The Basic Eight Page 3

  On the way out of choir, I passed the room where the band and orchestra rehearse. Rolling their eyes, Douglas Wilde, my ex, and his girlfriend Lily Chandly, strolled out carrying their instrument cases. He is a violinist, she a cellist so there’s no bitterness here because she’s much better for Douglas; I’m practically tone-deaf and anyway, I broke up with him. Douglas, as usual, was dressed to the hilt in an off-white linen suit, complete with pressed handkerchief and pocket watch. Dating him was a bit like being in an old movie. I hugged them both, each in turn. Douglas, the dear, didn’t mind–it was, as they say in tabloids, an amicable parting–but Lily emitted such a glare that I was thankful that those were true instrument cases and not Mafioso euphemisms. Had I written to these people during the summer I wouldn’t have to re-establish anything. Douglas had to rush off (after disentangling himself from Lily’s smugly possessive good-bye kiss), but I stayed with her as she went to her locker. She handed over her computerized schedule card and I discovered that we were about to have lunch together.

  “I think it’s great that you two are still together,” I said as we sat down at one of the appropriate benches in the courtyard. Like homing pigeons, all the right people were in all the right places after summer break.

  “Yes, me too,” Lily said, relaxing a little bit. I could see her remembering that she was my friend and not my rival. I spied Natasha and waved for her to come over; she saw me and walked across the courtyard, accompanied by–I swear I could hear it–the clatter of male jaws dropping to asphalt. She had taken off her black leather jacket as the day got hotter and was wearing a translucent tank top that made the following fashion statement: Here are my nipples. That may sound bitterly envious, but that’s only because I am.

  “Same shit, different year,” she said by way of greeting. She grasped Lily’s well-combed head and kissed both cheeks. “Tonight I get to make flash cards of the periodic chart. How’s the scrumptious Jim Carr?”

  “I haven’t had him yet.”

  “Well, give yourself time,” she said, taking out a blood-red metallic lunch box decorated with lacquered photographs of her idol, Marlene Dietrich. Where does she find these things? “It’s only the first day. Oh, how was choir?”

  Lily looked up from her apple. “What’s in choir?”

  “Flan’s current flame,” Natasha whispered.

  Lily looked relieved and I was thankful that Natasha let her know that I wasn’t after Douglas. “Who? Have you been dating someone this summer?”

  “She spent all summer in Europe,” Natasha said, opening her lunch box. Inside it were twelve large shrimp in a bag filled with ice, and a small container of cocktail sauce. “Not that anybody received as much as a postcard.” Natasha and Lily turned to me and tuttutted in unison. Why hadn’t I sent postcards to them instead?

  Lily took another bite of apple. “So if Flannery isn’t seeing someone, how can she have a current flame?” Only Lily would want to get the terminology straight before finding out who the mystery man was. Is.

  “The candle,” Natasha said, shrimp between teeth, “is not yet burning at both ends. He doesn’t know yet.”

  Lily nodded sagely. She was ready. “Who is he?”

  I sighed. This part was always a little embarrassing. “Adam State.”

  “Adam State?” she screeched, and the apple dropped out of her hands and rolled into the middle of the courtyard. Everybody was quiet and stared at it. Natasha, of course, broke the silence.

  “To the fairest!” she cried, and people laughed and went back to their lunches. Though I’m sure nobody but us understood the Homeric reference, everyone understood Natasha doing something crazy.

  “Having a crush on Adam State is like having a crush on Moses,” Lily said matter-of-factly. “He’s too busy doing his own thing to notice you.”

  “In The Ten Commandments Moses had a lover,” Natasha said, absently.

  “The Ten Commandments is not a documentary, Natasha,” Lily said, and looked me over like a talent scout examining a piece of meat. “Flannery, I wouldn’t bet on his candle getting lit.” She took her napkin from her lunch bag and began to clean her tortoiseshell glasses.

  “I heard he just broke up with somebody,” Natasha said, fluttering her hands in a gesture that indicated that she may have heard this from the wind.

