The Aristobrats (14 page)

Fitz Orion once told me ‘I'm going to make a difference in the universe,'” Hotchkiss announced at the podium. “He was just a student at Wallingford Academy at the time.” The Terminator's demonic buildup gave Parker a horrible, sinking feeling. “And Fitz Orion
did
make a difference in the universe after all.”

Ikea turned around. Her father was still sitting there in the back.

“What is she talking about, Parker?” Ikea whispered, squirming.

“I can't tell,” Parker said. “Something about the solar system, maybe?”

The soft music began on her command. Parker suddenly couldn't breathe. She felt like she was under water.

“And speaking of
different
…” Hotchkiss looked directly at Parker and raised her Genius Pen to her shiny black tablet.

The world is going to end. Right here, right now,
Parker thought. With the touch of her stylus, the Terminator was finally going to annihilate all mankind. Or maybe it was just the Lylas who were going to be destroyed.

Hotchkiss pressed the pen lightly and the Super-Screen illuminated with the
Wallingford Academy Today
logo. Parker began to shake so hard she had to hold onto her armrests to keep from falling off her chair.

Ikea began to shake. Kiki's head dropped like a deadweight into her lap. Plum curled in her seat like one of those dolls that turns into a backpack.

Parker felt like the floor fell out from beneath her.

***

The show's opening song—Liam Davies's latest hit—blasted out through the finely tuned acoustics of the elegant Freeman Auditorium. It was the loudest thing anyone had ever heard at the school. Years ago a sudden explosion of sound like that would have sent hundreds of Wallys and teachers running for the old bomb shelter. Even Parker had to put her fingers in her ears as the bone-splitting grind ricocheted around the great rotunda, nearly shattering the grand chandelier.

Those who had not already passed out (like Mrs. Rouse, onto her piano keys) or become coma-toast (like Allegra Oliphant and a half dozen other Einsteins) or popped out a Hollywood Hair Bumpit (like Tinsley Reardon, onto Courtney Wallace's lap), were thrashed by flashes of silver, swirls of light and fog, and caboodles of Plum's DayGlo universe.

The set was downright sedate in real life compared to the way it came off on the stadium-sized Super-Screen. And James's filming—the “feeling of movement without the whole hand-held trap” and the “compression effect without all the old school distortion”—made the studio feel like a glimpse from a spaceship rather than what it was: a dark spare room in the basement of the school, a couple of cans of bright “door-hinge,” some junkyard furniture and Plum's mother's spinning Pilates ball covered in mirror tiles. There weren't enough yellow slips in Death Breath's entire collection to even begin listing all the rules that'd been broken.

Parker wasn't sure if she'd ever start breathing again. She took her fingers out of her ears, opened her eyes and stared up at the screen.

“
Hello
, and welcome to
Wallingford Academy Today
! I'm your host, Parker Bell, and we're streaming to you from the studio here in the bowels of our dorky school, Wallingford Academy…”

Even before Parker finished delivering her opening line, the entire audience broke out in laughter. Parker cringed. The voices were unmistakable: Kirby, Courtney, Cosima, Tinsley, Laurel, Natalie, even Tribb. All laughing at her. She could even hear Barn Yard's cackling behind her.

There was nothing worse, Parker realized—no terrible disease, no dissected cow eyeball guts—
nothing
more gruesome and paralyzing than the feeling of the whole world laughing at you. Parker's insides felt like they had just melted onto the floor never to be gathered up again.

The footage cut away from Parker's public humiliation to the video clip of Graham Henry belching the Alma Mater beside the portrait of Miss Thistle in the foyer of the school. Only this
was
supposed to be funny—but not a single person in the room was laughing. (Except Graham Henry himself, of course.) In fact, the Freeman Auditorium was so painfully silent, it felt like the whole school had turned into one giant ice cube. Everyone's faces were stuck in a single position, like the entire room was playing a giant game of Freeze Tag.

Allegra Oliphant smirked from her spot down the row.

“Mind your own beachwax, Allegra!” Kiki snapped.

Parker had almost forgotten that Ikea's sharp fingernails were digging into her arm. She was glad her body was completely numb or else the ten tiny vice grips would have sent her screaming.

Please let the computer crash,
Parker prayed.
Please let the electricity shut down in the whole school. Please let a random train come crashing through the stage. Please let an alien spaceship abduct me right now…
She glanced over at Ikea, whose hands were clasped in silent prayer, as well.

But the webcast just kept rolling.

Kiki had decided that she simply couldn't do the lunch menu
and
shop for dresses for Fall Sosh—so she just shopped for dresses (quel surprise). She did, however, do it in front of the camera, so they just edited her bit in.

“We're here in the Langdon's designer frock salon picking out something
fabu
for Fall Sosh, the first truly major event of the season!”

