Who Can Guess Ms. Cady’s Favorite Number?
Here’s a hint: It’s a number found on bills in denominations over twenty.
Think you know the answer? Drop an example of whatever bill you think it is in the front office!
(Guesses are non-returnable.)
“There’s no time!”
Fiona Shay, the girl who plucked me from (relative) junior-class obscurity to succeed her as next year’s master of the universe, is shrieking at me from where she kneels inside my walk-in closet. She is waving one of my pink slippers. I can’t tell if she wants to hit me in the face with it or if she wants me to pack it. She chucks the slipper at my head. It bounces off with a soft foof and lands in the suitcase lying open on the bed. I manage to catch the other slipper as she whips it in my general direction, her skirt wobbling with the effort.
“For the love of all things holy,” Fiona screeches, heaving herself up by grabbing on to a summer dress that hangs neat and perfect inside a clear plastic garment bag, her Founder’s Queen crown slipping down over one eye. She shoves it back up on her head and yanks the dress off the hanger, garment bag and all, and thrusts it toward me. “Does everything you have look like it came out of my dog’s butt?”
This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening. I need to say something. It’s like I’ve swallowed my tongue and it’s flopping around in the pit of my belly. I know what I need to do. I need to affirm and confirm. That’s what my mom would do. I’m Gigi Lane and you wish you were me. I’m Gigi Lane, and even if I was just totally humiliated by Daphne “Dog Face” Hall at the Founder’s Ball, you STILL wish you were me.
Right?
I can feel my face, already a mask of dried tears, start to go all crinkly again.
I look at my bedroom door, wishing Deanna would come bounding through with her trademark pluck and charm. But there’s no Deanna. She’s back at the ball, along with Aloha; ordered by Fiona to stay behind and “smile, for God’s sake! Smile and act like none of this ever happened!”
“I have other things I could wear,” I mumble thickly, squinching up my nose to keep from crying. “If I just knew where I was going.”
“There’s no time!” Fiona screams again, and then she starts yanking things willy-nilly off the hangers and shelves in my closet and tossing them onto the bed. “You have really screwed things up, Georgina Lane,” she growls, now stuffing two flower-girl dresses, a wet suit from my trip to Belize, and my seventh-grade Halloween costume into the suitcase. “You better thank your lucky stars that we already swore you in to the Hot Spot, because the sort of display we all saw tonight is most definitely not Hot Spot behavior, nor is it the sort of behavior becoming to a young woman of Swan’s Lake!”
“Wait!” I gasp, the lump in my throat threatening to break my neck. “That wasn’t my fault. …”
“Bull balls! Whatever you did to that Daphne girl was enough for her to totally demolish you! In front of everybody! At the last Founder’s Ball I’ll ever attend! You went too far, Gigi!”
Stay calm, Gigi. I take a deep breath and try for a smile. “But you said—”
Fiona narrows her eyes at me and lowers her voice to a growl. “Don’t you put this on me, Gigi Lane! I never told you to go ballistic on the poor girl.”
She starts quoting by heart from the Hottie Handbook, “‘Though the verbal intimidation and punishment of sister Swans may be necessary in order to maintain order and obedience, excessive cruelty weakens the reputation of the Hot Spot and Swan’s Lake Country Day School for Young Women, therefore jeopardizing both the Hot Spot’s power at Swan’s Lake and the reputation of Swan’s Lake as a whole.’ We are not mean girls, Gigi! What you did”—she shakes her head—“what you did crossed the line. It’s not just a few people that think you’re the devil, Gigi. It’s everyone. If I had any idea you’d been torturing that used-tampon of a girl …”
She leaps up on the bed, and for a second I think I’m going to die in a borrowed ball gown, but instead of stabbing me with her corsage pin, she closes the suitcase and plops her bony butt down, bouncing a couple of times to cram the clothes in. Her hoopskirt flies up, and from where I stand, it looks like she’s being eaten headfirst by a giant whale. She slaps the skirt down, pinning it between her knees.
“Zip!” she yells. I zip the suitcase, trying to avoid getting a stiletto in the eye as she lifts her legs so I can zip around them. It gets stuck halfway around, and she shoves me away and works on it herself.
“This,” she says, grunting with effort, “is not how I wanted to end my senior year at Dear Olde Swanny, and I am sure it is not how you wanted to start yours.”
Fiona stands up, still on the bed, narrowly avoiding bumping her head on the chandelier above. With the palm of her hand, she carefully pats away the sheen of sweat that’s gathered on her forehead. She smooths her dress and takes a deep, shuddering breath. She’s screamed off most of her lipstick, and the sweat has sent the rest of her makeup south, so it’s starting to gather in the creases of her neck. She lifts a hand to yank a long pin out of her hair, knocking into the chandelier with her elbow, and in the swaying light her hair comes tumbling down around her shoulders like a black waterfall. Sweaty and without makeup, Fiona Shay is still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
“You’ll be Head Hottie next year, Gigi.” Fiona’s voice is syrupy sweet, the light swinging her face into harsh brightness and inky shadows. “This is for the best.”
“But I don’t understand. Why do I have to leave tonight?”
Fiona laughs, a short, barking huff. “‘Why do I have to leave tonight?’” Her imitation is so accurate, and so sharp, that I can only swallow in response. “You have to leave tonight because I don’t want to have to look at your face all summer in the DOS.”
“No, no, no, no, no … Fiona, please,” I beg, “I’ll do whatever you want.” My mind is racing. “I’ll cut my hair. I’ll shave it right off. …” She looks at me, no emotion in her face. “I’ll stop waxing my upper lip and grow a handlebar mustache, I won’t use deodorant for a month, and I’ll wear dollar-store perfume, please, Fiona, punish me however you want, you just can’t make me leave!”
She looks at me for a long time, her head cocked to the side, and I’m suddenly embarrassed at how desperately I want to spend the summer with her and Poppy and Cassandra, how much I want Deanna and even Aloha to be there too. I hate this feeling of disappointment, as unfamiliar as if I’d slipped my bare feet into someone else’s well-worn shoes.
“I’m sorry, Gigi.” Fiona shakes her head and leans in close. “But this is serious. As serious as the most vomit-faced girl in the junior class getting up on stage at the Founder’s Ball and making a tearjerker of a speech about how the Head Hottie I chose for next year is a total witch. How do you think that reflects on me, Gigi? Do you think I want that as my legacy when I graduate? Do you think I want to be known as the Head Hottie that chose a little fascist to succeed her?”
She pauses for so long I’m wondering if it’s not a rhetorical question. But when I open my mouth to answer, she whispers, “You went too far, Gigi.”
“But … but I didn’t … ,” I stammer, “I didn’t do anything different than what I usually do, the girl just freaked, she’s a freak, Fiona, a total loser freak who—”
“The Network has already called an emergency meeting about your situation, Gigi,” Fiona says firmly. “And it’s been decided that you need to vacate the premises, effective immediately.”
“And next year?” I ask weakly.
Fiona looks at me. “If all goes well, you’ll come back to Swan’s Lake and start your senior year as Head Hottie.”
“Promise?”
“If you do what I say and leave Swan’s Lake immediately, until we tell you it is safe to return.”
I nod earnestly. “I will, I’ll get out. I’ll leave now.”
“Good. And you can’t talk to anyone, Gigi, not Deanna, not Aloha, not anybody,” she says. “Understood?”
I shake my head. “Wait, what about my mom and dad?”
“What about them?”
“Well, they think I’m staying home all summer. Even if my mom’s on a book tour, I can’t just disappear on the night of the Founder’s Ball and not talk to either of them for the whole summer. They’d freak.”
“Yes,” Fiona sighs, “I suppose you’re right. There are rules about this sort of thing.” She flips open her phone and proceeds to have a conversation with someone, I’m not sure who, which involves my dad’s address at the hospital—which I didn’t even know Fiona knew—and his surgery schedule, ending with, “Of course he’ll believe you.” She listens for a moment and then says flatly into the phone, “Permission denied. You are still under punishment. You’ll just have to use your persuasion skills.”
She ends the mysterious phone call without a good-bye, flipping her phone shut. “Well, that’s settled, then.”
I nod. “But where am I going?”
“Somewhere you won’t be able to do any further damage to your own reputation, or that of the Hot Spot.”
“But where?”
“That information is shared on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know. You’ll find out when we get to the airport.”
“Is it someplace bad?” I manage to squeak.
She makes a disapproving growling sound deep in her throat.
I search her face for some sort of friendliness. I will stop breathing and die a thousand deaths if Fiona Shay decides to hate me. She studies me for a long moment, and I try to hold her gaze, willing myself not to look sweaty and weepy and nauseous. A slow smile spreads across her face, like a ribbon unfurling in the wind.
“No, honey, it’s not bad at all. In fact, I’m a little jealous of where you’re going. And don’t worry; when you get back to Swan’s Lake at the end of the summer, everything will be the way it should be. You’ll walk into school as Head Hottie and have the best year of your life.”
Fiona’s cell phone chirps. “What?” she says, slipping the phone under her curtain of black hair. She glares at me as she listens. “Got it. We are go,” she sneers, “repeat, we are go for protective exile.”