Upper East Side #7

by Ashley Valentine

  She logged off without reading the rest of her mail and pulled her luxurious black hair back into a messy ponytail with a rubber band. Then she smeared her lips with Vaseline and opened her bedroom door to look for her parents.

  The elder Crenshaws had their own suite of rooms consisting of a large bedroom with a massive four-poster bed, two dressing rooms with huge walk-in closets, and two full bathrooms. Not to mention a lounge with a wet bar they never used, a plasma TV they never watched, and a library full of rare books they never read, because they were always out at charity dinners or the opera or watching polo matches up in Connecticut. It could have been an apartment all by itself, but it took up only a quarter of the Crenshaws' entire Fifth Avenue spread.

  “Didn't you see the clothes I laid out for you?” her mother demanded, sweeping her eyes despairingly over her daughter. Mrs. Crenshaw was tall and fair like Chanel, with the same symmetrical features, which had grown even more beautiful with age. “Jeans with holes in the behind really aren't acceptable for this sort of occasion, don't you agree, dear?”

  “They're not just any old jeans,” Chanel said, looking down at her faded pants. “They're my favorites.”

  Actually, she owned around thirty pairs of jeans, but this particular pair were this week's can't-live-without-them.

  “The skirt and blouse I chose for you are just right,” her mother insisted. She buttoned the jacket of her gold Prada suit and glanced at the antique platinum Cartier wristwatch fastened to her slim, tanned wrist. “We're leaving in five minutes. Your father and I will be reading the newspapers in his study. Don't be difficult, darling. It's just a party. You like parties.”

  “Not this kind of party,” Chanel grumbled. Her mother raised her thin eyebrows so fiercely she decided not to mention that she'd much rather see the Raves play than schmooze with a bunch of kids and their parents all gloating about the fact that they'd gotten into one of the toughest colleges to get into in the world.

  Chanel went back to her room and grudgingly changed out of her jeans and into the gray pleated Marc Jacobs skirt laid out on her bed, pairing it with an aqua-colored T-shirt and her Miu Miu clogs instead of the boring navy blue blouse and suede loafers her mother had chosen.

  And the pearls? Sorry, Mom.

  Her last effort was to pull out the messy ponytail and run her fingers through her silky hair. Then, without even a glance in the mirror, she strode out of her room and into the front hall.

  If only we could all be so sure of our exquisite beauty.

  “Mom! Dad! I'm ready!” she trilled, trying to sound excited about it. She'd give the party five or ten minutes—just enough time for her parents to get involved in some supremely boring and involved conversation with Stanford Parris III or one of the other ancient Yale alumni who'd been attending these parties for centuries, then she'd slip out and head downtown to the Raves gig. After all, if she was going to spend the next four years being intellectual, she needed to enjoy herself while she had the chance.

  As if she didn't always enjoy herself.

  12

  Jeremy, Charlie, and Anthony would not shut up about Bermuda, so when they got onboard the Charlotte, named after Kaliq's deceased paternal grandmother, Kaliq did a search for ports in Bermuda on the boat's computer and then programmed Horseshoe Bay into the navigational system. He set the motor for .5 miles per hour. That meant they were headed to Bermuda very slowly. In fact, even though they'd left the dock in lower Manhattan nearly twenty hours ago, they were only just drifting past Coney Island, in Brooklyn.

  Friday night had oozed into Saturday night, and the sun hung low over Staten Island as the sailboat motored slowly southward. The air was cooler than on land and smelled like wet dog. Kaliq and everyone else on the boat remained high, sprawled on deck with their eyes half closed and their mouths hanging lazily open, or drifting languidly below decks in bare feet to replenish their stashes of beer and snacks.

  It had dawned on Kaliq only recently that Porsha wasn't onboard. He recalled that she'd called him last night from the Plaza, and that he'd sort of blown off meeting her. Of course he would have called her, but his cell phone was missing, and when he tried using Jeremy's phone, he discovered that he'd only ever speed-dialed Porsha from his stored address book, and he didn't even know her number. And when you've been high for almost twenty-four hours, doing something like calling around to find your girlfriend's number seems impossibly complicated.

