Petty in Pink

by Compai

  “Oh,” she realized, taking a flustered step backward (mental note to self: die). Flattening her back against the opposite wall, she drew her eyebrows together, and in a desperately casual tone asked, “Is that your room?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, slowly turning the handle, half-hoping she’d disappear. There’s no way around it, he acknowledged with quiet horror. Unless he decided to just, like, stand there, Janie Farrish was about to see his room: the chamber of lame, the bib crib—where players took their game to die. He closed his eyes, trying to make his peace with fate. Not possible. Pushing the door open caused him near-physical pain.

  “Omigod!” she gasped, and he braced himself for what was coming—the ultimate four-letter word, the death to every dude’s dudeness. “Cute!”

  “Yeah…,” he granted, beckoning her inside and fighting off the sting. “My mom’s decorator kind of went ape-shit.” He could still remember the gleam in Heidi’s eye. Isn’t it a wipeout?! she’d gushed, ushering him inside. Um, more like a butt wipe, he’d frowned. The first thing he’d noticed? The knobs on his solid oak bureau had been replaced by seashells. It only got worse from there. The entire bedroom had been, like, surfolested—from the fringed hula-dancer lamp to the weathered boardwalk floors, from the antique hibiscus-print curtains to the anchor-and-chain “shipwreck chandelier.” And then, most shameful of all, the brand-new Al Merrick surfboard mounted on the wall. In another stroke of brilliance, Heidi thought it’d be a good idea to have the board detailed with his name. Evan—coming at you in a burst of flame. Man, it was a full-on tragedy. He knew dudes—like, seriously talented surfers with nothing to spend but the sand in their pockets—who’d kill for an Al Merrick board. And here he was… using one as a “decorative element.”

  More like dickorative.

  Janie didn’t seem to notice though. She wandered over to his built-in bookshelf, picked up a 1940 Ford station-wagon model car, and began playing with the wheels. He plunked down his glass of ice, gently kicked his empty ice-water bong under his desk, and lifted his chin. “That’s a woody,” he informed her.

  She looked up at him and froze. “What?”

  “The car,” he clarified, resisting the impulse to wince. Awesome, he thought. Now, on top of everything else, she thinks I’m a perv. “That’s just what they’re called,” he explained. “ ’Cause the doors are, uh, made out of… uh…”

  No. No way was he saying it again.

  She laughed weakly, returning the wooden car to the shelf. “It’s really cool,” she offered, discreetly wiping her hand on her hip.

  “I guess.” He shrugged, eyeing the petrified starfish glued around his mirror. “It’s kind of a surf thing,” he added, kicked a foot over his ankle, and leaned against the desk. “Like everything else in this stupid room.”

  “Stupid?” she repeated, darkening those ocean-gray eyes of hers. “Sorry, I—I thought you were all about surfing…”

  “Nah, I am,” he assured her. “It’s just… people tend to latch on to that one thing like that’s all I’m about, you know? It’s like, okay—I love to surf. Does that really mean I need white sharks on my light switches?”

  Janie laughed—a real laugh this time, he was pretty sure—and he grinned. “You know what I mean, though?” he beseeched her, loosening up a little. “It’s like I can’t escape.”

  “Uch…,” she groaned, covering her left eye with her hand and watching him with the other. “I feel bad now.”

  “Why?” He laughed, looming at the foot of his bed. “It’s not your fault.”

  She moved to sit on his bed, then swiftly swayed back, repelled like a magnet, and frowned at her shoe. He noticed she was back to wearing the ones he liked.

  The checkerboard Vans.

  “So, um…” She hesitated, shaking her silky bob. “I actually came up with a few tattoo ideas, like… over lunch?”

  “You did?” he said, grinning like a total Beavis.

  “Yeah, but…” She looked up with an apologetic cringe. “They’re all surf themed.”

  “Oh.” He pushed some air from between his lips, dismissing her concern. “That’s cool!” he assured her, plopping on the foot of the bed. The frame creaked, and he bounced up again, inanely dusting off his shirt. “I mean, it’s different with a tattoo.”

