by Compai
Charlotte would have Janie’s kiss-happy head on a stick.
“Omigod, qu’est-ce que c’est is it?” The endlessly curious Francophile tilted forward, and the corner of her beautiful and vicious mouth twitched with bemusement. From her position on the floor, a wide-eyed Petra quietly and painstakingly unwrapped a cherry-flavored Ricola, loath to break the suspense.
“I…”
Melissa could not be more bored. “Just sit down,” she groaned, rescuing her discombobulated coworker with a startlingly loud rap of her silver Tiffany hammer. Janie wobblingly exhaled like a discharged prisoner. Unbelievable, she thought, obediently taking her seat. On any other day, she’d have been ruthlessly questioned (as Nikki Pellegrini could testify: interrogation was Melissa’s forte), but today, on the one day it would have led to some serious drama, she’d been pardoned. Seriously, what was going on?
What was going on was this: for some endlessly mysterious reason, Janie’s life had been, like, not sucking. In addition to the miraculous development of a love life, Poseur, the upstart fashion label for which she was one-fourth responsible, was actually taking off. Ted Pelligan, the eccentric yet omnipotent fashion luminary, was head-over-Hermès in lust with Poseur’s premier designer handbag, the Trick-or-Treater. “It’s heaven on a handle!” he’d assured them over Skype, while Daphne, his scowling Vietnamese manicurist, tugged his small hand and repeatedly squawked, “Re-lax-uh!”
“Shangri-la with a shoulder strap!”
“RE-LAX-UH!!!”
Come Thursday, Janie and her colleagues’ “guardians” (to think they used to be parents!) would congregate in Mr. Pelligan’s vast and polished office and sign on the dotted line, granting Pelligan Enterprises exclusive rights to produce one thousand Trick-or-Treaters for the small fee of (wait for it) $15,000. To each of them.
They were millionaires!
And then, just when she thought things could not get more awesome, the universe, like a drunk-on-the-job car salesman, went ahead and sweetened the deal. With a freaking Nylon shoot. The super-hot glossy advised them to “just, you know, come dressed like you normally dress,” which everyone knew meant “dress better than you’ve ever dressed in your entire life.” And while only last week Janie would have had to reduce herself to borrowing one of Charlotte’s mother’s designer castoffs, or worse, do battle with the homeless at Jet Rag’s infamous Dollar Sale, today getting dressed was easy as pie. Why? Because today she’d got her slice.
She decided to set her budget at one thousand, which, okay, sounds like a lot, but Winston girls shell out that kind of cash all the time. Plus, she’d earned it. Plus, she was actually being super frugal with her choices. Par exemple: instead of the $620 “cleavage guarantee” La Perla set she really wanted, she settled for the much more reasonable $145 Cosabella. See? She’d just saved $475 that could be donated to a philanthropic cause.
Like shoes.
“Girl,” Melissa huffed, startling the vaguely smiling Valley girl from her daydream. “Are you going to pay attention? Or do I need to send you a Mother McMuffin bill…?”
“Sorry,” she blushed, stooping to retrieve her pencil, which—in what may have been an attempt to escape the mounting tension—had rolled off the desk and dramatically thwacked the floor.
“As I was saying.” The Director of Public Relations arched a reproving eyebrow and slowly turned, flicking on her latest PowerPoint presentation. In an instant, three words marched across the screen, POSEUR’S TOP THREATS, subjecting her colleagues to mild trepidation. Somehow, Melissa’s handwriting succeeded in being both bubbly and menacing, like a Murakami cartoon or Willy Wonka’s man-dicing “fizzy drink” machine. Of course, Melissa was impervious to its effects; she clicked a tiny gray remote with her acrylic-armored thumb, an absolute pillar of badass.
“Oona Berlin,” she gravely announced as a photograph snapped on the screen. A raven-haired Zooey Deschanel–type looked up from a table of fabric swatches, her slightly parted cherry lips and big blue eyes conspiring to project the essence of indie innocence. “Clothing designer from New York. Nineteen years old.” Melissa narrowed her eyes until they sparked.
Click.
Oona and her whimsical face were taken over by an exuberant boy wearing red footy-pajamas and what looked like a deconstructed Easter bonnet. He bounded joyously through an open field. “Algernon Getty,” the charm-immune diva pronounced. “Seventeen years old. A self-described ‘fab hatter’ from New Orleans, Louisiana.”
