The Other Girl: A Midvale Academy Novel (16 page)

Edie nodded. “Hmm. Well, it was around three o’clock in the afternoon.”

I didn’t say anything.

But we both knew I wasn’t usually asleep at that time.

We took one of those campus vans to the round-robin. Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan drove. On the highway a giant splatter of bird shit hit the window. “Jesus,” Mickey said. “That’s not a normal amount of bird crap. It’s like the bird had, like, ten Oreo McFlurries and then crapped.”

I laughed, and I think it might have been the first time I laughed out loud since Gid and I had broken up.

“Oh my God,” I said to Edie, “those
alfajores
totally saved my life.” Pilar had been so full the night before she hadn’t even wanted Gideon to come over. And she’d gone online and ordered more
alfajores
.

“Sometimes the stupidest ideas are the best ones,” Edie said.

Devon was on Edie’s right, and he leaned into her. “Did you just say I was stupid?” he said.

“No, I said stupid ideas are good,” Edie said.

Devon tucked a stray piece of his hair under his barrette and looked at her approvingly. “Does that mean you want to smoke pot before the match?” he said.

Edie rolled her eyes. “I won’t get high before the match, but I will some other time.”

“Will you?” Devon said. “My, my, my.”

“Have any of you ever had a McFlurry?” Nicholas said.

All of us except Nicholas—all of us including Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan—had had a McFlurry.

“You’re all disgusting,” Nicholas said.

“Dude,” Mickey said to Nicholas. “If I can do a math word problem in my head at this match, you have to have a McFlurry.”

“You have to get it right,” Nicholas said.

“Of course I mean only if I get it right,” Mickey said. “Only the son of a very rich man could think of such a thing.”

“Fine,” Nicholas said. “Ridiculous.”

The round-robin ATAT match was at the Yarmouth School, which was a carbon copy of Midvale. Its student body was similarly made up of students too stupid to go to the best places and too in touch with reality and habits like wearing shoes to go to a place like Gates. It had a giant ugly modern library just like ours, a new theater designed by someone foreign and famous and pretentious, and the dorms were the same mix of turn-of-nineteenth-century charming and 1970s depressing. The round-robin was held in the chapel basement, a low-ceilinged place that was painted pistachio green with turquoise trim.

“It smells like sheet cake in here,” Nicholas said as we settled into our chairs. There were eight different schools here. We were going up against three of them in five-round mini matches.

“What’s wrong with sheet cake?” Devon said. His eyes were large and unfocused and bloodshot.

Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan toyed nervously with the blue enamel beads at her neck and studied his face. “Devon, are you all right?” she said.

“Of course, Mrs. G-dash-V,” he said, turning a lazy smile on her. “I’m just stoned out of my mind.”

Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan shook her head. “Very funny. Are we all set here? Who is sitting out the first round?”

Devon and Mickey both volunteered. As Mickey put his hand up I noticed him studying his fingers with undue fascination, and I realized he was stoned too. He winked at me and I smiled wearily, with affection. I didn’t care. Those guys played fine when they were stoned.

Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan frowned. “Dan, you sit out this round. Next round, when we’re up against Waterford, you come back in and, Sergei, you come out. After that we’ll see where we are.”

She smiled politely and walked away to join the other faculty advisers.

“You know they really are stoned,” Dan called after her. “It’s not just a joke.”

Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan didn’t turn around.

Dan knew he was only going in for Sergei because Waterford sucked. She never took Sergei out unless she absolutely knew there was no chance of losing. And it wasn’t that Dan sucked. He was good. But everyone else was better than he was.

We took our seats, Edie, Nicholas, Sergei, Mickey, and me. Devon went and sat on the bench and started to play some video game on his phone. Dan stood there complaining. “This is lame,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

We beat Yarmouth, Tisdale Academy, and Thomas Paine Regional High—the one public school that was, for reasons unknown to me, in our conference. We had one team left, some Catholic girls’ school from Fall River called Holy Virgin. Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan checked her watch. “I just heard from Sister Martha, their adviser, and they’re just pulling in right now.” She lowered her voice. “So, I don’t anticipate any real problems here…. I don’t think these girls are all that brilliant, honestly. Now, you know if we win this, we’re in the finals, so if everyone can just keep their wits about them and—”

At that moment, the door at the end of the hall creaked open, and the girls from Holy Virgin started to file in.

