one

I have never let my schooling
interfere with my education.
—Mark Twain

Last night Cindy dreamed she went to Manderley again. In the morning her stepsisters yelled, "Wake up, Orphan Girl," and she knew this time it was no dream. Starting today she was a junior at Manderley Prep, the most exclusive, expensive high school in the Bay Area, maybe in the whole state of California. No longer would she go to Castle High with its crowded prefab classrooms, its tired, overworked teachers and tuned-out, stoned students. As a poor scholarship girl, she might not fit in with the rich kids at Manderley, but she'd never really fit in anywhere anyway. So what?

Since she'd overslept, Cindy had no time to apply concealer to her face or grab an energy bar. Not that she had zits; it was the freckles she wanted to hide. And there was no way she could have gotten anything into her stomach before ten A.M. without gagging. But still. She threw on a pair of secondhand jeans she'd found at the Goodwill store and a T-shirt with a faded Dutch Goose logo, and grabbed her backpack and her clarinet. Brie and Lauren were already out of the house and impatiently honking the horn of their Jeep Cherokee.

"Next time you're late, we're not waiting for you. You can take the bus," Brie said.

"Sorry," Cindy muttered. They'd love an excuse to ditch her in the morning, but their mother, Irina, made them give her a ride to school and to her job at Irina's day spa after school.

"Well, look at her," Lauren said to Brie as Cindy dragged her clarinet case with her into the backseat. "If it isn't Benny fucking Goodman."

Cindy almost dropped her backpack in surprise. Not because her sister had used the f word, but because she'd even heard of the world's greatest clarinet player.

"Who is he, anyway? I saw his name on your old sweatshirt. Some rock star?" Lauren jabbed Brie in the arm and laughed hysterically. Then her laughter died. "Hey, isn't that my shirt?"

"You threw it away," Cindy said. But Lauren didn't hear her. Not with the music blasting from their new sound system. A few minutes later Lauren turned her head to look at Cindy again. Her perfectly straightened blond hair brushed against her spray-on-tanned cheekbone.

"Just do me a favor and don't tell anyone at school you're related to us, which you're really not."

"Don't worry," Cindy said. They thought she'd claim to be any part of the family her father had married into? As if.

Maybe Cindy would live to regret the day she'd filled out those scholarship forms. Now she'd be at the same school where her mean, self-centered sisters were seniors, members of the popular clique and cheerleaders. And they thought she'd claim to be related to those bitchy girls? Not in this lifetime.

"You're not going to like it there," Lauren said, as if she'd read Cindy's mind. "Everyone's rich and snobby. If you don't wear the right clothes or drive the right car, you're nobody. Of course in your case you've always been nobody, so maybe you won't notice."

Cindy fastened her seat belt and pressed her spine into the corner of the backseat where she was wedged between a stack of tank top and miniskirt cheerleader uniforms and blue and gold pom-poms. She felt the chill from their cold warnings right through her T-shirt.

"Even Brie and I had a little trouble fitting in at first," Lauren continued.

"Then why…"

"Why do we go there?" Lauren lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the backseat. At least they weren't smoking pot today and filling the car with that sweet, sickly smell of weed that would cling to Cindy's clothes. They bragged to Cindy that the latest shipment they'd gotten from south of the border was the best they'd ever had. She'd seen them hide their stash under the seat cushions of the jeep in snack-sized Baggies Irina bought in bulk at Costco.

Lauren answered her own question. "I'll tell you why. It's the cool school, that's why."

Lauren must not have noticed the way Cindy's lip curled down at the corner, not that she noticed anything about Cindy except when she was wearing her hand-me-downs, because she went on and on about Manderley.

"And the football team is number one in the private school league," Brie added.

Cindy knew her sisters thought their chants and stunts, during which they took every opportunity to shake their booty at halftime, played a huge part in the football team's ranking. They made no secret of the fact that they spent time on the sidelines lusting over the jocks in their tight Lycra pants. After the games they did more than just lust, unless they were only bragging.

Copyright © 2007 by Carol Culver.