  Hello, lameness?

  Kaliq and his father had built the Charlotte themselves, up on the Braxton compound on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. It was a one-hundred-and-ten-foot ketch, huge enough to comfortably ferry one hundred-plus passengers from Battery Park City to the Hamptons, or seventeen highschool kids to Bermuda. In preparation for the upcoming cruise to the Hamptons, the kitchen had been fully stocked with cheeses, crackers, smoked oysters, beer, champagne, and vintage scotch. The four bathrooms were equipped with hot showers, navy blue towels, and handmade shell-shaped mini soaps with CHARLOTTE printed on them in gold. The cabin was equipped with the latest computer mapping and communication systems, and there were state-of-the-art sound systems both on deck and below decks.

  After a dinner of beer, Brie, and potato chips, Kaliq passed up another session of bong hits with his buddies and climbed up into the crow's nest at the top of the taller of the boat's two masts. He sat down and hugged his knees, contemplating the situation from up high. Since they were only drifting, he was pretty sure they weren't going to get farther than the New Jersey shore before Monday, which was fine with him. He was also pretty sure he was just about to miss that Yale party he was supposed to go to with his parents. And he'd probably missed a whole slew of Porsha's pissed off, upset, and maybe even worried calls.

  Probably.

  Kaliq had the nagging feeling that this little excursion onboard the Charlotte had been kind of a mistake. The crew would be frantic to find the boat missing, and his dad would be pissed as hell. But as long as they were back by the time the Hamptons cruise was supposed to start, there was no harm done, right?

  He lifted up his worn black T-shirt and checked to see if the hickey Porsha had left on his belly the day before was still there. A shade lighter, but yes, still there. Just thinking about Porsha eased his mind. Even if she was pissed off at him eighty percent of the time, they would stay together for always, and hopefully even go to Yale together. How good it was, he thought, as only a high boy can, knowing you had someone's hand to hold when you were about to step into the big bad unknown.

  “Peace, dude!” a girl's voice called up to him from the deck. “Alors, I found some Oreos for our dessert!”

  Kaliq peered down at Lexie. From where he sat she looked very small and bright-eyed, like a little girl. All over the deck, groups of guys and a few girls were smoking and drinking beer. In the aft of the boat the lazy music of one of Kaliq's mom's French jazz CDs wafted out of waterproof speakers.

  “Want one?” Lexie added. “I can climb up.”

  For a moment, Kaliq didn't respond. He shifted his gaze to the brightly lit Coney Island Ferris wheel, turning slowly round and round across the twinkling greenish-brown water. He was pretty sure he didn't want Lexie to join him in the crow's nest. First of all, there was hardly room up there for one person. Second of all, if she did, the obvious thing would be for him to kiss her, because she was pretty and had that sexy tattoo, and because she so obviously had a crush on him. But these days he really didn't feel like kissing anyone but Porsha. After all, he and Porsha were supposed to be going to college together and getting married. They were going to spend their whole lives together.

  Wait. Is he, like, having some sort of epiphany?

  Kaliq stood up and began to climb down out of the crow's nest. He couldn't sit up there all night, waiting for the boat to turn itself around. Not when Porsha was waiting for him, not when he had his whole future ahead of him.

  He jumped down from the ladder and Lexie handed him an Oreo. “The water makes me
feel so free,” she declared, swaying slightly as the Charlotte drifted over a patch of rough water. Her tie-dyed dress had somehow loosened or gotten torn, and the sleeves drooped down over the tops of her arms, revealing her bronzed shoulders and making the most of her tiny sun, moon, and stars tattoo.

  Kaliq took an Oreo, pulled the two halves apart, and licked the white icing inside. Yes, he had his whole future ahead of him, but sometimes it's important to enjoy the simple things in life.

  13

  “Will you be dining here tonight, or shall we have your food sent down to your rooms at the Plaza, miss?” Tahj asked in his best hoity-toity English butler voice.

  Porsha glared at the annoying dreadlocked head that had poked its way into her so-called bedroom. “Actually, I'm going out,” she replied, yanking a never-worn satin dress out of her closet. Kaliq was still MIA and she'd just had the humiliating experience of taking a cab home from the Plaza in her school uniform, even though it was Saturday and there was no school.

