Read It Before You See It: TRINKETS by Kiwi Smith
On Friday, the first season of the Netflix Original Series Trinkets will air! Like most great entertainment, it’s based off a book with the same title…by the same screenwriter/author, Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith! Kiwi’s credits include Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, 10 Things I Hate About You, The House Bunny, She’s the Man,…you get it—she brings it with the badass female characters. If that piques your interest (which it should, since we’re all for badass female all the time), then keep reading…
Trinkets introduces us to Tabitha, Elodie, and Moe, beauty queen, a wallflower, and a burnout. Tabitha has a seemingly perfect life, Elodie has a goodie-two-shoes attitude, and Moe is notoriously known as the bad girl. What do they all share in common? Well, I will tell you that they will steal your heart.
To give you a sneak peek, here’s an excerpt from the book.
ELODIE
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
The people who say Portland is a place
where hipster thirtysomethings go to retire
clearly have never been to Lake Oswego,
my new hometown,
the burb of all burbs,
a suburban utopia of Audi-driving type As,
a place so white they call it “Lake No Negro,”
a place where dads go
when they don’t care that their kid
was happier living in Idaho;
a place for dads to go when
they’re hoping a constant downpour of rain
will wash away the past like it wasn’t even there
and all they can see is a new job
and a pretty new wife
and a place
to send your daughter to be educated properly
and ignored resoundingly.
OLD AND NEW
Of the six months I’ve been here,
the first two were friendless
until I met Rachelle.
She needed a bestie and I needed somebody.
I met her by joining Yearbook,
which is a shortcut to friendship
if you’re one of the new people.
I’m new enough so no one knows my name,
but I’m old enough to realize who everyone is.
I’m new enough not to understand
why they call Ken Headley “SpoogeBob,”
but I’m old enough to have heard that
Mr. Hart had to leave school
because he made a pass at Martin Pierce
in the bio lab.
I’m new enough to be clueless about
what the Interplanetary Analysis Club actually does,
but old enough to realize
if there’s any guy
any girl
would kill to be with,
it’s Brady Finch.
HUMAN ANATOMY
Brady is by his locker
and as he’s reaching up to get something,
the word sinew comes to mind—
probably because we just learned it
in our human anatomy discussion in Biology.
I’m going to tell Mr. Lopez
that if he wants people
to really appreciate human anatomy,
he should show a slide of Brady Finch’s forearm
while saying the word sinew
and I bet every girl’s C-minus would
suddenly sprout into a B-plus.
Brady zips up his backpack
and slams his locker shut
and his sinew comes down
and curls around its rightful place in the world:
the shoulder of Tabitha Foster.
TABITHA
WHAT THE MIRROR SAYS
I wonder what the point of being quote-unquote popular is, since sometimes it’s a highly annoying thing to be. For instance, idiots and plebeians constantly come up to you and invade your space with inane greetings, bids for attention, and pleas for friendship.
“Hey, Tabitha.… How’s it going?… Whassup?… Love your earrings.…” Etc. Etc. Barf. Space invasions are draining.
Don’t get me wrong. Of course I like it that people know me and I have the perks of getting away with whatever I want, but most of the time I would appreciate an iota of privacy.
Right now is one of the few times I actually receive said iota—hanging out in the bathroom with Kayla and Taryn. Sure, they talk about ridiculous things, but at least when they’re looking in the mirror, they’re not paying attention to me.
“I did an hour and a half of cardio last night,” Kayla offers, pushing her long black hair out of her eyes. Asian girls are the luckiest when it comes to their hair. They barely have any on their bodies, and then they have these supershiny, hassle-free manes.
“I’m pretty sure Coke Zero makes you constipated,” Taryn says, clutching her stomach.
A minute later Kayla squints at a bubbly blonde exiting the bathroom. “Serena Bell’s on the Pill,” she prattles. “That’s why her boobs are so humongo.”
“Mine are just a God-given gift,” Taryn says, fluffing her cleavage out of her low-cut Juicy Couture top. It’s true; her C-cups are an asset, and she sure as shit uses them as one.
For once Kayla and Taryn aren’t barraging me with questions like “How’s Brady?” and “What are we doing tonight?” because they’re busy reapplying their makeup and primping and making faces at themselves in the mirror.
I’m a secret connoisseur of Mirror Faces. Every girl’s is different. My mom’s is a smoky glance, eyes half shut, all sexy and mysterious. Kayla puckers her lips like she’s making a kiss, sucking in her cheeks. Taryn tilts her chin down, with a saucy little half smile, angled in a way so she looks ten pounds lighter. Too bad none of them can pull it off in real life. That’s what sucks about a Mirror Face; you make it because it’s how you want other people to see you, but you’re the only person who actually gets to.
This is possibly a topic worthy of the LOHS blog, but who has time. Just because Ms. Hoberman gave me an A in Creative Writing last semester, it doesn’t mean I should be wasting my time blogging. Blogging is for people who don’t have social lives. Besides, Ms. Hoberman gives everybody an A. Hence, my signing up for her Shakespeare class this semester. The best thing is the field trips, where you get to hang out with your friends under the guise of extra credit. This year we only get a nighttime trip to Northwest Classical Theatre to see a play, but next year, when we’re seniors, we go to Ashland for the weekend for the Shakespeare Festival. As in, an entire weekend where you get to hook up with your boyfriend and get drunk, and your parents foot the bill for the whole thing because they think you’re “learning.”
