by Compai
“You can always come after the fashion thing. We’ll still be hanging out.” Amelia looked sympathetically at her friend.
“Really?” Janie exhaled with trembling relief. When Amelia saw how quickly her friend was consoled by the option of hanging out after, she removed her arm to smack her on the shoulder.
“All you care about is Paul!”
“No! I really am upset about missing your show. Besides,” Janie pointed out, “it’s not like you’ve said anything about missing my launch party.”
“Point.” Amelia got to her feet and stretched. “You ready to go?”
“Sure.” Janie nodded. But then her eyes widened and she grabbed Amelia’s arm and yanked her behind a skirt rack.
“Ow!” Amelia yelled, rubbing her abused arm.
“Shhhhh . . .” Janie crouched low to the floor, pulling her best friend down with her.
“What’s going on?” Amelia whispered, craning her neck to get a look. “Is there . . .”
She yanked her down again. “Don’t,” she ordered through clenched teeth.
“Janie?”
Janie and Amelia glanced up at the same time. Even though she’d never met him, Amelia knew exactly who it was. He was wearing a distressed blue SEX WAX t-shirt, brownish cords, and black flip-flops. He forked his fingers through his golden hair until it sat like a lopsided thatch of straw. His skin had the smooth luster of a beach stone, and when he smiled, the sandy stubble on his well-defined jaw caught the light. He actually glittered.
“Thought that was you.” He smiled.
“I’m just . . . I dropped something,” Janie explained, making a show of searching the dusty floor. Amelia brushed her hands and got to her feet.
“I’m Amelia,” Janie heard from above.
“Hey . . . Evan.”
“Found it!” Janie swept something invisible into her pocket and got to her feet.
“Okay,” she said, taking Amelia’s hand. She nodded to Evan. “Well. Bye.”
“Wait!” Evan laughed. Janie frowned. She knew Evan only talked to her because of Charlotte, so why talk to her now? She looked into his pool-green eyes for some kind of clue. She looked away. His eyes were far too similar to Charlotte’s for comfort. It was like she was in there, watching.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Evan scratched the back of his ankle with the toe of his flip-flop. “I just . . . um . . . what are you doing here?”
“Shopping,” Amelia replied from behind a nearby rack of tartan kilts.
“No, we are not shopping,” Janie blurted. She could not believe Amelia just admitted to shopping at the Goodwill! “She’s totally joking,” she explained, avoiding Amelia’s confused expression. “We’re donating.”
“Me too,” he replied, hugging a Barneys shopping bag to his chest. “Can I ask you guys a question?” They watched Evan crouch to the ground and dig through the bag. He pulled out a lavender silk Chloé halter and a beautiful Cacharel skirt in white cashmere, discarding both in sad, crumpled heaps. And then, just when things couldn’t get more painful, he pulled out a pair of pants. And not just any pair of pants.
The perfect pair of badass black leather pants.
Amelia stared at Janie with the plaintive look of a starving animal. Janie shook her head. No way would she allow her friend to dig through Charlotte Beverwil’s hand-me-downs. Especially in front of Charlotte’s not-to-be-trusted brother.
“Do you guys know what this is?” Evan pulled a jade green something from the bag by a long, silky ribbon.
“It’s a corset,” Amelia answered, still staring at the leather pants.
“Cool,” Evan replied, smoothing a Goodwill donation form across his knee. He clicked his pen, crossed out the word “vest” and replaced it with “coursette.”
No one bothered to correct his spelling.
“Well, thanks,” he said, refolding the form. Then he re-forked his fingers through his hair and flashed his most devastating, shamelessly dimpled smile to date. Janie picked dirt from her fingernail and stared into space. Evan sighed. It was weird. The more this girl ignored him, the prettier she got.
Why was that?
“Late,” he surrendered with a lift of his chin.
Janie and Amelia watched Evan exit and lope along the front window in the direction of his mud-splattered forest green Range Rover. As soon as he was gone, Amelia clapped her hands and did a little jig. “Yay! I have to try those on!”
“You’re not serious,” Janie gasped in disbelief.
“Did you not see those things?” Amelia spluttered, her disbelief equal if not superior to her best friend’s. “They were perfect!”
