The Aristobrats (7 page)

Parker was standing by the only window in the dark video-edit studio watching Tribb and the rest of the Tigers stretch their hamstrings on the field. It was so sunny outside, so the opposite
of this cramped, stuffy place. Tons of Wallys were already out on the bleachers. Where the Lylas belonged, she thought angrily. Weird James Hunter was walking around the production studio with his sweatshirt zipped up nearly to his chin and the bottom of his uniform shirt hanging out. He had his digital camera in his hands and he was bending down, lurking around corners with his lanky body and snapping photographs of who knows what.
The leg of a chair? The light switch? The gum stuck underneath a desk?
James got extra creeper points for having shaggy hair flopped down over his eyes and flipped up in all directions. It would have been cute if he'd styled it that way on purpose or if he was protesting the mistreatment of hairbrushes or something.

James's fingers moved quickly around the buttons of his camera like they knew exactly where they were going before they got there. For a moment Parker was transfixed by them.

He caught her staring
.

Flustered, Parker shifted her eyes quickly to the clock above him, which, BTdubs, seemed to be ticking extra-slowly.

Kiki licked the tip of her finger and flipped though
Lucky
magazine. Ikea had her nose buried in her Latin book: “…
porto¯, porta¯re, porta¯vı¯, porta¯tum,”
she practiced. Plum was lying in corpse pose on the floor next to Kiki with her pile of yellow slips balanced on top of her nose and her illegal striped undershirt untucked and pulled down past her uniform.

They were all supposed to be working, but what they were doing could officially be described as: Farting Around 101.

“They're saying this American Coquette bra makes you look a whole cup-size bigger.” Kiki held up a page of her magazine to everybody.

Plum brushed the yellow slips off her face and looked at the model in the ad. She squished up her nose and turned her head sideways to get a better look at the image.

“I don't really think she needs to be a cup-size bigger.” Ikea glanced up from her conjugations. “Her cups are already pretty big,” she observed.

“My mom always says that they put these models in ads for age cream who are only, like,
twenty-five
,” Kiki said. “So why would they need age cream if they're not that old…”

“I know,” McDweebs chuckled (as he did in response to pretty much
anything
Kiki said). “That's so funny that they do that…”
Ha ha ha.
“They're always doing that.”

“So…” Kiki continued as if McDweebs hadn't spoken at all (as she did in response to pretty much
anything
McDweebs said), “like why would this girl need to be any bigger?”

Plum looked so deeply into the photograph that she could've fallen in. Then she flopped back down on the floor and crossed her arms in front of her own washboard chest. “What do you do with all that…
flesh?”
she wondered aloud.

Parker peeked out the window to the field again. The Tigers were already done stretching and had moved on to a scrimmage.
The world's out there. And I'm in here.
What's wrong with this picture?

“What are we doing here, you guys?” she finally blurted. She sat back on the windowsill and kicked the wall with the heel of her shoe. “I mean,
hello
. Reality check. Look at us!” Ikea took her nose out of her book. James stopped taking photographs of the ceiling. “We are
so
the last people in the world who should be doing this.”

McDweebs looked disappointed—as if someone had just taken away his box of Raisinets before the movie even started.

“Except
you
, Leonard,” Parker corrected. “You're actually the
perfect
person in the world who should be doing this.”

“We should blow it off and go to the Orion store,” Plum said from the floor. “I really want that new black glitter case for my phone.”

“I could be home scooping up Snicker's poop-bombs,” Kiki suggested, “or yanking out my hair, or having a heart-to-heart convo with Bunny…really
anything
would be more entertaining than
this.
”
Kiki nodded over to McDweebs. “Anything would be less torturous than sitting here watching IckDweebs-May obber-slay all over the omputer-cay.”

For the first time in his life, he didn't smile at her. “I am not slobbering,” McDweebs insisted. “I am carefully removing dust particles from the keyboard with a lint-free cloth, if you don't mind. “
Iki-Kay.”

Kiki scowled. “Whatevs.”

Parker felt like the room had no air in it. She could be out there right now, she thought, watching Tribb, popping cinnamint Tic-Tacs, waiting until he finished playing soccer, until he ran up to her all sweaty-ish and asked her if she had any plans for Fall Sosh. Then she could go home, practice glamorous updos for the event, upload her photos from the Vineyard to FB, think through the details of the outfit to wear to the big game against Fox Chapel, and IM something cute to Tribb after the whole Fall-Sosh-invitation-moment at the field. Her palms began to get clammy.

She
didn't ask
to be a
Wallingford Academy Today
producer. She
didn't ask
to miss every populartunity that there was.