Kiki sashayed through the fancy boutique. Kenneth came along while Kiki shopped because Kenneth always came along for things like this: haircuts, mani-pedis, Fake-n-Bakes.
Somebody
had to sprawl out on a grand divan (even when the cameras
weren't
rolling) and read magazines aloud. That somebody was Kenneth.

“Now lace is evil. It truly is. You
think
it's going to be smashing, but really it's a horrendous material. It makes everyone look like a stuffed sausage. So this is why we won't even be
looking
at lace.”

There were uncomfortable murmurs coming from the back of the eighth grade section. Parker assumed from the girls who were planning to wear lace. The audience's game of freeze tag continued. On screen, Keeks & Kenneth gabbed about dresses and shoes, gossiped about celebrities, and played “Who Wore It Better?” with the webcast audience. Kenneth showed the camera the pages of his magazine inviting everyone to submit their opinions online.

“Do you think I look fat?” Kiki asked Parker. “That side's my fat side I think.”

“Who cares what you look like, Kiki? Our lives are over!” Parker hissed, unable to contain her hairy nip. “Who cares?!”

“You don't have to be such an insultosaurus, Park. What's the matter with you anyway?” Kiki slumped down into her seat. “And, I was just testing you, F-Y-I. The
other
side's my fat side!”

Ikea's hand was all clammy on Parker's.

“I can't believe this, Parker,” Ikea said softly.

“I'm so sorry, Ike,” Parker said. “I really didn't think she would show it.” Together, in the giant ice cube that was the Freeman Auditorium, they continued to watch.

James had the idea of filming Ikea from just slightly below a normal level. It made her seem even larger than she would have on the Super-Screen. Her Afro alone looked as big as the moon. No one had ever seen Ikea like this before. There was a collective OMGasp in the auditorium.

“A friend of mine told me that everyone in this school knows me already, so I guess I don't have to introduce myself. But the
are
a few other people I'd like you to meet…”

Ikea (the one shivering in her seat, not the one stomping a suede boot on the screen) closed her eyes. Her sweater sleeves were pulled out away from her arms and twisted limply around her like she was in a straightjacket.

Parker didn't dare turn around and look at Ikea's father.

“For those of you who have
no clue
who these people are—and that's
most
of you—I'd like to introduce them. Because, uh,
hello
, they go to school with you! And, if the administration is listening (you know who you are), there
should be
thirty-nine point six more of them here.
At least.
So—if you know me, you should know them too: The few, the proud, the shockingly outnumbered: The fourteen underappreciated
students of color
at Wallingford Academy!”

The petrified, fidgety silence in the room was suddenly broken by Wallys' screams and whistles. Fourteen Wallys to be exact. The under-appreciated fourteen that were each about to have their moment of Super-Screen glory: Kiki had done their outfits, Plum had done makeup, Kenneth hair, and Parker had coordinated the complex location scouting and studio schedule that allowed for each of them to have their moment in front of James's camera at a location of his or her own choosing. Even with Advanced Geometry, it was one of the most complicated equations Parker had ever solved.

“Divya Venkataraghavan!”

McDweebs had cut away from the shot of Ikea standing in the studio. Divya marched into the middle of the screen, did a Top Model turn, snapped in a
Z
like Kenneth had shown her, and smiled proudly, her silver braces gleaming in the light. She wore a formal
salwar kameez
embroidered with gold, and a traditional studded nose ring with a long chain attached. James had filmed her in the ornate foyer of her parent's home.

There were hushed whispers around the room.
Who was that? Did she go to this school? Do you know her? Do you?

Divya was easily the most exotic and glamorous Wally nobody had ever seen.

“Brooks Jenkins the Third!”

Brooks wanted to be filmed in front of his father's Lamborghini Countach—a car, Brooks had boasted to Parker, he'd inherit when his father croaked.

“Ashanti Wiseman!”

Ikea introduced them all one by one.

“Lily Del Milagro Maldonado! Yu Chen! Diana Taylor!”

The once-silent audience worked into a frenzy as the fourteen students of color took their moment of glory. They chanted Ikea's name over and over again: “
I-kay-ya! I-kay-ya! I-kay-ya!”

But the cheers only made the real Ikea squirm in her chair. Parker put her arm around her friend and turned around quickly to see what Mr. Bentley was doing. His seat was empty.

“He's gone,” Parker told her gently. “You don't have to worry about him anymore.”

“He's gone?” Ikea turned around. “My dad walked out?” She was outraged. The roar of the crowd nearly drowned her out. “He walked out on me?”

“I don't know that he walked out really…” Parker tried to sound sure.

“He did,” Ikea murmured. “I'm such a total idiot!”

“You're not an idiot, Ikea.” Plum reached out but Ikea yanked her hand away.

“You're the smartest girl I know,” Kiki tried to console her.

