by Compai
But normal no longer applied.
“Is there something wrong with you?” she sputtered, still gaping at his outfit. “The invitation said to wear pink, not crazy.”
“Uh, sorry,” he scoffed, easing on the brake. “But if I actually spent money on an all-pink clown suit for a Pink Party—something that’s bound to happen never again in my lifetime—then I’d be crazy.”
“I spent nothing,” Janie pointed out with a lift of her eyebrows. “Okay? You can spend nothing without reducing yourself to mom’s tracksuit.” Against her better judgment, she eyed the offending outfit a second time. Of course, the pink terry tracksuit was about five sizes too small, halting above her brother’s inevitably hairy-guy ankles, straining across his broad yet skinny chest, and inching above his narrow waistline. God, he was so gross.
“Stop!” he mock whined, hiding his profile behind his raised shoulder. “You’re undressing me with your eyes!”
“I’m strangling you with my eyes,” she snapped back.
“Come on.” He lowered his shoulder and defended his choice. “It’s Juicy Couture.”
“It’s GAP, Jake.” She narrowed her eyes. “It says so in huge white letters on your ass.”
“Well, whatever the label,” he lisped in a motherly falsetto. “It’s extremely comfortable, I mean… the fabric really breathes.”
“I totally hate you,” Janie grumbled, gazing out the window at the night sky and shadowy, hulking hills. They were on the freeway now. High above, the stars glittered, but rather than surrender to their magic, she was reminded again of Gabrielle Good. The Nylon issue featured this totally obnoxious photo spread of her traipsing around Venice Beach, spaghetti strap slipping off her shoulder, blond hair cascading to her waist, a quote in bold orange font: I’M MORE OF A “DO FIRST, THINK LATER” KIND OF GIRL.Ucchh… Janie unconsciously glared at a blue Toyota in the neighboring lane. Do what first, exactly?
Behind the Toyota’s backseat window, an androgynous Goth kid bugged out his or her liquid-eyelinered eyes and sarcastically waved. Janie snapped from her stupor and blushed, averting her eyes. Not that she’d needed to; Jake was switching lanes. In seconds, they’d coasted down the off-ramp, and he carefully began to turn right, inching ahead to the tick of his blinker.
“What do you think of Gabrielle Good?” Janie ventured once the Volvo groaned onto Sunset. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
“That’s Bellagio, right?” Jake tapped the brake and stopped at the red light. To their left, at the end of a short drive, stretched a giant wrought-iron gate flanked on either side by moon white Spanish arches. Tucked into recessed plinths, pruned potted ivy plants sat like icons in a church. Above the gate, propped into place by ornate wrought-iron swirls, a lantern glowed. The traffic light switched green, and Jake eased into the intersection, waited for a black Bentley to pass, and turned left. As they rolled past the arches and under the gate, a pale light swept through the car.
They’d officially entered Bel Air.
“I don’t know…” Janie gazed at the slowly passing estates—each more spectacular than the last—and bitterly imagined Evan carrying Gabrielle, his beautiful new bride, across that threshold, then that threshold. “I guess she’s pretty.” She scowled as the disgustingly in-love newlyweds paused beneath a blooming arbor to kiss. “In an obvious sort of way.”
“Man, Charlotte looked good,” Jake remarked out of nowhere, recalling the sight of his ex-girlfriend getting into Jules’s Ferrari: her long legs, her perfect ass. “It’s like”—he clenched the wheel, quaking a bit in his cracked-vinyl seat—“you know?”
“But isn’t she, like, twenty-one?” Janie folded her long arms across her tightly bound chest and scoffed. Jake shook his tousled head and grimaced.
“I can’t believe she likes that douchebag!”
“It just seems a little old to go out with some guy who’s still in high school, I mean…” Janie rolled her eyes at the window.
“Whatever.” Jake slouched into his seat, landed his hand at twelve o’clock, and shrugged. “It’s not like there aren’t going to be plen-ty of hot girls at this thing. Hey.” He grinned and glanced his sister’s way, waiting for her full attention. “Is it true Gabrielle Good’s gonna be there?”
Janie leaned against the vibrating passenger door and regarded her pink terry tracksuited brother in disgust.
