Poseur

by Compai

  Charlotte hardly left that tailgate for three weeks. And then, after the last night of shooting, she and Jake took a long walk through the vineyard. It was one in the morning, and the moon was bright and full. The grapevines were bathed in a silvery light and the churned soil was warm beneath their feet. And she could smell it: the grapes, the soil. She could even smell the moon.

  “Charlotte . . . ,” Jake said. He plucked a leaf from a vine. Even in the dark, it was green.

  “Yes?” Charlotte breathed.

  He stepped toward her. The wind moved a piece of her hair across the bridge of her nose. She stared at the ground. If she could pretend to be a klutz, then she could also pretend to be shy.

  Jake reached for her hand. The sound of crickets filled the dark, their chirps evenly measured, as if to mark the seconds of a countdown.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the leaf. He looked her in her eyes. “This is for you.”

  And then that was it.

  But Charlotte made a vow: it wouldn’t be for long.

  Charlotte heard Jake’s car door click, swing open, and close. As she would not allow herself to look directly (way too obvious), she closed her eyes. Maybe she could trick her brain into thinking she was blind and develop supersonic hearing. Then she could just listen to his hotness.

  “Charlotte,” he beckoned. She opened her pool green eyes at the sound of his voice, fluttering all five million of her ink-black lashes.

  Too bad she was wearing sunglasses.

  “Hey,” Charlotte replied (like she’d only just noticed him). Jake walked toward her, a silhouette haloed by sun. A perfect eclipse, she thought, proud of her analogy. Plus, it reminded her — she could really use some gum.

  “Qu’est ce qui se passe?” she asked, crushing a tiny white square between a flawless row of pearly teeth.

  “No, I . . . no spare change,” he apologized, pretending to search his pockets. “Sorry.”

  Charlotte laughed. “ Qu’est ce qui se passe means ‘what’s up.’”

  “ Sure it does.” He raised an eyebrow. Then folded his arms like Mr. Clean. Charlotte smiled. Just the man to take on Miss Dirty.

  “Jake!” Anna Santochi shrieked, emerging from the nearby locker jungle. “Omigod! Your hair!” But Jake barely lifted his hand to wave in response. He was too busy staring at Charlotte, who stood there, shaking her gum like a maraca.

  “Wanna piece?” she asked, once Anna turned and headed for the drinking fountain.

  “Okay,” he replied. Charlotte decided she liked nothing more than to watch Jake chew. He had three small beauty marks along his jaw and one above his eyebrow. She connected them like stars in a constellation, navigating his face like a sailor in search of direction. Jake looked at her and smiled, disappearing a single star into the crease at his mouth. Charlotte sighed, resigning herself. She was hopelessly adrift. She was doomed at sea.

  “You know” — Jake pointed to his mouth — “this stuff has saccharine in it. Causes cancer in rats.”

  “Do I look like a rat to you?” Charlotte smirked.

  “That would explain the impulse to leap on your car and scream like a girl,” he remarked.

  “Whattup, gorgeous!” Someone called in greeting. Probably Jason. Or Luke. Or . . . who cared? Whoever it was, Charlotte ignored him.

  “Maybe we should quit gum chewing and take up smoking,” she suggested, her eyes fixed on Jake.

  “Excellent plan.”

  Charlotte cupped her manicured hand to her mouth. (Anything can be feminine — even acts of expectoration.) When she was done, the gum sat in the shell of her palm like a pearl in an oyster. After a moment’s hesitation, she leaned over, sticking the minty wad firmly to Jake’s skinny-yet-toned arm.

  “What” — he looked at his arm — “was that?”

  “I’m putting you on the patch,” she explained solemnly. “For your saccharine addiction.”

  “Awesome,” Jake responded with an amused grin. “I’m such a badass.”

  Charlotte looked down, feeling proud. All around her, the Showroom rioted with noise: with first day omigods and shutups and noways and youlookamazings and haveyouseenyouknowwhos. Doors slammed, lockers rattled, hands slapped, girls shrieked, radios blared, hydraulics hissed, sub-woofers woofed, sidekicks chirped, trunks kuh-klunked, sneakers squeaked, book bags jostled, keys jingled, engines rumbled, brakes squealed, and someone, somewhere, bounced a basketball: buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom . . .

  But it couldn’t compete with Charlotte’s beating heart.

  Jake and Janie Farrish were “scholarship kids” — an anomaly at Winston. They were also “new kids” — another anomaly. For the most part, Winston recruited students in kindergarten and kept them all the way through twelfth grade. Which isn’t to say relationships began in kindergarten. Dr. Spencer, Bronwyn Spencer’s mother, had delivered fourteen of the sixty students in the sophomore class alone. At one time their mothers had sat in her waiting room, probably even next to one another — perusing the same Peoples, sipping the same Evian, fingering the leaves of the same potted ficus. “Why shouldn’t our children attend the same school?” they were fond of saying. “They were clusters of cells together!”

  Some cliques start at birth. Winston’s start at conception.

  Charlotte, however, was born in a hospital outside Paris. Her mother had wanted the privacy; that’s how famous she was. She was “Georgina Malta” — you might remember her as that incredibly hot chick from that Chris Isaak video. Or was it that Meat Loaf video? It hardly mattered. When it came down to it, she was famous for being Georgina Malta- Beverwil.

  Wife to Academy Award–winning actor, producer, and director William (aka “Bud”) Beverwil.

  Triathlete Bud (aka “Bod”) Beverwil.

  Avid Art Collector Bud (aka “Bid”) Beverwil.

  Legendary Playboy Bud (aka “Bed”) Beverwil.

  Okay, so her dad was a Hollywood icon. That hardly counted for glamour, not in Charlotte’s book. For one: her hayseed parents were from the Midwest, thereby denying her the Parisian lineage she rightfully deserved. For two . . . well, there was no for two. For two you have to move past one.

  And she would never move past one.

  There was no way around it: Charlotte was a die-hard, hard-core, hard-hitting Francophile. She was Paris Bueller. She was Frenchenstein. Everything she touched went the way of oui: her books (Colette, Voltaire), her drink (Orangina, Perrier), her music (Air, Phoenix, the pensive Eric Satie), her good habits (bicycling, aventure amoureuse), her bad habits (cigarettes, ennui).

  And then, of course, there was fashion.

  Charlotte liked to think of herself as the style child of Marie Antoinette and Jean-Luc Godard. Which is to say, she adored cigarette pants and pencil skirts, skinny belts and pearls. Lived for lace collars and tiny puffed sleeves, knotted silk scarves and ballerina flats. And, of course, she absolutely worshipped Chanel.

  And how does this relate to Jake and Janie?

  When you’re this obsessed with France, even insults adhere to theme. Which is to say, Charlotte was responsible for Janie’s highly unfortunate Winston nickname. Not that she ever took the credit. She didn’t have to. Who else could have come up with it?

  Ninth Grade * Intermediate Ballet * 3:58 p.m.

  “Who did you say she looked like?” Laila Pikser asked as they warmed up at the bar. Laila was kind of a ditz, but her arabesques were positively perpendicular.

  “It’s a what, not a who,” Charlotte explained, keeping her eyes to the wall-length mirror. “I said she’s the human version of Centre Pompidou.”

  “Who’s Sandra Pompidoo?”

  “The modern art museum in Paris,” Charlotte sighed, pinning a renegade curl into her loosely coiffed bun. “The ugliest, weirdest, stupidest building in the world.”

  “Oh,” Laila sighed, extending her long leg to the bar. “Can’t you just say she’s ugly and weird?”

  “Boring,” Charlotte sang.

&nb
sp; “That girl Janie’s in my mother’s French class,” Kate Joliet announced mid-plié. Kate’s pliés were a sorry affair, but her French was flawless. Madame Joliet, Kate’s mother, taught Beginning French at Winston. “She told me she thought she was ‘quite beautiful.’ ”

  “No, she did not.”

  “She said she had delicate features and a neck comme un cygne.”

  “Like a swan?” Charlotte choked in translation. “Do swans get acne? I forget.”

  “That’s what I said!” Kate (who always said what Charlotte said) declared.

  “Maybe they get acne but the feathers cover it,” Laila suggested.

  “Anyway,” Kate continued, ignoring Laila, “my mom got all pissy and was like, she’s just going through an awkward stage . . . try to be kind.” She groaned and tipped her head back in despair.