“Amelia,” Janie commanded. “No!”
“But why?”
“Um . . . your dignity?”
“Dignity has nothing to do with this!” Amelia fumed, storming for the exit.
“Omigod, ’Melia!” Janie followed her through the exit and out onto the sidewalk. The door slammed behind her with a joyous jangle of bells. “What if someone saw you wearing those pants?! What if they like, recognized them and Charlotte found out?! Don’t you see how humiliating that would be?”
“Omigod,” Amelia groaned. “For who? You or me?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“Yes, it does! See, I don’t care what that girl thinks. You care! It’s all about you!”
“Well, easy for you to say!” Janie defended herself. “ You don’t have to be in class with her. You don’t know what it’s like!”
“Like that’s my fault?!”
“Yeah, actually! IT IS!” Janie exploded on the street corner. “I wouldn’t even be in that class if it weren’t for you!”
Amelia walked until she found her bus stop and plunked herself down. A million posters of Britney Spears plastered the face of a stucco wall. Her front teeth were blacked out with marker. Her foreheads were marked with SLUT or SKANK. The posters curled and cracked in the sun. Janie and Amelia stared ahead, frowning in the face of Britney’s million mutilated smiles.
“If you hate it so much” — Amelia finally broke the silence — “why don’t you just drop out?”
Janie stared at the ground. A clump of tough yellow grass sprouted through a crack in the concrete and she touched it with the toe of her Converse. “We were gonna make that dress.”
“Were we?” Amelia asked. Janie kept staring at the ground. She’d made no plans to make that dress, and Amelia knew it.
“See?” Amelia shook her head. “I got you into this grossness, but the reason you’re still in it has nothing to do with me. It’s you, Janie. You devote yourself to people who reject you.”
“That is not true.” Janie’s eyes smarted with tears.
“Whatever.”
As the Metro rounded the corner, Amelia got to her feet. Within moments, the grumbling bus pulled to the curb, sounding a long, high-pitched whine. The tall vertical doors hissed open and locked with a snap. Janie watched her friend climb the dirty black stairs and clamber along the aisle. She ducked into a seat on the opposite side, disappearing from view. As the bus pulled away, Janie swallowed. A bead-sized lump lodged inside her throat.
For the first time in the history of their eight-year friendship, Amelia hadn’t waved goodbye.
The Girl: Charlotte Beverwil
The Getup: Sacred Ceremonial Garb
Charlotte liked to claim she was born a century late. She imagined herself as a drowsy-eyed courtesan in 1910 Paris, or perhaps a depressive ballerina, or perhaps a rosy-cheeked nun who runs off with a daring young sculptor named Sebastien-Pièrre du Pont. “But you wouldn’t have liked it, Blue Bear,” her father declared in his booming, theatrical voice (he’d invited Charlotte into his study for one of his monthly fireside chats). “All that disease! The bad teeth! The horse shit in the streets! And besides,” he chortled to himself, “a hundred years ago, actors were treated no better than whores!”
Charlotte added “actors treated like whores�
�� to her list of positives.
Toward the tail end of eighth grade, Charlotte’s romance of times past began to show up in her closet: silk stockings and chemises, hunting coats and corsets, velvet capes and lace gloves, a bustle. Not that she ever wore this stuff. Not in public anyway. She dressed up in the privacy of her own room and stared deep into her own reflection. “Sebastien-Pièrre,” she would whisper with all the longing she could muster. “Take me away from this place.” And then she’d press a hand to the mirror, kissing the glass until it fogged.
Seriously.
Of course, as soon as Charlotte landed her first real-life boyfriend, she broke up with the mirror and never gave their time together another thought. But then Jake Farrish stopped calling, and Charlotte reconsidered. With careful, measured movements she’d draped herself in a black widow’s veil from 1905, clutched a rosary from 1906, and faced her first and only dependable love: herself.
“I loved you, Jake,” she sighed, staring deep into her mirror. “But you have parted for another world. And so I say . . . adieu.”
The next day she bounded out of bed, blasted an old Beck CD, and danced until she actually laughed out loud. Her little funeral had done the trick! Now that the relationship was officially dead and buried, that was it. She was free!
