by Compai
The Getups: Handmade party frocks (to be revealed)
The “Tag — You’re It!” party was set for Saturday night, which meant (unless you were planning to look like a total slob) primping prepped on Tuesday. Everyone knows the first rule in looking good is booking good. The coolest girls at Winston secured appointments with The Pore House, the trendy new spa on Robertson Boulevard. From buffing to blowouts, pedicures to paraffin, seaweed to salt scrubs, teasing to tweezing to professional squeezing, The Pore House promised everything short of a whole new skin, for a price that stopped just short of your soul.
And yes. That was debatable.
As a thrifty alternative, Janie convinced Jake to drop her off at Bloomingdale’s. She spent Saturday morning floating from makeup station to makeup station like a nectar-binging butterfly. She lacquered her lashes in Lancôme, shimmered her cheeks in Chanel, boosted her brows with Benefit, and plumped up her pout with Prada. She even fortified her follicles with Frederic Fekkai (whatever that meant). By the time Jake picked her up, Janie’s face boasted $360 worth of makeup. And (unless you count the mint gumball she bought at the Origins counter) she hadn’t spent a dime.
Leave it to Petra to spend even less.
“I’m so excited you’re having friends over,” Heather Greene said as she breathlessly arranged their formal dining room table. Already, she’d laid out every piece of her wedding silver and china. Their crystal wineglasses blossomed intricately folded linen napkins. The Arte Italica candleholders sprouted smooth white candles. Everything floated on lily pads of antique lace. “It’s so nice to have people over,” she remarked, polishing an impossibly tiny fork.
The Trend Set voted Petra’s house as the most convenient place to congregate before the party. Petra had been too stoned to refuse. As she watched her mother flit about the table, she realized she’d made a terrible mistake.
“Why are you putting out crab forks, Mom?” Petra could barely contain her frustration.
“Aren’t they darling?” Heather tenderly placed each fork next to a pair of hand-painted chopsticks. “They should have a chance to get out and breathe.”
“Mom,” Petra pleaded, glancing out the window. The others would be arriving any minute. It was one thing for her mother to discuss her fork’s respiratory health in front of her own daughter, but in front of them? Petra felt the blood drain from her face. Her Potential for Embarrassment Quotient was through the roof.
“You know what we need?” Heather remarked, gazing about the gilded rose-and-cream room. “Fresh cut flowers.”
“Mom! These kids are gonna be here for, like, ten minutes. You really don’t have to do all this!”
Heather stared at the table, patting her hair like a bird that might fly away.
“Mom!” Petra covered her eyes with her hands. “Do you have any idea how weird and, like, embarrassing this is?!”
“How dare you talk to me in that tone!” Her mother blew up. Petra swallowed, storming from the table. She ran upstairs to her bedroom, the plush white carpet muting the thud of her angry footsteps. And still, for all her dramatics, she preferred it when her mother yelled. At least she sounded like a real parent and not some zonked-out mental patient.
Petra slammed her bedroom door. She yanked her underwear drawer open, clawed apart a chaos of cotton bras, underwear, and lavender sachets, and located her stash, which was kept inside a dented Sleepytime tea tin along with her collected seashells, Devendra Banhart ticket stubs, and a photo-booth picture of her parents in their twenties. They were laughing.
When she first starting smoking, in eighth grade, she’d been paranoid about getting caught. She took every possible precaution. She rolled up damp towels and shoved them beneath her locked door. She sealed her weed in film canisters and hid them in bottles of shampoo. She lit incense and stocked her room with munchies, preventing future (and possibly incriminating) runs to the kitchen. But then one day she got lazy. Joaquin, Theo, and Christina Boyd came over, and they started a round of shotgun. She started the game, exhaling a stream of smoke into Theo’s mouth. Theo inhaled, smiling like a toad. As he turned toward Christina, Petra glanced at the doorway. Her heart skittered like a stone.
Her father had been standing there the whole time.
“Now I know why you’re not picking up your phone.”
“What do you want?” Petra snapped. She was weirded out by the amused expression on his face. It was like, hello. She was doing drugs under his own roof. Wasn’t he supposed to be pissed?
