19. That’s So Fetch
No one ever asks Olivia H-T for her opinion. It’s just assumed by the girls on the first floor of South (which basically constitutes Olivia’s entire universe) that Olivia thinks whatever Davi thinks.
But with the announcement of the school musical, this changes.
Mr. Chuy has chosen Mean Girls. Everyone predicts that Taylor Wilson will play Cady and Davi will play Regina George. Olivia H-T will probably end up getting the part of Regina’s lackey Gretchen, which would be the definition of typecasting.
The night before tryouts, Davi shocks everyone by saying that she isn’t going out for the musical this year because she wants to focus on her studies.
Olivia H-T is hurt enough that she closes the door to her room so no one sees her tears.
Davi isn’t just choosing her studies over the musical; she’s choosing Charley over Olivia.
Davi and Charley had a random bonding moment right before the Kringle, one Olivia H-T hoped would vanish once Davi realized how truly weird Charley was.
(She’s a plant lady! A bookworm!) But in the new year, Charley has emerged victorious—not only because she has somehow won Davi’s devotion but also because she’s hanging with East, which Olivia H-T can’t believe is a real thing.
Olivia knows everyone expects her to say she’s not going out for the play either—but for once, Olivia H-T is going to do something on her own.
And guess what? She slays her audition, and despite the fact that Olivia H-T does not fit the role in either traditional beauty or social status, she is cast as Regina George.
Olivia pretends it’s no big deal as everyone on the floor—including Davi, including Charley, including Miss Bergeron—congratulates her. But as soon as she’s alone in her room, she jumps up and down, silently screaming, That’s so fetch!
Zip Zap post: The Harkness Society would like to welcome new members… Hakeem Pryce and Cassie Lee.
The newest Zip Zap post comes out on a Saturday evening in February.
Valentine’s Day has come and gone (Head Prefect Lisa Kim mentioned something about Candygrams one morning in Chapel, but then she got deferred Early Decision 2 at Tulane and was so despondent about it, she forgot to order the candy), and it’s weeks until spring break.
In other words: Welcome to Tiffin’s bleakest time of year.
Taylor Wilson receives the Zip Zap alert just like everyone else.
Hakeem and Cassie have joined the Harkness Society.
Taylor isn’t sure why she’s so jealous. Hakeem and Cassie are always breaking the No PDA rule (forbidden: page 3 of The Bridle ) and making out in the halls of the Schoolhouse, so joining the Harkness Society is the obvious next step.
Taylor supposes she’s jealous because Hakeem has now lost his virginity and Taylor hasn’t. She hasn’t even come close.
The alert addles Taylor so much that she considers going home for the weekend, but home is Philadelphia, which isn’t realistic.
So instead, Taylor plucks a well-hidden “water” bottle from the back of her mini fridge.
It contains Casamigos tequila that she pilfered from her parents’ bar cart over the holidays.
She grabs a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa from her hanging baskets and texts Dub. I’m coming over.
K, Dub responds.
When Taylor gets to Dub’s room, he’s lying in the near-dark playing “exile” by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver.
He has the room lit only by the electric candles they used at the Kringle; he’d swiped a bunch at the end, telling Taylor they would be such a vibe in his room this winter.
He was right: They add a romantic glow to an otherwise dreary evening.
Are the music and the candlelight for her?
Oh, how she wishes this were true, but somehow she knows they’re not.
“Hey.” She closes the door because Mr. Rivera wasn’t at his post and didn’t see her come in. She plops in the middle of the floor and opens her backpack. “Trifecta,” she says. “Tequila, Late July salt and lime chips, and Mikey V’s seven-pot salsa.”
“No way.” Dub joins her on the floor. She hands him the bottle and he takes a slug. “Woof. Limes would have been nice.”
Taylor swallows some tequila herself. It’s sooooo gross. Tequila tastes like dirt and Taylor can’t understand why the world doesn’t agree with her, but it’s her parents’ preferred poison, and beggars can’t be choosers.
“You saw Zip Zap?” She pulls open the bag of chips.
“Yup.”
“I can’t believe he lost his virginity to a random third-former,” Taylor says. She dips a chip into the salsa, which sets her mouth ablaze; the discomfort is welcome.
“It wasn’t his virginity,” Dub says. “Probably hers, though.”
Taylor pulls from the tequila again. “It was his virginity.”
