AVERY: There was no time to wallow in the unmitigated disaster that was the senior prom. I had to leave it in Hutch’s capable hands, trust that he had a miracle up his sleeve, and press on. Prom was only two days away, I had all of my boyfriends from sophomore through senior year to get through, and I still didn’t have any answers. The project was nowhere near finished, and I felt no closer to reaching enlightenment or understanding!
HUTCH: I had a lot of people to convince and favors to call in if I was going to pull this off. But I couldn’t resist weighing in on this particular ex-boyfriend.
COCO: Welcome to Avery’s Sophomore Slump.
HUTCH: Is Tripp Gomez-Parker worse than Sean Graney? No, no, I don’t think so. Tripp isn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box, but at least he has a neck.
COCO: I know what you’re thinking: “Coco, how could you call Tripp Avery’s Sophomore Slump? You are literally taking him to the prom in like forty-eight hours.” And you would be right about that! But you would only ask that question if you’d never seen him dance. The man is like Channing Tatum in a San Anselmo Prep uniform. And a slightly less muscular body.
TRIPP GOMEZ-PARKER, ex-boyfriend, lacrosse player, surprisingly proficient dancer: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everyone likes to make a big deal about my dancing, but I swear, man, it is no big deal. Dancing is definitely not, like, my thing. My thing is lacrosse. If I even have a thing. Do I have a thing? I don’t know, man. How would I describe myself in three words? One: male. Two: awesome. Three: lacrosse player.
Editor’s Note: Oh, boy.
CRESSIDA SCHROBENHAUSER-CLONAN, lab partner of T. Gomez-Parker: Tripp Gomez-Parker has been a carbuncle on my sterling GPA all year. I can obviously carry his deadweight and still beat out Hutcherson to become valedictorian, but it’s been slightly more challenging than it otherwise would have been. So maybe I should thank Tripp for keeping things interesting. And for finally learning not to eat erasers.
TRIPP: Hold up—Cressida said what? Man, I only ate an eraser one time! And it was shaped like a tiny watermelon. Probable cause, yo! There’s a reason erasers should be shaped like erasers.
HUTCH: There is no way Cressida is beating me for valedictorian. She’d best be writing her salutation right now.
CRESSIDA: Obviously, if Hutch and I had been allies instead of enemies, there was no telling how high our GPAs could have climbed. If only Avery Dennis hadn’t kept us apart … well. A lot of things might have happened.
Editor’s Note: OMG, obsessed much, Cressida? If I’d known she was that desperate to be Hutch’s lab partner … well, I still probably wouldn’t have given him up, honestly.
COCO: I love talking about when Avery and Tripp dated. She is constantly trying to talk me out of taking him to prom, and this is literally the only thing that will shut her up! After all, Tripp and I are most emphatically not dating. He is not my boyfriend. We are not a couple. We are going to the prom together, and that is absolutely it. So if anyone deserves to be teased about her relationship with Tripp—even a former one—it’s Avery.
TRIPP: When Avery started asking me all these questions about sophomore year, I started getting mad nervous. But she promised—pinky-promised—that no one but her and Ms. Segerson would ever read this thing.
HUTCH: When AD told me I couldn’t listen in on her conversation with Tripp, I was confused. But then I remembered that she didn’t know that I know … you know what? Never mind. I respected her space and headed off to try to save the prom. Man, that’s not something I ever thought I’d say.
Editor’s Note: Mysterious much, Hutch? Whatever, I needed his help.
COCO: No, I wasn’t there when Avery and Tripp started dating. That’s weird, right? She just walked into school one day and boom, she was Tripp’s girlfriend.
AVERY: Somehow, Dad felt like I needed even more extracurriculars—I swear it’s like he didn’t want me to ever have any time for anything else but school. Luckily, I knew exactly what else I wanted to do. Not a lot of people know this, but Audrey Hepburn was also a classically trained ballerina who danced professionally—and that’s why I decided to start taking ballet sophomore year. Audrey Hepburn started dancing when she was five. Unfortunately, so did the rest of the world, apparently. It was super hard to find a beginning ballet class for teens. All the teen classes were at the, like, triple advanced level! So I ended up finding a dance studio, way far away in a whole different town, that had a Beginning Teen/Adult class.
