“But I haven’t accessorized yet!” Phoebe whined, picking the jeans up and placing them back on the rack. “I thought with some chunky silver jewelry and chrome aviators, maybe?”
“There’s no accessorizing your way out of this one,” Madison drawled, throwing the sparkly tank on top of her Fendi bag she had tossed on the floor like a used Kleenex. “It’s entirely the wrong message.” Casey watched speechless as Madison marched over to the sale rack, her sandals clacking decisively. “Now this,” she said, her voice radiating satisfaction, “is what we call perfection.” In her hands Madison held a pale yellow, off-the-shoulder Nanette Lepore sundress, shot through with the faintest lines of metallic gold thread, an understated ruffle decorating the knee-length hem. “With some cute wedge sandals,” Madison said, walking over to Casey and holding the dress up to her shoulders, “it will be beyond cuteness.” Madison looked into Casey’s gray eyes and smiled, but since she was still wearing those enormous shades, Casey couldn’t quite tell whether Madison was laughing with her—or at her.
“Maybe I’ll try it on,” Casey mumbled, surreptitiously fingering the price tag, her face turning white as she flipped it over, peering at the numbers scribbled in red pen. $350? On sale? Casey felt dizzily nauseous—like she might at any moment go completely Exorcist and projectile vomit green slime all over Madison’s perfect coral pedicure. “Umm, I don’t know,” Casey said weakly, hanging the dress on the nearest rack before she fainted. “I’m not sure it’s really me after all.”
“What are you talking about?” Madison said, grabbing the dress off the rack and pushing it back into Casey’s hands. “Of course it’s you! It couldn’t be more you—and to be honest, it’s a hell of a lot better than what you have on right now.” Casey wished the floor would simply open up and swallow her whole—along with everything in the store she didn’t have the money to pay for.
“It really is to die for, Casey,” Sophie said, fingering the smooth cotton. “You’ll be completely adorabubble!” she squealed loudly, grabbing Casey’s hand in her own and flinging her bangs from her eye with a practiced toss of her head. “Drew won’t be able to keep his eyes off you!”
“Oy.” Phoebe rubbed her ear with one hand. “No more lattes for you.” she said grumpily. “I think you broke my ear-drum.”
“Come on, Casey.” Madison’s voice was honey-sweet. “Go try it on—we’ll wait here.”
Casey could feel herself beginning to sweat. She could feel it rolling down her sides and into the denim of her capris. Gross. How was she going to get out of this one? Maybe she could buy the dress and return it later—except she didn’t know if the limit on her mom’s credit card even went up that high, and how would she explain to Madison why she wasn’t wearing the dress tomorrow at school? No, the only thing she could do was to tell the truth—and if they thought she was a loser and dumped her outside on the steaming pavement of Madison Avenue, so be it.
“Actually, guys,” she said, staring at the floor, “I kind of blew my whole allowance last week getting ready to move here.” Casey could feel her cheeks getting redder and redder—her whole face felt like she’d dipped it in gasoline and lit a match. She could feel her palms sweating all over the soft yellow dress in her hands, and she took a deep breath. “So I’ll just have to make do with what I have for a while.”
OK, so it wasn’t exactly the truth—but she was going to look stupid enough as it was. There was no sense informing The Bram Clan that she’d probably never have the kind of money necessary to shop at Barneys, was there? Hadn’t they figured it out already? She was a clueless loser from ass-crack Illinois, who didn’t know a Manolo from a Mint Milano, and what’s worse, before this totally humiliating moment, she’d half-convinced herself that she was actually fitting in with the most popular girls in school—hell, on the entire Upper East Side, or on the planet, for all she knew. Now, all she wanted to do was go back to Nanna’s apartment and eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip straight from the carton until her brain was totally numb.
Casey looked up, watching as Madison slid her shades off, her green eyes softening as she took in Casey’s flushed, embarrassed face. Casey noticed that Madison’s eye makeup was smudged—almost as if she’d been crying. But what the hell could Madison Macallister ever have to cry about? Casey couldn’t begin to imagine, but she hoped against hope that some day she might just find out.
“Don’t worry about it.” Madison took the dress from Casey’s hands brusquely, all business now, and proceeded to the register. “That’s what Amex is for,” she called over her shoulder.
