THE HOTNESS: A Modern Teen Pride and Prejudice (chapter two: Mackenzie)

Chapter Two

Mackenzie

    First things first, as Honey would say. She talks, I write, Veronica listens.

    The only person Mackenzie truly liked, (apart from her twin brother who obviously shared the same DNA), was Darcy. Mackenzie had idolized him since she was a little girl and all through her middle school journals she’d written things like, I wonder what Darcy would do? and Darcy is so hot / Darcy is the hottest boy I’ve ever met / Darcy is a rock star. He is the one, the only, the hotness.

     Wow, Mackenzie was years older than us but she was clearly “far more deluded” as Honey, who is aiming to be the most popular girl in school by her junior year, would say.

     Mackenzie was supposed to arrive with her brother that first day of school but she had an appointment with her hairdresser, Marvin Markin and that took priority.

     Marvin was the most notable stylist in Rodeo Drive. He had bright orange hair and simply could not be kept waiting. Mackenzie was lucky to get in on a cancellation.  School would have to be postponed. Mackenzie’s schedule of foils and straightening tongs was far more important than classes. After all, she reasoned, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.  

     I read all of this in the notes Mackenzie had scribbled on the back of her History folder and left carelessly on a lunch room table for me to gather and carry the next day.

     Oh, I forgot to tell you, from then on, she designated me her ‘freshman helper’ and I played along so I could keep the others informed. I think it’s because I wear glasses that everyone thinks I’m smart. Honey and Veronica have been trying to encourage me to wear contacts. I’m allergic so I’m not going there – yet. Besides, as freshman, we don’t date and our lives are not nearly as eventful as Mackenzie’s and the other seniors were sure to be, so I enjoyed following Mackenzie around. Up to a point.

    Besides, I’m going to be an actress first, before I fall in love, then a writer: AWW. I write ActressWriterWhatever on my home page. At the moment I’m researching my role as a teenage intellectual queen bee. I’m basing my character on Veronica and a freshman mathlete I know. My audition is not for two weeks so this gives me heaps of time to sleuth.

     “You need to start wearing contacts,” Mackenzie advised me after we met (as if she were the inventor of style). “In color, I’d say blue. It’ll brighten your eyes,” Mackenzie assured me. I nodded. I knew I’d be thrown out of her potential inner sanctum if I openly disagreed with her.

    Let’s leave Mackenzie at Marvin Markin’s Hair Salon for Fashionable Teens (I did) and focus instead on her brother Ryan and his hotsicle best friend, Darcy. Mackenzie paid for my cab to school that day so I arrived in style just as the newbies created quite a stir in the hallway by showing up. Fame preceded them, Darcy reasoned. It was always the same:

    “Always a feast, never a famine. I’m so over it.” I heard him say distinctly to Ryan as he slammed his locker door again.   

     Ryan and Darcy complimented each other perfectly because they both came from a far flung, misunderstood and ancient part of the world – Australia. I looked it up on a google map during recess. It’s very orange. The center of their vast country of origin was largely red and uninhabited and although the coastline cities were modern and densely populated, the boys carried with them the look of bored, ruggedness on the hunt for action. There were tons of things in Australia that could kill you (like snakes and spiders) so Darcy and Ryan were like kings of their species – they’d survived to visit civilization – our school in Los Angeles.  

     And yet, Darcy persisted in boasting.

     “Sure, America is a large country, but we’ve seen cattle stations just as big as the ranches in Texas: our own back yards, for one thing.”

     What I’m saying, of course, is that it took A LOT to impress them.

     Their fathers both worked for The Bank of Australia (some people said they owned it) and the boys had never known anything but luxury: swimming all year round, tennis in summer, skiing in Falls Creek during winter, sailing in spring, horse riding when they weren’t driving their extremely expensive sports cars. 

