Bittersweet Sixteen

by Carrie Karasyov

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” I answered, drawing a beefy upper arm.

  “I think it is.” She stopped sketching and looked at me. “Anyway, on to better topics, I wanted to make sure you know you’re invited to spring break with us to the Bahamas. It’s gonna be amaaazing.”

  Before I could respond, Ava came up and Whitney gave me a look so that I wouldn’t mention the invitation.

  “Come on, you guys, let’s go sign up for the French Club’s party. It will be très très,” said Ava.

  “All right,” said Whitney, wiping her hands. “You coming, Laura?”

  “You guys go ahead. I’ll see you later,” I said.

  I watched Ava link arms with Whitney as they wandered off. Ladies and gentlemen, add Ava Bisset to Whitney Blake’s corner. The teams were dividing up nicely.

  After art, I had math and then I stopped by the lounge to switch books in my closet. Sophie appeared next to me.

  “Hey, Laura?”

  “Hi, Sophie—”

  “Sweetie, listen, I have a favor—after all that, like, craziness over the weekend, I’d love to get back on track with Jake. I really felt a big-time chemistry between us. I mean, not to brag, but he was fully checking me out and doing some rack-scopage at my house the night we met.”

  “Uh-huh—”

  “So I was thinking maybe we could all hang out soon—can you call to invite him to my place? I’ll screen the new Brad Pitt movie. You’re the best!” she said, hugging me and flashing a huge smile without waiting for an answer. “Oh, and feel free to tell him a lot of guys have been calling me.” She winked and left before I could protest.

  After class I was in the same spot, getting my next book, when Whitney came up. “Laura! Listen, I need you to do me a massive favor. Can you call Jake tonight and just say how sorry we are that we all left so abruptly? I feel like there’s weirdness now. Maybe we can chill this weekend and get some sushi?”

  I suddenly felt sick and just wanted to pull the ejector seat.

  “You know what, Whitney? No, you call him.”

  Whitney looked stricken. “Laura, please…”

  “I really don’t like being your phone service. You do your calls.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I am so wimpy.”

  “You guys are friends,” I said, surprised by her reaction, but determined to make my point. “So he’ll be psyched if you call.”

  “You’re right, Laura. As usual, you are right.” I liked to hear her repeating that line. “Okay, but if I don’t call him and you happen to call him or he calls you—and I know you will because you said you had to tell him about that MoMA exhibit, well, please just mention this weekend.” She air-kissed me and was gone before I knew it.

  Crap. She had put on the charm to get me to do her dirty work yet again.

  I was starting to feel very used from both sides. But it was too early to call Sophie and Whitney on it. I knew if I said anything they would both get all wide-eyed and deny everything. And what could I say? “You want me to ask Jake over, and that’s the only reason you’re my friend?’ I didn’t believe that was exactly true, and right now I couldn’t be totally sure their full-on Mary Poppins attitude toward me was a farce, so I decided to wait it out. I hoped that by the end of the week, everything would be glossed over and they’d be back on speaking terms so I wouldn’t have to be the rope in this immature tug-of-war.

  But, as the day crept on, there was more tension circling Sophie and Whitney than ever. Mean looks, whispered insults, and harsh comments muttered a little too loudly were becoming common whenever we were all in the same room. The whole atmosphere was toxic.

  I left school never more psyched to be free from the war zone that my life had become. I had just exhaled my first breath of relief when suddenly my body stiffened once more when I heard the spine-tingling word “Finnegan!”

  It was Jake from across the street. I waved, still startled, as he zigzagged his way through Fifth Avenue traffic and approached me in full post-soccer mode. He was wearing his coat over his Bradley uniform, had an unknotted scarf across his neck, and his knapsack and gym bag were swung casually over his shoulder. He looked…really good.

  “I’ve been yelling your name for the last three blocks, young lady. Haven’t you heard me?” he asked, breaking into a wide grin.

  “Sorry, I’m kind of in a daze.”

  “I see that,” he teased. “You were like zombie girl.” He did his best Night of the Living Dead impression, which normally would have been hysterical except I was so nauseous from the day’s tension that I couldn’t bring myself to break into a grin.

