Pride & Princesses (13 page)

    
‘Guess what I’ve come up with...’

    
It turned out Mouche had refined and highlighted the next entry of the
Boy-Rating Diary
with a specific list:

THE BOYS OF SUNRISE HIGH
 

Mark Knightly

Transfer student from Loratio and England, seriously hot, very dark and broody

Jet Campbell

Also a transfer student, just as hot; recently obtained his pilot’s licence. There really doesn’t seem to be a downside to this man...

Joel Goodman

Dangerous, brutish, charming

Jack Adams

Film school tragic; owns and runs the film club every Friday lunch time

Tom Allen

Wants to be a stockbroker, possibly more interested in money than dating

Josh Klein

Art major, sci-fi fan
 

Peter Williamson

Musical theatre star (a real challenge for a date), honors student
 

Adam Feldman

Academic genius, slightly stooped from being bent over his microscope, doubt he has ever spoken to a female, interested in insects.

Alex Miller

Dubious moral values, rumored to run a school gambling racket

Ethan Mandel

Future concert pianist, always dragged into composing the school musical

Tobias Olson

Xbox fan, martial arts expert, quite the rebel, caught in freshman year smoking who knew what and suspended from school for a week.

Scott Riley

Boy next door (literally lives across the road)

    
While Mouche was parking, I executed a few ballet twirls and a high kick up the steps before I leapt and landed on my feet near the fence. This isn’t so unusual in our school, and besides, no one was looking. Oh, except Mark. My face went red as I hastily looked away.

   
‘How deeply embarrassing,’ Mouche said.

   
‘Why? I’ve gotta warm up for class,’ I covered, as if I wasn’t the least embarrassed.
 

   
‘Wow. You’re becoming more like
Buffy
every day,’ Mouche said.

   
‘What a shame that series was cancelled. I’d have auditioned for a role and we wouldn’t have had to go to school at all. You could’ve been my assistant.’

   
‘Thanks, I’m sure that would be a rewarding job, Phoebe. Face it, we should’ve fleeced our father’s bank accounts and emigrated to New York years ago. We could’ve attended the Professional Children’s School thus avoiding HSYL altogether.’

    
‘Those days are over, Mouche.’

    
‘Thanks for the memories.’

    
Our time at HSYL had been very harsh, if you haven’t gathered that already. Mrs Mouche had dated the school guidance counsellor and a scandal had erupted when their relationship resulted in the birth of a child – Mouche’s half-sister, Wednesday. As it turned out, Wednesday’s Dad was actually Mr
Married
Guidance Counsellor
from nine streets away.
    
Mouche was understandably keen to vacate this town, maybe even this state, permanently.
     
(Of course, Mr Married Guidance Counsellor had never told Mrs Mouche that he was attached and since we’d never needed his guidance, we didn’t know, but it was all a mini social nightmare in our street and everyone was treating Mrs Mouche like the town
bike).

  
Mouche and I had felt more like lepers in the Gothic halls of HSYL that month after the scandal broke. Between trawling through academic work and being taunted by the Princesses chanting,
‘sluttie mommies, sluttie mommies, you both have sluttie mommies...’
You can imagine the rest. It was all caused by Mrs Mouche’s scandal and the fact that my mother totally stood by her (that’s what friends are for). And of course, I stood by Mouche, just as she had always stood by me. People saw us as the offspring of our morally dubious, adulterous mommies. Although, as Mrs Mouche said, ‘I wasn’t knowingly committing adultery since he
lied
to me –
he
was the jerk!’

     
I’m sure that’s why, after playing the good girl cards, we decided to go for it and turn the
Boy-Rating Diary
into a real challenge. We’d learned a lot about being social pariahs at HSYL and placed our competitive natures aside to learn what it took and how important it was to have a loyal friend.
 

   
‘You only need one,’ my mother once said, ‘as long as it’s a good one.’

    
Or was that husbands?
          

  
‘I totally love my mom but I just can’t believe she did it with him,’ Mouche admitted,

   
‘You’d think she could’ve used contraception... but then we wouldn’t have Wednesday, who is seriously cute.’

  
‘It says here, ‘
the ‘accidental’ conception is rare past thirty
...
men are terrified of needy, baby-hungry, gold diggers desperate to secure them for their net value and sperm...
’

  
‘Ew...once again...disgusting. Besides, ‘
men need to re-learn to be grateful...they require direction in the art of seduction...like in the old days...make them thankful that women even want to sleep with them...’

  
‘
Gold diggers? Nothing in return?
Who’s the gold digger? Who asks for nothing in return?’ Teegan’s ears pricked up when we walked by her. She gave us a piercing stare. Teegan was a virtual conduit for any form of relationship gossip. Of course, this particular gem came from
Miss Suzy’s Bunny Girl Secrets
but I wasn’t ready to share them with my nemesis just yet.

     
Singing had been re-scheduled and replaced with English class because our teacher was in the auditorium with Mr Sparks, preparing the audition roster for
Rocco and Julie
. Before class started, the rain was tapping on my window. It never rained in Sunrise and Mark was late. I was pending his arrival like an
ingenue
awaiting her first Oscar but he didn’t appear and I was more disappointed than I’d let show. Finally, ten minutes after the lesson started,
 
he showed up, late, which raised eyebrows but since he was the only person in the class (apart from me) who’d read the prescribed text (
Wuthering Heights
), the teacher was willing to forgive him once she’d read his notes. She seemed exceedingly pleased to have been graced by his mere presence. We were working on a modern re-write of the dialogue from the famous scene when Cathy tells Nelly it would degrade her to marry Heathcliffe as Mark walked down the aisle towards the vacant seat next to me.

    
Teegan immediately staked her claim. She planted her dainty, black tap shoe firmly at his feet to prevent him going any further.

    
‘Oh, hi Mark,’ she said, ‘I just love your jacket. Did you get it at French Connection UK? My cousin used to work at the store on Kings Road...’

    
He gave me an apologetic smile, then sat where he was bade.

    
I was a little annoyed that my Franco hadn’t fought for me, but since we hadn’t properly conversed there was little I could do, except wait longingly and plan.

    
At lunch I was tapping my toe under the table, humming the last bars of a piece I was learning on keyboard for music class when someone touched me on the shoulder and all I could see was a mouth move. Then I took out my ear plugs, turned off my play list and heard a voice. It was quite deep and mature and male. The voice unmistakeably belonged to Mark Knightly.
   

   
‘You’re on the swim team, aren’t you? I saw you race yesterday. You won. You were good.’

   
 
‘Oh, thanks...’ I said, kind of lost for the right reply.

    
Mark had already won points for making the first move, which is very important.

   
Now, one of the first steps in my reference guide (which Mouche decided was mostly outdated, but nevertheless quaint) detailed how to
appear nice, yet unobtainable.

   
I didn’t think this would really work but when Mark said
hello
after English class earlier that morning, I tried it. I didn’t actually speak, I just smiled back shyly but when he kept walking, I thought I’d really blown it.

    
But here he was trying to get my attention again in the last minutes of the lunch hour.

   
‘Well, um...I guess I’ll see you at the auditions...’

   
‘Yeah, the play is compulsory,’ I said dumbly. Mouche cringed.

   
‘But aren’t you and...your friend PA students?

   
‘Yeah...’

   
‘Cos I saw you both...dancing around this morning. So you must like...artistic stuff, right?’

    
I nodded and smiled like a total dork.

    
Silence sat uncomfortably between us.

    
‘...see ya, Phoebe,’ he said and walked off.

    
I looked at Mouche and flushed, ‘Did you hear that?’

    
‘What?’