“It turned up?” I asked in shock.
She shook her head and put down her pastry. “No.”
“Were you able to read my mind?”
“I just knew this would happen,” she said slowly.
“How?” I balked.
“Did you bring that churlish child to my party? And did I tell you to follow your heart or not?”
My head was spinning and I lay on her rumpled covers. “Is this some kind of sick punishment of yours?”
She chuckled. “You give me more credit than is due. It’s not up to me.”
“So it’s a rule of the weirdo universe? If I disobey you, the necklace falls off?”
“No.” She folded her hands together. “If you disobey your heart, your powers go limp. You got your signals crossed. Now you need to uncross them.” She raised her tawny eyebrow meaningfully. “You follow?”
My head felt heavy as I nodded. If I wanted to find my necklace and dream my way back into the Moons’ good graces and save the purity of the Brooklyn Bridge, all I had to do was get Andy back.
Which would be about as easy as creating no-calorie fudge. And world peace. In the space of thirty minutes.
My expression must have given away how doubtful I was feeling.
“Oh, calm down,” she told me, “there’s very little in this world that can’t be undone.”
“Okay, but you’re forgetting something. Andy hates me. I can’t get him back.”
“Oh yes you can.”
“What am I supposed to do? Tell him that if he doesn’t go out with me I won’t be able to find my magic necklace and I won’t have any more dreams and Sink Landon will have his day and New York will cease to be the city we know and love?”
She rolled her eyes. “When have I ever recommended full disclosure? Just say what needs to be said.”
I rolled over onto my stomach and found myself eye level with a pair of tweezers and a hand mirror on her bedside table. Kiki’s eyebrows had stopped growing decades ago, but she still kept a close eye on them. “And what would that be?”
“That bringing that date was an abysmal mistake and that you adore him and only him. And be sure to remind him that he was the one not to snatch up our invitation in the first place.” She stretched out her doughy arms. “And for heaven’s sake, leave out the mystical bits. They’re about as sexy as cheap eau de toilette.” She lumbered over to her walk-in closet and flicked on the light. “Now let’s find you some turtlenecks.”
“Which are sexy?” I asked incredulously.
“No, but at least they’ll cover up your unadorned neck. A sad sight, that.”
I stuck around Kiki’s for another hour or so, long enough to go over our favorite moments from the party and to get a little more encouragement on the Andy front. “It behooves you to act fast,” she said as she saw me to the door. “There are only so many Shuttleworth boys to go around.”
“Are you two talking about that mysterious tall boy who stopped by the shindig last night?” Jon-Jon’s voice, thick with sleep, surprised me.
“Who else?” Kiki said.
Her guest sat up and nodded. “If I were you, I’d be on that like a duck on a june bug.”
Way to get your point across, weirdo.
“He’s right. Don’t stand there like a flagpole.” Kiki shooed me away. “Be yourself. But a little bit better.”
Ouch.
By the time I rolled my bike out of the hotel manager’s office and into Park Avenue traffic, I was so pumped up about getting things back in order that I neglected to think about one niggling detail: the rest of the world doesn’t check in with my schedule before making its own plans.
This annoying truth didn’t make itself apparent until I reached a pay phone on Fifty-first Street (I didn’t want to call Andy from the Waldorf in case he recognized the number and didn’t pick up). The nervous rush I’d felt when he immediately answered gave way to irritation when I realized it was just his voice mail. “Hey,” came his unhurried voice. “I’ve gone into hiding for the next little while, but I’ll be sure to call you when I’m back.”
The street sounds around me faded out and I couldn’t hear anything until the recording came on to tell me to hang up and try again.
As inconvenient as it is having a secret thing with your best friend’s older brother, the situation does have some things to recommend it. For instance, you can ride your bike over to your friend’s place when you need to do a little romantic sleuthing and she won’t necessarily know you’re there to sniff out her brother’s whereabouts. The ride from the Waldorf to Becca’s is usually fifteen minutes, but I made it in half the time—must’ve been all that extra energy now that I wasn’t busy having energy-depleting dreams. A housekeeper answered the door and led me up to Becca’s bedroom. “I should’ve called, but I was just riding by …”
Becca was curled up on her sofa, wearing her tortoiseshell glasses and enjoying a trashy vampire book.