Ikea held down her puffy ponytails and ran out of the auditorium crying.

Sometimes Parker could feel bad just
because
—like when something bad happens but deep down in your heart you know it's not that big of a deal. This wasn't
that
kind of “feel bad” for Parker—this was the kind that deep down in your heart made you feel terrible. Like you just broke something delicate that could never be fixed, not even with Crazy Glue. She sat paralyzed in her seat. She should have known better—she started out the year wanting to be a shining example for everyone and now she'd done the worst thing a person could do.

She'd let down her friends.

“This is all your fault, Parker,” Kiki declared. “You said Hotchkiss would never show it.”

Parker saw her face on the Super-Screen again. She braced herself for the end.

“This is Parker Bell signing off. Until next time—
Stay pretty,
Wallingford!!”

Parker didn't dare sneak a look back at Tribb as she ran out. She couldn't look at anyone.

Ikea wasn't by the old phone booths. She wasn't in any of the stalls in La Cachette. She wasn't in the studio or Tea & Wardrobe. Parker even used the Spy Feed to try and find her. Ikea wasn't anywhere in the school.

Kiki wasn't speaking to Parker, and Plum just decided she didn't want to get in the middle of the whole thing so she wasn't talking to anyone.

In other words, the Lylas no longer existed.

***

“Hey.” Tribb swaggered up to Parker's locker at the end of the day. She didn't do the by-her-locker pose or try and think of something clever. She just looked up.

“Hey,” she replied.

“That was sure a real…” Tribb tried to think of the right word, “…
webcast
.”

“And I totally forgot about the bootleg recording,” she said. “I'm sorry I…”

“Everybody's talking about the show,” he interrupted. “I heard you guys already have fans everywhere.”

“I bet.” Parker already knew about their
fans.
She grabbed her French book from the shelf in her locker and shut the door.

“Oh, hey. I just remembered…” Tribb thought of one more thing in that way someone thinks of one-more-thing when that's really what they wanted to talk about in the first place. “I didn't want you to think that
you
…and
I
…like that whole Fall Sosh thing.
Us
and everything,” Tribb said with a funny look on his face.

Parker wasn't sure what Tribb was getting at but she could pretty much guess.

“N
ooooo
.” Parker faux-laughed at the mere thought. “Me and you?”
Pa-lease!
“That whole azul dress with the neckline thing? Just JKing,” she said convincingly. “Totally,” she added. “Fall Sosh! Not
at all
.”

“Because I'm just, you know,” he said, “doing my
thang
. Right?” That funny look still clung to Tribb's face like a popped bubble of Bazooka.

“Me too!” Parker agreed wholeheartedly. “My own
thang
.”

The funny thing was, she should have felt terrible. But there was just so much
terrible
already hanging off of her, another backpack full of it didn't seem to make much of a difference. The weirdest part? The thing she thought about most was not getting the gardenia wrist corsage. She'd wanted the smell of it to swirl around her all that evening. She wanted to go to bed that night with the flower next to her on her pillow. A gardenia corsage, she thought, meant someone really great kind of loved her. Or
might
love her. Or might consider loving her someday.

“That's great.” Tribb smiled. “Because I always want to be honest with you, Parker. I mean, we're friends, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Absolutely.”

“Sweet.” Tribb nodded as he popped his collar and headed for the vestibule.

Parker looked up, halfway hoping that Tribb might turn around. That he might someday feel the same way about her that she did about him.

She didn't cry about it until she got into the bathroom.

***

Parker went to Wallingford Towne Centre and tried on three different colors of Lipglass at World of Beauty but she couldn't tell if any of them looked good on her.

Ikea would have known, she thought. Kiki too. And Plum.

She bagsied the comfy couch at La Coppa Coffee and tried to enjoy her half-caf venti mocha macchiato, but she couldn't. All of the fun of a mocha mach was drinking it with her friends. (She didn't even like coffee when she was by herself.) She tossed her full cup in the garbage and wandered over to the Orion store and tried out a few of the new gadgets. Fitz Orion (or actually
the holographic
likeness
of Fitz Orion) was in the center of the store showing one of his newest creations, the Orion holoPod, a holographic music video player.

Customers were standing around the ghost-like image of Fitz, grabbing at the vision again and again like they might scoop up a piece of him and stuff it in their pockets. But they were all gathering up nothing—reaching out again and again for something that didn't exist.

Why do people do that?
Parker wondered. Why do they keep thinking something will be there when it's not and never will be? Why do they keep reaching with their fingers as if this time might be different—as if this time something real might appear right there in their hand?

But Parker knew why. She knew that when you wanted something
so badly
you held out this endless bucket of hope. You believed in magic. You believed in wishes. You kept reaching out again and again, believing that someday you might open your palm and find something real in there.