Luckiest Girl Alive: A Novel Read online

  When I realized I was alone with Mr. Larson my cheeks blushed underneath the Cover Girl Mom said I needed and I assumed the other girls would be wearing. They weren’t.

  “You’re joining us from St. Theresa’s, am I right?” Mr. Larson hunched over his desk, shuffled through some papers.

  “Mt. St. Theresa’s.” I finally managed to zip my book bag.

  Mr. Larson looked up from his desk, and the crease in his lip deepened. “Right. Well, the book report you did was very good. Very thorough.”

  Even though I would lie in bed later, replaying this moment over and over until I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists to keep from spontaneously combusting, all I wanted to do was get out of there. I’ve never known the right thing to say, and my face probably looked like my Irish aunt’s when she has too much red wine and starts stroking my hair and telling me how much she wishes she had a daughter. “Thanks.”

  Mr. Larson smiled and his eyes disappeared. “Happy to have you in my class.”

  “Uh-huh, see you tomorrow!” I started to give a wave and changed my mind halfway through. I probably looked like I had some kind of Tourette’s tic. I’d learned about Tourette’s on a sick day, watching an episode of the Sally Jessy Raphael show.

  Mr. Larson gave me a small wave back.

  There was a broken desk a few steps outside of Mr. Larson’s classroom, and Arthur had his book bag propped up on it. He was rummaging around in there but looked up as I approached.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “My glasses,” he said by way of explanation.

  “Oh.” I slid my hands underneath the straps of my book bag and gripped tightly.

  “Do you have lunch now?” he asked.

  I nodded. But I’d planned on spending it in the library. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than that moment after paying for my food, looking around the room at the expanse of nameless faces and being forced to sit down where I wasn’t wanted because you weren’t allowed to bring food outside the cafeteria. There was so much to talk about on the first day of school, no one wanted to waste that precious gossip time by taking on the responsibility of making the new girl feel included. I got it, I would have been just as disinterested. I knew things would shift to the familiar eventually, that the curly redhead with soft blue veins in her forehead would become the girl with the highest IQ in class, who would apply early decision to Harvard and have the distinction of being the first Bradley student from the class of 2005 to be accepted. (Out of a class of seventy-one students, there would be nine overall. Main Line Magazine hadn’t determined Bradley an “exemplary” college preparatory option for nothing.) That the short, stocky soccer player with actual pecs would become the guy who had gotten a blow job from Lindsay “Biz” Hanes in his best friend’s basement last summer while his best friend watched. These faces and identities would eventually come together for me, and I would eventually become someone to everyone else too, with anecdotal lore to explain why I sat with who I sat with, why my allegiances resided where they did. But until then, I preferred to maintain my dignity by getting a head start on my Spanish homework in the library.

  “I’ll walk with you,” Arthur offered.

  He slung his lumpy backpack over one shoulder and led the way, his swollen, pale calves brushing against each other as he plodded down the stairs. I knew what it was like to have your body betray you—I was only fourteen and I already looked like a college student who needed to lose the freshman fifteen. Teenage boys were stupid though, and because I had relatively skinny arms and legs and a chest that looked pornographic in V-neck tees, they thought I had the perfect body. This despite the fact that underneath the clothes was a genetic mess that not even a prom dress–induced bout of anorexia could fix—a stomach that was rippled with fat, a belly button that winked like an Asian eye. It was the summer the tankini came into style, and never had I been more grateful for a piece of clothing in my life.

  “Are you, like, in love with Mr. Larson like every other girl here?” Arthur grinned and pushed his glasses, which he’d found, higher on his shiny nose.

  “My teachers were nuns before this. Can you blame me?”

  “A Catholic girl,” Arthur said, solemnly. They didn’t get a whole lot of my kind around here. “Where?”

  “Mt. St. Theresa Academy? I waited for his reaction, which I didn’t anticipate would be favorable. When his expression remained blank I added, “In Malvern?” Malvern was technically considered the start of the Main Line, but it was like the lowest tier of troops, shielding the generals and the captains in the cushy heart of the camp. The plebeians toeing its border prickled most storied Main Liners—Malvern wasn’t really a member of their dynasty.

