Anyone who says that uniforms mean you don’t have to think about what you wear to school is a filthy liar. It wasn’t quite cold enough yet to have to worry about whether to wear a pullover sweater or a cardigan, but there was still the endless supply of khaki pants, skirts, and shorts to thumb through. I thought about how much worse things must have been for Harper that morning. She would be standing in her bedroom across town, trying on polo after polo trying to find the perfect collar to match her mushy smile.
I snickered to myself at the thought and grabbed the closest pair of long khaki shorts in the name of soaking up the last few days of summer. I took a moment to daydream about a world where I could walk into school in jeans. Soft, stretchy jeans and shoes that were not made of patent leather.
College, I mused as I wandered into the bathroom, would be wonderful if for no other reason than getting to look like myself every day. I had a dresser teeming with beautiful, barely worn T-shirts. As much as I wanted to go to a good college and devote myself entirely to whatever major I decided on, I really just wanted to escape the Mess and be the kind of girl who came to class in a Princess Peach shirt and still managed to decimate everyone in an argument about Kierkegaard. Because that’s the girl that I was in my head. Proudly geeky, not only about comics or sci-fi but about everything I loved.
I patted the remnants of face wash from my cheeks with a fluffy white towel and wrinkled my nose at my reflection. I wasn’t adorable like Meg or a lost Disney princess like Harper or elegant like Mary-Anne France. I had brown hair and overcast eyes and small lips. Nothing particularly exciting unless you counted my being two inches above the national average height for Caucasian women.
The elastic band holding my ponytail slipped down. I grabbed two ends of my hair and yanked until I felt the ponytail secure itself to the base of my skull. It was shameful to be dissecting my own appearance. I blamed Cornell Aaron and the way he stared at Harper, as though he’d picked her out of a claw machine and couldn’t believe his luck. I wasn’t jealous, exactly. I certainly had no designs on Cornell for myself. He was a nice guy and good-looking, but nothing like the vague idea I had in mind for a male companion.
But that was the problem. Harper only wanted Cornell. Meg only wanted to see what the hype was about without letting her limbic system get the best of her. And I didn’t really want anything. Not anything concrete. I didn’t want to waste my time. I didn’t want someone who wouldn’t understand when I referenced Tony Stark, Mal Reynolds, and Alexander Hamilton in the same breath—all handsome rogues, obviously. I wanted someone who didn’t need me to backtrack and explain everything. Someone who would escort me to midnight showings but never ask me to dress up to attend. Someone who knew that I always, always, always wanted a Slurpee, but especially when it was snowing.
A boyfriend, I concluded, should be like a new best friend. Which didn’t help me at all considering I hadn’t made a new best friend since I was eight and Meg transferred to Aragon. Even in a world full of people as smart as I was, there weren’t that many people I wanted on my team.
I pushed the thought away. It didn’t do any good to spend too much time dwelling on it. I was content to be a singular kind of person, to focus on comics and homework and surviving senior year. If I went the way of Harper and Meg and started prematurely melting down about the harvest festival or the spring fling or any of the other Messina Academy social events, our group would undoubtedly explode in an array of hormones and prom dresses. I had to hold down the sanity quadrant.
And yet, a prickle of wistfulness crept across my shoulders like the feeling of trying to remember the details of a dream that remained elusive. It lasted throughout my walk to school. I tried to shake myself like an Etch A Sketch, but the feeling persisted, fraying my patience. Maybe Harper’s and Meg’s boyfriend-centric insanity had started the same way. Had they gone to bed normal and woken up unable to think about anything else? Perhaps it was a communicable disease and I’d spent too long being infected by their chatter.
The Mess came into view, a blooming series of brick buildings half-hidden behind the open wrought iron gate. I sat on a planter box near the gate, my Mary Janes sinking into the immaculately cut grass. I flipped open the front of my bag and pulled out my sunglasses and the Buffy comic. Scanning pages, I finally found the point where I’d left off the night before and started reading.
“You haven’t finished it yet?”
Ben West had moved out of a line of other Mess kids and was leaning against the planter a few feet away from me. His polo was wrinkled and he hadn’t brushed his hair. I glared at him for a second and then turned my attention back to the comic.
