Ugh. Scene Day finally arrived, and I was so unbelievably nervous even though Max and I had rehearsed and rehearsed and we knew we were ready.
“The purpose of Scene Day,” Mrs. Zeig tried to convince us, “is to determine which part of the craft each of you needs to work on.”
Yeah, right. What it really felt like was the whole drama department watching and judging if you were a good actor or not, based on this one stupid scene.
In the auditorium there was a big stage with movable audience seats. So for Scene Day we created a “theater in the round”—a space on the floor in the middle of the room where we performed, surrounded by chairs on all four sides. Mrs. Zeig sat in a chair a little bit off the stage announcing our names and each scene before we went on. Max and I were third, thank God. I don’t think I could have stood it if we went last or near the end.
So we did our scene. Somehow that first line—“Wasn’t she cross with you on account of your fighting?”—came out of my mouth and it didn’t sound weird. I just said it like of course I say stuff like that all the time. Max responded, and I thought we were playing off each other well. And then, before I knew it, we had done the whole scene. Once it was over, I didn’t really remember it. Julie said that was a good sign, that that meant I was really in it, that I wasn’t self-conscious or watching myself. Julie said I was really good but she was biased, of course. All I knew was that I was so nervous that my hands were freezing, but once I was out there onstage, all my nervousness went away. It was the best feeling of relief when we were done and everyone applauded. Mrs. Zeig gave me a warm smile and squeezed my shoulder as I passed her on my way to the bathroom to change out of my costume.
On my way back to the auditorium, I ran into Josh.
“Wow,” he said, just looking at me. “You were, like, so real.”
“Thanks,” I said, like it was no biggie, but I could not stop smiling the hugest smile.
12
Maybe Something Was Wrong with Me
February was freezing, but that didn’t stop Julie and me from going to the outdoor flea market on Greene Street where I saw this gorgeous vintage cigarette holder. It was a long black plastic tube with a white stripe around the middle and rhinestones, like from the 1920s. I imagined a flapper girl in a red fringe dress and red satin gloves smoking with it. I suddenly felt like I just had to have it—not that I was really gonna use it, it was just so pretty.
This lady was selling all kinds of tchotchkes like cigarette holders and cases, old-fashioned tins, hair stuff, and old hats that were, like, part veil. She had long, silvery-white hair in a ponytail, but her face was young-looking. She wore a big man’s checked wool shirt.
Julie was opening and closing this silver cigarette case, and I was eyeing the holder with rhinestones, and the ponytail lady said to Julie, “That’s sterling silver.” She had a Southern accent, and you could see little puffs of her breath in the cold. “And an antique.”
“Uh-huh,” Julie said.
“Could use some shining up; just needs a little silver polish.” Her eyes were an intense dark blue and crinkly when she smiled.
“Yeah,” Julie said, flipping it over to see the price: thirty-five dollars.
“That’s an excellent price for an antique,” said the ponytail lady, lightly hopping from one foot to the other and hugging her gloved hands under her armpits.
“Uh-huh,” Julie said again. She kept opening and closing it; I couldn’t figure out what she was doing. Inside the case was a little piece of purple felt. Then the lady answered some other customer’s questions about a set of wineglasses or something and when she came back to us, Julie said, “Would you sell it for twenty-five dollars?” The ponytail lady frowned and thought a minute.
“I’d go to thirty, but I can’t go lower than that. It was my great-grandmother’s. See those initials there in the corner? SSB? That was my great-grandmother, Stella Schuman Brandt.”
“Wow,” Julie said. “Cool.”
“You girls aren’t smokers are you?” the ponytail lady said. “Don’t smoke, it’s bad for you. What are you, sixteen?”
“Yes,” I said. Sometimes I couldn’t help lying. I had just turned fifteen the weekend before, and Julie and I celebrated at Serendipity, this amazing ice-cream and dessert place. Julie would turn fifteen in October, so we actually wouldn’t be sixteen till next year.
“It’s a present for my older brother,” Julie explained. “He smokes—he’s twenty-four.”