She zoomed up to his grinning, gleeful face. Click.
A bespectacled, race-and-gender-neutral baby face with bejeweled skull rings affixed to the five points of his or her bright green Mohawk glared menacingly at the screen.
“Yumi Mendez,” Melissa explained. “Jewelry designer from Berkeley, California. Thirteen years old.”
The projector lingered on Yumi for another two seconds and then clicked to black. Melissa lowered the remote to the desk and faced her colleagues, clasping her hands into a steeple under her chin. “Twenty designers chosen to appear in the March issue, but only one”—she paused for dramatic effect—“wins the cover. The question is, Will it be us? Or one of these three jokers?”
“I guess we’ll find out!” brightly chirped Janie, eager to make up for her earlier lack of participation.
“No.” Melissa slapped the desk. “We will not ‘find out,’ okay? Because finding out gives them the power. They need to find out from us, ya hear? The winner,” she exhaled, “is Poseur.”
“So…” Charlotte smirked. “Do we text them?”
“Close!” Melissa clapped her hands together and pranced toward the board, missing Charlotte’s sarcasm by a mile. “Okay now.” She grinned, picked up a piece of pale pink chalk, and proceeded to scrawl Dear Nylon in her trademark terrifying cursive. “I need y’all to channel your inner Omarosas and help me draft the most persuasive letter of all—”
Before she could say time, the chalk snapped in half. “Shoot,” she muttered, scowling at the floor and regarding the two pieces with disgust. Was she really supposed to draft what would go down in history as her most powerful missive to date with this pathetic weakling, this cripple? Ha! Not a chance. With a disdainful brush of her hands, she bent toward the teacher’s desk, pulled open a drawer, and…
Let out a loud and bloodcurdling scream.
“What the hell, Melissa!” Petra flinched against the recycling bin and covered her ears with her ink-stained hands. But the dismayed diva could only point into the open drawer, covering her mouth with her hand. After a shared glance, the three remaining girls abandoned their respective posts and ventured slowly toward the desk. Charlotte saw it first, and finding no French words worthy, resorted instead to an English classic:
“Ew.”
Nesting on top of a lumpy pillow and pill-ridden blanket, a frayed yellow toothbrush, dented travel-size toothpaste, purple plastic hairbrush, and can of Suave hairspray jumbled together like bugs under a rock. A pineapple-shaped clip-on earring gleamed.
“Gold plated.” Melissa shuddered, slamming the drawer shut.
“Double ew.” Charlotte waved her hands in revulsion, flouncing from the scene. “Is someone, like, living here?”
“Ch’ello Poh-czars!” A Russian accent floated from down the hall. A second later Miss Paletsky, their sickly sweet if criminally unfashionable twenty-eight-year-old Special Studies adviser, popped her face into the room, her feathery bangs lacquered into a nightmarish halo around her otherwise dreamy heart-shaped face. Thanks to a pair of overstuffed shoulder pads, her navy knit sweater hung from her shoulders like a large FOR RENT sign, its ugliness challenged only by the matching navy L’eggs under her pleated beige skort. Where do people even find skorts in this day and age? wondered Melissa, almost in awe.
“Ch’ow are you?” Miss Paletsky cheerfully asked. Pushing an unpolished finger under the left lens of her octagon-shaped glasses, she carefully picked away some sleep.
“You would not believe it,
Miss P,” Melissa began, and gestured to the desk, fully prepared to debrief their loyal mentor. “We think…”
“We’re fine!” Petra stepped in front of Melissa and grinned, maniacally nodding her head. “We think we’re just fine. Thank you.”
Melissa fluttered her eyelashes, appalled. “Excuse me?”
“Well, weren’t we all just saying how the four of us thought we’d never be able to work together? You know, because we were all just so, ha! You know?”
Understandably, this inanity was met with a collective befuddled glance.
“But now,” she continued, and linked her teacher’s arm, gently urging her toward the door, “we are all just so totally, totally tight, and we have you to thank for it, Miss Paletsky, because without you we would have never teamed up for a Special Studies class and formed this totally rockin’ fashion line. I mean, seriously? We should, like, send you a fruit basket, or something.”