“No,” Dub says. “He told me he lost it to some chick at Dartmouth. The student athletic trainer. During his recruiting trip last semester.”
Involuntarily, Taylor moans.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Dub says. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to know.”
“I don’t care,” Taylor says. To prove her point, she dips another chip and chases it with more tequila.
She’s starting to feel it now. “I’m the reason he and I aren’t together anymore.
” She looks at Dub, who is staring at his knees.
Since football season, his hair has grown back all curly and wild and she longs to run her hands through it. “I don’t want Hakeem, Dub. I want…”
“Today is Cinnamon’s birthday,” Dub says. “February twenty-first. She would have been seventeen.”
“Oh god,” Taylor says. “I didn’t know.” But then she recalls the year before, Cinnamon’s sweet sixteen.
Davi made a pink balloon arch outside 111 South.
Cinnamon and Taylor had both been in rehearsals for Grease, and Dub had shown up in the auditorium with an ice cream cake from the Carvel in Haydensboro.
“It’s okay,” Dub says, though obviously it’s not okay. This explains the darkened room, the candles, the maudlin playlist. The song now playing is “Jar of Hearts.”
Taylor offers Dub the bottle again. He drinks, then attacks the chips and salsa. Taylor watches him eat the snacks she brought him; she feels like such a trad wife.
She hits the tequila for what is probably the fourth or fifth shot; she’s to the point where she doesn’t even notice how disgusting it is.
Taylor is smart like Cinnamon, she now has the lead in the musical like Cinnamon, she even considered dyeing her hair auburn over the holidays, but then decided that was psycho.
Taylor’s and Dub’s hands brush when they both reach into the chip bag; Dub pulls away, saying, “Go ahead.”
Taylor lifts his chin so he’s looking at her. “Why do you never touch me?”
Dub chugs what’s left in the water bottle, then shakes his head and gasps. “I have something to tell you,” he says. “But you can’t tell another fucking soul.”
“Okay?” Taylor says.
“Taylor.”
“Okay!” she says. “I won’t, I promise.”
He studies her, shakes his head.
“Do you not trust me? We’re best friends, Dub.”
She’s nearly drunk enough to say I love you, but not quite.
“Fuck it,” Dub says. “I have to tell someone because this thing is eating me alive.”
“What is?”
He opens the laptop on his desk. He brings up his Gmail account and scrolls through a thousand marketing messages from every athletic brand in America: Nike, Under Armour, Rawlings.
He dives all the way back into the previous spring.
Taylor makes two fists. May 20, May 17, then finally, she sees it.
May 12 from Cinnamon Peters. Subject line: DO NOT OPEN THIS FILE UNTIL THE MORNING OF OUR GRADUATION.
He clicks on the message and Taylor reads:
I mean it, Dub. Save this in the vault until May 29, 2027. You’re the only one I can trust. I love you and you’re going to be fine, I promise.
Cin.
Below is an attachment.
“What is it?” Taylor says.
“I haven’t opened it, obviously.”
“What do you think it is?” Taylor asks. “A letter, maybe, to our class?”
“I don’t know, Tay,” he says. “She asked me not to open it until next May and I’m not going to.” He runs a hand down his face. “But just having access to it is driving me fucking crazy.”
Right, Taylor thinks. It’s the ultimate clickbait: a message from beyond the grave.
It has to be a suicide note, right? An explanation?
No wonder it’s driving Dub crazy. Taylor would have opened the attachment the minute she saw it.
Cinnamon forfeited her right to tell anyone what to do when she took the pills.
But Dub, of course, doesn’t see it that way.
Dub is a person of honor and integrity who will obey Cinnamon Peters’s final wish.
“Thank you for sharing it with me,” Taylor says. “I’m a safe place.”
Dub nods solemnly and clicks out of his email. “I feel better now that you know,” he says. “I told my mom too, but that’s not the same.”
“You didn’t tell Hakeem? Or Davi?”
“Hell no.”
Taylor grabs Dub around the midsection and presses her head against his chest. His arms close around her just as she hoped, but she can feel the tension in his muscles—it’s restraint, maybe even resistance.
The reason he never touches Taylor has nothing to do with some bro code or his devotion to Hakeem.
Dub never touches her because this other thing has him all knit up.
He’s obsessed with a ghost.
