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to have a baby or a reality show (or both). We’d zero recognition for it. They were just kind of
5
stay for hours chewing on straws and gossiping expected to build the sets, like the janitors were
about boys, and collectively only spend about expected to clean up the hallways.
fifteen dollars on one slice of cheesecake and Though Mavis could have been confused for
four Cokes. Then we’d leave and have our regular a boy from almost every angle, she had the pale
Narrative
dinners at our respective homes. Obviously, the skin and high cheekbones of an Edith Wharton
waiters loathed us. In a way we were worse than character. Thinking back on her now, she had all
the dine-and-dashers because at least the dine- the prerequisites to be a runway model in New
and-dashers only hit up Cheesecake Factory once York, especially since this was the early ‘90s, when
and never showed up again. We, on the other it was advantageous to look like a flat-chested,
hand, thought we were beloved regulars and that rail-thin boy. But our school was behind the
people lit up when we walked in. We’re back, times, and the aesthetic that ruled was the curvy,
Cheesecake Factory! JLMP’s back! Your favorite petite, all-American Tiffani Amber Thiessen look,
cool, young people here to jazz up the joint! which Polly and Lauren had to some degree. At
I know what you’re thinking, that I ditched school, Mavis was considered neither pretty nor
Mavis because she wasn’t as cool as my more popular. Neither was I, by any stretch of the imag-
classically “girly” friends, but that wasn’t it. First ination, but at least I didn’t tower over the boys in
of all, JLMP wasn’t even very cool. High school our class by a good five inches.
girls who have time to be super cliquey are usu-
ally not the popular girls. The actual popular
girls have boyfriends, and, by that point, have
chilled out on intense girl friendships to explore
sex and stuff. Not us. Sex? Forget it. JLMP had
given up on that happening until grad school.
Yep, we were the kind of girls who, at age four-
teen, pictured ourselves attending grad school.
Getting a good idea of us now?
Mavis had her own friends. Maybe because
of her height and short hair, she hung out with
mostly guys. Her crowd was the techie boys, the
ones who built the sets at school and proudly
wore all black, covered in dried paint splatter.
The techie boys all had fancy names like “Conrad”
and “Xander” and “Sebastian.” It’s as if their
parents had hoped that by naming them these
manly, ornate names, they might have a fighting
chance of being the leading men of our school.
Unfortunately, the actual leading men in our
school were named “Matt” or “Rob” or “Chris”
and wouldn’t be caught dead near our student This is a poster from a film adaptation of Edith
theater unless they were receiving a soccer Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence.
trophy in a sports assembly. Mavis and her guy Based on this image, what might Kaling have
been going for by comparing Mavis to a
pals built gorgeous sets for our plays like Evita, character in a Wharton novel?
Rags, and City of Angels, and got absolutely
150
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

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