Girls We Love

by J. Minter

  “Hey, SBB,” Patch said, “I think you’ve got too many candles there. Flan is only fourteen today.”

  Sara-Beth looked up at him and then batted the naysaying away. “I know, but it’s her sweet sixteen. So I put sixteen candles on the cake.”

  “Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?” Jonathan asked.

  “Oh, whatever,” SBB said. “Nobody counts the candles anyway.”

  “Okay,” Patch said. “Whatever makes Flan happy. You guys ready?”

  He picked up the cake, and everybody followed him. They moved into the center of the Candy courtyard like a small army of Flan-adoration. SBB gave the DJ the signal and then he turned off the searchlights and lowered the music. The crowd parted for them, and they moved forward, first Patch and SBB, then Jonathan and David, then Philippa and Mickey. When Sara-Beth caught sight of Flan, sitting next to Leland Brinker at the bar, she started to sing. In halting voices, they filled that courtyard with a rousing version of “Happy Birthday to You.”

  Something had happened to Flan’s wig, but she looked beautiful with her hair falling down and her gold dress slightly askew. As SBB crooned, “And many more… ” she even thought she saw Flan’s big eyes get all mysterious and wet, like she might cry.

  “Don’t cry,” SBB said, coming right up to her with Patch and the big elephant cake. “You have to blow out your candles. And besides, your crush is right there.” Flan looked at her and gave three furtive little shakes of her head. “No, over there,” Sara-Beth said, pointing a slender arm in Jonathan’s direction. She turned to look at him, to make sure he was actually in the direction she had pointed, and she saw that he was frozen in the middle of saying something to David and that the color had gone out of his face. She looked back at Flan, and decided that she would figure out later how to tell Jonathan that Flan had a crush on him. “Well, don’t just stand there! Blow the candles out.”

  Flan smiled weakly, leaned forward, and blew out all but one candle. As she looked at the last wayward candle, one big tear collected on the rim of her eye and then dropped.

  “Hey, Flan,” a female voice out in the crowd yelled. “Why are you crying? Is it because you have a secret?”

  Flan jerked up, and SBB looked around trying to see where the voice had come from. “Who said that?” SBB yelled.

  “What, are you trying to deny that there’s something a little off about this sweet sixteen party?” the same voice yelled. There was a smattering of laughter across the crowd, and then it grew. Pretty soon it seemed like everybody was laughing. And then it got worse.

  “We paid to get in here!” one of the partygoers yelled. “And we want our sweet sixteen-year-old to really be sixteen!”

  A chant went through the crowd. It took SBB a second, but then she realized that they were doing a call and response thing. “How many candles, Flan?” one person would yell, and the crowd would chant, “Fourteen, fourteen, fourteen.”

  “This is absurd. These people are soooo literal-minded,” SBB said to their little group, but especially to Flan. She couldn’t believe that there were this many people in the world who would be willing to pay to get into a club and cared about sweet sixteens this much. “Are you okay, hon?” she asked, and then decided that if Flan tried to talk she was just going to straight up burst into tears. “Come on,” she said to Patch, who was looking pretty concerned about his little sister, “we’ve got to get out of this lame, kids-only party and go to a real club.”

  Patch looked down at the cake. “Totally, but what am I going to do with this?”

  “Oh, give it to me,” SBB said impatiently. She took the elephant cake in her hands, and used the whole weight of her body to throw it out into the crowd. Chocolate cake and gray frosting burst all over several of the loudest chanters, and one girl was fully knocked over. This only riled the crowd up more, though. “Come on!” Sara-Beth yelled. “Flan, I’m sorry your party got ruined like this. But all of my birthdays get ruined, so maybe it’s a good thing! Anyway, I’m getting out of here. Are you coming with?”

  Flan nodded, and then turned to Jonathan. “That whole thing, though, about the crush… ”

  Jonathan fished for Flan’s hand and caught it. “If it turned out you were interested in getting back together, that would be like a birthday present for me,” he said. “But right now, we just have to get the hell away from this place before we all catch the lame.”

  “Okay,” Flan said.