Charlotte slipped into her newest Blumarine dress and headed for school with all the sparkle of a freshly corked bottle of champagne. Sometimes, she realized, the future wasn’t so bad.
The Girl: Nikki Pellegrini
The Getup: Paige “Laurel Canyon” jeans, Ella Moss extra-long magenta cotton tank, silver Joie ballet flats, Kate Spade wicker lunch tote
Jake leaned against a tree, cracked open his Physics text, and cursed, quietly, in the key of F. Jake, like many Winston students, studied according to the time-honored Procrastination Method. If you saw him studying at 7:48 a.m., his test, most likely, was at 9:00 a.m. He dropped into his books like a bomb, his heart ticking like a countdown. And the slightest disturbance — from a mild good morning to a locker click to a gentle purr of a far-off Jaguar — could set him off.
As Charlotte pulled her cream-colored Jag into the Showroom, and the purr grew into a full-fledged growl, Jake’s hair-trigger panic exploded. Without thinking, he stopped, dropped, and — clutching his Physics text to his chest — rolled into a nearby hedge. He wished he could say this was the first time he’d ducked for cover.
It wasn’t.
Of course, hidden as he was, Jake could still hear. At the ringing chime that was Charlotte’s laugh, he pushed aside the dense branches, picked a leaf from his hair and squinted. She stood at a distance of twenty feet, leaning against her left fender, her foot against the wheel. The morning sun shone through the flimsy fabric of her flowery dress. A triangle of light glowed behind her knee. Jake swallowed, hard. He had never seen anything so beautiful, so pure. . . .
And so completely surrounded by tools.
Tim Beckerman crouched at her feet, tilting his head and brushing back his sensitive, emo-boy bangs. Tool. Theo Godfrey sat up on the hood, his skateboard in his lap. Tool. Luke Christie pushed up his shirtsleeve, indicating a small space on his bulging bicep. (Luke was forever inviting girls to brainstorm his next tattoo.) Tool. But Charlotte allowed them to crowd her; she even seemed to enjoy it. Jake frowned. Why the hell was she giggling so hard? It’s not like any of those guys were funny.
“Hi, Jake.”
Jake tore himself from the overpowering spectacle of Charlotte to find his new little friend, Nikki Pellegrini, smiling down at him. He blinked.
“I was wondering,” she began in a rush, “would you wanna have lunch in the projection room today? It’s empty on Fridays.” And dark, she thought with a deep, happy blush.
To Nikki’s increasing amazement, she and Jake had been having lunch together for a week straight. It started when he invited her to the roof of the gym so she could educate him a little on the subject of Jewel. At first she thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Nikki talked music for twenty minutes (in addition to Jewel she really liked Sarah McLachlan), and Jake totally listened to what she had to say. When she was done, they gazed down at the glinting river of cars in Coldwater Canyon, the long slope of the hillside, and the cityscape beyond. Never had the wide plain of telephone poles, billboards, and traffic looked so beautiful. After a long pause, Jake cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if the iPod people, like, came alive and leaped down from the billboards, wreaking havoc on Los Angeles?” It wasn’t the kind of line that worked for everyone.
It worked for Nikki.
For the rest of the week, the lunches didn’t stop. Tuesday, they sipped sodas on the roof. Wednesday, they shared bags of chips in the stairwell. And Thursday, in the quiet shade behind the lockers, they split a pastrami sandwich. For some reason, Jake insisted they keep their lunches secret (they ate where they would not be seen). As much as Nikki found the secrecy of their lunches confusing, it also gave her a thrill. She felt special somehow, chosen — like a sacred cow.
“Not now, Nik,” Jake muttered, his eyes still fixed on Charlotte. Why the hell was she scruffing Tim Beckerman’s hair? The whole notion of Charlotte’s hand on Tim’s body made Jake sick.
“Oh.” Nikki panicked. Maybe she should have waited for Jake to invite her to the projection room. Then again, she’d waited all last week — and someone had to ask. The projection room was the perfect spot: dim and quiet, warm and cramped — private. It was where lunching types went to share more than just a sandwich. If her instincts were correct, her hair soft, and her lips freshly glossed (she picked Lancôme Juicy Tube in Caramel Delight), Jake would just have to kiss her.
“You wanna take a rain check?” she asked with a brave smile.