“Or mommy and daddy,” Sophie trilled, shoving Phoebe in the ribs.
“Or boyfriends,” Phoebe added slyly, pulling her white Chloé sunglasses off her head and down over her dark eyes.
When Madison put the large black Barneys shopping bag into Casey’s hands, she felt like throwing her arms around the aloof, groomed-within-an-inch-of-her-life, Upper East Side princess she’d only just met, and giving her a giant hug. So, before she could think too much about it, she did just that.
Maybe we’re going to be friends after all! Casey thought with no small amount of glee as she leaned in and grabbed Madison, wrapping her freckled arms around Madison’s slender frame. “Thanks so much!” Casey gushed, squeezing Madison’s alarmingly bony back. “This is so amazing of you!”
Maybe we’ll even become best friends, Casey thought, lost in her own happiness and the smell of Madison’s Marc Jacobs perfume. Some random guy definitely wasn’t worth causing so much chaos—and shouldn’t girls stick together anyway? After all, the last thing she wanted to do was piss Madison off again, especially after she’d just been so nice to her for absolutely no reason she could think of.
Casey was so lost in her own thoughts that she failed to realize that Madison wasn’t exactly hugging her back until she pulled away. When she stepped back, Madison’s face was frozen into a polite smile. Whoops. Casey’s face fell slightly, and her grip on her shopping bag tightened, her knuckles turning white. Maybe befriending the most popular girl in school wasn’t going to be that easy after all…
games
people
play
Phoebe Reynaud sat smack in the middle of the enormous white shag rug covering the bleached oak wood of her bedroom floor, trying not to listen to the sound of her parents arguing. You’d think in an apartment the size of a football field the sound of raised voices wouldn’t be a problem—but you’d be wrong. You could probably hear them arguing all the way in Paris, Phoebe thought, turning up the volume on her iPod dock to help block out the shouting, filling the custom-designed, oval-shaped room with the soothing sounds of the new Feist CD instead. She wished she were back in Paris—the perfect place for someone like Phoebe, who not only worshipped fashion, but who also aspired to create it someday. She’d spent the month of June at her grandmother’s apartment just off the Rue Saint-Honoré, popping into Colette and Dior to try on jewel-toned velvet mini skirts and pairs of gorgeous Swarovski crystal–encrusted stilettos, or sitting at a sidewalk café with her sketch pad, drinking Perrier with lemon. If she could’ve even remotely concentrated with all the screaming and yelling going on around her, Phoebe would’ve grabbed her pad and drew the silk shantung blouse that had been haunting her since she woke up this morning, and that proceeded to linger at the back of her mind all day. Instead she was curled up on her floor in a ball, trying not to listen to the way her dad was hurling insults at her mother in his own bizarre blend of Franglish.
Tu ne comprends pas la situation! You’re nothing more than a common slut! Rien!
She couldn’t hear exactly what her mother screamed in return—but her accent was flawless. Even thought she’d spent at least a month of every summer since she was eight in Paris, Phoebe’s French skills were still rudimentary at best. Phoebe had no aptitude for languages whatsoever, and she tended to panic when someone asked her even the simplest question—much to her mother’s complete dismay. Her m
enu French was very good: She could order just about anything at a bistro or café with no problem, but her conversational French had always been lousy, no matter how hard she studied. Of course, this was in sharp contrast to her mother, who, despite a childhood spent mainly in New Haven, Connecticut, spoke fluent French—along with Italian, Spanish, and German.
“What in the world is wrong with you?” Madeline Reynaud was fond of yelling, usually before she stepped out of the room in a huff, shaking her perfectly coifed satin hair from side to side. “If I had any sense at all, I’d pull you out of Meadlowlark and enroll you in the Lycée Français, where you belong!” The Lycée Français was an exclusive private school on East Seventy-fifth Street, where the students were forced to wear stupid, itchy uniforms, and all classes were taught exclusively in French. Phoebe thought it sounded like a French-fried nightmare.
