Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(26)

It’s one thing to pick on me, but Leslie can’t stand up for herself.

I wheel around and snap, “Nope! Totally me. Really impor-tant investigation, Jason. Thanks for spreading awareness.”

“Everybody just calm down,” says Mr. Kercher.

Jason just gives me a Crazy bitch stare, infuriatingly blank and slack-jawed.

“Nothing?” My eyes dart over to Gideon, who still refuses to look at me. I get louder.

“You have nothing to say?”

Mr. Kercher finally loses it, banging his palm down on his desk.

“Scarlett, that’s enough!”

He sends me to the front office, where I get a pink detention slip to forge Dawn’s signature on.



As Ave, the Girl Geniuses, and I walk past the Populars to get our lunch trays, Ashley studiously pays no attention to Ave. You’d think they were strangers, not sisters, but there is no sibling loophole for breaking the MHS caste system.

Gideon heads for a table at the nuclear center of a group of loud jock guys, chatting with Mike Tossier in the dulcet tones of loud bro. He glances at me, and I give him my best glare. He looks away. I wonder, again, what the hell is going on—why Ashley would pick Gideon, loaning her much-curated social life to him. Either he struck some kind of Faustian bargain or Ashley is actively trying to ruin my life.

We sit down at the designated Girl Genius table with the other lady misanthropes. A few fey, antisocial boys who look twelve sit here too, for good measure.

“Yes, this is my cheap-ass poor-person lunch,” I announce when I sit down with my tray, and they laugh, like they do every time. I used to try to hide swiping my reduced-lunch card, but eventually I realized I can neutralize it with jokes, make people feel more comfortable and less like I’m some walking PSA.

“Hey, Ave?” I ask.

“Yeah?” She pulls out a bag full of almonds and pops one in her mouth.

“Have I told you lately . . . that I love you?”

Avery rolls her eyes, crunching. “What do you want?”

“Can you do my take-home test? It’s due next period.” I yank it from my folder and hand it to her. She pulls out a ballpoint—the true sign of a math genius, not picking a pencil—and starts efficiently scribbling in answers, moving from equation to equation without missing a beat.

“One of these days I’m gonna tell my parents about this,” she threatens, then rolls her eyes. “Actually, it wouldn’t matter. You could murder a drifter and they’d still love you.”

She might act cranky, but she likes doing it. She told me once that it’s relaxing to do my tests because they’re so easy that it’s like a form of supersmart-person meditation. Not that she said it in those words, she’s always been way too modest. (If Ave had invented fire, she’d introduce it to the Cro-Magnons by whispering, “Um, hey, I made this thing, it’s kinda cool, it might be sorta helpful for our continued evolution, if that makes any sense.”)

As Ave whizzes through my test, occasionally sipping one of the many cans of Diet Coke she guzzles all day, there’s a shuffling behind us, then a shadow over poor Got Her Period on Her Pants and Nobody Told Her Leslie like one cast by the side of a mountain.

It’s Mike Neckekis, a tree-trunk-neck jock who in the days of yore might have been called “simple.” Ave doesn’t notice.

I nudge her. “Um . . . Avery?”

She glances up and around. Looks at Mike. Waits expectantly. Generally speaking, the Populars approach Avery only if they want to buy Adderall, pay her to write their college essay, or ask if she and Ashley are really sisters.

“I wanted to say that uh, uh . . .” He breathes heavily, in what would seem like a sigh if it was not just his natural state of Pop-Tarts-infused mouth breathing. “Uh . . .”

We all stare.

“I agreed with you in sociology when Mrs. Donovan was talking about Twitter outrage, and you argued that was a privileged point of view.”

“I didn’t . . . did I argue that?”

“Well, you sort of mumbled it. You mumble stuff.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, you mumble stuff, and you scratch your forehead with your pen, and sometimes the cap is off, so you get, um . . .” He runs his finger over his hairline. “Ink stains. Not right now, but sometimes.”

Avery stares at him for a second, touching her forehead self-consciously. She looks perplexed, but sort of . . . happy? How can she not be laughing her ass off at him right now?

“Anyways, I agree with you. I think, like, Twitter totally scares snobs like Mrs. Donovan who live in, like, mansions in Short Hills and commute here to teach because they want to feel like they’re helping out less rich people without actually having to, like, think about them all that much. So. Yeah.”

Avery breaks into a smile.

“I was wondering—I saw you talking to some older guy when you were getting off the Princeton bus, and I wasn’t sure if you were, like, dating . . .”

“We’re not,” Ave says, still smiling, seeming shell-shocked. “I mean. No. Nothing is—he’s not my boyfriend. Or anything. I was asking him if we’ll still have a free period.”

“Oh! Okay. Well. I guess, then, do you want to go to the dance with me?”

Avery’s jaw drops in the briefest expression of pure joy before she tamps it down, undoubtedly due to the numerous dating-advice listicles Dawn posts on our Facebook walls with headlines like “17 Ways to Win at Love by Pretending You Don’t Give a Crap.”