It was the most anybody present had heard Petra speak at one given time. Miss Paletsky seemed particularly moved, her brown eyes sparkling in gratitude behind her LensCrafters. My ch’eart is so full! She nodded once, swallowed back tears, and bowed her exit. Petra shut the dark green door and leaned against it, sighing a sigh of unfathomable relief.
“So,” Melissa stepped in front of her, folded her oyster white running jacket–clad arms, and nodded with new understanding. “It’s you.”
“Come on, Pet… squatting?” Charlotte gripped the windowsill and shook her head in disbelief. “I mean, I realize you’re dating someone in a band now, but aren’t you taking this whole punk thing a little far?”
Janie wandered back to her chair, chewing her thumbnail. She hated to think it, but she had to agree.
“Um, I’m sorry.” Petra sprung off the door, gaping at their ignorance. “But did you guys not notice something off about Miss Paletsky’s outfit?”
Melissa scoffed. “Did I not notice the sky was blue?”
“She was missing an earring,” Petra rejoined. Charlotte sighed, fluttering her chlorine eyes to the ceiling.
“Get to the point, Nancy Drew.”
Petra stepped toward her, and lowered her voice. “As in a gold-plated pineapple earring?”
Charlotte and Melissa locked eyes.
“Miss Paletsky?” Janie squeaked, glancing between them in horror. “Miss Paletsky’s the squatter?
It made perfect sense, actually. Miss Paletsky couldn’t still be shacking up with her now ex-fiancé, especially not after the major drams that went down. See, Seedy and his now ex-fiancée, Vivien Ho, had hired the diminutive Russian to play piano at their engagement party, and—assuming Seedy and Vivien exemplified true love (because who could not be in love with Seedy Moon?) and concluding it was wrong to marry without it—she had worked up the courage to break off her engagement. A bold move, considering losing Yuri meant losing her chance at citizenship, a convenient fact the sweat-stained owner of the Copy & Print Store on Fairfax never let her forget, consistently barking, “They will send you back to Russia. Like dog!” But Miss Paletsky refused to care. When it came to choosing between her nonexistent green card and her barely existent dignity, she chose the latter, and against all inclination to be agreeable stormed out of his Putin-infested apartment. He could fend for himself on his toadstool leather couch, with his Icy Hot, with his bull neck, with his Tivo’d episodes of The View. For once, she didn’t care where she was going. And then she realized.
She had nowhere to go.
Not that Yuri let her off the hook. Convinced there was another man, the squat vigilante infiltrated the Pink Party with his Bratva, an elite band of criminals existing in Russia since the days of the tsar, or, in Yuri’s special case, a ragtag band of petty crooks in waiter uniforms, and then—in front of all those people; in front of Seedy!—accused his would-be bride of “lying with pigs.” Needless to say, Seedy, who had a posse of his own, leaped to her rescue, and as that particular party was bullet-free, the two gangs had no choice. Before the inevitable loser could belt out “Food fight!,” the Pink Party had dissolved from a perfect rose-tinted confection to a Pepto-Bismol-pink-stained nightmare. Tables wheeled across the floor, cakes soared, ice sculptures exploded. But nothing moved with greater velocity than Miss Paletsky herself, who—wracked by humiliation—flew from the spectacle and escaped into the night.
“I mean…” Petra resumed her seat on the floor. “Where else is she supposed to stay?”
“Not with that Russian dude,” Melissa declared, pushing some air between her lips.
“Doesn’t she have any friends?” opined Charlotte.
“Poor Miss Paletsky!” Janie exclaimed, mutilating her thumbnail. Did she honestly have no better option than sleeping at school? Was she really and truly…
Ch’omeless?
The Girl: Amelia Hernandez
The Getup: Pink fishnet Hot Topic t-shirt with black thrift store tank underneath, black pin-striped Forever 21 pants, black and white plastic bangles from Claire’s, black Doc Martens, manicure (in Wite-Out)
“Dude.” Amelia Hernandez, Janie’s very best friend since childhood, appeared at the top of an elegant flight of polished white marble stairs that led to Ted Pelligan’s second floor, and held up an acid blue t-shirt. The word TRASH pranced across the distressed fabric in bold black caps. “Guess how much?”
