Hancock Park by Isabel Kaplan Page A

of my duvet cover.
    I was in the eighth grade when my mom had a breast cancer scare. She was so frightened. I was, too. How could my dad have done that? It couldn’t have been my dad—the Dad who used to take me out to get pancakes for dinner,who would pretend to be a horse so that I could ride on his back around and around the bedroom. Was it possible? Then I realized it was definitely possible, since I hadn’t exactly seen that Dad in a long time.
    I turned back to face Mom. “I’d never make you take a taxi to the hospital,” I told her as I reached into her arms, hot tears dripping down my cheeks.

Current Affairs
    T here are certain perks for juniors at Whitbread that sophomores just don’t have. Like, juniors can go off campus for lunch or leave early if they have free periods at the end of the day. But best of all, juniors have their own designated living room. (Seniors do, too, but ours is just as good as theirs.) Couches and armchairs line the walls, and pastel-colored beanbag chairs—for that special teenage feel, I guess—are planted throughout, with some grouped around an oak coffee table. The Living Room, which most people just refer to as the Room, is where all of us juniors hang out during our free periods. Most girls bring their laptops to school and spend hours analyzing photos from recent premieres and cocktail parties (the entire campushas WiFi, of course). A whiteboard, which hangs on one of the walls, sometimes gets used to tally up who in the grade had garnered the most mentions on gossip websites over the weekend—whether for wearing a one-of-a-kind designer dress to an exclusive party or flipping off one of the paparazzi. The winner was usually Alissa Hargrove.
    I was beginning to warm up to Taylor. She was nice, albeit eccentric with an occasional unwanted attention-drawing laugh. And despite the fact that I knew she wasn’t going to help me win popular friends, I preferred sitting with Taylor in the Room to sitting alone. I didn’t want to seem absolutely friendless. She had a group of drama friends, and they were all…nice. But I had even less in common with her friends than I did with her. Taylor wasn’t in the Room all the time, though—she did have to go to class, after all. And sitting alone on a couch with a schoolbook in my lap, anxiously watching everyone else socialize and wondering how I might convince the Trinity to nod my way, was not good for my mental state. So sometimes, I hid in Mr. Elwright’s classroom, doing research for Model UN.
    â€œJust couldn’t tear yourself away from world events for one whole day, could you?” Mr. E. asked me once when I plopped my backpack down on a desk and sat behind it. I was back in his classroom for the second time that day.
    â€œNo, I couldn’t,” I volleyed back. “I was sitting in English class, wondering what Uganda’s gross domestic product is. I just had to come and look it up!”
    â€œOh—speaking of, I received our country assignment for this year.” Mr. E. stood up and began to dig through piles of papers on his desk. In terms of organization, Mr. E. was the anti-me. After a few minutes, he held up a piece of paper, triumphant. “So it’s a good thing that you’re finding out Uganda’s gross domestic product.”
    â€œWe have Uganda?” I asked, excited.
    â€œYep.”
    â€œThat’s great!” I half squealed. “There are plenty of schools that need building in Uganda.”
    â€œThat’s for sure,” Mr. E. said, sitting back down. “One more thing: The Parents Association wants you to speak about MUN at their next meeting. You worked so hard last year, and they thought you’d be perfect at getting kids excited about the program.”
    I smiled, secretly flushing up with pride. Somebody had noticed. Somebody had realized how hard I worked.
    The bell rang.
    â€œShit, I have bio,”