How to Be Popular (6 page)

D
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DAY
MONDAY
,
AUGUST
28, 9
A
.
M
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“Good morning, Crazyt—What happened to
you
?” is what Jason said when I climbed into the backseat of The B this morning.

“Nothing,” I said innocently as I closed the door. We’d moved on from the 1977 compilation mix CD, I realized immediately when the sounds of the Rolling Stones assailed me. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“What happened to your hair?” Jason wanted to know. He actually turned around in his seat, as opposed to just looking at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

“Oh, this?” I pulled on my bangs to make sure they were hanging sexily in front of one eye, the way Christoffe had meant them to. They were. “I just used a flat iron, is all.”

“I think it looks nice,” Becca said indignantly from
the front passenger seat.

“Thank you, Becca,” I said.

Jason was still twisted around staring at me, as Mick Jagger bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t get any satisfaction.

“What kind of SOCKS are those?” Jason demanded.

“Thigh-highs,” I explained patiently.

Although inside, I was wondering if I’d made a mistake. All the teen magazines had insisted sheer thigh-highs were THE must-have for fall.

But, judging from Jason’s face, I might just as well have been wearing clown shoes.

“I think they look nice,” Becca said.

“Is your skirt short enough?” Jason asked me, looking strangely red in the face. Especially since my skirt was strictly mini, not micromini. I wondered if maybe Jason’s mom had made him eat hot oatmeal for breakfast. It always upsets him when she does this, something she tries every year on the first day of school. She puts raisins in it, too. Nothing disconcerts Jason more than raisins—he had an unpleasant experience involving one and his right nostril when he was three.

“That’s the style,” I said, shrugging.

“Since when do
you
care what’s in style?” Jason practically shouted.

“Wow, thanks a lot,” I said, pretending to be offended. “I didn’t mean to try to look nice for the first day of school, or anything.”

“I think she looks great,” Becca said.

But Jason wasn’t falling for it.

“What is this about, Crazytop?” he asked as he put the car in gear. “What’s the plan?”

“There’s no plan,” I insisted. “And you can’t call me Crazytop anymore, since my hair isn’t curly right now.”

“I’ll call you Crazytop anytime I damn well want to,” Jason said crankily. “Now what’s the deal?”

No matter how much I assured him that there was no deal (even though, of course, there very much was one), Jason didn’t believe me.

And when we pulled into the student parking lot at school right behind a certain red convertible, and watched as Lauren Moffat emerged from it, Jason seemed to reach a boiling point.

“She’s wearing those same socks!” he cried—fortunately while we were still inside the car, so Lauren didn’t hear him.

I looked and saw with some relief that the teen magazines had been right…sheer thigh-highs
were
in. At least they were if Lauren Moffat was wearing them.

Only Lauren’s thigh-highs, unlike mine, which were navy blue, were white.

This was a blatant violation of one of The Book’s strictest fashion mandates, which is that white stockings—even sheer ones—are fine only if you’re a nurse, since pale colors have a tendency to make legs look larger than they actually are.

It was true, I saw, as Lauren, her cell phone glued to her ear, hurried across the parking lot. Her normally shapely
legs looked as big as an elephant’s. Well, more or less.

“What is the world coming to?” Jason wanted to know as we dragged ourselves to Bloomville High’s back entrance (our first time using it, since in previous years we’d been dropped off in front of the building by our bus). “When Steph Landry and Lauren Moffat are dressing alike?”

“We’re hardly dressed alike,” I pointed out, pulling on the door handle. “I mean, she’s wearing a micromini, and mine’s just—”

But I didn’t get a chance to finish, since my words were immediately swallowed up by the din that greeted us inside the school. Combination dials spun. Locker doors slammed. Girls who hadn’t seen each other since school ended last summer let out piercing shrieks and hugged one another. Guys high-fived other guys. Teachers stood in the doorways to their classrooms, clutching steaming mugs of coffee and gossiping with other teachers. Vice principal Maura Wampler—or Swampy Wampler, as she was commonly referred to—was standing in front of the administrative offices, fruitlessly yelling, “Get to your homeroom! Get to your homeroom before the late bell! You don’t want a detention your first day, do you, people?”

