Popular Girls
Atlantic, The, October, 2001 by Karen Shepard
You know who we are. We're Kaethe and Alina, CJ and Sydney. Stephanie. Our hair is blonde or brown or black. Rarely red, rarely curly. It's thick and straight, and falls back into place after we run our fingers through it and hold it away from our faces long enough for you to see our striking eyes.
When we do this, you get shivers. It's 1982, and we sit on the benches lining our New York private school's entrance, after classes are over and before we head home. They are old church pews, and we are from another world. Our canvas book bags mass at our feet. They're from Sweden. They come with an excess of zippers, a plastic ID tag on a small chain, and a ruler that we never use. We buy them at Chocolate Soup, on Madison, the store for cool kids. We say things like "Tenth ...