“What do I want, what do I want . . . ,” he began, his eyes resting on Christina. For the first time, Petra noticed the sheerness of Christina’s paisley cotton blouse. Her father ran his hand around and around his trendy shaved head. “Do you know where the remote is?” he asked at last. “Lola can’t find it.”
“No,” Petra answered. “I don’t watch TV, remember?”
Her father nodded absently, shutting the door with a quiet click. Petra’s shotgun buddies collapsed to the floor, clutched their sides, and rolled with laughter. “I don’t watch TV!” Joaquin gasped, his red-rimmed eyes watering with joy. Christina crammed her face into a pillow and cackled.
Petra didn’t think it was funny.
While her mother was undoubtedly polishing another crab fork, Petra stepped outside and lit up. Her bedroom balcony, which she’d decorated herself, was the only place in the house where she felt truly safe. The balcony was as big as some bedrooms. Watered silks fell along the walls and oversized Moroccan pillows cluttered the floor. Jewel-encrusted lanterns dangled from the ceiling, and at night the lanterns glowed their amber light, illuminating the needles of a nearby pine.
Petra rested her pipe on the banister and peered into her neighbor’s vast yard. One night in late July, she’d glimpsed a guy her age strip down to his birthday suit and dive into the neighbors’ pool. He swam one lap and got out, squeezing water from his dark hair. He looked up at the moon, still and pure and perfect as a statue. She couldn’t understand it. Her neighbors, Miriam and George Elliot Miller, were pretty old — in their seventies at least. What the hell were they doing with a Naked Moon God in their backyard? Petra didn’t have the nerve to ask. After all, what if she’d hallucinated the whole thing? What if she really had fried her brain, just like everybody said?
Petra’s cell phone rang and interrupted her thoughts. She stared at the small flashing screen and frowned. She was supposed to do something now. What was she supposed to do?
“Hello?”
“Does everyone’s phone need beauty sleep but mine?!” Melissa barked from the other end.
“What?”
“This is the fourth time we’ve called,” Charlotte took over in calmer tones. “We’ve been on the sidewalk outside your house for, like . . . ten minutes?”
“What are we supposed to do out here?!” Melissa’s voice squawked in the background. “Sell lemonade?!”
Petra peered around the pillar at the edge of her balcony, craning her face around the ivy-covered south wall. “Over here!” she cried. The three girls looked around. She could see them squinting through the trees, using their hands as visors. They looked like a troop of tiny saluting soldiers. Petra giggled, flinging her arm in greeting.
Melissa snatched the phone.
“Are you gonna let us in? Or are we supposed to get to you by magic carpet?”
“Sorry!” Petra yelled. Melissa winced, holding the phone from her ear.
Petra punched the OPEN GATE button and ran downstairs. “What’s going on?” her mother called from the living room, removing her noise-cancellation headphones. (She was listening to her Deepak Chopra tapes.) “Why are you running?”
“Didn’t you hear the doorbell?” Petra asked. “Where’s Lola?”
“What do you mean, where’s Lola?” Heather fluttered with panic. “She’s not picking up Sofia and Isabel?!”
Petra flung open the double French doors to a crowd of faces: Melissa, Charlotte, Janie, Lola, Sofia, Isabel, and
some random guy with a Thai takeout flyer. They looked like a mob of angry villagers except, instead of torches, almost everyone carried a bulging shopping bag.
“Oh, Lola!” Heather pressed her hand to her heart. “Petra had me so worried.”
“Mom,” Petra pleaded in her best please shut up tone. Sofia and Isabel writhed away from their nanny and clutched Petra’s legs. They turned around, peering shyly at the three mysterious older girls.
“Come in,” Petra said as Melissa stepped inside. Charlotte glided in her wake, and Janie followed soon after. Petra accepted the Thai takeout flyer, closed the door, and repeated her mantra: No one can tell you’re high, no one can tell you’re high, no one can tell you’re high.
“Finally.” Melissa pushed her gold Roberto Cavalli sunglasses to the top of her head. She punched something into her metallic-pink sidekick. Emilio Poochie watched with interest from the crook of her arm.
“Look at the dog,” Sofia whispered.
“Are you famous?” Isabel asked.
“Not yet,” Melissa replied, bending to shake Isabel’s tiny hand. “I’m Melissa.”
