Upper East Side #8

by Ashley Valentine

  Hold on, Jessica Soames scribbled back. Jessica had been the class slut starting in fourth grade, when she’d gotten her period, and culminating in sixth grade, when she lost her virginity. She’d had the biggest chest in the class, too—until Bree had blossomed in seventh grade, surpassing her by three whole cup sizes. Jessica stole a subtle glance at the desk to her right, trying to read the answers on Bree’s exam. But Bree was already finished and was now doodling in calligraphy on an empty page in her blue book.

  Loser, Bree had written in elegant, loopy black bubble letters, and Jessica tried not to take it personally.

  The truth was, Bree had written the word to describe herself. First thing Monday morning, she’d FedExed Bridgeport Academy her trio of brilliant new portraits, all matted and framed, but now it was Thursday and she still hadn’t heard from the admissions office. It was the first week in June. September was only three short months away, and she had nowhere to go to school. She was quietly approaching desperation.

  Before they’d sat down for their exam, Elise had reminded her that Bridgeport was winding up the school year too and probably wouldn’t get to the package she’d sent them until after their seniors graduated. But Bree was having none of that. She’d obviously missed her chance to go to boarding school. Her only other option besides public school was to ace her exams and then beg Mrs. M to let her stay at Willard. She could repeat ninth grade, cultivate her reputation as a total geek, wear thick tortoiseshell glasses, and lengthen her uniforms to her ankles. No more appearances on Page Six. No more racy fashion spreads. No dating rock stars. No online nudity.

  Aw. But isn’t that what makes Bree so special?

  The problem was, she was already a straight-A student. How could she do better than she was already doing? It occurred to Bree that maybe her grades and her new artwork weren’t enough. Why not send Brideport a copy of the W magazine spread she’d modeled for with Chanel Crenshaw and the Page Six piece featuring a photograph of her kissing Kash, the lead guitarist from the Raves, outside the Plaza Hotel?

  And while she’s at it, why not send them a lock of her hair? Or one of her massive Bali support bras?

  Kim Swanson snickered discreetly as she scrawled something on Jessica Soames’s desk. Bree put down her pencil and rested her forehead on her arms, her curly hair cascading in little ringlets all over her desk. If she sent Bridgeport the W spread and the excerpt from Page Six, she’d be the talk of the school before she even arrived. That was one way of getting people’s attention, but then everyone would be so full of preconceived notions about her, she’d never change their minds. Better to earn her reputation and demand people’s notice once she got there.

  Ahead of her was a bizarre summer in Prague with her mother, attending some famous Czech art camp—something she’d committed to over Passover under the influence of too much wine. Her dad had reminded her last week, when she’d thought she’d at least have boarding school to look forward to in the fall, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  “Two, four, six, eight, only four more days till we graduate!” a group of seniors shrieked excitedly in the hall outside the biology lab. Then the bell rang and Bree’s classmates threw their pencils in the air and started hugging one another and signing yearbooks. Even Elise came over to ask for Kim Swanson’s signature in her yearbook, and she’d despised Kim ever since Kim had spread the awful rumor that Elise had been born deformed and had had a hump in her back removed when she was two.

  “Summer, summer, summertime,” Roni Mitchell began to sing in her glee-club-trained falsetto. "Time to sit back and unwind."

  Bree wished she could share their excitement. After all, this was her last exam. She was done for the year! Three long summer months awaited her in Europe, and the possibilities were endless. But somehow she just didn’t feel like shrieking or signing anyone’s yearbook, even though her calligraphy was way better than theirs.

  Now she realized how the seniors must have felt all winter while they were waiting to hear back from colleges. She’d done everything she could do. Her fate was in someone else’s hands.

  23

  Porsha and Chanel sat side by side at the long black chemistry lab table, scribbling away at their last and final exam. The AP chemistry students had been seated between the regular senior chemistry students and were taking a different exam, so it wasn’t supposed to matter that the girls were practically bumping elbows. Emma Willard liked to think its girls were beyond cheating, but the truth was, they cheated all the time. Porsha and Chanel were no exception.

