Winning (3 page)

“Need a lift?”

It's the New Girl. Erin. My ears burn with embarrassment. Did she hear the way Lexi just blew me off? And if there had to be a witness, why did it have to be
her
?

“No thanks,” I say. “But I appreciate the offer, umm . . . Ellen?”

“It's Erin, actually.” She smiles as she says this, and there's something about the expression on her face that catches me off guard. Then I realize: her smile is genuine.

It makes me uncomfortable.

Erin pushes a lock of hair behind her right ear and I watch as her slender fingers trail across her jawline to complete the same action on the other side of her face. “You're Sam, right?”

I nod, wondering how she already knows that. Then I blurt out, “Do you always offer rides to strangers?”

She laughs. “Not especially. But you're hardly a
stranger
.”

Our eyes meet, and my breath catches in my throat. Is it possible that she's . . . ?

“We're classmates,” she finishes. “And to be honest, my offer isn't entirely altruistic. I figured I could pick your brain about the
Streetcar
paper on the way to your house.”

Of course. Maybe that smile wasn't so genuine after all.

Normal breathing resumes, and I assess the situation. Cozying up to Erin
could
piss Lexi off even more. Then again, maybe she'd approve of me gathering some inside intel. Better yet, taking Erin up on her offer could accomplish both.

“Okay,” I say. “If it's not too much trouble.”

“Not at all.”

We walk across the lot to Erin's car, a bright white MINI Cooper with a convertible top. It's adorable, and totally suits my new skort-wearing friend. She hits the clicker to unlock the car, but opens the passenger-side door for me anyway. Who
does
that?

I give Erin my address, and she types it into her iPhone. “Might as well give me your number, too,” she says, so I do. “You want mine?”

“Okay.”

She puts her hand out, and for a second I wonder if she's offering it to me to hold. But before I do something stupid, it registers that she wants me to hand over my cell.

Her thumbs are the fastest I've ever seen, and I'm mesmerized by how quickly they clickety-clack through the info. “Here you go,” she says, handing it back. I look down and see that she's used emojis to bookend her name—a pink heart with yellow stars to the left and a blushing smiley face to the right.

Lexi would gag at this girly display, but me? I swallow hard.

As we drive to my house, Erin chats not about the AP English assignment, but about her former life in California. I learn that she's not from San Diego proper, but Poway, a suburb of the city she describes as “idyllic.” It's the second SAT-prep word I've heard her use in the past ten minutes, but there's nothing forced about the way she speaks. She was cocaptain of the cheer squad at her old high school, as well as a peer counselor, student council representative, and member of Key Club, for which she served as the fund-raising chair.

It's this last piece of information that catches my attention. Of all of Lexi's extracurriculars, she's most territorial over Key Club. She's been president since sophomore year.

Last fall, when Sloane Fahey decided to join, Lexi was livid for weeks. Her anger only intensified when Sloan ran for—and won—secretary, an upset over Lexi's handpicked candidate, Jen Tyner. Secretly, I was impressed. Sloane's one of the only people at Spencer High with big enough balls to challenge Lexi directly. It's even more impressive considering how Lexi fucked up her life sophomore year.

“You guys have Key Club at Spencer, right?” Erin asks. “Your friend—Alex
andria
—she's the president, isn't she?”

I can practically hear the eye roll in how she says Lexi's name. Dangerous. We were right to think we needed to watch out for this girl.

“Yes,” I say. “It's very important to her.”

My subtle warning goes completely over Erin's head. “Oh, me too!” she says. “In fact, I was absolutely heartbroken that I didn't
get to see my last project through to completion.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. I was organizing a Jail and Bail lock-in for this huge project we were working on.”

“Jail and Bail?” I ask. “What's that?”

“You've never done one? Oh, it's the best. You get a bunch of people to volunteer to be ‘arrested'—teachers, coaches, the principal—and then they have to call people to raise their ‘bail' and spring them from the jail cells.

