A Tale of Two Besties (6 page)

Why does that not surprise me?
I thought but didn't say.

“You know where it would be kind of cool to shoot a film?” Derek mused, scraping some flecks of gray paint off the windowsill with his fingers. He reminded me of a cute prisoner trying to bide time till the end of his sentence.

“Where?” I said.

“Murphy's Ranch,” he said, turning toward me. “Do you know it?”

I did. It's a straight shot from my house if I rode my mountain bike down Sullivan Fire Road. I'd gone once with Rachel, Lily, and Jacques when my sister was really into her “learning our local heritage” phase. A long time ago, a couple of German Nazi sympathizers living in California built the ranch as a self-sustaining bunker. But the couple was seized right after Pearl Harbor, and the land was later blessed by a generation of hippies who left a tipped-over VW bug on the property. It's open to the public now, but you've got to go through these cast-iron gates in the middle of the woods and down these forever-steps that lead to sort of a canyon. There's still a giant house there, and a machine shed, gardens, a massive water tower. The water tower is the best part, it's got this “urban exploring” vibe. It's the kind of place you'd imagine Miss Havisham from
Great Expectations
to live in, if Miss Havisham was really into punk rock graffiti. The place is covered in it, like you can't even see an inch of wall space that hasn't been spray-painted over a billion times.

“Sure. It's near my house,” I said, maybe a little bit too quickly. “I've definitely scouted it for shooting.” A lie. Film crews did shoot a lot of material on the Ranch, but the place actually creeped me out more than it enticed me, and I hadn't been back since that first trip. Whenever I ride my bike past it I hold my breath, the way I do when we drive next to cemeteries.

“Cool. Hey, you could shoot us skating down there,” Derek said, meaning him and Matt, unless one of these girls was secretly carrying around a floral-print helmet and knee guards. “You should come with us. Friday.”

Again, he wasn't asking like it was a question, which I decided to think of as evidence of an attractive, confident attitude, because otherwise it would be highly presumptuous and offensive.

“Unless you already have a hot date or something.”

“Friday? I don't know, I'll have to check my social iCal,” I said, playing it very cool. In my head, I was already rushing out to check his relationship status on Facebook. What if it turned out he was dating one of those crop-top tweens currently giving me the evil eye? I'd heard rumors of some of the stuff that went down at Murphy's after dark—nothing witchy or culty, just a lot of drinking and kids snorting their ADHD-medication, but it wasn't really my scene. Maybe I'd go, if Lily came with me.

“You do that, Carina.” Derek winked. “I'll be seeing you around.” Then, as if on cue, as if he'd planned it, the bell rang, and Derek Wheeler picked up his stuff and walked out of the library without looking back. Not even once. Was this a Lifetime movie starring me?

I immediately and impatiently took out my phone. Lily was going to die when she heard about this.

I didn't expect Pathways to be anything like this. There I was that first morning, actually dreading taking the walk down the Lane, the strip of grass that separated the East wing of the school from the West and where all the students seemed to congregate before, in between, and after classes. Despite what Harper had said the night before, I was wearing my wings—took a picture for Harper on my way to school for Gawkward Fairy luck!—and decided to stop for a pre-class acai bowl with berries at my favorite coffee shop. My mind was a million miles away from my body, and I almost didn't hear the group of girls giggling behind me until one actually bumped into me.

“Oops, my bad.” I turned around to see a girl with overly plucked eyebrows, wearing a leopard print dress, who could have been anywhere between sixteen and thirty years old. “Sorry, but my friends and I were wondering . . . what are YOU supposed to be?” Behind her, a bevy of girls—all sharp features and synthetically woven fibers—tittered.

“I'm just . . . me,” I said, straightening my shoulders and staring Leopard Dress in her overly made-up face. I should be used to people gawking at my style, but without Harper by my side, I felt outnumbered and trapped.

“Yo, fairy girl! Can you grant me a wish?” Another girl shouted at me from behind an increasingly long line of foot-tapping patrons while I stuttered and tried to come up with a witty retort.

Just when I was hoping that a hole would open up in the earth and swallow me up along with all the almond milk and chai flavored lattes in the store, I felt a presence beside me. I was still staring down, so all I could see was a pair of sandals sticking out from a long, flowing hippie skirt.

“Excuse me,” said the skirt, as she maneuvered herself between me and the overplucked bully. “Can you back up your fake vintage Chanel purse just a bit? You're standing in my friend's light.”

Now it was Leopard Print's turn to be speechless. There was a pop of light and my head snapped up in time to see a photographer standing near the muffin display case. Her dark brown hair was in a halo of tight curls that surrounded her face like a lion's mane, and the yellow of her Peter Pan–collared dress and matching heels contrasted perfectly against her caramel skin. She smiled warmly at me.