  Arthur made a face. “Malvern? That’s far. Is that where you live?”

  And so started the years of explaining—no, I don’t actually live there. I live in Chester Springs, which is even farther out, crawling with commoners, and while there are beautiful old houses that would certainly be met with approval, I didn’t live in any of them.

  “How far away is that?” Arthur asked after I finished my spiel.

  “Like half an hour.” It was forty-five minutes, fifty some days, but this was another lie I learned to tell.

  Arthur and I arrived at the entrance to the cafeteria and he gestured for me to go in first. “After you.”

  I didn’t know who to be afraid of yet, so even though the cafeteria was packed and brimming with an energy that could have been interpreted as threatening, I was oblivious. I watched Arthur wave to someone and followed him when he said, “Come on.”

  The cafeteria was the confluence where the old mansion and the new school met. The lunch tables were wood, a worn shade of espresso, chipped to reveal their sandy skeletons in places. The dark, matching floors ended at a large entryway, which opened up into a newly constructed atrium with skylights, terrazzo gleaming underfoot, and floor-to-ceiling windows that watched the quad, middle schoolers roaming the grass like cattle. The food was contained in a U-shaped room that welcomed students from the old mansion with a deli bar and spat you out into the new atrium, shortly past the bony arms of recovering anorexics reaching into the salad bar for broccoli and fat-free Italian dressing.

  I followed Arthur, who stopped at a table by an antique fireplace. It looked like it hadn’t been used for years, but its soot-stained mouth suggested that the former inhabitants had appreciated it. Arthur dumped his book bag into a chair across from a girl with big brown eyes set so far apart they were practically in her sideburns. Kids called her the Shark behind her back, but her unusual eyes were actually her best feature and the thing her husband would eventually love the most about her. She was wearing bulky khakis and a white cotton sweater that gathered underneath her large breasts in a wrinkled pouch. She was flanked by another girl, chin in her hands, her long brown hair spilling over her shoulders and pooling on the table around her elbows. She was so pale I was shocked by her short skirt, that she would put her white legs on display so brazenly. Mom would have strapped me into a tanning bed before allowing me to go out with skin as blanched as that. It didn’t seem to be working against her, though. The guy next to her wore a soccer jersey that seemed mandatory next to his wholesome good looks, and his hand rested on a quadrant of her lower back that only a boyfriend would touch.

  “Yo,” Arthur said. “This is TifAni. She went to Catholic school. Be nice to her, she’s had it bad enough.”

  “Hi, TifAni!” the Shark said, brightly. She dragged a plastic spoon around the curves of an empty pudding cup, trying to scoop up any last remnants of chocolate goo.

  “Hi.”

  Arthur pointed at the Shark. “Beth.” Then the pale girl. “Sarah.” Then her boyfriend. “Teddy.”

  An a cappella of hellos. I held up my hand and said hi again.

  “Come on.” Arthur tugged my sleeve. I hooked the strap of my book bag over the edge of a chair and approached the line forming at the deli. When it was
Arthur’s turn, he ordered a whopper of a sandwich, with roast beef and turkey, three different kinds of cheese, no tomatoes, just lettuce, and enough mayo that his lunch made a squishy sound every time he bit into it. I asked for cheese, mustard, and tomato on a spinach wrap (oh, the days when we thought a wrap had fewer calories than bread). Arthur tossed two bags of chips onto his tray, but I noticed that most of the girls weren’t using, so I didn’t either. I carried my wrap and my diet Snapple to the register and waited in line to pay.

  “I like your pants.” The compliment turned me around. A girl who was at once extremely bizarre looking and attractive nodded at my orange cargo pants, which I already couldn’t wait to never wear again. She had strawberry blond hair that was so uniform in color it couldn’t be natural, large brown eyes somehow devoid of eyelashes, and skin the color of a girl who had a pool in her backyard and no summer job. In her hot pink button-down and schoolgirl-style plaid skirt that most certainly broke the fingertips rule, she was dressed in a way that defied the androgynous prep style that seemed to be so dominant among Bradley girls, but she carried herself with the air of someone who ran the show.