“Sit by you at the welcome back convocation?” Becca screamed at me above the chaos.

“See you then,” I screamed back.

“I’m not through with you, Crazytop,” Jason assured me as he reached his locker, and I had to keep going in
order to get to mine. “Something’s up with you, and I’m going to find out what it is!”

I couldn’t help laughing at that one. “Good luck,” I called to him, and hurried on without him.

As I got closer to my locker, things seemed to get quieter. Which is actually impossible, because my locker happens to be located at a point in the school where two main hallways intersect. There’s a girls’ bathroom AND a drinking fountain next to my locker, not to mention the doors leading downstairs to the cafeteria. Normally, this is the loudest corner of the school.

But today, for some reason, the hall seemed strangely hushed as I walked down it. And not, as I would have liked to think, because I looked so stunning in my new wardrobe and haircut, that everyone was shocked into silence, like when Drew Barrymore showed up at the ball in her angel outfit in the movie
Ever After
.

Actually, it was probably just as loud as usual. Things just SEEMED like they got quieter.

And that’s because Mark Finley had entered my line of vision.

Mark’s locker is across the hall from mine. He was standing there talking to some of the other guys from the football team as I walked by. In his purple-and-white jersey, he looked tanned and rested, his light brown hair bleached gold in a few places from all the time he’d spent out at the lake this past summer. Even his hazel eyes seemed brighter against the sun-darkened skin of his cheeks.

I, of course, couldn’t take my eyes off him. Well, what girl could?

And with that kind of vision standing in front of me, was it really any wonder that I failed to notice that Lauren Moffat and her fellow Dark Ladies of the Sith, Alyssa Krueger and Bebe Johnson, were standing by the drinking fountain, staring at me?

“What,” Lauren asked, her gaze going from the top of my insouciant, gaminesque head to the round toes of my platform Mary Janes, “are YOU supposed to be?”

Fortunately just last night I read the section of The Book revolving around jealousy, so I knew just what to do.

“Oh, hi, Lauren,” I said, plastering a sunny smile on my face. “Did you have a nice summer?”

Lauren looked incredulously from Alyssa to Bebe, then back at me.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Your summer.” I hoped they couldn’t see how badly my fingers were shaking as I twisted the combination to my locker. “How was it? Good, I hope. Did your mom like the books?”

Lauren’s jaw dropped. I could tell I’d thrown her. See, most of our previous interactions—since the Super Big Gulp incident, anyway—had been like the one we’d had on Saturday night. Lauren says something mean to me, and I respond by saying…nothing.

The fact that this time I was responding—and in a manner that made it clear I refused to let her bait me—had her gears shifting into overdrive.

“I certainly hope so,” I said.

Lauren’s blue-glazed eyelids narrowed.
“What?”
she asked, sounding irritated.

“That your mom enjoyed the books she bought from our store,” I said.

At that moment—thank GOD—the bell rang. I slammed my locker door shut, shouldered my new designer bag, and said, “Well, see you at the convo,” and rushed down the hall…

…right past Mark Finley.

Who, I couldn’t help noticing, had been looking in my direction, either because he’d noticed my interaction with his girlfriend, or—even though I knew this was too much to hope for…still, The Book said optimism is crucial for any successful social venture—he was taking in my sheer thigh-highs.

Either way, our gazes met as I hurried by.

I smiled and said, “Hi, Mark. Hope you had a good summer.”

They were the first words I’d ever spoken to Mark Finley in my life.

And I think they had the desired effect. Because as I breezed past him, I heard him go, “Who was that?” and heard Lauren hiss,
“That was Steph Landry, you retard.”

Oh yeah. I’d pulled a Steph, all right.

And for the first time in my life, I felt GREAT about it.

STILL D
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DAY
MONDAY
,
AUGUST
28, 11
A
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M
.

“This is so lame,” Jason said as he started for our traditional places in the last row of the auditorium, where, last year, it had been my idea to roll soda cans down the entire length of the room during the student government’s speeches. Since the floor is cement, they’d made an extremely satisfying racket.

