Poseur

by Compai

  “That’s mine,” Janie remarked, retrieving the stowaway.

  Once the clothes were separated and returned to their rightful owners, the four girls folded them again. But they seemed to be taking their time. Several minutes later, when Seedy Moon shuffled into his living room for a relaxing round of Extreme Chess, they were only halfway done.

  “Well, hello there!” he beamed in greeting. At the sound of his voice, Charlotte, Petra, and Janie dropped their clothes and froze. Seedy Moon was one of the fiercest voices in rap. And yet here he was, greeting them like Mister Rogers.

  “I’m Melissa’s dad,” he explained to them, then winked at his daughter. “I suppose these are your colleagues?”

  The girls looked at each other.

  “We’re sort of former colleagues,” Charlotte explained after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Former?” Seedy waited for an explanation.

  “The band broke up, Daddy,” clarified Melissa.

  “I see,” he replied, taking a seat on his Louis Boy. He folded his strong hands in his lap and frowned. His Bugs Bunny slippers stared their one-eyed button stares. “Anyone wanna tell me what happened?”

  “We don’t have anything in common,” Janie offered, checking with the other girls. They nodded their approval. “We fight, like, all the time.”

  “We’re just really different people,” Petra explained. “We . . .” She looked to Charlotte for assistance.

  “We clash,” Charlotte offered. The other girls murmured in agreement. “Clash” was exactly the word.

  Seedy drummed his bejeweled fingers on his knees. “Clash, huh?” He pressed his lips together and nodded.

  “Oh no.” Melissa shook her head with dawning comprehension. “Daddy . . . don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” Seedy feigned innocence. He smiled at Janie, lifting his chin to the corner of the sweeping room. “See those two bamboo sticks over there?”

  “Daddy!” Melissa slapped the shag carpet with her hand. “No!”

  Seedy ignored his daughter. “Will you bring them over here?” he asked Janie. Janie got to her feet, sending Melissa a quick, trepid glance. What was going on?

  She handed Seedy the two bamboo sticks.

  “Great,” Melissa muttered.

  Her father clutched the bamboo sticks in either hand. “Here we have two bamboo sticks. Both exactly the same.” After a pause, he hit the sticks together. “This is the sound they make. Let’s try it again.” He hit the sticks together a second time. “Look at that. Same sound. Same sticks. Everything exactly the same. Do you girls find that interesting?”

  The girls stared in perplexed silence.

  Melissa balled her strawberry shirt into her face and whimpered. “You’re supposed to say no.”

  “No,” the three other girls chanted.

  “Good.” Seedy nodded, lowering one stick to the floor. “Now,” he continued, still holding the other, “pick something in this room. Anything you want.”

  After some hesitation, Charlotte pointed at his Grammy.

  “ No, not that!” He winced. “Something else.”

  Petra pointed out the white porcelain tiger in the middle of the long glass coffee table. Seedy nodded his approval. He paced a slow circle around the tiger, the bamboo stick behind his back. And then, before anyone knew what was happening, he whipped the stick through the air. There was a sudden slicing noise followed by an explosive crash. The girls gasped and ducked for cover.

  The tiny tiger smashed to smithereens.

  “NOW!” Seedy’s voice boomed. “Is that tiger the same as he was before?! No he is NOT! When similar objects come together, what happens? Nothing. But when different objects come into contact, what happens? CHANGE happens! Things are destroyed and things are created! So!” He began pacing the room. “How does this relate to you?”

  No one spoke.

  “Y’all say you don’t get along?! You think Eminem would be half as good if he and Kim got along? You think my platinum album Mo’tel would have been the indisputable masterpiece it is, if me and Slick Willi hadn’t experienced a few . . . creative differences?”

  In one lightning-quick move, Seedy unzipped his black Adidas tracksuit jacket and revealed his bare chest. The liner notes to Mo’tel weren’t exaggerating. Slick Willi had shanked Seedy with the dull edge of a can opener during a quarrel over the cello track on “Kim Chee Killa.” The scar arced across Seedy’s rock-hard abdomen like an angry comet.

  “You girls need to cherish this fight!” he bellowed. “You need to love the hate! You need to clash and clash and clash again. Why? Because it is out of conflict that creativity is born!”

  At that, Seedy re-zipped his jacket, concealing his chest (and past) from view. “All great art,” he concluded with a long, stern look, “is born of conflict.”

  “Totally,” Petra whispered after an awkward pause.

  “That was” — Charlotte cleared her throat — “moving.”

  “Yeah,” Janie agreed.

  “Are you done?” Melissa flared.

  “Yes,” her father replied. “But just one more thing.” Seedy frowned at the floor, choosing his words carefully. “Conflict,” he paused, “doesn’t always mean you hate each other. Sometimes . . . deep down? It means you love each other.”

  The girls looked at each other for the first time since arriving at Melissa’s door. A meaningful silence passed between them.

  “No,” Charlotte confessed at last, “I’m almost a hundred percent sure we hate each other.”

  “Definitely,” the three girls concurred.

  “Okay,” Seedy conceded. “But just ’cause you hate each other, doesn’t mean you have to give up on The Trend Set. Right?”

  “I guess not.” Charlotte shrugged. The other girls nodded in bewildered agreement.

  “You won’t regret it.” He smiled, then shuffled toward the wall and punched the button on the intercom.

  “Yes, Mr. Seedy,” a nasal voice crackled from the speaker.

  “Yo, Zelda, whassup,” he replied, scratching the back of his head. “Uh . . . we got something broken in the living room? I know. Yeah. No idea how it happened, no. Aw, come on, Z . . . would I lie to you?”

  While Sofia and Isabel played in the living room with Emilio Poochie, the members of the newly restored Trend Set decided to meet in the Moons’ kitchen and discuss the future of their fashion label. First, they created specific positions based on their strengths. After some discussion, Melissa drew up an official chart.