TRIPP: I thought I had been crazy careful. Why would anyone from San Anselmo be at a dance class in Petaluma? It’s like forty minutes away.
AVERY: I was pulling on my pink ballet slippers, trying to decide how I felt about being the only teen in the adults/teen class—would it be beyond awkward? Or would I learn lots of great Pinterest recipes for the crockpot I would someday own? That’s what I always assume adults talk about. Then, I saw the last person I would expect to see walk out of the Teen Triple Advanced Ballet Ninja class or whatever it was called.
TRIPP: My heart stopped. I thought there was a legit chance I’d vom all over the studio. Was Avery the absolute worst person to run into at Madame Dubonnet’s? Maybe not the worst, but she was pretty high up there on my list of “worst people to run into.” Bizzy Stanhope would have been worse, for sure. Or Sean Graney. Or Tamsin Brewer. But Avery was not a great person to run into. At least I was wearing track pants over my dance tights.
MADAME DUBONNET, former ABT principal dancer, owner of Madame Dubonnet’s School of Dance in Petaluma: Tripp has studied with me since he was very young. His mother brought him to class when he was only four years old because his older sister was in my studio, but it became apparent to me that Tripp was the Gomez-Parker sibling with talent. He has been with our school of dance ever since, and although I do not think he has the technique to dance professionally, he is, without a doubt, very gifted.
TRIPP: Dag, I thought, my secret double life was over. No doubt Avery was going to make fun of me. And tell everyone at school what she saw. And then I’d become a total reject and have to eat lunch every day with Hutch and Michael Feeley and those guys. Not that they’re total rejects, but, uh … You know what I mean.
AVERY: I couldn’t stop staring. The adult beginning ballerinas were pushing their way around me to get into the studio, but I couldn’t move! I just stood and stared at Tripp, with my jaw hanging open.
TRIPP: Avery was mad horrified. She couldn’t even speak! She just stood there staring at me. I was bugging. So I tried to get ready to spend the rest of high school known as Ballet Boy.
AVERY: It explained a lot, though. It really did. Tripp is—was—a great dancer. At every dance we’ve had since sixth grade, a dance circle has formed around him at some point. There’s no way that was just natural talent. Some of those skills were taught. And taught well, by Madame Dubonnet.
MADAME DUBONNET: Ah, yes, Mademoiselle Dennis, I remember that one. She does not have grace, of any kind. Her movements are so forceful. I feared, always, for my beautiful floors when she pirouetted across them. When she began her relationship with my star, Tripp, I was astonished. How could two creatures who were so different relate to one another in any way? It was like a bull dating a butterfly.
Editor’s Note: I cannot believe I am not the butterfly in this simile. I also can’t believe Tripp Gomez-Parker is the butterfly in this simile. Also, she’d just called us “creatures.”
AVERY: There was a lot I didn’t—don’t—understand about Tripp. The guy is, objectively, an idiot. I feel like I constantly have to be on guard about him groping Coco. And yet … There was something about him when he danced. Something, perhaps, that revealed a more sensitive soul.
TRIPP: That first day I saw Avery in the ballet studio, I just walked past her. Straight-up ghosted. I couldn’t talk to her. I didn’t know what to say—what could I say?! When I walked into school the following morning, I was mad nervous. I waited for the haters to start chanting “Ballet Boy,” but I never heard anything. School was chill! Avery hadn’t told anyone. I couldn’t believe it.
AVERY: No, I didn’t tell anyone. I thought about telling Coco—obviously, I thought about telling Coco. This was probably the craziest thing I’d found out about a classmate since I discovered that Tamsin Brewer was so good at making balloon animals she was basically a professional clown—but somehow I just couldn’t do it. The way Tripp looked at me when he saw me see him … no. I couldn’t do it. He just looked so … scared. And broken, almost. Defeated.
TRIPP: I didn’t know why Avery didn’t blow me up, but I had to talk to her. Beginning Teen/Adult Ballet meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at Madame Dubonnet’s. I hung around after Tuesday night class until Avery got out.