All conversation and rustling of paper and scratching of pencils came to an abrupt halt as six of the most stacked teenage girls I had ever seen in my life came through the door. They were wearing long-sleeved white blouses, but they were tight and buttoned low, and their breasts burst out of them. Their plaid skirts rested high up on their butts. They were wearing stockings, but they were sheer and sort of shiny in this way that made the effect even dirtier, in a way, than bare skin. All of them wore black boots. Two of them wore glasses, like smart porn stars.

“Holy Virgin,” Mickey said.

Dan’s and Sergei’s mouths fell open. Dan’s eyes were big and fishlike. Sergei just looked like he was going to cry.

“Just picture them in their underwear,” said Devon, smiling evilly and giving a proud pat to his giant gut. He and Nicholas were unfazed. They’d had sex with pretty girls before. Mickey was certainly overstimulated, but he had a sense of humor, and he had experienced his dick being touched by something other than his own hand. But this was kind of a nerd nightmare.
Dan’s and Sergei’s sexual frustration was literally seeping out of them. Sergei’s brow sprouted beads of sweat, and when Dan ran his hands over his Dockers, they left wet spots.

Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan gathered us into a huddle. “All right,” she said. “Is everyone OK?” She’s already told Dan he could go in this round, and considering his being upset before, she couldn’t very well change the roster now. But that was too bad, because he was a mess. So was Sergei, who was also in for this round.

“I don’t think they should be allowed to wear those clothes,” Sergei said. Dan’s livery tongue kept clearing gross white stuff from the corners of his mouth. Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan took a small bottle of water out of her bag and handed it to him.

Nicholas opened it for Dan, who seemed quite devoid of motor skills. “Drink this,” Nicholas said. “Then pour the rest of it on your penis.”

A nun—one of those sort of modern-looking nuns, in a habit, but wearing pants—approached a lectern a few feet away. “Are we ready?”

Dan looked fearfully at Nicholas.

“Just drink the rest of the water,” Nicholas said. “Let’s just get this over with.” He looked at Sergei.

“Are you all right?” he said.

Sergei made a sound kind of like a humpback whale.

Dan drank the water and handed the bottle to Nicholas.

“What the hell?” Nicholas said. “I’m not your mother.”

Dan made whimpering noises to indicate that the trash can was behind where the girls were sitting, five pairs of perfect round breasts and silky hair in a row. One of them crossed and uncrossed her legs. Another leaned over to whisper to another, and a strand of her hair swung between another girl’s ample cleavage.

“Wow,” Sergei said. “It almost looks like she was going to make out with her.”

“Don’t make me go over there,” Dan pleaded.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Nicholas said. “Give me that.”

He went to throw away the bottle. As he walked by, the girls all swiveled toward him. Dan and Sergei both caught it, and their faces went red with jealousy and rage.

“Life sucks,” Sergei said.

Thank god Edie was going first, up against one of the girls with the glasses.

“The Chicago Museum of Art is home to the great masterwork in the painting style pointillism…” the nun read.

“
La Grande Jatte,
” Edie said.

Glasses and Breasts pouted. Pants and Habit frowned. “Correct.”

Edie was similarly aggressive with the rest of the questions and won the round. I went up against a blond girl named Daphne. “Hi,” she gurgled at me. Her body looked like it was made out of tan Tupperware. “I love your earrings.” I thanked her and won the round handily.

Now Sergei went up. Sergei’s opponent pitched slightly forward on her toes as she shook his hand so that her cleavage found its way to just under his face. He didn’t really sit down so much as fall into his chair, casting a helpless look at Nicholas and Devon, who gave him a thumbs-up.

“Physics,” the nun announced.

“Physics,” Sergei repeated. It was the last word he uttered for the round. He just sat there with a sort of dumb, apologetic smile on his face until the other girl came up with the answers. When it was over he said, “Good job,” and went to shake her
hand, but she pretended she didn’t see, and flounced back to her seat.

Dan was next. His mouth was still open in that weird gaping-fish-mouth expression. His opponent’s name was Ursula, and she was appropriately Bond girl-esque, tall and bodacious, with long coppery hair.

“Who missed a crucial ground ball in the 1986 World Series?”