  “Thanks.” I beamed.

  “Are you new?” she asked. Her voice was husky, like the voiceovers in those commercials urging you to call 1-900-GIRLS now.

  Off my nod she said, “I’m Hilary.”

  “I’m TifAni.”

  “Yo, Hilary!” The booming voice came from the center of the most esteemed table in the cafeteria, crowded by boys with hair on their legs—real hair, coarse and dark like my father’s—and obedient girls to laugh when they accused each other of being any one of the following: pussy, ’tard, cocksucker.

  “Yo, Dean!” Hilary met his call.

  “Grab me some Swedish fish,” he demanded. Without a tray, Hilary’s hands were full. She tucked her Diet Coke underneath her chin and cradled a bag of pretzels in the crook of her elbow.

  “I got it!” I was up at the register and I grabbed the sack of candy before she did, paying for it along with my wrap and drink over her protests.

  “I won’t forget that,” she said, hooking her pinkie around the fish, somehow able to carry all of her purchases with just her hands now.

  I caught up with Arthur, lingering a few feet away from the cash register. The encounter, Hilary’s curiosity about me, had left my face flushed. Sometimes, a momentary truce in girlhood is much more precious than a guy you really like asking you out, sticking around even after he got the milk for free.

  “I see you’ve met one half of the HOs.”

  I looked back at Hilary tossing the bag of Swedish fish onto Dean’s lunch tray. Guys could use lunch trays. “Is she slutty?”

  “It’s an acronym for Hilary and her best friend, Olivia. That one”—he nodded to a girl with curly brown hair, laughing appreciatively as the Hairy Legs constructed a fortress out of empty French fry boats—“came up with it for their names. I don’t think they even know what an acronym is.” Arthur sighed, pleased by their ignorance. “Which just makes the whole thing even more brilliant.”

  I may not have realized that Holden Caulfield was having a mental breakdown at first, but so help me God I knew what an acronym was.

  “Are they really HOs?” I’d never heard of a girl willingly co-opting a word like that before. I’d been called a slut once, the natural jump everyone makes when you have adult breasts by the time you’re twelve, and I wept in Mom’s lap for an hour.

  “They wish they were.” The skin crinkled on the bridge of Arthur’s slick nose. “But they wouldn’t know what to do with a dick if it punched them in the face.”

  After lunch I had Chemistry, one of my least favorite subjects but exciting nonetheless because the HOs were both in my class. That excitement quickly faded when the teacher told us to pair up for an experiment that would prove that Chemistry can be cool. I looked desperately to my right, but my neighbor was already twisted in his seat, signaling to someone he wanted to be his partner. It was the same situation on the left. Happy twosomes meandered to the back of the room, and this migration revealed a fellow straggler, a boy with light brown hair and eyes that were visibly blue even from across the room. He gave me a nod and raised his eyebrows, a silent request to be his partner even though that was the only option. I nodded back and we made our way to the stations behind the rows of desks.

  “Oh good,” Mrs. Chambers said when she noticed the two of us standing next to each other, still a little unsure, “Liam and TifAni, take that last table by the window.”

  “Like we had any other choice,” Liam muttered softly, so Mrs. Chambers wouldn’t hear. “Thanks for looking out for the new people.”

  It took me a second to realize that he was also lumping himself into the “new people” category. I glanced at him. “You’re new here?”

  He shrugged, as though he assumed it was obvious.

  “I am too!” I whispered excitedly. I couldn’t believe my luck I’d ended up with him. New people are contractually obligated to look out for each other.

  “I know.” He lifted one side of his mouth into a half smile and the afternoon light caught a dimple in his cheek. Frozen like that, he could have been a poster you tear out of Tiger Beat. “You’re too pretty to be the last one picked.”

  I squeezed my thighs together, trying to smother the heat.