Phoebe wasn’t sure how or why it happened, but when she turned thirteen, and people began to notice that she was sort of pretty, her mother started acting like Phoebe was the biggest disappointment of her life—and when she was being honest with herself, Phoebe suspected that it just might be true. Her mother just couldn’t stand sharing the spotlight—she needed male attention the way alcoholics needed vodka—and she’d mastered the art of throwing a star-fit whenever anyone dared compliment Phoebe on how lovely she was. Phoebe had begun to dread those moments, watching as her mother’s surgically tightened skin froze like a mask, her eyes glazing over with annoyance.
Madeline Ashbrook had arrived on the Manhattan debutante circuit a fresh, rosy girl of eighteen with jet-black hair and flashing Ca rib be an-blue eyes that bewitched any man within fifty yards, including Phoebe’s father, Etienne Reynaud, who’d moved to the United State at seventeen to attend Harvard. But now, with forty rapidly approaching, and her father’s attention decidedly waning, Phoebe often found her mother staring into mirrors for hours at a time, pulling back the skin of her jaw or eyelids while muttering under her breath. She was still earth-shatteringly gorgeous—for a woman of a certain age. But the cosmetic procedures she was forever subjecting herself to weren’t helping any. All the Botox and laser resurfacing she spent thousands on only made her look more like an alien, and not a particularly youthful alien either.
Phoebe heard the tinny, contagious sound of giggling coming from her sister’s room across the hall, and she got up and cautiously opened her bedroom door. The sound of breaking glass against the imported Italian tiles in her parents’ bathroom drowned out her sister’s laughter, and made Phoebe jump out of her room and out onto the slick, polished floors of the hallway. Phoebe knocked lightly on the large pink metallic star Bijoux had pasted to her bedroom door. “Beebs? You in there?” She swung it open.
Bijoux sat behind a reproduction of a Chippendale desk—perfect in every detail—except that it was scaled to the size of a six-year-old’s body. Even though the maid had probably picked her up hours ago, Bijoux was still wearing the pink tutu and dirty white leotard she’d worn to ballet class earlier that afternoon, and a pair of their mother’s black Chanel reading glasses sat on the bridge of her tiny nose, magnifying her blue eyes, making them look gigantic. Her room was painted a shiny, candy pink, and an Austrian-crystal chandelier hung over her flouncy, pink-and-white ruffled bed. Her best friend, Jeremy Alexander, sat across from the desk wearing jeans and a red Abercrombie T-shirt with pictures of monster trucks on it. They were both sucking on Bomb Pops, their mouths stained with the red and blue dye.
“Now,” Bijoux said, peering over the glasses and trying to sit up straight in her chair, “you did sign a pre-nup, didn’t you?’
Jeremy giggled, squirming around on his miniature Chippendale chair, and when he opened his mouth Phoebe could see that his tongue was bright blue. “No,” he said, grinning at Phoebe, who was still standing in the doorway, one hand on her hip, “I don’t think so.”
“What are you little monsters up to?” Phoebe smiled, walking over to her sister and kissing her on the top of her dark ponytailed head, breathing in the sweet scent of baby shampoo along with Givenchy’s signature perfume for the under-seven set, Tartine et Chocolat.
“We’re just playing, Pheebs,” Bijoux said as she placed her rapidly melting Bomb Pop down on the desk, grabbed a magic wand covered with silver glitter off the floor, and promptly began waving it in her sister’s face.
Phoebe grabbed the wand, halting it in midair. “Playing what?”
“Divorce court,” Jeremy said matter-of-factly, bending down to grab Bijoux’s ankle under the desk.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” Bijoux screamed, yanking her ankle away from Jeremy and tearing around the room like someone had just put a live tarantula in her tutu. Even though Bijoux could be a holy terror, everyone loved her—the doormen, taxi drivers, puppies, strangers on the street—and, of course she was Mommy’s little darling as well. Madeline was constantly cooing over her youngest daughter, dressing Bijoux in bizarre high-fashion outfits like she was a real-life American Girl doll. All this should’ve made Phoebe positively despise her baby sister—and the attention she routinely got from their mother—but strangely, it didn’t. Bijoux was the person Phoebe loved most in the world, and the only one she really trusted.
Phoebe grabbed her sister by the waist and sat down on the round pink rug on the floor, pulling Bijoux down onto her lap and grabbing a juice-stained Harry Potter book from the corner of the desk. “Maybe if you little maniacs can sit still for five minutes,” Phoebe said into Bijoux’s ear, “I’ll read to you guys for a while—unless you’d rather keep playing.”