No one had even suspected us, because we’re such good students. Ms. Wampler yelled at some totally innocent guys in the row in front of us, just because they were horticulture (i.e., not college-bound) students. She’d have given them detention, too, if at the exact right moment I hadn’t let loose one of my Diet Coke cans, causing Swampy’s face to turn bright red as she shrieked, “WHO IS DOING THAT?”

I got a stitch in my side from laughing so hard.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said before Jason could flop into a seat. “Let’s sit closer.”

Enthusiasm is contagious, all right. Becca was like, “Oh my gosh! Is this part of a criminal master plot?”

“Uh,” I said. “Yeah.”

“How’m I going to be able to roll my Coke can down the aisle if we’re up front?” Jason wanted to know.

“You’re not,” I explained, selecting three empty seats just a few rows from the stage.

“Whatever your plan is,” Jason said when he saw how close the seats were to where Ms. Wampler and the other school administrators were standing, “it better be worth it. We’re going to have to, like, pay attention.”

“Exactly,” I said, and took the seat on the aisle.

“I don’t get it,” Jason said, shaking his head. “First the hair, then the socks, now this. Did you suffer a concussion this summer that I didn’t know about?”

“Shhh,” I said, because Ms. Wampler was starting the convocation. Which is what they call it at Bloomville High when we all gather in the auditorium to listen to ex–drug addicts and people who killed their friends in drunk driving accidents talk about their experiences.

While Swampy tried to get everyone to settle down (by saying, “Settle down, people. Now, people. Please settle down,” over and over into the microphone at the podium), I watched as the A-crowd filed in and started filling up the first few rows in front of us. There was Alyssa Krueger, in Juicy Couture jeans and a glittery top, riding into the auditorium on Sean de Marco’s broad
shoulders, laughing hysterically.

There was Bebe Johnson, chattering away in her unnaturally high voice about nothing, as was her custom.

There was Darlene Staggs, surrounded by guys, as usual. One of them seemed to say something she found amusing, since she threw back her head and laughed, her honey-blond hair cascading like a waterfall down the back of her seat. All the other guys watched her truly magnificent chest as she jiggled. I mean, giggled.

And then, just before the bell rang, in came Lauren Moffat, hand in hand with Mark Finley. The two of them weren’t looking at each other—no gazing deeply into each other’s eyes, going, “I love you…no, I love YOU. No, I love YOU.” Instead, they were gazing out across the sea of faces in the seats on either side of the aisle they were walking down, the way a bride and groom might smile and nod at people assembled for their wedding, or a king and queen might nod to their populace.

Which is, in a way, what Lauren and Mark are: the king and queen of our school. No matter how much Jason—who followed my gaze, saw who I was looking at, and made a very rude noise—might not like to admit it.

As soon as Lauren and Mark sat down—front row, since Mark, as senior class president, would be getting up to go to the podium to give us all a back-to-school pep talk, and also rally us to help the senior class raise enough money to send them all to Kings Island in the spring, a Bloomville High senior tradition—and
Principal Greer finally approached the microphone, the chattering hordes fell silent. They shut up because Principal Greer, who golfs, keeps a club in his office with which he often practices swings—without regard, rumor has it, to anyone who might happen to be sitting in his office at the time. There’s a guy who works at the car wash who only has one working eye, and everyone says Dr. Greer is the one who put it out with his 5 iron the day the guy got sent to his office for mouthing off to Swampy Wampler.

Dr. Greer started his welcome speech—“Welcome, students, to another school year at Bloomville High”—and Jason, slumped in the seat next to me, slumped down even farther, putting his Converse high tops on the back of the seat in front of him and causing the person in that seat—Courtney Pierce, class suck-up—to turn around and give him an aggravated look, to which Jason responded with, “What? I’m not touching you,” a line he actually learned from my little brother Pete.

Beside Jason, Becca, clearly bored, took out a purple sparkle pen she’d put on my employee account over at the bookstore ($1.12, seventy-three cents with my thirty-five percent off) and started making little stars on the white part of Jason’s high tops.