“It's totally a hoot,” she continues, “and it raises beaucoup bucks. We should totally do one at Spencer!”

She's right; it does sound fun. And it probably would raise a lot of money, as long as no one incarcerated Frick (because really, who would pay her bail?). But I know that Lexi wouldn't like the New Girl waltzing in and planning a high-profile fund-raising event, especially not on her first day.

“Anyway,” Erin prattles on, “we've been raising funds for the past two years to buy a van that could be converted into a bookmobile. A bunch of teachers and our school librarian were involved and everything. My Jail and Bail was projected to bring enough not only to get the van, but also to pay for the conversion.”

“Wow,” I croak. “That's . . . huge.” Much bigger than anything Lexi's ever tackled, and way more impressive than the pancake breakfasts and Lost and Found auctions she organizes each year.

“So who would I talk to about bringing a project like that to
Spencer?” Erin asks. “Alex
andria
?”

“I don't know,” I lie. Obviously, nothing gets done without Lexi's approval. “I'm not in Key Club.” I steer clear of it, just like I do the half dozen other organizations that Lexi runs. Publicly, that is. I'm usually involved behind the scenes; the work I do is invisible.

“I guess I could just propose it at a meeting,” Erin says. “The next one's tomorrow, right?”

We pull up to my house. Erin parks the car and cuts the ignition. “I hate to ask, but do you mind if I come in for a sec? I really need to use the little girls' room.”

She is thanking me and getting out the car before I can protest. I show her to the powder room, wondering if I can usher her back out the door before my mom gets wind that I have brought a girl home. I don't need her getting the wrong idea.

But it's too late; Mom has seen us out of the second-floor window. She rushes downstairs to find out who my “new friend” is.

“Just a girl from school,” I tell her in a low voice. “She's a transfer. She needed some help with an English assignment.”

Turns out that Erin is parent catnip. From the minute she introduces herself, my mother is charmed. I know because she keeps beaming at me, as if befriending Erin is some sort of accomplishment on my part. To be fair, Erin probably scored fifty points just by
not
being Lexi.

My mom can't stand her—like, actively hates her—but she tolerates Lexi because, despite the fact that my mother graduated
a quarter of a century ago, she still understands the social hierarchy of a Midwestern high school.

“It's hard enough to be a girl who likes girls,” she told me once. “It's even worse when you live in a Bible-thumping town like Spencer.”

There are just under six thousand people who reside in Spencer's city limits. There are two elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. By the time you hit freshman year there, you pretty much know everyone you're ever going to know. And everybody knows everybody else's business.

So when I accidentally came out in eighth grade, it wasn't long before the whole town was buzzing about it. How does one “accidentally” come out, you ask?

It happened when this girl Meredith Snow wrote me a letter confessing that she had a crush on me. I'd never really thought of Meredith in that way—she was a vanilla sort of girl that always melted into the background—but I knew I liked girls, and Meredith was the first one who'd shown any interest in me.

I carried the letter around in my bra for about a week. I couldn't risk anyone finding it, especially not Lexi or my mother. Neither of them would approve, for different reasons.

It took me forever to figure out if I should write Meredith back, and what I would say if I did. When I finally penned the response, I confessed that I wasn't sure anyone else in our class liked girls except for me. And that even though I didn't know her all that well, I'd like to get to know her better. Would she be interested in going to the movies with me?

I slipped the note into Meredith's locker one morning before homeroom. When I got to third-period English, one of three classes we shared, Meredith was waving my note around and saying loudly, “See? I told you she was a lezzie!”

If it were possible to die of embarrassment, they'd have been holding my funeral at lunch.

Gym class was the worst. Ashley Chamberlain complained to Coach Tate that she wouldn't change into her uniform if I was in the locker room. Why couldn't I go change with the boys?

It was Lexi who stuck up for me. “You're a disgusting homophobe,” she told Ashley. “Not to mention a conceited one. Just because someone likes girls doesn't mean they'll like
you
.”