     Even though they were sent away from their lush six storied homes and private boy’s schools on the shores of Sydney Harbor to one of the many far-flung family-owned cattle ranches where life was harsh and the weather was even harsher, during school vacations (to ‘toughen them up’ according to their fathers), they had an aura of ‘poshness’ about them. They acted, quite frankly, superior and although the Princesses were taken by them, we weren’t ‘taken in’ by them – especially the taller one. That one was Darcy, obviously.   

THE HOTNESS: A Modern Teen Pride and Prejudice (chapter one: Darcy Equals Hot)

Chapter One

Darcy Equals Hot

    It was a perfect September Day when two new seniors; Darcy and Ryan, graced the halls of Sunrise High School for the first time.

    They were tall, tanned and handsome but the slightly taller one, Darcy Donovan, had coal black hair, eyes the color of deepest ocean and the gait of a movie star down on his luck.

     I have to admit, even though he was a (much) older man and he was seriously cute, that Darcy had a cold and distant air about him. He made all the freshman girls part their newly formed cliques and gossip as he walked by. I looked a little extra long after he turned away and his friend smiled at me. But Darcy only gave a slight smile to his friend because he was used to “younger girls” crushing on him. He said that disdainfully too, as if I were barely a teen and certainly lacked “common sense.”

    From that moment on, I thought Darcy acted like a tool as he checked his Twitter while the rest of the freshman girls (and a few boys) stared. Not me. I’d moved on already. I was busy writing the first lines of my most excellent teen novel on my iPhone.

    This is how our school works.

    The main clique, The Princesses (of which I am the most junior member – a member by birth, I should add but please don’t think that makes me a snob), all googled him (of course). We found out he’d just parted company with his former manager, Dustin Jones. There was a picture of Dustin on the internet. He wore a bored expression above his goatee and had his arms around two very spacey looking girls.

    One gossip site noted: Born in Sydney, In his country of birth (Australia), Darcy Donovan is a reluctant superstar. Mr Darcy has acted in at least a dozen locally produced web-i-sodes of a reality TV drama called Rich Boys from Down Under… and so it went on.  

    Well, I could assure them that here at Sunrise hardly anyone knew him. He might be in the process of putting the finishing touches on his first “album” and reportedly have “no room in his life to handle any more fans” and be “so over” the music industry he was “taking a break” (even though he was barely eighteen) but he certainly didn’t seem to lack a good PR person.

     It seemed like Ryan Bingley was Darcy’s best friend. Ryan had hair that shone in the sun and a disposition to match. Ryan also had a twin sister, Mackenzie, who was Ryan’s double in looks but his opposite in temperament. 

    From the first Mackenzie wanted to be a Princess. And from the first, Mackenzie acted nice enough to be invited. Unfortunately, because I was the youngest and newest member of the group, my vote only counted once.

    It wasn’t long before Mackenzie was in with the “in” crowd, but I’m getting ahead of myself as usual…

    The most important thing to know is that around the time that Darcy arrived a new girl (and her sisters) transferred to Sunrise from the wrong side of town – and that’s putting it nicely. Paige Bennet had not a clue how to be fashionable on that first day. Since she was a junior so it was hard to believe she was that clueless. I’m here stating it, for the record and I’m nothing if not honest. That’s another reason I trail around after Mackenzie. I get so much information it’s important for the novel I’m writing. The new girl had an older sister (a senior) who was quiet and pretty and a middle sister (Senta) who was dull and younger sisters (Sia and Rebel) who were, let’s just say, party girls.

    I’ll tell you about the Bennet sisters, though, once I’ve introduced the Bingley twins. Here’s what I quickly learned about Mackenzie Bingley.

     Mackenzie was a professional queen bee and she immediately wanted to rule the Princesses and take over from the most senior princess, Melody Mitford. Melody’s Dad was being transferred to London, England so she wouldn’t have long to wait. Mackenzie had been a queen bee at all her previous schools (The Sydney School for Rich Princesses and The Los Angeles High School For Young Ladies, were just two of the previous high schools she’d been expelled from).

