CHARLIE-GIRL, CHARLIE-BOY by kellee ngan            You would think that since Our Lady of Perpetual Help (or Prep H, as everyone calls it) and White Oaks are two of the oldest high schools in the entire world, the faculty would understand that trying to get sixty-two teenagers to dress up and eat a ten-course meal when not under threat from their parents is one of the most stupid and impractical things to do.

           But tradition is a big deal around here, so none of the teachers question the wisdom of having a formal dinner on the first night of the Summer Service Semester—probably out of fear that they’ll get struck down by lightning, or worse, get passed over for early retirement.

           I really like dressing up because you get to show off how you’re more than just book-smart with the right outfit. A lot of the kids in my class don’t know how fashion-savvy I am because I have won Prep H’s Long Division Challenge with the all time speed record for most equations solved, so I like having these opportunities to show my avant-garde nature. My latest find is crinoline. People don’t give crinoline any credit for really jazzing up an outfit. Also, because the Victorian look is coming back in, crinoline—as a sister to silk ruffles—is an affordable way for cash strapped teenagers to really hop on the hottest trends.
        So when I walked into the grand dining hall with this really awesome outfit I put together with bits from Goodwill and headed straight over to my best friend, Christine, who was sitting at a table in the corner, I noticed some people staring at me in what seemed like a positive, non-threatening way. There may have even been some awe but I can’t be sure because I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
        “Gosh, Charlie, where have you been all day?” Christine whispered as I slid into the seat next to her. “I was worried you had managed to get out of this and leave me alone.”
        “At the office. My single room has actually turned out to be in violation of a bunch of health and safety codes, even though they swear it was fumigated,” I whispered back. “They’re trying to find me a new space.”
        I don’t know who our administrators are kidding. I am totally going to get hantavirus, or something equally wretched, and will sue them so fast they’re going to wish they had just let me bunk on the boys’ side with Roderick for the summer because if anything inappropriate happened in there, the only place I would report that was in my anonymous blog.
        “I wish you could stay with me, but our room’s full.” Christine pointed across the table at her roomies, Gretchen and Arti, the yearbook editors. They’re best friends, which in and of itself is perfectly normal, but they lose all credibility by advertising the fact that they are BFFs—sadly, they didn’t get the memo about wearing friendship bracelets past the age of twelve. Friendship bracelets are strictly pre-teen territory because once you’re a teenager, you shouldn’t have to prove who your friends are with ugly string and beadwork—you get matching tattoos or cell phones instead.

 “You don’t need me here,” I said, gesturing to the BFFs.    
“You’ve got Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to keep you company.
“Don’t make fun—they’re nice girls.”
“But look at what they’re wearing.”
       Christine wrinkled her brow as if I had given her a function to solve without her graphing calculator. She’s nice and all, but sometimes she doesn’t quite get that it is actually possible to make yourself more attractive with the right clothes and accessories. She just sticks to black, anyway, which has led to her reputation as the school’s resident Goth, although she wouldn’t know pessimism and darkness even if the words were tattooed on her lower back.  

        “What’s wrong with what they’re wearing?” she asked.
        “Seriously? You think that tie-dyed T-shirt dresses and sport sandals are an appropriate combination?”
        I’ve offered to come up with fashion schemas for them but they all seem quite resistant to stepping away from oversized sweatshirts and printed polyester skirts.
        Christine shrugged. “I don’t care.”
        “You should!”
        “Well, what about your outfit?” Christine asked, waving at the fluffy layers of purple crinoline fixed to the underside of my blue bubble skirt. “What’s that all about?”
        Like I said before, crinoline makes everything bigger and better. “Read the mags, Christine,” I said. “It’s all about vintage and volume.” I pointed to my skirt. “Vintage.” Then I pulled at a layer of crinoline. “And volume.”