MADAME DUBONNET: The second week of beginning ballet, Mademoiselle Dennis still had not mastered the positions of the feet. I knew there was no hope for her.
AVERY: Week two of ballet was basically amazing. I was pretty confident I had a gift. But I hadn’t seen Tripp on my way into class, so I was assuming he was going to hide from me forever and pretend the whole thing had never happened. I mean, that’s probably what I would have done if I had run into Tripp if I was at, oh, I don’t know, pro wrestling practice? Or maybe I would be proud because that actually sounds kind of awesome? Anyway. I was very surprised when I got out of class and saw Tripp waiting on a bench in the studio’s entryway, with two Styrofoam cups of hot herbal tea—what a healthy choice! The Tripp Gomez-Parker I thought I knew only drank the weird punch they have in the cafeteria and Monster energy drinks.
TRIPP: I told Avery everything. All of it. The grueling hours rehearsing at the barre, the long drives to competition, and how I’d been crushing ballet since I was just a cute li’l baby Tripp.
AVERY: I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Our grade’s resident hot idiot was a dedicated, passionate, classically trained ballerina? Er, ballet man? It seemed impossible, and yet here he was, sitting in front of me in a Madame Dubonnet’s School of Dance Competition Team hoodie. It made absolutely no sense.
TRIPP: Do I remember when I realized I should be embarrassed by ballet? Naw, man. I just always knew that if I said anything, I’d get a patented Sean Graney wedgie.
AVERY: In one way, though, it did make sense. Tripp has seriously gnarly feet. They are beyond disgusting. Like all cut up and blistered and bruised and weird. Honestly, they look like big, horrifyingly bruised pieces of rotten fruit. Too graphic? Anyway. Once he went mini golfing with me and Coco and everyone, and I legit almost threw up on the ninth hole because he was wearing flip-flops.
TRIPP: After I told her everything about ballet, I expected … well, I don’t know what I expected. What I definitely didn’t expect was that Avery would kiss me.
AVERY: A kiss seemed like the only appropriate response! The guy had just bared his soul, for Pete’s sake! I didn’t kiss Tripp because I felt bad for him or anything, he just looked so vulnerable and sweet—so different from the Tripp I thought I knew—that I couldn’t help myself. I leaned in, and he was definitely surprised, but he wasn’t surprised for long. When he put his hands on my waist, I imagined him lifting me through the air, like we were doing the Act III pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty.
MADAME DUBONNET: No, no, Mademoiselle Dennis could not handle partner work. She most definitely could never be the Sleeping Beauty! It is appalling to consider.
Editor’s Note: Well, there goes my ballet career. But also, I haven’t taken a ballet class in two years, and I definitely left a lasting impression on Madame Dubonnet. So there’s that. I may not be a good dancer, but at least I’m an unforgettable one. She remembered more about me than Bobby Boback did.
TRIPP: I had spent a lot of time in that dance studio since elementary school. Lots of good memories. When I did my first lift. When I first nailed a grand jeté. When I found out I was playing the Nutcracker Prince in our annual company Christmas show. But the moment Avery kissed me is definitely mad high on that list of good dance studio memories.
MADAME DUBONNET: I knew that girl would be no good for my Tripp. If he had taken up with one of my principals, fine. I have seen it happen before, many times, where the intimacy of partner work bleeds into a relationship of a romantic nature outside the studio. But I knew Mademoiselle Dennis would be nothing but a distraction. We were mere months away from The Nutcracker, and I could not afford to have my Prince lose his focus.
COCO: The Avery and Tripp thing came literally out of nowhere. Seriously. The last text I got from her said, “LOL this leotard, though >” with a selfie and a bunch of emojis. Does that sound like, “Hey, best friend Coco, I have a new boyfriend!”? No. No, it does not. Not that Avery needs to clear her entire life with me, but it’s a little embarrassing when Bizzy Stanhope knows your best friend is in a new relationship before you do.
