The longest we’ve been apart is when she had to go to Connecticut for all of spring break sophomore year for her dad’s wedding, which came complete with a shiny new stepfamily, and that was a total disaster. So how do I tell that person, my person, that I’m essentially abandoning her to fend against blenders and protein powder on her own, with zero warning?
“Harper?” Kristina grabs my arm. “Okay, now you’re starting to freak me out. Did something happen with Bobby? I’m going to murder him—”
“No, it’s not that.” I stop abruptly, causing Kristina to stumble over her flip-flops. “It’s just . . . I’m so sorry, but we can’t drive to San Francisco this summer.”
“Oh.” Kristina looks at me quizzically. “That’s okay. I mean, we can—”
“No, that’s not it either. We can’t anything.”
And then I take a deep breath and tell her (almost) everything. With a dozen different variations on “I’m sorry.” How I got a writing internship in New York at the very last minute. How I have to take it.
I do, however, leave out the small, minor details explaining how exactly I got the job—or even that I’ll be writing about dating. The whole truth wouldn’t benefit either of us right now. She never needs to know that I kind of, sort of, 100 percent misappropriated her own salacious story as my own.
After a too-long silence, Kristina asks, “How did I not even know you went out for this?”
“Because there was no way I’d get it!” I say. “And having to tell people I got rejected again, which I was . . . God, I probably wasn’t even at the top of the waiting list. I probably only got it because I was the first girl to answer the phone when the editor called. I—”
“Listen to me! I’m surprised because I had no idea you were going for it, which is something best friends usually tell each other, by the way. I’m not surprised you got it. You’re a really good writer.” Kristina’s the only person who’s seen not only the articles I’ve written for the Castalia Chronicle, but excerpts from my private notebook. “You deserve this. I was just really excited for our summer together.”
“Same.”
“And now you’re going to have this awesome adventure without me, and you’ll be totally over me after you make a million super fashion-y, intellectual New York friends.”
“No!”
Kristina’s by far the coolest, best person I know. I can barely deal when she’s home sick, because there are a hundred things I want to tell her all day. Also, while people are okay with me as her sidekick, I constantly feel like I’m crashing conversations and tables in the cafeteria when it’s just me.
Kristina, without me, is still golden. But the thought of me, on my own, making a better set of friends with ease seems so ridiculous that it takes me a minute to realize that Kristina’s eyes are wide and kind of glassy and totally serious.
“You are legitimately a crazy person! I won’t make any friends on your level. I’m just going to make a big bowl of cantaloupe friends. Probably not even ripe cantaloupe.”
Kristina sighs. “Why are you changing the subject to melon? You didn’t smoke any of Bobby’s pot, did you?”
“No,” I say, “cantaloupe friends. Nobody craves cantaloupe in their fruit salad, it’s just there. The ultimate meh filler fruit.” There’s a slight chance that the almost imperceptible movement at the corner of Kristina’s lips is the beginning of a smile. “Cantaloupe friends are just who you make do with in extenuating circumstances so that you don’t, you know, starve to death socially.”
“So what kind of fruit am I?”
Strawberry? Blueberry? If I screw this up, I might be her rotten apple.
“Pineapple. Definitely pineapple. Exotic but something you want to eat every day.”
Silence.
“I’d rather be a mango,” Kristina says finally.
“Perfect! You’re my mango.”
Kristina stops fiddling with her hair and links arms with mine. “Well, as long as you’re just hanging out with filler fruits . . .”
One mango down. Two parents to go.
Parents who shout, “Girls, keep it down! Lady Pendleton just found a dead body in her sage bush!” as I crack open our creaky front door.
But tonight, instead of making fun of my parents’ strange BBC addiction like I normally would, I put a finger to my lips. I lead Kristina past the smiling Vishnu (my dad’s an East Asian history professor) and the massive bookshelves (my mom’s an English professor) to the couch where my parents have a burnt-orange throw blanket pulled up to their eyes.