        Christine nodded slowly, clearly in awe of my interpretation of the latest fashion trends, as the waiters came by our table and noisily dropped a bunch of platters in the centre. Arti, who has yet to master the skill of portion control, jumped up immediately and started lifting off the silver domes. “What are we having?”
        Just as Arti was leaning over to inspect the plate of what appeared to be a sausage sampler, a nasally screech punctuated the air like an air raid siren. “Eeeew! Disgusting! Like, meat is so mean to living things.”
        I looked over at the next table to see Dawn Baskow, dressed like some Paris Hilton clone in a tacky, blinged-out and backless pink dress—so inappropriate considering there was a chapel next door and several Catholic nuns in attendance—jumping up and down and waving her hands in protest. The tables of White Oaks boys on the other side of the room all turned to see what the fuss was about and kept staring when it became clear that the bouncing bimbo wasn’t wearing a bra.
        Our headmistress, Mrs. Gopal, scurried over to soothe Dawn because Dawn’s dad is a school trustee. It’s sad watching an adult pander to a kid. It really erodes their credibility. “Miss Baskow,” Mrs. Gopal said. “It’s just a bit of, um, tuna on the Nicoise salad. You can move it to the side, okay? Or we can get you a fishless dish if you have such strong moral objections.”
        “Please, she’s only a vegetarian because she thinks meat makes her fat,” I snorted. “And what’s up with ‘Meat is so mean to living things?’ That doesn’t even make sense.”
        Sense or nonsense, Dawn’s misconception of meat was popular enough to lead to a murmur of agreement and loud, bratty whines of “Meat is so…meaty!” and “We want watercress!” until Mrs. Gopal told everyone to sit tight while she went into the kitchen to see how much iceberg lettuce was available.
        Teenage vegetarianism annoys me because it’s so mass market. Every teenage girl wants to be one at some point between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, and only on occasions when they are under the influence of peer pressure—and let me tell you, Prep H is a case study in adolescent psychological warfare. 
        I dug into the cold cut tray and slapped a slice of salami on a baguette smeared with butter. “More for us, then!” I’m kind of glad that meat figures so prominently in our meals because I love meat. My philosophy is that since I didn’t kill it, I don’t have to feel guilty about it. And if I don’t eat it, it’s just gonna rot and go to waste and my mother always used to tell me that there are starving children in Africa who would appreciate what I’m not eating. Besides, being a veg is not all that it’s cracked up to be. All the noncarnivores have this misguided belief that being a veggie eater is totally cool because if you tell people you don’t eat meat, they automatically think that you are capable of caring more than someone who enjoys a good steak.
        I think it’s sad that baby seals get clubbed to death because they’re cute and soft, but who am I to stand in the way of human history and someone in the Arctic who needs a snack? And there’s tons of evidence out there to support the fact that people who don’t eat meat are causing further strain on the environment by forcing manufacturers, farmers and other producers to use all these newfangled, super-polluting processes to make food that doesn’t have a face. Besides, I come from a family that likes to eat chicken knuckles—Chinese people don’t mess around when it comes to food.
        Once Dawn sat back down and the chants of the ignorant quieted, the second course came out and, for once, I was delighted by the incompetence. Mrs. Gopal had managed to find baskets of celery sticks, but they were accompanied by a massive pot roast for each table.
        “We can’t let the food go to waste,” Mrs. Gopal said, sheepishly trying to explain away the continued service of animal parts. “Please just take what you are emotionally comfortable with.”
        But the White Oaks boys didn’t care, and neither did the girls at my table. We each eagerly dragged a slab on to our plates and began cutting through the gristle. Well, most of us took one piece. Arti took two, plus another helping of bratwurst.
        “So,” Christine mumbled as she munched on some scalloped potatoes topped by a dusting of bacon bits. “Dawn looks pretty, hey?”
        “What? Are you kidding me?” I whispered as I looked over to find Dawn using a knife and fork—seriously—to slice her celery stalk into pieces. “She looks like a celebu-tard about to flash her crotch at the paparazzi.”
