The Carrie Diaries and Summer in the City

“Please. Sit down.”

Sebastian looks around the room, his glance pausing on me. He takes in my white go-go boots, slides his eyes up my light blue tartan skirt and sleeveless turtleneck, up to my face, which is now on fire. One corner of his mouth lifts in amusement, then pulls back in confusion before coming to rest on indifference. He takes a seat in the back of the room.

“Carrie,” Mr. Douglas says. “Can you give me the basic equation for movement?”

Thank God we learned that equation last year. I rattle it off like a robot: “X to the fifth degree times Y to the tenth degree minus a random integer usually known as N.”

“Right,” Mr. Douglas says. He scribbles another equation on the board, steps back, and looks directly at Sebastian.

I put my hand on my chest to keep it from thumping.

“Mr. Kydd?” he asks. “Can you tell me what this equation represents?”

I give up being coy. I turn around and stare.

Sebastian leans back in his chair and taps his pen on his calculus book. His smile is tense, as if he either doesn’t know the answer, or does know it and can’t believe anyone would be so stupid as to ask. “It represents infinity, sir. But not any old infinity. The kind of infinity you find in a black hole.”

He catches my eye and winks.

Wow. Black hole indeed.

“Sebastian Kydd is in my calculus class,” I hiss to Walt, cutting behind him in the cafeteria line.

“Christ, Carrie,”Walt says. “Not you, too. Every single girl in this school is talking about Sebastian Kydd. Including Maggie.”

The hot meal is pizza—the same pizza our school system has been serving for years, which tastes like barf and must be the result of some secret school-system recipe. I pick up a tray, then an apple and a piece of lemon meringue pie.

“But Maggie is dating you.”

“Try telling Maggie that.”

We carry our trays to our usual table. The Pod People sit at the opposite end of the cafeteria, near the vending machines. Being seniors, we should have claimed a table next to them. But Walt and I decided a long time ago that high school was disturbingly like India—a perfect example of a caste system—and we vowed not to participate by never changing our table. Unfortunately, like most protests against the overwhelming tide of human nature, ours goes largely unnoticed.

The Mouse joins us, and she and Walt start talking about Latin, a subject in which they’re both better than I am. Then Maggie comes over. Maggie and The Mouse are friendly, but The Mouse says she would never want to get too close to Maggie because she’s overly emotional. I say that excessive emotionality is interesting and distracts one from one’s own problems. Sure enough, Maggie is on the verge of tears.

“I just got called into the counselor’s office—again. She said my sweater was too revealing!”

“That’s outrageous,” I say.

“Tell me about it,” Maggie says, squeezing in between Walt and The Mouse. “She really has it out for me. I told her there was no dress code and she didn’t have the right to tell me what to wear.”

The Mouse catches my eye and snickers. She’s probably remembering the same thing I am—the time Maggie got sent home from Girl Scouts for wearing a uniform that was too short. Okay, that was about seven years ago, but when you’ve lived in the same small town forever, you remember these things.

“And what did she say?” I ask.

“She said she wouldn’t send me home this time, but if she sees me in this sweater again, she’s going to suspend me.”

Walt shrugs. “She’s a bitch.”

“How can she discriminate against a sweater?”

“Perhaps we should lodge a complaint with the school board. Have her fired,” The Mouse says.

I’m sure she doesn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but she does, a little. Maggie bursts into tears and runs in the direction of the girls’ room.

Walt looks around the table. “Which one of you bitches wants to go after her?”

“Was it something I said?” The Mouse asks innocently.

“No.” Walt sighs. “There’s a crisis every other day.”

“I’ll go.” I take a bite of my apple and hurry after her, pushing through the cafeteria doors with a bang.

I run smack into Sebastian Kydd.

“Whoa,” he exclaims. “Where’s the fire?”

“Sorry,” I mumble. I’m suddenly hurtled back in time, to when I was twelve.

“This is the cafeteria?” he asks, gesturing toward the swinging doors. He peeks in the little window. “Looks heinous. Is there any place to eat off campus?”

Off-campus? Since when did Castlebury High become a campus? And is he asking me to have lunch with him? No, not possible. Not me. But maybe he doesn’t remember that we’ve met before.

“There’s a hamburger place up the street. But you need a car to get there.”

“I’ve got a car,” he says.

And then we just stand there, staring at each other. I can feel the other kids walking by but I don’t see them.

“Okay. Thanks,” he says.

“Right.” I nod, remembering Maggie.

“See ya,” he says, and walks away.

Rule number one: Why is it that the one time a cute guy talks to you, you have a friend who’s in crisis?

I run into the girls’ room. “Maggie? You won’t believe what just happened.” I look under the stalls and spot Maggie’s shoes next to the wall. “Mags?”

“I am totally humiliated,” she wails.

Rule number two: Humiliated best friend always takes precedence over cute guy.

“Magwitch, you can’t let what other people say affect you so much.” I know this isn’t helpful, but my father says it all the time and it’s the only thing I can think of at the moment.

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“By looking at everyone like they’re a big joke. Come on, Mags. You know high school is absurd. In less than a year we’ll be out of here and we’ll never have to see any of these people ever again.”