Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(18)

“We have an announcement—” Dean Jacobs began.

“We have a fantastic announcement.” Dean Arnolds beamed.

Dean Jacobs glared at him, and he wilted just a bit as she continued.

“We are thrilled to announce,” Dean Jacobs unconvincingly lied, “that we’ve been chosen as one of the first secondary institutions to host Miss Ordinarias.”

Immediately, enough male students’ eyes lit up that you could see it from space, with the exception of a bored handful who wondered, God, where are the male ones already? The girls were sullen, scuffing their penny loafers against the hardwood floor. One girl right next to Gideon began to sob.

“As you may know,” Dean Jacobs continued, her face increasingly deadening, “while Ordinarias are primarily marketed to ages thirty-five to sixty, Miss Ordinarias are designed to appeal to the eighteen-to-twenty-five demographic.”

A collective slap as two hundred high fives were given.

“Attention!” snapped Dean Jacobs, stomping her designer heel once, hard.

Everyone was quiet again.

“This is still Pembrooke, and I fully expect every one of you to act accordingly,” she barked. Underneath, her defeat was audible.

“Oh, lighten up, Shelly!” said Dean Arnolds, slapping her on the fragile back so heartily that she stumbled forward. She tugged the hem of her suit back in place and glared daggers at him. He didn’t care.

“I hope you all know who to thank for this,” bellowed Dean Arnolds cheerfully. “Because his son is among you. Right here . . . in . . . this . . . room. Gideon Maclaine, where are you?”

Then 999 eyes (those of all five hundred students, including Kenny Adaire, who’d lost an eye last summer in a freak racquetball accident) flaring with all sorts of emotions turned toward Gideon at once.

For a second you could hear a pin drop, if anybody had a pin. But nobody had a pin, so the only thing plummeting was Dean Jacobs’s patience.

The sobbing girl broke the silence by crying harder while glaring at Gideon, which was terrible. Whenever he saw a girl crying, even a random one in the quad, he felt weirdly guilty, like he was somehow responsible. This time, he actually was responsible.

“Son of Mitchell Maclaine,” Dean Arnolds continued. Gideon felt like he was in the Bible. “CEO of Ordinaria Inc., who’s an entrepreneur, an innovator, and a massive donor I’m sure we’re all incredibly grateful for.”

That last bit was pointed, clearly addressed to the girls: Remember the name of this hall. Remember who funded your equestrian classes. Where you should have learned to REIN IT IN.

*

The delivery was the following Thursday. It was the first day in Pembrooke history that nobody, not even the stoners, cut class—but attendance didn’t matter because class was shot to hell. Students and teachers alike gathered by the window to watch as the Ordinaria Inc. truck pulled around the school’s cul-de-sac. Gideon was the only one in SAT Prep who didn’t leap up to watch the action—even Mrs. Greer, who was ancient and seemed surprised by nothing, was straining at the window like the rest of them.

Gideon didn’t have to run to the window because he had seen it a million times. He knew the deal. Right on cue, all the guys in class sighed and groaned with disappointment when the Ordinarias weren’t pulled out of the truck in clear Barbie-like casing, naked and on display.

It was marginally classier than that. Each one came in a long white rectangular container—sort of a coffin/pastry-box hybrid. As per usual, overlaid on a big pink lipstick kiss print, in the company’s iconic cursive font, was AUTHENTIC PRODUCT, ORDINARIA INC. On each of these, though, was a hastily stuck-on label in standard type instead: MISS ORDINARIA—TEST PRODUCT.

“You think they’re naked in there, bro?” Dylan Dinerstein asked Paul Watts, because of course.

“No,” Gideon said reflexively. Everyone looked at him. He bit his tongue.

Homely, sweet Lisa Lerner turned to him, her cowlike eyes enormous and pleading.

“They’re gonna be nice, right?” she asked.

It was at this moment that Gideon remembered when his father had once described 2001: A Space Odyssey as a slapstick comedy.

“Yeah, um. Of course they will,” he said.

*

Even Gideon had been wondering exactly how much would be different from the Ordinaria proper model, with which he was very well acquainted—a beautiful thirty-to-fifty-year-old ersatz woman, brightened, less weary, and not as caustic as a human female of her age. Sometimes they were so lifelike it was uncanny. But Gideon could always tell by their eyes, the one feature that had frustrated his father to no end. No matter how many new developers or how much money he threw at it, there was something impossible to get just right.

The classroom door swung open, and Gideon noticed the absence of the familiar whirring noise that Ordinarias made. But there in the doorway was a Miss Ordinaria.

The class fell silent, but their expressions were united: Holy shit.

Gideon’s breath caught in his throat very unexpectedly. She was gorgeous, in a totally different way than the Ordinarias Gideon had grown up with. Her skin was glowing but still seemed real; her face was just unique enough to pass for a real girl’s. She had a little bit of (improbably becoming) rosacea. She was . . . God, just really sexy. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he was furious with himself, like his father had just scored a point.