“No spoilers,” I said.
“Ah,” he said, staring at the groups of incoming classmates. “So, you haven’t reached the point where Xander dies?”
“Damn it, West.” The glossy pages gave a pathetic crinkle as I closed the book.
He laughed loudly. “Kidding. Don’t freak out.”
“Why don’t you leave me alone?” I growled at him. “There is absolutely no reason for us to ever have a conversation.”
He gave me a sardonic look out of the corner of his eye as he reached up and twirled the end of his mustache.
“I was just trying to uphold the school ordinance,” he said. “Everyone is required to try to be pleasant to you in the name of making you seem like less of a dangerous loner.”
“Go to hell,” I said with a groan, stuffing the comic into my bag. “Or whatever hellish dimension you prefer.”
“I’m partial to the world without shrimp. I’m allergic.”
“Name the episode or stop sullying my fandom,” I said. There really should have been a rule about unworthy jerks making Buffy the Vampire Slayer references. I shoved my sunglasses farther up my nose.
“‘Superstar.’ Season four, episode seventeen,” he said drily. “You’re extra shrewish today. Did your friends finally realize that they could do better?”
“Did yours?” I asked, turning to look at him dead-on. “Why are you skulking around alone?”
He gestured vaguely to the front gate. “Waiting for the guys.”
“Then wait with your mouth shut.”
Someone called my name and I spotted Meg bobbing toward us, her shiny black hair leaping around her cheeks. She landed in the grass faintly out of breath.
“Good morning, Trix,” she said. She gave West a confused wave. “And Ben West.”
“Margaret Royama,” he said, inclining his head.
“You guys aren’t going to, like, duel or something, are you?” Meg asked me, cocking her head.
“I submitted the challenge years ago,” I said blandly. “But appealing to his sense of honor is useless.”
“We’re divvying up hell dimensions,” West said. “Trix is taking the world that’s nothing but shrimp.”
“But you don’t eat meat,” Meg said, blinking at me. She brightened suddenly and said, “Oh! Did you guys read the new Buffy? Isn’t it cool when—”
“No spoilers,” I huffed, holding up a staying hand.
“Beatrice is a little behind,” West said in a loud whisper. “There were some very big words in this issue.”
“I have some very short words for you, West. Shut your damn mouth, for a start.” Taking in a deep breath, I turned to Meg. “I was up late starting our costumes.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s okay, then.”
“What will you be dressing up as this year?” West asked me. “Something with a mask, I hope?”
“Maleficent,” I ground out.
“Ah.” He paused. “So, just scraping off your makeup and going in your true form.”
“Perhaps you could follow suit and put on a pair of donkey ears.”
“Oh look,” Meg interrupted with false cheeriness. “Peter and Jack are here.”
The Donnelly brothers were, in fact, walking toward us. Jack sped ahead of Peter, leaving his brother limping behind as he rushed through the gate without a backward glance.
“Asshole,” I breathed.
West nodded in pleasantly mute agreement as he stepped forward. He and Peter clasped each other’s forearms in greeting like a pair of Roman soldiers in white cotton polos.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” I said.
“Hey, Trix, Meg.” Peter grinned, casting around for a second. “No sign of Harper and Cornell?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“The poor saps are probably off somewhere gazing deeply into each other’s eyes,” West muttered. He stared off into the parking lot as wistful wind played at the corners of his mustache. “At least with Cornell distracted with composing sonnets I’ve got a chance of getting valedictorian.”
Meg looked appalled. I’m sure I did, too, but only because I hated hearing my own secret desire to up my place in the ranking coming out of Ben West’s mouth.
Peter laughed, ever the picture of amiability. “Whatever keeps you from getting in their way, Ben.”
West’s mouth twisted into an unconcerned smile. “I told him that if he let his guard down, I’d sweep him. I’m not going to get distracted by some chick.”
“And all of the chicks on Earth thank you kindly for that,” I said. “What could be worse than being courted by that mustache? You could start prospecting for gold any minute.”