What made this all the more shocking is that Ashley was—and still is—one of the hottest girls in our entire class. And at the time, Lexi's rank on the popularity food chain was considerably lower. Taking Ashley to task took guts.

But Lexi stood her ground. She'd deliver verbal spankings to anyone who so much as gave me a weird look. She also went to our then-principal, Mr. O'Connor, and asked for permission to start a Gay-Straight Alliance. He denied her request, so she asked my mom for help. By that time, my mother was well aware of my sexual orientation. She strong-armed the entire PTO into backing Lexi, and by spring, our GSA was seven students strong.

And as for Meredith? When she didn't get expelled for her little stunt, Lexi orchestrated a cheating scandal and, with the help of my brother, Wyatt, and his computer-hacking skills, placed
Meredith at the center of it. She ended up in a super-strict Catholic school two towns over. No one even talks to her anymore.

My association with Lexi—and her surprising loyalty to me—has shielded me from the bad behavior of others ever since, and my mother understands this. After all, she didn't become the president of the PTO of every school I've ever gone to by accident. She knows how to work the system better than anyone.

My mother asks if Erin would like to stay for dinner, but before she can accept the invitation I interject, “She can't. We have a huge assignment due in English tomorrow.”

“Not for me,” Erin says. “Mr. Banerjee gave me until Monday, since I'm new. But I can see you're stressing over the essay, so I'm going to go. Rain check?”

“Of course,” my mom says. “Any time.”

As Erin's MINI Cooper rounds the corner, I text Lexi:
Got scoop on NG. Call if interested.

That should be enough to pique her curiosity. Once I fill Lexi in on Erin's background, and let her know that I have an “in” with the New Girl, she'll forgive me for whatever I did this afternoon to piss her off.

It doesn't occur to me until much later, when I'm fully immersed in writing not one but two versions of the AP English assignment, that Erin didn't ask me a single question about
A Streetcar Named Desire
after all.

Between Matt's little stunt and an argument with that new incompetent ass of a pharmacist—the one who tried to tell
me
I couldn't fill my mother's Xanax prescription for another six days—I don't make it back to my house until nearly 4:15. I'd made sure to text Natalie from the pharmacy, to let her know I was held up running
her
errand, but she never responded.

She hardly ever responds. I'm not sure why I still try.

As I round the corner onto our street I see a gunmetal-gray Jaguar squealing away from the curb in front of my house. There's only one person that could belong to: my uncle Douglas. I feel a fleeting disappointment that he didn't stick around long enough to say hi, and make a mental note to ask Natalie about his visit.

But I forget all that as I enter the house, which is filled with an acrid smell of chain-smoked Virginia Slims. It's no secret that Natalie likes a smoke every now and then, despite the fact that she warns me frequently about the dangers of cigarettes (“They'll age you quicker than having a child,” she's said on more than
one occasion). But she hates—absolutely abhors—the smell. In fact, I can't remember the last time I caught her smoking inside.

So that's the first thing I notice. The second? Our house is
dark
. The brown velvet curtains are drawn and every light is off. I wonder if it's been like this all day.

“Natalie?” I call out. “Where are you?”

No answer.

I take a deep breath and almost choke on the smoky stench. The smell is so strong, she has to be on the first floor. I snake my way through the living room, past the formal dining room, and into the kitchen.

Natalie sits at the small round table where I do my homework (alone) and eat most of my meals (also alone). She's staring out a window she hasn't bothered to crack. The saucer of a coffee cup serves as a makeshift ashtray. It overflows with stark white butts ringed by black cherry lipstick.

“You're late,” she says out of habit, not because she cares. She's not even bothering to look at me.

“I sent you a text,” I say. “There was a . . . problem. But I fixed it.” I place the bag of Xanax on the table and push it toward her like a sacrificial offering.

Next to the mock ashtray is a tumbler with just a splash of bourbon left in the bottom. Cigarette dangling from her mouth, Natalie reaches for the nearly empty bottle of Blanton's and refills her glass. There's only about two fingers' worth left, but if Natalie's bleary eyes and sloppy movements are any indication, she's already three sheets to the wind.