BIZZY STANHOPE, still the worst but somehow keeps being relevant, which is absolutely murdering me right now: I was the first person who saw Avery and Tripp together. Was I surprised? Not particularly. Who hasn’t Avery Dennis dated, after all? She can’t hold on to a boyfriend, so she constantly needs a new one. She’ll work her way through the entire dating pool eventually. Well, I guess she did … and that’s how you end up sad and lonely with no prom date. Tripp and Avery travel in the same circles, they go to the same parties, they eat at the same table … It seemed pretty logical. The only thing that was surprising was that it had seemed like, for years and years and years, that Tripp had been into Coco. Which would lead one to assume that, in some way, even some small way, Coco was into Tripp. And yet … Coco’s very best friend had swooped in right under her nose and stolen him. It was a classic Avery Dennis move.
COCO: What?! No! No!! She said what?! I am not—was not—will never be—into Tripp Gomez-Parker. Listen. The only reason I was upset—and upset is too strong a word, really—when Avery started dating Tripp was because I like to know these things before the rest of the school does. That is all.
Editor’s Note: Oh, no. Oh God, no. The lady doth protest too much, methinks! Could Coco actually be into Tripp?! If Coco has been carrying a secret torch for Tripp since kindergarten and never told me, I will be devastated. Especially if it turns out I screwed things up for her by kissing him in a dance studio sophomore year. But do I even want Coco to be into Tripp? Ugh, talking about sophomore year was making me remember Tripp’s sensitive side and forget all of his bad parts. I couldn’t let my guard down about Tripp and Coco. Constant vigilance! I would not let my best friend get busted for inappropriate dancing like she was some kind of Bizzy Stanhope.
BIZZY: The whole thing was just very basic. Everyone kept eating at the same lunch tables. Everyone still did the same things on the weekend. I don’t think they even spent that much time together outside of school. You could hardly call it a relationship.
AVERY: Tripp and I spent all our time outside of school together at Madame Dubonnet’s. Mostly because I quickly discovered that Tripp spent every waking moment he wasn’t at school or at sports practice in the ballet studio. Obviously, I couldn’t keep up with him on the dance floor, but I could stretch and do my homework and stuff while Madame Dubonnet drilled him and he trained with the teenage girls who were actually good. God, this was just like Ben and Grapenuts all over again. Underclassman Avery had a real problem with spending all her free time watching her boyfriends do things.
TRIPP: It was awesome having Avery at the studio. I’d never been able to hang out there with someone I went to school with before! And she could help with my homework. That was like the only semester in high school I wasn’t even close to failing. Avery is crazy smart. I feel like that’s something not a lot of people know about her.
COCO: Why did Tripp and Avery break up? You know what? I can’t remember. Huh. That’s weird. They dated for kind of a while, too—like almost four months. You’d think the breakup would have been more dramatic.
HUTCH: I assumed Avery broke up with Tripp because she actually talked to him. Sorry—that was mean. He’s not a bad guy; he’s really not. He postures a lot—he’s got that faux-cool-guy swagger—but I’ve never heard him be actively cruel, like Sean Graney or some of the other guys in the popular circle. But he’s certainly not someone I would describe as an intellectual. A nice guy, but dim.
CRESSIDA: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—Tripp Gomez-Parker is as dumb as a box of rocks.
AVERY: Tripp and I broke up because I wanted him to go public, and he wouldn’t.
TRIPP: Avery tried to ruin me.
AVERY: Let me clarify—we were public about our relationship. I wanted him to go public about what an amazing dancer he was. He was hiding this whole huge part of himself because he was scared! And he had nothing to be scared about. I know he was worried people would make fun of him, but I thought it would make people like him more. I know it made me like him more. He was so talented, and so strong—a real athlete. I thought that if people saw how cool ballet actually was, and how awesome Trip was, they would understand. Why were we living in a cultural prison of outdated gender norms?! It was time for freedom!
TRIPP: I don’t think any of this had anything to do with me. Avery wanted me to go public because she wanted people to see her in The Nutcracker.
MADAME DUBONNET: Every student in my school is guaranteed a role in our Christmas production of The Nutcracker. Usually, my beginning adult and teen students do not audition. Unfortunately for me, however, Mademoiselle Dennis did audition, and I was left with no choice but to cast her.