  I tried to sound worldly and confident. “He is the only appropriate person for me to like,” I said, and Natasha and Lily exchanged a look. Natasha said nothing and finished her shrimp, and Lily put her glasses back on. I watched her hands as they absent-mindedly practiced cello fingerings at her side. Lily will probably attend a conservatory next year. I think she lost some weight over the summer. What was that look about? Did someone have a crush on me? The sun glinted on the apple, but the gods didn’t seem interested today. Maybe they had to cover their books. I’d better stop all this description now, because I’m in Civics and my teacher, Gladys Tall, who lives up to her name, is getting suspicious. I couldn’t possibly be taking this many notes on her lecture, because the notes would have to look like this: cover your book cover your book cover your book

  Wednesday, September 8th

  Would that everything in life began with the Grand Opera Breakfast Club. For those who have opened the time capsule and found this journal as the sole chosen memento for this wondrous century, let me elucidate: The Grand Opera Breakfast Club is a precious stone that killed two birds that flew around the head of Joanne Milton, Roewer’s best French teacher and mother of Jennifer Rose Milton. One bird was the fact that Jennifer Rose Milton’s friends (that is Kate, Gabriel, Natasha, myself, etc.) always weaseled our way into French with Mrs. Milton (it’s so strange to write that–to us she will always be Millie) and not entirely inadvertently turned it into what we called a salon but what the head of the department told Millie was socializing, even if it was in French. The other bird was in the form of our principal, an ex-football coach named Jean Bodin who is as large as a truck and half as smart. He was giving Millie a bad time for not sponsoring a club. Every faculty member was supposed to sponsor a club.

  It was Jennifer Rose Milton, beautiful Jennifer Rose Milton, who had the idea. It was when she was going out with Douglas, and he was trying to woo her away from the wispy-voiced feminist songwriters she liked to put in her tape deck by steering her toward the classics. So, over dinner with Maman, Jennifer Rose Milton conceived of the Grand Opera Breakfast Club, an organization so pretentious that no one but our friends would join it, which would enable us to have a salon after all, except not in French, and would give Millie a club to sponsor. Once a week or so we’d meet before school in a classroom, listen to opera and eat breakfast. In her gratitude, Millie volunteered to buy the pastries.

  This morning was La Boheme, and so was the opera, if you catch my meaning. Millie, Jennifer Rose Milton, Douglas, Kate, Gabriel, Natasha, and V__: I felt for the first time that I was amongst comrades and that we were all facing the new year together. Of course we couldn’t meet two whole hours before classes began, so we only listened to the first act, with the artist/lovers meeting in their garret. We munched and listened. We got powdered sugar all over the libretto. Douglas, in a dark blue three-piece suit, tried to lecture us; we shushed him. Gradually the burnt play, the shirked rent, the pawned key all became background for our own small dramas.

  “I can’t believe all my babies are seniors,” Millie said, adding accent marks to someone’s homework with a leaky red pen. A single red drop stained her cheek like a bloody tear; I note this image now for a future poem.

  “I can certainly believe it,” Natasha said. She was looking in a small hand mirror and examining her lipstick for flaws–she might as well have been examining it for the crown jewels which were just as likely to be there. “Douglas, what were you saying Marcello had to do?”

  “Not Marcello, Schaunard. He’s telling the story right now,” Douglas said, and his eyes lit up. I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the
way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I’m good for a Haydn quintet. “He was hired to play for a duke, and–”

  “Lord,” Kate corrected, looking up from the libretto.

  “Well, a royal, anyway. The lord told him he had to play the violin until his parrot died.”

  “I’m sorry,” V__said, fingering her pearls. The pearls were real; she wore real pearls to high school. “How and why did a starving musician have a pet parrot?”

  “The lord’s parrot,” Douglas said. “Honestly, V__.”

  “The Lord’s Parrot,” I said, “will be the name of my first play.”

  “Your first play for whom?” Natasha asked, raising an eyebrow delicately highlighted with glitter. Maybe the crown jewels were to be found on her face, after all.