  Girls who must wear uniforms to school try their hardest not to be seen in uniform outside of school hours, and especially not on weekends.

  Earlier that afternoon she'd actually had a pair of jeans delivered to her room at the Plaza directly from Barneys Co-op, but when the jeans arrived they were a totally different style than the ones she was used to wearing—pencil straight and meant to ride so low that at least six inches of butt crack would show. Porsha could barely get them over her knees. And, with only her school uniform, her underwear, and a white Plaza Hotel bathrobe to wear, and nothing to do but watch TV for sixteen hours straight, she'd slowly been going insane. The Yale party Chanel had mentioned would offer a welcome escape, as well as provide an opportunity to take revenge on Kaliq.

  Roll camera.

  She'd arrive at the party in a cloud of perfume and cigarette smoke, like some sort of genie, wearing something so adorably irresistible that all the incoming freshman boys and even the stodgy old Yale alumnae at the party would toss back their scotches and fall on their knees at her immaculately manicured feet. She'd have a torrid, newsworthy affair with the handsomest, most influential one in the bunch, making sure Kaliq heard all about it, and then demand that the alumnus secure her acceptance at Yale. Then she'd tell Kaliq to go fuck himself and go to Brown or someplace even farther away, because she honestly never wanted to see his sorry face again.

  “Kaliq's mom called. She was kind of snippy. Said she'd appreciate it if you and Kaliq showed up at the Yale Loves New York party tonight,” Tahj informed her.

  Huh?

  Porsha frowned down at the dress in her hands. It was a lovely shade of deep Yale blue, but not quite as come-hither as she would have liked. Unless she wore an outrageously sexy pair of strappy high-heeled sandals with it—of which she had many.

  “I thought that party was only for people who were definitely going to Yale in the fall,” Tahj persisted nosily. “You didn't get in already, did you?”

  Ignoring him, Porsha pulled one of those mini poncho things she didn't even remember buying from out of her closet. It was a sort of stripy blue-gray, one of Missoni's latest weaves. She held it against the dress to see if it would go, and it did, but it wasn't exactly the alluring you-know-you-want-me look she needed to set those Yalie hearts aflutter

  She threw Tahj an icy get-the-fuck-out-of-here-I'm-trying-to-get-dressed glance. “For your information, no, I didn't find out—yet. However, I am confident that eventually I will get in, so I really don't see why I shouldn't attend this party.” She walked over to the door and gripped the doorknob, preparing to slam it in Tahj's face. He'd gotten into Harvard early admission. What the fuck did he care?

  Tahj backed away, holding up his hands to show that he meant no harm. “No need to be so hostile.”

  Nothing makes a girl feel more hostile than being accused of being hostile.

  Porsha slammed the door and a few minutes later, she opened it again, wearing the royal blue dress and a pair of silver Louboutin heels. She teetered down the hall to her old room. Baby Yale had the perfect notice-me accessory for her outfit. If Porsha could just sneak into the nursery without anyone seeing…

  Yale's room was decorated in shades of pale yellow and peach and was filled with plush toys and miniature wooden furniture. The crib was draped with thick white mosquito netting imported from India, so that it was impossible to see if Yale was sleeping inside it or not, but there was a hush about the room that suggested she was. It also suggested that the baby was still in quarantine.

  Oops.

  Porsha tiptoed up to the antique armoire, slid open the top drawer, and removed a small velvet jewelry box. Then she closed the door and tiptoed over to the crib.

  “I'll bring it back, I promise,” she whispered to the blanketed bundle lying peacefully inside. She lifted up the mosquito netting and planted a kiss on Yale's soft pink cheek, too focused on her prize to notice that the baby was wearing little mittens on her hands to keep her from scratching her rash-ridden body.

  Usually it's the younger sister who steals stuff from her older sister's room, but, as baby Yale will eventually find out, Porsha isn't exactly your average older sister.