“I'm going to put first day pictures on my Tumblr, FancyFashionFeminist,” she shouted across the din. “Have you heard of it?”

“Jane is going to be the next Tavi Gevinson!” said the long-skirted girl, waving at the photographer. “You know, from Rookie mag?” She looked back at me and then at Leopard Print, coolly appraising the situation with a cocked eyebrow. “We just saw you in the midst of these knock-offs,” she said to me, as if we were alone in the shop, “and I said to Jane, now
that's
a girl who knows who she is.” She stuck out her hand, her nails chipped with black nail polish. “I'm Nicole,” she said, rolling her eyes like she was being sarcastic. “I know, right? My parents were oh-so conventional when it came to baby names.”

I finally managed to make eye contact with my savior. She had short pink hair, a round baby-face, and her frayed-hem peasant shirt hid an impressively large chest. Despite her Earth Mother look, I didn't think she could be much older than me. A Native-American-print Herschel backpack was slung across her perfectly postured yogi shoulders and when she smiled at me I could see the outline of her Invisaligns. Her ears were studded with gold cuffs, and she wore about a million rings with smoke-colored stones in them. She reminded me of an old pin-up model gone rogue, or a Botticelli girl who'd just discovered Amanda Palmer. “Here, let me get a good look at you, Fairy Girl!” she said.

And that's how I met Nicole, the founding member of NAMASTE.

NAMASTE is a group devoted to individuality and tolerance and body-acceptance and a lot of other things I didn't know you could get extracurricular credit for. Nicole is the group's president, except no one calls her that, or even uses the word “leader,” though she definitely is that, too! Instead, as Jane explained to me, NAMASTE has a “laterally formed hierarchy” that “eschews the meritocratic and patriarchal values of traditional, tier-based democracies.” Or something like that. I'm not sure if I got the words exactly right, but close enough!

Nicole is a junior and a nu-hippie and says she can do my birth chart if I find out what moon sign I was born under. She's got a nose ring and is a vegan and “plus-sized and proud,” according to her, though she really isn't all that big. She's a feminist and refuses to listen to music or see movies with actresses who don't acknowledge that feminism means equal rights for everyone, because that kind of stance just shows that they don't actually even know what feminism
is
.

After buying me a kombucha and properly introducing me to Jane and their friend Drew, Nicole told me that she could tell I was a Pathways student even before I turned around in the coffee shop line.

“Pathways attracts the unconventional and you, lady, are definitely not conventional. You could be our new school trendsetter!” She told me my wings were
subversive
. “They totally undermine our society's preconceptions about feminine fragility.” I'm not sure how true that is, but anyway, it was way better than what most people called them, which was “silly.”

Jane and Drew are also juniors, and Nicole's co-chairs in NAMASTE. Nicole says Drew is a “theater queer,” and actually encourages people to use that term because “theater isn't a bad word!” Drew is very tall and gangly and blond, with a baby face and the gentlest eyes I'd ever seen. He was dressed in a doctor's lab coat, which he said wasn't illegal because he never told anyone he was a doctor and plus the big pockets were great for storing things. Then there's Jane the photographer, who runs a fashion Tumblr that's popular with people even outside of school. I didn't want to tell her that, compared to everyone else my age, I was basically Internet-illiterate, so I pretended to know what she was talking about when she listed names like MandyX and Cheshire Chills and KillQueens as a way of describing her aesthetic. (I think one of those is a website and one is a band and the third might be a brand ambassador for a clothing line, but I don't know which one is which.)

As the four of us crossed the street from the café to the imposing arch that signified the entrance to Pathways, I felt a wave of nervousness. What if everyone wasn't as nice as Nicole and Jane and Drew? We'd arrived early—the school had a notoriously lax attendance system, Jane whispered, meaning that most kids sauntered in at whatever time they felt was fair—and there was some time to kill before our first classes—er,
session
, which is what they called classes here, for some reason. Nicole invited me to join her, Drew, Jane, and a couple other NAMASTE members—a group of seven or so older kids who were busy trying to claim some space on a spread of large, rainbow-dyed Mexican wool blankets to practice their lotus position—as Nicole gave a first-day pep talk about holistic messaging and “everybody integration.”

“Here, you can sit on my serape with me,” Jane giggled, pulling on her hand-knit gold and brown throw.

“Remember,” Nicole was saying, “You shouldn't feel bad about being yourself . . . unless you don't like
you
for the right reasons!” Nicole ended her pep talk with that line, which seemed to be her motto, or some Pathways-specific mantra or something. Then she turned to me and said, “Wow, Lily.” Everybody turned to look, and I could feel my face getting hot. “I can feel your energy from all the way over here. You are
such
a spiritual person. Here. I want you to have this.” She gave me a rose quartz crystal and told me to hold it to my heart whenever I felt I needed to be centered.