“Oh shit,” he said, to her surprise. Was he actually going to apologize? But then she noticed the impressed expression on his face, the encroaching thump of a hip-hop base, a gesticulating valet, mini-flashlight in his hand… and held her breath.
“We’re here.”
The Girl: Gabrielle Louise Good
The Getup: Orchid pure silk tank dress with scoop neckline and pleated detail by Doo.Ri, neon pink patent platform pumps by Alexander McQueen, candy pink Trick-or-Treater handbag by POSEUR!!!
“All right, y’all!” Melissa clapped her slender tan hands, manicured as always in Paparazzi Pink, and despite the chaos of cars arriving, music thumping, cameras popping, and pulses jumping, her tiny clap won the attention of at least thirty people. For once, she only wanted the focus of five: Charlotte and Jules, looking like they’d stepped from the pages of Vanity Fair; Marco, adorable in the Dolce & Gabbana pink crushed-velvet tux she’d picked out; Deena, wearing completely unauthorized pink satin genie pants that would seriously have to be addressed later; and Emilio Poochie, flawless as always in his pink rhinestone-encrusted Harry Winston collar and matching Paparazzi polish. Pursing her Glossimer-slathered lips, the impatient diva stared at the freshly mown grass, waiting for her twenty-five nonessential listeners to lose interest. At last they looked away, resuming their excited chatter. “I want your peepers peeled for a red 911 Porsche,” she addressed her entourage in a confidential tone. “If I miss a second of this thing,” she paused to spring a warning finger, “I’m holding y’all responsible, ya hear?”
“Ch’ere is stool you ch’ave requested, Miss Melissa,” interrupted a tallish valet with piercing blue eyes and a thick Russian accent. With a stony formality ill fitting to his youth, he placed a beige plastic stool at her scintillating feet, tipped a bow, and slunk away. Melissa nodded her thanks and grasped Marco’s hand, gathering the ruched skirt of her floor-length rose viscose Donna Karan goddess gown. Evan and Gabrielle were going to arrive any second, and she demanded the perfect, uninterrupted view. And if the rest of these jokers got a perfect, uninterrupted view of her? she softly grunted, mounting the stool in all her goddess-gown glory. Then all the better.
“Oh my lord,” she gaped, eyes settling on a corner of the crowd. Clapping her hands once, she cackled. “Is he for real?”
Marco followed his girlfriend’s twinkling gaze to the end of the drive. “Oh shit!” he doubled over, hiding his laughter in one hand and jerking his knee to his elbow. From a distance, Jake grinned, yanked the right leg of his pink tracksuit to his knee, and slowly pimp-walked his approach. Behind him, his sister rolled her eyes.
“Man.” Melissa’s boyfriend exuberantly bumped his fist, beaming with pride (at this point, almost everyone was laughing, even Charlotte, who tempered her capitulation with a disapproving shake of her head). Flashing a grin that could guide Santa’s sleigh, Marco declared, “You got balls.”
“I don’t understand.” Jules, by far the most tastefully dressed in a classic pink lightweight cotton twill Ralph Lauren suit, furrowed his handsome dark brow, gently tugging his girlfriend’s arm. “What is funny?”
Charlotte’s smile wavered; that she had to explain! “Well,” she began, and Janie couldn’t help but eavesdrop, wondering if at any point she’d acknowledge her hypocrisy. Why, she wished she had the nerve to interrupt. Why is it when Jake intentionally wears stupid clothes, you think it’s hot, and Marco gives him props? Your mom’s eighties dress was ten times funnier than that tracksuit. And yet, oh no—God forbid I wear it. Of course, the hypocrisy wasn’t Charlotte’s. It was the world’s. When a girl dressed for laugh
s, it was like, even if a guy did think she was sexy, he wouldn’t admit it. Meanwhile, members of her own gender reacted with that special mixture of mirth and disgust, like dressing weird was equivalent to public drunkenness. Or involuntary drooling. It wasn’t fair, Janie decided.
“Hey…” A melodious voice diverted their attention. Her honey gold hair, which gleamed in gratitude from a rare shampooing, tumbled freely about her shoulders and fell to her waist. A sheerish cotton pink tie-dyed maxidress billowed about her ankles, exposing in glimpses her perfect, tanned ankles and open-toed espadrilles. Not that Janie noticed this stuff. She was too busing gawking at the guy to her left: hot pink vinyl pants, torn pink Patti Smith t-shirt, black, fuchsia-tipped mohawk. “This is Paul,” Petra smiled, grasping his hand; on his thumb, a mood ring (a mood ring?!) gleamed.
