Rachel: Not So Sure
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s harder and all that, but nothing I can’t handle. It really is the same game, after all. Yeah, well I should be going. I do have places to be, after all. Bye.”
Rachel Dubose hung up the phone. It had been an old friend by the name of Stacy that had called, though the girl on the other line was far from what most people would consider a “friend.” The daughter of a family acquaintance was a better term for this snobby, elitist girl that Rachel liked to say “understood” her. The two had gone to different high schools, and therefore had never been in direct competition with each other (a good thing for the two of them, as that might have ended in one of their deaths), but this didn’t stop Rachel from haughtily pointing out her “friend’s” academic and social failings whenever possible. Such was their relationship.
It was therefore with a sort of smug pride that Rachel put down the phone. Stacy seemed to be struggling, and very surprised that she was doing so. What, can’t play the game any more, dear? And so she had scoffed and said that she was having no problems whatsoever and why should she be?
Except that that wasn’t entirely truthful.
It was unlikely that Rachel would ever even admit it to herself, but the game wasn’t the same, or at least Rachel’s old ‘strategy’ wasn’t working. Her reputation of enthusiastic sincere interest of a pretty, polite student who would work her hardest, one she had carefully crafted for years, no longer preceded her and allowed her to slide through. It wasn’t that she had expected it to, obviously no one would know her here, but she hadn’t expected it to be so difficult to build it up again.
There was the class she was failing, though, and she allows herself a small smile, she supposed that she wasn’t really failing. He said he would pass her, after all, and there was no way she could see that he could break that promise. Guerrera didn’t want his secret told. He would make sure his secret wasn’t told.
And yet...
And yet what? Why was she suddenly doubting things? Because Rachel Dubose does not fail? Because so much rested on this? What did it matter? Rachel had figured out long ago how people respond to pressure, and Guerrera was following the model perfectly. He wouldn’t back down now; he couldn’t be that sincere, that honest. No one was. People looked out for themselves; they always had. The last thing they did was to give up their reputations for the sake of a few truths.
And then there was the loneliness that gripped her at the oddest of moments. Back home, everyone had known who she was; the jewel of the school, the senator’s daughter…She had never had friends and had never desired any, but she had always been surrounded by people that were in awe of her. And that was enough. Now no one seemed to care. Sure, she was still social, but she was the norm now, not the exception. And Rachel hated being the norm.
Stop it, she told herself, you just have a lot of work right now and you’re dwelling on it too much. Just forget about it and everything will be fine. Everything will be more than fine, just as always.
And she forced the insecure thoughts from her mind.