He flushed to a pernicious shade of scarlet. “You really should examine your obsession with my facial hair, Trix. It’s becoming a problem for you.”
“It seems wise to keep an eye on anything that could gain sentience and go on a killing spree,” I said, peering at him over the tops of my sunglasses. “It wouldn’t be difficult for it to surpass your diminutive IQ.”
“Hey,” Peter said, dragging the syllable out into a heavy warning. He glanced around for eavesdroppers before lowering his voice. “The gag rule.”
“Eff the gag rule,” West snarled. He took a threatening step toward me. “You want to throw down numbers, girly? We aren’t on campus yet. Let’s do this.”
“We’re on school property,” Meg squeaked. She shuffled her feet against the grass in a sort of manic jig. “See? Official Messina Academy grass. Our tuition pays the landscapers.”
“No,” I said, jumping off the planter. “We’ve been dancing around this for years. Go ahead, West. Inflate your IQ points to try to win this once and for all.”
“I’ll tell the truth if you will, Beatrice,” he growled.
“The IQ test really isn’t a reliable test of intelligence,” Peter said imploringly. “That’s why the entrance exam is so long. It measures more than the standard—”
“Meg, count to three for us,” I said.
“I knew this was going to turn into a duel,” Meg whimpered. “You could both be suspended for this, you know.”
Peter scrubbed a hand over his forehead, mussing his hair. “I really shouldn’t be a part of this. Ben, you could lose your seat on student council—”
“Worth it,” West barked, not taking his eyes off me. “Meg, count us off.”
“Okay,” she sighed. She gave Peter an apologetic frown. “Unos, duo … tres.”
“One hundred and seventy-eight.”
I paused at the sound of the echo. My voice had never been on the dulcet side of things, but I was sure that I hadn’t woken up as a baritone. I tilted my head at West, who looked as though he’d been slapped.
Peter and Meg stared at us in abject horror. I reached up and pulled my sunglasses off, squinting through the sunlight.
“You’re a damn liar,” I said.
He slapped a hand to his chest. “I’m the liar? There is no way—”
“You have the exact same IQ,” Meg breathed, holding onto her cheeks.
“That explains some things,” Peter murmured.
There was absolutely no way that it was true. What were the chances of having the exact same score? It defied imagination. I doubted that even our old statistical anomaly teacher could have given us the odds on it.
“It explains nothing,” I said. “Because it can’t be true. West is just a—”
“A what?” He laughed, but there was no color in his face. “We’re at the Mess, not Hogwarts. I’m not a gorram wizard.”
Blistering heat rose to my cheeks. I clenched my hands into fists. “Then you snuck a look at my file or—”
Cornell appeared out of the crowd moving toward the front gate, holding onto the straps of his backpack as he approached us. He frowned. “What’s going on?”
“Nerd duel,” Meg answered. “Where’s Harper?”
“I thought she’d be here with you guys.” His frown deepened and he rubbed a hand over his shorn scalp. “What’s a nerd duel? I don’t see any Magic cards or polyhedral dice.”
“The gag rule,” Peter said.
“Oh.” He swung his head to look at me and West. “Who won?”
“It’s a draw,” West said numbly.
My brain was lagging, as though the proceedings had somehow shorted a circuit in my head. I had never assumed that I had the highest IQ on campus, far from it. I was above average, but not in the mad-genius range of 190 or above. And there was no logical way for Ben West to have hacked into my file. The only answer was the most impossible—we were exactly the same.
I walked away without a word, unable to endure everyone staring at me for another minute. I heard footsteps behind me and assumed it was Meg, but as I climbed the steps toward the front door, I saw West’s face reflected in the window. He followed me silently into the American Immigrant classroom. We sat down in our usual seats, feigning ignorance of each other’s continued existence.
I took out my binder and set it down on my desk, going over the previous day’s notes in case Mr. Cline decided to spring a quiz on us. After a few minutes, Harper slid into the empty seat next to me. As I’d expected, she was more coiffed than usual. Her hair was pulled back with a handmade Batman logo headband and she smelled vaguely of raspberries.
