Pride and Prep School (3 page)

The next day in homeroom I notice that people are passing around phones underneath their desks. They look at a picture posted on Instagram or somewhere, whisper to someone or pass it on it, before each new viewer gasps or guffaws and then looks over at me for a second.

“Can you bel
ieve
she would do this?” I hear.

“It’s too pathetic,” someone else says.

“God. Like that’s going to get you a man,” a female voice derides; then a male voice says, “I don’t know. I’d tap that,” and I hear the sound of palms slapping together in a high five.

When I turn around, everyone looks down at their desk, and some girls smother a giggle. I turn to Michael, Monsieur Oblivious, who looks up from his French book and asks, “You’re going to lab today, right?”

“Yeah. Right,” I assure him, but I’m still scanning for beneath-the-desk activity and trying to figure out what these people are looking at and what it has to do with me. The fact that the obvious answer to the last question is “Cassie” does not make me feel better.

When I get to English class, there’s more chatter than usual and people are giving me weird looks, some like I’ve just emerged from living in the sewers and others like I am wearing a bright red clown nose.

“What is going on?” I hiss to Shondra as Ms. Ehrman starts writing on the board.

She sighs as she opens her copy of
Emma
. “You know that warning from Willow last week? Well … the storm’s hit the shore.” She looks over a few rows to where one boy in a Minutemen basketball jersey is handing his phone to another boy.

“Oh, God,
what
?” I groan.

Shondra swallows and I can tell by the look on her face that she is really unhappy to be the one to bear the bad news. “Apparently your sister Cassie hooked up with Jeremy Wrentham a few days ago and has been sexting him ever since. You know … sending selfies.‘
Lingerie
’ selfies?”

“
What
?” I gasp so loud that everyone stares at me and snickers, and Ms. Ehrman turns from the whiteboard.

“Georgia, are you all right?” she asks.

“I just feel sort of …sick,” I manage.

“Do you need to see the nurse?”

I nod dumbly and grab my things and scurry up the aisle. I can feel everyone’s eyes on me and I know some are laughing quietly.

I walk down the hall to the girls’ room and go right for the sinks to splash some cold water on my face. I look up at the mirror and try to wipe my face as gently as possible with the paper towel that seems to be ninety-five percent un-milled wood pulp and then see it between the mirrors:
Cassie Barrett=SLUT
. I rub furiously at the fat blue letters with my paper towel but someone had the wisdom to use a Sharpie so they don’t budge. They don’t even fade. I grab my bag and march down to the principal’s office and start yelling at the secretary before she gets off the phone.

“I want to report some really disgusting graffiti in the girls’ bathroom in the west wing!”

She fills one of those pink “While You Were Out” phone pads, tells me she will contact the janitor, and then shoos me on my way with a flap of her plump ringed hands.

When I get to lunch, everybody can see that I am so cartoon-style mad I practically have smoke billowing out of my ears. Dave and Gary admit that they heard about the photos a few days ago but didn’t want to say anything.

“God!” I fume as I rip open my hemp lunch bag.

“I saw the photos,” Gary admits.

“And?”

“She is
not
naked,” he assures me and makes no move for my lunch bag for once. I guess he’s afraid he’ll lose a finger.

“Where did you see them?”

“I got an email. Which I immediately deleted!”

I sink into my chair. No way can I eat my leftover vegan potpies; no matter how great they were last night, they are about as appetizing as a bag of cement right now.

“I don’t know who I’m more disgusted with,” I admit. “Cassie for being such a colossal moron, or the idiots who pass along the photos.”

Dave opens his mouth to say something but thinks better of it. Shondra puts a hand on mine and says, “This can’t last forever. You’re getting the graffiti to come down, right? And you know how these things work. In a few days everyone will move on to a new story, a new victim.”

“She’s right,” Dave says.

“Maybe I’m just mad because Willow Harper was right for once,” I sigh. “We should have warned Cassie.”

“There’s a first time for everything, my grandma says,” Gary agrees. And then he steers the conversation to which cookies and cupcakes I’m planning to sell at the Pigs show in a few weeks. I go along with this and try to tune out the lunch crowd because there is nothing I can do for or about my sister right now.

***

All week long, I am grateful for having Shondra and Dave and Gary to keep me relatively sane. And whatever he may think about Cassie and her reputation, Michael doesn’t say anything about her all week, despite her being the focus of most conversations, and I don’t say anything to him about it. If he is about as far out of the loop as Leigh is, I don’t need to bring him in. Friday doesn’t come soon enough and when Shondra calls me Saturday morning I’m ready to go out and forget school and all its traumas.

She announces, “Los is home from school and I want you to meet him.”

“‘Los’? Home from school?”

“Yeah, he goes to Pemberley on scholarship—you know, Michael’s old school—and he’s really chill and funny. You’ll like him. His name’s Carlos but everyone calls him just ‘Los.’ So what do you think? Do you want to meet us at that coffee shop in Park Hill? The Blue Rooster?”

“Yes! Give me an hour, okay?”

I’m on my way upstairs to find Mom or Dad to make sure I can get the car when I hear the unmistakable sound of retching coming from the bathroom I share with my sisters. I knock on the door softly.

“Hey, are you okay?”

There’s no answer, so I try the knob. It gives way and I see Cassie sitting in a ball next to the toilet, holding her stomach.