“Thank you! I'll keep it right here in my backpack so that way I'll always have it handy.”

Nicole smiled and then turned to Jane and Drew. A look seemed to pass between them, like they were deciding something important through telepathy. I fidgeted, wishing I could text Harper, but knowing that would be rude. Instead, I turned the rose quartz over and over in my hand. I knew this was crazy, but it felt like every time I turned the rough stone over, my stomach did another queasy flip.

“I'm fine, everything is fine, I'm totally safe,” I mumbled to myself as I turned the rock over and over. It's my bad habit: I kind of talk under my breath a lot when I'm feeling anxious. Just stuff I'm thinking about, or mantras to make me feel better, or anything, really.

Nicole turned back to face me, and I blushed realizing that everyone had probably been able to hear my stupid word barf.

Instead, Nicole beamed brightly. “Lily, we'd really like you to hang out with us more. You know, as a regular thing,” she said, Jane and Drew nodding along with her. “I was just telling Drew the other day that NAMASTE could use a fairy godmother!”

“It's true,” Drew said, straightening the lapels of his coat. “And one that can cast spells, to boot!” I didn't know what he was talking about, but I got the sense he was making a little bit of fun at me. Oh man, I'd already blown my chance to meet some actual nice people, who now think I'm the crazy freak who wears wings and talks to herself. ARGH!

“So what do you say?” Nicole interrupted my spiral alert. “Do you think you'd like to come chill with us and learn what NAMASTE is all about?”

I breathed an inward sigh of relief. They weren't planning on ditching me after all!

“That would be great!” I tried not to gush, but I wasn't really one of those people who had much of a filter. “Thank you so much!” I winced as I heard how high-pitched I sounded.

“Thank
you
,” Nicole said magnanimously. “Now let me ask you: do you have different wings for every day of the week? Because that would be cool, if we could coordinate my outfits to your wing colors or something.”

“My wings?” I asked, reaching back to feel at the uneven patch that Harper had sewn on the day before. I'd almost forgotten I was even wearing them. Suddenly I felt self-conscious, and remembered Harper's comment that I didn't even have to bring them to school if I didn't want to. “Oh, I only have one pair. These are more of like a good luck charm. You know, my grandmother gave them to me right before she died, and they are really special but I need to take good care of them, so I was really only planning on wearing them the first day . . .” I heard an audible gasp from Jane, and Drew shook his head sadly.

“Nonsense!” said Nicole, trying to maneuver her arm around me, the wings' nylon straps making it difficult. “Those wings are
so
Namaste and
such
a fashion statement. I mean, that's cool, your story about your grandmother, but like
,
that isn't going to really fit your new vibe as being the ‘fashionista with the wings', so maybe just keep that part to yourself? Because believe me, everybody at Pathways is going to be so obsessed with your look. In fact . . . Jane?”

“On it!” Jane chirped, whipping out a bedazzled phone, seemingly from thin air. Her fingers flew around for about a millisecond before she looked up at Nicole. “Found them!” She grinned proudly and handed it over for us to see. “On Etsy, natch,” she said, running a finger through her hair. “Am I like a fashion algorithm or what?”

I stared at the screen. “Custom order ‘Natural' adult fairy wings, realistic!” claimed the text above a picture of what looked like an exact replica of my grandmother's heirloom appendages. “Free shipping within the US.”

I was speechless. I'd assumed my inherited artifact was my own weird quirk, unshared by anyone else. Now it turned out there was a market for it online?

“Good joke, Jane,” Nicole said after studying the phone and handing it back. “So let's order, like, five pairs to start and then see if anyone else in NAMASTE wants in.” She turned to me. “Look at you, already being such a trendsetter!” I couldn't tell if she was making fun of me or not; “trendsetter” isn't a word anyone's ever used to describe me. Like, ever. But then again, I'd never been in a place like Pathways before, either. I found myself looking around the Lane at my new classmates as they hurried between classes. A girl in a thrift store wedding gown walked past, a parakeet on her shoulder. She waved to a boy who was drawing a fake tattoo of Curious George on his friend's arm, and they both had to jump out of the way when a beautiful dark-skinned girl on a unicycle almost mowed them down. What was this Wonderland hole I had fallen into, where up was down, black was white, and fitting in at school meant wearing giant fake fairy wings every day of the week?

What would Harper say if she were here right now?
I tried to think. I knew she'd think Nicole's hair was really cool—she loves pink and went through a phase where she really wanted to put lilac streaks or maybe just add it on top for an ombre thing with her natural blond. But she might not be as thrilled about the part where pretty soon I'd look like everyone else . . . but because they were copying my style, not the other way around! Would I be less of a Gawkward Fairy if Nicole and Jane and their friends started wearing wings, too?