Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

“Same thing here.” Maya applies more kohl. “They act like I’m some kind of freak because I care about stuff. My Uncle Morty said that I sounded like one of those fanatical environmentalists! You know, like Clemens the Lemon? I said, ‘Excuse me, but do I look like a nerd?’”

“Exactly,” agrees Alice. “You just have to show a little concern or think a little differently and they get all warped.”

“Two hundred and thirty-six plastic bags,” says Maya. “My grandmother has two hundred and thirty-six plastic bags under the kitchen sink. I counted them.”

Alice whistles. “Jumping Jehoshaphat. That’s got to be some kind of record.”

Maya pulls roughly at clumps of her hair. The effect of her haircut is supposed to be funky and windblown, not flat and blown over. “That’s what I mean, you know? They all act like there’s nothing wrong with the world. It’s like Gran doesn’t even know that we have an environment, never mind that it’s going to be buried in plastic thanks to people like her.”

“What about the food?” Alice stretches her eyes and rolls mascara on the lashes. “Did they get on your case about the food?”

“Are you kidding?” Maya shakes her head in a speculative kind of way. “It was like the soundtrack for the whole visit.” She almost has to heave herself onto the sink to make certain her eyes aren’t smudged. “What do you eat if you don’t eat meat? How do you get any protein? Oh, you have to try the ham, Gran’s been baking it for the last 200 years.”

“Praise the Lord for inventing fish and chicken.” Alice, like Maya, is a practising vegetarian – though some, of course, might say that they could practise a little harder. “I would’ve starved to death or been mercilessly nagged into eating some poor cow if it wasn’t for them. Because, trust me, the Pittsburgh Shimons do not do tofu.”

“The Vermont Baraberras do not—”

Maya breaks off as the door to the restroom is suddenly flung open. She and Alice both turn to see who it is.

“Talk about what’s wrong with the world,” mutters Alice.

“The Barbie doll made flesh,” mumbles Maya.

Strictly speaking, the new arrival is neither of those things. It is Sicilee Kewe.

Although Maya and Alice are staring right at her, they don’t acknowledge her presence by so much as the flicker of an eye. There is nothing unusual in this. They may live in the same country, in the same state, in the same town and go to the same school as Sicilee Kewe, but they might as well live on different planets. And rather wish that they did.

Sicilee is smiling, of course, but it is a smile that goes a long way towards redefining both loathing and insincerity.

“Sweet Mary,” Sicilee says, not quite under her breath. “The dipster hipsters.” And for the second time that morning, turns and flees.

It is almost time for the school day to officially begin. People are shuffling down the corridors towards their classrooms, but the main hall still reverberates with talk and laughter, punctuated by the slamming of lockers and the hurrying of feet on the stairs. Just like on any other morning of the school year.

Indeed, up until now there has been nothing to suggest that this day is anything but a normal day. No cauldron of witches muttering prophecies behind the library. No shower of tree frogs over the football field. No abnormal celestial activity of the sort that suggests some earth-shaking event is about to take place. Even Maya, who is sometimes known for them, hasn’t had one of her hunches.

But then, only minutes before the homeroom bell, the door to the office suddenly opens and a boy steps through – rather like the last person arriving at a party being held in his honour.

For the sake of our story, I have to say here that – based on first impressions – this boy is no ordinary boy. Not an ordinary Clifton Springs boy, at any rate. It could be argued, of course, that any newcomer is going to stand out next to boys you’ve known since kindergarten, but it isn’t simply a question of novelty. To begin with, he is closer to beautiful than handsome: full, sensuous mouth and nose; large eyes so heavily lashed he might be wearing mascara; strong chin and brow; straight black hair. His are the kind of impossible good looks that make even the least impressionable of people think, My God! Is that what humans are supposed to look like? To match that, he has an air of effortless, almost alien, cool, standing there among the jeans in his vintage pinstriped suit (no tie) and plain black T-shirt, like a visiting prince – a canvas book bag casually flung over his shoulder and a class schedule, personally filled out for him by Mrs Skwill, the overworked administrative assistant, in his hand. He shows none of the awkwardness or nervousness most of us exhibit when we walk into a crowd of strangers, but pauses for a few seconds, his eyes calmly scanning his new schoolmates, smiling amiably if vaguely, apparently completely at ease. As he starts to stride nonchalantly across the hall, one eye on the schedule he’s holding and the other on the sign that says Rooms 1–20, his new classmates turn – very much as though he is a magnet and their heads are made of iron filings – as their attention is caught. It would be an obvious exaggeration to say that jaws drop and breaths are held, but it wouldn’t be much of one.

It is, of course, a gloomy day, at a gloomy time of year. Which may explain why news of the arrival of a mysterious stranger in their midst will spread through the school like a wildfire raging across drought-dry plains. Speculation about the new boy starts spontaneously and immediately. He’s stinking rich. He’s a world-class athlete. His GPA is 4.0. He only dates models and movie stars. His mother’s really famous. His father’s in the CIA. He isn’t from America. He speaks ten languages fluently. The only word he knows in English is “hello”. Within an hour, boys who haven’t seen him yet are making jokes about him; boys who haven’t met him have decided whether they like him or not. Within an hour, girls who haven’t seen him yet could pick him out of a police line-up. Girls who have seen him walk through the hallways tense as a dog that’s just caught a whiff of rabbit.

