I was purposely nasty and cruel to everyone, but this made the popular girls only more determined to succeed in friendship. I wanted to drive them away. I’ve always been more comfortable as a loner only interfered with by the curious stares. It was how it had been in Santa Barbara among that cross section of teenagers that thought being a bastard, unacknowledged, was a humiliating thing and that I was duty bound to feel embarrassed. How is it possible that my sordid family history and the wrongness of my behavior only increase my popularity here?
That I could do what I want, say what I want, and with no negative blowback has made it nearly impossible to shut off awfulness within me. Try as I might, I can’t recall what it had felt like not to have the power of behaving badly. It is really quite an intoxicating drug: not giving a shit, saying what you want, and knowing people will take it.
In contrast to my increasingly foul behavior, I receive from the kids at school daily doses of assurance that my life is a lucky one and I am destined to do great things. They talk about me in the abstract as if who I am is merely the subtotal of the external.
How lucky Kaley Stanton is, how lucky she is, how lucky she is about everything! What is it about people in Southern California that makes them determined to work ‘how lucky’ into every phrase? The world has given unto me and I am expected to feel fortunate about every aspect of my life and have empathy for the vast world of people less fortunate than me—sincerity in that not required.
If the world had righted, if anyone had noticed the wrongness of my behavior, I might have been able to contain it. But probably not. If anyone had asked its source, I would have most likely snapped that it was out of contempt for their empty and meaningless perspective of the world. But no one ever asked. They simply took it. Even the faculty turned a blind eye as though my emotional unpleasantness is the reasonable result of having moved at the onset of my senior year.
They all think they know my intimate details, the workings of my mind, the impact of my external issues, and they forgive me my foulness and reinforce my absolute right to be as relentlessly malicious as I dare to be. It is completely illogical and irritating in every way.
But then, what should I have really expected from people who think about nothing? Pacific Palisades Academy is like a bad episode of Seinfeld. In the post-9/11 world of two wars, unemployment, poverty and fear of a near global economic collapse, I exist trapped in a narcissistic cocoon of rich kids who think about nothing and survive on synthetic empathy.
They are more concerned with what music I have loaded into my iPhone than what is in my head. The conversations that swirl around me on campus focus mostly on who is having sex, what drugs they are taking, the parties they’ve been to and the occasional resuscitation of pop culture ideology probably learned from TV.
As for the esteemed reputation of this elite private school, after the first day I contemplated asking Mom to demand the tuition back since the shitstorm of stupidity I hear in class each day definitely makes the case that they’ve violated the truth-in-advertising standard.
I don’t want to listen to them, faculty and student alike. I sure as hell don’t want to talk to them. Unpleasantness seems the only protection left against the relentless floodtide of dim-witted human interaction and even that is only partially effective…
That irritating, droning voice is swallowed by clapping and I slam my journal closed. Thank God she’s done. After two months of somewhat competent teaching of global economics, that was the best the girl could come up with: a completely moronic perspective on the social benefits of wealth redistribution presented in oral report format, with a PowerPoint no less.
I can’t stop myself. I smile nastily at the self-satisfied girl making her way back to her desk. “Do you really believe all that liberal guilt over wealth or is collective, national poverty the new chic we should all strive for here? Have you ever considered what you’d be without Prada, you irritating twat?”
Oh shit, silence. I don’t like the way Mr. Jamison is staring at me at all.
He leans over his desk, scribbling frantically on the dreaded pink sheet. He holds it up to me and points to the door. “Principal’s office now, Miss Stanton! If you can’t be respectful of the opinions shared in class then keep your opinions to yourself. We don’t criticize each other’s ideology. Not in this class. We encourage open and respectful dialogue.”
I gather my things, feeling the heavy stares and smirks of the silent room, and strangely I realize that I am even more irritated since I haven’t been booted from class for the British vulgarity, but for showing disrespect for liberal politics.
I snatch the pink slip and smile, but then again, what should I have expected? I mean really. I’m in an affluent city in Southern California.
I shove the door open a little too hard, not giving a shit and not even provoking comment from Mr. Jamison. I must have really rocked his world and I think I’ve finally found where intolerable conduct goes over the line with my teachers. Any language that isn’t politically correct speak crosses the line and will be dealt with! No one even seemed to notice that I’d call the girl a “twat.” It’s not on the description of my infraction, and the twat comment is where I would have started listing my crimes and offenses.
I show the pink slip to the office secretary and am instructed to sit down on the waiting room sofa outside the principal’s office. After five minutes, the door opens and in meanders a boy, pink slip in hand, who is directed by pointed finger to the seat across from me.
He drops heavily on the bench facing me and says nothing. He closes his eyes and crosses his arms.
There is something strangely familiar about the guy, but I chalk that up to probably having passed him in the hallways. He isn’t exactly cute, but he isn’t exactly unattractive either. He is interesting, quite a unique specimen at Pacific Palisades Academy. He has that guy’s guy intensity that radiates an air of not giving a shit, though somehow in a strangely intelligent way, and I am surprised to find it mildly thrilling.
He is taller than me, a good thing since I rarely find guys of adequate height for my five-foot-ten-inch frame, and he has a lean, nicely muscled body like a surfer, a slightly worldly aura somehow accomplished by his clothes that are more European style than American, and the most penetrating green eyes I’ve ever seen.
Interesting. I can’t tell what he is, since he’s such a hodgepodge of mismatching things that it is impossible to identify the group he falls in with at school.
I sit there staring at him, fiddling with the pink detention slip, and when the office secretary leaves, those green eyes open and he asks, “You’re Kaley Stanton, aren’t you?”
Shit, not this again. And it’s such a disappointment because there was a slight prick of interest before he spoke and his voice—well, I never expected that—but it made the hairs on my body stand up.
“Oh, fuck me,” I snap, letting loose my fallback response, the knee-jerk reaction that comes from perfect strangers knowing my name.
“Not on the first detention.”
That is the first quick comeback I’ve heard in two months here. I try hard not to smile and can’t stop myself. Arching a brow, I counter, “I’ll probably be here next week. Maybe you can fuck me then.”
Those green eyes sharpen on my face. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
I tense. Why would he think I’d recognize him? “No. Should I?”
The guy shrugs. “What landed you in here?”