  Mrs. Chambers started in on a lecture about safety that didn’t interest anyone until she mentioned that if we weren’t careful, we’d walk out of here with our hair and eyebrows singed right off. I looked over my shoulder at her, realizing when I did that Hilary was watching me with her large, lashless eyes, as though she had already suffered the fate that so concerned Mrs. Chambers. I had a split second to make a decision—look away and pretend I hadn’t caught her, or smile and have some kind of nonverbal exchange that could further endear me to her. The instinct that had garnered my fleeting popularity at Mt. St. Theresa’s kicked in and I chose the latter.

  To my delight, Hilary smiled back and nudged Olivia, whispering something to her as she leaned in close. Olivia smiled too and signaled to me. “He’s hot,” Olivia mouthed, stretching her lips widely around the word “hot” and giving the slightest of nods to Liam. I quickly glanced at him to make sure he wasn’t looking and mouthed back, “I know.”

  My God, was I pleased with myself by the time the bell rang at 3:23 P.M. Only my first day, and I’d established a flirtation with the hot new guy, laid claim to him in a way that only our mutual newness could allow, and I’d bonded with the HOs. I felt like sending a flowery Hallmark card to that beast Sister John: “Dear Sister John, I’m doing so well at my new school and I found someone who I would like to take my virginity. I only have you to thank!”

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  Twenty-five, twenty-six—lift your chins!—twenty-eight—two more, make them your best!—twenty-nine, thirty.” I rocked back and rested my butt on my heels, stretching my arms out in front of me in a bid to elongate them after “running toward the burn,” the prodigal promise that I paid $325 a month to hear. I probably would have that longer, leaner body, too, if only I wasn’t so desperate to get food into my mouth by the time I get home that sometimes I don’t even take off my coat before I start pillaging the kitchen.

  “Take your weights back to the bin and set up at the bar for calf raises.” This is always the part of class that gives me the most anxiety—because I need to deposit my weights and get to my favorite spot at the bar quickly but politely, when all I want to do is elbow the slow movers out of my way. “I’m going to be on TV and I’m not here for my health, bitches!” I settle for the accidental bump, the one I typically reserve for the Singers. You know those people, just so fucking happy to be alive, bouncing down the street, buds in their ears and faces repulsive with pleasure as they belt out the lyrics to some noxious Motown classic. I’ve gotten bold, bumping them with my enormous bag as I pass by, savoring their outraged “Hey!” behind me. No one gets to be that happy
.

  I’m a little gentler in class. I wouldn’t want to alter the image the instructors have of me, one carefully crafted to impress and endear: the sweet but slightly standoffish girl who will always take the most advanced option in the thigh work portion of class, no matter how intensely her legs tremble.

  Fortunately, by the time I dropped my weights in the bins and turned around, I saw that my favorite spot was wide open. I looped my towel around the bar, placed my water bottle on the ground, and bobbed up and down on the balls of my feet, all the while pulling my stomach back toward my spine and pinching my shoulder blades together.

  The instructor said, “Nice form, Ani.”

  For an hour, I tucked, sucked in, squeezed, lifted, and pulsed. By final stretch, my limbs felt like the pad thai noodles I’m always craving, and I debated scrapping the two-mile run back to my apartment. But as I stood to return my mat to the cubbyhole in the front of the room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the front mirror, specifically of the roll bulging over the back of my tank top, and reconsidered.

  In the locker room after class, some girl who had phoned in all three of the abdominal sets said to me, “You were so good!”

  “Sorry?” I had heard her, of course.

  “During abs. That last position, I tried to let go of my legs and I couldn’t hold myself up for even one count.”

  “Well, it’s the place I need it most so I push myself as hard as possible.” I patted my tummy, swollen against my extra-small Stella McCartney for Adidas yoga pants. Ever since wedding planning began, my binges have returned to their high-school-level intensity. For the last few years, I’d been able to contain them to Sundays, and the occasional Wednesday night. Overexercising and restricting myself the rest of the week kept my weight steady at 120 pounds (willowy when you’re five ten, squat when you’re five three). My goal for the wedding, and, most important, the documentary, was 105, and knowing what I was going to have to do—and soon—to attain that seemed to be exacerbating my cravings as of late. I felt like a deranged bear storing up for anorexia.