Free Where It Began by Ann Redisch Stampler

asks.
    “It’s a really good college that I’m not going to attend,” Lisa says.
    “How is anyone supposed to make decisions from a catalog anyway?” Anita says.
    “Great catalog,” Lisa says. “I just have other plans.”
    “My plans don’t extend beyond this weekend,” I say.
    Lisa sighs. “You’re an artist, so you’re in a completely different category than the rest of us. Your portfolio is going to be amazing.” Lisa thinks that any doodle you aren’t outright embarrassed to sign is amazing, which makes her very supportive but not entirely realistic about my stature as an art goddess. “Do you know where you’re going to send it?”
    Well, no.
    Whatever brains I once had have been sucked out through my new and time-intensive good hair, my energy devoted toprecision blow-drying and Billy. But even if I’d still been skulking around Winston with sub-regular hair and no boyfriend, it is not as if I would have been out there whoring it up with extra-sexy extracurriculars to fill out great-looking lists for the (close eyes and wince) sub-regular, second-tier colleges that would even consider a person like me.
    The portfolio seems like a bizarre little sideshow to keep my mind occupied so I won’t have to contemplate how fast I’m going to plummet in a highly entertaining yet predictable nosedive from the high board into a very small bucket during the main event. How I am going to spend the spring of senior year congratulating everybody else for getting into (loud applause from God Himself) Harvard while I pretend I want a gap year.
    Anita says, “It’s junior year. Shoot me if this sounds too momish, but don’t you need to start making a plan?”
    Well, no.
    How much strategic planning does it take to get rejected from Penn, laughed out of the Wharton School of Business applicant pool, and left rotting and Ivy-free up on Via Estrada with only your totally shattered dad who has run so amok with his stupid, unrealistic plans for your future that even a pitcher of iced margaritas is not going to take the edge off?
    My only plan is to climb onto Planet Billy and only occasionally glance back down at the debris of my soon to be previously sub-regular life. Because even though I can tell that high school is only temporary, I just don’t care.
    Anita says, “You know, Gabby, you should run with this. Youshould go out for student government right now.”
    Which is not as bizarre as it might sound. Because: Student Council is always getting both halves of cute couples elected to it. And because Winston has its Student Council elections at the start of the school year instead of in the spring, presumably so that if someone gets fat or their social status suddenly tanks during the summer, the cool kids on Council won’t be stuck in a room with them all year.
    And right then, two weeks into being with Billy, a meteoric rise to super-regular Student Council Girl Appendage to the Gorgeous Hot Boy seems as unremarkable as crossing the street.
    “Right now,” Lisa agrees. “Not that you have to.”
    Right now, before you screw it up with Billy Nash, is what I hear. Which is so not happening. Because pretty much my whole way of life involves thinking about how much I adore Billy Nash, and adoring him, and doing all this cute domestic stuff to keep him happy and not screwing it up.

XV
     
    I AM MAYBE THE WORLD’S BEST ASPIRING GIRLFRIEND.
    Billy likes blue Pilot pens; I always have one handy. Billy wants to cut out of school and get coffee at Starbucks or some boysenberry/wheatgrass thing at Jamba Juice; I am out of there in a flash. Billy likes fat oatmeal cookies with currants and not raisins; I am a fat-oatmeal-cookie-with-currants-and-no-raisins baking machine.
    Vivian even helps me. We have mother-daughter pimp-your-kid bonding over cookie sheets and baking powder.
    “Don’t think you don’t deserve this,” she says, spraying sticky nonstick grease onto the cookie sheets.
    I say, “Huh?”
    “You look