“Are you okay?” I repeat.

“Obviously,” she snaps.

“Are you sick?” I ask despite the evidence in front of me.

“Yes,” she breathes.

“Really? Can you get up?”

She shakes her head and slumps against the side of the bathtub.

“Cass! What’s going on?” I shut the door and sit down next to her.

She says, “I’ve been throwing up a lot.”

“Yeah?”

I remember that she had stayed home from school once last week, before the photo exchange even started, but if she had really been vomiting constantly, she would have used it as an excuse to miss a lot more of school. Especially since it had to have been hell for her to walk those halls this week.

“And I didn’t get my period last month.”

It hits me squarely in the stomach.

Still, I go for denial.

I tell her, “You’re fifteen, you’re probably not regular yet anyway …” The weird thing is I am more upset than she is, but I decide that she’s just numb with shock and fear and shame.

I put my hand on her shoulder and she leans on me a little. I have no idea what to do, except to go find Tori, but she’s somewhere with Trey, as usual.

Cassie begins blubbering, “And he doesn’t even talk to me, not in school, not out of school, not when I call him!”

“Who?”

“Jeremy!”

She’s now wailing like a dog chained in a backyard for too long and I shush her before Dad or Mom come by.

“Jeremy,” I repeat and the name feels like acid in my mouth.

“Why won’t he talk to me?” Cassie’s light blue eyes are round and I realize with horror that this is not because she might be carrying the embryo of another human being in her uterus. It’s because Jeremy has blown her off.
This
is her paramount concern.

“Jeremy Wrentham isn’t taking your calls because Jeremy Wrentham is a dirtbag. Does he know about this?” I say, gesturing vaguely to the toilet. The seat is still up.

“How can I tell him if he won’t talk to me? How can I
make
him talk to me?” She’s actually pleading with me now, as if I could make Jeremy care, as if Jeremy’s indifference were her biggest problem.

“Forget Jeremy for now.” I sigh when she quiets down. I am no good at raw emotion. Her nose is running on my shoulder but at least she’s not screeching like an ambulance siren any more. “You think you’re pregnant? Did you take one of those tests?”

She shakes her head.

“No. I was waiting for Jeremy.”

To share the magic moment with him? Even for Cassie this is dense, but I force myself to remain calm and say, “Well, you’ve got to do that. Maybe this is a false alarm.”

“Will you go with me?”

I sigh and rest my head on hers for a moment. I am sad and stunned and angry with her for getting herself into this mess, but I feel like I have to take charge. Someone has to. Otherwise Cassie will keep hitting Jeremy’s number on redial while the phantom fetus grows to human baby size. It will be in college before Cassie makes a rational decision.

“So let’s go to CVS,” I declare. “Now.”

“
Not
the one in town.”

“No,” I agree. “Should we tell someone else?” I ask her as she wipes her face with a green gray washcloth.

“Not Mom or Dad! No, no one … please!”

“Of course.”

I call Shondra back and tell her I can’t make it to the Blue Rooster and that I’ll explain why later. Then I tell Mom I need to borrow her car to take Cassie to the main library in Netherfield. She’s so touched by this unusual sisterly partnership that she’s not surprised by the destination, even though I don’t think Cassie’s set foot in a library since Mom took her and Leigh to Toddler Story Time.

In East Longbourne I practically have to drag Cassie into the drugstore. She lags far behind me as we wind our way to the horribly euphemistically named “Family Planning” section and we stare at all the different boxes of creams and gels and tests for ovulation and pregnancy and urinary tract infections.

“Which one?” I ask her and she just shakes her head.

“I can’t do this,” she says stubbornly.

“How much money do you have?” I ask her and she digs in her bag with shaking hands. Maybe the reality of seeing all the pregnancy test kits has made her realize that she has bigger problems than getting a return call from Jeremy.

“Maybe we should get two, just to be sure,” I muse as I scan the shelves. “This one’s a double pack. And this one comes with a little heart-shaped card that you can keep the stick in, to remember—well, that’s not really appropriate, is it?” I cut myself off and just grab a box and start for the cash registers in the front of the store. I make it as far as a display of rubber balls and pasta makers for the microwave.

“Hi, Georgia, Cassie.”

I turn around and there’s Michael, dressed in gray sweatpants and a faded hoodie with HARVARD emblazoned across his chest. He’s holding a bottle of purple Vitaminwater. Cassie flees down the aisle and Michael looks after her, puzzled.

“Hi,” I croak at the exact moment his eyes hit the pregnancy test box.

I see his face redden. He mumbles something along the lines of, “Oh. See ya,” and then he’s gone as quickly as he appeared.

I want to escape, too, to bore right through the scuffed drugstore floor into another world. But that’s not an option. So when I am sure that Michael has paid for his drink and gone, I make myself go up to the cash register, where I find my cowardly sister pretending to examine the selection of sunglasses on sale as if the fate of the world depends on her finding the perfect pair of Panama Jack shades.

“What was Michael doing in East Longbourne?” she asks when we’re back in the car.

“I don’t know. We didn’t chat, really, not after he saw the First Response test in my hand.”

She slumps into the passenger seat and says nothing until we’re parked in front of our house, I tell her, “It says you should take the test first thing tomorrow, with the ‘morning’s first urine.’