     What Mackenzie lacked in academic skills, she made up for in attitude. She ruled her friends with fear. Her pattern was the same wherever she went; infiltrate the main social groups, make herself indispensable to them, divide, and conquer. It always worked. I state for the record, Mackenzie was pretty but she was all surface.

     Inside, there was something lacking that even she couldn’t locate.

     You might wonder how I know everything. Well, I have a long history with Sunrise, since even before I was born. My family  have always lived here. My older sister was Mouche Mackintosh. I’m not sure if some of my memories of her are just from photographs or what people have told me (she was more than ten years my senior), but I feel her presence here sometimes, even though she’s been gone a long time. My sister also went to this school and was a founding member of The Princesses. The Princesses (me, Honey and Veronica are the only freshman members) always know who is who and what is what. I have to say, although I have a passion for dance, fashion and theatre (just like my sister) I’m definitely the most intellectual of my trinity of close friends. Honey is the most popular and Veronica is the most studious.

    So, I felt like I’d be letting the side down if I was immune to the charms of the hottest guy in school but it was obvious, from the first time I saw them together (yelling at each other, of course) that Darcy Donovan and Paige Bennet (though everyone called her ‘the girl from the wrong side of the tracks’) were going to become an unexpectedly ‘it’ couple.

    At least, that’s the way it was supposed to be in my imaginary teen Austen world.  I was reading Pride and Prejudice (I’d consider myself an advanced reader for my age) on my e-reader. I was literally up to ten percent when a real story began to unfold around me, creating more than one serious diversion between me and my intellectual property...

    

THE HOTNESS: A Modern Teen Pride and Prejudice (prologue)

THE HOTNESS: A Modern Teen Pride and Prejudice

Prologue by Wednesday Mackintosh

I was walking into my freshman year at Sunrise High when I looked up from my locker only to notice Darcy Donovan, the new senior I’d been told about. He was totally hot just as my friends had warned me. I made a choice right there and then not to act like just another fan girl. Besides, he threw me when he bestowed a charitable smile, turned away and said in an Aussie voice loud enough for both me and his friend to hear, “Girls stalk me via Twitter now. I’m so over it.”

    My name’s Wednesday Mackintosh by the way and from that first day, I started writing this story about him. I originally began writing it with this line:

   “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a new guy in possession of even the slightest bit of hotness thinks everyone in his orbit is a potential fan...” but then I changed it, obviously.

    Yes, I know any normal person would raise an eyebrow at this romantic topic du jour when as teens we live in a century of constant war, animal activism, global human rights issues and unlimited options but this statement deserves to be re-stated.

    Why?

    Because in Darcy’s case, it’s definitely true. And I should know. I just overheard that the only reason Darcy’s even looking for a girlfriend (he’s “so over relationships”) is because he needs to hook up to receive his share of his grandfather’s ‘gift’ – a cattle ranch (he called it a cattle ‘station’) to be bestowed upon him at eighteen. It’s priceless, but he only gets it if he proves he’s emotionally ‘stable’ and in a functioning relationship. How bizarre is that?  

    Let’s just state, for the record, I’d just discovered it was more important for a guy like Darcy to have a steady girlfriend than anyone could imagine. Anyone, that is, except his best friend Ryan. Oh, and me, of course.

    But let’s start before the introductions and pretend this is like a scene from The Sound of Music (without the singing of course). Sunrise is a cul-de-sac that photographs like an old fashioned picture postcard filmed in long shot…

    (For those of you who don’t already know, this town is a picturesque and hilly enclave, located near enough to Beverly Hills to be ritzy, but far enough from Bel Air to be not quite ritzy enough.)

     This is mostly where our story takes place… at least in the first instance. Now, to begin again…

THE HOTNESS (Prologue)

THE HOTNESS 

Prologue by Wednesday Mackintosh

I was walking into my freshman year at Sunrise High when I looked up from my locker only to notice Darcy Donovan, the new senior I’d been told about. He was totally hot just as my friends had warned me. I made a choice right there and then not to act like just another fan girl. Besides, he threw me when he bestowed a charitable smile, turned away and said in an Aussie voice loud enough for both me and his friend to hear, “Girls stalk me via Twitter now. I’m so over it.”