  Molarity if 5.827 g of NaCl is diluted to a volume of 100 mL? Chanel etched into the inside of her forearm with her black pen. She yawned and stretched, letting her arm fall on the edge of Porsha’s exam book.

  n = 5.827 g / 58.4425

  n = 0.09970 mol of NaCl

  M = 0.09970 mol / 0.100 L

  M = 0.9970 molar

  Porsha scribbled the answer on the inside cover of her blue book. What are you wearing Monday? she wrote next to it.

  Why Monday? Chanel wrote back before copying the answer Porsha had given her. Was it possible that Porsha already knew she’d been called back for a second audition?

  Graduation—duh?! Porsha scribbled back hastily.

  Chanel stared at the words Porsha had written. It was so typical of her not to have realized her mistake. The second audition was on Monday—and so was graduation. Her parents were going to be there. Cairo, her brother, had delayed his plans to spend the summer skiing in New Zealand with Liesl, his bodacious chick-of-the-week, so that he could be there. And Porsha was giving a speech.

  Oops.

  You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Porsha wrote, before racing through the next two pages of her exam.

  Chanel watched her admiringly. Porsha totally deserved to go to Yale. She was a complete whiz when it came to tests. Sunlight streamed into the chemistry lab windows and a bird chirped merrily. Chanel sighed and began to scribble her name in the corner of page three of her nine-page exam.

  Chanel Crenshaw. Breakfast at Fred’s, starring Chanel Crenshaw.

  Normally she didn’t daydream about things like this, but this was her first chance to star in a real movie. It was hard not to want it just a little bit.

  Porsha folded over the last page of her exam, rapidly scribbled in the answers, and then went back to check her work. Once she was satisfied that all was correct, she glanced up at their proctor, Mrs. Crandall. The overweight teacher was busy filing her nails, which were painted an atrocious dark beige, making her fingers look like the pig feet steeped in formaldehyde they’d had to dissect in ninth-grade bio. Porsha shoved her paper out of the way and reached for Chanel’s.

  “Hey—” Chanel started to object.

  “Shush,” Porsha whispered, already beginning to answer the unanswered questions.

  Chanel drew a smiley face on the page Porsha was working on. It was just like old times. Except for the fact that she was with Kaliq, and Porsha was with her new British hunk. She frowned. And she was going to miss graduation, which was going to make Porsha hate her all over again.

  Yup.

  24

  Yasmine kept the white dress Porsha had bought for her to wear at graduation stashed in her closet until Sunday night, the night before graduation. The lights were off in the apartment and she was all alone. She stripped down to her underwear and slipped the dress on over her stubbly head, padding over to the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door to check it out.

  The dress was prettier than anything she’d ever owned, with a plunging V in the satin bodice, an asymmetrical hemline, and a sort of flapper-style low waist that she’d had no idea would look as flattering on her as it did. She went back to the closet to retrieve the shoes. She and Porsha had the same size feet, and Porsha had left her a pair of white Michael Kors wedge-heeled sandals to go with the dress. She’d even found Yasmine a pair of cool white fishnet gloves from some consignment shop on the Upper East Side, because it
was a Willard tradition for the girls to wear white gloves during the ceremony.

  The thing was, Yasmine wasn’t going to be at the ceremony. Tahj was arriving at ten the next morning to pick her up, his red vintage Saab loaded up with herbal cigarettes, snacks, and peach-flavored Snapple for their cross-country sexcapade. Her parents were in Santa Fe, New Mexico, participating in some sort of hippie artist happening, and her older sister, Ruby, was still in Finland or Poland or Lapland, developing a freaky foreign fan base for her band, SugarDaddy. It wasn’t like anyone in her family cared if she missed graduation. She’d get her diploma in the mail, and Porsha could return the dress. It wasn’t a big deal.

  Right. We believe you.

  There was a scratching sound at the front door. Yasmine left her room and flicked on the living room light as someone shoved a piece of paper underneath the door. She recognized Mekhi’s boyish scrawl before she even knelt down to pick it up.

