Snark and Circumstance (Novella) - By Stephanie Wardrop Page 0,3

usual jumper and white shirt—her own self-imposed parochial school uniform, I guess—but is still wearing a pink leotard and white shorts from dance class. She actually looks young and fresh and less like she’s auditioning to be somebody’s sister-wife.

“Are you still eating vegan?” she asks, kind of the way you would ask someone if they still had cancer or a broken arm.

“Yes,” I say, poking at my congealed noodles and looking at my mom. “It’s a serious choice I’ve made. It’s not a fad, not some phase I’m going through.”

Leigh nods and pulls her long braid over her shoulder, a gesture of hers that always reminds me of someone petting a little monkey who perches there. About three years ago, when we were living in Colorado, Leigh found religion. Don’t ask me where. Now she is the only churchgoer in the family and she’s taken to wearing shapeless dresses with little flowers on them like one of those refugees the FBI rescues from those polygamist camps in the Southwest.

Her twin and polar opposite, Cassie, smirks, swishes her dirty blonde ponytail, and passes the plate of chicken wings right under my nose. She asks, “When are you going to stop being a hippie freak, Georgia? We’re not in Boulder anymore.”

“Cassie, I know you don’t understand someone caring about anything besides American Idol and what’s on sale at Hollister, but some of us actually think about things and make ethical choices based on that,” I tell her. “And we’re willing to stick to them, even if we may get a bad grade in bio . . .”

This gets my dad’s attention, so I explain how Michael wants to trade me in for a new lab partner. When I describe Michael’s insistence on having a particular seat, I embellish it a little so that it sounds like he practically picked up the chair and dumped me out of it. My dad actually chuckles.

“Well,” he says as he picks up the platter of dead birds from Cassie, “it sounds like this boy has a real sense of entitlement. Typical for a town like this.” He looks at me over his glasses and says with a crooked smile, “You’ll set him straight, George.”

My mom, of course, interprets my story completely differently.

“The Endicotts are the oldest family in Longbourne,” she tells me. “I hope you weren’t too rude to him.”

Cassie, flushed with the triumph of her first cheerleading practice, laughs so hard I think the iced tea will come out of her nose.

“I’m serious,” my mom half-wails, as if any of us had thought she was anything but. “The Endicotts have done a lot for Longbourne—”

“Like run the first Indians off the land?” I crack.

Cassie leans back in her chair and declares, “I heard Michael Endicott got kicked out of prep school. But he’s hot.”

Okay. The prep school expulsion is certainly intriguing, but I don’t want Cassie to know I think this, so I just roll my eyes at her. And as for Michael’s being “hot,” I won’t deny that. That crooked smile is infuriating, but there’s also something kind of attractive about it. Like he knows a really good joke and if you’re nice to him, he just might share it with you.

“There’s a newbie in the senior class, too,” Tori tells us. “His name’s Trey Billingsley.”

I immediately launch into a parody of an upper-crust accent to try to get my dad to laugh again—“Oh, I say! It is I, Trey Billingsley, here to play the grahnd pi-ah-no!”—but Dad doesn’t find this funny. He just looks uncomfortable.

My mom warbles, “Billingsley? Isn’t that the name of your new boss?” and Dad looks as if he’d be happy if a meteor hit our dining room and ended this conversation.

“He’s the new dean, Barbara,” he says as he pokes into his chicken with a sharp knife so that a trickle of reddish juice comes out, “not my ‘boss.’”

“Yes, Trey mentioned that at lunch today,” Tori says, and her robin’s egg eyes take on an extra sparkle when she says his name. Which means, of course, he will be devoted to her by the end of the week, because everyone likes Tori. She’s pretty, with big blue eyes and gold-blonde curls; she’s smart but she never shows it off; and she’s genuinely kind and thoughtful.

If she weren’t my sister and I didn’t love her, I would want to beat her over the head with a shovel.

“There’s a party this Friday, before the game, at Willow Harper’s house,” Tori says