    My name’s Wednesday Mackintosh by the way and from that first day, I started writing this story about him. I originally began writing it with this line:

   “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a new guy in possession of even the slightest bit of hotness thinks everyone in his orbit is a potential fan...” but then I changed it, obviously.

    Yes, I know any normal person would raise an eyebrow at this romantic topic du jour when as teens we live in a century of constant war, animal activism, global human rights issues and unlimited options but this statement deserves to be re-stated.

    Why?

    Because in Darcy’s case, it’s definitely true. And I should know. I just overheard that the only reason Darcy’s even looking for a girlfriend (he’s “so over relationships”) is because he needs to hook up to receive his share of his grandfather’s ‘gift’ – a cattle ranch (he called it a cattle ‘station’) to be bestowed upon him at eighteen. It’s priceless, but he only gets it if he proves he’s emotionally ‘stable’ and in a functioning relationship. How bizarre is that?  

    Let’s just state, for the record, I’d just discovered it was more important for a guy like Darcy to have a steady girlfriend than anyone could imagine. Anyone, that is, except his best friend Ryan. Oh, and me, of course.

    But let’s start before the introductions and pretend this is like a scene from The Sound of Music (without the singing of course). Sunrise is a cul-de-sac that photographs like an old fashioned picture postcard filmed in long shot…

    (For those of you who don’t already know, this town is a picturesque and hilly enclave, located near enough to Beverly Hills to be ritzy, but far enough from Bel Air to be not quite ritzy enough.)

     This is mostly where our story takes place… at least in the first instance. Now, to begin again…

THE HOTNESS (chapter one: Darcy Equals Hot)

CHAPTER ONE

DARCY EQUALS HOT

    It was a perfect September Day when two new juniors; Darcy and Ryan, graced the halls of Sunrise High School for the first time.

    They were tall, tanned and handsome but the slightly taller one, Darcy Donovan, had coal black hair, eyes the color of deepest ocean and the gait of a movie star down on his luck.

     I have to admit, even though he was a (much) older man and he was seriously cute, that Darcy had a cold and distant air about him. He made all the freshman girls part their newly formed cliques and gossip as he walked by. I looked a little extra long after he turned away and his friend smiled at me. But Darcy only gave a slight smile to his friend because he was used to “younger girls” crushing on him. He said that disdainfully too, as if I were barely a teen and certainly lacked “common sense.”

    From that moment on, I thought Darcy acted like a tool as he checked his Twitter while the rest of the freshman girls (and a few boys) stared. Not me. I’d moved on already. I was busy writing the first lines of my most excellent teen novel on my iPhone.

    This is how our school works.

    The main clique, The Princesses (of which I am the most junior member – a member by birth, I should add but please don’t think that makes me a snob), all googled him (of course). We found out he’d just parted company with his former manager, Dustin Jones. There was a picture of Dustin on the internet. He wore a bored expression above his goatee and had his arms around two very spacey looking girls.

    One gossip site noted: Born in Sydney, In his country of birth (Australia), Darcy Donovan is a reluctant superstar. Mr Darcy has acted in at least a dozen locally produced web-i-sodes of a reality TV drama called Rich Boys from Down Under… and so it went on.  

    Well, I could assure them that here at Sunrise hardly anyone knew him. He might be in the process of putting the finishing touches on his first “album” and reportedly have “no room in his life to handle any more fans” and be “so over” the music industry he was “taking a break” (even though he was barely eighteen) but he certainly didn’t seem to lack a good PR person.

     It seemed like Ryan Bingley was Darcy’s best friend. Ryan had hair that shone in the sun and a disposition to match. Ryan also had a twin sister, Mackenzie, who was Ryan’s double in looks but his opposite in temperament. 

