Dream Girl

by Lauren Mechling

  “Hello?”

  “There you are, darling,” Kiki said grandly. “I’ve only got a minute to spare. It’s almost time for dinner. We’re having stone crabs and asparagus with hollandaise—I snuck a peek at the menu. Above and beyond the call of duty, those Lamonts. Though it sounded like there’s a party at the Voyante residence, am I correct?”

  “I guess,” I said. “Mom and Dad are drinking Vouvray with some other barefoot professors.”

  “Delightful,” Kiki murmured. “Now, I just wanted to confirm that you received your invitation.”

  “Of course—I’ve saved the date!”

  “And the necklace? Is it to your liking?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m never taking it off.”

  “I shouldn’t if I were you. Apart from when you shower,” she said. “It’s an old good-luck charm, you know. It doesn’t really take well to sporadic usage.” This was the kind of remark Kiki typically followed with a spray of laughter, though this time she remained silent. “Oh dear—there’s the dinner bell! Ta-ta, toodle-pip, and so forth. See you soon!”

  Come again? Fifteen years into our bosom buddy–ship, I still have trouble distinguishing Kiki’s important pronouncements from her jokes. Sometimes it feels as if she’s on shuffle, her lines popping out with little relation to what has been said just before. Was she serious about the cameo’s being a good-luck charm? Or was that just one of the comments she tosses around like table salt? I had to assume it was the latter—the only notable thing that had happened since I’d put on the necklace was my being roped into a night with Sheila and her nerd posse.

  When I came out of my room, I saw that our family’s favorite poetess had joined the fray. Cheri-Lee and my mom were over by the bookshelves, eyeing me as they drained their wineglasses.

  “Big plans tonight?” Mom asked me, her voice laced with optimism.

  “Yeah, I’m going to a party with Hudson people. Should be interesting.”

  Mom’s face fell. “Claire, it won’t be if you don’t give it a chance.”

  “What did I say to make you so sure I wasn’t going to give it a chance?” I protested. Just because I have a raspy voice, Mom thinks she can detect sarcasm in everything I utter.

  Cheri-Lee leaned in to whisper something to her partner in crime, and the two started to smile and titter—there was no doubt Cheri-Lee had filled Mom in on our courtyard encounter. Shuddering at the realization that I was the petri dish for their social experiment, I made a beeline for the door.

  Thirty minutes later, I was pulling up on my bike in front of the Upper West Side address Sheila had reluctantly handed over to me. It turned out to be one of those prewar buildings with beautiful details on the outside and gloomily lit hallways inside that smell faintly of meat. You’d think people living in multimillion-dollar apartments would go the extra mile and spring for a mop and a few lightbulbs, but the sad truth is they rarely do.

  A chipmunk-cheeked woman who identified herself as the nanny answered the door and led me through a series of big dark rooms until we reached Lauren’s bedroom. Sheila and her gang were stretched out on the floor, all dressed alike in black yoga pants, tank tops, and hoop earrings. With their heads close together and their identically clad legs splayed out in a circle, they looked like a giant starfish. And then there was me, sticking out like a birthday cake at a funeral.

  I’d learned from Kiki that in the event you find yourself feeling shy at a party, you should approach the most uncomfortable-looking person in the room. “Princess Diana used to do it,” she’d told me. “Buttonhole the biggest dud, and you’ll immediately feel like the belle of the ball.” But here, nobody else looked remotely anxious, which only made me feel worse.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to keep the discontent out of my voice.

  “Hi,” Sheila said without catching my eye.

  Stop the presses: she’d acknowledged me!

  “Everyone,” Sheila said, “this is Claire, my old…acquaintance.”

  Of course. Saying “my old friend” would’ve been too much. Gritting my teeth, I waved.

  Sheila started to point around the room. “This is Ariel, Janice, Lauren, and Lauren.”

