The True Meaning of Cleavage Read online

  For a second, I imagine myself as a 102-year-old freshman. This is entirely possible. It could very well take me eighty-eight years to understand algebra.

  Around midnight, my mom knocks on the door and says, “Good night, girls,” in this way that means: lights off. I unfold my futon chair and drag my sleeping bag out of the closet for Sari. She changes into a T-shirt of mine that has a big dog on the front, then settles right in, lying back with a sigh. I go to turn off the light, then get into my bed.

  For a second, I can’t see anything. Then I pull the blinds open so the moonlight comes in, and Sari’s there, staring up at the ceiling like she’s thinking about something really serious.

  “Sar?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you could pick one thing not to happen this year, what would it be?”

  “Um … that I don’t completely flunk out. What about you?”

  I flop on my back and concentrate. Into the dark, I whisper, “That I don’t fall prey to the evil forces of Eldridge.” I say “evil” in a way that makes Sari laugh.

  Then, for a long time, we don’t say anything.

  I think about the day. It was a good Last Day of Freedom. Even if it didn’t end perfectly. I wish my picture of Sari had been good enough to give to her.

  “Sar?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the thing you want to happen most?”

  Sari’s quiet for a while. “I don’t want to say.”

  “Come on.”

  “No, it’s … I can’t explain it. It’s too big. Forget it. What about you?”

  “No way, I’m not saying if you’re not.”

  “Jess …”

  “Nuh-uh. That’s it, time for sleep.”

  As I listen to Sari turn over, the rustle of the sleeping bag, I wonder what I would have said if Sari had said what she wanted. In the dark and quiet, I imagine I’m free to have anything I want. In my head, I hear …

  To draw. Draw better. Have people like what I do.

  Hang with Sari.

  Not be around people I can’t stand.

  Then I think, Forget having people like what I do. That shouldn’t be important. Art isn’t about being liked. It’s about being …

  Being free.

  But I don’t see how you’re free at school.

  Then I hear Sari whisper, “Jess?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What do you think will really happen?”

  “This year?”

  “Yeah.”

  I think for a very long time. But the future is too big. It’s like when I sit on the beach and try to draw the ocean. I can’t get my eyes around it, and I always end up with a straight, flat line that doesn’t look like anything.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me either.”

  After what feels like a long, long time, I whisper, “Good night.”

  For a long time, there’s just silence. For a second, I wonder if Sari’s asleep.

  Then I hear her say good night back, and I feel like this year will be okay.

  No matter what.

  2

  —Hollow Planet: Thorvald’s Hammer Rana stood before the gates of the Great Palace. She knew it to be a place of cruelty—the hallowed space where the Exalteds held their festivals of humiliation. Inside the future was pain, torture, even death. At least, she smiled to herself, for them.

  It’s Sunday night. All day, Sari and I have been on the phone. After the last call, my mom said that was it, no more phone calls. I told her my mental state was fragile and I needed support. She said she didn’t care, she just wanted her phone back.

  I wonder if during the French Revolution, aristocrats headed to the guillotine felt as nervous as I do. The fact is, being guillotined only takes a second. Whereas freshman year lasts much, much longer.

  Guess what wakes me up the next morning?

  Alarm clock? Panic? My mom pounding on the door, yelling, “And I mean NOW?” All good answers. Just not mine.

  Every morning, I wake up to the sound of the crazy scrabbling of feet at my door followed by thirty-five pounds of dog hurtling itself at my head.

  It’s probably enough to make some people faint. But only if you’re squeamish about slobber.

  “Nobo” is short for “Nobody.” He’s a hairy little mess of a dog, and if you think my mother hasn’t wondered how it is that dogs and their owners always end up looking alike, well, she has. We got him from the pound. The minute I saw him all hunched and miserable in a cage, I said, “That’s my dog.”

  Nobody may seem like a cruel name, but it suits him. I named him that because when I got him, he looked like he had had nobody for a long time. Now he has me, and I have him, and if he knows his name sounds strange to some people, he doesn’t let it bother him.