“Ah,” the ponytail lady said. “Just a moment.” And she went down to the other end of her long rectangular table to open some matching canisters for a guy. I was still eyeing the black cigarette holder with the rhinestones.
“Do you want that?” Julie asked me under her breath. I nodded. Very slowly she turned around, so her back was to the table. Then she said in a very low voice, “Stick it up your sleeve . . . ready?” She looked around some more. “Now.” And I did. I put my glove back on so the cigarette holder wouldn’t fall out. I had pulled the holder from a coffee can full of plastic cigarette holders in different colors. You couldn’t really tell one was missing. Just then the lady came back to us.
“Decided?” she said to Julie. I put my hands in my coat pockets.
“I don’t know, thirty dollars is kind of a lot. . . .”
“I’m sorry, darlin’, I can’t go lower than that. Like I said, it was in my family. I’m just broken up to have to sell it.”
“Okay,” Julie said, taking out her wallet. “I’ll take it. It really is beautiful.”
“I’m sure your brother will love it,” said the lady, putting it in a plastic bag. “You have silver polish at home?”
“I think so,” Julie said, handing her cash.
“Just a little bit’ll shine it right up.” She handed the case in a little baggie to Julie. “Thank you, darlin’. Stay warm!”
“Thank you,” Julie said, and we were out of there.
Walking to the subway on Canal Street, I had so many thoughts buzzing around my head. Mostly just, Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, over and over like that. I never stole at the flea market before. It always seemed so out-in-the-open and more risky than a store. When we got a few blocks away, I pulled the black cigarette holder out of my sleeve and slipped it into my Chocolate Soup bag. I felt kind of out of breath, but I couldn’t tell if it was the excitement or the cold or because we were walking fast. Then I remembered I had a new vintage scarf to wear in my hair that I had stolen from Unique Antique Boutique after school last week. It matched the cigarette holder exactly, ’cause it was black with white dots. Usually knowing I had new stuff to wear to school the next day made me feel happy. But this time, I had a sick feeling. I started to wonder if that cigarette holder I stole also belonged to the ponytail lady’s family. Maybe Stella Schuman Brandt was a flapper back in the 1920s, and when she was twenty-five (that was the coolest age—I couldn’t wait to be twenty-five) she flipped her cigarettes out of her monogrammed silver case and popped them into her rhinestone holder, and her handsome boyfriend with slicked-back hair dressed in a tuxedo lit them for her.
I suddenly had this urge to turn around and go back. I wanted to inconspicuously stick the cigarette holder back in the coffee can. I could do it without the ponytail lady seeing me. I’d wait for just the right moment. But we kept walking to the subway. Just before we got to Canal Street, it actually occurred to me that we could go to Canal Jeans and look through the bowling shirts. How could I think about returning my cigarette holder one second and stealing something else the next?
When I got home from the flea market that day, I closed my bedroom door and sat on my bed holding the cigarette holder in my lap for a little while. Then I hid it in my underwear and sock drawer. I’d probably never use it. Why did I even want it in the first place? Maybe something was wrong with me. Was this really bad, what we were doing? Was something bad gonna happen to us? How long could we get away with it?
The next day I went over to Olivia H
owe’s house on Central Park West. She just called me up out of nowhere and invited me over for lunch, which I thought was pretty cool. We made tuna-fish salad on whole-wheat bread like we used to all the years we were growing up together.
“So how do you like P.A.?” Olivia asked me.
“It’s pretty good. But it’s hard. There’s a ton of work,” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich. Whole-wheat bread sandwiches tasted so different from what I was used to. My mom always bought Pepperidge Farm white.
“Us, too,” Olivia said. “Dalton is known for its demanding homework. Like, it’s almost like college-level. I think it was even written up in some magazine, my dad said, as, like, one of the hardest schools in the city.” Suddenly our conversation felt tense.
“Yeah. Studying acting is really hard. We’re, like, always in rehearsal and stuff, I’m always memorizing lines—”
“Oh,” Olivia said, looking kind of put off. Was I being competitive? I didn’t mean to be; I was just trying to tell her about school. And anyway, all I heard about Dalton was that it was a school for celebrity rich kids.
