Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here (10 page)

AS SOON AS I’M HOME FROM SCHOOL, BARELY IN THE DOOR,
I throw my laptop on the nearest possible flat surface (this time, the side table) and check the
Lycanthrope
tabs. Days after I posted the second story, the number of readers—and Gidbot shippers—is growing.

I can’t decide if I’m flattered or deeply irritated.

I scroll through the gushing and hashtags and cries of “YAAAAAS” and roll my eyes.

The problem is that if I smash Ashbot with a crowbar, everyone will yell at me and only ship the couple
more.
And . . . to be honest, I’ll be sad too. I like her; she came out differently than I expected. I never knew original(-ish) characters could be sneaky like that.

I guess the only thing I can do is create a diversion. . . .

The Ordinaria
Part 3

Submitted by Scarface_Epstein

Creating Miss Ordinaria was a little bit like creating a women’s magazine. A ton of work was done, undone, and done again, and everything was based on endless studies and surveys and data, but somehow it always ends up as the lowest common denominator. Something that looks like no work was put into it at all.

But before the prototype went through the wringer and came out as the robot-girl equivalent of a beach read, one of the many studies involved handpicking a few teenage girls who embodied certain qualities that had rated well. The physical stuff was easy—testable. But building an appealing personality from scratch is way more subjective. So when they picked the girls, looks weren’t an issue. Maybe they didn’t have the glossy hair, the perfect figure, or the indiscriminating sexual freedom, but they had other skills: violin playing, perfect pitch, 4.0 GPA, years of grooming for the nationals in figure skating, and so on.

The plan was to narrow down the top four categories that teenage boys looked for in a girl’s personality, search across the country for girls that best represented each category, and then contain them in the lab for five months in order to thoroughly observe their behavior.

Ava was an obvious candidate for one of the slots:
intelligence. She entered only because her mother was determined she continue her studies at a top university, and being chosen would diversify her application, supplementing her excellent grades. She quickly made it past the preliminary interviews, then the finals, and made it through. (There was no broadcast on TV; networks uniformly turned it down, saying that even if there was a swimsuit element—which there wasn’t—nobody would tune in to see
normal
girls wearing them.)

The other slots, determined by a nationwide survey of men in an extremely wide demographic, were philanthropy, creativity, and educational voraciousness. The girls chosen were from all over the country: Tara, seventeen, had started volunteering at homeless shelters at age thirteen and was now a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN. Jill, eighteen, was an art prodigy whose abstract paintings had been shown at MoMA and the Sorbonne. Jen, sixteen, was a pretty normal girl who didn’t know anything about cool stuff but really, really wanted to be introduced to it, which showed a deep interest in art, music, film, programming, culture, and education at large. (When surveyed, the feedback from consumers was that Ordinarias would sit patiently as the men talked at length about noise bands, HTML, or Hemingway but never seemed to listen or appreciate the invaluable cultural education the men were so thoughtfully attempting to give the Ordinarias.)

Ava couldn’t have cared less about any of this, but to appease her mom, she spent the required five-month
quarantine at the rebuilt headquarters, taking standardized subject tests and personality quizzes from Ordinaria engineers. The four girls shared two bunk beds above the lab, and the only thing they seemed to have in common was ulterior motives for being there, which they occasionally discussed late at night, in the dark.

“Well,
I’m
here only because I want to improve conditions at the factory. Did you know they’re paid only slightly above minimum wage?” said Tara, who was either heartfelt or sanctimonious depending on one’s mood.

“I’m here because I’m researching a multimedia installation that breaks down modern American femininity,” said Jill, who wore all black and read Sylvia Plath when she wasn’t in the lab, painting an abstract with electrodes taped to her forehead and engineers taking notes.

Jen cleared her throat. “Do you guys know anything about the Smiths?”

“No,” they all said. (Jill was lying, but she’d already had to talk to Jen about the Kinks, the Clash, and the Shins; she was done.)

“Me neither,” Jen said plaintively.

* * *

It was raining outside, for the third day straight, but Ava would still do anything for some fresh air. They weren’t allowed to leave—since they were test subjects, the engineers were paranoid that other people would try to influence them.