“Omigod,” Charlotte almost tittered, and immediately glanced between Paul and Janie, who fluttered her gray eyes shut, struggling to organize her horror into one actual coherent thought. Pautra was with Pet?! No, no, wait… Traul was with Pépé?!
Arcing an ebony eyebrow, Charlotte sang under her breath. “Awkward!”
“What?” Petra frowned, confused, wounded, and mostly just stoned. “Wait…”
“Hey…” Paul, who’d heard Charlotte and chose to ignore her, recognized Janie at last. “I know you.”
“Know her?” The petite brunette folded her tiny arms over her fitted pink jacquard bodice. “Is that what badass punk rockers who still let Mommy buy their underwear are calling it these days?”
“Charlotte,” Janie rasped, the bile rising in her throat. Oh God. Of course, she’d recognized him. Of course she had! “Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” the smaller girl gaped in exasperation and disbelief. “Come on, Janie. Don’t let him treat you like that.”
“You d-d-don’t,” she stammered, simultaneously swallowing and gasping for air. “It’s-s-s not…”
“What’s going on?” Petra blurted, pulsing with paranoia. Imploringly, she looked at Paul.
“Isn’t it obvi, Pot-tra,” Charlotte scowled, bored already. “These two went out.”
“Wait, what?” he grimaced, staring accusingly at Janie. “No, we didn’t.”
“I know!” Janie grinned in this terrible, face-melting way. I don’t even like you anymore! she wanted to scream. Get over yourself. The world was spinning, actually spinning, like that time at the Santa Monica pier when she was eight and ate too much kettle corn and rode the Ferris wheel and got off and smelled the fish-filled sea and puked on the boardwalk. Everyone was looking at her, their faces alternately baffled and appalled. Don’t cry, she swallowed as her eyes began to burn. Do not…
“Excuse me,” she whispered, pushed past her brother, who was still talking to Marco, and fled. Petra stared after her, her comprehension dawning.
“I’m serious,” Paul insisted earnestly, touching her bare shoulder. “Petra — she’s just this friend of Amelia’s. I barely know her.”
“Whatever,” she grimaced, closing her tea green eyes. Focus, she ordered herself. But she couldn’t. Her feet were blocks of static, her brain was too big for her skull, and his hand… his hand was a tarantula. She shivered, shrugging it off. “I’ll be right back.”
Paul watched in dismay as she ran, chasing after Janie. “This is funny!” some ponytailed douchebag tittered, glancing between him and his MIA girlfriend. “No?”
“Omigod!” Melissa squealed, resnatching their attention and unknowingly saving Jules from a disciplinary shove. Marco struggled to hold her steady as she bounced precariously on her stool. “They’re here!” she gasped, clapping her ring-adorned hands. “They’re here!”
Pop! Pop! PoppityPOPpoppityPOPpopopop! PopPOPop!
Two impossibly long legs swung from the shining red Porsche door, and the paparazzi went ballistic. “Gabrielle!” they cried, falling over one another as the blithe blond starlet stepped to the curb and unfolded into the air, rising like a rare night-blooming flower. Bright lights pulsed at a seizure pace, delicate bulbs tinkled and smashed, and all the while Gabrielle Good exuded hand-on-hip cool, squaring her shoulders, angling her chin, and transitioning from pout to smile with such alien ease, her true mood (did she have one?) was puzzling to fathom. That is, until Evan Beverwil—beautiful and blasé in breezy pink linen—arrived at her side, and she lit up in a way that had nothing to do with cameras. With a new, teasing smile, she batted him lightly with her startlingly fresh pink handbag, and he laughed, touching the small of her back.
Her orchid pink slip dress looked cool and slippery under his hand.
“Aren’t they perfect together?” Melissa choked up with emotion, causing Marco to give the couple a second, scrutinizing glance.
“I guess they’re both blond,” he shrugged.
“No, not her and him,” she grimaced, like his idiocy caused her pain. “Her and the Trick-or-Treat—oh…”
Clattering down the ivory marble stairs that descended from the main house and wearing a strapless pink Versace mermaid gown the shade of pure rage, Vivien Ho was shimmying, shimmying her way. Her raven hair was pulled back from her face—teased, pinned, and sprayed into a rock-hard, brain-size beehive—and as she drew close, her poison gaze pricked like a sting.
