less embarrassing too.

—J

¹
That was a sentence fragment. I will leave it because Ms. Silver told us to ignore grammar. Please don’t penalize me.

²
Pronounced Shar-low. It’s my mother’s maiden name. It’s Creole, based largely on 18th-to-21st-century French.

³
Simile.

⁴
Circa 1983, when she won Miss America (except my hair is shoulder-length, clavicle-length when wet or flat-ironed).

⁵
I currently have 159 awards. (Complete list available upon request.) I have served as student council president for three consecutive years. I was captain of the eighth-grade track-and-field team. I have been a Girl Scout for seven years. I have never received a grade lower than A.

⁶
Latin for “truth.”

⁷
I just took a pause. I’m starting to fatigue from the surge of heavy emotions gathering in my hands.

⁸
A.J. failed eleventh grade and has to repeat it this year. He’s always getting suspended and he’s really disrespectful to Mom and Dad. The only things he cares about are cars. So they never let him drive one.

⁹
Best tempura! The same rule applies to A.J., only he’s never won anything. So it’s all on me.

¹⁰
Inspirational quotes are my caffeine. Same with caramel lattes from Starbucks.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Welcome

Dedication

Octavian Country Day School: "The Room"

Westchester, NY: Slice of Heaven Pizza Shop

Westchester, NY: Slice of Heaven Pizza Shop

The Block Estate: Front Foyer

Octavian Country Day School: The Bomb Shelter

Octavian Country Day School: The Café

The Block Estate: Driveway

The Block Estate: Spa

The Abeley House: Layne’s Bedroom

Octavian Country Day School: The Bomb Shelter

The Block Estate: Guesthouse

Octavian Country Day School: The Halls

Briarwood Academy: Wave Pool Dedication Ceremony

Octavian Country Day School: Massie’s Oak

Octavian Country Day School: The Bomb Shelter

Briarwood Academy: Parking Lot

Westchester, NY: The Hamilton Home

Westchester, NY: The Hamilton Home

The Block Estate: The Guesthouse

Octavian Country Day School: The Auditorium

Quiz

About the Author

A Sneak Peek of
Bratfest at Tiffany’s

A Sneak Peek of
Pretenders

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Alloy Entertainment

Excerpt from
Bratfest at Tiffany’s
copyright © 2008 by Alloy Entertainment

Excerpt from
Pretenders
copyright © 2013 by Lisi Harrison

Cover design by Andrea C. Uva and Sarah Kearney

Cover photo by Roger Moenks

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

“Too Little Too Late” by Joshua Alexander Berman, Ruth-Anne Cunningham, William E. Steinberg (Jerk Awake, Jetanon Music, Shapiro Bernstein & Co., Inc.). All rights reserved.

“Strut” by James Houston Scoggin (Walt Disney Music Company). All rights reserved.

Produced by Alloy Entertainment

151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 100011

First ebook edition: August 2008

ISBN 978-0-316-04171-3