The Other Girl: A Midvale Academy Novel Read online

  “You just said that there’s an ATAT scholarship. That’s great. But how do I even know I would get it?”

  “Because I would make sure you did. I know how quick you are. I know how you absorb information. You will be the best one on ATAT, and, frankly, I don’t want to be rude, but it’s a lot of money, and aren’t you…”

  “On partial scholarship? From Buffalo? White trash, compared to most people here? Yes to all three. But I still don’t know that I want to give up every single night of my life to ATAT. I have a lot going on.”

  She didn’t look mad. She just gave me that weird, trancy look again, like she was mystified by my reactions.

  “Can I think about it over break?” I said, knowing full well all I was going to think about over break was Gideon. I couldn’t help but steal another glance. Anyone who has ever had a cute boy wait for her with an expression of total longing knows it is way better than free college.

  “I just don’t know why you care,” I said. “I mean, I am fine. I am clearly going to go to college.”

  She looked away. She was going to let me go. I stood up, testing her.

  Spying me, Gid jumped up and down. The Hat That Changes Everything flapped like little puppy dog ears. I couldn’t wait to just run outside to hug him, and to smell the clean soap scent of his warm neck and shoulder. I cleared my throat of whatever fear was left in it, of the small part of me that still didn’t want to defy an adult who was asking me to do something.

  “So am I in trouble?” I said. “Do I have to do anything?”

  “You will get written up,” she said. “The standard information.” I wanted her to roll her eyes to let me know that she thought that stuff was bullshit, but she didn’t. Instead, she picked up that giant pile of papers she’d taken out and put it on my lap.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “Do you have a camera on your phone, Molly?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, confused.

  “You’re going to take this home with you. It’s just a lot of information, for ATAT. And you’re going to take a photo of yourself getting on the train with it, which is how I will know you’ve taken it with you.”

  I shifted. The thing was giving me a cramp. “Why is it so important to you to see me go to Harvard or whatever instead of Buffalo State, which is, I might add, a very good school?”

  “I care because there is nothing in this world more foolish than seeing a smart girl throw her life away for love.” I kind of expected her to be smirking at me, but she wasn’t. She was totally serious.

  “What would you say if I told you I thought that love was life?” I said. “And that this”—I indicated the giant package of paper in my hand—“was just a bunch of words?”

  She finally smiled. “I would say that you were sixteen,” she said.

  She didn’t get it.

  Whatever. Whenever someone didn’t get it, I felt the cord, that actual connection between Gid and me, even stronger. Right now it tugged me and I ran outside.

  I took the stairs two at a time. Gideon was waiting for me. His mind went in a loop, like a crazy polar bear walking in circles at the zoo: Molly’s almost done. I should go. But I want to see her now. She looked hot today. Maybe we can do it in the chapel later? Probably doesn’t fit in with the keeping-a-low-profile plan. Cockweed is such a dick. The chapel—will I ever have sex there?

  Then he thought, Wire, fruit. Wow, it is like wire and fruit. I can’t wait to tell that to Cullen and Nicholas. Wow, and what kind of fruit? Coconut? Too obvious.

  Wire and fruit? He couldn’t wait to tell what to Cullen and Nicolas about wire and fruit? Why would they care about wire and fruit?

  Wire and fruit. Apples? Or more like grapefruits?

  “Oh, Geedeon…ow a-hare you? You look sad. I mean, you steel look cute. But a leetle sad.”

  Twenty feet from the door were my boyfriend and Pilar Benitez-Jones. My boyfriend had made a poetic and accurate assessment: her body was so sinewy and so curvy that it looked like it was made out of wire and fruit. Cleavage strained at the limits of a white button-down shirt. Lustrous hair cascaded down her back, and her black pants were snug in all the right places.

  Pilar saw me. She greeted me, two rows of gleaming white teeth inside a red, sensuous mouth. “Hi, Molly,” she said. The smile deepened to the point of absurdity.

  “Hi, Pilar,” I said, with a smile that was about a ninetieth of her smile’s wattage. I was pleased when she took a step backward, away from Gideon. She teetered attractively on high-heeled suede boots, but the step was still slightly awkward, a clear relinquishing of turf.