Ava crept out of the holding pen and tiptoed down the
hall. Breaking rules made her nervous, and she was deciding whether to turn back or go ahead and push through the contraband side-exit door—just for a breath of air—when it swung open and a dripping-wet guy lumbered in. He saw her, and they both stood there for a second, realizing that both of them would get in trouble if the other one told.

“Are you one of those girls?” he asked. That’s what they called them. They didn’t really have a name for this five-month stretch.

She nodded.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I was just gonna . . . who are
you
?” she asked defensively.

“Oh. Um, name’s Mike. I’m just a deliveryman. I was on the highway with my truck”—he motioned to an enormous truck with Ordinaria Inc. painted over the company’s trademark logo, a curvy female silhouette—“but the rain got too bad, so I figured I’d pull in and wait it out. I’ve been driving for nine hours or so; my eyes were getting tired.”

He was around her age. He spoke slowly, she noticed, and fumbled words a lot. She found it endearing and couldn’t help but notice how his wet clothes had conformed to the outline of his very nice body. At that moment, they thought they heard the echoes of footsteps.

“Why don’t we move to the loading dock?” he asked. She hesitated, then nodded.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, secretly, they got to know each other
better. Mike was from a few towns over from Ava’s. He hadn’t gotten into the academy, so when he’d turned seventeen, he became an Ordinaria deliveryman, like his father and grandfather had. He was a little bit in awe of her, and she was surprised how much she liked it, considering she hated the attention she’d always gotten from her mother, teachers, and fellow students for her intelligence. She’d always thought she’d feel this attracted only to another star student.

It became a weekly ritual: They’d meet on the loading dock, swinging their legs over the edge. He’d give her a piece of regional candy he’d gotten from whatever state he had to drive from, and they’d talk about their day, or the candy, or the weather, or whatever. They didn’t have a lot in common, and there were a lot of long silences, but they were packed with enough crackling sexual tension to fill entire books.

One afternoon, after his long drive back from New England, he gave her a maple sugar leaf. On this day, there was an unusual sense of urgency. Ava was coming to the end of her quarantine, and she was afraid they’d never see each other again. Rather than sitting, they stood, facing each other, him towering over her.

She unwrapped the leaf and started self-consciously blushing as she sucked on it while he watched.

“Want some?” She held it out to him. Instead, he pushed her back against the brick wall of the loading dock and kissed her. All other thoughts floated out of her head, including what—or who—she might be leaving behind.

DAWN EMERGES FROM THE BATHROOM AND GLIDES TOWARD
me like an incredibly round and bizarre debutante and twirls in her white boots, pulled up over flimsy fishnets. The prospect of a “slutty green M&M” seems impossible, but there can be miracles when you believe.

“So? How do I look?”

“Like anthropomorphic candy.”

She rolls her eyes. “I mean, obviously. But I mean my hair and makeup.”

“Good.”

Her face flashes that this is the wrong answer, considering she has just spent two hours in the bathroom getting ready.

“No,
great
!” I say more enthusiastically. “But why don’t you just go out on Halloween proper instead?” I sigh. “I’m worried you’re gonna get Clockwork Oranged.”

It’s October 30—Mischief Night. It is exactly what it sounds like: an excuse for MHS students to truly be the creepy, ultraviolent droogs they are. They smash pumpkins on door-steps, toilet paper people’s houses and cars, and generally act like the stupid, reckless kids the cops always think did it in the first fifteen minutes of
Law & Order
.

“Scar, it’ll be fine. I won’t be out and about or anything. Brian invited me to his office party!” She beamed. “It’s one of those haunted houses where there’s punch, and you get blindfolded and put your hand in a thing of peeled grapes.”

“Sounds gripping. Use protection.”

Dawn sighs and puts her hands on her (actual) waist, folding her costume from totally circular into a cinched figure eight.

“I realize that it’ll be an awful ordeal for you, sweetie, but you
will
have to meet him at some point.”

“Really? ’Cause I’m totally comfortable with keeping him a concept.”

“Well, he really wants to meet you-uuuuu,” she says, practically singing the last word.

This is mildly disconcerting because usually they don’t want to meet me. Usually, since she knows I’m a harsher judge of character, she wants me to meet—and evaluate—them. In fact, on one notable occasion, Dawn pretended I did not even exist (which culminated in the Great “I’m Not a Good Mother” Crying Jag of 2012). So I’m briefly at a loss for words.