        “I’m sure she’s wearing underwear. It’s part of the ethics code.”
        “I’m sorry, are you not aware of Dawn Baskow and her reputation?”
        “We used to be friends.”
        “I know. Then she got boobs and got bitchy, right?”
        Christine shrugged again. Christine is the queen of nonassertive gestures. I’ve been encouraging her to be an arbitrator for a living, but she hates making decisions and talking to strangers. “I think that everyone looks nice.”
        “You would,” I said.
        “And the boys definitely think they look nice,” she continued. “I heard Roderick complimenting Mindy and Dawn on their outfits.”
        “What?” I couldn’t believe Roderick was so easily swayed by rhinestones and a flash of cleavage. After all, he was the only boy wearing a handkerchief in his pocket. He had depth.
        “Yeah,” Christine said between sips of sparkling apple. “He was talking to them before dinner started. I think Dawn likes him.”
        I had been in the middle of happily chewing my prime rib when Christine dared to say those five words—“I think Dawn likes him”—that made me feel like hurling up the entire cow onto my plate. Well, it actually did make me throw up the last chunk as I struggled to protest the feasibility of Roderick and Dawn together in any sort of way other than a really bad skit for student council.
        Then it happened.
        That hunk of meat got lodged right at the back of my throat like a plug in a bathtub and all I could do was push my chair back and start alerting everyone to my condition using the International Sign of Choking.
        “Ohmigod!” Christine shouted—as any good best friend with the knack for pointing out the obvious would. “Charlie’s choking!”
        Naturally, the majority of my classmates were too dense to recognize the gesture of grasping at my throat and turning purple, so I was grateful that Christine said anything at all, especially considering her phobia of public speaking. I didn’t really have confidence in any of the girls in my class rescuing me for fear of breaking a nail.
        I knew I was expendable. I was ready to go. I asked for forgiveness for smart-aleck remarks (even if they were completely warranted) as my airway began to seal off below the stopper of meat and hoped that my brother, Ben, would make sure that my CD collection was distributed evenly between Christine and, well, him. But just as I was about to expire and die tragically, an even better thing happened — better than choking, I mean.
        Roderick.
        Roderick flew across the room as if on winged feet and grabbed me from behind and held me close to him. My crinoline crunched between us, like boots on fresh snow, but I swear I could feel the lines of his abdominal muscles tightening against my back. He had a six-pack, for sure.
        “I’m a lifeguard,” he announced. “I can handle this.”
        Then he plunged his fists into my diaphragm, and I was putty in his hands. He drove his knuckles into my abdomen with such tenderness that I knew he was doing his all not to hurt me. He’s such a gentleman that way. It reminded me of the time when we were kids and he let me ride on the handle bars of his BMX. We were going along fine until he saw an injured squirrel lying on the sidewalk in front of him. Because he was a big fan of Alvin and the Chipmunks at the time, he slammed the brakes to avoid the injured critter. I sailed eight feet in the air then took a digger on the pavement—well clear of the squirrel, thank goodness. I was bleeding all over the place but he gave me his last Band-Aid to patch up my knee.
        On the third pump of my stomach—only the third!—I felt a whoosh of air run through my chest, dislodging the gristly meat plug from my windpipe and shooting it across the table into Dawn Baskow’s prominently displayed and unsettlingly large breasts.
        “Gross!” she screamed. “Get it off me! It’s got loser cooties!”
        Loser cooties. Lo-ser cooties. No joke. That’s what she said. It’s pretty safe to assume that Dawn Baskow will never be the Poet Laureate.
        But Roderick wasn’t even listening. He turned me around, wrenched my head back to look for any residual cow debris, then sat me upright and offered me a sip of water. “Charlie,” he said, rolling the ‘r’ and ‘e’ over his tongue with such melodious tones that he could have been singing my name. “You okay?”
        I looked up and saw his brow furrowed with genuine concern. Roderick had rescued me from certain death. How could I not be okay?