  “Quit checking yourself out in the ceiling mirror, Kate,” Charlotte instructed.

  “I am not!” Kate gasped and stamped her satiny foot. Laila cackled with delight. “Shut up, Laila!”

  “Seriously,” Charlotte agreed. The girls grew quiet, flexing their toes. Occasionally they needed a moment to hate each other. This was one of those moments. To make it less obvious, they watched Mr. Hans push the upright piano from one end of the room to the other. The piano’s tiny wheels chirped like crickets and the wood floor creaked from the strain. From the looks of things, the three girls found the goings-on of Mr. Hans positively gripping.

  “You know what?” Charlotte said, ending their sixteen-second silence.

  “What?” Kate asked, her relief palpable (she hated it when they weren’t talking).

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “What don’t you buy?” Laila paid very close attention to what Charlotte did and did not buy.

  “Awkward stages,” she sniffed. “I don’t believe in them.”

  And seriously, why should she? It’s not like she’d ever experienced one. Not personally. Neither, for that matter, had any of her friends. In terms of stages, they’d graduated from Gerber Baby to Adorable Toddler to Beautiful Child to Stunning Young Woman. And Charlotte fully expected to stay in Stunning Young Woman for another 35 years at least.

  She was sure of it: awkward stages were a myth of some kind. Kind of like unicorns. Except unicorns were pretty.

  “That girl wishes she was going through an awkward stage,” she observed, arranging her arms into a halo. “Even if the pimples did go away, she’d still be attractively challenged.”

  “I know,” Kate agreed. “Unfortunately for her, she’s just — awkward.”

  “A total pompidou,” Charlotte confirmed.

  “Pompi don’t,” Kate tittered in reply.

  Anyone who grew up in L.A. knows something about the La Brea Tar Pits, and this is what they know: The pits are gigantic swamps of disgusting black goo called “tar.” Every day blobs of tar rise through the earth’s crust, gurgle into ancient cracks and crannies until — at long last — they break the surface, creating a swamp or “pit.” When water collects on the surface of the pit, some species, such as elephants, confuse them for drinking holes.

  Long ago, as the elephants wandered around to cool off, they became lodged in the goo. The goo — like quicksand — swallowed them up. Over time, their elephant bones turned into objects called fossils. These fossils stayed inside the tar for thousands of years — like pineapple chunks in a Jell-O mold.

  Janie, like most Angelinos, learned about the tar pits during a second-grade field trip. Her tour guide had a ponytail and addressed her as “ma’am” — even though she was eight. He led her class to the edge of a tar pit, which was fenced off. There was a life-size statue of an elephant in the middle of the swamp. “Here we see the nature of tar in action.” The guide gestured to the statue. “This poor guy is trapped!”

  “But he’s not real,” second-grade Janie pointed out.

  “Yes, ma’am, he is,” the guide informed her. The class pressed their faces to the fence and murmured. They were unconvinced.

  “If he’s real, why doesn’t he move?” Janie asked.

  “Because he’s a smart elephant,” the guide went on. “He knows that if he tried to escape, the tar would pull him down even farther. So he decided to stay completely still. No wonder he’s survived so long!”

  As she got older, Janie realized the guide was just playing around. But she took his lesson to heart. Which is why — seven years later, on the first day of her sophomore year at Winston Prep — Janie stayed inside the Volvo. She decided to stay completely still. As long as she was a statue, she was safe from disaster.

  A few minutes into her vow never to move again, Janie’s cell phone rang. She’d programmed the ring to The Virgin Suicides theme by Air. Janie let the phone ring long enough to imagine herself as Kirsten Dunst — so miserable, so blond. Keeping the rest of her body frozen in place, she moved her hand toward the phone. She wondered how many inches into the tar that would cost her.

  “Hello?”

  “Janiekins!” Amelia squealed on the other line. Janie flinched at her best friend’s intonation of cheer. Way too Bring It On Kirsten for her current mood.

  “Hey.” Janie pushed one finger to her vintage heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses.

  “How’s the first day?” Amelia asked in an exaggerated whisper.

  “Well . . . I don’t exactly know yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t left the car.”

  “O-migod.”

  “Amelia,” Janie confessed. “I think I’m, like, an elephant.”