“Well, I don’t know.” I shrug. “Tell him to bring me an expensive bottle of wine and a sacrificial virgin.”

Then she zings me: “You
are
a sacrificial virgin.”

I suck in my breath. “Daaaaaaayum, I ought to call CP&P for that one.”

(Child Protection & Permanency plucks New Jersey kids out of “inadequate households” and places them in the state’s care. It is also Dawn’s and my best inside joke, because we’re sick people.)

As she heads for the door, she pulls some money out of God knows where and leaves it a few feet away on the kitchen island.

“Order a pizza or something, okay?”

“Yep.”

I glance down and notice that her legs are practically bare, covered only by the sheer tights.

“Yo, aren’t you gonna wear something over that?” I call after her. “It’s kinda cold out.”

She and the pair of eyes on the green M&M costume both stare haughtily at me. “Chocolate can’t wear jackets,” she says matter-of-factly, as if I am supposed to smack my forehead like,
Oh, right, how could I forget that famous old adage, “Chocolate can’t wear jackets
”?

“Have fun! Be safe! Say hi to Brian!” I yell after her as she opens the door with a loud gust of wind and slams it abruptly behind her.

I’m not a total shithead. I’ve met a few of her boyfriends, mostly at awkward third-wheel dinners at this one Mediterranean place downtown that we use only for her boyfriends. If she marries one of them, it’ll be kind of fun to yell “YOU’RE NOT
MY REAL DAD!” at him and storm away to my room, although a two-floor house would really make for better storming. Storming in an affordable-housing apartment means you go two loud, impotent stomps away and you’re, like, already in your room. It’s not worth the effort.

I glance outside and watch as she runs to the Taurus, shivering, just to make sure no assholes pop out of the bushes with water guns or eggs.

Being primarily friendless, and also somewhat intelligent, I’m staying in. Halloween stuff doesn’t scare me easily, but when this many teenagers in town are congregated in permissive parents’ basements doing shots of 151 and preparing to smash in some car windows, you can sort of feel the weird destructive electricity in the air.

I feast on a balanced meal of pizza and a coffee mug filled with some white wine Dawn left uncorked on the side of the fridge, squeezed in between the eggs and milk. Then I read a little bit of Kira’s novel,
Genius Family
, right up to the part where her brilliant and beautiful but aloof physics-prodigy mother makes subtle fun of the soccer moms at the PTA but they’re too stupid to notice. I Google Kira again and read some new reviews, one of which is in the
Washington Post
: “A solid debut,” albeit “just a touch self-consciously quirky and smug.” Ouch. I wonder how she’d respond to that. She’s probably above it all. I think it’s easy for beautiful people to be above things.

By around ten I’m lying in bed and lulling myself to sleep chatting with Were-Heads about random stuff, because that’s the thrilling life I lead.

I’m half-asleep when I turn my head toward the window and see some movement across the highway, in front of Ruth’s place. I sit up and pull my curtain aside to see four small, dark figures standing—posturing, really—one of them holding a nearly empty squarish bottle by its long neck, glinting in the porch light. Their steps, somehow, are barely making any noise.

Simultaneously two rolls of toilet paper soar in an arc against the dark sky toward Ruth’s roof, and then comes the splat of an egg. I realize they’re in the garden, their Sperrys mashing and ruining Ruth’s flowers. That’s why their sneakers are padding silently on the ground. Ruth is almost certainly sound asleep by now; she has been going to bed earlier and earlier. If this wakes her up, she’s sure to be wrecked tomorrow.

Suddenly I’m so angry I can hardly feel my body, other than my face getting so hot it feels like my head might explode. My body, meanwhile, is jumping out of bed, yanking on Dawn’s Uggs by the front door and leaving it wide open behind me as I fly down the stairs and march toward them with a flashlight. I barely check for cars before I’m tearing across the highway.

“Hey!”

Jason Tous stands there casually, like he’s waiting for a bus, but the other three—who I can’t make out—take off, winding around Ruth’s house and running into the pitch-black woods that crawl almost all the way up to her side door. I take off after them.
We are all quickly swallowed up by the darkness and the quiet, every branch snapping under our shoes sounding like gunshots.

