1You could say it all started with this invitation, a thick white card popping out of my locker door:
FRANCES BEAN ELLISdeep
requests your presenceOn the fall equinoxWhen the sun shines directly on the equatorThe Patterson HomeDress code: whiteGirls like me don’t get invitations to Deep events. Girls like me aren’t supposed to be interested in beauty serums, namaste hands, mindfulness apps, crystal water bottles, and the expensive white lace dresses that everyone wears who is adjacent to wellness guru Deena Patterson. Especially not me, Frances Bean Ellis, the teacher’s daughter.
Yes, I’m named after
that Frances Bean, as in Frances Bean Cobain, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s daughter. My mom liked, at least according to legend, that they graced her with a middle name after a character in
The Beans of Egypt, Maine, by Caroline Chute, which, according to my mom, is an excellent book on poverty in America. My friends call me Bean.
Most of the girls in my school
and their mothers want to be in close proximity to Deena and her daughter, Julia. Deep is a multimillion-dollar wellness company with international recognition, a billionaire fan base,
and a flagship store right here in South Brent because Deena Patterson, who lives in a palatial home in the estate section, wanted a short commute. But Deep isn’t just wellness. It’s clean beauty products, organic clothes, detox brushes, salt therapies, and new ways to heal yourself.
Then about five years ago, Deena Patterson launched Femme, an exclusive offshoot for young girls. Femme girls host parties, or “gatherings” as they call them; they intern at the local Deep store and are regulars on the Deep Instagram account. All of them in their white dresses and lacy skirts, draping their glowy legs on white ruffled organic linen sheets, surrounded by an endless supply of cosmetics and products. Girls with huge smiles on their faces, looking like someone vacuumed the brains out of their skulls.
I could barely afford a hair tie from the Deep store.
The reason I want to be in close proximity to Julia Patterson has nothing to do with Deep or Femme. It’s because I’ve been crushing on Julia long before we became partners in Nineteenth-Century Lit. Yes, me, with my overdyed platinum-blond hair, my red lips, my white, ghostly skin. My unplucked, messy dark brows. My black velvet skirt, my embroidered top with the lace sleeves, my fishnet stockings.
I’m supposed to rebel against such things.
Yet I have a crush on Julia Patterson. A wild, out‑of‑control crush.
“I heard about these invitations, but thought it was like folklore or something,” Brooks says, and plucks the card from the crease of my locker, turning it over to inspect it. Say what you want about Brooks, that his pompadour hair, penny loafers, and black-rimmed glasses make him look like a young Morrissey, which he vehemently denies, but he’s a fiercely loyal friend.
Ivy pokes Brooks with her black lace parasol, reaches her laced-glove fingers out, and snatches the invite from his hands. The parasol was something she picked up at an antique shop during a weekend trip to London with her mom about a year ago and she’s carried it with her ever since. Out of our group, Ivy is my best friend.
“Damn, Bean, this happened fast,” Ivy says. “You bonded with Julia Patterson over Charlotte Brontë, and now you’ve got a Femme invite.”
“Hand it over,” Nico says, and inspects the invitation with her antique gold magnifying pendant, an artifact she wears around her neck. “Embossed lettering? One-hundred-and-twenty-pound card stock? Jesus, this is wedding-invite quality.”
“Might as well be an invite to a coronation, with the massive social currency it carries, at least to the people in this school,” Brooks says.
He’s not wrong. Talentum is an elite private school twelve miles outside Manhattan. Countless articles have been written about the student body, how rich they are, how they skip out on required community service, how the antiracist missions have largely gone ignored. Talentum may come with a high price tag, but it’s got a glare of privilege shining on it.
While the kids at Talentum are the power elite of the world, my friends and I, in our Victorian goth attire, are most certainly the outcasts.
My stream of anxiety comes to a halt when Brian-Michael Tenny and Steph Markowitz, in matching pink button-downs, make a beeline to Steph’s locker, which is next to mine.
“Oh goodie, here comes the pink-shirts regime,” Brooks says under his breath.
Brian-Michael pulls out his phone and starts taking photos. He’s so embarrassing.
“Who are you taking pictures of?” I say.
Brian-Michael glares at us. “It’s not Halloween.
Fucking goths,” he says like it’s a bad thing.
“Actually,” Ivy says pointedly, “I’m afro-goth.”
“You’re what?” Brian-Michael says, chomping on gum.
“
Afro-goth. Get the terminology right.”
“There’s no such thing as afro-goth,” he says. “Goth is a derivative of white punk.”
“Let me school you, Brian-Michael, a boy so important that your parents thought you needed two first names,” Ivy says, and twirls her parasol at him. “A) Goth subculture doesn’t exclude people based on race. B) Bauhaus, the pioneers of goth, admitted that they were basically influenced by reggae.”
Steph and Brian-Michael stare at her blankly.
The outcast thing wasn’t something that ever bothered Ivy. To her, Steph and Brian-Michael were just part of a handful of kids who made fun of us. I think she found arguing with them entertaining. She’s the editor in chief of the school paper, part of Model UN and the International Girls Club. Last year she even joined the tennis team for a hot second. I don’t have any of those fancy hobbies or extracurriculars that get you into college. I’m nothing like Ivy in that way.
“You’re quite imaginative,” I say to them. “Are you going to ask us next if we’re going to a funeral?”
They roll their eyes and walk away.
Harassment is an unofficial pastime for these Talentum guys. They’d make the OG preppy ’80s bullies proud. I’ve come to accept their secret clubs, their cliques, their Ivy League legacy sweatshirts, and their judgmental looks. Brian-Michael is not special in this way. He’s from a long line of assholes who get off on power trips.
The only reason I go to Talentum is because my mother is a teacher here. The only other school I’ve gone to was a neighborhood public school in the West Village, where my mom and I lived in a studio apartment. My bedroom was a walk‑in closet. Ivy always tells me that I have the right to be here more than anyone because my mom has influenced over a decade’s worth of students with her feminist-focused history lessons. Yet
I don’t belong here is always in the back of my mind.
Which is why this invite makes little sense. Why would Julia Patterson invite me?
“Can we get back to this invitation?” Brooks says.
“Yeah, I thought you two were just friendly in class?” Ivy says. “Is this, like, a full-blown thing?”
“Calm down, it’s just an invite,” I say. “There is nothing full blown about it.”
But I don’t feel calm at all, and I’m starting to wonder if it was accidentally put in my locker. Though, how can it be accidental? It has my name in it. Maybe, just maybe, Julia knows about my crush and has one on me too.
No, that’s impossible.
I tell my friends I’ll meet them in the newsroom after class and give them updates with details. Always with details. And I’m reminded of the invitation again, all those details . . .
on the fall equinox, when the sun shines directly on the equator, and an excitement creeps up my spine, to my shoulders, through my ears, and I shiver as I walk into class.
Copyright © 2025 by Hayley Krischer. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
