A Pretty Little Parody [PLL]

6. Way Too Many GBFs

“It was a good thing your parents decided to go out last night,” Moby told me as I climbed in next to him in the backseat of Henna’s car the following morning. Since we were neighbors, no one really questioned me getting rides with Moby all that much. And if they did, they were shot down faster than they could say “loser.” I secretly loved talking with Moby before school. He was extremely levelheaded and often kept me from going too far with my pranks and insults.

“Why?” I asked now, smearing on yet another layer of BBQ-flavored lip gloss. I loved barbecue chips and the gloss gave my lips a nice reddish tint, so it was a win-win situation. “Did your mom freak out about the dancing?”

From the driver’s seat Henna snickered. She had headphones in but it didn’t keep her from overhearing everything.

“More so than you think.” His eyes darted back and forth. “She called over the principal of Rosebush Day and half the parents of kids in our grade, told them what you did, and pretty much played the video and said you were a bad influence. She was all like, ‘this horrible girl destroyed both my son’s innocence and my reputation at school!’. It was sooooooo embarrassing. I wanted to hide the whole entire time.”

Suddenly I was furious at Mrs. Cockcutoff. “I didn’t destroy your reputation at school,” I pointed out. “That was all”--I started to say Sasha but caught myself before Henna could overhear-- “her fault.”

Moby kept his gaze out the window. “Yeah, but still.”

“Wait.” I turned him and made him face me. “Are you seriously mad at me? For something your mom overreacted to?”

“It was my mom that hosted that get-together, yeah, but did you really have to upload a video of us dancing? That was the highlight of the meeting--everybody seeing us dance like that.”

“They saw the video?” Oh, crap. A’s threat came back to haunt me like that extra burrito Henna ate yesterday was clearly coming back to haunt her, judging by the horrendous smell that was starting to fill the car. The wrath of Mrs. Cock is nothing compared to the humiliation you’ll suffer...

But A had said Monday, and it was already Friday. No one had said a peep about the video all week, so I’d assumed it would never get out.

Somehow, though, it had.

Which meant I had to put Moby in the clique immediately.

“Yeah,” said Moby softly. Then he was silent.

We pulled into the long fancy driveway into Rosebush Day. The school had once been a huge estate, so every car entered through a gate and parked in the back. True to its name, there were rosebushes growing everywhere. It had been beautiful for a while, but now that it was almost summer, the air was filled with the thick scent of dying roses.

It had been all too easy to convince everyone I was Sasha, even with my seemingly sudden drastic change in personality earlier this week. Sasha’s diary had been pretty helpful--I’d even started writing in it myself as a record of my time as Sasha. I’d gotten maybe a little too used to being my sister. Now I answered automatically to Sasha. Eli who?

Henna swung past the lower and middle schools and headed for the back parking lot. All the upperclassmen hung out there and smoked (which was beyond disgusting. Why smoke a joint or a cigarette when weed brownies were so delicious?) while talking about deep stuff like precalc and the SATs.

I grabbed Moby’s really-pale-especially-for-May wrist and dragged us out as soon as Henna rolled into a space looking for someone--anyone--cool so that I could explain that Moby was now part of our clique. I spied Henry at the end of the lot with a tall, thin, black guy I didn’t recognize.