Dan’s mouth widened and narrowed, as if he had encountered some plankton.

“Bill Buckner,” the Bond girl answered briskly.

“In what city was basketball invented?”

Even I knew this.

“Springfield,” said the Bond girl.

“You have a pretty voice,” Dan said.

She gave him a sweetly insincere smile.

The last question was so fucking easy: who was the first American to win five medals in the winter Olympics?

“Uuuhhhhh,” Dan said.

“Eric Heiden,” the girl said, and her butt twitched triumphantly as she went back to her seat.

The match was in Mickey’s hands. I had confidence.

Until I looked at him and saw his glassy-eyed stare.

I leaned over Edie’s lap to get to him. “Get it together,” I hissed.

“Shit, guys,” Mickey whispered. “The one I am up against is the only one I think is really hot. I just see such pathos in her eyes, you know? And she keeps looking at me.”

“Oh Jesus,” Edie said, disgusted. “She’s looking at you because you’re her opponent.”

“Mickey,” I said. “Those two are freaks. But I know you can do this. I know you can.”

Mickey gave me a hopeful, sad smile, and then his eyes drifted up. I looked and saw his opponent lacing up her boot, bent gracefully over it like a deer rubbing its nose against its paw. “These girls look vulnerable, but they’re not. And even if Dan and Sergei probably will never get their hands on a piece of ass like that, you very well might.”

“Really?” Mickey said. “Even if I don’t grow a lot?”

“Yes,” I said. “You’re funny. Girls like this. We care about this thing that you have called personalities.”

Mickey nodded, mystified. Edie widened her eyes, encouraging me to give him more.

“Mickey, someday a girl like this—maybe even one of these girls—is going to drive you insane. You’ll be wondering how you can get rid of her. Or you’ll be in a custody battle with one of them. Or if you do marry one and stay married, she’s going to redecorate your house every time she gets her period. You think you want to take care of a beautiful girl, but you really don’t. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. Trust me. I know.”

Mickey nodded. I think he had drawn some strength from what I said.

The nun cleared her throat. “Are we quite ready?”

I can’t believe my college education hinged on whether Mickey Eisenberg was going to be able to resist getting a boner in the next five minutes.

He gave me a confident look as he took his seat across from one of the girls. She was blond with brown eyes, and her lower lip quivered with a vulnerable sensuality. “Hello,” Mickey said to her evenly. “How are you?”

“Fine,” she said. Her voice was bitchy and irritated. It was exactly what Mickey needed.

The nun cleared her throat. “Twenty-seven to the one-third power times sixteen to the…one-half power.”

About three seconds passed and Mickey said, “Three-quarters.”

The nun pressed her lips together. “You are correct.”

The next question involved finding the volume of a sphere. Mickey got it.

The last question was another math problem, harder, and Mickey got that one too.

We had won the match.

“Nothing says ‘You managed to keep your dick out of your brain’ like whipped fake ice cream and crushed cookies full of trans fats,” Mickey said. “I think I’m having a McFlurgency!”

It was ten on a Wednesday night, but the McDonald’s off 128 was packed. Tables were full of guys just off work, hunched over their burgers, their jaws working in unison. At other tables, little kids sat up on their knees and used their skinny little bodies like shields against their brothers’ and sisters’ attempts to eat their french fries. When we walked in they all stared at us—a bunch of overdressed prep school kids and a lady in a skirt with tiny pink ducks, each swimming in its own tiny blue lake. After we’d gotten our McFlurries and Nicholas had paid for all of them, Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan touched her pearls, her nostrils flaring in instinctive reaction to the attention. “Let’s go outside,” she said. “And have a little chat about how the hell we’re going to beat Xavier.”

We sat in the McDonaldland playground, around tiny
tables, our knees up in the air. My McFlurry was amazing, and made even sweeter by the fact that Pilar was back in her room at Midvale trying, and failing, to ignore her
alfajores
. She ate half of one and then sat on her bed, chewing it with tightly closed eyes, willing herself not to go back for the other half. She counted to ten. But she couldn’t stop herself. She ran over and ate the other half, and started in on another one.

“Oh my God,” I whispered to Edie. “It’s working! Pilar is totally chowing those
alfajores.
”

“Of course she is,” Edie said. “Because they’re
alfajores,
and she is Pilar Benitez-Jones.”