  “And by the way? You look way better without the wig,” he said. “Because you look like you. And you is what I like.”

  Flan smiled and blushed and didn’t care that she was blushing. “Thanks,” she said.

  “This is beautiful,” SBB said, glad to see her friend back with the guy she liked. “Now, can we just go?”

  “SBB, there’s something I have to say,” David said. He was looking at his oversized athletic shoes and shuffling a little bit.

  “Yeah, well say it!” SBB shrieked. She usually felt protected by David, but she had just thrown a gigantic cake at an angry crowd of people, and she felt like the protective thing for him to do right now was to get them the hell out of there. “This isn’t exactly a family therapy session here! We’re surrounded by hostile birthday party guests!”

  “I know, I know. It’s just that when I saw you getting all excited about Flan’s birthday and doing normal shit like lighting the candles on her cake, I realized that you were a real person … ” David put his hand on his forehead. “That didn’t come out right … but anyway, I think I might be in love with you, and, well, I guess the point is that I want to go to Gdańsk.” David inhaled deeply. “With you.”

  “Well, of course you do,” Sara-Beth said, throwing her arms around him. “And whatever you were trying to say, I’m sure it was very sweet.”

  “Okay,” David said.

  The “How many candles, Flan? Fourteen, fourteen, fourteen,” chant had become deafening. It had been time to leave five minutes ago, but when they turned to leave none of them could figure out which way the gates were. And they were surrounded on all sides by angry sweet sixteen celebrants, pounding their fists into their hands.

  it’s not for nothing they call liesel no-nonsense

  “This sweet sixteen is a farce!” screeched a girl with very straight brown hair. She was wearing low-riders and a lavender shrug over a dark purple tank. Liesel caught a glint of braces when she looked at her. “We paid thirty dollars to get into the sweet sixteen party of a fourteen-year-old! Refund, refund!”

  “Deborah,” Liesel said, grabbing her DDR coworker by the access pass hanging around her neck on a plastic chain. “Who the hell is that? And who let her in?”

  Deb cocked an eyebrow and looked at her clipboard. The chanting filled the room now, which was weird, because these people weren’t even drunk. Maybe a whole room of people fueled by energy drinks wasn’t the safest idea, either. “That would be Mona Brill, from Flan’s—ahem—eighth-grade class. She was on the list you gave me.”

  “Well, what’s her problem?” Liesel asked.

  “I don’t know, I hear fourteen-year-olds often harbor immature resentments,” Deborah said. “And by the way, Lies, this doesn’t look good on the résumé.”

  “Oh, shut up, Deb,” Liesel said. She gave a mighty push to the unfortunate girl in front of her and strode over to the DJ booth. “Mind if I use this?” she said, taking the mike that the DJ had been using to make announcements with. “Good. Listen up, everybody!” The feedback reared up through the sound system, but it was no match for Liesel’s voice. “You’re all being really lame, and, I’d like to add, sort of uncouth.”

  “Farce! Farce! Farce!” the crowd chanted up at her.

  “Farce?!” Liesel hurled the word back at the crowd of self-righteous idiots. “You call this a farce! All of you loved my sweet sixteen party, remember? Remember? The Central Park Boat House, shrimp cocktail to die for? Yeah, you remember. You loooooved that sweet sixteen. And I turned seventeen four weeks
ago!”

  A collective gasp went up from the room and then everybody got very hush.

  “You people gross me out,” Liesel said. “In fact, I’m so disgusted with you that I’m quitting the public relations biz. Obviously, none of you appreciate what I do for you anyway. You don’t deserve my buzz. Buhbye a-holes!” Liesel tossed the microphone into the DJ’s lap and strode down through the stunned and silent crowd. “Come on, posse,” she said to the little group forming a protective wall around Flan. Then she turned toward the entrance, and the wall of people parted, making a clear path all the way out of Candy.

  Once they got outside, Flan ran up to Liesel and smiled. There was sadness in her eyes, but also relief, and the beginning of happiness. She was wearing a white blazer over her gold dress. “Thank you, that was so nice of you,” Flan said.