  The girls were flipping through a stapled-together Hudson phone book and eating a bowl of pretzels. They all looked older than me, but the room seemed to have been decorated by an eight-year-old girl. Twin beds, pink walls, and even a shelf full of horse figurines. I sat on the edge of the nearer of the beds and put my bicycle helmet down by the pillow. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this badly accessorized.

  And then, as abruptly as a car crash, the weird dream I’d had the other night came back to me. I was still looking ahead at the girls, but I could barely see them through the little paper dolls buzzing around my field of vision. A wave of exhaustion washed over me, and a spasm rocked through my left leg, which tends to happen when I’m falling asleep.

  “You okay, Claire?” Sheila’s tone was more catty than concerned.

  “Yeah, I just…” I could see everything clearly again. “I haven’t eaten in a while and I got dizzy.”

  “Help yourself.” Ariel passed the bowl of minirods my way.

  I did as told, and hammed up the munching for credibility’s sake.

  “Do you have a stomachache or something?” Ariel asked me.

  “Me? No, why?”

  “Sorry.” She looked embarrassed. “It must be the way you’re sitting, curled up like that.” She turned back to her friends and I unfolded my arms and straightened my spine. One of these days I was going to develop perfect posture.

  “Where’s the book?” Sheila asked the rest of the social starfish.

  “Oops, my bad,” said curly blond Lauren. “I left it in my backpack.” She flounced out into the hallway, then returned with a classic black and white composition book. The girls passed the book around and took turns writing in it. Silence descended on the room, and I felt as if I’d intruded on some ancient ritual.

  Janice, a beautiful girl with dark sloped eyes, eventually motioned for me to join them on the floor, and I settled into the spot between her and brown-haired Lauren. “This is the Beatle book,” Janice whispered conspiratorially to me.

  I scratched my head. Last time I’d checked, Sheila was into symphonies—not old British bands.

  Janice went on, “A couple of years ago a group of juniors kept a group diary. It got published and they all got into, like, Harvard.”

  “Not quite,” Ariel scoffed. “Two of them got into Brown, one got into Penn, and the other went to Michigan for a year and dropped out.”

  “Whatever,” Janice said. “It’s still better than wherever my average is going to get me.”

  “Oh shut up, Miss Ninety-five Percent,” Sheila hissed. I remembered how Sheila used to say she wanted to go to art school and be a ceramicist when she grew up. Something told me there’d been a change of plans.

  When brown-haired Lauren took the book, I glanced at the cover. It said: “BDL Book,” and in Sheila’s loopy handwriting, no less.

  My breath stopped. Janice hadn’t been saying “Beatle,” but “BDL,” like Kiki’s best-dressed list. The best-dressed list Sheila and I used to pretend to be a part of when we were little kids. How could she? Kiki had busted her butt to get on that list, hiring tailors and organizing shopping trips around the world. No doubt she’d be amused when I told her who’d anointed herself a member, but I was more than a little angry. I had to suck on my cameo to keep from saying anything.

  Every time somebody was done jotting something down, the girls would pass the book around and titter.

  “What are you guys writing?” I asked after they’d all examined a particularly hilarious entry.

  “We can’t show you,” Sheila said. “It’s between us.”

  “Like she won’t see it when it gets published?” said Janice.

  “Well, how are we going to publish it as a secret diary if we show it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry?” Sheila sho
t back.

  Janice turned to me. “You’ll see. It’s just a typical diary. We write about the things we do together.”

  “Or we’ll just debate about something totally random,” Ariel offered.

  “Yeah,” curly blond Lauren giggled. “Like the pros and cons of see-through bras.”

  “And sometimes we write about important stuff.” Ariel sounded defensive.

  “Like your insightful entry on how blond guys are more likely to develop bacne than dark-haired ones?” Sheila said.

  They all sounded infinitely amused by their witty project, though I was suddenly grateful that I wasn’t allowed to participate. I’d wait till it hit the bestseller list.

  After the book had made a few more rounds, Sheila took control. “Okay, everyone’s done writing, right?” She handed the book to brown-haired Lauren, the one whose room we were in. “You can keep it this week. Are we up for a round of telephone?”