“Are there any celebrity’s kids in your class?” I said brightly, hoping this would ease the tension.
“Yeah, Tom Brokaw’s daughter. And I think Bette Midler’s kid is a few years behind me.”
“Cool!” I said, trying to act impressed. But it still felt weird.
We hung out in Olivia’s room looking at our old eighth-grade yearbook and talking about our new friends. I tried to tell her about Julie without sounding like I was bragging about how cool she was. I wanted to tell her about my crush on Josh Heller, but the timing never seemed right. I waited for Olivia to talk about the boys in her school, but she never did. Then the phone rang, and Olivia went to answer it in the kitchen. When she was gone for a while, I started to poke around her desk. I found this really cool little tin box with hot-pink elephants painted on it. It was empty. Without even thinking really, I dropped it into my bag.
13
Shoplifting Is Not a Game
“I don’t think you should have said yes,” I complained to Julie as we waited in the cold the next Saturday morning on the corner of 59th and Lexington. We were going to Bloomingdale’s to see what we could get. “Three people is too conspicuous.”
Julie had told Jennifer Smalls she could join us that morning at Bloomingdale’s.
“It’ll be fine,” Julie said. “Jennifer’s experienced.”
“I know, I just think it would have been better with just you and me.”
“What about that time we all went to Macy’s? That was, like, five of us,” Julie pointed out.
“That was different,” I said. “Besides, it’s like eleven fifteen. She’s late. Where the hell is she?”
“How was that different?” Julie said, and just then Jennifer came running up to us.
“Am I late?” she said, slightly out of breath, and gave us each a kiss on the cheek.
“Don’t worry about it,” Julie said. “Let’s go in. It’s freezing.”
We browsed through the angora scarves and gloves on the first floor, near B-WAY, the cosmetics part of Bloom ingdale’s. When no one was looking, I slipped a lavender scarf under my armpit inside my coat. I had to move a little stiffly after that, but I didn’t think it was noticeable. We all stood at different racks and shelves a few feet from each other, acting like we weren’t together. Jennifer, I noticed, had been holding a lime-green hat in her hands, and when I looked back at her again, the hat had disappeared and she was trying on gloves. God, she’s good, I thought. Her face was kind of hidden behind her long, permed blonde hair. Julie was wearing her big black puffer coat—perfect for hiding stuff. She discreetly held up a mohair magenta scarf, looked over at me, and raised her eyebrows, as if to say, Do you like it? I shrugged, meaning, It’s okay. She put it back. I really wanted the lavender angora gloves that matched the scarf under my armpit. I felt a little nervous, but I was sure I was acting calm. B-WAY was pretty busy; lots of people were around the cosmetics counters, no one really looking at us. It was my perfect opportunity. I quickly put the gloves in my outside pocket. Nobody saw, I thought, looking around slowly. There were some ladies browsing around the hats and gloves, but they seemed too far away to see us. Okay, we all glanced at one another—time to go. For some reason we all just knew this by our glances—this was going to be a quickie. We had other stores to get to.
I stepped into one of the revolving doors and felt a hand on my shoulder. I tried to push the door but somebody’s foot was stuck in the way, stopping it from moving. It took me a second to figure out what was happening. A blonde lady dressed in regular clothes flashed a badge at us and said, “Excuse me, can I see what’s in your coat?” I froze and stared at her. She stared back at me. Julie and Jennifer were standing a little to the side, and they were frozen, too. Oh my God. I had heard of people called “plainclothes cops” who acted like shoppers; I think I saw it in a movie once. Shit. A cop with no uniform. Just a badge. She had flicked it so fast in my face, it was just a blur of silver.
“Did you hear me?” the blonde lady said. “Please unzip your jacket.” Still semifrozen, I slowly opened my coat and handed her the scarf.
“Come with me please,” the lady cop said.
