uncompetitive and unpretentious and found the BTRs boring. Nobody really paid her that much attention before I moved to Deadwood. She wasn’t an Independent, she was just Ella. Now she’s an Independent by default, because I’m her best friend.
And then, standing alone like a princess on a tower of diamonds, there’s Carla Santini.
Carla Santini isn’t an Independent, she’s a BTW
Carla Santini is beautiful, rich, intelligent and revoltingly sophisticated for someone who was born and raised in the depths of New Jersey. She does what she wants; she dresses like a model. If Carla Santini wears something new on Monday, half the girls in the school will be wearing something like it by Friday. And then Carla will never wear hers again. Carla Santini is also one of those people who sees this enormous planet as a single-person dwelling. It baffles me how someone as materialistic, self-centred and shallow as Carla Santini can be the most popular teenager in Dellwood, but young as I am, I have already learned that there’s a lot in this life that doesn’t make sense.
After that first conversation in the homeroom Carla Santini didn’t come near me for a while. But she watched. I could see her sizing me up as she passed in the hall, tossing her hair and laughing with her friends as though she didn’t know I existed. But I made sure that she did. Whether I was in a black phase or a phase of vibrant colours, I stood out: Morticia Addams one day; Carmen the next. And I made sure that I took part in all my classes; especially English. Carla Santini and her brood of admirers monopolized the middle rows in English, forcing everyone else either to the front (where they’d always be picked on), or to the back (where they fell asleep).
My second day at Dellwood, I dragged Ella to English early and sat dead centre. Ella didn’t want to; she liked to sit to the side at the back, but I pointed out that since there weren’t assigned seats we could sit where we wanted. We live in a democracy, don’t we? Ella can always be reasoned with. Unlike some of us she comes from a very reasonable family.
Even Ella admitted that it was worth it, just to see the expression on Carla Santini’s face when she strode through the door and saw us sitting in her seats. It only lasted a nanosecond, but it was a beauty: pure, primal rage. Scarlett O’Hara couldn’t have done it better. Then, without any hesitation, she screamed out, “I’m bored with sitting in the same place all the time, let’s sit at the back for a change,” and she sailed past us, her entourage shuffling after her.
At the end of my first week at Deadwood High, Carla Santini came up to me on the lunch line. She was smiling like a salesman on commission. She has an incredible number of teeth – at least twice as many as the rest of us – each of them perfect and white.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Carla Santini.”
As if I didn’t know that. It was like Cher coming up to you on the lunch line and saying. “Hi, I’m Cher.”
I smiled back. “I know.”
Carla’s smile became a little less bright but no less toothy. The salesman was about to tell me a price I didn’t want to hear. “I know you’re new here, Lola,” purred Carla Santini, “and you don’t understand how things work yet.” Her smile solidified. “I’ve been making allowances for that.”
My own smile dimmed slightly. Even though I hadn’t heard it yet, I could tell I wasn’t going to like the price.
“So are you going to tell me how things work?” I purred back.
Carla Santini said, “Yes,” and stopped smiling. Then she told me. I was sitting in her seat in English. I was attracting too much attention. I was committing social suicide by hanging out with Ella-Never-Had-a-Fella.
“I thought you and Ella were friends.” I still had a smile on my face.
“Of course we’re friends.” She held up her hand, the first and second fingers crossed. “We were like that when we were little. But she doesn’t have your potential, does she?” She openly turned and flicked her head to where Ella was sitting with her lunch in front of her, waiting for me. “I mean, look at her. She dresses like a politician’s wife. I know she’s very sweet, but, let’s face it, she’s about as exciting as lettuce.” The curls shuddered and she looked back to me. “But you … you’re different. You could really be somebody at Dellwood.”
I could hear her adding silently,
“Wow…” I said. “Then I could die happy.”
If it could be bottled, the Santini smile could be used as a chemical weapon.
“It’s a lot better than dying
I picked up my tray.
“Thanks for the advice,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…” I nodded to where Ella was staring at us, her mouth open and a forkful of food hovering in the air beside it, like a politician’s wife whose lunch has been disturbed by the arrival of Martians. “My friend is waiting for me.”
Those were the first shots fired in what turned out to be a pretty ugly war.
My mother was still sitting at the table, reading the newspaper, when I finally staggered into the kitchen the morning after the end of the world, but the twins had already left for school. Thank the gods for their small mercies. I could face my mother – she, at least, usually tries to act like an adult – but I couldn’t have faced her other progeny on that black, black morn. To have to sit with them while they shrieked at each other, babbled about nothing, and spat half-chewed cereal everywhere while my heart was being devoured by the worms of death would have killed me on the spot.
My mother gave me a glance when I came in.
“I called you twice,” she said, her eyes already back on the article she was reading. “What happened? Did you fall asleep again?”
I took a dragon mug from the shelf, but I was almost too weak to lift it. I leaned against the counter for support.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” I said in a voice that had lost all trace of joy. Probably forever. “I had a very fraught night.” Which was a phenomenal understatement.
My parent responded to this shocking announcement with her usual lack of concern for anyone else, especially me. “I had a very difficult night, too. Someone was playing one of her audio-migraines for hours.”
My mother doesn’t call what Sidartha plays “music”. My mother calls improvisational jazz “music”. Sidartha’s music she calls “audio-migraine”.
I poured some coffee into the mug. Very slowly, watching it flow into the cup like blood. “I’m sorry if my music disturbed you.” I sighed again. “But I’m afraid it’s the only comfort I have right now.”
“Well comfort yourself a little more quietly next time,” said my mother.
I picked up my mug and collapsed in the chair across from her.
She finally looked up and noticed that I was all in black, including my lips and eyelids. “So what’s it today? You in an Addams Family mood, or have you and Ella had a fight?”
I stared into the blackness that filled my cup. “It’s nothing,” I whispered, the words strained with pain. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“That’s not all you’re having for breakfast, is it?” demanded my mother. “You can’t go to school on a cup of coffee.”
I looked at her as a ghost might look at an old friend who is still alive. “I can’t eat anything,” I informed her patiently. “It would turn to ashes as it touched my lips.”
My mother made a face of exaggerated concentration. “Bette Davis?” she guessed. “Joan Crawford?” She shook her head. “It can’t be Glenn Close.”
“This isn’t an act,” I said hollowly. “This happens to be a day of great unhappiness for me.”
“You’ll be a lot more than unhappy if you don’t at least eat a piece of fruit.” She raised her paper. “And you’ll wash all that junk off your face before you leave this house, as well. You look like the living dead.”
My mother’s a potter. Potters aren’t like painters or musicians or actors; they’re much more pedestrian. It was unusual for her to be so perceptive. This unexpected sensitivity on her part surprised me so much that, even
