Pink is my new favorite color|| Cynthia Zdunowski

Girl Gang

After spending time at Jane's drafting up a game plan for her student council campaign, I went home and straight to sleep, trying to avoid my parents questions as to why I got home later than expected.

The next morning I woke up to my mom screaming from the bottom of the stairs, "Ella! Phone!" Phone? For me? At, I looked at the clock next to my bed.. 5 am? On a Monday morning? I picked up the phone from my bedside table. "Hello?" I asked. It was Cynthia, "hey, mcgee's been calling all of us this morning-" "Hold on Cynthia wait" I heard a soft clicking sound meaning my mom was still on the line downstairs, "mom! Get off the phone!" The clicks stopped and I let Cynthia continue, "She's trying rat us out for yesterday, just giving you a heads up, just try to intercept any calls." I responded "of course, thanks, hey do you think you could just stay on the line with me?" "Sure" And so we talked for an hour, about anything we could think of. Occasionally we would run out of things so say and we would just sit in silence, comfortable silence, just to keep the line busy. Eventually my mom came in my room to tell me to get off the phone and get ready for school. I really wanted to fight it but I didn't. Instead I just said, "Hey, Cynthia, I gotta go, I'll talk to you at school" and hung up.

"You know it's strange, I haven't heard you talk to or about Cynthia in years and now, you're spending hours on t he phone with her and I haven't seen Dot in a week. Did something happen? Do you want to talk about it?" My mom asked. But before I could answer, the phone rang. I reached for it but my mom got to it faster. I after a moment she looked at me and yelled "She did what?!"

"You ran out of school and aided in stealing a car?! Where did I go wrong?" My mom lectured as a sat on the living room couch with my parents standing over me. Then my dad chimed in, "Believe me, there will be consequences... you'll... you won't... I don't know, you've never done anything wrong before." "Ella," my mom continued, " you've always been such a good girl, good grades, good friends-" "Was it Cynthia? You know I always thought there was something off with her-" I cut my father off, "there is nothing wrong with Cynthia! Everything that happened I made the decision too be a part of" "I just don't know what happened Ella..." My dad stared at me with a look that made me so ashamed of what I had done, then I remembered how I felt with the girls yesterday, like nothing could touch me. I haven't felt like people actually cared about me in the longest time. I felt a surge of confidence and said, "are you gonna punish me or not because I need to get to school." Both my parents just looked at me with a shocked expression, I had never said anything even remotely disrespectful before. "Well, we weren't going to, but if you're going to talk back, you're grounded for two weeks, only to school and back. And we're taking the phone out of your room." After my dad finished I simply stood up, grabbed my bag and walked out the door, off to school.

On my way to school I saw a man sitting on a bench finishing reading a newspaper. A newspaper that had the girls on the front page. He closed the paper and started walking down the street. I had no money on me to get my own copy but I needed that paper. I don't know what came over me, I would normally never approach a stranger, but I caught up to him and said, "Excuse me sir, are you done with that newspaper? Could I have it by any chance?" He looked at me questioningly, "I'm an aspiring journalist and I just love to-" he cut me off by handing me the paper, rolling his eyes, and walking away. I happily turned around and continued my path to school.

Once there I found all of the girls talking outside. "Look at who made the front page of today's paper." I said, everyone already crowding around me to try and look. "Vicious vixens perform vulgar acts before violently vacating the premises." Jane read.

"Who wrote this? Mother Goose?" Cynthia joked. "Even more shocking were the ideas Ms. Facciano espoused in her manifesto-like speech." Olivia continued. "To paraphrase Richard Nixon, speaking of his 1950 Senate opponent Helen Gahagan Douglas, she's pink right down to her underwear.They're calling us communists. This will sink my entire campaign." Jane finished. "Maybe not. I mean, you made some really good points during your speech. They wouldn't be trying to ruin you if they didn't think you might win." I chimed in. "It's great press and it's going to work perfectly with our new jackets" Nancy said pulling her new design from her bag. It was a black jacket with the words "black widows" and a spider on the back. The design and craftsmanship were stunning but the concept was, well, not it. "So, what do you think?" She asked. "Its.. violent.." Jane replied, trying to turn Nancy down gently. "Thanks! We're the black widows. Nobody messes with us because if they do, we eat them for breakfast." Oh. And the jacket comes with retractable fake blood coming out of the spider's mouth. Fun. "I like it!" Cynthia said with the biggest grin on her face. Not helping. "Probably not the best way to convince people we aren't vicious vixens." Jane said. "Sure thing boss," Nancy started, "Black Widows dead on arrival. New name pending."

We all started to walk into the school when Cynthia stopped, "Hey thespians! Jealous we put on the most interesting show Rydell's ever seen?" Then she stole one of their hats and threw it to a group of boys who kept throwing it around. "I'm so sorry about her" I yelled to them as she dragged me away. Once inside the school, we were immediately met with an angry Gil Rizzo, "All right. Which one of yo use is gonna pay for a new paint job for my car?"

Cynthia chimed in with "I could buy the hunk of junk for cheaper. Think of it this way, Gil: at least you finally got some girls in it!" She was met with a giggle from all the girls.

Gil muttered a "whatever." "See the paper, boys?" Cynthia continued, "When's the last time any of you chowderheads made the front page?" "Congratulations." Shy guy said, smiling at us. He's sweet. Potato just had to throw in his tow cents, "Whoa, watch out, fellas. It's a girl gang. They might beat us up with their pocketbooks!" Cynthia started hitting him with the paper and chased him down the hallway, all of us following in a fit of laughter.

"Ladies. My office. Now" Miss Mcgee. Shoot. We all started filing into her office until she stopped me, "Not you miss Bartlett. You didn't do anything." But, I did.