The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

During the summer before Frankie’s sophomore year, her body matured, which made her suddenly interesting to boys. Her older sister, Zada, was a senior when Frankie was a freshman; now, Zada attends Berkeley. The narrator notes that Frankie’s physical maturation is not mirrored by her mental development. At the start of Frankie’s sophomore year, she is still childlike, neither ambitious nor particularly unusual.

Just before returning to school, Frankie goes on a vacation with family—including her “vile” pack of male cousins—to the Jersey shore. One day, she asks to walk into town alone, but her mother, Ruth, and her uncles debate whether this will be safe. Ruth calls Frankie “Bunny Rabbit” and argues that it isn’t safe for her to walk alone in an unfamiliar place wearing a bikini. Frankie believes she’d be allowed to go if she were a boy and that her family still sees her as someone who needs protecting. Instead of going into town, Frankie walks down the boardwalk and buys a frozen custard. Halfway through, she feels too cold to finish it, and a boy who seems to be around her age asks for the rest. When he learns that she’s going into 10th grade, he calls her “an infant,” as he’s entering 12th. He goes to school in New York City, and she tells him she goes to Alabaster; he knows the school. He says he just drove to Jersey after having a fight with “the menstrual unit” (16), which is what he calls his mother. When Ruth calls for Frankie, Frankie tells him goodbye. He says he might see her around.

Frankie’s father is named “Franklin,” and before Frankie was born, he wanted a son he could name after himself. When she turned out to be a girl, they named her “Frances,” which is close to “Franklin.” Franklin then began calling himself “Senior.” When Frankie was five, her parents divorced. Ruth found Senior dismissive, and Senior felt his duties as a husband and father infringed on his golf game and professional goals. He is a doctor and an “Old Boy,” an Alabaster alum, and his memories of youth factor largely into his concept of self. Senior tells Frankie her Alabaster connections will become her personal and professional network. He claims Frankie is “forming loyalties” that will help her to “get in with the club” (21), which will make life much easier. She pities her father for only having memories of a life rather than an actual life.

The narrator stresses that Frankie is an “ordinary girl” who likes clothes, experiences social awkwardness, misses her sister, and avoids her ex, Porter Welsch. Her roommate is Trish, who dates Artie, a member of the Audio Visual Technology Club who has keys to many buildings on campus. The campus houses an old theater, a new arts complex, the founder’s house, a chapel, old gym, new gym, and Hazelton Library. Stuffy oil paintings of former headmasters, teachers, board presidents, and literary figures—all men—hang in many buildings, and underground steam tunnels connect most of the older buildings.

The previous year, several clubs at Alabaster came together and began calling themselves the Geek Club Conglomerate. They hosted a party, inviting the Debate Club, to which Frankie belonged, to participate. The Debate Club discussed the merits of joining, and Frankie argued that it was in the club’s interest to remain friendly with other organizations and, if they joined, they could attend the party. That’s where she met Porter. He is tall and good-looking; his father heads a profitable power company that is suspected of using unethical business practices. Frankie and Porter dated for several months and broke up after she caught him with another girl.

On the second day of her sophomore year, Frankie watches Matthew Livingston across the quad and crashes her bicycle. He is attractive and is the son of a newspaper magnate and a socialite, though he doesn’t make a show of his wealth. When Matthew comes to see if she’s hurt, Frankie feels like a genius. They joke around, though he thinks she’s a first year. Zada introduced them several times, but Matthew doesn’t recall. Now, Matthew flirts with Frankie, and she feigns injury and acts helpless, prompting him to walk with her.

Alpha’s real name is Alessandro Tesorieri, but he was declared an “alpha dog” as a freshman. His mother and father never married, though his mother’s boyfriend supported them for a decade and even paid his tuition. However, when the boyfriend left his mother, Alpha had to transfer to a public school in New York. He was unhappy and requested to return to Alabaster on a scholarship for his senior year. Frankie is shocked when Alpha turns out to be the boy from the beach. He appears not to recognize her, and when she mentions meeting him, he denies it. Matthew’s other friends also claim not to remember her, though she suspects they do. She is charmed, nonetheless, by their “completely undignified” behavior and willingness to laugh at themselves.