  Can’t make it through graduation tomorrow without seeing you one more time. I’m upstairs.

  Not again!

  Yasmine left the dress on and clomped upstairs to the roof in her Michael Kors wedgies. It was a mild June evening, almost nine, but not quite dark. Traffic snaked on and off of the Williamsburg Bridge, and a chorus of fire alarms sounded down on Broadway. A hurricane lantern swung from the steel frame supporting the water tower. Beneath it, Mekhi was sitting in the lotus position, naked, with a thick paperback book open in his lap.

  “What are you doing?” Yasmine demanded.

  Mekhi looked up, his love-struck face illuminated by the lamp. He was all shimmery with it—the light and his complete adoration of her. “Wow,” he murmured softly. “You look so pretty. It’s almost like how—” He stopped with an embarrassed smile.

  “What?” Yasmine folded her arms across her chest. If she and Mekhi hadn’t already been best friends for so long, she might have been more upset by his freaky naked stalking appearances. But Mekhi was Mekhi—she could only muster mild irritation.

  “You look like how I imagine you’d look at our wedding,” Mekhi blurted haltingly.

  Whoa.

  Yasmine decided that the only appropriate response was to completely ignore what he’d said. “Is that something to do with the speech you’re giving tomorrow?” She pointed at the book.

  “What?” Mekhi looked down, like he’d forgotten it was there. “Um, sort of. Actually, not really.” He closed the book and held it up, revealing all his naked manly bits. “It’s called The Sexual Art of Ecstasy. I found it in the bookstore.”

  Yasmine nodded with faint interest, as if he’d just told her that it might rain later.

  “There’s this part about meditating together until you get to a place where you’re both, like, there. It talks about how Russell Simmons can, like, do it forever, even though he’s really old. Well, this is how he does it.”

  Like we really want to know.

  Yasmine stared at him. Mekhi was sort of adorable in his own bizarre, scrawny-bodied way, but the truth was, she’d been hoping she wouldn’t see him again before she left tomorrow because she didn’t want to have to explain anything—how she loved him, but how she’d promised Tahj. How it had been sort of exciting and fun seeing two guys at once but how it had to end sometime. The truth was, she wasn’t even sure how she felt, because she’d been trying not to think about it.

  Mekhi put the book aside and held out his hand. “Or we could just kiss,” he suggested with a sort of polite tenderness that made her glad he was already naked.

  She went over and knelt down in front of him, careful to lift her dress up so it wouldn’t touch the ground. “Just watch the dress,” she warned him.

  This might be her only chance to wear it. Not that she was about to tell him that.

  25

  Outside Brick Church on Park Avenue and 92ndStreet, a throng of black town cars released women in Gucci couture and men and boys in Ralph Lauren into the church to watch their daughters and sisters graduate in Emma Willard’s commencement exercises. It was a balmy June morning, and a pleasant breeze rustled the apple trees bordering the sidewalk, scattering petals and pretty green leaves onto the avenue. The lovely redbrick church with its sturdy white columns and creeping, well-tended green ivy looked like something out of a picture book. In fact, today the entire Upper East Side seemed picturesque and soaked in sun and apple blossom perfume, for today was graduation day.

  Hooray!

  Imani’s mom, Titi Edwards, craned her surgically enhanced neck to survey the well-dressed audience, nearly popping the buttons on her Versace coat-dress. “I heard Harold Sinclaire flew in from Paris with his flaming French boyfriend to see Porsha graduate today,” she whispered to Lillian Crenshaw, who was seated in the dark mahogany pew next to her. “He even had a red convertible sent over in parts, with a special French mechanic to assemble it for her.”

  Mrs. Crenshaw shook her head. She liked gossip, but only the harmless kind—about people’s dogs or their golf game.

  Harmless gossip? What would be the point?

  “Harold Sinclaire is in Bordeaux, at a wine auction,” she corrected her tackily dressed neighbor in a polite whisper as she smoothed out the silk calf-length skirt of her simple-but-gorgeous Yves Saint Laurent suit. “I know for a fact because a dear friend of mine is bidding on a few bottles of Burgundy for us there. However, I know nothing about the car.”