Sofia stared into her shimmering cleavage, mesmerized. “OOoo . . . ,” she breathed, pressing Melissa’s boob like a doorbell.
“Sofie!” Petra’s mother gasped while Charlotte snickered into her wrist. Heather lifted Sofia with her thin arms, balancing her on her hip.
“I am so sorry,” she clucked, widening her eyes.
“It’s fine.” Melissa shrugged. Marco pulled stunts like that all the time, and he didn’t have the excuse of being four.
“You have a lovely home,” Charlotte said.
“Yes,” Janie agreed, looking around. Her parents loathed houses like Heather’s, and Jake and Janie were trained to agree. A minute inside the house, however, and Janie felt her hate subside into something like appreciation. Who cared if it was a McMansion? It sure beat a Happy Meal box in the Valley.
“I love the yellow wallpaper,” she added.
“Well, thank you!” Heather smiled brightly. “Would you girls like some apple pie? I baked it myself.”
“We actually have to go, Mom,” Petra interrupted, pushing the girls toward the east wing stairs. Melissa turned around. She hadn’t seen her own mother for almost six years. And still. Even when she was sober, Brooke was never the type to bake pies. Melissa didn’t think moms like that existed. She watched Heather with a tourist’s sense of wonder.
“Have fun, girls!” Heather chirped, ushering Sofia and Isabel into the kitchen.
“It was nice meeting you!” Melissa called, following Petra upstairs.
“Sorry about that,” Petra groaned, kicking a wad of laundry under her rumpled futon. Melissa stared at Petra with contempt. Only kids with perfect, pie-baking moms had the nerve to complain.
“I like your mom,” she bristled. “She’s really nice.”
“Oh,” Petra said, pausing. “Yeah. She is.”
Charlotte brushed the arm of Petra’s overstuffed velvet chair and sat down. “Were you smoking pot?” she asked with a suspicious sniff.
Petra’s face froze. “What?”
“Oh relax,” Charlotte sighed. “I was just gonna ask if I could partake un petit peu.”
“It’s on the balcony.”
“Oh goodie,” Charlotte said, retrieving the pipe. She held her platinum Zippo to the bowl and lit up. “Anyone want?” she asked, exhaling with the delicacy of a teakettle. Charlotte could make freebasing crack look like a subtle feminine art.
“I don’t do drugs,” Melissa snapped.
“Janie?” Charlotte asked, ignoring the previous comment with a dainty cough.
“Not today,” Janie replied, as if on any other day she’d be game. The truth was, despite her increasing curiosity, she’d never tried pot before. And she didn’t want her first time to be with them. What if she did something stupid?
“Okay,” Melissa said. She shook her watch as if to wake it. “It’s five o’clock.”
“Petra?” Charlotte asked. “You have the pirate’s chest?”
Petra disappeared into her walk-in closet and emerged with a medium-sized, jewel-studded mahogany box with four brass padlocks. The chest — a prop from Pirates of the Caribbean — was a gift to Petra’s father from a powerful Hollywood talent agent (Dr. Greene had squeezed her in for an “emergency” lip injection the night of the premiere). As Petra lowered the chest to her bedroom floor, Janie’s hands went cold and clammy. She’d been dreading this moment all week.
Melissa flipped open her glittery white notebook and jotted something inside.
“Alright,” she began, “as you know, we’re here to exchange the outfits we designed for each other. And we agree to wear them with pride. . . .”
“Or at least a good imitation of it,” Charlotte clarified.
“Exactly,” Melissa agreed. “As extra insurance that we do not back out, we agree to lock the outfits we’re currently wearing into the pirate’s chest. That way, we have no choice but to wear each other’s designs. Unless you wanna go naked.”
“Okay, do we have to do this?” Janie blurted, folding her arms across her flat chest. “I mean, shouldn’t we just trust each other?”
“Trust is something you earn over a long period of time. And we don’t have time for time.” Melissa crossed her arms and pinched the corners of her shirt. “Now strip.”
