Dyan Sheldon - Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

“You won’t believe what happened!” I said, too excited to pretend to be cool. “You just won’t believe it!”

I told him what happened.

“And you should have seen my dad,” I concluded. “Lots of Stu’s friends knew his books. It was really weird.”

Sam took his hands from the wheel for a second. “Hallelujah!” he shouted. “This is the day I’ve been waiting for since kindergarten, when Carla Santini used to talk me out of my dessert every lunch. I cannot wait to see her face.”

He didn’t have long to wait.

Ella was waiting for us in the courtyard, right outside the student lounge. In my old school, the teachers were lucky to have a faculty room, but in Deadwood even the kids have their own room. The student lounge has three walls of glass, a bunch of chairs and low tables, and a drinks machine. Ella jerked her head behind her as we approached.

“Carla’s already started boring everybody to death with every microscopic detail of the concert and the party,” said Ella. She looked a lot different than she had just two days before. Partly this was because she had her hair down, but it was more than that. She looked brighter, happier, sort of more vivid.

Sam and I looked through the wall of windows. Carla Santini was holding court from the centre chair, flanked by Alma, Tina and Marcia, and surrounded by a gaggle of BTWs. She must have known Ella was waiting for me, because she turned to face me and smiled.

“Uh-oh,” said Sam. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What?” asked Ella, her back to Carla.

“She smiled,” said Sam.

“Are you sure?” asked Ella.

The way they were carrying on, you’d think they were two Red Guards talking about Stalin. He scratched his ear this morning… Well, someone’s off to the firing squad…

“She’s bluffing,” I said airily. “She doesn’t want everyone to know she spent yesterday crying her eyes out.” I grabbed both of them by the arm and steered them towards the entrance of the lounge. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s watch Carla Santini eat humble pie.”

Everyone turned around as Ella, Sam and I stepped into the lounge.

“Well, if it isn’t the Great Pretender!” called Carla.

“Kill her now,” muttered Sam.

The smile that had been on Carla’s face since she saw us grew like a cancer. “Come to hear what the Sidartha party was like?” she crowed.

As if she’d said something hysterically funny, the rest of them laughed.

“Why would we want to hear what you have to say?” I asked sweetly. “Ella and I were there, remember?”

This, apparently, was even funnier than what Carla had said.

Alma started shrieking hysterically. “Oh, my God!” Tears of laughter watering her mascara, she turned to Carla. “Did you hear that ? She said they were there!”

Marcia gave me a pitying look. “You know, lying’s not going to help you,” she said as though she wanted to be helpful. “Everybody already knows that you didn’t go.” She shook her head, baffled, as many of us are, by human behaviour. “How could you think you’d get away with it?” she wondered aloud. “Nobody who isn’t an idiot believed you in the first place.”

“That’s right!” chimed in Tina. “I mean, you ? The only way you’d get into a party like that is if you were one of the waitresses.”

I stood there, taking their abuse, staring at Carla in shocked disbelief. She had no intention of eating humble pie; it wasn’t on the Santini menu. She was going to lie through her teeth, and make it her word against mine.

“Don’t you pretend you didn’t see me!” I was calm, but strong. I stood up straight. “I know you did.” I sent a sneer in Tina’s direction. “And don’t you tell me the only way I’d get into a party like that is as a waitress. It just so happens that Ella and I got in with Stu Wolff. After we practically saved his life.”

Carla gestured to the photographs spread out on the table in front of her. “There’s the proof,” she purred. In case I was too thick to get what she meant she explained. “Those are my pictures from the concert and the party. Lola isn’t in one of them. But Stu is.” Her smile was Antarctica with lipstick. “Now how could you have been saving his life, Lola, when he never left the party all night?” She made a helpless gesture to her audience. “Why isn’t Lola in any of the pictures?” Her expression became sweetly sly. “It’s not like she’s camera shy, is it?”

Another round of laughter greeted this insightful witticism.

“Bride at the wedding … corpse at the funeral…” muttered Alma.

I wanted to turn the tables on her. I wanted to say that she had taken a photo, but she was pretending that she hadn’t. Only Ella was there. I’d promised her I wouldn’t lie any more, and I definitely wasn’t going to when she could hear me.

“You’re not going to get away with this,” I said instead. “Ella and I were at that party. My dad and Stu are even going climbing together – sometime.” When Stu got back from finding himself in India.

That, unfortunately, was the wrong thing to say.

Carla went off like a siren. “Your dad? But you don’t have a dad, Lola. Ella’s mother told my mother that your father died before you were born.” She turned her lethal smile on Ella. “Isn’t that true?” she asked.

It was obvious that our adventure really had changed Ella. She recovered more quickly from this sudden attack than I did.

“If you say so, it must be true,” said Ella sarcastically but without strictly lying. “All I know is that Lola’s father is very much alive and living on the Lower East Side.”

The homeroom bell sounded.

Carla smiled. “Of course he is. He and Stu Wolff are probably climbing up some mountain in Manhattan even as we speak.” She gave Ella another killer dose of smile. “Didn’t I say you should come with me?”

Monday went downhill from there.

History, Spanish and science weren’t total hell because, though everyone darted knowing glances at me and Ella, and muttered amongst themselves, Carla wasn’t in those classes with us, egging everyone else on. But in maths, Ms Pollard sent Sam to the principal for threatening to deck Morgan Liepe because he called Ella and me liars. And in English, where we had a supply teacher because Mrs Baggoli was taking one of her classes on a field trip and we were supposed to be writing an in-class essay, Carla passed her photographs around so everyone could see the first-hand proof that Ella and I hadn’t been at the party. Hearing the hissed wisecracks and sniggers, the supply teacher periodically raised her head from the book she was reading, but as soon as she went back to it, the wisecracks and sniggers would start again.

After school, Ella went home looking down, and Sam and I got the dress out of his car and snuck it back into the drama room cupboard. At least some things were going according to plan.

“Maybe Carla really didn’t see you,” said Sam as we climbed into the Karmann Ghia. “I mean, it is possible. The party was really crowded, right? And it was late.”

I snorted with derision. “Oh, please… She saw us all right.” I opened the passenger door again and freed my cape. “You should have seen her face. She looked like she’d just swallowed her tongue.”

We pulled out of the parking lot.

“You should have taken your own camera with you,” said Sam. He shook his head. “I mean, if you think about it, it always was a ‘heads Carla wins; tails you and Ella lose’ proposition. Even if she’d taken a photo of all of you together, she would never have admitted it.”

“Thanks for thinking of that now,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about bringing a camera with us because I knew Carla would have one. The last thing I’d needed to do was lose or break my mother’s Pentax on top of all my other crimes. “And anyway,” I went on more pleasantly, “I do have proof. I have Stu’s T-shirt.”