  As I brush my teeth, I have the ghastly realization that I will be among my peers in one hour.

  Nobo looks up at me and wags his tail. He cocks his head, like, How come you look like you’re going to puke?

  I dash down the hall, hoping to make a clean escape. Somehow, it feels important to get out of the house and on my way before my parents can turn it into a whole big production. She’s All Grown Up, starring Jess Horvath, or something revolting like that.

  But no such luck. My parents are having breakfast in the kitchen, which is just off the front-door hallway. They’ve heard me coming a mile away, and by the time I’m at the door, they’re both smiling at me from the table, ready to pounce.

  “Well, I’m gone,” I tell them.

  “You feel ready?” my mom asks.

  “I don’t think so.”

  My dad examines me for a moment. In this solemn voice, he says, “I predict a year full of fulfilled potential and sustained excellence.”

  Then he gets up and hugs me. My dad does have a very good way of giving hugs, like he knows you’re too old for that kind of thing, but he’s going to hug you anyway, just because he’s a big goof and he feels like it.

  My mom sneaks one in too.

  To get to my school, I have to take the cross town bus through the park. I actually don’t mind. It’s a good way to get your head together before Eldridge rips it apart.

  On the bus, I try to come up with the Worst-Case Scenario and the Best-Case Scenario for this year.

  Worse-Case Scenario

  - My college advisor Says I am unfit for college. She advises roe to get a job at McDonald’s instead.

  - Sari and I have no classes together.

  - I get Madame Balmain Instead of Madame Beauvoir for Intermediate French. Madame Beauvoir est trēs gentile and shows Truffaut movies in class. Madame Balmain est une vache.

  - I have gym first period. I have gym any period.

  - Something really interesting happens to Sari and nothing whatsoever happens to me.

  Best-Case Scenario

  None of the above happens.

  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

  Actually, what I’m still hoping for is that certain people in my class have moved, transferred, or fallen off the face of the earth. But that probably is too much to ask.

  Then the bus turns a corner, and here I am.

  Eldridge Alternative, folks. Everybody out.

  I’ve been going to Eldridge since the first grade, so Eldridge High isn’t totally alien territory. In fact, I’ve been coming to this building ever since junior high. It’s a brick building that was probably once very cool before they built a million ugly extensions onto it. We’re just a block away from the park, which has this old stone wall, and when it’s nice, people hang out there. Not that I ever have—the wall is strictly the territory of the cool and the privileged.

  What else can I tell you about Eldridge Alternative? Well, for one thing, we’re all very creative. Some of us are rich, and a lot of us don’t take tests well. Otherwise, our parents would have put us into a better private school or one of those public schools where they’re always winning science prizes.

  A lot of t
he teachers are into “relating.” They don’t yell, they talk. They don’t punish, they find out what’s going on. They want us to feel that they’re one of us—like that’s such a great thing to be.

  When I reach the entrance to the school, I can see a lot of my fellow freshmen hanging out on the street. The rest of the school won’t turn up until noon, because the first part of the day is reserved for Freshman Orientation. Which means we’ll get a big talk on how IMPORTANT everything is now. How our grades are IMPORTANT, how our test scores are IMPORTANT, how our school record is IMPORTANT. Then we sign up for classes. Then we make appointments with the school college advisor to plan out the next four years of our lives so we can get into a great school that looks good on Eldridge’s record. That, I think, is what’s most IMPORTANT to Eldridge.

  Looking at the crowd outside, I can see all these people I sort of know and sort of don’t. I have no idea if I say hi to them they will say hi back. In the end, I decide to play it safe: say nothing. Instead, I just put my head down and charge up the stairs, like some criminal going up the courtroom steps in a movie.

  Sari and I have agreed to meet by the third-floor bathroom. My mission is to reach the third floor without running into anyone who will make me barf upon encounter.

  By which I mean the Prada Mafia.

