Epic Fail Read Free Page B

shook it, with her lip curling so high, I thought it was going to enter her right nostril. “I’m Dr. Gardiner.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    Dr. Gardiner tilted her head sideways, which made her glasses look almost straight. “Let’s talk about the dress code, Chelsea.”
    “You mean like uniforms?” Chelsea said. “We don’t have uniforms here. Haven’t you noticed?”
    “But we do have a dress code.” Dr. Gardiner gestured toward Chelsea’s legs. “And I’m afraid that skirt doesn’t conform to it.”
    Chelsea put her hands on her hips. “This is a Dolce and Gabbana, and our tailor just hemmed it.”
    “He hemmed it too much: skirts can’t be more than four inches above the knee.” The new principal reached into her pocket and pulled out a tape measure. “Let’s check.”
    Chelsea took a step back. “No way.”
    Dr. Gardiner shrugged. “Fine, but I’m going to have to ask you to change.”
    “Change into what ? It’s not like I keep an extra wardrobe in my locker.”
    “You can wear your PE shorts.”
    “You have got to be kidding me! Do you know how dorky those are?”
    The principal slipped the measuring tape back into her pocket. “If I see you still wearing that skirt later today, I’ll have to notify your parents and send you home.”
    Chelsea’s mouth opened so wide in horror that I could see the wisdom teeth budding in the back, but the principal’s attention had moved on. “How is everyone enjoying his or her lunch?” she asked, gazing along our table. That’s when she spotted Juliana. “Hello!” she said delightedly. “How’s your first day going, sweetie?”
    Juliana managed a weak smile. “Fine?” she said.
    “Good, good. Oh, there you are, Elise! Everything going well?”
    “Yeah, fine,” I said. “Everything’s fine.” Please go away, I thought. Please, please go away.
    Dr. Gardiner said, “Well, I’m happy to hear that.” She turned. My muscles relaxed: she was leaving. Wait, no—she was just picking up a protein bar wrapper that was lying on the ground. She carefully balled it up in her hand as she stood back up. Then she beamed at us like the proud mother she was and opened her mouth to effectively kill our short-lived anonymity. “Won’t you girls introduce me to your new friends?”
    “She’s your mother ?” Chelsea said a few minutes later, after Dr. Gardiner had finally moved on. “How can you stand going home at night?”
    “Chels,” said her brother warningly. “That’s not—”
    “Seriously,” she said. “Is she always that bad? And why don’t you guys give her some fashion tips?” Her eyes fell on my T-shirt. “Or not.”
    The insult hardly registered: I was still trying to process the awkwardness of my mother’s appearance, the shock of discovering that Chase’s friend Derek was the son of Melinda Anton and Kyle Edwards, the most famous celebrity couple in the country, and the embarrassing realization that everyone at the table, including my mother, had already known this except me and Juliana.
    Melinda was the leading female action star in the U.S. She’d starred in an endless series of blockbuster movies. Kyle was more of the indie film type, but he’d won an Oscar or two, so he was no slouch.
    They were on the cover of half the tabloids on the newsstands any given week of the year.
    But okay, fine—I guess if I’d thought about it, I’d have expected a private school in L.A. to boast a celebrity brat or two. No big deal, right?
    Except that it seemed to be one for my mother—hence the awkwardness, above and beyond the fact she was our principal, which would have been bad enough. For someone who never wanted to take us to the movies, she got awfully excited when she realized who Derek was: she kept telling him over and over again how “empowering” his mother’s movies were to young girls and how his father was “not just an actor—he’s an artist .” The true horror came when she informed Derek that I—her second