  “Hush, you savages,” Douglas said. “Anyway, Marcello has to play until the parrot dies.”

  “Well, my point, lost somewhere in all this, is that that’s how I’ve been feeling. We’ve been at Roewer all this time, waiting for some goddamn parrot to die.” Natasha took another doughnut. What I would do to be able to take another doughnut and still look as good as she does.

  Douglas thought for a second. “Well, Marcello manages to bribe the maid into poisoning the parrot. Who could we bribe?”

  “To kill whom?” Lily said, always demanding accuracy. It was still early, so none of her hip-length hair had strayed from her sculptured bun. “Who is the parrot in this situation?”

  “Bodin,” Millie said, muttering the name of our beloved principal under her breath, and then, suffering from a rare bout of professionalism, looked up from another scarred homework assignment, saying, “Who said that? I didn’t say that.”

  “Killing Bodin would be extremely difficult,” Natasha said. “Digging a grave that large would be six weeks’ work.”

  “Is there some creative murder method in La Boheme?” Kate asked in a tone of voice meant to imply that she once knew the answer, but it had slipped her mind.

  “Nobody gets killed, they just get sick,” Douglas said, and drew out his pocket watch. “It’s almost homeroom,” he said.

  “Then we’d much rather discuss something of infinitely more importance,” Kate said, “like the first dinner party of the season.”

  “That’s more like it,” Gabriel said.

  Kate pulled out a spiral notebook. “I was thinking this Saturday, if everyone’s free.” We all nodded; we’d postpone surgery for one of our dinner parties.

  “Let’s make a list,” Lily said, licking jelly off her fingers.

  “You and your lists,” V__ said fondly, swatting at her. Lily kissed her on the cheek. “I can’t have it at my house, even though I’d love to. My parents are entertaining.”

  “Your parents? Entertaining?” Kate asked in mock surprise. Her parents are always entertaining, though in person they are never entertaining, if you follow me. We’ve never had a dinner party at V__’s house, even though each time she says she’d love to.

  “We’ll have it at my house,” Kate pronounced. “Now, a guest list.”

  “Well, everyone here,” Lily said, counting us off on her fingers. “There’s Flannery, Gabriel–”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Kate said. “We don’t have to list all of us. We’re you know, the basics.” She scribbled down our names on a piece of paper. “The Basic Eight.”

  “Are there only eight of us?” Jennifer Rose Milton asked. “We’re such a menagerie it seems like more.”

  “Yep, just eight. The Basic Eight are as follows: Kate Gordon, Natasha Hyatt, Jennifer Rose Milton, Flannery Culp, Lily Chandly, V__, Douglas Wilde and Gabriel Gallon.”

  “Why are the men last?” V__ asked.

  “If you have to ask…” Natasha said, rolling her eyes.

  “…you can’t afford it,” I finished, and Natasha smiled at me.

  “Who else shall we invite besides, um, the Basic Eight?” Lily asked.

  “How about Lara Trent?” Gabriel asked. “I’ve always thought she was nice.”

  “Absolutely not,” Natasha Hyatt said. “Such a drip.”

  Jennifer Rose Milton put her hands on her hips. “She can’t be that bad. Let’s invite her. We’ll give her a chance.”

  “Absolutely not,” Natasha said. “She once told me I wasn’t a good Christian.”

  We all threw up our hands and said “No!” in unison. One thing we don’t tolerate is organized religion. Right-wing parent activists are going to love that sentence, but loath as I am to give any ammunition to those who are frothing at the mouth about our godless schools, it’s true.

  “How about Adam State?” Kate asked. She met my eyes quietly, and I appreciated her tact, which was a little out of character. Not that Kate is the sort to tease about our romantic inclinations, but she might at least raise her eyebrows. Just about everyone must have known about me and Adam, so just about everyone waited for me to answer.

  “He seems a little conceited to me,” Gabriel said. Don’t smirk at me, reader; I said just about everyone, not everyone.

  “And we certainly don’t want any egotism,” Natasha said. “Heaven forfend. We don’t want to be friends with anyone who’s at all self-important.” Millie snorted in the corner at that.