  The Prada Mafia is the clique of five or six girls whose goal in life is to wear nothing but Prada. Not really up there with ending world hunger or finding the cure for cancer. They are all very rich, and their combined IQ is roughly equivalent to that of a kumquat. They think they rule our class—and unfortunately, they do.

  Their leader is this chick named Erica Trager. I hate Erica Trager. Not the way I kind of hate most people at school, but deeply, personally hate. She never eats—it’s like a sin. Her vocabulary is limited to, “My daddy bought me” (fill in the blank with designer clothes, cell phones, computers, ski trips, you name it). And she’s nasty. The kind of person who has friends just to put them down. “Are you sure you should eat that?” she says to her lamebrained sorority sisters. “Were we a little color blind when we got dressed this morning?” She’s the kind of person who gives females a bad name, if you know what I mean.

  No sign of Erica or the Prada Mafia, so it seems safe to proceed to the third floor. Dash up the stairs. Pause. Check that the coast is clear through the glass window in the door. (No sign of Prada, chief. You’re good to go.) Push door open and race to the lockers by the third-floor girls’ bathroom. Slump against locker, try to look like I have been there for hours and am already bored.

  Now I’m seeing a lot of people I know. I nod to Liza Kleinberg, who’s our resident poet. I smile a little bit at Nicky Patterson and Zoe Haas. Nicky’s really tall and thin and has this quiet voice. Zoe is short and fat and has a very loud voice. They’ve been best friends for as long as I can remember. Sari says Nicky is gay, but I don’t see how she knows.

  It’s so weird—it’s only been three months since I saw all these guys, and they feel like total strangers. I wonder how I seem to them.

  Probably not all that important.

  If you want to know where I fall on the social status scale, just look down. Way down. When you get to the level of Repugnant and Reviled, start looking up again till you get to Weird and Ignored. That’s me. My parents don’t like to hear this, but it’s a fact of life at Eldridge that if you have half a brain, those who are popular will make your life miserable. If you think there’s more to life than money and designer clothes, they will torture you. Needless to say, a fanatical sci-fi nerd is not their idea of cool.

  Still, even I am not uncool enough to be pleased that the first person to speak to me is Danny Oriel.

  It’s not that I don’t like Danny. I do. It’s just that he’s … embarrassing. He thinks we’re friends, and I keep wanting to tell him, We’re not. I’m just one of the few people on the planet who will speak to you.

  Hollow Planet is the reason why Danny thinks we’re friends. Last year, he caught me reading volume four of Hollow Planet in hardcover, and he said, “They’re making a movie, you know.” And I said, “It’ll suck.” And he said, “Yeah, Hollywood ruins everything good.” And that was kind of that. See, Danny is the only other person at school who’s as big a Hollow Planet freak as I am—and who will admit it. He never pretends to be above it. That is one thing I can say about him: He’s honest that way. But frankly, he should be, because Hollow Planet is his entire existence.

  For example, instead of saying hello to me like a normal person, the first thing he says is, “Only two hundred and fifty-three more days until Hollow Planet: The Film comes out.”

  I say, “You don’t know when it’s coming out, Danny. They haven’t set a release date yet.”

  He shakes his head. “No. I read it on HolPlan.com. Some guy has a brother who works in the mail room in the studio where they’re making it, and he says …”

  If honesty is a nice thing about Danny, boringness is definitely a big drawback. He can just go on and on and on until you want to smack him. Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what makes a person weird and what makes them a nerd. The difference? Nerds talk too much.

  In fact, he’s such a gumball, I decide to play with his mind a little.

  “Well, here’s what I heard. They’re killing off Thor.”

  Danny’s mouth falls open. “No way. Where’d you hear that?”

  “Cinescape.”

  “It’s gotta be wrong.”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Totally confirmed.”

  “Oh, man.” Danny slaps his fist into his palm. “The movie’s gonna suck.”

  For the record, Danny is unable to say the word “suck” with any authority. Same with “Oh, man.”