We sit down on the couch next to them. Kristina gives me a reassuring smile—even though I know she must be kind of mad still—and I look at the TV screen as they fast forward past a particularly gory scene involving garden shears. I have twelve minutes and forty-seven seconds of the episode left to get my thoughts in order.
It’s gonna be a long night.
3
IT’S 6:29 MONDAY MORNING, AND my tired eyes jolt open to the monstrous roar of a blender.
But I’m not at Skinny B’s, and there are no intimidating forty-somethings with pitchforks shouting things like “Blend faster!” and “Where’s my wheatgrass?” Once the clock on the unfamiliar bedside table next to me strikes 6:30 and my iPhone starts blasting Taylor Swift, I know where I am.
“Welcome to New York,” Taylor sings, kicking off my very carefully curated, in-theme playlist.
And I’m back to reality. Hard as it is to believe, I, Harper Anderson, am waking up in Manhattan to start my first day at Shift magazine.
Un-freaking-believable.
At first, I didn’t think it was going to happen. When the Netflix went off and the truth came out, Mom and Dad made it very clear that they were both less than pleased about a lot of things. Namely:
• The fact that I applied to an internship without telling them. (“I didn’t think I’d get it. . . . I mean, I didn’t get it.”)
• The fact that I needed them to fund a last-minute flight for said internship—or at least let me reallocate some college money for the ticket. (“I won’t need college money if I don’t get into college. Think of how good this will look on my applications!”)
• The fact that said last-minute flight would take me across the country for an entire summer. (“Mom! Stop crying! Of course I’m not going three thousand miles away because you’re overbearing!”)
I kind of left out the whole dating blogger part of the equation when I talked to them, too. For now, let them think I’m making coffee and fact-checking inspiring stories about fifteen-year-olds overcoming extreme adversity to start world-changing nonprofit organizations. We can leave the conversation about their daughter’s new role as resident Rosetta Stone of Hooking Up for the five minutes before my first post comes out.
After substantial cajoling on my—and even Kristina’s—end, my parents relented. They even seemed a little bit, dare I say it, excited about the whole thing. (“Obviously!” Kristina, who was no longer showing any signs of sadness about my imminent departure, told me when we were tucked under my polka-dot comforter that night. “It’s exciting.”)
“Welcome to New York,” Taylor belts, repeating the refrain. It’s 6:31. “Welcome to New York—it’s been waiting for you.”
The upbeat pop anthem is met with a loud grunt reverberating from the corner of the guest bedroom I’ve been placed in.
One condition of going to New York was that I live at my Aunt Vee’s Upper East Side apartment. And let me say that after arriving here late Sunday night, that will not be a problem at all because what I expected to be a shoe box is actually a sweeping penthouse the size of my family’s entire home . . . but with a view of Central Park.
The only catch is that I have to share my bedroom with a very unhappy roommate, currently making disgruntled sounds from a little plush bed surrounded by doggy toys. Princess—who is quite possibly the fattest pug in the universe, or at least the northern hemisphere—does not approve. Of me or my music choices
.
“More of a Beyoncé kind of girl?” I ask the pug, who somewhat resembles a sausage with tiny legs.
Princess gives me a withering stare before flopping her head back down to resume her favorite position: Princess in repose.
I, however, cannot repose. Because of all the things I can and probably will colossally mess up at my first day on the job, being late will not be one of them. (Note: Control the controllables.)
My “Welcome to Shift magazine!” e-mail—which I can recite from memory because I’ve read it so many times—says new interns have to get to the office by nine a.m. sharp to get security badges and computer passwords, and do whatever other mysterious things prestigious magazines make interns do on orientation day. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never worked at a prestigious magazine before. I’ve never worked anywhere that didn’t make you wear a hairnet.
I pry myself out from between sheets that might be made out of actual silk and drag myself toward the guest closet, which is filled with my newly procured, work-appropriate wardrobe. I tiptoe past Princess—her tongue is out and she’s back to snoring—out of our room toward the sound of the roaring blender.
