If there is one thing that influenced me as a middle schooler more than anything, it was the Clique books. I was captivated by the rich snobby lifestyle that seemed just close enough to the one I was surrounded by, but elevated to the most extreme. I wanted to be Massie Block with her shiny chestnut hair and all white room with purple accents. I wanted to have every flavor of Glossip Girl lip gloss and to be the alpha of my friend group and be a student at Octavian Country Day. I even went as far as saying the infamous "ehmagawd" after every other word.
Lisa Harrison created a world just dramatic enough to keep 13-year-olds reading book after book after book. We never knew what happened to The Pretty Committee and their college plans. But I am here to tell you.
Massie Block
When the series left Massie she had just moved away to England, away from The Pretty Committee and expelled from OCD.
My take: Massie stayed in England for university, where she tries to make her life seem much better than the average college experience and constantly tweeting about how shes so "over the college scene" even though she never actually experienced it. She still sometimes talks to Claire but her friendships with Alicia, Dylan, and Kristen have fizzled away. She's constantly instagramming herself in little coffee shops acting like she's living some fabulously different life with a grueling workload because she says the education is "ah-mazingly harder across the pond." Her only true friend is still her black pug Bean, who is getting gray around the snout nowadays. Deep down Massie wishes she just could've gone to a regular American college like everyone else, but she wouldn't be caught dead admitting that. She says she's "over" the English boys but in reality they're over her. It seems the university boys aren't very into her juvenile games as much as she thought they would be. She spends her Saturday nights drinking red wine and bouncing around to bars, slipping into the dimly lit bathrooms to do a line every so often. Massie absorbed herself into the party scene, which no one would be shocked to know.
Alicia Rivera
My take: Alicia, after being beta and the sidekick to Massie for so many years, has finally become the alpha. Alicia is a Journalism major at Pace University and finally, after months of kissing ass she has landed an internship with their local news station and she's slated as the new president of her sorority. Alicia spends her days dragging around an excessive binder, planning out every single social event for the semester and spends hours scrolling through Instagram commenting an "x" on pictures that her sisters are posting with alcohol in them. She's seen as a hypocrite by her chapter because she's the first person to yell about having a drink in your hand and she's always the first person to have to leave the social early in a cab because she can't handle her liquor. She's a groupie to her favorite frat on campus and usually the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes on a Sunday morning is the greek letters on a flag above her head. Despite having fun, Alicia manages to keep her life for the most part in check and has never been happier since dropping Massie as a friend.
Dylan Marvil
Dylan landed a reality TV show with her mother in the final book, and as a result, became a star.
My take: Dylan, who was always obsessed with her weight, cracked under the pressure of reality TV and as a result, gained an eating disorder. However, after a short stint in rehab, Dylan is back on the show and working her way towards being the next great Kardashian. She's finally as skinny as she had always hoped she would be and she has decided it's time to expand her empire. Dylan, who has always been the most fashionable in the Pretty Committee, lands an internship (with no college education, just on the back of her famous mother) with Diane Von Furstenberg in LA. She soon learns that even a famous mother can't help the inevitable, that an internship in Los Angeles is getting coffee and writing bullshit on sticky notes. She's one step behind the "it girls" of Hollywood and sometimes Bella Hadid takes her coffee with two sugars, and Dylan would consider them "best friends." Newsflash, they aren't.
Kristen Gregory
My take: With no shock to anyone, Kristen got a full ride scholarship to play D1 soccer at Stanford. Kristen is the manager at P.F. Changs and pays for all her expenses and rent herself. Junior year, Kristen began dating a boy on the swim team and plan to marry after graduation. Her life is still just as vanilla and uncaptivating as it was in the books. She's constantly posting on the Stanford Class of 2018 Facebook page for everyone to go to the women's soccer games and she drank once at a frat basement party freshman year and had to have her stomach pumped. She and her boyfriend practice abstinence until they get married and she posts pictures of her doodles of bible quotes about "waiting" on her SnapChat story to make people really think she's a virgin. She's not, she just is to her boyfriend.
Claire Lyons
My take: Ah Claire, rightfully so listed at the bottom of the article. The Claire and Cam Fisher love story came full circle, with a little mid-semester pregnancy. Claire decided to follow her beloved Cam to some SEC school that Massie calls "the kissing cousins college." Claire joined a middle tier sorority, the one that everyone kind of forgets about when ranking them in hotness, but has the highest GPA on campus and Claire is the philanthropy chair. She's constantly writing in her pledge classes' GroupMe about volunteering at a local horse farm or writing Christmas cards to the old blue-hairs at the retirement home down the road. No one answers because everyone is hung over and Claire is the only person that wants to shovel horse poop at 10 am on a Sunday morning. Cam joined the top frat on campus and adapted quickly to the Patagonia and Percocet lifestyle. Like every other college boy, he thinks condoms are "so extra" and accidentally popped a baby into Claire halfway through sophomore year. Unfortunately for her, Cam wasn't so keen on giving up his Natty Light for a bottle of baby formula and ended things with Claire. Her parents made her move back home after sophomore year and she's back living in Westchester, still FaceTiming with Massie from time to time, while she's growing a little LBR (loser beyond repair) inside of her tummy. Weird ass Layne Abeley has been painting the nursery for Claire and everyone is concerned she's painting it in sheep's blood because she made an uncomfortable joke about it and no one can forget that Layne is batshit crazy.
I don't know about you but I wish more than anything that Lisa Harrison would write one last book, an update with the real story of what happened to them in college. The Clique series will always hold a special place in my childhood, and I hope I did the books justice with my premonitions about the Pretty Committee.