AVERY: When Tripp said my motives for him coming clean were purely selfish, it hurt. A lot. Obviously, I wanted people from school to come see me in The Nutcracker. Of course I did! It’s not every day that you get to play a male child, a rat, and a gingerbread cookie—a horrifying list of garbage roles I was somehow proud of—and I wanted my peers to see me shine! I was the only gingerbread cookie who was over the age of seven. I wanted people to see me tromp around the stage as the largest cookie in Nutcracker history! And let’s not disregard the Coco factor. If I told Coco I didn’t want her to come see my ballet debut, she would be instantly suspicious. I mean, I made Coco come to the time I debuted the fact that I could do a handstand, and that was in my backyard.
COCO: Oh, sure, yeah, I remember Avery’s handstand debut! The refreshments were quite good.
AVERY: But just because I wanted people to see me dance my ratty little heart out on the stage doesn’t mean that was the only reason I wanted Tripp to tell everyone about who he really was.
TRIPP: I should have seen this coming the minute the Nutcracker cast list went up at Madame Dubonnet’s and Avery was so stoked about being a rat—which is also bizarre, like who ever is really stoked about being a rat—but I can be really slow sometimes.
COCO: Avery was soooo excited about doing The Nutcracker. She was asking me all these questions about rat makeup versus gingerbread makeup, and if I thought she could convincingly play a boy in the party scene, and did I think they would let her wear a beanie, because although it was set in the nineteenth century, she felt that a beanie was really integral to her character.
Editor’s Note: My character in the party scene was a troubled young man named Johann. Madame Dubonnet was really resistant to a lot of my choices, but that’s the problem with these classical French ballet mistresses—they’re stuck in the past, unable to see the vision of the next generation.
TRIPP: It hit me really embarrassingly late in the rehearsal process. Wasn’t until costume fittings. Avery was dancing around in her gingerbread outfit, super pissing off Madame Dubonnet, who requires that people remain in the dressing room during fittings, not on the studio floor, when she said, “I can’t wait until Coco sees this!” And it was like every blood cell in my body turned to ice.
AVERY: I caught Tripp’s eyes in the mirror where I was admiring my own reflection and knew something was wrong. Madame Dubonnet caught me and hauled me back to the dressing room. Tripp waited outside, and the minute I changed out of my gingerbread suit, he told me I absolutely, positively, could not invite anyone from school to see The Nutcracker.
TRIPP: It wasn’t possible. No way. No way, man! I look a little different with my stage makeup, but not different enough. Plus, my name would be right there in the program! And, like, don’t get me wrong, Coco’s mad chill, but even just having Avery know my secret felt like too many people. I couldn’t let it spread. And the odds of Avery only inviting one person from school seemed pretty dang slim. I was surprised she hadn’t already taken out an ad in the school newspaper.
AVERY: At first, I was outraged. How dare he tell me what to do! I’m an independent woman! I make my own guest list, thank you very much!
TRIPP: I begged her. I pleaded. There was definitely some groveling involved. It was not my manliest moment. You ever see a dude in dance tights grovel? It’s not pretty.
AVERY: It broke my heart, a little. But I’m not a monster. It would have been unforgivably selfish to make a decision that, like it or not, would have impacted Tripp’s life, too. So I promised that I wouldn’t invite anyone from school. And then we broke up. We wanted different things—I wanted people to come see the show, and he didn’t. I couldn’t live his secret double life anymore. I was proud to be a ballerina’s girlfriend, and if he couldn’t be proud, too, then I couldn’t be his girlfriend.
MADAME DUBONNET: That year, Tripp danced the Nutcracker Prince as though he danced for his soul. There was an anguish he brought to the piece that gave it a depth one does not usually associate with The Nutcracker. It remains one of his finest performances, and, perhaps, my favorite Nutcracker. So perhaps I have Mademoiselle Dennis to thank after all. A bit of heartbreak is good for a dancer. Mademoiselle Dennis’s performance? Ah, she managed not to ruin the party scene or the gingerbread dance, and actually made a somewhat convincing rat.