  Once the positions were official, the girls decided to make a meal to celebrate. Petra sliced up every vegetable in the house: red, green, and yellow bell peppers, bright baby carrots, fresh cucumbers, and crisp jicama. Janie whipped up a special yogurt-dill dip. Melissa air-popped an enormous bowl of popcorn, and Charlotte made her dessert du jour: crêpe and nutella “sushi” rolls. The four girls stared at the banquet in front of them, salivating for a taste. They were starving! But the rule was: no eating until they came up with a name for their label. After all, they couldn’t just call it THE TREND SET forever.

  “Okay,” Janie said after five minutes of serious thought. “This might sound a little crazy. But what if we just go ahead and name the label . . . “Poseur”?

  “What?” Melissa almost choked.

  “I don’t know,” Petra considered, shrugging her shoulders in consent.

  “You don’t know?” Melissa gasped. “That word is an insult! I mean — it makes us look bad.”

  “I know.” Janie nodded. “But, you know, if someone uses a word to insult you, you can’t let it get to you. You gotta, like, take that word as your own. Once you own your enemy’s word and act like it’s something to be proud of — you take away its power.”

  “Beautiful speech,” Charlotte oozed. “Bravo, Pompidou.”

  At the sound of that word, Janie flushed with the old, familiar anger. But then she realized: Charlotte was only testing her point. If her theory about “Poseur” had any meri
t, then it would have to apply to “Pompidou” too. She turned to face Charlotte, her supposed greatest enemy, and smiled. For the first time, Charlotte hadn’t intended Pompidou as an insult. She intended the word as a gift.

  “Okay, okay . . .” Janie laughed, pumping her fist in mock-triumph. “I am Pompidou!” And that was all it took. At last the word belonged to her.

  “I guess I’m Harlotte,” Charlotte announced with a celebratory finger-swirl.

  “I am Petrafried!” Petra joined in. The three girls laughed, turning their dancing eyes toward Melissa.

  “And I am not participating.” She frowned. “ That said: Janie . . . I see your point. My dad calls what you’re talking about, um . . . he’s calls it . . .”

  “Appropriating the language of the oppressor!” Seedy’s voice echoed down the hall.

  “ Thank you, Daddy!” Melissa replied in a teasing lilt.

  “So then” — Janie smiled — “are we down?”

  Everybody waited as Melissa unsnapped the smooth Tiffany blue leather case that contained her Tiffany gavel. She raised the small hammer into the air.

  “All for sticking it to those who dare call us names!” The silver flashed. “Say here!”

  “Here, here!”

  “All for taking their word and making it ours, say here!”

  “Here, here!”

  “All for naming our label POSEUR because we don’t give a frying duck!”

  “Frying duck?”

  “Just say ‘here’!”

  “Here, here!”

  Melissa brought the gavel down, tapping it four times — one tap for each girl.

  “Wait,” Janie interjected the ensuing whistles and cheers. “Does this mean we have to make t-shirts with POSEUR across the chest?”

  The four girls looked at each other and collapsed into gasping guffaws. “Totally!” Melissa shrieked.

  “What kinda noise was that?” Seedy Moon popped his head into the kitchen. At the sight of his mock-stern face, The Trend Set tried to contain their laughter. But they couldn’t.

  “You ladies are getting along!” Seedy shook his head in faux dismay. “After everything I told you!”

  “No, Daddy.” Melissa covered her smile and shook her head.

  “We are not getting along,” Charlotte added.

  “We hate each other,” Petra whispered.

  “To the core,” Janie squeaked.

  “Yeah, excellent work, ladies.” Melissa’s father continued shaking his head. “Keep it up.”

  At that, Seedy Moon headed down the hall, leaving the girls alone. Melissa looked at Janie. Janie looked at Petra. Petra looked at Charlotte. All four of them were smiling. They smiled because they understood what they didn’t have the nerve to say: how you look can be the opposite of who you are. What you say can be the opposite of what you mean. And who you think you can’t stand . . . can turn out to be exactly who you need.

  They smiled because, knowing this, they could admit what no one else could:

  They were just a bunch of poseurs.

  October 4, 10:13 p.m.

  Fellow Winstonians, Fashionistas, and Fabulazzi:

  Okay, so it’s official. Our grand experiment in over-the-topness, our daring exercise in ’til-you-can’t-stopness (aka the “Tag—You’re It” party), has come to its inevitable tragic end. No doubt some of y’all are lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what more there is to life. Well, to you we say: chillax. There are more parties on the horizon, bashes so bananas they make yellow the new black. Why? Our up-and-coming label has a brand-new name. What is that name, you ask?

  POSEUR.

  Yeah, you read that right.

  We chose POSEUR ’cause (admit it!)—it’s hard to always “be yourself.” How’re we supposed to be ourselves when we’re still figuring out who that is? So, if you think you’re one thing one day, but change your mind the next, we at POSEUR say: that’s cool. And maybe even chic.

  Yours with a cherry on top,

  Melissa, Janie, Charlotte, Petra

  P.S. Our wonderful but VERY SHY label name winner is currently anonymous. So, if you or anyone you know has any leads to who this person is, please let us know. We’d hate for this amazingly perfect person to wander around without receiving their due reward.…

  In the words of William H. Shakespeare,

  “all the world’s a runway,”

  and it’s high time you played your part.

  So who are you, anyway?

  You can be a Janie, a Charlotte, a Petra, or a Melissa . . . or even a crazy combination of all four. (Hmm . . . are you a Petrottemelanie?)

  Whatever you decide, turn the page and make their looks your own. New York City fashion label Compai shows you how. It’s easier than one, two, um . . . spree!