  He looked at me, noticing I wasn’t down with the whole pod people shtick.

  “Laura, are you okay?” he asked, his cute brow furrowed and his voice laced with worry.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. Truth time: “Not really.”

  “Why, you got an A minus on your algebra test?” he joked.

  “No. Our class is, like, Yugoslavia right now.”

  “What happened?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. I’d noticed he does that when he’s really listening to someone. Was it total betrayal to vent? Especially when he was the reason for the blowup? But he looked at me with such concern that I decided to fill him in.

  “Whitney and Sophie had a major fight. I mean, epic. Kaitlin was totally glued to Sophie all day, and Ava is Velcro-ing to Whit. And little old me, well, I’m kind of stuck smack in the middle.”

  Jake thought for a moment before responding. “I thought you’d hang with Whitney; you guys have been friends forever.”

  “Yeah, but…” I paused. “I don’t want to bore you with this petty stuff.”

  “No, tell me. Seriously.”

  “It’s just that Whitney kind of ditched me when Sophie arrived and now she wants me back. I was the toy that got shelved for the glitzier new version, and now I’ve been rediscovered since the flashy toy’s broken.”

  “Okay, wooden doll,” he said, grinning.

  I smiled. “I’m serious! I love Whitney, I do, I just feel like it’s not that easy to simply shake the Etch A Sketch and make it like it was before.”

  “It was inevitable they’d have a meltdown,” Jake said, shrugging. “Their friendship was shot out of a cannon. Plus, they’re total opposites. You’ve got sassy Sophie from California and Princess Whitney from the Upper East Side. Oil and vinegar.”

  Hmmm…I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. Was “sassy” a good thing? Or was “princess” a good thing? Maybe he just wanted to get off the topic so he wouldn’t have to reveal which one he liked? Suddenly I felt awful downloading all this crap to Jake, who they liked. I tried to backpedal a little. “Maybe I’m being unfair. I mean, I really do love them both. Whitney is so generous and Soph’s really fun and cool…I’m hoping this all blows over.”

  Jake gave me a knowing look. “Come, on, Finnegan. Not happening.”

  “Well, I can dream, can’t I? They have good hearts, they really do. They’re both awesome girls. And…” Should I mention the fight was about him? I mean, that’s what they wanted, right, for him to know they had the hots for him? “They both really like you a lot,” I finally added.

  Jake didn’t acknowledge what I said and looked away. Before I could subtly reintroduce the topic, he pointed to the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum.

  “Whoa! Look at that koi in there! Those things are huge!”

  Jake gestured to an enormous shark-sized übergoldfish swimming in the Metropolitan fountains. We walked over to take a closer look.

  “I have never seen anything that gargantuan,” I mused. “I’m shocked that a Second Avenue sushi joint hasn’t poached them yet. Where did those come from? They aren’t usually here.”

  “I know, I go to the Met all the time and have never seen those.” He looked up and pointed to a sign. “Ahh, see? It’s for the Japanese garden exhibit. Good prop.”

  “Boy, they’re huge.”

 
“You should see the ones in Tokyo,” Jake said. “Literally as big as a squash racket.”

  We kept strolling down Fifth Avenue; I’d already passed six bus stops. Oh well.

  “Did you know goldfish only have a memory of twelve seconds?” I asked him.

  “No way. Weird!”

  “Imagine if you put one of those aquarium treasure chests in their bowl! The fish would be so psyched all the time, like Oh my God, there’s a treasure…. Oh my God, there’s a treasure!”

  Jake looked at me in amazement before bursting into hysterical laughter. Obviously he liked my little goldfish impression.

  “Laura, how the hell do you know all this stuff?”

  “I’m a magnet for useless information.”

  “Like what else?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, smiling. I looked at him, and he was grinning at me, waiting for an answer. Suddenly I felt this weird electric tension between us. He was so sweet and easy to talk to, I sometimes forgot how damn handsome he really was. I just loved his teeth—God, I loved them! Swept away in the moment, I seriously almost leaned in and kissed him. Or told him how much I worshiped him, and that he literally could make any moment better just by being there. Just as I was about to say something that would haunt me for the rest of my angst-filled teenage years, I came to my senses, thank God! How could I let myself get carried away?

