Upper East Side #8

by Ashley Valentine

  Kaliq had never been that into public displays of affection. And anyway, what had ever been so special about Kaliq?

  20

  “I heard about you. You’re the kid who’s to take my place on the Yale lacrosse team. Excuse me, ladies.” Lord Marcus reached across Porsha and Chanel to clasp Kaliq’s hand in the cramped backseat of the cab as it raced down the hot Park Avenue blacktop. “Coach said you were a maniac with a stick.”

  That’s one way of putting it.

  Kaliq hoped Lord Marcus wouldn’t guess that he’d been crying. Now would’ve been a good time to take another Viagra, just to give him an ego boost and keep the tears from flowing. If it hadn’t been for those annoying side effects, he’d have taken it every day.

  What, like the major hard-ons? But that’s not a side effect, that’s the whole point!

  “So is Yale, like, seriously tough or what?” Kaliq asked, because it was the only thing he could think of to say. Porsha had her head on Lord Marcus’s shoulder, and she looked so comfortable, it was sort of unsettling and nice to see at the same time. Her thick hair was growing out and it looked so soft and shiny, Kaliq could almost feel it in his hands.

  Oh, please. Don’t cry.

  “Not as hard as Coach Heffner’s arse,” Lord Marcus joked. “She told us all about how she stabbed you with a fork when you tried to hit on her.”

  Kaliq had pretty much blocked that little episode out of his mind, and he flinched, remembering. “I just wasn’t expecting a cute female coach,” he admitted.

  “Believe me, none of us were,” Lord Marcus replied with a knowing smile. He lit a cigarette, but the tiny shriveled cabdriver flapped his hand in annoyance, so he threw it out the window.

  “Let’s all light cigarettes and see what he does,” Chanel whispered, still feeling giddy. She handed out four cigarettes from her suede Balenciaga bag and Lord Marcus helped her light them with a silver lighter.

  The driver screeched to a halt when he noticed the smoke. “Get out of my cab!” he shouted, his tiny shriveled fists raised in anger.

  Lord Marcus, ever the polite Englishman, began to apologize, pretending he didn’t know it was illegal to smoke in American taxis. But they were already on Park Avenue and 47th Street, just around the corner from the Yale Club, so they got out anyway.

  What a sight: a lovely chocolate goddess dressed exactly like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, two handsome, green-eyed, lacrosse-playing, neatly dressed boys, and a heart-wrenchingly gorgeous exotic bombshell in jeans. The Yale Club’s dress code forbade distressed denim, but Chanel looked so pretty in her jeans, no one cared. As soon as the group stepped into the club’s sparse classical lobby, all the middle-aged Yale alums in suits stopped talking business and switched off their phones. Oh, to be seventeen and irresistible!

  As if any of them were ever this irresistible.

  Lord Marcus took Kaliq up to his suite to show him some lacrosse trophy that only Kaliq would appreciate, while Porsha led Chanel into the club’s lounge, where they settled in at the elegant bar with its gold ceiling, polished wood floor, and dark wood paneling. Of course they were used to going out all the time, but it still felt extremely grown-up to be out at a private club bar on a Saturday morning, especially when they were supposed to be glued to their textbooks, studying for their final exams, which would begin on Monday.

  “So, what are you going to say in your graduation speech?” Chanel asked Porsha. “What’s that Dr. Seuss book—you know the one everyone always quotes from?”

  Porsha rolled her eyes. She was so not quoting from that book. “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”

  The bowtied bartender brought Porsha’s drink first—a Ketel One martini straight up with an olive. She took a sip and then stuck a cigarette into her cigarette holder. She was enjoying the whole cigarette holder thing so much, she planned to use it right up until Breakfast at Fred’s came out and all the girls started copying her.

  Hence, the difference between being trendy and being a trendsetter.

  “Actually, I’m going to write about going after what you want and getting it,” she declared, blowing smoke over the top of Chanel’s silky head. “I never thought I’d get absolutely everything I wanted. But I kept trying, anyway, and now I have it. Everything.”