“Huh?” Jake said in a semi-absent way. Before she could respond, he moved past her. Nikki followed him with her eyes, her heart sinking. She knew where he was headed. Charlotte Beverwil wore a sun-drenched flowered shift dress and brown leather boots that laced to the knee. Her hair fell in shiny dark ringlets around her laughing face. Nikki had never seen anyone more gorgeous. As Jake broke into a trot, she wiped the slick of gloss from her lips. The message was all too clear: she was nothing more than procrastination.
Charlotte Beverwil was the big exam.
Jake paced around the Showroom in easy, measured steps. He had to give her ample time to look up and happen to see him. He would happen to see her too, smile, wave, and approach. After two laps, however, Charlotte had yet to glance in his direction. Jake opted for an alternative tactic.
“Hey,” he began, clearing his throat. Charlotte didn’t seem to hear him. She was too busy listening to Joaquin Whitman.
“So I’m staring into this cup of noodles, right? And fuggin’ Ziggy’s jammin’ with all these cellos and shit, and I’m, like, totally trippin’, cause all of a sudden the noodles turn into these craaaazy dreads, and the little dehydrated carrot things are, like, his eyes —”
“Shut up, Whitman,” Luke said. Charlotte tilted her head back and laughed.
“Dude, I’m serious!” Joaquin insisted. “That shit’s, like, instant cup of demon, man.”
The bell rang and the tools dispersed to opposite sides of the lot, unlocking their luxury cars with electric chirps and grabbing books from their places in the trunk. Jake followed Charlotte around her car. She popped open the back, located her notebook, her organizer, her L’Étranger, and dropped them into her black vinyl Chanel shopper.
“Hey,” Jake said again. Charlotte slammed her trunk shut. Her eyes fixed into the depths of her bag; she walked right past him. “Charlotte,” Jake walked to keep up with her. “Are you gonna talk to me?”
“Why should I talk to you?” she flashed. “Do I look crazy?”
“A little,” Jake teased. She pinned him with a warning glance and steamed ahead. “Did I mention you look like an extremely attractive crazy person?” he added, his tone hopeful. If Jake ever realized the error of “taking some time to think,” he rea
lized it now, trailing in the wake of this fed-up, fuming, and furious female.
“Ugh!” Charlotte groaned. “You know what you are, Jake? You’re like that guy in A Beautiful Mind. The guy Russell Crowe thinks is his best friend, only to find out . . . wait! He’s a hallucination.”
Jake knit his eyebrows. “I think you’ve been talking to Joaquin too long.”
“No, I’ve been talking to you too long,” she snapped, shifting the strap of her shopper from one shoulder to the other. “If you’ll excuse me. It’s time for me to take my little Russell Crowe pill and make you disappear.”
“You have a Russell Crowe pill?”
“Of course I don’t. But if I did, I would take it like that.” She snapped her fingers in his face.
“Okay.” Jake unzipped his backpack. “Just wait a second.” Sometime last year, if he remembered correctly, he’d spilled a box of Sweet Tarts and never bothered to clean them out. Sure enough, the Sweet Tarts were still there, buried in the darkest, lintiest corner of the pocket. He pinched one between his fingers. Once upon a time the Sweet Tart was a bright green — now it was more of an algae gray. Jake rubbed the candy on his cords. He reached for Charlotte’s hand.
“Charlotte,” he began, trying to ignore his trembling fingers. Charlotte stared fiercely at the ground. “I’m sorry I’ve been . . .”
“An utter and complete jerk?!” she erupted. Jake’s mouth fell open, and she couldn’t resist a smile, pleased to have finally put him in his place. Little did she know, far from feeling wounded, Jake felt flattered. Excited, even. There is no greater moment in a guy’s life than the transition from “nice guy” to “jerk.” Jake smiled a little himself, cherishing the moment.
“I just . . .” He sighed to communicate the weight of his confession. “I kind of freaked out.”
Charlotte nodded with cold comprehension. “Because of your sister, right?”
“Actually, she had nothing to with it.”
“She didn’t?”
“I’m telling you,” Jake insisted, “I just freaked out. And I thought if I put some, like, distance between us . . . I would feel less freaked out. But instead I got more freaked out.”