  First off, that would be so harsh to do to Whitney, who had announced at the beginning of the year that she wanted him. And Sophie was pretty obvious about making her intentions clear. How lame would it be if I was like “Me too! I want Jake!” I couldn’t make things messier. And besides that, for all I knew, Jake was madly in love with either Sophie or Whitney. Then I’d really look like an idiot. No, no, no, I couldn’t betray my friends like that, or risk saying something when I didn’t know how Jake felt. Although deep down, the thing that bummed me out the most was that I knew Whitney and Sophie were not really, really into Jake. I mean, of course they liked him ’cause he’s gorgeous and nice, but they didn’t understand him the way I did. It was so irritating the way they both just jumped on bandwagons because things were cool. If only I had realized I liked Jake first. But as usual, I was the last to know, and now that I knew Jake was the most amazing person in the world, it was getting harder and harder to be a loyal friend. But I had to do it.

  At that moment I was relieved to see my bus pull up to the stop. “Oh, there’s my bus,” I said hastily, and started to walk toward it.

  Jake looked momentarily disoriented but recovered quickly.

  “Brainstorm more fun facts,” he demanded, watching me climb aboard. “I’ll call you tonight; you better have one for me.”

  The doors closed and I waved through the window as the bus pulled away and made it through the yellow light just as it was turning red. Luckily he couldn’t see that my face and heart were as red as the light.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There is always a quiet before a storm, and the next two weeks were just that. Although Sophie and Whitney were now sworn enemies, furiously recruiting classmates to their sides and planning their respective bashes with Martha Stewart–esque detail, they had accepted that I wanted no part of their campaigning and agreed to essentially back off. And even though I was called in by both Whit and Soph to confer on every little seemingly irrelevant thing, like what kind of flatware to have or if the waiters’ uniforms should have gold or mother-of-pearl buttons, I was somehow able to navigate between the choppy H2O remarkably easily. But the best news was that even though they talked practically every third second of every day about their parties, I did have some mellow hangage time with Sophie and Whit that was just fun and low-key sans party mentions, reminding me why I liked them.

  For example, one day I took Sophie around NoLita and showed her all my favorite haunts, like the new Cath Kidston store, which had the most amazing retro British prints, or Jane Mayle’s rocking clothing boutique that made every shirt seem like one of a kind. She was totally cool and into the whole scenario. In fact, Sophie was almost a different person below 14th Street, and she totally ditched the whole name-droppy and show-offy attitude that had sometimes bugged me. We had a long fun lunch at Café Habana and she fully fessed up Oprah style how insecure and nervous she was moving to le Grande Apple and how sometimes her parents’ materialism really made her cringe. I totally got the impression that Sophie’s mom was driving the whole party process now, and even in small moments where I could tell Soph was freaking and would rather not push this party competition with Whit, her mom was behind the wheel, full speed ahead. In fact, Sophie and Whitney’s moms had been bombarding Ms. Hoffer with calls to secure the January 28 date, and even though Sophie got there first, the Hoffer couldn’t fully commit because Mr. Blake was on the board. Finally both mothers ignored her and the stupid book and went ahead as planned, without her approval.

  I also had some “seems like old times” times with Whit. We spent a weekend at her house in Southampton just vegging and watching Will Ferrell movies, chowing down on total junk at every opportunity. I could tell she was also a little stressed about the party, and every time her mom appeared (mostly to monitor our food intake) and had some new development for the bash, Whitney visibly changed. I was sad that Soph and Whit were under so much pressure, but in those moments where we just hung out I had a great time.