  I positioned myself next to Gid in the space she had left. Out of habit, his hand found the small of my back. His brain still played with his whole wire and fruit revelation. I had gotten used to these moments. Gid was a guy, after all, and sometimes he checked out other girls. And usually, the other girl he checked out was her.

  I smiled at him. “Hey, Gid.”

  He smiled back. “Hey, Molly.” Any other girl would have seen nothing but devotion in the look he gave me. It was pretty good. But his left eye, five or ten degrees off, was on Pilar.

  “Oh my God,” Pilar said. “What is for that giant pile of papers?”

  “Ugh,” I said. “Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan is having some kind of Mr. Chips meltdown and wants me to be on ATAT.”

  Pilar just said, “Ewww, boring.”

  I nodded. “Yup.” Fuck you, I thought, you’re pretty but you’re stupid, and you know it.

  Gid thought, Pilar’s breasts remind me of a poster I had in fifth grade with these kittens hanging out of a basket. The Midvale bell sounded: the two-minute warning for the first class.

  Pilar said, “Where are you guys going for Espring Break?”

  “We’re going to Molly’s parents’ house,” Gid said. His hand now rubbed my back. I saw Pilar see it. I saw her eyes narrow just the tiniest bit.

  “Ah,” Pilar said. “That sounds sooo fun. Where is their house?”

  “Buffalo,” I said.

  “Wow, eesn’t it really cold there?” Pilar shivered theatrically.

  “Buffalo’s average winter temperatures are ten to twelve degrees colder than those in the greater Boston area,” I said, sounding like a loser weather nerd on purpose.

  Pilar pursed her lips and shook her head. “I don’t understand why for when everyone wants to get warm, you go to a place that maybe is colder?” She looked at Gideon. Gideon looked at me.

  “It’s where my parents live,” I explained.

  Pilar didn’t seem to find this information helpful. “OK,” she said, “but don’t they have another house?”

  It was hard to tell whether she was being mean or just honestly couldn’t comprehend—as so many Midvale students could not—how I didn’t have another house or know the difference between the Club 55 and the Le Voile Rouge in St. Tropez, or how I could in fact know that two-ply cashmere from Scotland was much softer that the $69 Chinese special at Nordstrom Rack but still buy the cheap one. But I wasn’t going to sacrifice any dignity by acting offended. “No, just one house,” I said.

  Pilar didn’t know what to say, and she did something pretty girls do a lot when they don’t know what to say. They shrug and go up on their tiptoes.

  Gid thought, Kittens hanging out of a basket with really big heads.

  “Hi guys.” Madison Sprague came sauntering up. We exchanged weak smiles. Madison wasn’t my favorite. She was skinny and fashiony and vapid, but not bubbly vapid like Jessica Simpson. Mean, sneery vapid like a not-famous model.

  “Hey,” she said, in her listless, over-it voice. “What’s up?”

  “We’re just talking about Buffalo,” Gid said.

  “Ohh,” Madison cooed. “Rust Belt chic.” She fluffed her hair, which was dark and streaked with dramatic stripes of white. She toyed with one of her hoop earrings. “OK, bye,” she said to Pilar and walked away without even looking at me or Gid.

  “I’m coming with you,” Pilar c
alled after her. “We have a lot to do. Madison and I are going to California, yes?”

  “California,” I said, “yes.”

  Gideon gave me a “behave” look. Pilar didn’t notice and prattled on.

  “We are trying to get a job. Well, an eenternship with a film producer. He went to Midvale and ees very, very cool. He has a lot of projects we can help him with.”

  Internships. Low-paying or unpaid jobs that got you fancy jobs later. While people like me who had to actually earn that thing called money had to work selling concessions at the little park across from the Albright-Knox, the big art museum in Buffalo. And I wondered what kind of help Madison and Pilar could offer, other than maybe showing someone how to use express checkout on Sephora.com.