“Who would expect you to call?” she said without looking up. “You couldn’t even be bothered to say good-bye last night.”
Crap.
I couldn’t handle all this trouble, especially without my necklace to get me out of it.
“I … I didn’t want to interrupt you,” I lied. “You and Louis looked like you were having so much fun.”
“We were having fun waiting for you to dance with us,” she corrected me. “It was a little annoying when we realized you’d jetted.”
“I thought it would be weird if I got in the way,” I said. “Don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry. I’m just saying, don’t ever think about leaving another party without saying bye again. Especially a party where I only know two other people.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I guess I accept. Now hold on and let me finish this chapter, ‘kay?”
“Of course.” I paced around the room and let Becca power through to the end. Watching her turn the page for the fourth time in under a minute, it occurred to me that she must have inherited all the reading skills that had skipped her older brother, who had once confided in me he was lucky if he made it through twenty pages in an hour.
“You really like that junk?” I asked her when she finally dog-eared a page.
She looked at me dead-on. “The Vampire Institute trilogy is no ordinary junk, thank you very much. It’s junk at its most brilliantly toxic.”
We exchanged smiles and I took a seat at her desk chair, trying to figure out how to uncover where her brother had run off to without being too obvious about it.
“Based on your freaked-out expression,” she said before I could come up with anything, “I take it you checked your e-mail this morning.”
“No, why?”
A new alertness filled her brown eyes. “We weren’t the only ones to play dress-up last night. Sills and Reagan decided to put on a couple of wigs and crash a party at Helle House to poke around and get the iPod back.”
My breath quickened.
“Did they find it?”
“No, but they got found out. And it got ugly.”
I made a worried frown. “Did they get hurt?”
She scoffed. “C, we’re talking about West Chelsea, not the Wild West. But they got booted out and now there’s tightened security. There’s an advisory on the Web site, saying no more visitors and no new members.”
“What does this mean for …” I could barely speak. “Everything else?”
“It means we’re a hundred percent certain that they have the iPod, but game over … unless you have any bright ideas for getting in and finding it.”
I sighed. Better luck next piece of lost jewelry.
“Didn’t think so.” She smiled sadly. “So looks like everything is going to proceed as feared. The bridge gets tested next week and it’s revealed a cable is loose, everyone freaks out, the city announces they’re replacing the cable, the greatest landmark this side of the pyramids loses any protection, the waterf
ront becomes the living embodiment of Sink Landon’s freak-vision, and the rest of us go back to our normal lives until we figure out a new project—though nothing from the list that got away.” I wanted to smack myself for all the time I’d wasted sweating over the Andy situation. Everything she was talking about was a zillion times more important. Becca went on, “I heard the sidewalk outside of Penn Station is all covered with gum. That could be fun for us, a clean-up day.” Her tone was as bitter as wilted arugula and she returned to her book and began to read aloud from it. “‘Clover took him by the shoulders and smelled his manly, feverish aroma …’” I bit down on my lip, doing the math. The iPod was in Helle House. And nobody could get in. But there had to be a way.
“By the way,” I broke the silence, “Kiki wanted me to thank Andy for the combs he brought her last night. He around?”
She shook her head. “Dad had some business in Orlando and he tagged along.”
“What’s up?” I couldn’t help being extra nosy. “Is Soul Sauce asking to be Mickey Mouse’s official ketchup?”
“It already is,” she said bashfully. “They went to some conference for the plastics industry. Sounded boring to me, but Andy talked his way onto the plane this morning. He seemed eager to get out of town.”
And away from me, no doubt. My heart folded in on itself.