“I hate this room,” Plum said.

“Maybe we should just sort of
forget
to do the webcast,” Kiki suggested.

“Hotchkiss will have a nutter…” Plum said. “Worst case, we'll get detention.”

Parker was going through the alternatives in her head.

“Robert Pattinson got expelled from school when he was twelve,” Kiki announced with a glimmer.

“My grandmother is
so
sending me to Our Lady of Fatima no matter what I do.” Plum held up her stack of slips. “So I really couldn't give a whup what happens.”

Parker peeked outside again. Practice would be over soon. Her heart was pounding away. She had to tell them the truth about her home sitch before it was too late. They would understand why she couldn't do the webcast no matter what happened. She summoned the courage to spit it out. “
I
…
I…
”

“We
have
to do it.”

The other voice came out of nowhere. It was quiet but powerful. Ikea shut her textbook and stood up from her chair.

“We
have
to do it.” Ikea looked around the room. “…
I
have to do it, you guys,” she said. “My dad is president of the board. He'll kill me if I mess this up.” She was breathing fast. Her gray-green eyes could have shot holes right through the walls. “I need this on my record,” she said. “For Yale.”

“But you're not going to Yale for
five
years, Ike,” Kiki reminded her. (Kiki always said what everyone was secretly thinking.)

“I
have to do this, you guys,” Ikea repeated. She was as serious as Parker had ever seen her. “I can't bail.”

Parker closed her eyes. She could feel the pain well up behind her eyelids. All her years had amounted to nothing. Her life was over. She actually felt it floating away like dandelion fluff shaken away from its stem.

If Ikea had to do it, then so did she—so did all of them. It was rule number one. The rule that was never changed, amended, reversed, or modified.
Friends first.

The one rule that would never be broken.

Parker held her left hand up to Ikea's. Plum stood up and so did Kiki. Their four silver rings met in the center.
Neither James nor McDweebs joined them but they stood too, perhaps sensing some sort of ritualistic activity. Parker suppressed a smile. Like it or not, they were all in this together.

“We're in,” Parker bravely announced. The secret would just have to wait.

How to make a nightmare mildly acceptable? Stick together.

Every afternoon, instead of going out to watch Tribb's practice or trying out updos for Fall Sosh or getting an airbrush tan just to boost things back to the way they were naturally, the producers of
Wallingford Academy Today
made their way down the hall, past the lower level of the Hunt Memorial Library, past the nurse's office, past the two old phone booths and the bomb shelter entrance and the row of Super-Screens…to the most comatastic room in the whole school: the
Wallingford Academy Today
studio.

Together they stayed until the nurse went home, until the Super-Screens darkened for the night, until Arthur the janitor was finished buffing the second floor…until life, as they knew it, ceased to exist. Together they stayed when they should have been home tending to their Facebook pages, maintaining their prime position on the populadder. But now that position was up for grabs.

Plum found the cans of beige and off-beige paint behind some computer boxes in the storage closet. She put together the set exactly like they had the year before. And the year before that. She stayed completely within the color palette, which was a major-domo accomplishment for a rebel like Plum. Worse, Parker noted, Plum's overalls and hi-tops were splashed with beige paint. Chunks of white spackling paste streaked through her hair and spotted her perfectly made-up face. (Though she managed to make dirty work look like a fashion trend.)

It took four afternoons for Plum to get it to look exactly like it was in the archive.

Parker had to admit: she was impressed. In the end, the set looked pretty…
smart
. They all agreed. They tried to stay positive.

“‘Perfect Passive Participles—the Key to Understanding Latin Conjugations.'” Ikea ran through a few of her super-smart ideas for segments with the rest of the Lylas.

“Passive Participles…” Kiki considered the baffling concept.

“Sweet,” Plum said with a wave of her brown paintbrush. “Loving the Latin thing, Ike.”

Ikea was the ideal Segments Producer. No one else understood a word of it—which meant Hotchkiss would love it. Not to mention the Yale admissions committee. They were making it happen.
That's
what really mattered.

“Which one do you think, Park?” Kiki had her hand covering the answer on the “Who Wore it Better” page in
Us
magazine. She pushed the pages across the table to Parker. “Eliza or Cameron?” she asked. “And it's so obvy you're definitely not going to get it wrong.”

“Aren't you supposed to be practicing the lunch menu?” Parker asked her.

“I am
not
rapping the lunch menu,” Kiki assured everyone in the whole world. “Like, hello!”