  “When are we not?” Ariel pulled out a cell phone, her eyes agleam.

  Had I entered some time warp where we were all back in third grade?

  “No, use mine,” brown-haired Lauren said. “It’s caller ID blocked.”

  “Who’s going first?” Sheila scanned the group and pushed the phone into Janice’s hands. “You didn’t go last time.” Sheila might have sworn off her former life as a sword and sorcery enthusiast, but her aggressiveness had found a new outlet.

  Janice seemed uncomfortable. “Not me. I don’t have any ideas.”

  “No wiggling out,” Sheila said. “Besides, I have an idea for you. Call Dimitri Ossuraf and tell him you think the Jets sweatshirt he wore to school every day last year was really sexy.” She laughed in a way that sounded like a flutter of hiccups.

  Suddenly, the anger I’d thought had passed flared back up in me. This shindig had seemed fine when it was some lame powwow you would expect of a group of sixth graders. But I wasn’t prepared for it to take such a mean direction. There was no question about it—these girls were awful. I could just see it: they had been nerds all their lives and had only recently schooled themselves in the art of acting popular by watching bad Disney Channel movies.

  Janice took a steadying breath, then dialed a number.

  “Um, is this Dimitri?” Her voice was shaky, and she stuck her fist in her mouth to keep from making any giveaway sounds. “Hi, this is, um…” When she looked at me, she came up with her pseudonym. “Clara.” She looked at the pretzel bowl. “Clara Pretz.”

  Talk about creative.

  The other girls were enthralled by her performance, and Ariel went to sit closer to Janice so she could listen in. “I wanted to tell you…I just love your…” She started to laugh hysterically and hung up the phone. “I couldn’t! I was dying!”

  “Would anybody care to explain what’s going on?” I asked, but they were all too busy laughing to respond.

  They passed the phone, taking turns making equally bewildering calls. One girl was asked to come try out for a modeling agency, and curly blond Lauren left heavy breathing on her math teacher’s answering machine.

  Then it was Sheila’s turn. “I’m going to call Ian Kitchen.” She was hiccup-laughing again. “The kid with the wheelie suitcase.”

  “Him?” Ariel groaned with amusement. “He’s, like, nine, right?”

  “You’d die if you saw this kid, Claire,” Sheila said. “He’s always shuffling around the hallways by himself.” She paused. “He’s like a high school version of your little brother.”

  Was she trying to be nasty, or did it just come naturally to her?

  “So he’s a cool loner?” I tossed back.

  Sheila put her finger over her lips, then pointed to the phone to indicate that she’d already dialed the number. “Hi, Ian? It’s, uh, Nina, Nina Papagiornas, from Hudson….” I knew Nina Papagiornas—but not from Hudson. She was a curmudgeonly biology professor who lived in building one, down the hall from the Virds.

  At least Sheila was a better actress than Janice. “You don’t? Oh, my locker was near yours last year. Listen, I know this is kind of random, but do you want to go to John’s for pizza? On Bleecker Street?…So I’ll see you in half an hour.”

  Sheila’s friends were laughing so hard they were gasping for air, and she had to take a deep bracing breath to resist joining them. I had to take one to resist screaming.

  “I’ll see you there,” she said. “Oh, and Ian…can you bring your suitcase? I think it’s hot.” She hung up and rolled onto her back. She was wheezing and kicking her feet in the air. “I think I nearly had a heart attack there.”

  If only.

  Kiki always warned me against leaving anything too abruptly, but I couldn’t stay there a minute longer. I peeled myself off the floor and scooped up my helmet.

  “I’m sorry,” I told them. “I…I have to go.”

  “What?” Sheila retorted. “What about the party we’re going to?”

  “I just…,” I said, backing toward the door, “I’m just feeling really dizzy. I should probably go home before I pass out or something. Maybe next time.”

  By the way all the girls were looking at me, though, I knew there wouldn’t be a next time.

