Life and Other Inconveniences(66)

She’s really cool, though. I asked if I could take a selfie with her and the boys, and she said, “Of course, honey!” and put her arm around me. It was a nice picture, though my skin looks like goat cheese next to theirs.

Anyway, I need a project, and finding out what happened to Sheppard is a pretty big one. And I might even ask Jamilah to help me, since she works for Google, and Google knows everything about everyone.

A project would be good.

I honestly didn’t know how I would’ve gotten through this summer if we hadn’t come here. Mom said mean girls “harbor a deep sense of self-hatred and low self-esteem.” Gigi called them coyotes. I liked that better.

But I still get a lump in my throat thinking about them. I know I shouldn’t miss them, but I miss them anyway. Not the coyote version . . . the old gang. The four of us. I’d give a lot to time travel back to last summer, which was the happiest, best, funnest time of my life.

I don’t know what happened. I seriously don’t. One week, we were the same as we always were. The next week, I was out. Little things, like them all getting to lunch first and already engrossed in conversation when I got there. It used to be that Jenna and I walked together, since our lockers were on the same hall. All of a sudden, she was already gone. Annabeth and I always sat together on the bus, but then her mom was driving her. No explanation.

In a blink, the three of them were different people. Annabeth seemed to feel at least a little guilty, but by the end of week one, she’d gotten over it. She always took orders.

I just didn’t see this . . . alienation . . . coming. I didn’t see the meanness, and I feel so stupid. In some ways, it had been there all along . . . Jenna with her funny-but-mean comments about Mr. Stebbins and his hairpiece. Mikayla with her obsession over designer clothes and “jokes” about Lissandra, who had been her best friend in middle school. Annabeth, who’s always been such a follower, had stopped wearing purple because Mikayla told her it was an ugly color.

I just didn’t think it would happen to me. I never dreamed I’d be jumped by my three best friends in the bathroom. I knew it was over by then, but even so, I didn’t expect it to be so awful. I cried so hard on that bathroom floor I thought I would break.

And still, I miss them. My mom would die if I admitted that. She’d talk for days about how what I was feeling was normal, and okay, and everyone had these experiences, and the important thing was to learn from them. Don’t get me wrong; I love my mom, but her double duty as shrink and mother can be hard to handle.

Genevieve, though, she understood. In the car going down to the city, I found myself telling her everything. She didn’t give me any advice or quote Psychology Today articles at me. Instead, she asked me some questions. How were my grades? (Stellar.) Was I getting recruited by any colleges? (A little? Stanford had been sending me e-mails about visiting, but didn’t they do that to everyone?) Had I been singled out for any academic awards? (Yes . . . Chemistry and Trig Excellence Awards.)

“But that’s how it always was,” I said. “I tutored them. I’ve always been the dork of the group.”

“Dear, don’t use that word. It’s so pedestrian. You’ve always been the intellectual of the group. The one who’s being recruited by the finest colleges. The one with flawless skin and remarkable eyes.”

Mikayla had posted a picture of me on Snapchat with the caption tinted contacts make u look like an alien. Except I didn’t wear tinted contacts. Remarkable was a nicer way of thinking of it.

“Your former friends are jealous, Riley dear. Last year, you weren’t a threat, since college wasn’t looming on the horizon. Last year, you hadn’t blossomed, I imagine. This year, they see you as you are—superior. Therefore, they’ve banded together like a pack of mewling coyotes, sensing that you’re the timber wolf in their midst, and trying to make you feel like a rabbit instead of what you are.”

I liked the way she called me dear. And timber wolf. Yes, I liked timber wolf a lot.

“Did anything like that ever happen to you?” I asked.

It had. She told me all about it, admitting she’d been a bit of a snob herself at Foxcroft. (I snorted . . . How could you avoid being a snob at a place called Foxcroft Academy?)

“I wouldn’t have classified myself as a coyote,” she said, “but looking back, I can see I never really gave some girls a chance. Which is different from turning on a friend, mind you.”

“Were you ever . . . cut out?” I asked. I thought she might think it was a rude question, but she tipped her head, considering.

“After Garrison—your great-grandfather—died, my friends would visit, or invite me to lunch, but I was never invited to anything to do with their husbands, or anything with couples.”

“Because you were gorgeous and single and loaded,” I said.

“Gorgeous and widowed and well-to-do, dear. Choose your words more carefully. They make such an impact. But yes.” She took a pair of sunglasses from her purse and put them on. “When I founded my company and began garnering a lot of attention, some of the other, more established designers became catty. A few started a whisper campaign about the treatment of my workers, or claimed I’d stolen their designs, or called me an imposter with too much time on her hands.” She paused. “Once, Giuliana Camerino got up and moved when I sat next to her at a fashion event,” she said. “It was quite hurtful at the time. And quite a public snub. It made Page Six.”