  “Really?” she asked, looking doubtful. Before he could respond, she swiveled her bag against her hip and twisted, presenting one side of her long, slender waist. Her black-and-gray dress came together in a crazy row of bright red stitches, like dashes on a map—marking the path to treasure. “Here.” She pulled out a marred black sketchbook, flipped it open against her hip, and pointed to the corner of a page. “It’s kind of based on this, um, Magritte painting?” She surrendered the book and bit her thumbnail, waiting for his response. “I don’t know,” she blurted after a 2.8 second-long eternity. “It was just an idea.”

  He stared down at the book. “It’s awesome.”

  “Oh.” She flushed, not quite buying it. “You don’t have to…”

  “No, listen.” He looked up, watching her. “I love it.” At which point she stopped talking and watched him right back. You’re amazing, he mentally added, clenching his jaw; for some reason, he imagined jaw clenches assisted telepathy, not that he believed in telepathy, but still. Something was happening. The color slowly blooming in her cheeks, the near-reflective sheen in her eyes, the barely perceptible heat radiating off her body: a definite conspiracy of signs. Sun streamed in through a crack in the curtain, illuminating the downy hairs around her perfectly curved ear; they were like the microscopic feelers of some glowing, deep-sea creature, something so delicate you barely believed it existed. He clenched his hand and slowly released it. His fingers thrummed like something electric, jolting painfully at the tips. This was it.

  He had to touch her.

  “I should have known!” Charlotte cried, bursting into the room. With a start, Evan and Janie turned away from each other and parted, sliding like pads of butter to opposite sides of a pan. “Melissa just called,” the indignant brunette informed the terrified, taller girl, cornering her by the seashell bureau. “And apparently, the Pink Party?”

  “Stink Party!” Don John sang, sailing into the room.

  “Is friends and family only,” Charlotte pushed on, ignoring his quip. “Can you believe it?”

  “No,” Janie replied hoarsely, still attempting to recover from the world’s craziest spike of adrenaline. She took a deep breath, not quite believing Charlotte wasn’t there to bust her. Not that there’d been anything to bust—well, besides incredibly strange, incomprehensible eye contact with her older brother—which hadn’t meant anything! she reprimanded the storming butterflies in her stomach. Did they not realize? Evan gave everything inscrutable come-hither stares. He seriously gave that look to toasters!

  “I know,” Charlotte moaned in sympathy, attributing Janie’s fainting effect to her terrible, terrible news. “And the only other high-profile event that week?” She paused to milk the horror. “A Save the Whales benefit hosted by Hayden Panettiere.”

  “Snooze!” yawned Don John.

  “Oh…,” Charlotte whimpered, wringing her hands and beginning to pace. “Whatever will we do?”

  “Well,” Janie hesitated, resisting the urge to look at Evan. “If it’s friends and family only,” she reasoned, “we could probably get Jake an invitation. I mean, we’re all Melissa’s friends, so we’re invited. And Jake’s my twin. I could claim some hysterical codependent we-speak-a-secret-language thing. ”

  “Yes!” Charlotte brightly cut in, endlessly pleased by the idea. Don John loudly exhaled through his perpetually flared nostrils.

  “But how does that solve anything?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Charlotte’s delicate face collapsed. “How does that solve anything?”

  “Well,” Janie explained. “He’d be allowed a plus one, right? So maybe he could take the celebriteaser as his date. You know, like… sneak her in u
nder the radar.”

  “Omigod,” Don John clenched his fists by his face and crooned. “Buh-riiiillllls!”

  “No.” Charlotte pursed her lips at the floor. The idea of Jake traipsing around with some beautiful celebrity was not sitting well with her. “Not brills.”

  “Really?” Janie knit her eyebrows into a plaintive knot.

  “You’re jealous,” Don John addressed Charlotte, and then sharply gasped. “Omigod, you still like him.”

  “Oh, Don John!” Charlotte trilled with laughter, making a mental note to revoke his wardrobe and makeup-borrowing privileges—permanently. “No, no. It’s just that I don’t think it’s realistic, that’s all.” Her eyelashes fluttered as she arranged the bright topaz bangle on her wrist. “I mean, Jake Farrish going out with a celebrity?” Fighting a wave of queasiness, she managed to sniff, “Who’d believe that?”

  “I don’t get it,” his sister muttered. “You went out with him.”