But I was also relieved to have Andy’s exact whereabouts. Armed with this new bit of knowledge, I felt my worries fade a bit, and talked my friend into going for a walk.
When we got outside, the sky was clear and it was warmer out than it had been all week; Becca had untied her white scarf and pulled back the finger flaps of her mittens by the time we’d reached her corner.
The area closest to the entrance to Central Park was mobbed, but it cleared up when we trekked a little farther north and found an abandoned outcrop. This section of the park was shielded on all sides by elm trees. The shiny skyscrapers looming in the distance looked like silver French fries, and I realized I hadn’t eaten in a little while.
Becca let off a heavy sigh as she fell back against the rock wall. “You know, I owe you a thank-you.”
“For what, the fresh air?”
“I guess you could call it that. … Louis is different from most guys. He’s really … sane.”
Considering Louis spends more time on his shrink’s couch than a workaholic in his office cubicle, “sane” wasn’t the first word I’d pick, but I decided to let it slide. Who was I to squelch her happiness? I leaned into the spot next to her and watched a squirrel try to pick up a discarded Milky Way wrapper with its paws. “So you two really hit it off?”
She didn’t say anything at first. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do in this situation. He’s your other best friend. You must think the whole thing is gross.”
“No, the idea of me and Louis is gross. Louis and anybody who makes him happy makes me happy. And if you’re happy in the bargain I’m even happier.”
Well, she was half right. I would be happy in the bargain if they would just make a little more time in their happy lives for me.
“Okay,” she said. “You’d better be telling the truth. After the party we went on a long walk through Hell’s Kitchen, then up to the Upper West Side.”
The Upper West Side? Interesting.
“That’s where Louis lives,” I couldn’t help saying.
“No, it wasn’t like that. We sat on a bench on one of the traffic islands along Broadway. There was this guy on the other bench who was listening to the Knicks game on his AM radio. Louis told me about his father issues, and how much he hates the Knicks,” she said, easing into her role as storyteller. “We were goofing around and pretending to get really into the game, like the crazy fans who paint their faces and bet their life savings on the World Series.”
“Um … I think that’s baseball.”
“You know what I mean.” She was trying to open up to me in a way that was unusual for her.
“Sorry,” I said. “Go on.”
“Anyway, the Knicks were behind two points and all of a sudden there was this amazing pass that came out of nowhere and …”
“Louis made a pass out of nowhere?” I offered.
Becca looked down.
“He totally did!”
She smiled slyly. “Considering we’d been hanging out all night, I wouldn’t call it nowhere. But yeah, the kid came through.”
She pulled herself off the rock and started walking down a dirt path. “And what about you and your date?”
I groaned and watched her flounce ahead. I guessed Alex hadn’t passed her his card.
“What, things didn’t work out between Claire Voyante and Alex the social networker?” Apparently I’d guessed wrong. Becca’s singsongy tone made me shudder.
“Don’t tell me he gave you his business card last night,” I said, catching up to her side.
Becca laughed. “Not last night, but he’s in my chem class.”
“He is? You should’ve warned me!”
I was so embarrassed.
“Is that right?” She turned to face me. “And remind me, how was I to know when you never mentioned him to me?”
“I—I didn’t?”
“Nope.” Still walking, she slowed down and her eyes filled with sadness. “It’s weird, sometimes it feels like I know you inside and out, and then other times it’s like you’re keeping everything a secret from me.” She was looking at me in a way that indicated she wasn’t just talking about Alex—she suspected other things too, things about my weird talents and my relationship with her brother. “You know what I mean, right?”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded my head heavily, wondering how much I was reading into what Becca was saying, and trying to calculate how different life would be if Becca was in on my secret powers and nonlove life.
“Just tell me next time, okay?” she said.
And that was when it occurred to me that not coming clean wasn’t a choice anymore. Becca didn’t just expect total honesty—she deserved it. More to the point, we deserved it. All this time I’d been doing my best to keep different parts of my life separate, I hadn’t realized what a heavy price there’d been to pay Becca and I had been drifting apart this semester, and maybe the Moons and Louis weren’t entirely to blame.