Editor’s Note: I knew I’d win her over eventually with my ratty skills! Also, I definitely did not break Tripp’s heart—I am not nearly conceited enough to think his anguished dancing had anything to do with me. That was all the torture of his secret double life.
COCO: I felt so bad for Avery. It was the craziest freak accident! The pipes burst in the theater, and they canceled the production of The Nutcracker! It was all she’d been talking about for weeks, and then the show just didn’t happen. Isn’t that awful? You would think they would have been able to find an alternate space or something, but Avery said the sets were just too elaborate to re-create on such short notice. And then Tripp broke up with her—or she broke up with him? I don’t remember, exactly. Anyway, it was a very sad December. We had a lot of cocoa.
HUTCH: Avery came into school and spent the entire day talking very, very loudly about how the pipes burst in the theater and The Nutcracker was canceled. Something seemed off about the whole thing. When I asked her a question about how the water in the pipes could have possibly gotten close to freezing—pipes usually burst because water expands as it freezes, which causes an increase of pressure inside the pipe, which ruptures them—she got all shifty and clammed up. I pointed out that the temperature hadn’t dropped below 49 degrees all month, and she said, and I quote, “Shut it, Hutch, you’re not a pipe doctor,” which is when I definitely knew she was lying.
AVERY: Stupid Hutch and his stupid rational mind! He stopped poking around after I told him to shut it, but I was still nervous he’d accidentally expose Tripp. Of course I wanted Tripp to tell everyone who he really was, but I wanted him to do it on his own terms, not because I’d forced him to.
HUTCH: The crazy thing to me is that nobody at our school even bothered to google it. Seems completely obvious, right? I guess everyone just took Avery at her word. But I went to Madame Dubonnet’s website. They were still selling tickets—no mention of burst pipes anywhere to be found.
AVERY: And you know what? It ended up being totally fine that Coco and everyone else from school couldn’t come. Honestly, I looked like a big old idiot in that cookie costume, so it was probably better that no one but my mom and dad saw me. Dad’s review: “Christ, Avery, that was long.” Mom’s review: “You make a surprisingly convincing rat.” So I pretty much nailed it.
PAUL DENNIS aka DAD, father, ballet hater: Avery, I wasn’t saying you did a bad job when I said the show was long! Long is good! Great, even! It was just … It was really long, kid.
HUTCH: I knew that blond “boy” in the party scene was Avery. I spotted her right away. But I didn’t understand why she’d told everyone the show was canceled until the Nutcracker came to life. At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I figured I had to be wrong—it was just someone who looked almost identical to Tripp Gomez-Parker. Tripp, in a ballet? Tripp, good at ballet? It seemed impossible, but the most logical explanation is, after all, usually the right one. This explained why Avery had kept everyone from our school from coming to the show. Tripp must not have been ready for people to know he was into ballet. Although I don’t know why, because the guy was incredible. I had come to see Avery, obviously, but I felt like I spent most of the show staring at Tripp with my jaw hanging open, rubbing my eyes in disbelief.
Editor’s Note: WHAT?! Hutch came and saw The Nutcracker?! Why did he come?? Why did he never tell me that he came?? What did this even mean?!
HUTCH: I never told anyone what I’d seen. Liam probably could have kept it a secret, but Alex would have had a field day—could you imagine? He’s always getting worked up over the popular kids. Probably would have tried to bring Tripp down in some kind of Revenge of the Nerds ballet maneuver. If AD wanted to keep Tripp’s secret, then I’d keep it for her, too.
TRIPP: Avery Dennis is a really cool girl, man. I don’t think there are a lot of people who could have kept that to themselves. Usually nothing is a secret at San Anselmo Prep. But she really kept that one on lockdown. Do I think I’ll ever tell anyone? Maybe. Yeah, maybe in college. Things’ll be different in college, I bet. The dance department at my school’s supposed to be pretty good. I’ve been thinking about trying out for the fall show. The girls in the pictures on the website are smoking.
Editor’s Note: Ugh. See? Still the same old Tripp.
HUTCH: And you know what? Avery was a really good rat.