  Chanel nodded. “I know what you mean.” The bartender brought her Tanqueray gin fizz and she took a few tentative sips, wondering if she should tell Porsha right now that when Ken Mogul’s assistant had whispered in her ear, she’d asked Chanel back for a second audition. But things were going so well with Porsha at the moment, she didn’t want to ruin it. Besides, even if she wound up being offered the part, she wasn’t sure she wanted it. She tried to think of something else to say, something about getting what she’d always wanted, even though she’d never really wanted anything—things just fell into her lap.

  “I’m so in love with Kaliq,” she blurted out, trying to sound as thrilled with the way things had turned out as Porsha did.

  Porsha lit the end of her cigarette. How easy it would be to accidentally set fire to Chanel’s long black eyelashes. She surveyed the room, trying to decide whether or not to let her temper get the better of her.

  Whoa, she’s thinking about it? Is this a turning point?!

  Porsha loved the Yale Club lounge. The gold-leaf paint and oriental carpets made it feel grand and exclusive, but it was more comfortable and less dull than some of the other rooms in the club. The lounge was the perfect place to escape from the heat. And it went with her dress. “Pretty soon we’ll all be at Yale,” she mused.

  The two girls stared at each other, their eyes locked, trying to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Chanel giggled. “And we can take the train back to the city and stay here, and our parents won’t even know we’re in town!”

  That does sound like fun.

  “This would be such a great place to have a party,” Porsha chimed in, deciding to be nice. She blinked, wondering why she hadn’t thought of it before. Of course, it meant there’d be a lot of random crashers—other seniors from dopey schools that she didn’t even know, and random juniors who thought they were cool now because they were going to be seniors next year. But she was Emma Willard’s graduation speaker. It made perfect sense that she should host a graduation party—the graduation party.

  The Yale Club was strictly members-only, but never fear. Yalie Daddy would certainly pay the club handsomely to keeps its doors open all night long to any well-dressed merrymaker who wandered in looking for more ways to make merry. It would be his way of apologizing to his only daughter for not being there in the flesh.

  Aw, how sweet.

  Let’s hope he doesn’t forget that she will also need some way of getting around New Haven next year. Vroom, vroom.

  Porsha gave Chanel a stiff hug, barely keeping her cigarette holder aloft to avoid setting fire to her hair. “We always have the best ideas,” she murmured, half to herself and half to her old friend.

  Chanel smiled eagerly, even though she had no idea which ideas Porsha was referring to. “Don’t we?” she agreed.

  Kaliq had brought a couple of pre-rolled joints along with him. He and Lord Marcus made themselves comfortable in the lord’s gold-and-white wallpapered suite, blasting the AC as they lay on their backs on the king-size bedspread, puffing away and trading secrets about Porsha.

  See, boys really are worse than girls.

  “She acts all grumpy when you come on to her, and then she complains when you don’t,” Kaliq complained, shaking his head. “I never understood that.”

  “But as long as you let her know she’s irresistible, she can’t make a fuss,” Lord Marcus pointed out. “That’s what’s crucial.”

  Kaliq turned his head to look at the older boy through a haze of weed smoke. He’d known Porsha practically since he was born. How come this guy, who’d only just met her, seemed to have her all figured out? Was it possible that he and Porsha were totally incomp
atible? Maybe they were actually never meant to be.

  Kaliq couldn’t think about it anymore without having a major sob attack. Instead, he took another hit and allowed his mind to go heavenly blank.

  “I’m thinking of asking Porsha to come over to England to visit for the summer,” Lord Marcus mused aloud. “I’ve told my family all about her and they’re desperate to meet her. Apparently my dad knows her dad. And my mum’s already got us married off.”

  Kaliq took another hit. No need to get upset. His mind was as smooth, white, and wrinkle-free as the 800-thread-count pillows on Lord Marcus’s bed.

