Dream Girl

by Lauren Mechling

  As we walked to the subway station, I told her a little bit about the people I share a home and a last name with—Dad’s makeshift café society, my hot mother and her ghostwriting career, and Henry’s midnight strolls and homemade board games. “People who aren’t related to them think they’re very entertaining. You should come and meet them sometime.”

  Stupid Claire! Why had I just blurted that out? I wanted to kick myself for smacking of desperation.

  “Sure, sometime.” Her tone was polite but noncommittal. “Anyway, this is my stop.”

  A rumble from below indicated that a train was pulling into the station. With a quick goodbye, she scampered down the stairs, leaving me to feel like a dork who’d come on too strong.

  “Hey! Claire!” she called out a few seconds later. She was running back up the stairs. “I forgot to get your number.” I fumbled in my bag for a pen. “You don’t have to write it down. My brain’s wired like that.”

  And so I gave it to her, trying to sound as indifferent as I could.

  “That your cell?” she asked.

  “Home,” I said quietly. “I’m one of the five American teenagers without a cell.”

  “You should consider yourself lucky,” she said, picking up on my self-consciousness. “At least your parents can’t keep track of your every move. It can be such a drag.”

  Her parting words played over in my mind as I bopped homeward. When would I ever have something that I wanted to keep from my family?

  And, come to think of it, what were her secrets?

  { 9 }

  Potlucky

  I woke up the next morning feeling exhausted. For once I was relieved I’d left my bike at school. The downtown F platform wasn’t too crowded, and finding a column to lean against was easy enough. The only problem, I realized a moment too late, was that a subway musician had set up his bucket-chair directly across from my post. He was plucking an instrument that was one very long string attached to a wooden base, and his scraggly white ponytail made him look like a crazy escaped monk. I’m sure that from the right distance his music would have been just the right morning pick-me-up, but from where I stood it just sounded like a whole lot of waa-waa-waa-ing.

  I closed my eyes and let the dream I’d had the night before play through my mind.

  Old jets were flying around the sky, doing fancy loop-de-loops and leaving behind puffs of smoke like in an old war movie. I was flying, too, and as I shot through the sky felt light as a meringue.

  It was all in grainy black-and-white—and not like a “maybe” black-and-white. I knew for sure because I had the smarts to look down at my hands. My red nail polish was chipped in exactly the same pattern as it had been last time I’d checked, though now it was a dull gray. I continued to zoom about, trying to get the attention of the planes. They’d come nosing my way, only to pass over or under me. And one by one, they streaked out of sight. The clouds bled together, until I was left in a field of white.

  The dream was still so vivid I didn’t know if I was supposed to shudder or laugh at the thought of it. I had no idea what it was trying to tell me, but I knew this much: there had been no need for Kiki’s talk that night in the Waldorf lobby. You’d have to be in a coma to have dreams like that and not pay attention.

  I opened my eyes just as the train was about to pull into the station. The old man continued to play, even though there was no way any of us commuters could hear him over the rumbling.

  As I dragged up and down the hallways between classes, I kept my eyes peeled for Becca. But every time I caught sight of a head of long dark hair, it turned out to belong to another person. I was starting to wonder if I was losing my mind and she’d been an invention of my admittedly febrile imagination.

  If I had any fun at school that day, it must have been extremely subtle, because I sure didn’t notice it. The one lesson I learned: exhaustion and Henry Hudson do not mix. I was too tired to pick up a hand weight in gym class, and when I fell asleep in music appreciation, my last class of the day, our teacher, Mr. Wropp, decided against leaving me in peace.

  “Did you find the answer in your dreams?” Mr. Wropp was towering over me, and a bunch of kids were staring at me.

  Considering how insane my dreams are, I wouldn’t be all that surprised.

  I asked Mr. Wropp to repeat the question, raising a laugh from the other kids.

  “I have an idea,” Mr. Wropp said, his eyes brightening. “You can help your classmates figure out the answer. Why don’t you stand up?”

  I rubbed my eyes and rose to my feet.

