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They met on the kindergarten bus, but it wasn’t until first grade they became a unit. Just one year’s time, innocence lost.
Mallorie and Charlotte and Kristin and later Carmody, who was from New York.
In fourth grade down by the honeysuckle bushes, they took a blood oath.
Bonded in sisterhood for life.
Below their eighth grade yearbook photos, each signed PhB. “What does that stand for?” Mrs. Jeffries, the Yearbook advisor and Computer teacher asked.
“We graduated with a PhD from Bluebell,” Charlotte replied sweetly.
I coughed. Everybody knew it was ‘Pretty hot bitches.’
“Well, isn’t that lovely?” Mrs. Jeffries trilled.
They were betches before bitches were betches.
Kristin lived around the block from me and was actually pretty alright. We were lab partners in Biology, amicable, and earned high marks.
Carmody was bona fide cool. Her New York pedigree meant she knew things before the rest of us. She had amazing style and was really, really funny. Strange how a person of privilege has the freedom to be herself when the rest of us are consumed with trying to prove to everybody we’re somebody else.
Besides of course knowing Mallorie and Charlotte, I didn’t know Mallorie and Charlotte. They said hi to everyone in the hallways, but they didn’t mean it.
I didn’t hate the PhBitches. Why should I? They hated each other enough as it was.
Like that time they “surprised” Charlotte with a bouquet of balloons on her birthday.
“Oh my Goddddddddd,” she shrieked, “you guysssss! What am I gonna do with these all dayyy?”
Carmody looked at her shoes, which probably cost her father, a financial planner, $400. I imagined the high pitched excitement was altogether too much for her to handle. They asked the nearest bystander to take their photo. SNAP!
In late October when Mallorie got a boyfriend—a junior on the soccer team with perfect hair—her relationship with her friends frosted over, just like the grass did on cold days. When they broke up just before Christmas, they consoled her. Did I see a glint in Kristin’s eye?
Carmody and I both made Varsity softball as freshmen and nearly everyone hated us for it: the seniors who thought us unworthy. The juniors who we ousted. The demoralized sophomores. But no one hated us more than Carmody’s best friends.
High school carried on for the PhBitches like it carries on for all teenagers—ordinarily, yet also dramatically. There was never a crescendo; Kristin didn’t beat Charlotte for Homecoming queen or anything like that. Rather, their ups and downs were more mundane. Locker decorations and lacrosse practice. Pool parties and Peer Leadership.
I remember seeing Charlotte protect Mallorie the day after her grandmother died. Assuming the sorrow on Mallorie’s face was standard teen angst, a shambling teacher ordered her to smile. Charlotte, who just the week before was on the outs with Mallorie, tore his proverbial head off. She may have gotten detention, but she also gained my respect.
That was the PhBitches: four females bound by an oath of blood and the knowledge that one wrong step was the difference between loving and loathing.
College unbraided friendships, and the PhBitches were no different. Kristin went to a state school, Mallorie went out of state to a rival state school, Carmody home to NYU, and Charlotte picked a small liberal arts school in New England. On breaks their clique resumed, now with the ever-looming threat of satellite lives outside of Bluebell.
The summer before senior year, Mallorie and her college roommate took a very public tour of Europe. The only thing worse than her relentless Instagramming of the Colosseum and Eiffel Tower was Kristen, Charlotte, and Carmody’s revenge Instagramming of forest parties and the town ice cream hut.
“Amazinggggg,” they commented back and forth.
“Hope you’re not having too much fun without me!” Mallorie said, unironically.
* * * * *
Kristin was the first to get married, and from what I hear, none of the PhBitches were asked to stand by her side that day. “Family only,” she advised, with her sister and six cousins as bridesmaids. Charlotte’s next, and while I don’t know the arrangements of her wedding, I heard the Nash-erlorette Party was a cataclysm; Carmody escaped on an earlier flight home.
What’s next for the PhBitches? I can’t say. There are no PhBitches. There is no Carmody. There is no Kristin, and—you get it—no Charlotte or Mallorie either. These characters are a composite of many misanthropic females I’ve known and observed through the years. Maybe me. Maybe you.
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