“Dexter. Off.”
“This is stupid,” I say. “There are, like, twenty benches. Or we can just cop a squat on the lawn.”
“Yes, but this is the junior Magnolias’ bench,” Hayes says patiently. “It always has been.”
“I’m done, anyway,” Dexter says, throwing his sketch pad and pencils into his messenger bag. “Alex, you want to eat in the art studio? It’s air-conditioned.”
“Sweet. Thanks.”
“Alex,” Madison says, “it’s really not cool to abandon us on your first day.”
“I’m not abandoning you,” I say. “I’m just expanding my horizons.”
“Just remember, we’re your real friends,” Madison snaps. I look to Hayes for a token bit of reason, but to my surprise, her face looks oddly dark.
I shoot Dex an apologetic look. “Guys, it’s not a cult. It’s a social club. That our mothers and grandmothers belong to. It’s not a lifestyle. I’ll see you later, okay?”
I turn and follow Dex across the lawn. The one time I glance back, Madison is huddled with the other girls around her, whispering. Hayes is still staring at me as if she expects that at any minute I’ll come back.
During lunch in the art studio, Dex gives me the dirt on the politics of the River School. “Madison and Hayes run the school,” he says between bites of a microwaved Krispy Kreme. (Dex has the same appetite as Madison and Hayes but seems to lack the metabolism.) “You know the type. They’re the queens, and all the other girls are their subjects.”
“What makes them so special?”
“Come to think of it, I don’t know, really. I mean, they’re pretty, but there are a lot of pretty girls here. I don’t know—the kids just… follow them around. It’s like they have some special social power or something.”
“What about that Sina person? Do you know her?”
“Of course. She’s notorious. A total fox.”
“Where does she come from?”
Dex narrows his eyes while wiping frosting from his mouth with a napkin. “I don’t know. The boonies somewhere.” He eyes the lunch Josie made me—deviled eggs, fried chicken, some kind of “salad” consisting mainly of bacon and mayonnaise. Not an organic veggie or fruit in sight. “You gonna eat all that?”
“No way,” I say, sliding the bag toward him.
“Thanks.” He pops a deviled egg into his mouth, rolling his eyes to the ceiling with pleasure. “I’ll tell you what, though. Those Maggots really don’t like her.”
“Maggots?”
“No offense, but that’s what we underlings call you Magnolias. At least until now.”
“None taken.” I try not to look bothered. Oh God. What has my grandmother gotten me into?
“Sina’s the only one who holds a candle to them socially. She’s at every big party, and they just shrink from her. Personally, I’m glad she’s around. She’s totally hot, and interesting. Although she might be even worse than they are.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, she can be really mean. She plays tricks on people just for fun. Like, this one guy who said Madison was better looking than Sina? Sina slipped him some kind of drink that made really weird things happen. He sprouted hair on the back of his hands, man. Instantly. Like, we were all watching.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was Propecia or something. Or some kind of antidote to Nair.”
“That’s the trippiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s nothing, friend. Savannah is a weird, weird place. I’m telling you. The city was founded by pirates and runaway slaves straight from African tribes and shit. There’s black magic everywhere.”
“Come on.”
“I just moved from Iowa two years ago. Things are normal there. You don’t like someone, you don’t like them. Girls are mean to one another, but it’s normal mean. They just hate-text or videophone each other buck naked in the locker room and throw it up on Facebook.”
“People do that?”
“Welcome to high school, Alex. It’s the land of the mean-girl tricks. Only in Savannah, the hoaxes are weirder.”
“Like what?”
“Well, there was that hand hair thing. Oh, and last year, that Orang-Anna girl tried to start her own posse. Then she got, like, majorly spooked. She said a gray man was following her everywhere.”
“Gray like old?”
“Like the color. He was transparent or something. I don’t know. She told the police and everything. But no one could ever figure out what she was talking about.”
“Was she high?” Plenty of people saw weird stuff at the RC, but it was always with the help of organic mushrooms.
“No way. That girl is as squeaky clean as they come. She won’t even drink soft drinks. She goes to parties only because Madison makes her, to pad her group.”
“So,