I breathed in so deep my shoulders practically hit my ear-lobes. And then, awkward as it was, I started to tell her about everything that had happened—and, more distressingly, everything that hadn’t happened—between her brother and me.
It was hard, but I had to do it. I’d already lost my necklace. I couldn’t afford to lose anything more.
I tightened my fists and detailed the ups and downs of my secret history with Andy, watching Becca’s eyes go deep with understanding. I was being as honest as I possibly could—the only place I drew the line was at the necklace.
She listened intently and didn’t say anything until I mentioned seeing him out the window with his new girlfriend, at which point she howled with laughter.
“Sorry,” I bristled, “but I’m afraid I don’t see the humor here.”
Becca smiled up at the sky. “That’s Carla. His tutor.”
I watched her with suspicion. “His tutor? That’s all?”
“No, there’s plenty more to her. … She’s like, thirty-five, an out-of-work actress, and a mother of two.”
I could barely formulate any words.
She slung her arm around me. “There’s only one thing you need more than a beat-down.”
“What’s that?” I asked warily.
“Contact lenses.”
{ 20 }
Yummy Mummy
As the F train screeched into the Broadway-Lafayette station, the conductor came on the loudspeaker with an authoritative, “Attention, all passengers, will you please make way for the naked young lady to step off the train?” All heads turned my way. And that was when I realized I was stark naked, except for my yellow and blue striped Lacoste socks.
Quelle bummer.
With nothing adorning my neck, my dreams had turned into the stuff of your typical tenth grader’s subconscious. Thinking you’ve left the house naked is nothing compared to being me and realizing you’ve done so in primary colors. As far as I’m concerned, my color dreams are pointless.
It rained on Monday, and it continued to do so for the next few days, which couldn’t have felt more appropriate. The Moons had all but disbanded, Andy wasn’t due back in the city until Thursday night, and Becca and Louis were off in la-la land, meeting up every afternoon for hang-out sessions that lasted well into the evening. Stuck with piles of energy that I didn’t know what to do with, I ended up spending a good portion of Tuesday night reading Agatha Christie and a back issue of Elle on the stationary bike in our building’s exercise room. When I got to the magazine’s advice column, I could have kicked myself for not reading it sooner—the agony aunt advised a girl who was getting mixed signals from a guy she’d hooked up with to be patient and let him reach out at his own speed.
Whole lot of good that did me now.
When I got back upstairs and called Louis, he took an hour to call me back. He was so distracted that when I asked if he wanted to hang out soon, he answered, “Not much. What’s up with you?”
“Can you at least pay attention?” I was losing my cool. Louis was allowed to be as lovesick as he wanted, but did it really have to coincide with the time when Becca and Andy were both pulling away from me? “Why don’t you call me when you get your brain back?” It came out like a punch, not that he noticed.
“‘Kay,” he said, “I’ll call you soon. We should get coffee or something.”
“Great,” I said sarcastically. The only thing I like less than the taste of coffee is “getting coffee” as a social ritual, at least if you’re under the age of sixty.
The only person who wanted to get together was Ian, and I wasn’t ready to forgive him for dragging me into Reagan’s bad graces just yet.
With weather this pissy, biking was out of the question, and the idea of going down to the Brooklyn Bridge for one of my last chances at a nostalgic glimpse of the landmark I knew and loved was as appealing as walking barefoot along a path of thumbtacks. I wish I could say I took advantage of the sudden opening in my schedule by learning how to make my own podcasts or helping Dad organize the annotations for his (almost-finished!) book, but the most productive thing I got up to entailed gazing out of my rain-streaked bedroom window and spying on Professor Ferris, whose apartment was across the courtyard. Turned out Alex’s favorite film professor liked to feast on back-to-back episodes of The Real Housewives of Dubai when he thought nobody was looking.
Dream Life Page 21