Gemma gets what she wants. All of the girls learn this, one way or another.
When Violet has the nerve to take the last sparkling water, Gemma empties five cans of Diet Fizz into her backpack. Shanaz makes the mistake of wearing her grandmother’s earrings to the Sadie Hawkins dance. Gemma has the mother-of-pearl beauties dangling from her lobes by the second setlist. Ellie brings her cat, Dobby, for show-and-tell. Gemma takes Dobby to the bathroom, returning with hand-sewn Barbie clothes she’s crafted with Dobby’s tail.
“Now you can call him Stumpy,” Gemma says, presenting him to Ellie. “The bleeding will stop with compression.”
Gemma’s mother is a plastic surgeon, and her father is an attorney for a large health insurance company, so she is gifted with needles and scores high in sociopathy. Her parents feel she has leadership potential.
Secretly, the girls whisper that something must be done about Gemma. But what? Gemma is keen and grasping and unrepentant. This is the way it has always been.
Until Margot.
The first time Gemma spots Margot in the State High cafeteria, she chokes on her gluten-free calorie-free Breadstyx. Gemma’s boyfriend, Luca, stares too. Gemma has undergone the requisite sweet sixteen rhinoplasty and lip filler and brow lift. She is pretty in a store-bought sort of way. But Margot—Margot is rare. And everyone is obsessed with the New Girl.
Margot takes her lunch to the library because she prefers the company of books. Margot volunteers at the shelter on the weekends. Margot makes cookies for the janitorial staff.
“Saint Margot,” Gemma says, “has the personality of a dry leaf. And not one you can smoke.”
One by one, though, the girls gravitate towards Margot, who is quiet and kind and unpretentious. Margot invites the girls to a benefit concert. Gemma calls her enthusiasm for classical music ‘fake’ and her concern for the fate of Belugas in the Bering ‘performative’.
Luca ghosts Gemma. He asks Margot to the semi-formal. Gemma rages.
“She’s a leech, ladies. A human hemorrhoid.”
Gemma can feel her empire slipping away. Which is why all of the girls are stunned when Gemma invites Margot to her house for the next big sleepover.
***
Gemma lives in Radnor in a red brick castle she insists on calling ‘burnt umber’. Her parents are never home. Gemma answers the door in cowboy boots. The girls see she has sharpened her glittery acrylic nails into points for the occasion.
“It’ll be just us,” Gemma announces. “Rick and Sheri are out, and I’m the only remaining child.”
Gemma had an older brother, Violet tells Margot, but he died last year. It was very hush-hush. Their parents said something about a fire, but the way they said ‘fire’ invited speculation.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Shanaz whispers. “He couldn’t stand her. Self-immolated in protest.”
Ever the gracious hostess, Gemma serves candied nuts and espresso, assuring the girls that the coffee is fair trade and the Ethiopian children who picked the beans were happy to do so. Margot doesn’t usually drink coffee, but sips to be polite.
“If you don’t like what I’ve given you,” Gemma says sweetly, “we have horse feed out back.”
Horse feed doesn’t sound appealing to Margot, even if it is organic and non-GMO.
“Let’s play Tradesies,” Gemma says when the snacks are put away. “Shanaz, trade jeans with Violet.”
The girls comply, quickly shoving limbs into non-native garments. Their audience snickers as they catch a glimpse of Shanaz’s frilly undies and Violet’s moth-eaten boxers. The girls are very different heights, and Gemma gets a kick out of watching Shanaz trip over Violet’s extra-long cargos.
“Good,” Gemma says, surveying her handiwork. “Now, Ellie and Zoe, trade tops.”
The girls exchange glances. Zoe is broad in the neck with a bulging chest and a fleshy waist. Ellie is a double zero who has oatmeal for breakfast, seltzer for lunch and self-loathing for dinner. The girls hesitate. Zoe opens her lip-glossed mouth, as if to object. But Gemma is humming. And for Gemma, a tune heralds incipient rage.
The girls obey.
Finally, Gemma turns to Margot.
“Trade me your pants and your shirt.”
Margot looks at the girls in their mismatched clothing.
“No, thank you,” she says. “I don’t like this game.”
“I thought this might happen,” Gemma says, pulling a scalpel from her back pocket.
There is a rip, a tip, and a tumble. Gemma cuts Margot’s clothes from her body, draping them over her own. Margot is in her skivvies and shaking.
“How do I look, ladies?”
Gemma prowls up and down the kitchen like she’s on a catwalk.
“Totally amazing!”
“Fantastic!”
“Gorgeous!”
“Margot?” Gemma says. “How do I look?”
“Fine,” Margot says, eyes fixed on the floor.
Margot fears she has violated some law of euphemistic succession. She wonders if she will be punished. She speaks softly.
“I’d like what you took back, Gemma.”
At this, Gemma beams.
“Sure.”
Whistling a showtune, Gemma drags Margot into the pantry and slams the door. The screaming begins immediately. Violet and Zoe and Shanaz and Ellie try not to hear. They think of everything Gemma has taken. They think of every day they whispered that something must be done. They think of all the times before.
When Gemma emerges, she is smoothing her temples, hands slick with something that looks like currant jelly. Only, Gemma is no longer Gemma. She has Gemma’s voice and Gemma’s frame and Gemma’s clothes under Margot’s clothes. But Margot-nee-Gemma or Gemma-now-Margot has stitched Margot’s sticky scalp and button nose and blue-green kaleidoscope eyes over her own. She has peeled Margot like a pomelo and occupied her shiny skin.
“Margot,” Gemma says, blood dribbling in rivulets between her teeth, “has broken the only rule of Tradesies.”
Gemma grins, and it is a terrible thing to behold.
“No takesies-backsies.”
Nadia Djamila is an Algerian-American writer based in Washington, D.C.