  Lord Marcus finished off his joint and sat up, stubbing it out neatly on the sole of his amber colored lace-ups. “The ladies will be wondering where we are.” He clapped Kaliq on the shoulder. “Shall we go, then?”

  Kaliq sat up on his elbows and shook his head blearily, like a dog. A stray tear seeped out of the corner of his left eye and trickled down his cheek. He swatted it away angrily, but then another one began to trickle out of the corner of his right eye.

  “Are you alright?” Lord Marcus asked. “Do you need a minute?”

  Kaliq shrugged, and then his lower lip began to tremble.

  Lord Marcus sat down next to him and pulled Kaliq into his arms. “There, there,” he murmured. “You’re all right.”

  This wasn’t the pretend gay affection that Kaliq and his friends used to drive one another nuts. This was the real thing: a big-brotherly hug. Kaliq had never had a big brother, or any siblings for that matter, and the hug was exactly what he needed.

  “Mon père habite en France Danis le Loire. Il aime des autres hommes. Il est un fag!” Porsha shrieked, and she and Chanel burst into a fit of giggles.

  “Qu’est-ce que vous faites, mes cheries?” Lord Marcus called out as he and Kaliq approached.

  “We’re conversing in French. There’s an oral part to my AP exam. We have to talk about our family for ten minutes,” Porsha explained. “Using all the tenses.”

  Chanel rolled her eyes. “That’s what you get for taking APs.” She squinted at the two boys. “Hey, are you two stoned?”

  Kaliq grinned sheepishly. “Slightly.”

  “You big idiot.” Chanel grabbed him and kissed him smack on the lips, bubbling over with relief that she and Porsha were talking again.

  Porsha was so fine with seeing Chanel and Kaliq kiss right in front of her, she didn’t budge. Within seconds Lord Marcus had slipped behind her and wrapped his arms sexily around her waist—the sort of husband-like, proprietary gesture Porsha had always dreamed about. He winked at Chanel. “Did you know Chanel means dweller near the canal in French?”

  “Yeah,” Chanel giggled and then flashed Porsha a look that said, Where’d you find him, anyway?

  Porsha returned the look with a smug smile that was a combination of See, I told you I had everything and Hands off, bitch.

  Kaliq licked the taste of Chanel’s vanilla-scented gloss off his lips and then downed the rest of her gin fizz, his eyes on Porsha’s perfect milky chocolate feet. Something about the way they looked in those shiny flat shoes was making him seriously horny.

  Good thing he left the Viagra at home.

  21

  Mekhi finished his AP English exam with twenty minutes to spare and began rewriting his graduation speech about love in the back of his blue book. This time he planned on quoting from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”:

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  The words sounded sterile and entirely overused to him, though, especially in the context of graduation. Besides, neither he nor his classmates were actually taking the road less traveled. They were graduating and going straight to college. And how boring was thathj? The truth was, it had never really occurred to him to do anything else. Until now.

  He’d been battling with the notion for days that come fall, Yasmine would be here in New York and he would be there, in Olympia, Washington—on the other side of the country. The thought was unbearable to him, even though he was still unsure of Yasmine’s true feelings for him, especially after she’d so bluntly dismissed him the other night the minute Tahj had come home and had proceeded to not call him all weekend.

  But maybe he was the one who hadn’t been clear. He’d already told that nutty professor he’d decided not to spend the summer working in Olympia. Why not take it one step further and announce to everyone at graduation that he wasn’t going to college, period. That would show Yasmine, and the world, how far he was willing to go—for love. He would take the road less traveled.

  Mekhi turned the page and scribbled the words Ode on Love, modeling his new poem on those of his favorite poet, John Keats. Keats wrote odes all the time: “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on Melancholy,” but never an “Ode on Love.” So why shouldn’t Mekhi be the one to do it?

  “Seventeen minutes to go,” Ms. Solomon called out. Mekhi glanced up at the stiff backs of his classmates bent over their desks, pens working frantically as the black wall clock ticked the minutes by. He went back to his blue book. “Ode on Love.” Of course, his love for Yasmine was mixed with a heavy dose of undying lust. But how to convey that without sounding pornographic? After all, the poem was supposed to be part of his graduation speech.

