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My phone dings, and I glance down to see a text from Todd. My mind momentarily wonders what Chase is doing before I can squelch the thought.
I glance up at Mom. “Speaking of small allowances…”
She laughs. “Don’t push it.”
“You haven’t even heard me out. Todd wants to come over and watch a movie tonight. He’s skipping the party for me and everything.”
“Oh, the party, huh?” Mom does not sound impressed. “It’s ten o’clock already, Sky.”
“We’re just going to be watching a movie. I’ll even watch it in the living room.”
“I don’t think so. I’ll be in bed by eleven, and then you won’t have any supervision. Besides, I’ve seen this guy’s idea of what’s proper.”
“Mom,” I groan. “You’d like him if you gave him a chance. He’s a perfect gentleman.”
“You don’t know much about boys,” she says. “But take it from me. I was your age not that long ago, and boys your age really do only have one thing in mind.”
“Did you get that off a cereal box?” I ask, rolling my eyes. “You just used the biggest cliché in parental history.”
I don’t mention that it’s been like a century since she was my age, since that would probably not help my case.
Mom shakes her head. “I know, but there’s a reason it became a cliché, and that’s because it’s true.”
“So I have to text him back and say no? I’ll look totally lame.”
“You have to text him back and say no,” she confirms. “And you don’t look lame, just responsible and respectable.”
“Yeah, becausethat’swhat guys want in a girl,” I mutter, answering Todd’s text before handing over my phone to the warden.
three
Now Playing:
“The Distance”—CAKE
Daria is right about the gossip. By the next week, everyone has mostly stopped asking me about being a virgin, thank god. Now there’s something else to talk about. Wednesday all I hear everywhere I go is,the Finnegans this and the Finnegans that.
“So, who’s this family I keep hearing about?” I ask Todd as he walks me to class. “You’d think they were famous, the way everyone’s buzzing.”
He shrugs. “They used to go to school here.”
I wonder how even Todd finds out the gossip before me. He doesn’t even care. Not that I should care either, since I don’t even know these people. But I don’t want to be left out, and knowing the gossip is part of being in the inner circle.
Luckily, I know just who to ask.
I shoot a quick text to Daria, but we have a test in Spanish, so we can’t talk. After class, Daria skips over to my seat, practically bouncing out of her top with excitement, her eyes sparkling with glee at the prospect of so much juicy gossip.
Sometimes I think she only likes me because I don’t know any of the rumors, so she has a new face to impart all the wisdom everyone else already knows. I’m the perfect uninformed audience. She loves to tell me the histories of everyone, and she seems to know everyone’s history. I wonder how she can keep it all straight. She’s like an encyclopedia of FHS.
“You don’t know who the Finnegans are?” she asks, her eyes wide with shock.
I shake my head. “Are they, like, famous under a stage name or something? Ooh, is one of them Brody Villines?”
She throws her head back and lets out a raucous Daria laugh. Everyone in the vicinity turns to look at us, and I shrink down, wanting to disappear. I want to be part of the inner circle, but I’ve had a taste of the spotlight, and it was more than enough. Someone really should work out a way to be both popular and invisible at once, because I’d pay good money for that.
“No, silly,” Daria says, swatting my arm in her flirty way. “They’re a family who went to school here for a few years, but they moved away before freshman year.”
“And?” I ask.