  { 5 }

  Dinner Date on Wheels

  Back outside, I could breathe again. I unlocked my bike and charged down Riverside Drive. It was one of those mellow late-summer evenings, and all the restaurants had set up tables outside.

  I turned off Seventh Avenue and was forced to slow down. Just ahead of me, a couple was flouting the pedestrians-belong-on-the-sidewalk rule and moseying down the street with their hands stuck in each other’s butt pockets. The one advantage to my being so short was that there was little chance I’d ever end up walking around in that lovely pose. Who would ever be able to reach my back pocket without looking like a hunchback?

  Ian Kitchen was instantly recognizable, and not because of his wheelie suitcase. Not only was he the only person standing outside John’s by himself, but he was also reading a comic book and wearing an army coat that was two sizes too big for him. It was the kind of getup that would lend most guys an air of creepiness, but to see somebody that scrawny dressed up like a countercultural renegade was almost touching. I jumped off my bike and walked it over.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are you waiting for Nina?”

  “Yeah?” he said, looking at me suspiciously. “That you?”

  “Uh, I’m Claire.” I proceeded to tell him the story I’d concocted on my way down. “Nina told me to meet you guys here, but then she had to cancel at the last minute, so it’s just you and me.”

  He looked confused. “I don’t get it. Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Do I look like some kind of joke?” Remembering I still had my helmet on, I took it off.

  “That’s kind of a loaded question.” He slouched and stuck his comic book in one of his front pockets.

  The pizza parlor was too crowded, so we ended up going to Great Hong, a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant just above a leather shop on Sixth Avenue. They were playing terrible Muzak, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if a cockroach had come crawling out of the napkin dispenser. And yet, it was certainly better than sticking it out with the BDLs or going home early and trying to read a fashion magazine while my parents and their friends guzzled wine and played French Trivial Pursuit.

  We placed our order and small-talked for a little bit. He seemed skeptical of me, and rightfully so. But after a few mouthfuls of fried rice he warmed up and asked me where I lived.

  “Around here, in Washington View Village. You know that weird complex where all the NYU professors live?”

  He shook his head.

  “Right by the Angelika movie theater?”

  He shook his head again.

  “How can you live downtown and not know the Angelika!” I exclaimed. “It’s the theater where they show all the foreign movies with beautiful landscapes and no plot.”

  He shrugged. “I guess I’m not much of an art house guy.
I’m more into movies with zombies and superheroes.”

  “I see.” I took a bite and thought his answer over.

  “And let me guess. You’re not.”

  “A superhero?” I smiled. “As if I’d give something like that away so easily.”

  “That’s true. They usually wait a few scenes before revealing their powers.”

  I smiled. “And what about you? What’s your superpower going to turn out to be?”

  He took a few seconds to think it over. “I’ve always wanted to be able to lift cars and buildings, but that’s probably not going to happen.” He dropped his egg roll onto his plate and pushed up his shirtsleeve to show me his pencil-thin upper arm.

  “Well,” I said, trying to cover up my amusement, “I bet you’re a beefcake by Hudson standards.”

  He looked confused. “I thought you said you went there.”

  “I’m about to,” I explained. “I’ll be an incoming sophomore.”

  He shot me a look of pity.

  “What was that for? You don’t love Hudson?”

  He looked up at the ceiling and followed a fly that was moving around in circles. “Love is a strong word.”

  “You hate it?”

  “There you go with another strong word.”

  He looked back at me and leaned in over the dish of General Tso’s chicken. “It’s just not my kind of place. Maybe it’s because I watched too many cheesy movies, but I always thought high school would be the time when I’d make a zillion friends and some out-of-my-league girl would spend three years ignoring me and then realize that I was the one she had loved all along. I guess you could say I’m still waiting.”

  “For the girl to come to her senses?”

  “More like the opening credits.” He drained his tea. “But then again, it’s unlikely you have the exact same fantasy. Maybe Hudson will be everything you wanted.”

  “Do they have a bunny farm?”

  He shook his head ruefully.

  “We’ll see about me and Hudson.”