The three girls pulled off their tops with the ease of Las Vegas showgirls. Charlotte tugged the silk string of her fuchsia disco skirt until it split apart, sliding to the floor. Petra and Melissa shimmied out of their jeans, lifting their dainty feet like ponies. Charlotte ran her slender fingers under the waist of her light pink Hanky Panky thong, making sure it lay flat on her hips. Janie couldn’t help but notice her nipples through her matching pink La Perla pushup bra. She blushed and looked away, only to be bombarded by the more overwhelming sight of Melissa’s enormous double-Ds. Petra’s perfect in-between-B-and-Cs were cradled by light blue cotton, a simple United States of Apparel number Janie recognized. She happened to be wearing the same one. The bra looked different on her. A lot different.
“Hello?” Melissa said. “We don’t have all day.”
Janie realized she was the only one left dressed.
“Sorry,” she whispered, slipping her arms inside her red t-shirt. She could feel the eyes of the other girls as she lifted her shirt over her head. In the confines of her cottony cave, Janie felt safe. If I can’t see them, they can’t see me, she reasoned like a two-year-old. But she couldn’t stay in there forever.
Her head emerged from her t-shirt to find the other girls intent on folding their clothes. If they had been watching her, then they lost interest pretty fast. Janie exhaled, unsure if she felt relieved or insulted. She quickly folded her t-shirt and jeans and placed them inside the trunk, careful not to topple the other girls’ piles.
Petra closed the trunk, turning the locks with four separate silver keys. She handed one key to each girl. In order to unlock the trunk, they’d have to be together.
“Okay!” Charlotte tried to smile. “Let’s see what we have to wear!”
“You mean, get to wear,” Melissa corrected. But even she didn’t sound convinced.
They each reached into their shopping bags. The stiff paper crinkled like the sound of distant fireworks.
Rodeo Drive was brighter than ever. Lampposts bathed the smooth sidewalk with a milky glow. Strings of white lights wound around palm trees, and bright beams shot into the indigo night sky. Janie looked out the tinted window of the Beverwils’ Bentley Arnage and sighed. Her dad complained about city lights because they blocked out all the stars. But she didn’t care. What good were stars on a night like tonight? What wish could they grant that hadn’t just been granted?
Janie was wearing a floor-length, empire-waisted Emanuel Ungaro halter dress in pale yellow watered silk. The dress belonged to Charlotte’s mother, who had danced it to shreds before retiring it to a hanger in the mid-eighties
. After more than two decades’ worth of gravity and neglect, the delicate halter straps finally gave up and snapped; Charlotte spent Janie’s twenty dollars on a length of black silk ribbon to replace them. The leftover ribbon she sewed into delicate rose buds, tying the ribbon over and over, pulling the loops into petals, feeding her needle into the base, securing hard knots. In the end, the ribbon produced six black roses, all in various stages of bloom. Charlotte sewed one to the end of one strap, two to the end of the other, and three in a cluster at the waist. The result was so beautiful, Charlotte herself couldn’t resist trying it on. As she looked into the mirror, she came to the same sad conclusion she always did: she would never, ever borrow her mother’s clothes. She was just too short. Every dress Charlotte tried on made her look like the Wicked Witch of the West: “I’m melting! Melting! Ooohhhh . . . !”
But with Janie it was different. The buttery-yellow silk clung to her torso like a mold. The narrow skirt spilled from her nonexistent hips and cascaded to the floor, and the delicate halter straps showed her creamy shoulders to perfection. The dress transformed Janie from a pillar of low self-esteem to a high-performance fashion machine.
As the storm-gray Bentley pulled to the curb, Janie smiled at Charlotte for the eight millionth time. “Thank you so much,” she said.
“Okay!” Charlotte cut her off. “Stop thanking me.”
“Sorry,” Janie whispered.
A crisply dressed valet opened the car door, and Janie lifted the skirt of her dress, presenting one long leg to the street. She turned, showing off the length of her slender, bare back. The silky black roses bounced between her delicate shoulder blades. Thank you my ass, Charlotte thought to herself. If Janie was so damn thankful, then why’d she dress Charlotte like a slap in the face? Charlotte glared into the lap of her “dress.” It looked like Marilyn Manson had chewed up a British flag and yacked it all over her body. And the needlework! The needlework was appalling. Janie might as well have put it together with staples. (It never occurred to Charlotte that “messy needlework” was the whole point.) She fingered the chain of safety pins around her neck, her eyes bright with rage. Still, the angrier she got, the more amazing she looked. After all, nothing compliments a punk frock quite so well as a pissy mood.