Then she motioned for the three of us to walk in front of her down one of the aisles of B-WAY. It went Julie, Jennifer, then me, and I could have sworn we were all walking in slow motion. That’s what it felt like. No one said anything. It was like there was no sound except the pounding in my chest. All I could think was, What do I do with the pair of gloves stuffed in my pocket? Should I have told her right away or waited to see if she knew they were there? We solemnly marched down the aisle, past all the cosmetics counters like Borghese, Shiseido, and Lancôme. I looked down at the black-and-white-checked floor the whole way. Where was she taking us? She opened a heavy black door that you’d never even know was there, and we went down one flight to the basement. We sat on a bench in a room that was as tiny as a fitting room, and she sat on a metal folding chair in the doorway. She began to question us and never smiled. I thought she looked fortyish. Her blonde hair had a little gray in it, and it was kind of sprayed. She was wearing a white cotton blouse and a tan Members Only jacket.
I looked at these Polaroid mug shots and handcuffs hanging on the wall behind her head. Were they gonna take our pictures, too? Oh my God, if my parents found out about this they’d kill me. I’d never hear the end of it. Aunt Marty would find out, and I’d die of shame and embarrassment. What if I got expelled from school? Would this mean I couldn’t go to college?
Was this lady gonna arrest us? I could tell Julie and Jennifer were trying not to cry, just like I was. The cop had a clipboard with forms on it, and she asked us our names and addresses. Oh shit, this was really happening.
Julie went first—thank God ’cause I needed a minute to think of a fake address. There was no way I could tell her my real address; if they’d sent something home to my parents or called them, that would’ve been it. My life would’ve been over.
“Julie Braverman,” Julie said, “Two Sixty-Five Riverside Drive.” She could give her real name and address because she had a mailbox key and got home in the afternoon before Mimi. I was not so lucky; I did not have a mailbox key.
“And you,” the lady cop said to Jennifer.
“Jennifer Gibson, One Eighty-Six Franklin Street,” she said, still hidden behind her hair. Oh man, she gave Julie’s sister Ruby’s address in Tribeca! Ruby was twenty-six and lived in a big loft. Way to go, Jennifer, I thought. I wished I had thought of that. And how did she think of that fake last name so fast? The lady cop finished writing and looked at me. All I could think of was that building where Olivia Howe’s dad moved for a brief period when her parents almost got divorced. Was it 115 Central Park West? One Fifteen Central Park West was the only building I could think of that I knew exactly where it was. What if she quizzed me about the cross street or something? I had to force mys
elf to speak.
“Julie Howe,” I said, “One Fifteen Central Park West.” Julie and Jennifer did not even flinch. I amazed myself. I knew I was keeping a straight face, but the tears were getting harder and harder to hold back.
“How old are you girls?” the lady cop asked.
“Fifteen,” we said.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not sixteen or I could arrest you as adults. You could be sent to a correctional juvenile home. Shoplifting is not a game, you know that?” She looked at us like this was the most serious thing ever. Then I heard this small squeaking sound coming from Julie. Oh Jesus, was she cracking up? From the corner of my eye I saw tears falling into her lap. We didn’t know what to say. We could barely hold our heads up ’cause we were so scared. Jennifer kept sniffing to keep her nose from running and my eyes spilled over, too. It was impossible to hold it in.
“Would you like to explain yourselves?”
We stared at the lady cop and the mug shots on the wall hanging behind her. One guy in a mug shot was black and he had a huge blond Afro. I wondered what that guy did. Nobody was saying anything.
Finally, Julie said through her tears, “It was a dare. . . . Some other kids in our class dared us. We’ve never done this before. I swear.” Jennifer and I just sat there totally silent except for our crying.
The lady cop looked at each of us for a second. “Uh-huh,” she said. Man, was she mad. “Well, you should know better than to accept such a stupid dare. And you’re never going to do it again. At least not here. Now stand up,” she said bossily, and reached for the Polaroid camera on the shelf. She pointed it at Julie and clicked. Oh, shit. This couldn’t be happening. Julie’s picture slid out of the camera and the lady cop put it on a chair, where it sat developing. Then she snapped the camera in Jennifer’s face. And then mine. I couldn’t even imagine what we all must have looked like sobbing like that.
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