I glanced over at her. She gave me a tentative smile that plainly said that someone had updated her on the results of the nerd duel. Cornell skulking to his seat and folding his hands guiltily on his desk confirmed this suspicion.
“Don’t,” I grumbled, turning back to my notes.
“I had no plans to,” she said lightly.
“Uh-huh.” I reached into my bag and extended the Buffy comic across the aisle to her. “Take it and swallow your gloating.”
She took the comic and tucked it into the pocket of one of the many folders in her binder. “I’m not gloating. Just thinking.”
I rolled my eyes and did not ask her to elaborate. Whether she was thinking about Cornell or the best way to force me to keep my mouth shut, I didn’t need to know.
* * *
For the first time, I was thankful for the Mess staff’s undying love of pop quizzes and spur-of-the-moment essays. There was very little time to dwell on my morning when I was digging through my notes on the national debt of Zambia and struggling to remember the metaphorical significance of the train in Anna Karenina.
Of course, after I was excused from Russian Literature, I faced the long walk across campus to the cafeteria. Alone with my thoughts for the first time in hours, I considered the events of the nerd duel. Now that the shock had mostly worn off, I was left with an unshakeable determination. More than ever, I wanted to crush Benedict West. Now I knew that beating him in the ranking would be a true victory. We’d grown up in the same town. We’d had the exact same education. And, apparently, we had the exact same IQ, give or take an unknown decimal.
This was so much bigger than the monkey bars. This was the Rebels versus the Empire. This was the Doctor versus the Daleks. This was Ripley versus the Xenomorphs.
This was a real, true, full-scale war.
With the strap of my messenger bag slung across my chest, I slipped my sunglasses on and stepped into the open-air quad in the center of campus. Dozens of other students were zigzagging across the mosaic M emblazoned into the concrete, some scurrying out of the chemistry labs, some heading toward the library for lunchtime studying.
I spotted Kenneth Pollack shoving a small dark-haired boy against one of the many decorative sycamore trees that dotted the edges of the quad. The smaller boy went rigid as Kenneth’s hands braced into his shoulders. There was a rolling backpack toppled on the ground beside them.
Swerving slightly, I moved toward them. Hazing was, of course, forbidden at the Mess, but that didn’t mean that meatheads like Kenneth didn’t occasionally rough up the freshmen. As my shoes tread against the grass, the frosh made a pathetic whimper of dissent, his round face pinched.
“I didn’t,” the frosh protested. “I don’t even know—”
“Kenny,” I said, coming up behind them. There were only about a hundred people in our class and Kenneth had gone to Aragon with us, so I was fairly sure he at least knew who I was. “Isn’t it a little hack to push around the freshmen? It’s so expected.”
If we’d had a football team—instead of basketball, cricket, and chess—Kenneth would have been a linebacker. As it was, he’d taken Peter’s place on the basketball team, but he lacked the natural grace that the sport required.
“He told Cline that I cheated,” he snarled at me.
“I don’t know who that is,” the frosh protested, remaining against the tree as though he hadn’t realized he’d been released. “I don’t even know my lunch number.”
“Kenneth,” I said, resting my elbow on top of my bag. “Cline doesn’t have any contact with the lowerclassmen. He doesn’t even have office hours this year. He went back to teaching poetry at the university.”
“The email came from this kid’s account,” Kenneth blustered. His cheeks were blistered with impotent fury, pushing a whitehead on his chin into the foreground. “B. Calistero at Messina Academy. There aren’t any other Calisteros on campus.”
“We have school email?” B. Calistero asked.
“How do you know he sent the email?” I asked Kenneth. “Cline wouldn’t have told you.”
“I just know,” Kenneth said darkly. “He emailed Cline and said I copied Mike Shepherd’s Ellis Island essay. They’re threatening to bench me.”
Of course his outrage was unrelated to the sullying of his academic record—a mark of cheating would almost undoubtedly revoke any incoming college acceptances. No, it all came down to basketball. Why did his parents even bother writing his tuition checks?
“B. Calistero,” I said, peering over Kenneth’s shoulder at the frosh. “Can you name the gentleman who introduced the back of your skull to that tree trunk?”