  “Those people are all pathetic,” Liesel said. “I would have done the same for anybody.”

  “Well, still. Thanks,” Flan said earnestly. “And I want to be the first one to tell you that I think this Marc Jacobs dress got messed up. Before the cake disaster, I had this… other disaster, and I think there’s something sticky on the back.”

  Liesel smiled. “Don’t worry, dahling. Dry cleaning will probably get it out, and as far as I’m concerned, that dress belongs to you. I’m never going back to DeeDee’s, so Mawc’s people can cry all they want to.”

  Flan laughed and hugged Liesel. Then she stepped back, to be with Jonathan.

  “So, where are we going?” Jonathan said.

  “Let’s go to Lotus,” SBB said. “It’s my last night in New York, before I fly to Europe, and I’d really like to break my contract in style.”

  “I’ll go anywhere they serve alcohol,” Liesel said, and then laughed heartily at her own joke. “And Lotus, as I know from personal experience, serves all kinds of alcohol.” She looked down the dark street, lit up by pools of orange street-lamp light and all the taxicabs lining up to take people from Candy and then around the city to more exciting and authentic places. Out from the pack of yellow cars, she recognized her Lincoln. “There’s my car,” she called. “Who’s coming with me?”

  “I am.”

  Liesel looked over at the guys and saw Arno stepping out from the group. His guy friends all watched as he put his hand on her hip and guided her into the car. “Awno, I really don’t think… ”

  “We’ll meet you at Lotus,” Arno called over his shoulder before climbing into the car. “Could you just drive around for a minute?” Arno said to the driver.

  The driver turned into the street. Liesel shook back her hair, sucked in her cheeks, and said, “Awno, can’t we wait till tomorrow to break up?”

  Arno raised his faintly exotic eyes to her and held her gaze through the wisps of his bangs. “I don’t want to break up.”

  “Well,” she said, and exhaled definitively through her nose.

  “I brought you this.” Arno reached into his coat, and took out a small object wrapped in wax paper. Liesel touched it and realized it was soft. “Open it,” he said.

  Liesel unfolded the package and looked down on what appeared to be a PB&J. “Ew, did you have this in your coat all night?”

  “Yeah,” Arno said softly. “In case you got hungry later on.”

  Liesel giggled despite herself. “That’s pretty cute, Awno.”

  “Tell you the truth, the way this night was going, I didn’t think I was going to get to give it to you.”

  “Yeah,” Liesel said.

  “But if you’re really giving up on all that PR craziness, then I’m in,” Arno said. “I want to be your boyfriend—and your fate.”

  “All right then,” Liesel said, putting her PB&J into her Kate Spade clutch. “Now can we make out the way our old shallow selves would at this point in the evening?”

  Arno smiled, slowly at first, though soon it was a wicked, teeth-bared, ready-for-anything grin. Liesel shot across the backseat and landed on his neck.

  The driver drove around the block a few more times, and when he dropped them at Lotus, Arno jumped out of the backseat, held the door for Liesel, and then helped her to the curb. She did a little twirl into the night air, pulling down her skirt, and then they walked to the door like the ridiculously hot couple they were.

  Which was when they met up with the bouncers, and heard two unfortunate phrases.

  “Is that a hickey?” followed shortly by, “Yo, I’m going to have to see some ID.”

  i’m the new me, just like the old me, but a little bit better

  I stood there on the street in front of Candy feeling all ragged and pure in my ruined Marc Jacobs dress with my ex-boyfriend/best friend/new love interest at my side. There was the faint sound of car horns from off in the distance, and there was just a hint of ocean water on the breeze. All the cabs had lined up, like we were at the front of the line at the airport or something, and they were just waiting to take us where we wanted to go. I pulled Jonathan’s jacket around my shoulders and smiled up at him.

  “Let’s go to Lotus,” he said.

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  But you didn’t think we were just going to go quietly into the night, did you?