When Charley walks into the ’Bred Bulletin office, she sees Grady and Levi huddled together in front of the computer. As soon as they notice her, they click out of whatever they were ogling and try to act casual.
“Where’s Ravenna?” Charley asks.
“She has rehearsal every afternoon from now until the musical,” Levi says.
That’s right, Charley thinks. Ravenna was cast in Mean Girls as the weirdo outsider Janis, a role she’s been coveting since attending theater camp on Broadway when she was ten.
“So it’s just us,” Grady says.
“What were you two doing just now?” Charley asks. “Playing video games?” Both Grady and Levi are regulars at the arcade in the Teddy.
“No,” Grady says.
“Were you… watching porn?”
“Orgasms are In,” Levi says, which makes Grady hoot.
Charley can’t believe she’s been left to babysit these two.
“Do either of you have ideas for articles?” she asks. “We should try to get an issue out before spring break.”
“Ravenna wants a review of the musical,” Grady says. “But she told me she’s going to write it herself.”
“Unbiased journalism is a hallmark of the ’Bred Bulletin, ” Charley deadpans. The boys just bob their heads. “Anything else?”
“Why do we always have to come up with ideas?” Levi asks. Clearly, Ravenna’s absence has emboldened him. “We’re third-formers. You’re a fifth-former.”
“Your life is more interesting,” Grady says. “Especially now.”
Charley doesn’t have to ask what he means. He means now that Charley has become Davi’s confidante, now that she and East are hanging out.
Charley can’t very well write an article about herself, although she’ll be the first to admit, her transition from friendless weirdo to a person who is in the company of the two most popular kids at school is newsworthy.
And yet, Charley is wary. She knows that at any moment the spell could break—Davi could drop her, or East could.
For this reason, she’s tried to remain indifferent to both Davi’s and East’s attention.
Charley and Davi study together at the Sink.
Sometimes East joins them, sometimes he doesn’t.
Some nights East texts Charley the green downward arrow and on those nights she lies to Davi, saying she’s staying in her room to read when really she’s sneaking down to the bomb shelter.
Davi never questions this and Charley knows it’s because she’s too busy guarding her own secret.
There are now calluses on Davi’s knuckles, which is a bulimia tell.
When Charley ran a gentle fingertip over the calluses, Davi snatched her hand back and said, “They’re rough from the cold. They always get like this in winter.”
“Davi,” Charley said.
Charley can sort of understand why Davi likes her. Davi is sick of everyone else on the floor, she’s tired of people like Tilly Benbow and Olivia H-T tracking her every move.
East is harder to figure out. Every night before Charley falls asleep, she wonders, Why me?
She knows he likes spending time with her and they definitely have chemistry, but doesn’t East have chemistry with everyone ?
There’s no way Charley is the only girl in his life; she figures he must have girlfriends everywhere—back in New York City for sure, maybe at other high schools and colleges.
Charley is just the person he’s passing the time with while he’s stuck at Tiffin.
The only place East ever kisses her is in the bomb shelter. “Are you embarrassed to kiss me aboveground?” she asked him one night. Her tone is light but she wants to know: Why can’t they just Intervis like other couples?
He’d kissed her eyelids, the tip of her nose, and then, very lightly, her lips. “Everyone hooks up during Intervis. Only you and I come down here. It’s our place. It’s special. Do you really want me to take you to God’s Basement and have Mr. James catch me with my hand down your pants?”
Charley had blushed; they haven’t gone that far yet.
Tiffin doesn’t have an ice hockey team but East jokes that Charley is the best goalie in the school.
She allows above-the-waist touching only, although she’s always wet straight through the crotch of her pants; she can feel East’s erection against her leg and sometimes her belly.
She wants him—but she fears that as soon as she gives it up, he’ll drop her.
With each passing day, the idea of life without East becomes more unthinkable.
For the first time, Charley understands her mother and Joey.
This kind of desire changes your brain chemistry. It makes you do stupid things.
To Grady and Levi, Charley says, “My life isn’t that interesting.” She sighs. “Ravenna likes listicles. Why don’t you guys rank every flavor of milkshake at the Grille?”
They look at her, then at the computer in front of them.
“Fine, stay here and watch more porn, what do I care? I’ll go get a milkshake.” Before she leaves the office, she tries to imagine what Ravenna would do. “No whacking off!” she calls out over her shoulder.
They’re so engrossed by the screen, they don’t even hear her.