I Was Told It Would Get Easier(12)
Damn it.
EMILY
I was severely non-stoked to see Alice Ackerman and her crazy mother. Usually my friend group knows everything about everyone all the time, so how did this actually useful information get missed? I wonder if they knew and didn’t tell me. Great, now I’m anxious-er than ever. More anxious. Whatever.
Alice is the kind of girl we’re all supposed to be, but I don’t even want to want to be her, if you get me. Just seeing her gives me a level of cognitive dissonance my teenage prefrontal cortex can’t even handle (AP Psychology, just saying). I get a jumping nerve in my eye and a pain in my butt. Here’s the thing I do envy about Alice: She doesn’t give a shit. She didn’t go to middle school with any of us; she arrived on the first day of ninth grade and assumed control ten days later. Even seniors talk to her. Perhaps instead of middle school she’d gone to some kind of underground training facility, where alpha girls are hatched from pods. Her father is something important at a studio; she goes to a lot of premieres, and shops all the time. She got her license recently—I heard her parents hired a driving teacher who taught her two hours a day and took the written for her—and then received an adorable little electric car and it was, you know, perfect. The car has its own hashtag.
She and I were friends at the beginning. I guess she saw I was mildly popular and kind of funny (I’m not saying that, my friends say that), so she hung out with my friend group for a while. But after a few golden weeks of total focus, she shut down on me like an eclipse, and for the last two years she’s left me alone, out here in the penumbra (see, I did pay attention in Physics).
But that’s what she’s like. She spins at the center of the high school universe and her gravity pulls people in, but she spins so fast that most of them get flung back into the outer rings. (Dude, I am killing this outer space metaphor; Mr. Libicki would be stoked.) Now she has a core group of sycophants friends she likes to tease, torment, and favor, plus a long tail of lesser kids who watch out for crumbs, like those little fish that follow sharks.
Of all the kids at school who could have been on this tour, she’s the one. FML, right?
And her mother is a total freaking nightmare. My mom is never mean about other people, and she once said that Mrs. Ackerman was not a nice person. That’s strong stuff, for Mom.
JESSICA
Daniella—Call me Dani—Ackerman is not the kind of mother I want to be, but I think she’s the kind of mother I’m supposed to want to be. Back at the beginning of ninth grade, her kid and mine were friendly for a bit, so I invited her for coffee. It made me want to blow my brains out, not even joking, and I hang out with lawyers all day. She’s one of those women who are on top of their own game, their daughter’s game, the school’s game, and anyone else’s game that was available for topping. She knew where the school stood in relation to every other school in Los Angeles, she knew where the students matriculated, she knew what subjects her kid was going to take for the next four years and what her SAT and AP scores were going to be, more or less (this was years in advance, don’t forget). She knew which extracurriculars Alice was going to take, what sports she was going to do—nothing too common, something useful at application time . . . javelin? Something where the college would have a team but not enough players.
As Dani had laid out her four-year plan for Alice, I stirred my coffee into coldness and tried not to burst into hysterical tears. Honestly, at that point I was pleased Em seemed happy at school and ate her lunch and did her homework before midnight. I had started thinking maybe I could work from home Friday afternoons so I could see a bit more of my kid (not that Emily is ever home on a Friday night, but this was before all that started), and hadn’t realized I was supposed to be marshaling my forces for college already. Thank GOD the girls drifted apart so I hadn’t ever had to hang out with Dani again. We smiled and cheek-kissed at school events and made empty promises to have coffee or lunch or take an exercise class together, but we both knew these were social-grooming promises and were never actually going to happen. Like I have time to take an exercise class.
But now here we were, trapped with a small group of people and a rapidly drying tray of pastries. It was too late to go back up to the room and disguise myself as a plant or something, and now Dani had spotted us.
“Oh, my goodness, is that Jessica Burnstein?” she said loudly. “Look, Alice, it’s Emily!”
Alice looked up from her phone. “So it is.” She returned to her phone and started working her thumbs. At least her kid is as antisocial as mine. Teenagers are the great leveler.
I sighed inwardly, plastered a smile on my face, and went over to hug Dani with every apparent enthusiasm. FML, right?
EMILY
Mom’s handling this; she fakes it for a living. I’ve seen her get ready for big work events, all flying hair and cursing, hopping to put on a high heel, slippery straps that need tightening, Can you do this necklace up for me, baby? But then she sails out the door like a freaking movie star playing a high-powered lawyer, all glide and polish. She’s two different people: Stressed-Out Mom and All-Powerful Lawyer. Nothing in between. Nothing she shows me, anyway.
I waved vaguely at Alice and then headed straight to the breakfast buffet. I was hungry, it was too freaking early in the morning, and if I didn’t get my blood sugar up soon, I’d pass out. The biggest question I could handle right now was, jelly or cheese? My phone buzzed. It was a snap from Alice.