Whitney tossed some of her long blonde — dyed, apparently. At least according to my little sister Frida, who knows about things like that — hair and asked, her blue eyes glittering with indignation, ‘How is it an attack on any woman’s self-esteem to promote a healthy weight — which scientists have determined as a body mass index of below twenty-four point nine — as beautiful? If some women are too lazy to go to the gym because they sit around all day playing video games, well, that’s their problem. But they can’t then turn around and blame those of us who take proper care of our bodies of being sexist or holding them to impossible standards of beauty… especially when so many of us are living proof that those standards aren’t impossible at all.’

My jaw dropped. I looked around to see if anyone else was as stunned as I was. This was Whitney’s interpretation of the topic Mr Greer had assigned her for her two-minute persuasive piece? That normal-sized women should stop blaming the media for hyping stick-thin models and actresses as the beauty ideal?

Apparently I was the only one in the class who thought she’d gotten it wrong. At least if the rapt way everyone else (the male half of the class, anyway) was staring at Whitney’s — admittedly extremely perky — boobs was any indication.

‘If wanting to look as beautiful as someone like Nikki Howard, for instance,’ Whitney went on, naming the current It girl in the beauty-and-fashion scene, ‘was really so wrong, would women be spending an estimated thirty-three billion dollars a year on weight loss, another seven billion on cosmetics, and three hundred million or more on cosmetic surgery? Of course not! People aren’t stupid! They know that, with a little effort and maybe a little more money, they can be as attractive as — well, me.’

Whitney flung her long hair behind one shoulder, then went on, ‘Some people —’ insert the name Emerson Watts here, the look she sent in my direction implied — ‘might think it’s stuck-up of me to call myself attractive. But the truth is, beauty isn’t just about being five foot ten and a size zero. The most important accessory a girl can have is confidence… and I guess I just have plenty of that!’

Whitney lifted her shoulders in an innocent shrug, and almost all the boys — and half the girls — in class sighed as they gazed longingly at her. I whipped around in my seat and was relieved to notice that Christopher’s head had lolled forward in sleep. One guy — out of fourteen — was safe, anyway.

I turned back around in my seat just in time to hear Whitney say, ‘And the truth is, contrary to what critics tell us about the ideal being unachievable and women dying to be thin, the only thing killing women in this country is obesity, which is at epidemic proportions.’

Everyone in class nodded in agreement, as if all this made perfect sense. Which it so didn’t. At least, not to me.

‘Well,’ Whitney said, ‘that’s about it. Was that two minutes?’

Right on cue, Mr Greer’s oven timer dinged. He beamed and said, ‘Exactly two minutes. Excellently done, Whitney.’

She simpered again and started back to her seat. Since I saw that no one else was going to say anything — as usual — I stuck my hand in the air. ‘Mr Greer.’

He looked at me tiredly. ‘Yes, Miss Watts?’

‘Seriously,’ I said, lowering my hand. ‘I thought the purpose of the two-minute persuasive oral piece was to persuade our audience of something using facts and statistics.’

‘Which I totally did,’ Whitney said as she slid into her seat.

‘All you did,’ I shot back, ‘was make everyone in this class who isn’t as skinny and perfect as Nikki Howard feel totally bad about themselves. How about mentioning the fact that most of us are never going to look like her, no matter how hard we try or how much money we spend?’

The bell rang, loud and long. I guess I’d been asleep longer than I thought, because that period seemed to have flown by.

And as everyone sprang from their desks to get to their next class, Lindsey got up and said to me, ‘You’re just jealous.’

‘Totally,’ Whitney said, running her hands over her slender thighs. ‘And you got one thing right, Em: no matter how hard you try, you’re never going to look this good.’

Cackling with laughter at her own witticism, Whitney hurried from the classroom with a giggling Lindsey in tow, leaving me alone with Mr Greer. And Christopher.

‘You can bring up those points next week if you want, Em,’ Mr Greer volunteered helpfully, ‘when we do rebuttal persuasive pieces.’

I just glared at him. ‘Thanks, Mr Greer,’ I said.

He shrugged and looked sheepish. I looked at Christopher, who was slowly waking up, and said, ‘Thanks to you too. You were a big help back there.’

Christopher, blinking groggily rubbed his eyes. ‘Dude, I heard every word you said,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘What was my assigned topic again?’

‘Um… I’m not sure.’ Christopher’s smile was slightly crooked. ‘But I know it had something to do with short shorts. And glow-in-the-dark dinosaur stickers.’

Slowly I shook my head. Sometimes I think high school is just something society puts teenagers through as a sort of test to see if we’ve got the stamina to handle the real world.

It’s a test I’m pretty sure I’m failing.

You would think on weekends I’d get a respite. You know, from the

Whitney Robertsons of the world.

The problem is, my little sister is turning into one. A Whitney, I mean.

Oh, she’s not quite as bad as the Queen of Mean. Yet. But she’s slowly getting there. As I realized to my horror on Saturday morning, when Mom said I had to go with her to the Stark Megastore grand opening, because at fourteen Frida’s still ‘too young’ to do stuff like that by herself.

Substitute the word silly for young in the sentence above and you’ll get my mom’s gist.

Not that Frida is actually mentally diminished in any way. Like me, she got into Tribeca Alternative High School on an academic scholarship.

She’s just turned into a Whitney Robertson wannabe… or, more technically, a member of the Walking Dead. That’s the term Christopher and I use to describe the majority of our classmates.

To most people, zombies are the undead. But to Christopher and me, zombies are the popular people at TAHS, who are very similar to the undead, in that they have no soul or personality. But they are, technically, alive.

However, because they have no actual interests of their own (or if they do, they squelch them in order to fit in), and merely pursue those that they think will look best on their college apps, they’re zombies.

Ergo, the Walking Dead is what makes up the majority of the student population of Tribeca Alternative High School.

It was kind of frightening to watch your own sister turn into one of the walking Dead. But unfortunately, there really isn’t anything you can do to stop it from happening. Except try to embarrass her as much as possible in public.

Which would be why Frida (it was Mom’s turn to do the naming when my little sister was born, and so she got stuck being called Frida, after Frida Kahlo — Mom’s a women’s studies professor at NYU — a feminist Mexican painter best known for her self-portraits featuring her uni-brow and moustache) was as thrilled to have me along to the Stark Megastore grand opening as I was to be going with her.

Um, not.

‘Mo-om!’ she whined. ‘Why does Em have to come with me? She’s going to ruin everything.’

‘Em is not going to ruin everything,’ Mom said, rolling her eyes at Frida’s dramatics. ‘She’s just going to make sure you get home all right.’

‘It’s TWO BLOCKS away,’ Frida pointed out.

But Mom wouldn’t budge. There’ve been people protesting outside the new Stark Megastore since before it was even built, back when the neighbourhood found out that’s what would be replacing Mama’s Fruit and Vegetable Stand (located in the middle of an abandoned lot) on the corner of Broadway and Houston. Situated just two streets over from our university-subsidized apartment on West Third and La Guardia Place, Mama’s was where we bought all our lettuce and bananas, since you can’t trust the produce at the local Gristedes, and the gourmet food store over on Broadway, Dean and Deluca, was way too expensive.