“I don’t know….” Janie craned around a clearish pink fiberglass palm tree and squinted. Bowler hats clustered above her head like coconuts. French pop pulsed. “Fifty?”
“Three hundred and forty-nine,” Amelia informed her, frowning her disapproval at the shirt. She resembled a ventriloquist addressing her badly behaved dummy. “I mean, is this a joke?”
“Nah,” Janie tried on a yellow Katie Mawson porcupine hat and tilted her head, regarding herself in a silver-framed full-length mirror. “The JOKE shirt costs twice as much.” Catching her friend’s sickened glance, she pushed out a laugh—but her heart wasn’t in it. For once, she didn’t feel like making fun of the clothes at Ted Pelligan. Because for once she had $15,000 in her very near future. Which meant for once she was going to buy something.
She draped a Robert Rodriguez Black Label strapless sequin dress over a slender arm and smiled. Good-bye mockery. Hello frockery.
“It’s like, if you took one homeless guy, plucked at random from Third Street, and put him next to some gazillionaire, like, outfitted in head-to-toe Ted Pelligan, do you honestly think anyone would tell the difference?” Amelia dropped the shirt like a used Kleenex and flounced downstairs. “It’s like that game, European or Gay.” She sidled up to the mirror and licked her finger, fixing some wayward liquid eyeliner. “The Hollywood Jackass edition.”
Janie, who barely managed to nod in response, handed her selections to a striking salesgirl. “Okay.” She turned to Amelia, her delicate face awash with worry. “Troubadour. What are you going to wear?”
Amelia grinned. Creatures of Habit, her super fierce neopunk band, had booked the legendary club for the first time last week. The Troubador was the stomping ground of everyone from Miles Davis to Metallica, not to mention the last place Janis partied before she died. Hello? Can we say major ghost points?
“I think I’ll just wear the London Vampire Milkmaid Dress,” Amelia confessed, referring to the badass dress Janie designed. “That dress is pure magic, man. The more I wear it, the better it gets. Like a fine wine,” she mused, her hands pressed to her heart.
“Ha,” Janie cracked, masking her pleasure. “Except you drink wine out of plastic cups.”
“Yeah, well…” Amelia smiled distractedly. “Honestly, I can’t think about what I’m going to wear. I’m too worried Paul’s gonna to bail on the show to, like, bake gluten-free zucchini bread with his freak girlfriend.”
“She’s not a freak,” Janie defended Petra, hiding a smile.
“Whatever,” Amelia gaped. “Ever since she and Paul started dating? He’s turned into this total, like, hemp seed. I told you he took out all
his piercings, right? I swear, if you look closely, you can see his real personality, like, trickling out of the holes.”
“I don’t know….” Janie shrugged. “Maybe this is his real personality. You never know. Maybe who he was before was the fake version.”
“Wow.” Amelia smirked, rolling her eyes. “Look who’s so evolved. I wonder why.”
Janie smiled. She knew what Amelia was getting at: as recently as last week, she’d been brutally obsessed with Paul Elliot Miller, i.e., any details about his and Petra’s budding romance would have sent her into cardiac arrest. But now? Spying a silk tank in deep chlorine blue, she thought of Evan’s eyes, fingered the delicate fabric, and sighed.
“Do you like?” She smoothed the silky blue-green fabric over her long, thin torso.
“Meh.” Amelia shrugged. She pointed out the same tank in red and black, Janie’s favorite colors. “Check it out.”
“Oh right.” She affected a pensive expression, only briefly acknowledging the other tank before returning to the one in blue. “I just like this one for some reason. Wait while I try it on?”
“A’course,” Amelia assured her, plucking a pair of pink Ed Hardy tattoo-hearted sweats off the rack. She whip-turned toward a pouty salesgirl. “Do you have these in medium?” Janie giggled, heading toward the fitting room. Amelia never left a store without trying on the most hideous thing she could find. (She called it the Que La Chinga Challenge.)
“… to kiss her?!” a girl’s voice almost yelled just as Janie entered her stall and clattered the lock. Janie stared at the partition, but the girl, no doubt sensing an intruder, lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. Puh-lease, Janie rolled her eyes and shimmied out of her wife beater.
Like she cared.
“I’m sorry,” the disembodied voice continued. “It’s just… of all the girls in the world, why her? No, I know. It’s just… was she a good kisser?”