“We’ll play later,” Bijoux said bossily, pulling the book from Phoebe’s hands and opening it to the beginning. “It’s an open-and-shut case of sexual abandonment.” Bijoux reached up and smacked her sister on the forehead with her small, open palm, smiling mischievously. “Now, reeeeeead, Pheebs!”
Bratlet, Phoebe thought affectionately as Jeremy snuggled up next to her on the floor, and she began to read. Bijoux stuck her thumb in her mouth the way she always did when she was being read to, sucking softly and breathing loudly through her nose as Phoebe turned the pages. It was ridiculous—her little sister was playing divorce court and before long her parents would probably be visiting divorce court—it practically defined the word ironic. Even though she barely saw her father as it was, Phoebe knew that if her parents split up for good, her mother’s moods would only get worse, and Phoebe really didn’t know if she’d be able to handle it.
Please don’t let them get divorced, Phoebe thought as the thick paper sliced the pad of her index finger, giving her an excuse to cry. Tears sprang from the corners of her dark, almond-shaped eyes and rolled silently down her cheeks as she struggled to keep her voice steady, and held on to Bijoux for dear life.
it’s a
different
world
than where
you come
from…
Casey stood nervously in Meadlowlark Academy’s shiny chrome and glass Dining Hall, hugging the side of the Whole Bean coffee kiosk like an infinitely shorter, curly-haired jailbird Paris Hilton. Walking into the Dining Room—with its three course meals designed by Thomas Keller, Pratesi napkins, stainless steel salad bar, and Whole Bean coffee kiosk—was like stepping onto another planet, one where the aliens used lots of Frederic Fekkai hair products, and overdosed on Frappuccinos and Diet Snapple. And it couldn’t have been more different than the peeling, lime-colored cafeteria she’d left behind at Normal High, with its prepackaged mac and cheese, frozen fish sticks, and greasy burgers.
The kiosk, a popular meeting place for caffeine-deprived students before, after, and sometimes during class, was completely packed, and Casey had to sip her Apple Whipped Caramel iced latte down to a manageable level to avoid spilling the fancypants drink all over her spanking-new yellow sundress. Usually, she hated stupidly overpriced, high-end coffee, but as soon as she put her new clothes on this morning, she’d been fighting the slightly creepy feeling that she�
�d become someone else entirely. Someone who spent three hours in the bathroom getting ready for school, only to then show up and order the most preposterously complicated java on the menu. And her new dress, and Jimmy Choo cork wedge heels borrowed from Sophie’s endless closet, only made her feel even more out of place and less like herself—whoever that was anymore.
Casey tried to breathe steadily, but with the amount of caffeine rushing through her sleep-deprived system, it was hard to keep her pulse from racing or her palms from sweating around the plastic cup. Ugh—she was the only person she knew whose hands could sweat while holding an ice-filled cup. She’d sat up for hours the night before, giddy with anticipation and fear, gripping her violin with white-knuckled fingers and practicing scales with frenzied intensity, until Nanna’s crackly, sleepy voice yelled through the wall for her to “cut the crap and go to sleep already.” As she lay in bed, staring across her cluttered room at her new dress hanging on the back of the door, she couldn’t help imagining what she’d say to Drew when she saw him today—and what he might say back. So much for girls sticking together, she thought, licking whipped cream from the rim of her cup. I guess lust is definitely stronger than friendship. Not that you could really call them friends anyway. The thought made Casey kind of sad. She hadn’t known how much she missed having real friends until she’d moved away and lost them.
Even though Madison’s offer to buy Casey the dress definitely crossed the line from acquaintance to something more personal, Casey wasn’t sure if she’d ever get close enough to Madison to really consider her a real friend—whatever that meant. Casey had never met anyone truly rich before now, but she did know—mostly from watching shows like Laguna Beach and The Hills on MTV—that people with money lived in a different world, maybe even a different universe. And standing there in a ridiculously expensive dress she didn’t pay for, for the first time Casey wondered if she’d been bought along with it, and she didn’t like the way it made her stomach suddenly queasy, despite the mouth-watering aromas of fresh croissants and roasted veggie omelets permeating the room.
The Elite Page 8