Jocks are the only ones whoâre cool?â
Doing what she did with the milk and the sugar, Stacie nodded, said, âTotally.â
âWhoâs not cool?â
âEveryone else. Some of us are less uncool than others, I guess. Freaks and stoners are the uncoolest. Then brainiacs and geeks, then the artsy crowd and tree-huggersâtheyâre sort of the sameâthen cowboys, then jocks.â
âBrainiacs are kids who get good grades?â
âAnd do Student Council and all that stuff. If theyâre like, Chess Club, theyâre geeks.â
âArtsy, that would be you?â
She nodded. âAnd the drama kids, and the band, people like that.â
âCowboys?â
âThey, like, drink and do dope and fight, and push everybody around. Itâs like being a jock, but without being on a team. So cowboys actually get detention or suspended or whatever, when they get caught.â
âJocks do all that, too?â
âJocks do whatever they want.â
âAnd donât get in trouble?â
She gave me the wide-eyed look. âWho would play on Friday night?â
âUh-huh.â I drank some coffee. âAre there girl jocks?â
âNot exactly. I mean, we have varsity teams and stuffâI play softball, I catchâbut it doesnât make you cool. Nobody sort of notices.â She shrugged.
âAnd freaks?â I asked. âWho are freaks?â
Stacie pursed her lips. âKids who arenât anyone else. They hang out together but it doesnât mean they like each other. You just have to have someone to hang out with, I guess.â
âSullivan said half the kids in Warrenstown were probably at Tory Wesleyâs party,â I said to Stacie. âWere you there?â
She shook her head, looked into her coffee.
âYou knew about it, though, didnât you?â
She shrugged. âI knew her folks were going away.â
âYou mean, you didnât just hear about it afterwards, you knew before? That she was going to have a, what did Sullivan call it, a P double-A P?â
âI told you, she wanted to be cool. She didnât get invited to the jock parties. Iâm sure she totally thought this would make her cool.â
âIf you knew it was going to happen, why didnât you tell someone?â
She looked at me. âTell who? Tell them what? That some sophomore I donât even know is having a party Saturday night? So what?â
âAccording to Sullivan, those parties pretty much always end up like that. Shouldnât the police at least have been warned?â
âIf they wanted to know,â she said, âtheyâd know.â
The waiter came to take away my plate and pour us more coffee. This time he brought a full sugar packet holder, which he traded for the decimated one on the table. I sat with Stacie Phillips for a while longer. She confirmed again what Sullivan had said: Chances were all the cool kids in Warrenstown had been at Tory Wesleyâs house Saturday night. She gave me some of their names, though I wasnât sure how Iâd be able to make use of them, having been thrown out of town.
âIf Gary Russell wasnât there,â she said as the waiter put down the check, âit cut his chances of being cool way, way down. Theyâd have figured he was chicken. Especially,â she added, âit was the night before the seniors went to Hamlinâs. Randy wouldâve been extra pumped, and it wouldâve been a chance for him to show his protégé how itâs done.â
How itâs done. I thought about that as I drove over to the high school. How much of your life you spend, especially when youâre new, trying to figure out how itâs done.
Stacie and I had walked to the parking lot togetherâsheâd insisted on paying for her own coffee, to keep her journalistic integrity intactâand Iâd watched her drive off in
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