And Jason, after throwing a startled look at me (as if to say, “Do you see what your insane friend is doing?”), just sat there and let her keep doing it. Like he was afraid if he moved, she might plunge the pen into his forearm, or something.

After Dr. Greer’s mind-numbingly boring speech about how we should use the coming school year to Realize Our Full Potential came Swampy’s reading of the highlights of the student code of conduct: no cheating, no violence, no harassment of any kind, or you will be expelled and have to go to Culver Military Academy or the alternative high school.

It was hard to see which would be worse. At Culver, you’d be forced to rise at dawn and perform drills. At the alternative high school, you’d be forced to put on performance pieces about your feelings concerning war. It was a lose/lose situation, either way. It was obviously better just to keep from violating the Bloomville High student code of conduct.

Finally, after she had the place alternately looking at the clock and longing for it to be lunchtime, and snoring, Swampy turned the mike over to Mark Finley, who sauntered up to the podium to thunderous applause that caused some people—like Jason, who’d nodded off—to start in their seats.

“Oh, man,” Jason said looking down at his shoes. In addition to the stars, Becca had added tiny unicorns.

“Aren’t they cute?” Becca asked, clearly thrilled by her own artistic prowess.

“Oh, man,” Jason said again, not looking like he found them at all cute.

But I didn’t have time to deal with Jason’s shoe drama. Because Mark had started speaking.

“Hey,” Mark said, his deep voice gruff—but totally
charming—in the microphone, which he’d had to adjust to his own height after the diminutive Ms. Wampler stepped away from it, to amused chuckles from the student body. “So, yeah. Uh. It’s a new school year, and you know what that means…last year’s juniors are seniors now, and—”

Here he was cut off by more applause and cheering as the seniors congratulated themselves for managing to make it through the summer without killing themselves in drunk driving accidents or by diving headfirst into the shallow end of the pool (not to mention not drinking any batches of lemon Joy lemonade).

“Um, yeah,” Mark said when the seniors settled down again, grinning his sheepish little grin. “So, you know what that means. We gotta start saving up for our senior trip this spring. Which means we gotta make some money. Now, I know last year’s senior class made like five thousand dollars doing weekend car washes. And I propose we do the same thing. The Red Lobster out by the mall said we could use their parking lot again, so…whadduya say? You folks up for a car wash?”

More applause, this time accompanied by whistling and shouts of “Go, Fish,” which inevitably led to snickers about childhood card games.

I seriously don’t know how our school got stuck with the Fighting Fish as its mascot. Because as mascots go, fish suck. Apparently it has something to do with the fish weather vane on top of the courthouse…which some people suspect is a crappie, the most commonly found
fish in the lake. So I guess things could be worse. We could be the Fighting Crappies.

Mark looked around the room to see if anybody had anything but “Go, Fish!” to say. I looked around, too.

But the only person who raised his hand was Gordon Wu, the junior class president (elected solely due to having run unopposed, my class being—what’s the nicest way to put this?—slightly apathetic), who stood up and asked, “Excuse me, er, Mark, but I was wondering if there weren’t some other method by which we might raise funds, other than car washes? You see, some of us would prefer to have our Saturdays free for, um, lab work—”

This remark was followed by the hissing it deserved from the crowd and several shouts of “Don’t be such a Steph, Wu!”

I couldn’t believe my good fortune—I mean, that Gordon Wu, of all people, had actually cracked the door open for me to go barging through. Which I did without another second’s hesitation, before Mark could say anything.

“Gordon brings up an interesting point,” I said, standing up in my seat—so suddenly that Jason started and dropped both his feet from the back of the chair in front of him. He didn’t seem aware of the loud thumping sound they made as they hit the cement auditorium floor, either. Instead, he craned his neck up at me and mouthed, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? SIT DOWN!” while Becca, one finger in her mouth (she’s a nail biter),
stared up at me with a horrified expression on her face.