“Yo!” I shout.

One of the guys drops an empty bottle in his haste, and I snag it, barely slowing down. Jack Daniels—of course, patron saint of boys who try too hard to be Men. I hurl the bottle at the slowest boy as hard as I can, and it glances off his shoulder blade with the
whack
of glass on bone.

“Fuck!” he yelps, stopping to crouch and massage his shoulder. One of the other two keeps running, but one slows to a stop, looking back to see if the injured one is okay. I shine my flash-light in that guy’s face and actually
gasp
—as if I am on a soap opera and just caught my estranged evil twin making out with my husband—because it’s Gideon. I mean, of course it is. I’m surprised, and not surprised, and that combination takes my voice away for a few seconds, but fortunately I get my words back.

“Seriously?” My voice verges on shrieking. The injured boy—it’s Dylan Dinerstein—is still rubbing his shoulder and looking sullen, but I’m addressing Gideon. “What’s
wrong
with you?”

He shakes his head minutely, and I think I see a flicker of something in his face—guilt maybe—but he says nothing.

“That’s the problem with you assholes,” I snap. “You have nothing to say. So you pick on people who do.”

I can’t look at Gideon anymore—with him it’s way too complicated. But the other guys? They’re anything but. The words fly off my tongue before they’re filtered by my brain.

“Know what? I
hope
you get monster boners when you wreck
an old lady’s house, or when you make Leslie Barnes feel like shit for raising her hand. In ten years, Leslie Barnes will be running a million-dollar company—but you’ll still be here, still doing this, for the rest of your life. She won’t even come back for reunions. And neither will I, bitches.”

From behind me, Jason walks into my line of vision, keeping his head down. It seems like I may have struck a chord, but I’m too high on adrenaline to really know. He gestures to the other guys, and they stalk out of the woods in the direction of a stretch of main road where kids always park their cars when they come to drink.

I trudge the opposite way, resisting every temptation to look back at Gideon, and end up at the edge of Ruth’s wrecked garden, surveying the damage. A line has been crossed. He’s just not the same person anymore, right? He wears their dumb clothes and teases their weak targets. Still, the same little hopeful recorded message plays over and over in my head:
Maybe the short, chubby comedy nerd is still in there somewhere!
At what point do you start writing off the only person who you thought really got you?

I hear the shutter door bounce twice, and before I can warn her, Ruth pops out, wide-eyed, in an uncharacteristically feminine kimono with her hair in a scrunchie high on her head.

“Are you okay?” I ask Ruth.

“I’m fine. I was sleeping.” She surveys her garden.

“Do you want me to . . .” I helplessly sort of move my hands around in a way that feels appropriately sympathetic. She shakes her head.

“We can’t do anything about it tonight. Besides, it’s easy to grow them back.”

Still, I’m mad on her behalf. “Ugh, those guys are—”

“Those aren’t guys; they’re
kids
. Please, go to bed. You can help me take care of it tomorrow if you want. This is way too much late-night excitement for someone past menopause.”

She sighs, a brief cloud passing over her usual laissez-faire attitude.

Even if she’d never admit it, I know how much she loves looking at her garden.

Back in bed but wide-awake, I wonder if I even know Gideon, or know anyone really. Is this the moment I’m supposed to realize Gideon’s actually a shitty person who just happens to have excellent taste in comedy? Or is this the moment I realize I’m too judgmental and living in my own weird cerebral universe and have unrealistic standards for boys, or just for life?

It’s been bothering me more and more that I can’t ever see anything objectively, that every observation I make is filtered through my personal lens whether I like it or not. I mean, all my favorite novels are like that. F. Scott Fitzgerald basically
is
Gatsby, so obviously it’s Gatsby’s book, and Daisy comes off like a flake. But maybe in Daisy’s unwritten book, Gatsby is a flashy, patronizing asshole who thinks he could win her with money and fancy stuff. And that might be an even better book.

Eventually, sometime around when dawn breaks and I hear
the jingle of Dawn’s keys landing on the kitchen island, I fall asleep wishing more than anything that I could float outside my head and see things for what they truly, honestly, objectively are . . . and kill the tiny voice in my head that constantly questions whether that truth even exists.

Whatever. One thing at a time.