  14

  The Lower East Side was one of those lucky New York neighborhoods that had been cool forever but was just out of the way and dirty enough to remain free of tourists and Starbucks, and to resist becoming the trendy neighborhood of the moment like the Meatpacking District had become. A line of girls in halter tops and miniskirts and guys in jeans and polo shirts with the collars turned up had formed outside Funktion, the Orchard Street club where the Raves were performing.

  Bree gripped Elise's elbow, gloating inwardly at how cool it was not to have to wait on line with the others, worrying about whether or not the bouncer would let them in. She gave him her name, the velvet rope parted, and in they went.

  Ta-da! Instant coolness.

  Inside, Funktion was smaller than Bree had envisioned, and even though it was new, it felt old. The club's floor was painted black and the walls were made of cement blocks painted red. It was crowded, and instead of sitting at the black-and-white checkerboard tables, people crowded near the stage, standing up with beers in hand. The coolest and corniest thing about the club was the fireman's pole left over from when it had been a firehouse. The pole descended center stage from the ceiling, providing a dramatic entrance for whoever was performing.

  Bree wondered if they should brave the bar and order drinks, or if they would have more luck if they just sat down, looking bored and sophisticated until a cocktail waitress came and took their order. Maybe they didn't need to drink at all. Every girl over the age of nine and under the age of twenty-nine was in love with the Raves. Just being in the same room with them, live, would be intoxicating enough.

  She tugged on the strap of Elise's purse and led the way to the back of the club so they could sit down and focus on looking drunkenly bored, like the fashion models always look in those candid pictures in the front pages of New York magazine.

  The Raves' drummer and bassist were already onstage, fiddling with their instruments and testing mikes. “A, B, C, D, E, F, G,” the drummer sang into his mike, his eyes closed and his face earnest, like he was singing the most heart-wrenching song ever written. “Tell me what you think of meeeee.”

  “He's cute!” Bree whispered in Elise's ear.

  “Who?” Elise demanded, peering at the stage. “The drummer? But he's, like, twenty-five years old!”

  So?

  “So?” Bree retorted. “Aren't they all twenty-five?”

  “But he's wearing overalls.” Elise wrinkled her freckled nose in disgust. “The guitarist, whatsisname…Bash…no, Kash…the one Chanel's dating? He's the cute one,” she insisted. “And that accent!” she gushed. “And don't forget your brother. He's not twenty-five.”

  Bree rolled her eyes. Okay, so the drummer was wearing white painter's overalls, with a pink-and-green-striped polo shirt and new white tennis shoes. It was
a bizarrely innocent and preppy outfit for someone famous for breaking his drumsticks against his forehead during concerts. But that was part of his appeal, part of the whole band's appeal. The Raves were a perfect mixture of psychotic serial killer and loveable, goofball mama's boy, like Marily Manson crossed with the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.

  “I like him,” Bree insisted. She adjusted her chair so she was looking directly at the drummer. He winked in her direction and she giggled, blushing furiously.

  “A lotta pretty girls here tonight,” the drummer drawled into his mike and then grinned right at Bree. He had straight white teeth and a wide mouth, like the Cheshire Cat, and his dark hair was short and neatly combed, like he'd just come from that old barber shop on 83rd and Lexington where all the little Upper East Side boys go with their dads for their first haircuts.

  “He reminds me of the fat white guy from that movie,” Elise observed, as if anyone would understand who she was talking about.

  “He's not fat,” Bree shot back.

  Elise pulled an unopened pack of cigarettes out of her sparkly purse and threw them on the table. “You can't really tell if someone's fat until you see them naked.”

  Bree considered this as she stared at the drummer. She didn't even know his name, but she liked him. She just did. And she wouldn't have minded seeing him naked. After all, the total number of boys she'd seen completely naked in her lifetime added up to what—zero?

  The club was filling up. Bree even recognized a few people from the line outside who'd finally made it in. All of a sudden the lights went out, except for a single bare bulb illuminating the fireman's pole. Bree grabbed Elise's hand underneath the table and squeezed it hard, barely able to contain her excitement. Then Kash, the Raves' lead guitarist, slid down the pole, his reddish blond hair sticking straight up like he'd slept on them funny. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt with a big black capital R on the front of it—the Raves' new promo T-shirt, which he'd designed himself.