“Me, too,” I said, eating a bite of my sandwich, which, if the girls were to be believed, was the most miraculous sandwich ever to grace the Glendale High cafeteria. I tried to ready myself for what these people, these people who did not understand, would have to say about Start.
“Did you really go to that warehouse party?” asked another guy.
“Of course she did,” said the first one. “There was a photo of her there.”
“Chava and I drove her there last night,” Sally answered proudly. “She was grounded, so she snuck out of the house. I was the getaway car.”
“That’s cool,” a girl said to Sally, in a tone like she legitimately meant it. Sally beamed. Then the girl turned to me. “So you actually DJ there?”
I tried to smile as the walls I’d built between Start and school, my real life and my dream life, came crashing down piece by piece, battered away by lacrosse sticks and mascara wands.
“I went to see her once,” Emily butted in. All eyes snapped to her. “Guys, it was so much better than a school dance.”
Everyone murmured their approval and envy of Emily’s lifestyle.
“How did you get to do that, though?” one of the guys asked me. “I mean, why you?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Luck of the draw?” But that was a lie, and I couldn’t do it; I just couldn’t leave it at that. “And I’m good at it,” I added.
Oh, you think you’re so great. You think you’re so special. You think you’re so much better than everyone else.
But no one said that. Just my own mind.
“Here’s the bit I don’t understand,” Emily began, and again everyone turned to listen to her. “Why do you write that super-depressing blog about how nobody likes you and you hate your life, wah wah, when you get to be a DJ? I wouldn’t complain that much if I were you.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” I responded. “Because I don’t actually write that blog.”
Emily paused for just a second, and then she said, “Okay, that makes more sense.”
Mr. Witt couldn’t believe that someone would write a blog pretending to be me, because he is an adult, and adults don’t do things like that. And Amelia Kindl couldn’t believe it, because she is a nice girl, and nice girls don’t do things like that either. But Emily Wallace believed it immediately. Because she’s a mean girl. So she knew exactly the things that mean girls do.
“Who writes it, then?” asked one of Emily’s friends.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Mr. Witt is supposedly trying to figure that out.”
Everyone at the table snorted as one. “Oh, yeah,” said a girl. “I bet he’ll get real far with that.”
“Remember that time he thought I’d stolen Colin’s phone?” said a guy. “Mr. Witt doesn’t know shit about how this school works.”
“Anyway, Elise,” said one of the girls, “tell us more about the club. It was hidden in a warehouse, right? How did you even find out about it?”
So I told them, sort of. I talked about Start for the rest of the lunch period, but the safe parts: what kind of music we played, how people there dressed. I didn’t mention Char, or Vicky, or anyone specific. Sally and Chava delightedly shared their celery sticks with all our guests, and contributed to the story wherever they could, like by saying, “Yeah, Elise has always liked music a lot!” and so on.
It felt good, this sense of power. I had something, or I knew something, that these kids wanted. And for that reason, they were treating me with respect. They had seen I wasn’t the person who they’d thought I was, so now they were treating me differently, like the new person who they thought I was. Perhaps this was how it felt to be popular all the time.
But power was not friendship. And these people were not my friends.
When the bell rang, everyone got up to throw away his or her trash. But before I could leave the table, Sally and Chava each grabbed one of my arms.
“Thank you,” whispered Sally.
“That was the best lunch I’ve ever had,” whispered Chava.
I guess I had managed to give them something, after all. “Thanks, guys,” I said. “Me, too.”
Sometime during last period, the PA crackled to life. “Please send Elise Dembowski to Mr. Witt’s office,” the staticky voice said. “Elise Dembowski, to Mr. Witt’s office.”
Everyone in my history class went “Oooh,” which is pretty much the only appropriate response when one of your classmates gets called into the vice principal’s office.
I don’t know what I expected to find in Mr. Witt’s office. But what I know I did not expect to see was Amelia Kindl’s friend there. The one who had won the prize for making that documentary film about people at mummy conventions.
“Oh, hey,” I said to her, and, “Hello again,” to Mr. Witt.
He replied, “Elise, we have something important to discuss with you. Marissa, would you like to start?” He gestured toward the Wrappers documentary girl.
Her face was almost as red as her crocheted scarf when she said to me, in a mechanical tone, “I wanted to apologize. For the blog. Elise Dembowski’s Super-Secret Diary.”
“What?” I said.
She looked at Mr. Witt and he nodded. “I wrote it,” she muttered.
“You…” I stared at her. She was short, with a bob cut and cat-eye glasses. Her fingernails were stubby, with chipped nail polish, and the toes of her Converse sneakers were scuffed.
“You wrote it?” I said. “Why? You don’t even know me. I didn’t even know your name until two seconds ago.” I took a breath. “How could you not even know me and still hate me enough to do something like this?”
She drew herself up to her full height, which still left her a couple inches shorter than me. “It’s postmodern,” she explained, drawing out the word as if she were speaking to someone who had only recently learned English. “It’s a piece of experimental art.”
“It’s not art,” I told her. “It’s my life.”
“Watch that tone, Elise!” Mr. Witt murmured.
“Oh, you want to hear a tone?” I asked. “Here’s one for you. ‘Nobody likes me. Why would anyone ever really like me?’ Does that tone sound familiar to you?”
A feeling was welling up inside of me, so strong that I felt it spilling out of my eyes and mouth and nose. It was strong, but it was nothing I was accustomed to, so it took me a moment to identify it.
I was angry. Not at myself. I was angry at someone else.
“It’s an exercise in storytelling,” Marissa appealed to Mr. Witt. “Trying to get in the mind-set of someone else, trying to see the world through their eyes.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what my mind-set is,” I said.
“I’m using the blog as part of my application for the Gutenstein arts fellowship,” Marissa said to Mr. Witt. “They really like this sort of thing. Giving voice to the voiceless. I’m sorry you didn’t like the writing, Elise, but you have to remember it’s not really about you. It’s about a character who just happens to share your name.”
“Marissa,” Mr. Witt said, “this is bullying, and here at Glendale High, we take bullying very, very seriously.”
This was news to me.
He went on, “I’m going to call your parents so we can discuss how to proceed. But for now, I can tell you that you’re suspended, and this will go on your permanent record. You will take down the blog and replace it with an explanation and apology post, to be approved first by me. You will not be allowed to attend the graduation ceremony or the Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal. And the school will no longer support your application for the arts fellowship.”