  “Repeat after me,” Mr. Wropp said. “‘This is my speaking range.’”

  Unsure at first, I did as told. A smile grew on my teacher’s face.

  “Very good. And again?”

  “This is my speaking range?”

  Mr. Wropp scanned the other kids’ faces, exchanging conspiratorial looks with them. Had I misunderstood the directions?

  “Oh!” A kid in the back raised his hand, squirming as if his armpit were on fire. “Tenor?”

  “Close.” Mr. Wropp was perking up. “Alto. You see, even though her voice is deep, it would have to be even deeper to be tenor. Like this.” Without bothering to thank me for humiliating myself in front of the whole class, he returned to the front of the room, put on a video of a barbershop quartet, and told us to keep our eyes on the man wearing a polka-dotted bow tie.

  Unbelievable.

  That afternoon I biked home and found Mom in the kitchen, wearing her blue and white striped French apron and mixing quiche filling.

  “Bonjour!” she said when she saw me.

  “Hello to you, too.” I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from reminding her that the words embossed on her passport said United States of America.

  “Would you like a yogurt?”

  “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  I waited until I was sure she wasn’t looking and stuffed a jar of jam and half a baguette under my jacket sleeve. There was no time to grab a knife—my finger would have to do the trick.

  Out in the living area, Dad and his colleague Crystal de la Montaigne were on the couch, planning some class they were going to teach together. I’m not Crystal’s biggest fan. Her specialty is the French Revolution, but every time she sees me all she seems to want to talk about is how hard it is not to let her beauty get in the way of being taken seriously by her students. You could say I have a hard time taking her seriously, too.

  Dad and I waved hi, and before Crystal was able to go in for the kill and start telling me for the hundredth time why she wore her huge beige-framed glasses instead of contact lenses, I stole into my room. With the door safely shut, I ate my très interdit snack while checking my e-mail. There was a boring note from Cade Scherer, one of the Farmhouse girls I used to be friends with. “We had our Supper Club dinner last night, and the guest was the news editor of Cosmo,” she wrote, seemingly unaware that she’d just used an oxymoron. “She told us about butt surgeries. Ud have loved it. Come back!”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that, and I moved on to an e-mail from Louis. He’d written to ask me for the name of the French Moroccan restaurant we’d been to with my parents—no doubt he was planning some fun outing that I wasn’t invited to.

  “I think it was around 52nd St.,” I wrote back. “You can look it up online. Have fun!”

  The second I pressed Send, I realized how unhelpful my reply was. Oh well. He’d have to invite me to get anything else.

  Next I turned to my homework—I had a worksheet for chemistry, a problem set for math, and I had to read a children’s story about a baker who lost her sense of taste for my French class. It was all pretty easy, and when I was done I celebrated by curling up on my fake polar bear rug and rereading part of And Then There Were None, one of my favorite Agatha Christie books.

  I must have been more tired than I’d realized; when Dad poked his head into my room to tell me I had a phone call, I was fast asleep on the floor—for the second time that w
eek. Was I not getting enough iron or something?

  “Hello?” I said, using my fingers to tweeze a fake polar bear hair from my mouth.

  “Hey,” a mysterious voice said. “It’s Becca Shuttleworth, from yesterday?”

  “Hi!” I said, and dived across the floor to turn on my iPod dock. The Caravelles’ “You Don’t Have to Be a Baby to Cry” came on, protecting me from any potentially embarrassing parental background noise.

  “Is now a bad time?” Becca asked.

  “No, it’s a great time. I was just…um…hanging out. What’s up with you?”

  “Not much. I wanted to make sure I remembered your number correctly.”

  “Yup, this is it.”

  Silence.

  It was strange; we’d had so much to talk about the day before, but now I didn’t know what to say. It was what I imagined it would feel like if a boy I had a crush on called me out of the blue, except in this case I felt sure that once we’d broken the ice again, we’d have tons to talk about. With guys you never know.

  “So where are you?” I asked.