  Pilar gave Gid a coy look. “You have a good vacation, OK?” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Through Gideon’s own slightly quivering nostrils, into his mind, and then, unfortunately, into mine, traveled her heady scent, a mix of smoke, Creed, Crème de la Mer, and Frederick Fekkai Only for Brunettes conditioner. She squeezed her eyes at me. “Bye,” she said.

  “Take care,” I said.

  And she wandered off, Gid’s hand stayed on my back, and he thought, Pilar is hot, it’s just a fact. It’s a fact, and it’s not a big deal.

  Then he turned away and abruptly thought, God, Molly is really cute.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “You don’t still feel weird around Pilar do you?”

  “Oh,” I said. “No. She just bugs me.”

  “She’s really not that bad. I think if you were friends with her you’d see that—”

  I interrupted him. “That she was really nice and smart and cool? That’s OK. I think I’ll just live in ignorance and hatred.”

  He laughed. I loved it when I made bitchy comments like that and he laughed.

  All his attention, all of it, was on me. I could feel it, I could see it. Not one corner of his brain retained even a memory of Pilar.

  But it was awful seeing him look at her like that. I could make jokes about it, but it wasn’t a joke. Every time I saw her I felt afraid of what she could do to us.

  I couldn’t help thinking about what Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan had said about girls throwing their lives away for guys. What if I loved Gideon with everything I had and he ended up dumping me…or worse, what if he dumped me for Pilar?

  But…well. She was out of his head now. I was the one there now. I was the one there most of the time. I knew this. And it was not really all that big a deal, right? Noticing other girls was just what guys did.

  “Gid, were you just checking out Pilar?”

  Gid looked at me, like, are you crazy? “Molly,” he said, “Pilar’s pretty, OK? But I don’t…I don’t love Pilar. I love you.”

  He believed himself so I had to believe him too.

  Chapter Three

  Gideon could never be sure if Pilar Benitez-Jones was really into him, and with all I knew—which was, let’s remember, everything he knew plus feminine insight—I couldn’t figure it out myself.

  Here were the facts: she had flirted with him a lot. They had spent a night in the same bed once, but it was at a party where lots of people were crashing all over the place. OK, his roommates crashed with their penises inside actual girls, but whatever—teenagers, especially drunk ones, often slept in the same bed with friends of the opposite sex without having sex with them.

  The biggest moment in their relationship happened over Thanksgiving vacation. Pilar and Gid had ended up in the same bar together in New York. Drinks were consumed. Ultimately, Pilar had invited Gid back to her parents’ pied-à-tierre to have sex with him. Gideon was naturally thrilled until Madison tumbled out of the closet with a camcorder. They knew Gid was a virgin, and they were taping his deflowering. If they were going to watch it themselves, maybe Gid would have been flattered. But they were only doing it for the expressed purpose of sending the tape to Madison’s ex-boyfriend, Hal, a minor rock star who liked to watch homemade porn of guys losing their virginity.

  And this is when Gid came up to see me in Buffalo, and he lost his virginity to me. And I didn’t tape it, because I was just that classy.

  Pilar and Gideon’s little flirtation died down for a while after. Understandably—it’s not easy for a relationship to recover from one party’s secretly videotaping the other. Every week or two Pilar and Gid had a little chat like they had this morning, and then I would think about it. A lot.

  This time, I finally got sick of thinking about them sometime after dinner.

  I took out a pile of all the tests and papers I’d gotten back over the past two months. Gid was asleep, dreaming of nothing very invasive. I thought about just how much our relationship had wreaked havoc on my life since the beginning of the school year, when he first entered my head. That was early September. By October I’d fallen in love with him. By December I’d managed to get us to go out. It wasn’t easy, with Pilar sort of after him. I had won. And I’d been winning for four months now. And let me tell you, if you graphed my grades around our relationship, you could see a very distinct pattern. When things were going well with him, and I wasn’t seeing much thinking-about-Pilar activity, I was in the low A, high B range. When things were weird, I tended to get B minuses. Worst of all were the weeks where everything was super romantic lovey-dovey amazing. Those weeks were Cs.

