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Friday, Oct 10, 2008
The bell rang. Liza got up and moved away from Anton Grosvenor as quickly as possible.
A set of two matching girls, dressed and lip-glossed identically but clearly unrelated, approached Liza after class.
"Hi," the skinnier one said to Liza. "Were you passing notes to Tonto?"
"Who?" Liza asked, trying to de-code the class schedule that had been printed for her.
"Tonto. Anton Grosvenor. That guy."
They pointed to the note giver, who was striking a criminally suave posture near the bulletin board with several of his male groupies.
"Yeah, I guess," stammered Liza.
"What did he say?" the slimmer girl asked, clearly burning with self-interest.
"Not much," Liza sidestepped, unable to figure out where to go for her history class.
"You should stay away from him," said the girl, suddenly turning ugly. Liza now noticed the large, carefully drawn "Nikki + Tonto" tattooed in ballpoint on her new denim binder. "Nikki" dotted all of her is with fat hearts.
"That guy is totally disgusting, I wouldn't go near him if he paid me," Liza blurted out. Her brain was still so infected by the notes, she realized, too late, that the "Liza + Money = Sex" equation was a bad thing to put into the minds of her classmates.
"You look like you'd go near anyone that paid you," sneered Nikki.
"Yeah,pardon our mistake," condescended Nikki's chubbier accomplice.
Liza reddened, then purpled.
"Fuck you skanky-ass bitches!" Liza shrieked, rearing back into her past when she was a minority in a Reno junior high, and remembering that the best way to frighten white girls was to act nonwhite. "Bes' get the fuck out my face 'fo I kick both yo asses!"
Liza could hear Anton "Tonto" Grosvenor and his minions giggling down the hall at her display.
"Oh, you're black, I get it now," sneered Nikki, derisive but clearly nervous.
"Thass right, I 'mo kill your bitch-ass ugly face, too, skeezah!" Liza shouted triumphantly, sensing that her foes were on the run. "Don'tchu fuck wit' me, bitch, I been jumped in wit' the Nevada Queens!"
Liza had never been "jumped in" with the Nevada Queens, an ethnic high school girl-gang she had heard of once, but it seemed to intimidate Nikki and her friend enough to make them leave her alone, after giving her penetrating looks of disgust.
Enough other students witnessed that first-day-of-school display that Liza was instantly branded as feral, trashy, violent, and suffering a racial identity crisis by her peers. They didn't think of her in those words -- "gross" was all they were able to articulate -- but the girls gave Liza a wide berth, and the boys opted to openly deride her, since they found her outfits sexually intimidating.
It became clear, in Liza's first few days at Miwok Butte, that socially, the entire school was held hostage by members of the extensive Grosvenor family: six exceptional teens born to the famous identical twins Radcliffe and Horatio, partners in the thriving Grosvenor and Grosvenor law firm. None of the Grosvenor kids would have been attending public school were it not for the political aspirations of their fathers, who considered it important that their children mingle with the Great Unwashed during their preuniversity years, just in case they ever wanted to be mayors or assemblymen or even Governor Grosvenors. Teachers fawned over them, seduced by the glamour of such a healthy, wealthy, intelligent, and beautifully toothed army of teens; the Grosvenor presence lent dignity to their second-rate teaching jobs in the way that fine china can dignify a modest meal.
Miwok public opinion set as hard and instantly as epoxy -- one was either in or under the Grosvenor vanguard. Because there were so many of them, the deadly Grosvenor gaze was virtually omnipresent and held the entire school in its crosshairs.
One would think, given Liza's hapless high school debut, that she would scuttle down to join the lowest dregs of the sub-staircase-dwelling teens and live out her next four years suffering quietly beneath the Grosvenor boot. But Liza, as we know, is not a girl ruled by the logic of self-preservation.
High school girls, whose hormones outweigh their brains, generally fall for the worst, most abusive male louts available, out of some DNA-throwback, chimpanzee fealty to the Alpha Male. Over the first few weeks of high school, the felonious visage of Tonto Grosvenor began to creep into Liza's subconscious and create a Feeling that Liza thought she recognized as Mild Hate -- a safe and comfortable feeling, with which one can have a laugh and a beer, then forget about moments later.
But Liza's Mild Hate for Tonto Grosvenor, once it had gotten safely under her skin, shed its Wicked Wolf suit and revealed itself, when she was utterly defenseless, as the Deadly Lamb of Love.
Cupid has rarely been so cruel. The romance continued thusly:
YOU ARE A SPUNK-DRENCHED BAG OF USED SLUT-MEAT,
Tonto wrote as Nikki and her chunky friend Beth watched the transaction with furious eyes. While part of Liza was stung by Tonto's notes, another part of her was impressed with his flair for writing them. The verbal section of her mind began inadvertently developing as she wracked her vocabulary sheet and pocket thesaurus to come up with a laudable insult.
You are a jejune, lice-infested pariah, she wrote hopefully.
LAME THESAURAUS WORK YOU CUM-SICK HOSE MONSTER
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