    From the first Mackenzie wanted to be a Princess. And from the first, Mackenzie acted nice enough to be invited. Unfortunately, because I was the youngest and newest member of the group, my vote only counted once.

    It wasn’t long before Mackenzie was in with the “in” crowd, but I’m getting ahead of myself as usual…

    The most important thing to know is that around the time that Darcy arrived a new girl (and her sisters) transferred to Sunrise from the wrong side of town – and that’s putting it nicely. Paige Bennet had not a clue how to be fashionable on that first day. Since she was a junior it was hard to believe she was that clueless. I’m here stating it, for the record and I’m nothing if not honest. The new girl had an older sister, Shiloh (a senior), who was quiet and pretty and a middle sister (Senta) who was dull and younger sisters (Sia and Rebel) who were, let’s just say, party girls.

    I’ll tell you about the Bennet sisters, though, once I’ve introduced the Bingley twins. Here’s what I quickly learned about Mackenzie Bingley.

     Mackenzie was a professional queen bee and she immediately wanted to rule the Princesses and take over from the most senior princess, Melody Mitford. Melody’s Dad was being transferred to London, England so she wouldn’t have long to wait. Mackenzie had been a queen bee at all her previous schools (The Sydney School for Rich Princesses and The Los Angeles High School For Young Ladies, were just two of the previous high schools she’d been expelled from).

     What Mackenzie lacked in academic skills, she made up for in attitude. She ruled her friends with fear. Her pattern was the same wherever she went: infiltrate the main social groups, make herself indispensable to them, divide, and conquer. It always worked. I state for the record, Mackenzie was pretty but she was all surface.

     Inside, there was something lacking in a place even she couldn’t locate.

     You might wonder how I know everything. 
     Well, I have a long history with Sunrise, since even before I was born. My family  have always lived here. My older sister was Mouche Mackintosh. I’m not sure if some of my memories of her are just from photographs or what people have told me (she was more than ten years my senior), but I feel her presence here sometimes, even though she’s been gone a long time. My sister also went to this school and was a founding member of The Princesses. The Princesses (me, Honey and Veronica are the only freshman members) always know who is who and what is what. I have to say, although I have a passion for dance, fashion and theater (just like my sister) I’m definitely the most intellectual in my trinity of close friends. Honey is the most popular and Veronica is the most studious.

    So, I felt like I’d be letting the side down if I was immune to the charms of the hottest guy in school but it was obvious, from the first time I saw them together (yelling at each other, of course) that Darcy Donovan and Paige Bennet (though everyone called her ‘the girl from the wrong side of the tracks’) were going to become an unexpectedly ‘it’ couple.

    At least, that’s the way it was supposed to be in my imaginary teen Austen world.  I was reading Pride and Prejudice (I’d consider myself an advanced reader for my age) on my e-reader. I was literally up to ten percent when a real story began to unfold around me, creating more than one serious diversion between me and my intellectual property...

THE HOTNESS (chapter two: Mackenzie)

Chapter Two

Mackenzie

    First things first, as Honey would say. She talks, I write, Veronica listens.

    The only person Mackenzie truly liked, (apart from her twin brother who obviously shared the same DNA), was Darcy. Mackenzie had idolized him since she was a little girl and all through her middle school journals she’d written things like, I wonder what Darcy would do? and Darcy is so hot / Darcy is the hottest boy I’ve ever met / Darcy is a rock star. He is the one, the only, the hotness.

     Wow, Mackenzie was years older than us but she was clearly “far more deluded” as Honey, who is aiming to be the most popular girl in school by her junior year, would say.

     Mackenzie was supposed to arrive with her brother that first day of school but she had an appointment with her hairdresser, Marvin Markin and that took priority.

     Marvin was the most notable stylist in Rodeo Drive. He had bright orange hair and simply could not be kept waiting. Mackenzie was lucky to get in on a cancellation.  School would have to be postponed. Mackenzie’s schedule of foils and straightening tongs was far more important than classes. After all, she reasoned, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.  