In time, of course, the speculation will be replaced by facts. They will know his name, where he comes from, where he lives and his ethnic background – plus enough trivial information to fill a quiz – but for now all anyone knows for sure is that he wasn’t here before, and now he is.

Maya, descending the stairs with Alice beside her, comes to an abrupt stop. The moment she first sees the new kid is like no other moment in her life. She feels the way someone who has never seen a body of water bigger than a wading pool might feel when she first sees the ocean. And to think how close she came this morning to putting on her silver feather earrings instead of the empowering crystals. She actually had them in her hand. It’s as if some part of her knew that today would be special and she should be prepared.

“Gott im Himmel,” murmurs Maya. “Where did he come from?”

“Not around here,” Alice murmurs back.

Waneeda, going with her friend to deposit the leftover flyers in Joy Marie’s locker, also stops fairly abruptly.

In much the way that someone living on the Arctic tundra never thinks about climbing palm trees or skinny dipping, Waneeda has never shown any interest in boys. As many girls do, she has had the occasional crush on a musician or movie star – boys so far removed from her that they don’t really exist – but she’s never had a crush on someone who walks the same streets and breathes the same air that she does. Until, that is, the moment when the newest member of the student body, glancing at the paper in his hand, drifts past her like a satellite.

“Who is that?” whispers Waneeda. Joy Marie, who hasn’t stopped abruptly, doesn’t answer her, of course. And, echoing the words of Alice Shimon for the first and last time in her life, Waneeda adds, “He can’t be from around here.”

Even she and Joy Marie would have noticed if he were.

Sicilee, in a clutch in one corner with Kristin, Ash and Loretta, is recounting her adventures trying to find a friendly restroom when Ash suddenly interrupts her with a slightly high-pitched, “Oh my God! Will you look at that?”

“Whoowhee…” says Loretta. “Do you think he’s just visiting from the Planet Drop-dead-gorgeous or do you think he’s ours?”

Sicilee and Kristin both turn to see what the fuss is about.

It’s just as well that Sicilee is standing still, because the second her eyes fall on the boy in the pinstriped suit, her heart (metaphorically, if not literally) falls at his feet as if it’s been shot.

“Sweet Mary,” sighs Sicilee, and she squeezes Kristin’s arm.

Sicilee is the kind of girl who likes to get what she wants when she wants it. Not hours later. Not tomorrow. Now. Right now, what Sicilee wants is to find out everything about the new kid that she can and then, armed with this information, introduce herself and stake her claim.

So instead of going to her first class, Sicilee spends over fifteen minutes in the girls’ restroom, texting her network of friends. HV U SN TH NW KD? WHR? KP ME PSTD. Needless to say, since the others are all in class and not hiding out in toilets around the school, she receives no immediate reply.

Sicilee’s next stop is the office for a late pass.

“It was a female thing, if you know what I mean,” she confides in a conspiratorial whisper to Mrs Skwill. “If I could’ve gone to my class first, I would totally have done that. But I just couldn’t. It was a super emergency. It was like the time my mom took me to New York to see The Phantom of the Opera? And this pigeon dropped one right on her head as we came out of the hotel? So even though we knew we were going to be late and everybody was going to be really annoyed, we had to go back inside so she could wash her hair.”

Mrs Skwill is one of the many people on whom Sicilee’s smile always works.

“Don’t you worry, honey,” she assures her. “I’ll write you a note.”

“That is so super nice of you,” Sicilee gushes. “I know how busy you are. The first day back and everything … and everybody depending on you… It must be just, like, crazy.”

Mrs Skwill agrees that it has been a busy morning. There was a leak in the science block. There was a burst pipe in the gym. The main photocopier wouldn’t start. Several files were missing. Two teachers are out with flu. And, on top of everything else, there was the new student to look after.

Sicilee’s smile switches from sisterly sympathy to girlish bewilderment. She tilts her head and leans into the counter. “New student? Really? Who’s that?”

*   *   *

Kristin is waiting for her at the top of the north-east staircase for the walk to their English class.

“Well?” demands Sicilee. “What did you find out?”

“Not much.” Kristin hooks an arm through Sicilee’s as they start their descent. “Ariadne saw him in that new deli – the Portuguese one? – on Sunday so she figures he probably lives out by her, but otherwise that’s all the news that’s fit to print so far. He’s like the Lone Ranger, but without the mask and the faithful companion. What about you?”

Sicilee’s smile is undimmed by any attempt at humility. “His name’s Cody Lightfoot. He’s in our class. He’s an honour student. He comes from Northern California. He was living with his mother – she’s some kind of journalist – but she got a job in England, so he’s moved out here to live with his dad. Mrs Skwill says that his dad’s a professor at the university, but she wasn’t sure what the dad teaches, maybe anthropology. And besides being extremely good looking and smart, Cody’s a mechanical expert too because he got that Xerox machine that’s always breaking down going in less than a minute.”

Kristin whistles. “I swear, girl, you really should be a spy.”

Sicilee’s eyes (which, unlike her mouth, are not smiling) are on her phone. “This is unbelievable. Nobody knows where he is.” If she were a spy, she would probably find herself behind enemy lines with no back-up. “Nobody’s in his homeroom. Nobody’s in his first class.” How is this possible? She knows more people by name than the librarian. “Sweet Mary, nobody’s even passed him in the hall.” Forget the Lone Ranger; this is obviously the Invisible Man.