Huh. Maybe this SN guy knows me better than I thought. Adrianna Sanchez is the girl with the oversized Warby Parker glasses who sits next to me in English class. The one who reminds me of my friends back home. I blush a little at his Vans compliment. I’m such a sucker.
To: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
From: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
Subject: The One Percent
Credit cards? For real? Is everyone here rich?
To: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
From: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
Subject: come for a ride on my G4.
honestly? we have a couple scholarship kids, but this place costs mad bank, as i’m sure you know. it is what it is.
Spelled out in black-and-white: Reason #4,657 why I don’t fit in here. My dad’s not a film marketing mogul, whatever the hell that is; he’s a pharmacist. Back home we were far from poor. We were what I knew as normal. But no one had their own credit cards. I shopped at Target or Goodwill with saved-up cash, and we wouldn’t just buy a five-dollar coffee without first doing the unfortunate math and realizing that the drink cost almost an hour’s worth of after-school pay.
My parents were never much interested in money or clothes or any of the fancy-pants crap that’s ubiquitous here. I wasn’t the kind of kid who asked for designer stuff—it was never really my style, and even if it had been, I’m pretty sure my mom would have given me a lecture. Not just because we couldn’t afford more than the occasional splurge, but because my mother considered name brands and decorative stuff wasteful. Silly stuff for silly people. She was much more interested in using whatever money she and my dad saved to travel to interesting places or to donate to good causes. Experience over things, she used to say, and then talk about some social science study she had read that definitively proved money doesn’t buy happiness. I wish I could say I always agreed with her—I remember one fight we had over a two-hundred-dollar dress for the eighth-grade dance—but now I’m proud of how I was raised, even if it means I’m even more of a stranger in a strange land at this school.
Suddenly, my gratitude toward the Batman turns to fury. How dare he hijack my grade? Unlike the rest of the loaded kids here, I’m hoping to get a scholarship to college. I can’t just trust his promise of an A. And what if Mrs. Pollack found out we didn’t work together? When I enrolled, I had to sign an honor pledge. Technically, this could be counted as cheating and go on my permanent record.
Tomorrow I will have to gather the courage to talk to the Batman and tell him that we need to work together or I’ll have to ask Mrs. Pollack for a new partner. I hate that I have five hours of homework and still need to find time to get a part-time job. I hate that Scarlett is not here. I hate Theo, who just came home and, though I was sitting right there in the living room, didn’t even have the courtesy to say, “Hey, how was your day?” I even hate my dad, who, I decided after my mom died, is easier to love than to pity, for bringing me here, for leaving me to fend for myself. Even he is nowhere to be found.
My mom used to get mad when I used the word “hate.” She thought it was an ungrateful, overly entitled word, and no doubt she’d be furious at me for using it in reference to my dad. But then again, she’s gone, and he’s married to someone else now. Pretty sure none of the old rules still apply.
To: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
From: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
Subject: And now an understatement
Hey, Spirit Guide. Not to sound unappreciative or anything, but can I just say: YOUR SCHOOL SUCKS.
To: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
From: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
Subject: tell me something I don’t know.
preaching to the choir. now please stop yelling. you’re giving me a headache.
CHAPTER 5