     I read all of this in the notes Mackenzie had scribbled on the back of her History folder and left carelessly on a lunch room table for me to gather and carry.

     Oh, I forgot to tell you, from day one she designated me her ‘freshman helper’ and I played along so I could keep the others informed. I think it’s because I wear glasses that everyone thinks I’m smart. Honey and Veronica have been trying to encourage me to wear contacts. I’m allergic so I’m not going there – yet. Besides, as freshman, we don’t date and our lives are not nearly as eventful as Mackenzie’s, so I secretly enjoyed following Mackenzie around. Up to a point.

    Besides, I’m going to be an actress first, before I fall in love, then a writer: AWW. I write ActressWriterWhatever on my home page. At the moment I’m researching a potential television role as a teenage intellectual queen bee. I’m basing my character on Veronica and a freshman mathlete I know. My audition is not for two weeks so this gives me heaps of time to sleuth.

     “You need to start wearing contacts,” Mackenzie repeated that first day as if she were the inventor of style. “In color, I’d say blue. It’ll brighten your eyes,” Mackenzie assured me. I nodded. I knew I’d be thrown out of her potential inner sanctum if I openly disagreed with her.

    Let’s leave Mackenzie at Marvin Markin’s Hair Salon for Fashionable Teens (I did) and focus instead on her brother Ryan and his hotsicle best friend, Darcy. Mackenzie paid for my cab to school that day so I arrived in style just as the newbies created quite a stir in the hallway by showing up. Fame preceded them, Darcy reasoned. It was always the same:

    “Always a feast, never a famine. I’m so over it.” I heard him say distinctly to Ryan as he slammed his locker door again.   

     Ryan and Darcy complimented each other perfectly because they both came from a far flung, misunderstood and ancient part of the world – Australia. I looked it up on a google map during recess. It’s very orange. The center of their vast country of origin was largely red and uninhabited and although the coastline cities were modern and densely populated, the boys carried with them the look of bored, ruggedness on the hunt for action. There were tons of things in Australia that could kill you (like snakes and spiders) so Darcy and Ryan were like kings of their species – they’d survived to visit civilization – our school in Los Angeles.  

     And yet, Darcy persisted in boasting.

     “Sure, America is a large country, but we’ve seen cattle stations just as big as the ranches in Texas: our own back yards, for one thing.”

     What I’m saying, of course, is that it took A LOT to impress them.

     Their fathers both worked for The Bank of Australia (some people said they owned it) and the boys had never known anything but luxury: swimming all year round, tennis in summer, skiing in Falls Creek during winter, sailing in spring, horse riding when they weren’t driving their extremely expensive sports cars. 

     Even though they were sent away from their lush six storied homes and private boy’s schools on the shores of Sydney Harbor to one of the many far-flung family-owned cattle ranches where life was harsh and the weather was even harsher, during school vacations (to ‘toughen them up’ according to their fathers), they had an aura of ‘poshness’ about them. They acted, quite frankly, superior and although the Princesses were taken by them, we were not ‘taken in’ by them. Especially the taller one. That one was Darcy, obviously.   

POPULAR and THE HOTNESS (update!)

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I thought my FABTASTIC readers might like to see a sample of some of the drawings that I've completed to go along with POPULAR. I finished this teen novel a while ago - it's a sequel (of sorts) to PRIDE & PRINCESSES and is written with EMMA very much in mind. I'm so excited to share it here with you soon. First, I'm finishing THE HOTNESS... and that's not edited yet. I think you are going to enjoy these novels. Readers familiar with PRIDE & PRINCESSES are going to know that there are a lotta twists and turns along the way in the world of Sunrise High School. So, stay tuned for more updates... while you are waiting for these I've uploaded my entire teen classics catalogue (teen takes on Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre - representing some of my work over many years) here... you might like to read the stories while you ponder Popular... and please tell your friends to visit too! HUGS TO THE MOST AMAZING READERS ON THE PLANET:)

POPULAR PICTURE

Here's an example picture to go along with my new teen novel, POPULAR!