make up?”
“What! No? I don’t know,” Sarah says.
I don’t believe a word of it, coming from her.
The slump in her shoulders screams otherwise.
“It’s just, like”—her voice is soft—“you can hate her all you want, but there’s nothing wrong with picking what you know someone else will like.”
She pauses for a moment, turns to check her red lipstick in one of the pots hanging around our heads, and makes a face at herself.
“It’s smart,” she says finally.
“It’s cheap! It’s dialing it in! It’s—”
“A strategy you didn’t think of,” Sarah says. “Admit it: You’re pissed you didn’t think of it first.”
“And you’re not?” I turn the chocolate milk carton up one more time, but it’s empty. It flies past the trash can and hits the back door instead.
Sarah shrugs. “I think I’m just … I dunno. Going about it differently.”
“Strategy,” I say.
Sarah nods. “Strategy.”
After spending so much of my time at the Conservatory being compared to Rhodes’s pristine, well-developed artistic style, it feels like this is one more way something is going to be weighted for Rhodes to win: Her style is everything women like June Baker and the Bridge Club Biddies love. It’s art for people who think they love art more than they really do, the kind of stuff people buy prints of and hang in their mahogany-cased studies because it makes them feel smart.
Sarah’s phone dings from her back pocket.
She retrieves it and glances at the screen.
“Rhodes wants the check,” she says.
My face goes hot. Immediately, everything is so much worse than it already is. Everything feels like a test with Rhodes, an opportunity for me to fail and for her to judge my right to be a resident of this planet accordingly.
“What does it say?” I snatch the phone from Sarah’s hands.
ring.ram 5:52p: can you ask iliana for our check please
ring.ram 5:52p: Griffin has to get back for AP review
There’s nothing really to be upset about.
Still, it feels like criticism.
I’ll be reading into it for the rest of evening.
“You take it.” I thrust the check into Sarah’s hands. “You need to go, like, talk to her or something anyway, right?”
“No way. Griffin’s been weird with me ever since the art installation.” She places it in my hands as if it’s made of glass.
“No, he’s been weird with you ever since you went all Swimfan on him last summer.”
Sarah’s crush on Griffin last year is just another one of those myriad uncomfortable things we never really talk about.
Griffin was surrounded by ballet girls in their perfect buns, leotards, and frilly little tutu things. It’s completely lost on me why Sarah ever thought her shredded, acid-washed denim and oversize flannel would be his type—and apparently, it’s lost on Sarah, too, with the way she conveniently forgets she was ever blowing up his phone at all hours of the night or constantly trying to get him alone.
“You can have my tip,” I say.
“No.” She hops down from the counter and resumes her spot on the floor by boxes of cornstarch lined up like little soldiers. “That’ll cost you more than three bucks.”
“You can have my tips for the rest of the afternoon,” I say.
This one hurts. I need my tips today to pay my phone bill. I still owe Mom for my car insurance, and I used the last of my birthday money on gas last week.
Sarah ponders this for a moment.
She takes up her pen and runs her eyes over the rows of numbers she’s already logged. “Nope. You can’t afford me.”
“She is your roommate, Sarah—”
“Negative, Ghost Rider. Pattern’s full.”
“God. You’re lucky I’m literally the only person in the entire school that’s seen Top Gun.” I check my teeth in the microwave door for bacon, clean up my lipstick with two fingers, and fluff my hair through my hairnet.
The scene I walk out to shouldn’t piss me off: The Bridge Club Biddies have stopped at Rhodes and Griffin’s table, all six of them fawning and tut-tutting over them the way they usually fawn and tut-tut over me.
Rhodes and Griffin remind me of Von Trapps, soaking up all of the attention and sending loaded glances at each other when they think the ladies aren’t looking. They’re the kind of beautiful, well-groomed children that are used to this sort of thing—Daddy’s bosses patting them on the head and Mommy’s Daughters of the American Revolution board-member besties asking them out-of-touch questions about their interests.
“These two say they go to the Conservatory, too,” the Smallest Old Biddy says to me as I approach. She’s