  “Wandering around, downtown. My boyfriend and I went to Washington Square Park, and now he’s at an appointment.”

  Actually, I’m not sure if that’s where she said he was. She could have said he was in a tree eating poisonous mushrooms and I wouldn’t have noticed. She was near Washington Square Park was all I heard. And that was right by me.

  “That’s where I live,” I blurted out, stupid with excitement. “Not, you know, in the park, but right around there.”

  “I didn’t know that.” She sounded even-keeled.

  “If you want, you can come over for dinner. As long as you don’t mind French food.”

  “Will there be snails?”

  “Highly doubtful.”

  “Bummer…. What’s the address?”

  I was so out of practice at inviting people over, I’d forgotten you’re supposed to check with your parents first. As it turned out, Mom and Dad were having one of their potluck salons. It was actually awesome timing—we Voyante kids were normally required to spend an hour at the dinner table, but salon night was the exception.

  When Becca showed up, she was greeted by the sight of eleven shoeless French professors, one wannabe French professor, and one little brother, all feasting on Gallic goodies and talking hyperactively. It’s Dad’s hope that they would focus on intellectual issues at his salons, though the most popular topics are tenure gossip and cheese, two things I am allergic to.

  Becca stood in the doorway, her trench coat open to reveal a white button-down shirt tucked into wide-legged gray pants. Her hair, slightly wavier than I’d remembered, streamed down one shoulder. And her posture was perfectly erect. Kiki would have adopted her on the spot.

  I straightened up and rushed over to meet her. “I’m so sorry,” I said in a low voice. “This is a little awkward, but I forgot this was going on when I invited you. We can go out—you don’t object to greasy diners, do you?”

  She scowled. “Hell no. I’m a great lover of the cheese fry. Though it does look interesting in here.”

  She said “interesting” in an inscrutable tone, and I glanced over my shoulder and tried to see the place through her eyes. There were candles stuffed into empty wine bottles. Chili lights strung around Toulouse-Lautrec posters. And over on the windowsill, Mom’s minilibrary of astrology books in a stack next to an imitation Art Nouveau lamp. All the professors were engaged in dramatic conversations, except for Douglas Winkler, who sat at the end of the table and appeared to be nodding off. But that wasn’t the only reason Douglas didn’t really fit in. He’s younger than the other professors, and better looking, with soft brown curls and crinkly blue eyes. Douglas is the star of the French department and one of my parents’ favorite people. Mom and Dad chalk his sweetness up to his being Midwestern, though I can’t help suspecting it has something to do with his feeling guilty for being half my father’s age and twice as successful. As for the other professors who were at the table, well, if you don’t have anything nice to say…

  But the scene didn’t seem to put Becca off in the slightest. “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never seen so many candles.”

  “I know, it’s a regular séance in here,” I grumbled, and wondered if there was any chance we could make our exit without further embarrassment.

  I approached my parents to say goodbye, squatting down to their level. “My friend Becca and I are on our way out,” I said. Seeing that Becca had come to hover over me, my face went pink. There was no way my parents wouldn’t notice that she was still wearing her shoes—a gorgeous pair of black granny boots with stacked heels. Dad looked up at her and I flinched. But instead of saying anything about the “You only need to cover your feet in the street” rule, Dad just waved.

  “You must be Becca. I’m Gustave and this is Priscilla.”

  At this point Mom smiled beatifically and touched the bottom of Becca’s trench coat. “That is lovely stitching,” she said. “It’s hard to find detail like that these days.”

  Would somebody please tell me what’s going on?

  And then it hit me: they were too thrilled to see that I had made a new friend at school to do anything other than rejoice. I fantasized about digging up one of Dad’s cigarettes and telling Becca to light up. Would they object to that?

  I didn’t press my luck.

  “Okay,” I said, “we’re outta here. Bon appétit!”

  As Becca and I made our retreat, Dad called me back over. What now? The last time Mom and Dad had hosted a salon they’d needed my help removing candle wax from Crystal de la Montaigne’s hair.