  “What?” The voice on the other line scoffed. “You’re the skinniest person I know.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Remember that field trip we took in second grade? Well, I realized. Winston is a tar pit. Which makes me the elephant. Which means . . .”

  “Okay, stop right there,” Amelia ordered. “You officially sound insane.”

  “I’m not insane,” Janie replied in a calm tone. “I’m trying to survive.” She heard the sound of Amelia slapping her forehead.

  “I’m really sorry,” Amelia groaned. “But this kind of behavior calls for drastic measures.” And then, before Janie could tell her best friend she was just kidding, Amelia screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “Paul!”

  As the sound of that name filled her ear, Janie gasped into the phone. “Amelia, no!”

  “Paul!” she called out again.

  “No, no, no!” Janie panicked. “Don’t do this — I hate you!”

  “What?” Paul Elliot Miller’s gravelly voice surfaced on the other line. He sounded confused.

  He also sounded gorgeous.

  Paul’s nose was delicate, lightly freckled. His nostrils, ever-so-slightly flared, gave him the haughty-yet-vulnerable quality of an English Lord — a cute English Lord, not one of those pasty, chinless ones. Paul had one bluish green eye and one greenish-brown eye, just like Kate Bosworth (a comparison Paul did not enjoy). He also had a small silver piercing in his left eyebrow and another one on the right side of his lower lip. His hair, like his moods, forever changed color, from silvery white to electric green to ink-stain blue. And still. No amount of piercings, eyeliner, bad posture, or Manic Panic could disguise the obvious truth: Paul Elliot Miller was a pretty boy. He could not, despite his efforts, look any other way. He even paid his friend Max to punch him in the face — right there in the parking lot of the Whole Foods in Brentwood — and despite a broken nose and a black eye, Paul’s face healed without a trace of permanent damage. Yes, there was the hairline scar across his upper lip — but that was (embarrassingly) from chicken pox.

  Besides, the scar only drew attention to his luscious swollen mouth, which was (despite the nonstop profanity it spewed) the prettiest thing about him.

  For a long time, Amelia kept the undeniable fact of Paul’s beauty a secret. Whenever he entered conversation, she kept the details strictly business. “Paul thinks he’s God’s gift to the guitar,” Amelia
would say with a roll of her eyes. Or, “Paul’s work ethic totally sucks.” Or, “Paul has this new obsession with the Pixies, which is doing really cool things for our sound.”

  Not until the two girls had run into him on Melrose did Janie finally discover the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me he was so cute?” she gasped, once she and Amelia were alone.

  Amelia made a face, like are you kidding me? “I can’t look at the guys like that,” she stuck out her tongue. “They’re like my family. Besides,” she added after a considered pause, “I wouldn’t want to do anything. You know. To risk the band.”

  Janie shook her head in slow disbelief. Sometimes it was hard to believe Amelia’s discipline. It really was.

  Since the Melrose encounter, she’d seen Paul only twice: once when he swung by Amelia’s house to look for his keys, which he found behind her nightstand, and once when Janie sat in on band practice. Of course, she asked to sit in again, but Amelia demurred. A few days later, when Janie asked again, her best friend sighed. “It’s kinda hard to focus with other people around.” Amelia’s confession came as something of a shock (since when was Janie “other people”?). At the same time, she understood (what did she know about being in a band?). So Janie made do with what she had. She rationed her memories of Paul the way Pilgrims rationed corn to last the winter. Every night, as she gazed at the moon and star glow-stickers on her ceiling, she’d choose just one detail to think about. Monday: the way he hooked his lost keys to the silver chain at his narrow hips. Tuesday: the way he sucked the small hoop piercing on his full lower lip. Friday: the way he lifted his threadbare black t-shirt to scratch the taut stretch of skin above his square-studded leather belt. Just when she was down to her last two or three memories, just when she thought she was about to starve to death, Amelia put him on the phone.

  “Hello?” he growled a second time. Janie could hardly breathe. After her period of depravation, the mere sound of Paul’s voice was serious sensory overload.

  “Hey, Paw!” she croaked, before literally biting her fist. Hey, Paw? What? “How’s art school? Do you guys, like, wear berets?”

  “Who is this?” he asked, sounding confused.