  I looked over at Edie, wishing she’d sense that I wanted to talk. But she was deep in her book. Edie and I had lived together since the second semester of ninth grade, and we had lived with this girl named Marcy Proctor, but she finally left last semester for her own single because we wouldn’t let her listen to music while we studied. Our room was sort of a monument to not totally uncool but not particularly cool intellectualness. We’d added more bookshelves to the ones already supplied by Midvale. Between our two beds were framed posters for our favorite movies—mine was Chinatown and Edie’s was Anchorman. If we’d gone to a bigger school with more normal people, we’d probably both be considered pretty. But here, at this quasi country club, I think being smart made us look uglier than we actually were. Though now that I was going out with someone sort of cool, I, and by association Edie, had status-jumped.

  Edie was really small. She wore a size extra small and still had to have things taken in and shortened. She had dirty blond hair and bangs. Over enormous green eyes she wore enormous glasses that were that fine line between geek and fashionable. Edie truly didn’t give a shit about anything except her mind. Watching her right now, with her brow furrowed over her book and her eyes squinting in concentration, I thought of how I used to be exactly like her, and how that similarity made us become friends.

  But now there was tension between us. It used to be so easy to talk to her. Now I was reduced to sighing really loudly, until she finally looked up and said, “Is something wrong?”

  Her voice wasn’t that warm. It was as unimaginable to me that we were not superclose anymore as it was that I was holding a lap of mediocre grades, but the evidence was just as concrete.

  “I’m not really doing that well in school,” I said.

  Edie looked back at her book. “Do you care?” she said.

  I was hurt by her distance, but I couldn’t complain. Not when, two, three, sometimes four nights a week Gid snuck in and she dutifully crept down the hall with a pillow and quilt to sleep in the big closet off the common room.

  “I think I care a little bit,” I said.

  She appeared to be deep in thought. Then she said, “So try harder,” and went back to her book.

  I really wanted to tell her I was in Gid’s mind. Edie wasn’t a judgmental person. I really shouldn’t be grouping her in with the rest of Midvale, all those people I thought would think less of me if they knew that I was inside Gid’s mind, that I had tricked him into loving me. Edie had been my friend long before I even knew Gid existed. But it was a secret I liked to hold close to my heart. If I told anyone, if any one person in the world knew the truth, then it would bec
ome real.

  I’m not saying I ever tried to pretend this wasn’t happening to me. But it was like I had two lives. The one in the world, and the one in Gid’s head.

  I sensed that a collision would be disastrous.

  I tried to think of a way to talk more without mentioning the real issue. “There’s something satisfying about bad grades, isn’t there, Edie? I mean, they are very clearly a sign that something has gone wrong. They aren’t ambiguous.”

  Again she didn’t look up from her book, and I thought I had blown it. But then she smiled. “Yes,” she said. “You can’t pretend you don’t know what’s going on,” she said. She shook her head at the book. “Dostoyevsky is totally overrated,” she said. “It’s like, right, the guy’s a lunatic. I get it.”

  I laughed.

  “Is Gideon coming tonight? It’s OK if he is, I just want to know so I can charge my flashlight.”

  I hesitated. On nights when I knew he’d been thinking about Pilar or seen her looking particularly hot I generally tried to get him to come over, to remind him of what he already had. But I did have a physics test tomorrow, and if I studied and got an A, that would be a morale booster. Plus, me here with my book, Edie alternately reading and bitching about her novel—it wasn’t quite like old times, but maybe it could get back there if I invested a bit. And though it didn’t feel as good as being with Gid, it was nice. “No,” I said. “No activities tonight. Just studying.”

  Edie nodded. “I’ll just do it anyway,” she said. She rummaged in a plastic crate under her bed and plugged a metal flashlight into the charger on the wall.

  “OK,” I said. “You don’t have to.”

  I was so relieved when she smiled. “It’s fine,” she said. “I mean, I might as well charge it, right?”

  We went back to our books.

  It started to rain. It was cozy in that little room, me with my physics, her with her novel, and again Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan’s warning echoed in my ears.

  Was I throwing my life away?

  Maybe Gid should just come over two nights a week. That was still a lot.