  Your milky white orbs,

  The pillows of your stomach,

  Thighs like birches.

  Ew, enough!

  He drew a heavy X across the words. The pillows of your stomach? Yuck.

  Then he remembered the lines from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:

  More happy love! more happy, happy love!

  Forever warm and still to be enjoyed

  Forever panting, and forever young;

  All breathing human passion far above,

  That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,

  A burning forehead and a parching tongue.

  Was there any better way to say it?

  Probably not.

  Mekhi began to sketch a picture of the water tower on top of Yasmine’s building, but he was no artist and his water tower looked more like a giant acorn. If only he were allowed to use his phone during exams. He could call the Evergreen admissions office and let them know he wasn’t coming.

  Instead, he tried to rework the opening segment of his graduation speech in the last few pages of his blue book.

  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending this year’s commencement exercises for the Riverside Preparatory School for Boys. You must be very proud of your sons—so proud that you are giving them exactly what they wanted for graduation, right? (Pause for laughter.) Anyway, I’m honored to be the graduation speaker this year. I’d like to start out by reading from a Robert Frost poem.

  "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference."

  This is a popular quote for graduation speeches. I know, because I Googled it. (Pause for laughter.) It’s ironic, though, because how many of us are actually taking the road less traveled? (Pause for awkward silence.) Well, I am. And here’s how I’m going to do it: I’m going to follow my heart—

  The little timer on Ms. Solomon’s desk went off. “Put down your pencils, please,” she announced.

  Mekhi looked up with a dazed expression. As usual, he’d gotten carried away.

  “Didn’t finish the exam, huh?” Jaylen snickered to his left. Seniors were allowed to break dress code for exams, and Jaylen had chosen to wear a bright yellow cut-up Dolce & Gabbana sleeveless shirt that was somehow more revealing than if he hadn’t worn a shirt at all.

  Mekhi glared at him. Was it possible to be killed in the line of duty while you were still only in military school? He certainly hoped so.

  Ms. Solomon walked over to collect their blue books. “Is there a problem, Mr. Hargrove?” she
demanded, sticking her bony chest out at him through her weird ugly dress.

  Mekhi frowned. “Would it be all right if I ripped out the last couple pages in my blue book?” he asked, without much hope that she’d let him.

  The teacher shrugged her inappropriately bare shoulders. “Go ahead.”

  Mekhi ripped the pages out before she could change her mind, surprised at her total lack of bitchiness. Maybe Ms. Solomon had finally gotten herself a boyfriend and was too busy daydreaming about the approaching hot and sexy summer of late mornings and steamy sex to bother being nasty to Mekhi.

  Oh, like he wasn’t daydreaming about late mornings and steamy sex? In fact, who isn’t?!

  22

  Biology was Bree’s last exam and she’d stayed up all night studying for it. Nuclei, protozoa, osmosis—she knew it all. She answered the questions automatically, filling in the blanks without pause and making her classmates seriously jealous. Osmosis was the process in which organisms took on each other’s qualities just by hanging out together. Well, if it worked for tiny little organisms, why didn’t it work for them? They’d been hanging out with Bree all year, and yet they still weren’t any smarter.

  And their boobs aren’t much bigger, either.

  I like your hair, Kim Swanson scribbled on the edge of Jessica Soames’s plastic desktop with her number two pencil. Can you see Bree's answer to #21?

  Kim Swanson was the most perfectly groomed girl in the ninth grade. She’d been getting her hair highlighted since she was nine and preferred perfectly ironed button-down shirts with her gray pleated uniform. It was rumored that even her underwear was ironed, and she never left the house without full makeup, a gold-and-silver Cartier chain bracelet on each wrist, and the not-so-tiny Cartier diamond studs in her ears. She spent so much time grooming herself that she hardly had time to study.