  “I have an idea!” Charlotte gasped, giving Janie the brush-off she’d long perfected on panhandlers and Green Peace volunteers. “Evan can take her!”

  “Uh, excuse me.” Her brother planted his elbow on the back of his chair and twisted around. “Do I get a say in this?”

  “Are you waterlogged?” she inquired, digging her fists into her dainty hips. “It’s a romantic night with a beautiful celebrity.”

  He tuned her out, floating his eyes toward Janie. “Are you going?”

  “Evan!” she groaned, barely giving Janie time to part her Carmex-slathered lips. “Are you honestly suggesting Janie should take the celebriteaser as her date? They’re both girls, hel-lo? The whole point is to attract attention to the Treater. Not deflect it with idle gossip and queer-say. And besides”—she turned to Janie, oozing concern—“she probably wants to go with her boyfriend. No?”

  “Oh, um, I…,” she stammered, helplessly glancing at Evan. He had his back to her, hulking over his desk. No way would he let Janie see his face, which—assuming it reflected the state of his heart—looked like a little shriveled-up widow woman’s. Of course she has a boyfriend, he thought, feeling his shoulders tense. How had he been so blind?

  “Exactly,” Charlotte cut off Janie’s stammering and arced a reproving eyebrow at her brother. “So. Let’s be a little sensitive and say you’ll do this?”

  “Fine,” he agreed, inanely flipping through his take-home quiz. “I’ll do it. Whatever.”

  “Vive le frère!” she squealed, ruffling the top of his golden head. “Oh, Janie!” She whirled around with open arms, squeezing her into a girl hug. “I take it back. You’re the brilliest brill in Brill-land.”

  “No,” Janie modestly protested, attempting to nonchalantly pry herself out of Charlotte’s mosquito clutches. She had a strangling desire to explain things to Evan, to tell him she didn’t have a boyfriend after all; it had been a silly misunderstanding. At the same time, what made her think Evan even cared? What if she assured him she was single only to have him look at her, like, Why are you telling me this? She pretended to focus on Charlotte and Don John—the two of them grasping hands, excitedly jigging in place—and debated what to do. But it was too late. Evan had pushed back his chair; he was getting to his feet; he was heading for the door. It’s cool, she assured herself. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t. Does he? He doesn’t.

  And then, the moment before he left, he resolved the issue, lifting his chin in bro-ish salute.

  “Later, dude.”

  Dude? Janie paled in horror. It was the ultimate four-letter word. The gangrene to every girl’s girlness. He might as well have eviscerated her stomach, captured the butterflies, and pinned them, wings still fluttering, to the gargling, acid wall. And wasn’t this precisely why she’d sworn never to have a crush on Evan Beverwil? Not because it led to butterfly death on a massive scale, but because it led to total and complete humiliation? She knew that. She knew! So, if she knew so much, why was she standing here, staring after him… whipped beyond all redemption?

  “Bye!” she chirped softly, raising her hand. But he’d already disappeared down the hall. She lowered her hand and squeezed her arm—hard—and stared at the open door. Why not just say “bye” to her dignity?

  Why not say “bye” to her heart?

  The Girl: Petra Greene

  The Getup: Black cotton hip-bikini by On Gossamer, black light-as-air bralette by Hanky Panky, sterling silver, marcasite, and turquoise rings from Venice Beach, and… does pool water count?

  “Come on,” he begged, wrapping his strong arms around her small, towel-draped waist. The veins tensed at his beautifully wrought wrists, winding toward his elbows like vines. His firm torso, still slick with pool water, dissolved against her back, pulsing warmth throughout her entire body. “Just tell me the code.”

  She twisted free and pushed him away, escaping to the playhouse’s wraparound veranda. By day, the castle-like playhouse belonged to her adopted sisters, six-year-old Isabel and four-year-old Sofia—but by night. Petra smiled, too high on anticipation to finish the thought. Paul Elliot Miller, the neighborhood badass with ethereal good looks—like Zac Efron’s long-lost, wickedly sarcastic, eyebrow-and-lip-pierced punk-rock brother—was headed straight toward her. They’d been meeting like this for more than a month—well, not always like this. In the beginning, the most they did was swim, floating on their backs, gazing up at the star-flecked sky, trading each other’s lives like water from glass to glass. Then, after a week of midnights, in the long wavering shadow of the diving board, they kissed—an explosive, primordial kiss that all but pushed them out of the pool and slopped them panting across dry land. Just like that, they just… evolved.