The frosh’s eyes were wide and raced between me and Kenneth as though trying to figure out which of us was more likely to hurt him in the event that he gave the wrong answer.
“I don’t,” he spluttered. “I mean, this is only my second week here. I was in public school before and—”
“It’s okay,” I said, mostly to keep him from vomiting down the front of his polo. I looked back at Kenneth. “See? He doesn’t know anything. And the freshmen are still turning in hard copies of all of their homework.”
“So?” Kenneth asked.
“So he doesn’t know who you are and he hasn’t touched his shiny new email account,” I said, a tad exasperated. Honestly, sometimes talking to my classmates made me wonder how useful the entrance exam was. “Someone probably hacked him as some kind of start-of-term prank. We are at a school for geniuses. Stuff happens.”
Kenneth considered this, his forehead indenting around a smattering of zits.
“But who would have done it?” he asked finally.
“How should I know? I’m no Veronica Mars.”
He stared at me with vacant, glassy eyes.
“She’s a detective on TV. And there was a movie,” blurted the frosh. And then, in a much smaller voice, “The movie was really good.…”
I offered him a grateful smile. “Thanks, sport. Now, run and be free.”
He bobbed his head to me, scrambling to grab the handle of his rolling backpack. It leapt behind him as he charged toward the cafeteria. Kenneth watched him go.
“But I still don’t know who told Cline I cheated,” he said with a smidge of petulant whine lurking underneath.
“Did you cheat?” I asked.
He blew a raspberry of disdain. “No. And even if I had, it wouldn’t have been off of Shepherd. He’s an idiot.”
“Well. Best of luck to you. Try to stop roughing up the newbs. They’re delicate.”
“Whatever,” he grunted. “Put a few of them in line and the rest will learn not to screw with their betters.”
Gee whiz, why was it so hard to find a suitable male companion when there were gems like Kenneth around?
“Wow. You would have been a swell slave owner.”
I turned on my heel and walked into the cafeteria, where I promptly put together a spinach-and-egg salad. I found Harper and Meg whispering together at our usual table, tucked into the corner as far away from the door as possible to keep from being interrupted by traffic.
I set my tray down across from Harper, doing my absolute best to ignore how she and Meg had stopped speaking at the sight of me. I was sure that they’d been discussing the nerd duel and I had no intention of prompting them to continue.
“Why, Miss Harper Leonard,” I said, cracking open a can of cola. “I didn’t expect to find you here. Shouldn’t you be claiming your position as the senior class’s Second Lady?”
Meg tittered into a potato chip. “Does she count as the Second Lady if Peter’s still single? I mean, if the president doesn’t have a First Lady, doesn’t that automatically make her First? There isn’t any precedent for it in history. James Buchanan used his niece.”
I laughed. “Maybe we could vote on an incumbent if Harper isn’t feeling up to the job.”
Harper couldn’t stop herself from giving her glasses a telltale adjustment of embarrassment. “We’re just going to the harvest festival together. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend now.”
“Well, there hasn’t been enough time for him to pin you.” I smirked.
“I’ve never considered how dirty that sounds.” Meg giggled. “Pinning.”
“We don’t have pins,” Harper said.
“Oh, we could find some pins.” I said. “If that’s what it takes to get this show on the road.”
“Again,” Meg said with a snicker. “Dirty.”
“Anyway,” Harper said loudly. She gestured to my heaping plate of greens. “What kept you?”
“Oh, I had to stop Kenneth Pollack from braining some frosh. Nothing particularly interesting.” I paused and took a bite of salad. “Explain to me again why you didn’t go sit with Cornell when you got here? He bought you comics yesterday.”
“Four comics.” Meg nodded. “That’s totally like a dowry’s worth of comics.”
Harper pushed a pizza crust around her plate with her index finger, letting it slide through a smear of orange grease.
“Because,” she said, “I’m not his girlfriend. And the student council is starting to plan the winter ball.”
I caught a piece of spinach as it tried to escape my lips and shoved it back in. “The what?”
Meg’s face lit up like a kid on Christmas who descended the stairs to find a unicorn sitting next to the tree. “You haven’t heard?”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “I’ve had three pop quizzes today, so unless this winter ball is being thrown by Tolstoy or the struggling people of Yemen, no. I don’t know anything about it. Aren’t we still waiting for the harvest festival?”