“What,” she hissed, grabbing Melissa’s elbow, “is going on here?”
“Nothing.” Her future stepdaughter back-stepped off the stool, wrenching her arm from Vivien’s death grip. Behind her, Marco set his jaw, puffing up like a bouncer.
“Nothing?” Vivien repeated, dripping with contempt. “Girl, you think I’m an idiot?”
“All right,” Seedy intervened, materializing at the scene in a cool magenta Givenchy suit. A tiepin featuring a pink Mentos-size sapphire glittered at his throat. “What’s going on now?”
“She’s doing a celebriteaser!” his fiancée informed her future husband, indicating the flurry of cameras at the far end of the carpet. Seedy clenched his jaw, bolting his daughter with a disciplinary glare.
“I thought we discussed this.”
“But it isn’t fair!” Melissa reverted to her old argument. She couldn’t help it. “Look!” she cried, pointing to the decidedly unlit part of the carpet where the gnome-size Tila Tequila was checking her BlackBerry, a gargantuan magenta metallic east-west top-lock Ho Bag dangling from her arm. “She’s doing one too!”
“Hardly,” Vivien pointed out. “You’re hogging all the cameras!”
“Wait,” Seedy frowned, glancing between Tila and Vivien. “I thought you invited Tila ’cause you two are friends.”
“Of course,” she assured him. “But TeeTee’s got her ego, you know?”
“TeeTee?” her younger rival repeated in disbelief, gaping at her father. “Daddy… she be sellin’ woof tickets, and you know it!”
“Enough!” her father erupted. Melissa watched him press his palm to Vivien’s back and clapped her mouth shut. “We’ll talk about this later,” he informed her sternly.
“Yeah, we will.” Vivien flashed a final, triumphant look, and then, hanging off her fiancé’s elbow, headed back to the house.
“It’s so unfair.” Melissa whimpered, folded into Marco’s arms, and allowed him to rock her gently back and forth. “It’s so…,” she began again. And stopped. Through the crook of Marco’s armpit, dangling from Gabrielle’s arm, she could see it. It’s so worth it, she realized, melting into a smile.
“You’re doing good, baby!” she called, springing off her boyfriend’s body. Quickly, she remounted the stool, keeping her hand on his shoulder for balance and following her precious little one with an anxious, emotional gaze. “You’re doing so good!”
Marco watched in amazement as, bursting with pride, she blew the shiny pink bag a kiss.
The Girl: Miss Paletsky
The Getup: Candy pink strapless jacquard dress with pleat detail and sweetheart neckline by REDUX: Charles Chang-Lima, fuchsia patent leather bow-front flats by Miu Miu, scrunchie: confiscated
The inside of the estate was a different story.
The largest room on the first floor had been cleared out and transformed into what can only be called a pink-frosted palace. On either side of eight French doors, pulled back and tied in blush-pink silk ribbon, curtains of roses, real roses in pinks of every shade, cascaded to the polished white marble floor. In the center of the room, at the top of a triple-tiered white granite fountain, an ice-sculpted Cupid poised his arrow and bow; beneath his frosted feet, water gently trickled and swirled, stirring into motion a fleet of floating pink candles. Still more candles lined the marble mantels and side tables, the tiny flames dancing as if in competition with the boutique chandeliers, which twinkled and twinkled with rose-colored crystal. If twinkling wasn’t your thing, then indoor trees offered shade, their leafy branches strung with gilded bird-cages, where baffled pink parakeets twittered and hopped. Dainty round tables dressed in palest pink linen offered more pink flowers—tidy bouquets of peonies, hyacinth, and tulips—but they were overlooked for greater pink delights. On one table, savory prosciutto-wrapped melon and smoked salmon sandwiches. On another, shrimp cocktails, tuna tartar, and piles upon piles of pink caviar. And then there were sweets: pink lemonade cupcakes and sour cherry meringues, strawberry shortcakes and poached pink pear delight, crystal dishes of pastel pink candy-covered chocolates, pink embossed truffles by French chocolatier Richart, and (for fun) a glittering pink pyramid of chickadee Peeps.