  “I think he’s nice,” I said, casually. I’m sorry, I didn’t write that in a way that properly conveyed the mood. “I think he’s nice,” I said, CASUALLY.

  “I do too,” Lily said, loyally, and Kate wrote him down.

  “How about Flora Habstat? She’s my only friend in homeroom.”

  Kate narrowed her eyes and sighed. “It’s always difficult to tell if someone’s interesting in homeroom. The setting is so dull, how can anyone really shine?”

  “Well, let’s try her,” Jennifer Rose Milton said, and Kate wrote her down.

  Natasha pulled out her hand mirror again. “Can I just warn you guys about something? I’ve heard that Flora constantly quotes the Guinness Book of World Records.”

  “What?” V__ said. “I know her, and I’ve never heard her do that.”

  “That’s just what I’ve heard,” Natasha said, airily. Kate and I exchanged a look. We were both wondering if we were missing some obscure joke.

  “Who else?” Kate said. The bell rang.

  Idea for a story: A man falls in love with a woman and writes her letter after letter. We never read the letters she writes to him. His love grows and grows through the letters. He can’t stand it anymore. Then something drastic happens…but what?

  O my boggled head, around which numbers spun all period. The second day of school and I’m already lost in Calc. I covered my book last night, just like everybody else, but after that I got lost. I looked around me–no friends in that class, none at all–and everyone was taking notes, nodding along with Baker and his spirals of chalk. My mind sputtered and began to sink. I clung to the life jacket of sketching out story outlines. I think when I reread my journal this year I’ll always be able to tell when I was in Calc by the paragraphs of story entries.

  For some reason we got out of Baker’s class early. The bell system here is computerized, which means of course that it doesn’t work; the bells ring, ignored, at random, as if a loud, unruly ice-cream man is wandering around Roewer High School. Baker let us out of class and the hallways were nearly deserted. I arrived early for Poetry, which was a gift. Hattie Lewis was there.

  Hattie Lewis likes to tell her students stories from when she was young, but I can’t quite believe those stories because it seems that she must have been born a wise old woman. Her classroom is her lair. It’s industrial and ugly like everyone else’s classrooms, but it has an aura of classiness and culture. For one thing, there aren’t any faded travel posters or soft-focus photographs of sunsets with “Reach For Your Dreams” superimposed over them up on the walls, but the aura transcends the cheap Impressionist reproductions that have replaced them. It comes from her. She doesn’t have to tell an
ybody not to chew gum; they just know it. She dresses more ridiculously than any other Roewer teacher (and the competition is stiff)–all crazy-quilted skirts and vests with embroidered flora–but no one laughs, even when she’s not around. Her first name is Hattie, but no one has a mean nickname for her. Showing up early for her class and thus being alone with her felt like showing up early for Judgment Day and getting to hang out with the angels before the crowds arrive. (It sounds like I mean it felt like death. Calculus must still be crowding my brain.)

  Our conversation was about the literary magazine, of which I am editor. She’s the faculty sponsor. Our first meeting is tomorrow after school. I can’t forget about it.

  LIT MEETING TOMORROW!!!

  I asked her what poets we’d be studying this year, and was embarrassed when she listed all these names I had never heard of. I mean, I recognize Robert Frost, and of course e. e. cummings, but I consider myself a poet and had never heard of these people. She must have seen my face as I struggled to hide my ignorance.

  “Relax,” she said. “You will be wise. You’re young. You can’t have everything right away.” When something simple and true takes you by surprise, it hits you in the stomach. Before I could say anything people starting piling in. Hattie Lewis didn’t skip a beat. She had us all sit down and she spent the rest of the period talking about Anne Bradstreet. I took notes; I had never heard of Anne Bradstreet.

  Now I’m in choir, and even with Adam still gathered in a corner with the other officers, the calm of Hattie Lewis’s words comforts me. I can’t have everything right away. Plus, sometimes it’s enough to watch him. Still no sign of Mr. Hand, the real choir teacher.