Frankie tells Trish about meeting Alpha before and is incredulous that Matthew’s friends claim not to remember her. Trish explains that Frankie used to be invisible to them, but now that her chest has developed, she’s not. Trish claims boys “always talk” to girls’ chests. She says Matthew’s friends lied about not knowing Frankie to make themselves feel important and negate the threat she poses to their friendship with Matthew. Trish thinks Alpha claimed not to have met Frankie before because she arrived with Matthew, saying, “the Alpha guy had prior claim, but he backed off when Matthew got hold of you” (50). Frankie feels like an object and thinks maybe Alpha isn’t very “alpha” after all.

Frankie enrolls in a class called “Cities, Art, and Protest.” In the class, she studies Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, which is a theoretical prison in which one watchman can observe all prisoners without the prisoners knowing whether they are being watched at that moment. As a result, they would feel as if they were under constant observation, creating a paranoia so pervasive that the prisoners would always follow rules, whether they are being watched or not. Students in the class also read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault, in which the author describes the panopticon as a metaphor for Western society’s insistence on control and visibility. Foucault claims that people live in places that function just like the panopticon, including schools. This threat of surveillance compels individuals to follow social and cultural “rules.” Frankie really enjoys this class.

One day, Frankie notices students carrying pale blue envelopes. Star Allan and her friend, Claudia, compare theirs in history class. Star is not particularly intelligent, but she’s going out with Dean. She asks Frankie and Trish if they received notes, too; neither of them did. Later, at lunch, many popular seniors have the pale blue notes. 

That night, Frankie is in the library, reading The Code of the Woosters. She notices Matthew, Alpha, Dean, and Callum squeezed into a study carrel. When the boys emerge, Matthew tells Frankie to check her mailbox. She finds a blue card addressed to her, inviting her to a secret party as Matthew’s guest. Instead of a signature, the note is stamped with the picture of a basset hound. This is the symbol of a secret society in the school called the Bassets. 

Senior was a Basset, too, and he still gets together with other former members. Over one dinner, the men clearly wanted Frankie and Zada to know the society exists but refrained from answering the girls’ questions. One man suggested that secrets are “more powerful” when people know about them. The Old Boys admitted to keeping a notebook of their activities called The Disreputable History, but they wouldn’t divulge its location. When Zada suggested Frankie could become a Basset, the men demurred, as it’s an all-male society.

Alabaster doesn’t need much security due to its “panoptical nature,” so it’s not hard for Frankie to sneak out. She memorizes the directions Matthew provides in another note—which directs her to burn it after reading it—and feels disappointed Trish wasn’t invited. Over the summer, Trish opted out of similar parties to stay home and bake. Frankie knows that a girl can only do this a few times before she stops being invited and boys start expecting her to cook for them. 

Frankie burns her hand when she destroys Matthew’s note so he insists on holding it. She wants him to be her boyfriend. She realizes she has no “social power,” so she decides to make him laugh and to “unsettle him” so that he can’t be certain of her feelings. He reveals that he and Alpha threw the party and that the “she-wolf”—their nickname for Alpha’s girlfriend—made the invitations. He says that Alpha always has a girlfriend, and no matter who she is, she’s called the she-wolf.

Matthew offers to show her around Martha’s Vineyard, his home, next summer. He says he and Alpha used the party to match-make their friends, though Frankie says she would have been tempted to make some unusual matches to see how they affect the social order. Matthew asks her to promise that she won’t tell anyone that he and Alpha organized the party.

There are a few dozen students present at the party. Matthew is playing host, and Frankie gets bored. She gets annoyed when he calls her a “pretty package” and refers to her mind as “little,” but she’s happy he thinks she’s pretty. She tries to talk to Star, and she brings up their earlier conversation about the blue notes. Star feigns ignorance, and Frankie realizes that Star’s selective memory—as well as the others’—is a “power play” intended to embarrass someone they perceive as a threat. Star is bored by Frankie, and Frankie is bored by Star and the rest of the guests. On the walk back, Matthew asks to kiss Frankie, and they make out for a half hour. When Frankie gets back to her room, she does something the narrator describes as unusual: She considers what she would have done differently if she were in charge.