  And there was no turning back.

  Petra smiled as Paul hesitantly ducked to avoid the low-hanging, ornately trimmed Victorian roof, his palm flat against the pale pink ceiling. “You know I ain’t never gonna give it to you…,” she teased, and began to walk backward. By “it,” of course, she meant Isabel’s “top secret” security code, but “it” had a second meaning too—and as far as never giving that up, well… she was far less confident. “So why do you keep asking?”

  “I don’t know.” Planting his thumb-ringed hands on either side of her naked shoulders, he backed her up against the child-size red door. The veranda’s floorboards creaked beneath their damp, bare feet, and he grinned, watching her mouth. “Why do you keep not telling me the code?”

  “I told you,” she attempted a scolding tone, but his mismatched hazel brown and green-blue eyes conspired against her. “I promised Isabel…”

  “Oh, Isabel,” he murmured into her ear, causing her to nearly swoon against the door. The heart-shaped brass knocker dug into her spine. “What’s she going to do?” His warm breath caressed her neck. “Put you in the mush pot?”

  “Sick.” She shrugged him off, cupped her hand to the glowing number pad, and hid her pleased grin behind a dripping curtain of butterscotch blond hair. Ah well, she thought.

  So much for associating mush pots with duck-duck-goose.

  “I saw the first letter,” her partner in breaking and entering cackled triumphantly as she punched in the code, disabling the alarm. With mock annoyance, she sighed, pushing open the door. The achingly beautiful boy stooped, following her inside. “P…,” he pondered, reaching under a ruffled pink floral lampshade. “Wait a sec.” A gentle click. A gloating grin. “It’s not Paul, is it?”

  Petra rolled her wide-set tea-green eyes. “Your ego is…” Taking in the sight of his now-illuminated naked chest, the damp navy-blue boxers clinging to his narrow hips, she breathed, “Out of control.”

  He kicked the door shut, and the delicate porcelain teacups on the table rattled brightly in their saucers. Sofia and Isabel always left the tea set arranged and ready in case their dolls, who they believed came alive at night, might be interested in pretend-drinking tea, pretend-eating cake, and pretend-complaining about their busy days. (That’s what they did, anyway; why should their dolls be
any different?) Little did they know it was their big sister, not the dolls’ own two legs, who relocated their soft, floppy bodies from their respective wooden chairs to the dusty rose cushioned seat by the bay window. And their big sister who used their porcelain cups—leaving them to be discovered in the morning, washed and gleaming in the dish rack. And not only their big sister either. Who would have believed it? Gigantic, grown-up Petra, in their house, with an even more gigantic boy?

  “Would you like some tea?” he inquired with mock seriousness once she returned to the table, scooted aside the miniature chair, and settled into her seat on the hardwood floor. A half-empty bottle of amber liquid sloshed in his firm grip. His hands—all frayed cuticles, bass-calloused fingers, and chipped metallic-navy nail polish—weren’t the type you’d expect to offer tea.

  Then again, it wasn’t tea he was offering.

  “So,” Petra paused, watching him fill her tiny teacup to the very brim. They’d spent ninety-nine percent of the time in the pool making out, and, as admittedly blissful as that had been, she was determined to have some kind of conversation, you know—just to prove they could. Hooking the teacup’s handle with a crooked pinky, she dragged the cup across the table, dipped her flushed face, and boldly lapped a sip. “So,” she coughed, tossed her chlorine-saturated hair back, and sniffed. “How was your first day as a vegan? You fall off the wagon yet?”

  “Are you kidding?” he exclaimed, plunking the diminished whiskey bottle to the floor. “Turning vegan has only been, like, the best move of my life. Do you even know how annoyed my friends are?” Petra laughed, lifting her teacup to her bee-stung lips. “Seriously,” he smirked, shaking his head. “I thought nothing could outdo the time I told them I was a feminist.”

  “You mean…” She lowered her teacup, frowning with concern. “You’re not?”

  “No, I mean, yeah, I mean…” He knocked back his teacup of whiskey without a wince, wiping his mouth with the back of his palm. “You know.”