  The whole thing really got me thinking about parental pressure. It was weird, but even though they were planning this major fete I was kind of glad that I had nothing to do with it. Every day, either Ava or Kaitlin was like a messenger girl, bringing the information about what the other camp was doing. For example, the second that Mrs. Blake booked the Pierre, Mrs. Mitchum booked the Plaza. The day Mrs. Mitchum booked celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, Mrs. Blake brought in some famous French chef who had like a zillion Michelin stars. When Mrs. Blake arranged for David Copperfield to be jetted in from Monaco, Mrs. Mitchum had a plane for transport and a grand stage custom-made to accommodate Roy’s (as in Siegfried and…) wheelchair so that he could make his first theatrical appearance since the accident. Kind of gruesome. Nothing was out of reach for them.

  The other cool news was that besides my QT with Soph and Whit, I was also having some serious QT with Jake. I felt like we were becoming good pals. We were on the phone, like, every night and it felt fully natch, like he was a girl, but not. It was really odd, because I actually talked to him more than I did Sophie and Whit, who were always out now at night sampling restaurant dishes and theater acts to bring to their party. But I didn’t feel like I was missing any sort of companionship because I could totally be myself with Jake, and he and I had an easy time just chatting. Sometimes I would look at the clock and couldn’t believe that we’d been on the phone for an hour. And the thing is, we didn’t chat about stupid stuff like gossip but about things such as the places we’d most like to visit (I said India and he said the Galápagos Islands) and our favorite movies (I loved When Harry Met Sally and he admitted he also thought it rocked. How cool is that, considering most guys like crap with robots?).

  We also talked about where we wanted to go to college, and about museum exhibits—it turns out we both loved photography. It was just nice to have a new friend. The only topic that was kind of awkward was Sophie and Whit. They still pressed me at every minute to mention them to him, put in a good word, to try to get them to see him, and every time I brought it up Jake kind of changed the topic. Maybe he was really torn between which one he wanted. I mean, obviously they were both drop-dead gorge, but in such different ways it was probably a nightmare for him to choose. I braced myself every day for the news.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I never knew a red bouncy dodgeball could be a lethal weapon. The next day in gym class, the battle had begun, and I mean, move over, Braveheart. You should have seen how Whitney and Sophie hurled the cranberry orb in high hopes of pelting the demons out of each other. Ms. Rand’s whistle blew, followed by her temper.

  “Hey!
Cut it out!” she yelled at Sophie, who had just smashed the ball in Whitney’s direction. Unfortunately, through Whit’s quick moves, the ball ended up bashing poor Molly McGee in the face. “That’s a foul, Mitchum. Let’s keep it B the B, below the breasts.”

  Whitney shot Sophie a look of death and Sophie just taunted her with a huge smile. The piercing whistle blew again and Ms. Rand tossed Whitney the ball. With all her might, she lunged forward and shot it at Sophie with a vengeance that wiped the smile clean off Sophie’s face.

  “Ow! Ms. Rand!” Sophie screamed, pressing a hand to her cheek. I glanced in Whit’s direction long enough to see a satisfied grin.

  “You’re out of here, Blake. Hit the showers,” she ordered. “You, too, Mitchum. This is not a battlefield.”

  I watched them leave in silence, wondering what the two of them would do in the locker room. The bell interrupted my mental image of their joust, and the rest of us followed suit to the lockers. Ugh. I just wanted to make it to last period and then we would have a week off for Thanksgiving.

  “Happy turkey, all of yous. See you next week,” Ms. Rand said in her husky voice as we all filed out nervously, wondering what carnage awaited us by the lockers. Surprisingly, it was quiet. By this point, our class was literally divided. Half was on Whit’s side of the shower room, the other on Sophie’s. The two queen bees had their allegiances in order, and I was the only one who was trying to enter both hives. But the tension and venom were mounting. I was just praying I wasn’t going to get stung by being in the middle.

  The next day was Thanksgiving, but before my family chowtime, I was busy with Sophie and then Whitney, as both were concurrently jamming on party plans the whole day and needed my two cents. And, natch, both asked if Jake had mentioned them and whose Sweet Sixteen party he was leaning toward. Afterward, I could not have been more psyched to just get the hell home and plop down to eat. I smiled when I saw my mom had hung on our front door the funny papier-mâché turkey I’d made in second grade. I swear, I mark the year’s touchstones not by my Filofax calendar but by whatever “art” my kid self crafted that my mom uses for decoration.