“Macaroni and Cheese, would you please…” McDweebs rapped enthusiastically from behind the Orion 2000. “Apple Cobbler, if you bother—”

“Thank you, Slim Shady.”

“You do
not
have to rap the lunch menu, Keek.” Parker pushed the
Us
back across the table. “But you have to do
something.”

“Fine!” Kiki reluctantly shut her magazine and marched off to mope elsewhere.

As awful as all this was, Parker Bell was still Parker Bell and she was not going to leave behind something embarrassing for everyone to laugh at. Her face was not going to be projected up on the Super-Screen with people in the audience saying, “Who was she? Who remembers?” She was not going to be archived in an Orion kiosk forever as dork bait. Not after seven long years of doing everything right.

So while Parker was not fugly, and her forehead height-to-face-size ratio was not out of normal range (she measured), she took on the worst possible part of the assignment: the host of Snoozeville.

***

“Helloandwelcometo
WallingfordAcademyToday
.”

Parker practiced the welcome from her spot behind the brown teacher's desk and the sea-of-mud soundstage. The smell of Plum's fresh paint made her woozy.

Silently, the show's official cameraman, James, trained the video camera on her. He adjusted his lens with his quick and skillful hands as she sat there. Then he got down on one knee to get a different angle on the next take, then stood on a chair, then back down to his knee. It was like
America's Next Top Model
, minus the cool clothes, the $100,000 CoverGirl contract, and (
duh
viously) the next top model.

Parker felt strangely nervous as James moved around her—more nervous than when she had to recite Lady Macbeth's “Out, damn spot!” soliloquy for the whole Shakespeare class last year. It felt like a million sets of eyes were on her instead of just thirty-two.

James's face was blocked by the camera as he shot the video. All Parker saw were his long limbs and supersonic fingers as he circled around her like the headless horseman. He was also a lot taller than she'd realized.

“HelloandwelcometoTallingfordWacademyToday…” Parker repeated, only this time her heart was beating so fast she flubbed it up. “
Hallingford
…
Callingford
…” She tried again but she felt self-conscious being the center of all this attention—like she was the turkey in the middle of the table on Thanksgiving. Did her forehead look unusually large? Or shiny? Could James see something bad through his camera? Did something go wrong with her show?

“Hello and…
and
…
and…
” she tried again.

James stopped filming. He put the camera down at his side and pushed his free hand deep into his pocket. He looked off to the side like he was giving her privacy while she changed out of her bathing suit (which, as Parker imagined it, would have been a whole lot less embarrassing). She couldn't tell if he was mad at her for messing up the line, if he thought he could say the stupid thing any better, or if he was just waiting to leave. The whole thing made her very, very angry.

“Do you
only
know how to take pictures of the lunch ladies serving up macaroni and cheese?” Parker snapped.

James didn't answer her. His silence drove her bonkies.

Parker stood up from behind the teacher's desk. “Do you know how to use that camera, James, or what?” she demanded.

James looked directly at her. The camera wasn't in between them now but suddenly she was even more self-conscious without it. And James's eyes weren't dark at all, Parker realized. They were bright, arctic blue. They only looked dark because of the thick eyelashes that surrounded them. They were more puzzling than weird. They kicked the breath right out of her.

“I know how to use it,” James replied.

The sudden sound of his voice was startling. It was the first thing he'd said to her since maypole. A rush of nerves came fluttering up from her stomach making her neck flush.

It took Parker a minute to calm down enough to try her line again.

James lifted the camera back up to his shoulder.

“Okay then.” Parker cleared her throat. “Hello…and welcome to
Wallingford Academy Today
.” At long last the words came out flawlessly. From behind the camera, Parker thought she caught the glimmer of a smile crossing James's face.

***

It took more than a week of prep-work, eight afternoons of filming (three entirely devoted to Kiki and her lunch menu), and a week more of McDweebs's editing, for the team to finish the webcast—in all, almost a whole month.

During the process, they consumed three family-sized bags of pretzel crisps from the Convenience Mart, a box of frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts, four cans of Pringles: one sour cream and onion, one ranch-flavored, two original (McDweebs became Pringles's Facebook Friend), and countless packages of Mr. Churros. Kiki said she was committing carbocide as she stuffed another handful of Cap'n Crunch in her food cave. Ikea worried about their collective Carbo Footprint. Parker just wanted it all to be over. She wanted it to be tomorrow already. She wanted Matin to be over.