“Good morning, sunshine!” A very chipper Aunt Vee is in the kitchen making smoothies. “I hope you like spirulina! Your mother and I were all about it when we were roomies—and spirulina wasn’t even cool back then.”
She throws a handful of green sprouts into her murky concoction.
It’s probably worth noting that Aunt Vee isn’t my actual aunt. Rather, when my mom moved to New York to start Fordham’s PhD program in English forever ago, she rented a room in Aunt Vee’s then–Upper West Side apartment. Aunt Vee’s the last person Mom lived with before she found Dad.
“Live with Vee? Are you sure about that, honey?” Dad asked Mom while driving us to the mall to pick out a bevy of discounted, knee-length skirts, which my mom insisted were what the dress-for-success businesswoman wears to work. “Isn’t she a little bit . . . nuts?”
From what I’ve gathered from piecing together snippets of stories, when Mom was spending her nights raging in the library, her older roommate was at after-after parties, trying to re-create the “good old days” of Studio 54, where she regularly did cocaine off male models’ abs with Andy Warhol.
“It will be fine,” Mom said. “The woman’s in her sixties. I’m sure things have slowed down.”
Luckily for Aunt Vee, her surgically enhanced face, which is now turned to me with an expression of abject horror, looks closer to forty.
“What are you wearing?” asks the woman who’s decked out in skintight, neon-colored, head-to-toe workout spandex.
“Um, a skirt suit?”
“It’s so beige. And synthetic.” Aunt Vee is trying very, very hard to be nice and not frown. (The Botox helps.)
“I think it’s actually a cotton blend,” I say, looking down at my new, sensible work flats.
Oh no. Is this all wrong?
This is all wrong.
“You can’t go into a fashion magazine looking like you just walked out of some discount superstore,” Aunt Vee says.
(Let the record show that I love Target.)
Also: “We actually got it from the Gap outlet.”
(I also love outlet shopping.)
Aunt Vee shudders. “My closet. Pronto. This is an emergency.”
Aunt Vee is officially over the spirulina. She pivots and stalks toward the master bedroom with a sense of purpose. Her jet-black bob bobs up and down at her chin with every step.
I follow behind, scurrying past the gigantic wall of windows in her living room, which overlooks the park. I just barely take in the view of the treetops emerging from the shadows as the sun continues its ascent. That’s okay, though. I quickly learn that the view inside Aunt Vee’s closet is far greater than anything nature could provide.
We walk through the double doors off her dramatically all-white bedroom and are immediately enveloped in exploding colors.
“This”—Aunt Vee spreads her arms wide, her fingers sweeping the climate-controlled air of her closet—“is where the magic happens.”
There are animal prints, sparkling fabrics, and shoes. So, so many shoes.
“ ‘Summer’ is on the left.”
I turn my back on the furs—“All faux and PETA approved, Harper, so don’t look at them like that!”—of winter and fall and walk toward Aunt Vee’s summer selection.
“This is crazy-town,” I say. And it is. Aunt Vee’s closet is fancier than any store we have in Castalia.
“Au contraire, Harper. Couture is the facilitator of sanity.”
Aunt Vee starts pulling out floral dresses with plunging necklines and sheer tops. She is literally waving leather short-shorts in my direction.
I don’t know what to say.
“Um, I’m not really sure it’s a good idea to wear shorts on my first day of work.”
“These aren’t shorts. They’re leather shorts. It’s a completely different genre.”
“And . . . that makes it more work-appropriate? Because when Mom and I talked about—”
“Who do you think your mother comes to when she’s in need of fashion advice? Or, at least, she used to before your parents up and moved you all to the middle of nowhere.” Aunt Vee has the pained look of a woman on the second day of a juice cleanse.
Some people think that being from California automatically means that you live somewhere cool, like San Francisco or LA. Aunt Vee knows better.
“It’s not that bad,” I say, feeling a surprising tinge of Castalia loyalty. “And we’re not that far from San Francisco. Kind of.”
Aunt Vee sighs.
