Confessions Of An Angry Girl. Louise Rozett

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      TRACY'S HALLOWEEN PARTY already sucks and it hasn’t even started. She decided to throw the thing as soon as she made cheerleading last month because apparently it’s important for the new girls to kiss up to the older girls. She doesn’t put it that way, though—she says the younger girls have to pay their dues by hosting parties and things like that.

      She keeps talking about how pretty the cheerleaders on “the squad” are, like being pretty is the most important thing in the world. When I roll my eyes, she just shakes her head like I couldn’t possibly understand how important all this stuff is. And she’s right—I don’t. I don’t think we should still have cheerleaders that prance around in short skirts repeating stupid rhymes, flashing their underwear to cheer on boys without doing so much as a cartwheel. It’s the twenty-first century—shouldn’t we be more evolved than this?

      If Tracy weren’t my best friend, I wouldn’t be here hanging decorations for a “cheer party” while she and Stephanie finish putting on their costumes and looking for the key to Tracy’s parents’ liquor cabinet. I’d be home, probably, secretly wishing I were still allowed to go trick-or-treating and watching something on HBO without permission while my mom was locked away in her office writing up her notes on all the crazy kids she listened to that week. Or I’d be… I don’t know where else I’d be. I spend all my time with Tracy, so it’s kind of hard to know what I’d be doing if she weren’t my best friend.

      This is the first time Tracy’s parents have ever left her home alone, and I know it will be the last. I tried to tell her that this party is a bad idea and could get her into serious trouble, but I don’t think she actually hears me when words come out of my mouth anymore. Her house is beautiful and her parents collect antiques. Like, real antiques, shipped over from England and Portugal. When I mention this to Trace, she just says, “That’s why we’re having the party in the basement! There’s nothing valuable down there.”

      I refrain from asking her if she’s going to lock everyone in, making them come and go through the little windows that are high up near the ceiling.

      Something tells me that the two of us are not going to have an easy year.

      We had a big fight earlier, when we were making chocolate-chip freezer cookies for the party. She told me that she and Matt were going to do it tonight. I told her that I had finally decided that fifteen is too young. She didn’t like that at all. She changed the subject, saying that I need to find an activity, or a group, or something so that people will know who I am. “Like, you know, I’m known as a cheerleader now,” she said. “What are they going to say about you? And don’t say, ‘She plays French horn in the orchestra’ because, I’m sorry, but that’s just lame.” I shoved some candy in my mouth to stop myself from saying, At least playing French horn takes some talent. Instead I said, “I’m a runner” to which she replied, “Not on a team, you’re not,” to which I replied, “Well at least running is a real sport, not like cheerleading,” to which she replied, “It’s good enough for Regina and she’s Jamie’s girlfriend.”

      I almost punched her.

      She hasn’t mentioned Jamie in a long time, probably because the last time she brought him up, I still wouldn’t tell her anything. That made her so mad that she started texting someone on her stupid phone right in the middle of our conversation, which she totally knows makes me crazy.

      Of course, what she doesn’t know is that there’s nothing to tell about Jamie. Except maybe that a few weeks ago he watched me run laps around the track during tryouts, according to Robert. But now that Jamie and I don’t have study hall together anymore, we never talk. If he makes eye contact with me in the hall, maybe he’ll give me a little nod, but that’s it. I wonder if he’s freaked out by our last conversation. I guess I can understand that—I mean, we don’t even know each other, and I basically asked him how many people he’s had sex with. Dumb.

      “Rosie, where’s your costume? It’s almost time,” Stephanie says, coming downstairs to the basement where I’m about to fall off a ladder, hanging fake spiders from the ceiling. She’s dressed as Lady Gaga. Or maybe Katy Perry. I’m not really sure which, since they both like crazy wigs, corsets and stupidly high heels.

      “Um, I don’t… I’m not dressing up this year.” As I hang the last spider, I notice the blue nail polish I put on in honor of Halloween is already chipped.

      “You have to! Oh, my god! Tracy will kill you if you don’t!”

      “I’m not staying, Steph. I’m not in the mood for a party.”

      Stephanie sort of shuffles her patent leather platforms around on the floor and then squints up at the orange-and-black streamers that run the length of the ceiling, twisting around each other with the spiders poking through. She takes a single blue M&M out of a bowl on the food table and pops it in her mouth.

      Stephanie is truly one of the nicest people I know, which means that she gets caught in the middle a lot. Tracy and I met her in middle school last year, when she moved from southern Illinois with her mom after her parents got divorced. She’s more Tracy’s friend than mine, especially since she started dating Mike over the summer. I’ve wanted to ask Tracy for a while now why she and Matt didn’t set me up with anyone this summer, but I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.

      “Are you leaving because Tracy’s mad at you?” she asks.

      I have to think about that. Is that why I’m leaving? I think I’m leaving because I don’t feel like having Tracy flaunt her new friends in my face as if I’m not worth anything anymore. And because she’s making a big mistake by having sex with her stupid boyfriend when she barely even knows what sex is. And because he’s a jerk who is probably already doing it with half the girls’ swim team when she’s not looking.

      Matt morphed into something gross this past summer. Tracy didn’t notice. But I did.

      “Tracy’s mad because I told her I don’t think she should do it with Matt tonight.”

      Stephanie shuffles some more and yanks down her purple-and-black striped skirt, which rides up every time she inhales. Or exhales. Or moves. Or thinks about moving.

      Am I a prude? I wonder.

      “You told her that?”

      “I mean, Steph, isn’t fifteen, like, young to be worrying about this stuff?”

      “Not really. It seems like everyone has had sex already, except us.”

      “Everyone who? Who’s everyone?” I ask, a sick feeling flooding the pit of my stomach. Am I completely behind, and I don’t even know it? Am I totally out of the loop with no idea who’s doing it and who’s not? Part of me shrieks, Who cares? and the other part of me whispers, Chicken....

      “Well, like, Tracy says all of Matt’s friends, and, like, most of the cheerleaders—”

      “But they’re all—” I stop myself from saying, They’re all older, we’re just freshmen, because that argument has gotten me nowhere, especially in my conversations with Tracy. I guess I’m not supposed to be a freshman. I’m supposed to pretend to be older than I am at all times, I’m supposed to want to do things that don’t even make sense to me yet.

      “You know what?” I finally say. “I don’t care what Tracy or her new friends do.”

      “Come СКАЧАТЬ