“Do I have time to get changed before my lesson?” I ask her.

She ignores the question, opting instead to focus on the bouquet of roses I'm still cradling in one arm. “That a prop? For today's
lesson
?” That last word comes out as a bitter hiss, and a cold dread runs down my spine. Whatever's going on with Natalie can't be the result of my lateness alone. The reaction is too disproportionate.

“They're from Matt,” I explain.

“How fancy of him.”

Her tone is so contemptuous that I find myself rising to Matt's defense for the second time this afternoon. “It was actually kind of sweet. He staged this whole thing to ask—”

“Someone should tell that boy that red roses are offensive,” she interrupts. “A real man should know how to buy his woman flowers. Your father, for instance. He used to bring me freesia. And peonies, when they were in season.”

It's been two years since my father died, but the only memories I have of him and flowers are the ones from his funeral.

This reminds me of seeing Doug's Jaguar. I call Doug my uncle but we're not technically related. He was my father's lawyer and best friend, and in the years since my dad's death he's been like a de facto dad to me. Each year at Homecoming, the princesses and queen candidates are escorted onto the field at halftime by their fathers, just before taking part in the traditional Q&A. After my father died, Uncle Doug stepped up and offered me his chic-suited arm.

“Did Douglas stop by?” I ask.

“No.”

“Really? I could've sworn I saw his car.”

“You saw wrong.” Natalie stubs out her cigarette and takes another sloppy sip of bourbon. I almost hope she uses it to wash down a couple of Xannies, because then she'll pass out. Otherwise, she'll wait until the sun has set and then have me drive her to the liquor store so she can restock.

Natalie has become something of a shut-in since my father's untimely passing. At least during the day. She's less reticent about leaving the house at night. Maybe she thinks the darkness makes her invisible.

I look at the clock on our largely dormant stove; it's nearing four thirty. In addition to my date with Natalie, I have a bunch of homework to wrestle through, plus the phone call I promised Matt. And if I don't get to bed at a reasonable hour, I'll wake up with under-eye circles. They won't be as dark as the purple half-moons Natalie sports, but they'll be every bit as ugly.

Time to speed things along. “I was thinking we could work on onstage questions today,” I say. “I'm still sounding a bit Pollyanna-ish. Should I go get the flash cards?”

“Do whatever you want,” Natalie says flatly. “I'm not feeling well tonight.”

“What's wrong?”

“I just told you. I'm not feeling well.”

“Yes, but how?” I prod. “Do you have a fever? An upset stomach?”

“I have a daughter who asks too many questions,” she spits back. “Please, just leave me alone.”

“But, it's
Thursday
,” I protest.

“So what? There'll be another one next week.”

Natalie rips open the package from the pharmacy. She wrestles with the amber-colored plastic bottle but in her current state of inebriation can't seem to work out the childproof cap.

“Here, let me,” I say. I take the bottle from her, open it, and shake a few blue pills into the palm of my hand. “One or two?”

“Three,” she replies without hesitation.

“Three?”

“I haven't had any today. And I haven't slept more than a couple hours at a time in a week.”

I hand over the pills. Natalie takes them with one last gulp of bourbon, slams the glass down, and stands. It takes her a second to find her balance, a problem she tries to mask by smoothing her pencil skirt. How she's maintained such shapely calves in her current state of decay is beyond me.

She walks over to me and lifts my chin with one hand. “Your mouth is naked,” she says. “Very lazy of you.”

I knew I should have taken a few extra minutes to fix what Matt's kiss ruined. You never know when Natalie's going to turn back on. “Sorry,” I mumble.

“I'm going to bed,” she informs me. “Oh, and you may want to rethink your usual Lean Cuisine for dinner. Those things are full of sodium and your face is looking puffy.”

And with that, my once-beautiful pageant queen mother saunters off into the night.