  Around the corner, in one of the church’s outer chambers, the seniors lined up in size order, giddily awaiting the first few chords of “Pomp and Circumstance.” Alexis and Imani were the shortest ones, in matching white Ferragamo flats and matching bridesmaid-style dresses with lace bows in the back. Desperate to be next to each other in line, they’d done a survey of all the girls in their class, asking what size heel they planned to wear for graduation. Even Doc-Marten-boots-wearing Yasmine had said she’d be wearing platforms, so flats were their best option. How cool was it that not only were they together in line, wearing matching outfits—they were first!

  Yippee!

  In her two-and-a-half-inch white Manolos, Porsha was somewhere in the middle. Her white satin Oscar de la Renta suit had been flawlessly tailored, the jacket nipping in around her tiny waist and accentuating her excellent shoulders. None of the other girls had been creative or fashion-forward enough to even think of wearing a suit, let alone the shimmery coral pink lipstick she’d bought especially for the day or the simple pearls she’d chosen for her ears. She’d memorized her speech and kept reciting it over and over in her head, bouncing on the balls of her feet to keep her circulation going and her adrenaline level high.

  Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you to the senior class for electing me as its speaker. You know, some of us girls have been together since kindergarten. We learned to read together. We lost our baby teeth together. We learned how to get the most Oreos at recess together. And as the years went by, we learned not to crack under pressure together. Now here we are, college-bound, and we’re all still friends. How could we not be?

  There’s something else I learned at Emma Willard that I wanted to share with you today: how to get what you want…

  “Has anyone seen Chanel?” Nicki Button asked loudly as she examined her beady brown eyes in a compact and tugged on her drop-waist flapper-style graduation dress. “Can you believe I bought this at a children’s vintage clothing boutique?” she asked for the tenth time so everyone could remark on how tiny she was.

  “And what about Yasmine?” Lauren Salmon added, sucking in her breath as she tried to tighten the semi-inappropriate lace-up bodice on her corset-style Alexander McQueen dress.

  “You’d think they could try not to be late just this once,” Rain Hoffstetter put in, helping Lauren with her laces and trying not to bang into anyone in her pouffy Prada number.

  Porsha looked around. She’d been so preoccupied with going over her speech, she hadn’t even noticed: Yasmine and Chanel were missing.

  Hello?


  “It’s nearly ten-thirty,” Mrs. McLean announced urgently, clapping her meaty hands together to call the girls to order. “We’ll just have to start without them.”

  Porsha spun her ruby ring around and around on the ring finger of her left hand. Chanel and Yasmine were going to miss graduation?! But they’d miss her speech, and anyway, where the fuck were they??!!

  Mrs. Weeds, Emma Willard's frizzy-haired hippie music teacher, banged out a few chords on the organ, her fat shoulder blades jiggling.

  “All right, girls, this is it!” Mrs. McLean shouted excitedly. “Your last hurrah as Willard girls.” She raised her fist in the air, her red, white, and blue suit wrinkling with the strain. “Make it a good one!” she added, looking dykier than ever.

  “Ooh!” the audience gasped as the girls began to march into the main hall of the church and down the lily-strewn center aisle in time to the music, looking like crosses between runway models and mail-order brides.

  Eleanor Sinclaire Campbell sat between her husband of less than one year, Cyrus Campbell, and Porsha’s twelve-year-old brother, Brice. Eleanor was the only woman in the room wearing a wide-brimmed hat with actual dove feathers in it.

  Exactly where did she think she was—England?

  Cyrus Campbell was wearing a remarkably ugly double-breasted suit and was jiggling Yale, Porsha’s six-week-old baby sister, on his knee. Yale had on the Burberry kilt Porsha had bought for her even before she was born and a white onesie that Porsha had ordered from Oeuf, a baby boutique in Paris. Brice looked hungover. Or maybe Porsha just hadn’t seen him in so long, she’d forgotten what he looked like even though he was her brother. And Tahj appeared to be missing.