  As we turned to take our pick of cabs, an Escalade screeched up to the curb, or more like up on the curb. When it came to a stop, its right tires were well onto the sidewalk. A woman in a black velvet tracksuit with her blond hair up in a twist stepped down from the Escalade, and when she saw me she said, “Oh, Flan, thank God.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Quayle,” I said.

  “Where’s Liv?” she said.

  I tried to smile innocently, and turned back to look at the club. “I think she’s …,” I started to say, but then I saw the Candy gates open again, and Liv came bouncing out of the club, her long, horsey legs in front of her.

  “Flan!” she said. “Are you all right?” She did look genuinely concerned, although also kind of manic—maybe she’d found somebody with a secret flask, too?—and her mouth was hanging open. I jutted my head in the direction of her mother, and when she saw her she didn’t, to tell you the truth, look all that surprised. “You found me,” she said.

  “I sure did, honey,” her mother said, shaking her head. “Your father’s so mad, he can’t even get out of the car. You were supposed to fly to London, not New York. What in hell is wrong with you?”

  “I gotta be me, Mom,” Liv said.

  “Oh yeah? Fine. But it’s gone on long enough. Get in the car, we’re putting you on an airplane tonight. You’re just going to have to say bye-bye to all your friends right now. You’ll get to see them next year in school anyway, because I’m keeping you here in New York and on a tight leash for the next four years.”

  Liv stood there for a minute, and then she turned and dashed away from her mother. For a minute, I thought she was trying to run away for real—we all did—but then I saw that she was just beelining for my brother. Everybody else got all shocked and gaspy looking, but he just stared at her, calm and cool like usual.

  “I guess it couldn’t be,” Liv said. She put her hand over his mouth, and continued: “No, don’t speak. There’s nothing to be said anyway.” Then she threw her arms around his neck with such enthusiasm that it actually looked like he might get hurt, and kissed him, the way they do in the movies, with the back of her head twisting around in all kinds of animated directions.

  Just when our jaws were all starting to get sore from hanging open, Mrs. Quayle stepped forward. “Liv,” she said quietly but forcefully, “enough.”

  Liv turned around and shot her mom a pained expression. “I’m coming, Mother,” she said hatefully. Then she turned back to Patch. “Just know I will always love you,” she said, and then she turned and followed her mother to the car.

  We all watched as the car pulled away, and then we turned and stared at Patch, to make sure he was okay. Mostly in the head.

  “What the hell was that?” Mickey said finally.

  “Hey, man,” Patch said with a drop of
the shoulders and a twinkle of a smile, “who am I to stand in the way of a girl and her dreams?”

  “Amen,” Jonathan said. “Now really, can we please go to Lotus?”

  We crammed into two cabs, Sara-Beth and David and Jonathan and me into the first one, and Patch and Mickey and Philippa in the next. Once we were on the road and away from Candy, never to return, I turned to Jonathan and said, just to broach the topic, “That was pretty crazy, huh?”

  “Yuh,” he grunted in agreement.

  “I mean, how could I even think that you like, liked her?” I felt Jonathan and David snap to attention and turn their eyes on me, but I just gazed out the window and waited for some answers.

  “What? I never liked her,” Jonathan said laughingly. “David was the one who … ”

  David elbowed Jonathan—I knew, because Jonathan was sitting between David and me and I felt the impact. “That’s insane!” David said. I realized that he was acting all huffy because SBB was in the front. Jonathan and I both looked, and we saw that she was talking to the cabdriver.

  “Oh my God, you’re from Gdańsk?” she was saying. “I’m about to go make a movie in Gdańsk. So what should I bring, for summer there? To wear, I mean.”

  “No clothes in Gdańsk,” the cabdriver was saying. “No money! Nobody have clothes in my country.”

  “Really? They wear nothing?” SBB said. “Wow … that’s hot.” She giggled, and then continued to lob questions at him.

  “I didn’t like Liv,” David hissed at us when he was satisfied that SBB wasn’t listening to us. “I was just confused.”

  “Oh, come on,” Jonathan said. Then he looked at me. “That was why I called you the other day asking for her, because David wanted me to.”

  “Okay, okay,” David said. “Maybe I liked her a little bit, but mostly I was confused.”