In what had sadly degenerated into a lonely ritual, Parker stole another glance through the single studio window toward the soccer field. Amazing: the days were already getting shorter, the sun already a little lower in the sky. She smiled when she saw Tribb. He was bouncing a ball up and down on his head and laughing. She imagined herself sitting down there on the bleachers. Her butt would be cold from the metal but it didn't matter—just being near Tribb would keep her warm. He would wave to her when he ran by, maybe give her the secret signal for something only the two of them knew about.

“We're loving the noof, right? She's super-sweet.”

Plum's announcement interrupted Parker's mental moment with some serious annoyment. The words screeched through Parker's mind as clear as if someone had actually said them.
Cricket
was out there on the bleachers with a cold butt—not Parker. She was leaning back on one elbow with a leg dangling off the bleacher. She kept twirling her hair around in her fingers again and again and flipping her head back when she laughed.

Did someone say Obsessive Repulsive Disorder?

Courtney and Tinsley (Parker's fourth and fifth best friends, she had to remind herself) were one bleacher below. They clapped as Tribb took a corner kick. Parker's jaw tightened. Courtney had a suspiciously dark tan considering tennis camp had ended six weeks ago. No doubt she had fake-n-baked it. And Tinsley's hair was looking a little too bumpiterrific.
How many of those things did she have in there?

Parker turned away and caught her reflection on one of the many Orion monitors. Her tan was now gone. Her barely there highlights were
hardly
there. Her new cashmere sweater had spent up all of its precious new
-
time doing things that didn't count for anything. And her Carbo Footprint had become unbelievably large.

A whole month of afternoons completely wasted…and it showed.

Outside, Tinsley brought two fingers to her mouth and whistled. Cricket jumped up and down. Apparently Tribb had scored. Or something. But Parker couldn't hear any of it. Just the irritating noise of James putting away the video camera, the soft rustle of Kiki opening her third Pop Tart of the day, Ikea turning the pages of Jansen's
History of Art
, Plum lacing her hi-tops back on her feet, and the buzz and ping of McDweebs copying the final webisode onto a DVD to slip under Hotchkiss's door.

There was no denying it. She was completely off Tribb's radar.

***

“Balsamic or lemon vinaigrette tonight?”

Ellen Bell stood next to the sink at the center island of the kitchen and ripped open a bag of chopped lettuce, then tossed it in the salad spinner and added water from the sink. She was still wearing her suit and coat and her purse was still flung over her shoulder. In a frenzy, she rushed around the kitchen, pulling things out of the refrigerator and sticking them in the microwave. Parker chopped carrots on the cutting board across from her.

“I don't care,” Parker muttered as she chopped.

“Crumbled bleu cheese?” Ellen wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and finally took off her coat. “Oh my goodness, my bag!”

“Bleu Cheese is fine if that's what you want,” Parker said. She was barely conscious of uttering the words. They seemed to come from a machine inside her. A cold, unfeeling Orion computer.

Ellen stopped what she was doing and stared at Parker. “You hate bleu cheese.”

“Then why did you ask me?” Parker groaned.

“What is the matter with you, Parker?” Ellen demanded with a frown.

Only everything.
Parker felt like her insides were whirling around faster and faster. Soon her head would simply pop off. She tried to calm herself before she said anything stupid.
I am Parker Bell. I am confident,
cool, and on top of things.

“Look,” Ellen began. “I am trying
very hard
to get work that will pay me as much as I was making from Siddie's job so that we can stay here…” She pointed to her purse and coat, now draped across the other end of the kitchen island. She tried to smile, but her lower lip quivered. “And it is not easy, sweetheart, when all you've done for ten years is baby-sit a rock star.” Her voice cracked. Parker really didn't want her mother to start to cry. “And if your life is so miserable that you can't appreciate that…” She composed herself and then some. “Then we really should just move right now,” she said sensibly. “Fox Chapel has a great school system and I'm sure you'd make lots of new friends. And you wouldn't be that far away from your old friends.”

The calm tone of her mother's voice frightened her. She wasn't just
thinking
about moving. She'd gone into planning mode. Parker knew she had to think quickly.

“I'm just stressed about biology,” Parker said with her I'm-just-stressed-about-school face. “Kiki's my lab partner, so you know what that means,” she said casually. “Winkle hates me…and I got a little behind in my reading…” She listed truths. Truth always made lies more believable.

Ellen relaxed a little. She took a bottle of salad dressing out of the refrigerator.

“Everything will work out fine, Mom,” Parker assured her.

“Did you have to dissect the baby shark yet?” Ellen asked with a laugh.

“That's next week's torture.”

“And that's it?” Ellen asked suspiciously. “Everything else is going well?”

“Everything else…” Parker gathered up the slices of carrot and dumped them into the bowl with the lettuce, “is perfect.”