  “Your friend seems nice,” Dad said in a stage whisper. Then he slipped me a five-dollar bill. It was barely enough to cover a Coke, but still, it wasn’t every day Gustave Voyante parted with spending money.

  And who was I to turn down the offer?

  “Thanks, Papa,” I said, and slipped out of the apartment before any candle wax emergency arose.

  Becca was waiting by the elevator in the hallway, using a metal stick to enter something into a PDA. Next to her stood Douglas Winkler, a mustard stain on his blazer lapel gleaming in the fluorescent light. I hadn’t noticed him get up from the table, but he had looked pretty sleepy in there.

  “A for effort,” I told him. “You almost made it all the way through.”

  Douglas shook his head ruefully. “It’s just been a long day. I was volunteering at the shelter this morning, and I worked all day straight.”

  “And you still came to the salon?” I squinted my eyes. “I mean, willingly?”

  “You shouldn’t give your parents such a hard time,” Douglas said. “I remember when you used to get dressed up on salon night and dance to Édith Piaf for us.”

  Oh no. Please stop. Please stop.

  Becca stifled a laugh and stuffed her gizmo into her brown leather bag.

  I turned to my new friend, eager to change the focus of conversation. “Were you playing solitaire or something?”

  “No, Édith.” She smirked. “I was dealing with my weird family. My mom just sent me an urgent message asking if I want her to buy me a pair of cashmere sweatpants she saw on sale.” She shook her head apologetically.

  “I’d give anything for a mother like that,” I said. “Mine’s always copying things my dad says about American capitalism, and then she buys suitcases full of the most useless things in France so long as they have French words on them.”

  “Oh?” she looked especially interested. “Like Coco Chanel?”

  “Not so much. More like J’adore l’amour.”

  I glanced over at Douglas, who was watching us with growing interest.

  “Is this what girls talk about?” he asked.

  “Only when we know other people are listening in,” Becca said. “We save the good stuff for later.”

  The good stuff? I could hardly wait.

  “Did either of you press the button already?” I asked.

  Doug
las nodded and rolled his eyes. “The left elevator’s stuck.”

  “Again?” I groaned.

  “Gotta love Washington View,” Douglas said. “Now, where are you fashion critics headed?”

  “The diner,” I told him. “And you?”

  “Bed. I have a flight at six in the morning. I’ve been invited to speak at Miami University on cartoons of the French Revolution.” He smacked his lips. “I knew nothing about the subject until this morning.”

  “And I’m sure you know everything by now,” I told him.

  “Hardly.”

  I turned to Becca. “Meet Douglas. He’s the rock star of the French department.”

  “Becca.” She thrust out her hand with the self-confidence of a child star. “How do you do?”

  When we finally filed into the elevator, Frank Camiello, a history professor who lives on the tenth floor, and his eleven-year-old twins, Simon and Byron, were already on board. I greeted them with a vague smile. I couldn’t stand them. The Camiellos were always staging the twins’ oboe recitals in the basement Sunrise Room and hounding the other residents about coming to watch.

  Mr. Camiello and Douglas exchanged a few words. I watched in horror as Mr. Camiello reached into his pocket for a flyer for his sons’ next concert and pressed it into Douglas’s palm.

  The door dinged open not soon enough, and I couldn’t help myself. “Lucky you,” I muttered to Douglas once the others had skittered off. I had a bad feeling I’d have to hear some of that recital, but luckily, I wouldn’t have to see it. Douglas was too nice, though. He smiled and folded the flyer, putting it in his pocket.

  “Mind if I walk you guys?” he asked, changing the subject. “I could use some fresh air.”

  “Sure,” I said. I was grateful to have Douglas on hand; I still didn’t know exactly where I stood with Becca, and I was nervous about what to say around her. Sometimes self-assured people can be painfully quiet, and I’m not always the best at coming up with scintillating repartee to fill in the blanks.

  On the walk over to the diner, Douglas kept the conversation rolling, telling us about the shelter where he’d started volunteering and his new intern.