As for Brady, I’ve never seen his Mirror Face. His Everyday Face is pretty gorgeous, though. He has dimples and thick blond hair that he wears a little shaggy in the most adorable way, and he has moments of being truly charming. He’s not a big believer in deep conversations, but what guy is? And really, what’s the point? It’s easier not to have deep conversations. You end up talking endlessly about your feelings, not his, and then exposing yourself too much until you finally arrive at a place of inevitable heartbreak and disappointment.
Kayla finishes putting on her opalescent pink Dior lip gloss complete with plumper. Her lips look blindingly sticky.
“Can we go?” I ask. Marcia Abrahams keeps looking over at me, and I have a hunch she’s gathering the courage to come over and ask me what I’m wearing to Spring Fling. She always asks me what I’m wearing, like clockwork, eleven weeks before a dance, and then somehow ends up wearing something almost identical. Imitation is supposed to be a compliment, but copycats are annoying and should be ignored whenever you see them plotting their space invasion.
That said, one advantage of being on a high rung of the Lakers social ladder is that you and your like-minded peers get to have your lockers right next to one another. I don’t know how it happens that way, but it seems like the primo real estate always belongs to A-listers.
Kayla and Taryn and I saunter up to our bank of lockers to find Brady and his boys already there. Brady is getting a vitamin supplement out of his locker. He’s very into “peak performance.”
Jason Baines asks him, “Where were you last night?”
“Yeah,” Noah Simos adds. “You never showed up at Ferber’s.”
“Didn’t your mom tell you?” Brady says. “She had me come over to your house so she could suck my dick.”
Have you ever noticed how boys love making jokes about sleeping with each other’s mothers? Either that or discussing how gay the other person is. If you have a penis, you apparently possess an endless supply of this type of unfunny comedy.
Noah punches him, and Brady laughs, slinging his arm around me. I smell his D&G cologne. It isn’t entirely unpleasant. I look up at him like, You are the most charming person I know, and your arm around my shoulder makes me happier than anything in the entire world.
“What time should I pick you up tonight?” he asks, kissing me.
“Like, nine?” I say. He may be kind of a D-bag, but he does have nice lips. And he’s six two, which is good, since I’m an inch or so taller than most of the girls in my grade. Sometimes people ask if I’ve ever modeled. My mom took me to get professionally photographed once, but I hated it. It was all hot lights and faking it, and it got boring fast. Although, in a weird way, I guess you could say that’s what I’m doing now, looking up at Brady and playing the part of Perfect Girlfriend. Either that or I’m giving him my very own Mirror Face.
MOE
FEBRUARY 19
I know I wasn’t directly responsible for Lindsay Manatore having to run track with one half sweatpants, one half short shorts, but I probably should have stopped Alex from cutting the leg off them with Janet’s pocketknife. But in a way I’m glad I didn’t, because it was funny. Anytime we crossed Lindsay’s path on the track, I would start to sing, “Who wears short shorts?”
Alex befriended me in the first place because she thinks I’m funny. That, and she assumed because I dress the way I do, I belonged in their social circle. I told her, “Oh no, I just have a terrible fashion sense.” Next thing I know, I was being introduced by Alex to her friends as her hilarious, sarcastic new friend Moe. That was at the beginning of freshman year, and that’s the person I’ve stayed ever since. Before that, I was friends with losers, but I’ve got to say being with the tough kids or the “burnouts” or whatever you’d call them has its perks because no one effs with you. The problem is people mostly avoid you because they assume you’re dangerous or you’ll beat the crap out of them, so you don’t really have a chance to mingle a whole lot.
The only person who sees something close to the real me is Noah. He probably would not admit that in HIS journal. But he’s a popular kid, and those kids don’t even keep journals. Their lives revolve around status updates, and by status I mean STATUS. He hangs out with people like Tabitha Foster and Brady Finch and Jason Baines. Noah only talks to me after school when we’re alone, then he leaves before my aunt gets back from work. Or I leave before his mom gets home.
Yesterday I waved at him when I saw him walking into his house with his parents. He didn’t wave back. I heard his mom say, “Who’s that?” His response: “I don’t know.” Hey, asshole, if you’re going to pretend not to know me, that’s fine, but I live next door to you. Couldn’t you just say, “I think she lives next door to us”? I don’t need him to proclaim undying love for me or tell the whole world that we make out and sometimes do even more than that, but at least admit I’m a person you’re familiar with. Douche.
Now a Netflix Original Series! The Breakfast Club meets Leah on the Offbeat in this story of female friendships that break all the rules.
Tabitha, Elodie, and Moe: a beauty queen, a wallflower, and a burnout. Tabitha has just about everything she wants: money, friends, popularity, a hot boyfriend who worships her… and a yen for stealing. So does Elodie, who, despite her goodie-two-shoes attitude pretty much has “klepto” written across her forehead. Both of them are nothing compared to Moe, a bad girl with an even worse reputation. But the day that Tabitha and Elodie walk into Moe’s Shoplifters Anonymous meeting, everything changes. When Tabitha challenges them to a steal-off, they forge a strange alliance linked by the thrill of stealing, and the reasons that spawn it. A more unlikely trio high school has rarely seen.
Hollywood screenwriter Kirsten Smith tells this story from multiple perspectives with humor and warmth as three very different girls who are supposed to be learning the steps to recovery somehow end up on the road to friendship.