Silence roared through the auditorium as every face in the room turned toward me. I could feel heat rushing up to my cheeks, but I tried to ignore it. This, I knew, was it. My big chance to show my school spirit, after years of pretty much doing what Jason had been doing a second ago—dozing—through every school-related event I was forced to attend, and not showing up at all at the ones I wasn’t.

Well, not anymore.

“We have a lot of very talented individuals in this room,” I went on, glad that no one could see my knees from where I was standing (except Jason. But he wasn’t looking at my knees) since they were shaking so badly. “It seems a shame to waste them. Which is why I was thinking a good way to raise money for the senior class trip this year would be to hold a student talent auction.”

The crowd, which had been stunned into silence up until that point, began to buzz. I saw Lauren Moffat, her eyes alight with glee at what I was doing (making a public spectacle of myself…again), lean forward in her chair to hiss something in Alyssa Krueger’s ear.

“Let me explain,” I said hastily before the buzzing could drown me out. “Students like Gordon, for instance, who are very good with computers, could auction off a few hours of computer programming to a member of the community.”

The murmuring became louder. I could feel the crowd growing restless. Soon, I knew, the “Don’t be such
a Steph”s would begin. I didn’t have them yet. I needed to close the deal.

“Or, you, for instance, Mark,” I said, looking up at the stage and meeting Mark’s calm, hazel-eyed gaze. I wondered vaguely if he knew what an electrifying effect his gaze had on the female population of Bloomville High.

It’s weird what you think about as your life is slipping away before your eyes.

“Being the school’s quarterback, Mark,” I went on, “you could auction off your time to film a local television ad for a community business. People would pay a lot for that kind of endorsement.”

I noticed that, at the table behind the podium at which Mark stood, both Ms. Wampler and Dr. Greer were staring at me. Swampy even went so far as to lean over and say something to Dr. Greer, who, still looking at me, nodded. I wondered if she’d always suspected us for last year’s Tin Can Rolling incident and had finally put two and two together. I tried to ignore them.

“It just seems like we have so many extraordinarily talented people in this school,” I went on.

This was the tricky part. The Book was very explicit about not sounding like a suck-up. Although The Book doesn’t call it sucking up. The Book calls it “currying favor.” Under no circumstances were you to do it.

Still, it was hard, I was discovering, to suck up without
seeming
like you were sucking up.

“It would be a shame not to give them a chance to shine at what they’re naturally good at,” I said, “as
opposed to forcing everyone to work…well, at a car wash.”

Which was when a voice hissed, “What’s YOUR talent, Steph?”

And another answered, “Oh, right. Super Big Gulp!”

I didn’t need to look in their direction to know it was Alyssa and Lauren. I knew those voices plenty well.

“Which is not to say,” I went on, conscious of the snickers from those who’d been seated near enough to hear Alyssa’s question and Lauren’s answer, “that we shouldn’t have a car wash in addition to a talent auction, for the participation of those people whose talents are less marketable than others.”

I wanted to add, “Or whose only talents are the kind you could go to jail for if you accept money for them,” while looking directly at Lauren.

But The Book states very explicitly that if you want LASTING popularity, you aren’t allowed to publicly slight your enemies.

Which makes me wonder if Lauren knows how limited her time at the top of the popularity totem pole might actually turn out to be.

“But,” I went on, “I think we ought to consider a talent auction, as well.”

And then I sat down.

Good thing, too, since my knees had finally given way. I couldn’t have stood for a second longer. I sat there, my heart slamming against my rib cage, and looked at Jason and Becca. They were both staring back at me,
their mouths slightly ajar.

“What,” Jason asked softly, “was THAT about? Since when do you care—”

But I didn’t get to hear what he said after that, since Mark, tapping on the microphone to get attention after everyone had started whispering among themselves, went, “Uh, okay. Thanks, uh, um—”

“Steph Landry!”
Lauren screamed from her seat, where she’d dissolved in a puddle of white-thigh-high-wearing giggles.

“Thanks, Steph,” Mark said. He looked back at Ms. Wampler and Dr. Greer. Both of them, I noticed, were nodding.