“You’re using San Francisco as your fashion talisman? Harper, hoodies pass as formal attire out there.”
The woman has a point.
“All right. I’m open to your stylistic expertise.” (Aunt Vee responds with a squeal.) “But no shorts. Please.”
I’m bent over picking up a dress that fell from Aunt Vee’s arms when she stops squealing and shouts, “Stop! That one’s perfect!”
She drops the rest of the clothing she was considering on the floor and pushes me toward the full-length mirror.
“See?” she raises the short (very short) white linen dress—decorated with intricate stitchwork around its low neckline—in front of my thin, five-foot-two-inch frame. “See how the cerulean embroidery makes your eyes pop? They look so blue.”
“It won’t show too much cleavage?”
Aunt Vee and I both give my minimalistic boobular region a long look over.
“I honestly don’t think that that’s going to be an issue, Harper.”
“Point taken.”
“Now”—Aunt Vee scans the closet—“we need some accent pieces.” She snatches a pair of blue strappy heels from her wall of shoes and throws them in my direction.
“These shoes,” she says. “And . . . this purse.”
She hands me a canary-yellow bag that even smells brand new.
“I don’t know,” I say, holding it carefully. “I’d be worried I’d scratch it.”
“Well, try not to. It’s a Birkin.”
I show no sign of recognition.
“Oh dear, I have so much to teach you,” she says comfortingly. “Let’s just say a Birkin costs more than a Mercedes. Only a small one, though.”
Oh, hell no. Heels I can manage. (I think.) Heels the first day on a job make sense. But I definitely don’t want to carry a small Mercedes on my arm. There’s absolutely no way I could handle the constant fear of scuffing it. Not to mention the constant fear of being judged as the seventeen-year-old who brought a Birkin to the first day of an internship. “Thank you, Aunt Vee, thank you. But I can’t. It’s too much.”
“Too much?”
“Too much!”
“Well, you’re no fun at all, but I suppose a Birkin could be overkill.” She puts her hand on my shoulder and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Maybe it’s more second-week appropriate.”
/> Our bonding moment is interrupted by a buzzing sound coming from the pocket on Aunt Vee’s butt. She unzips the back of her yoga pants to retrieve her iPhone. The back of the case has a picture of Princess wearing a tiara.
“So sorry, Harper, but I’m going to have to run to a PiYoCo class.”
Blank stare from me.
“Pilates-yoga fusion with an emphasis on working your core. Everyone’s doing it! But before I go, I demand a quick little fashion show to make sure it all works.”
Like that, she’s off to her spirulina, and I’m in the closet alone for the first time. I take a long, slow breath of the lavender-scented air.
“Wow,” I say to the abandoned yellow Birkin. I put it back incredibly carefully between its green and purple brethren. “What just happened?”
I take off my beige blazer, beige skirt, and white button-up to replace them with everything I’ve collected from what has proven to be both my most and least expensive “shopping spree” ever.
“Harper!”
“Coming!” I give myself another look in the mirror, and I’ve got to say, the tiny stitches of blue do make my eyes pop against my pale complexion and dark hair.
I look good.
Princess grunts at the second disruption to her beauty sleep when I go back into our room to grab the big, black H&M bag I got with Kristina on a trip to SF so that I can show Aunt Vee the finished product. (I guess I’m the finished product.)
“Oh, Harper!” Aunt Vee clasps her hands together. “Now this is a first day of work outfit. You’re a knockout! There’s just one last thing. . . .”
Uh-oh.
Aunt Vee unties a scarf from the handle of her workout bag. “I suppose I understand skipping the Birkin, but can we at least tie this onto your purse? It will really pull the piece”—Am I the piece?—“together.”
A scarf. I can handle a scarf.
“Thanks so much, Aunt Vee.” I take it and knot it where the base of the strap meets the body of my bag. The royal-blue, gold, and cream design looks very midcentury. Kind of like something Audrey Hepburn would have worn to cover her hair on a windy day. “It looks great.”
Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies Page 2