“Yes,” Harper said. She also seemed to be dangerously excited about this news but was holding it back better than Meg. “But you know how there’s a lull between the harvest festival and the spring fling?”
“The lull known as finals?” I asked.
“Right,” Meg said. She braced her hands on the table and leaned toward me. “They’re adding a third dance this year.”
“Why?” I asked.
In the name of us having a “normal” high school experience, the Mess allowed us to have the spring fling and the prom. The spring fling was more of a sock hop—no formal wear, lots of punch. Meg, Harper, and I usually went to it as it was more group dancing and less requiring of a date than the prom. We’d spent junior prom eating candy and having a movie marathon in my bedroom.
“It’ll be more like prom than the spring fling,” Meg said, hurt by my lack of enthusiasm. “It’s formal, but it’ll be here on campus instead of at the fancy ballroom downtown.”
“And there’s going to be a live band,” Harper added.
“Do you think they know the Electric Slide?” I asked between bites.
Harper and Meg exchanged an unamused glance. I could feel their combined excitement for this exercise in torture pounding against my temples. Or maybe that was a stress migraine.
I allowed myself ten seconds of mental cursing and temper tantrum throwing before I said, “You’re going.”
“Of course we are,” Meg said. “It’s an important school event. We went to basketball games.”
“And stopped,” I said.
“The tickets won’t be that expensive,” Harper said. “When Noni was telling me about it in Latin, she said that it wouldn’t be more than twenty-five apiece.”
“Do you have any idea what I could do with the money I’d be wasting on a prom dress?” I asked, lowering my fork. “I could buy my Doctor Who figur—”
“Trixie,” Meg interrupted. “This is our senior year. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one night where you got dressed up and—”
“And?” I asked, turning on her swiftly. “What am I going to experience at some dance that I can’t feel right here in my uniform? I will go to the harvest festival because I like costumes and kettle corn, but there’s no way you two are going to talk me into going to a ball.”
“Okay,” Harper said, cutting across Meg, who was primed to keep arguing. “Really. We won’t hassle you about it, Trix. It just seemed like it might be a nice thing for the three of us to do together.”
But it wouldn’t have been the three of us. None of us had to say it, but we all knew. Harper would go with Cornell and be crowned the snow queen or whatever the winter ball award for prettiest couple was. Meg would undoubtedly find someone to go with her and have him running off to get punch whenever she got bored of talking to him. And I would sit at a table—probably the same table we were currently occupying—reading a book that was small enough to fit into a handbag. I could feel humiliation cropping up in my throat just thinking about it.
“It’s not until the end of term,” Meg said. “And we still have the harvest festival next week.”
I massaged my aching head and took another sip of cola in the hope that the caffeine would work some kind of magic and turn my day around.
“I should have the costumes done by Sunday,” I said. “Do you want to come by and do a fitting? We could watch the Battlestar Galactica miniseries again.”
The girls agreed. Meg asked for advice on an essay she needed to write on Jude the Obscure, complaining that she couldn’t even think about the title without starting to hum the Beatles. Harper sent sigh-laden glances over her shoulder at the table where Cornell pretended to not be doing the same thing. Equilibrium seemed to be restored.
But I wasn’t dumb enough to expect it to last.
[9:03 PM]
Harper
It’s going to be cold that night. Should I wear tights? It’s not a canonized part of the costume …
[9:05 PM]
Me
Doesn’t Supergirl normally go around with her stomach showing?
[9:06 PM]
Harper
I think Meg will be naked enough for all of us.
[9:08 PM]
Me
Then you’ve answered your own question. Buy tights.
[9:08 PM]
Harper
What about contacts?
[9:09 PM]
Me
You hate them and they hurt your eyes.
[9:10 PM]
Harper
But Kara Zor-El doesn’t wear glasses!
[9:11 PM]
Me
Okay. Buy contacts. I’ll just cut the midriff off of your top real quick …
[9:14 PM]
Harper
Fine. No contacts.