  I nod sadly. “Yep, I know.”

  Just then, I see Sari coming through the crowd. She’s smiling and waving at me. But when she sees Danny, she gets this look like she’s one of those chicks in a horror movie and the psycho killer has jumped out at her with a huge knife.

  Slowly, like she’s creeping up to zap Danny with bug spray, she approaches, then gives me a huge hug. “Hey …”

  The she gives Danny a fast smile. “Hi.”

  “Oh, hey, Sari.” Danny smiles back, then looks down at his feet. Sari has that effect on boys. Especially Nerdboy.

  Sari asks Danny how his summer was. He starts telling her. (I can sum it up for you in a single word: “boring.”) Sari’s nodding and smiling. But then she starts giving me this desperate look, like, I am not going to be seen hanging out with Danny Oriel on the first day of school. Do something NOW.

  Immediately, I say, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Right,” says Sari. “Me too.”

  Saying, “Sorry, Danny, see you later, Danny,” we disappear into the girls’ room. As I close the door, Sari slumps against the wall and shudders. “Phew. I mean, I’m sorry, but … creepy Geekboy alert.”

  I say, “He’s harmless.”

  “Exactly.” Sari gives me a last shudder, then starts checking herself out in the mirror. We have to go to orientation in a few minutes. God forbid she walk in looking less than fabulous.

  I have no interest in looking fabulous, so I decide to check out the graffiti on the bathroom wall. The place is like Gossip Central. Check out the stalls, and you’ll find out anything you want to know about Eldridge Alternative.

  Even though the janitors have tried really hard to wash the old messages off over the summer, you can still see a few:

  Thea David BIG TIME!

  Does anyone think Mr. Kenin smells, or is it just me? (Right near this: God yes! and No, it’s just you.)

  In need of weed? Go to Reed.

  It’s also an excellent place to get dirt on teachers—who’s okay and who blows. There’s a lot about Mr. Barry, one of the English teachers, a Hey, I’m one of you type of guy. Opinion is definitely split on Barry:

  Barry rules!

  Barry sucks!

  Barry inhales.


  I’m just checking out what’s left of last year’s messages when the door opens and my worst nightmare comes true. We are besieged by the Prada Mafia.

  Erica Trager and her cronies take over the bathroom like they own it. (Well, don’t they own everything? Of course. Mummy and Daddy buy it for them.) Me they totally ignore. I’m not even worth their contempt. But they all stop and sneer when they see Sari.

  It’s funny—you might think the Prada Mafia would be nicer to Sari. I mean, she at least gets the whole clothes-and-guys thing. But for some reason, ever since last year, they’ve been particularly nasty to her.

  Here’s what I think it’s about: hotness. Hotness matters. Everyone tries to tell you it doesn’t, but it does. It’s like money. Some people have it, some people don’t. Sari is hot. And a lot of girls don’t like her because of it. Not if they have pretensions to hotness themselves. If you think you are hot but are in fact not hot, Sari lets you know it. Not that she ever says anything. She just kind of shows you what it’s about.

  People like the Prada Mafia think she’s slutty. But they don’t know anything about her.

  I, of course, have no pretensions to hotness, so I have nothing to fear from Sari. Which is why I know that she’s nice and funny and a little crazy, and very few other people do.

  Erica and her little crew just kind of hang back, making it clear they won’t touch a thing until we vacate the premises with our unclean selves. Which we do. As we go, Sari gives them this look, like, Oh, my God, something SMELLS.

  When we’re outside, she says, “Hate them.”

  And I say, “Destroy them.”

  I glance back toward the bathroom. I wish I’d had the guts to do something. Spray them or something. Erica is such a cockroach. She definitely deserves to get zapped with Raid.

  We head to the Little Eldridge Theater for the dreaded orientation. Which is exactly as obnoxious as I thought it would be. At the end of it, Peter McElroy, our college admissions counselor, gets up onstage. He is here to enlighten us about freshman year. Here is what he has to say: