Sandwiched in the lunch line between my pals Harper Alden and Amory Wilx, I got a taste of just how widespread the anti-boy syndrome had become.
“I mean, Camille trusted Xander,” Harper was saying as she readjusted her massive black Ralph Lauren sunglasses to hold back her straight golden locks. “And the way he just dropped her like that—it’s completely disrespectful to her as a woman.”
I loved Harper, but in some ways she was pretty traditional. Everything in her life had a mannered, high-society quality to it. I turned to Amory, who’d grown up with Harper and almost always called her out on her antiquated views of dating.
But Amory was nodding her head so enthusiastically, I thought her Candace Ang hoops might fall out of her ears.
“I know,” she said, selecting a fruit salad from the line. “It’s like boys only want us on their schedules. They’re are so capricious, just picking and choosing whatever girl, whenever they feel like it. Why should it be up to them all the time?”
I laughed and pointed at her fruit salad. “So says the girl who picks all the kiwi off one fruit salad and tosses it back with just cantaloupe left.”
“Not the same thing!” Amory insisted, but she laughed. “Okay, maybe that was a little ruthless.”
“This is why people shouldn’t jump into relationships,” Harper continued on her tirade. “My parents have a strict rule: no new guy can take me out until he has enough manners to show up at our house and introduce himself to my father.”
“Geez,” I joked, grabbing a bottle of iced jasmine tea. “If I had to wait around for my dad to be home to meet my new boyfriends, I’d never get a date!”
“That’s not true, Flan,” Amory said. “Alex has met your parents, hasn’t he?”
“Briefly.” I grinned, remember my mom talking about what a hunk he was at dinner last night. “He’s pret-ty amaz—”
I froze midgush. Both Harper and Amory were staring at me as if I were praising my new pet tarantula. Whoops, better change the subject fast.
“Have we actually gotten Camille’s side of this story?” I asked as we paid for our grub. Both Harper and Amory looked at each other and shrugged. “I mean, so far, what we know about the breakup of the century is only conjecture, isn’t it? Where is Camille, anyway?”
What if it wasn’t that bad? What if, on her anti-boy rampage, Morgan had blown the story just slightly out of proportion? What if there was still a chance to hit pause on the man-hating DVD all my friends seemed to be tuning into? Maybe, just maybe, there was a way to turn things around in time for us to rock the Valentine’s Dance like we had Virgil. …
Suddenly, Amory pointed dramatically.
“There,” she gasped, breathless.
I followed Amory’s finger toward the fourth table from the door, our daily lunch spot. Hunched over the table alone in her black Burberry trench was the shadow of my best friend. At that moment, Camille looked up to give us a full view of her tear-streaked face. We were on the other side of the cafeteria, but even if we’d been standing right in front of her, she still wouldn’t have seen us. Her eyes were completely glazed over in misery.
“She needs us,” Harper said, starting toward her. But before she’d even taken three steps, she turned back around to me. “And Flan, for Camille’s sake, try to zip it on the Alex stories for like twenty minutes, okay?”
I blanched. That seemed a little uncalled for! But we were supposed to be uniting to focus on Camille, so I brushed off the harshness and just nodded.
As I followed the other girls toward the table, trying to imagine how things between Camille and Xander had fallen apart so quickly, I felt a sudden yank on my right elbow. I turned around to find the most un-Thoney-looking girl I’d ever seen within these walls.
She had bright red hair pulled into a high side ponytail and tied with a yellow ribbon. She was wearing a purple gingham shirt tied in a knot at her waist, and her face was dotted with a smattering of auburn freckles. Wait a minute—those freckles looked abnormally large and didn’t exactly match her coloring. And underneath that thick mop of hair, I could have sworn I recognized …
A look of terror crossed the girl’s face, and before I could say anything she clapped her hand over my mouth and dragged me—and my precariously balanced bowl of vegetarian pho—behind the vending machines.
“Don’t make a sound,” she hissed once we were alone. As soon as she uttered the words, I knew my suspicions had been right.
“SBB,” I said, “what are you doing here? And what are you wearing?”
“I texted you an hour ago to see if it was okay if I came for …” She paused. “… a visit.”
“I’ve been in chem lab all morning,” I said, taking in her pleated jeans and old-school Keds. “And for the record, in the past, a visit means you stopping by with sushi and a cute bag you just picked up at Barneys. What’s up with the gingham? I mean, I know urban cowgirl was in a couple seasons ago, but this seems like a stretch.”
SBB sighed and collapsed pretzel-style on the parquet floor. “I know,” she heaved. “I’m hideous. I just … I didn’t want to be recognized on my first day of school! My audition for Blinker High is right around the corner. I know you said you’d help me unlock the mystery of high school, but I was just sitting around in my underwater pilates class this morning, feeling like every second that I didn’t spend preparing for this part was a waste of time. I got so distracted, I almost drowned, Flannie! So I figured—I figured I’d enroll at Thoney with the very most wonderful high school student in the whole world.” She looked up to gauge my reaction. “Just, you know, for a little while.”
“Oh, SBB,” I said, joining her on the floor and putting my arms around her. This audition clearly meant a lot to her. “Well … welcome to Thoney. I’m Flan and I’ll be your tour guide through the treacherous world of high school.” I tugged on her braid. “Lesson one: you don’t have to dress like a complete geek—no offense—to avoid being recognized as your movie-star self.”
“I don’t?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“Uh-uh. Maybe start with a slightly less offensive wig and see how it goes?” I suggested. I slid the bowl of pho in between us and offered SBB first shot at the chopsticks.
“Wow, you have Vietnamese food in your cafeteria?” she asked, slurping up some of the spicy noodles. “This is good. I thought it was all Tater Tots and Jell-O.”
“Lesson two.” I held up two fingers. “Thoney is not your normal high school.”
“Should I be taking notes?” SBB asked. “I’ve seen some girls walking around with really cute planners. I could get a planner like yours.” She reached for my new Kate Spade notebook. It was flipped open to this afternoon, where I’d written: Man-hating spa treatment with the girls.
I sneaked a peek around the vending machines at my other friends. I knew I needed to be there for Camille, but at least for now, the other girls seemed to have her tears under control. I didn’t want to abandon SBB before she felt settled at Thoney.
“What’s this?” SBB asked, pointing at today’s box in my planner. “Does Thoney have an after-school spa club? Or are Bliss trips exclusive to Thoney too?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I think boy trouble is pretty universal to high school girls. Although maybe not everyone does therapy via seaweed wraps …”
“Oh no,” SBB said, snapping shut my planner. “Don’t tell me something’s wrong with you and Alex?”
“Far from it,” I said, glad to be able to admit that. “It’s Camille. She and Xander split up yesterday.”
Before I knew it, I had spilled the whole story to SBB—from my early morning coffee and complaining session with Morgan, to my convo in line with Amory and Harper, to the sad sight of one very heart-broken Camille across the cafeteria, to the final realization that all of my friends wanted to boycott the first dance I’d every actually been excited about.
“But you must go to the Valentine’s Dance, Flan,” SBB said. “Think about how great you and Alex will look together all dressed up!”
“I know, but it won’t be any fun if all my other friends bail,” I said. I sneaked a glance around the vending machines to check in on Camille. She was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief and Morgan was standing up, red-faced and waving her finger in the air—clear signs of an anti-boy tirade in progress. Making it to the Valentine’s Day dance didn’t look good.
“Flan,” SBB said, looking at me like I was missing a really obvious solution to my problem, “how many times have you seen my movie Heartbreak Hotel?”
“Only about three hundred.” I laughed, remembering SBB’s role in last summer’s smash hit about an eccentric millionaire living in the Beverly Hills Hotel. “You made me read Ronny Pepp’s lines opposite you for a month before shooting started, remember?”
SBB nodded. “You do a really great Ronny Pepp,” she recalled. “And you must also remember the brilliant idea that my character came up with when all her friends were heartbroken. …”
Simultaneously, SBB and I exclaimed: “She fixed them all up with dates!”
“Exactly,” SBB said, looking proud of herself. “Look, you know a ton of guys. And all your friends are megacatches. I’m sure you could fix them up with Valentine’s Day Dance–worthy dates in no time.” SBB put her hand to her chest like she was about to make a grand confession. “I may not know high school—yet!—but I do know about matters of the heart. Trust me, all it would take to turn your crew around is a little bit of matchmaking.”
I nodded. “You’re so right,” I said. “None of them would be anti-boy if I could find them the right boys! Flan the matchmaker. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Feeling immediately more empowered about the fate of my Valentine’s Day, I sneaked a final peek at my pals across the lunchroom. Everyone had stood up to recycle their trash—everyone except Camille, whose head was back in her hands in her Hunchback of Thoney pose. Hmmm. Finding a match for Camille should probably be my first priority.
“Flannie?” SBB asked innocently. “You’re not going to tell anyone who I am, are you? I won’t be able to really immerse myself if I know that my disguise isn’t airtight. My Jakey-pie told me that I need to try to lose myself in my role while I’m here.” She grasped my hands tightly. “You’ll help me be a real live high school girl, won’t you?”
Even as my mind was scrolling through all of the guys I knew, I had to laugh at SBB’s earnestness.
“Don’t worry, Not-SBB. Your crazy secret is safe with me.”