Big Summer(20)

“Welcome, Daphne,” said Ms. Reyes.

All the kids paused in their chatter and looked me over, but Drue Cavanaugh was the first one that I really saw. She was sitting in the center of the front row, dressed in tight dark-blue jeans with artful rips on the thigh and at the knee. Her loose gray T-shirt had the kind of silkiness that cotton could only attain after a hundred trips through the washing machine. On top of the T-shirt she wore a black-and-white-plaid shirt. Her face was a perfect oval, her skin a creamy white with golden undertones and a sprinkling of freckles. Her nose was narrow and chiseled; her lips were full and pink; her shiny, streaky blond hair was gathered into a casually messy topknot. She wore silver hoops in her ears and a velvet choker around her neck, and I could see, instantly, that my clothes and my hair and my earrings were all wrong; that she looked the way I was supposed to look, effortlessly beautiful and stylish and cool. I felt my face flush with shame, but, unbelievably, the beautiful girl was smiling at me, patting the empty seat next to her. “Daphne can sit here,” she said. Ms. Reyes nodded, and I slipped into the seat.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I’m Drue,” she said, and spelled it. “It’s an old family name. Short for Drummond, if you can believe that. If I was a boy I think my parents were going to call me Drum.” She wrinkled her nose charmingly, and I smiled at her, charmed. Then she smoothed her hair and turned back to the conversation she’d been having with the girl on the other side. When the bell rang, she gathered up her books and flounced away without another word to me, leaving only the scent of expensive shampoo in her wake.

Weird, I thought. I didn’t see her again until lunchtime, and she came gliding toward me in the cafeteria where I stood, frozen, trying to figure out if I should buy a slice of pizza or eat the lunch my dad had packed.

“Hey, Daphne? It’s Daphne, right?” When I nodded, she asked, “Do you have any money?” She made a face and said, “I’m completely broke.” Flushed with pleasure, thrilled that she’d remembered my name, I mentally committed to my packed lunch and reached into my pocket for the five dollars my mother had given me, just in case none of the other sixth-graders had brought lunch from home.

“Thank you!” she caroled, before bouncing away. As I watched her go, a girl with round glasses and a mop of shiny dark curls approached. “Did she ditch you?”

“Oh, no,” I said, even as I realized that was exactly what had happened: “No, she just needed money.”

The other girl gave a not-unfriendly snort. “Ha. That’s a good one.” She had medium-brown skin and wide brown eyes beneath thick, curved eyebrows, and she wore jeans and sneakers with a silky-looking light-blue kurta on top. Her mouth glittered with the metal of her braces; her glasses caught the light. I was tall for my age, and she was short, with skinny hips and a flat chest. The top of her head barely reached my shoulders.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The girl blinked at me. “Drue Cavanaugh? Drue Lathrop Cavanaugh?” I stared. My new companion shook her head in pity at my ignorance.

“If Drue actually forgot her money, which, PS, doubt it, the lunch ladies would just give her whatever she wanted,” she said. “Her mother’s family founded the whole school.”

“Thank you for telling me,” I made myself say. I didn’t feel grateful. I felt angry. Maybe she hadn’t meant to, but the new girl had made me feel dumb.

“Don’t worry. She’s a bitch. I’m Darshini Shah, but my friends call me Darshi. You can sit with me if you want to.”

She pointed to a table in the corner. Other kids were already sitting there. One of the girls had pale white skin and a frizzy ponytail and a constellation of pimples covering most of her forehead. Two boys, one black and one Asian, had taken out a chess set and started a game. My people, I thought, feeling resigned.

I followed Darshi across the room. We were almost at the table when I heard Drue call my name from a table in the center of the cafeteria, where she was sitting with two girls dressed the way she was.

“Daphne? Hey, Daphne! Aren’t you going to sit with us?”

I stopped and turned. Behind me, I could feel Darshi waiting.

“I’m sitting here,” I said. “But maybe I can sit with you tomorrow.”

A strange expression, surprise and anger mixed with amusement, moved across Drue’s face. The two girls at her table were easier to read. They both just looked shocked.

For a moment, it felt like everyone in the cafeteria was staring at us. Then Drue stood up, unfolding herself gracefully from the bench. “Then I will sit with you!” She nodded at the other girls, and, after exchanging an irritated look, they, too, picked up their plates and followed Drue over to Darshi’s table. I ended up with Drue on one side of me, Darshi on the other, and the two girls from Drue’s table sitting across from us.

Darshi introduced me to the curly-haired girl, whose name was Frankie, and to the chess players, David and Joon Woo Pak. Drue introduced me to her friends, Ainsley and Avery. The two of them looked like imperfect copies of Drue. One had blond hair, and one had brown, but they both sported versions of the same high, haphazard buns. They wore variations of Drue’s outfit: dark-rinse jeans, vintage tees, and Doc Martens boots. Ainsley’s face was long and rectangular as a coffin, and Avery had thin hair and squinty eyes. They made Drue look even prettier, like a stunning solitaire set off by a pair of smaller, flawed diamonds. I wondered, uneasily, if that was the point of the two of them, and if it was, what that might make me.