Dream Girl

by Lauren Mechling

  Or so I thought.

  “There you two are!” the initial intruder turned to the newcomers. “Becca, you know Regina and Coe, right?”

  Anger rose in me as the four carried on, but to be fair, Becca did keep eyeing me and opening her mouth, only to be cut off by more fussing and clacking.

  “What is this? Isn’t prom season a little while away?” the first girl asked, and I realized she was addressing me. Or, to be perfectly accurate, my dress.

  “This is my friend Claire,” Becca finally had a chance to say. “Claire, that’s Regina and Coe.” She paused before gesturing to the scarf girl. “And that’s Rye.”

  Rye scanned me, then turned to Becca. “She’s so cute! Is this the girl you told me about from the volunteer program?”

  Becca tossed back a strange, hiccuppy laugh. “No.”

  “Um, what girl are you talking about?” I asked Becca.

  “Nothing.” Becca said it in a tone that was supposed to sound casual, and the girls in the background looked away guiltily. “Claire goes to Hudson with me,” Becca explained. “And Rye goes out with my brother, Andy.”

  “I see,” I said, straining not to show how unpleasant this little reunion was becoming. Well, I could keep standing there like a clod or I could take the higher ground. “Do you go to Columbia, too?” I asked with a polite smile.

  “No,” Rye said distractedly. She was rifling through the dresses on the floor and mumbling something that sounded disapproving. “I’m at Bennington.”

  I’d never heard of the place, a fact that my expression must have given away.

  “It’s a small liberal arts college in Vermont,” one of her friends told me.

  “But she lives in the city,” Becca said.

  “I’m double-majoring in social theory and women’s studies via correspondence course.”

  “Tell her why,” Becca urged her, shooting me a devilish smile.

  Rye rolled her eyes, as if she’d already been asked to explain this a hundred times in the past hour. “I wanted to go to a small school in the country, but I didn’t want to actually have to leave the city. I need to soak up the urban setting. It’s more inspiring than a bunch of trees.”

  A chuckle bubbled up inside me, and it took every muscle in my upper body not to let it escape my mouth. “I’ve heard of interesting reasons for college choices, but that’s a first,” I said.

  “I’m glad you find my higher education humorous,” she drawled.

  “Rye,” Becca said levelly, “you know it’s kind of funny.”

  She exhaled again, this time through her nose. “No hard feelings.”

  Becca threw me an apologetic look as Rye frantically kissed her goodbye. “And don’t even think about buying anything you’re trying on. I just read the most amazing essay about how dresses are a tool for oppressing women. I’m totally giving it to you!” And with that, she led her hangers-on away.

  Once we were alone again, the room felt bright and cold.

  “Um, would you care to explain what that was all about?” I asked Becca.

  “The thing about the essay?” Her voice was edged with nervous phoniness. “She’s always saying I have to read something.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. Don’t pretend that wasn’t horrible—that entire encounter.”

  Becca’s shoulders slackened. “Okay, it was sort of horrible.” She laughed with relief. “She wasn’t exactly at her best, but I wouldn’t take it personally. She’s strange.”

  “Strange how?” I challenged.

  “For one thing she’s an only child.”

  “So are lots of people.”

  “And she’s also a member of the Calorie Restriction Society. It’s supposed to make you live longer and feel invigorated…but sometimes it just makes her act weird.”

  “Sounds fun,” I grumbled.

  About as much fun as the Peeling Off Your Fingernails Society.

  “Yeah, I hear you,” she said. “I’m not planning on turning in my Free Sandwich Appreciation Society card anytime soon.” With that, she popped a miniature club sandwich in her mouth. I could tell she was dying to steer the topic away from Rye.

  There was a tense silence. “Any good?” I asked, somewhat reluctantly.

  She nodded and looked up. “Thank you, founding fathers.” She took another bite. “What are you waiting for, C? The chicken salad is on the marble bread.”

  { 11 }

  Dead Men Walking

  Later that night I was back in my room, halfheartedly IM-ing with Louis about his bitchy stepmother while my thoughts wandered miles away. Something about Becca was troubling me. She hadn’t done anything that could be classified as outright objectionable—it was Rye who had been the jerk, not Becca. But still. I knew she was holding something back. She’d acted so strange about the fairly innocuous text message, and there’d been nothing normal about how she’d run around Bendel’s as if it were her playground. I looked over at Didier and Margaux, who were swimming circles around each other in their tank, and envied them their carefree life and easy friendship.

  I let Louis finish recounting getting in trouble for mentioning his stepmother’s new hair extensions in front of a neighbor.

  “what does she think,” he wrote, “that everyone’s going to believe her hair magically grew eight inches overnight?”

  “i think she’s the one who should be in therapy,” I wrote back.

  “who said she isn’t?”

  I was hit by a wave of exhaustion and just wanted to crawl into bed. “gotta go help with the dishes. sorry.”

  It was a lie, but he wouldn’t have let me go if I’d told him the truth. It was bedtime.

  I was walking barefoot along a path paved with smooth, flat stones. Moonlight shone down on the ground, and I couldn’t see much else besides the outline of my feet. My movements as slow and careful as a monk’s, I kept going until I reached the end of the path, where I was pulled into a dark room. Candles hung from the ceiling in an old-fashioned candelabra, burning a rich gray fire. A man whose face was barely formed, like an olive with a nose stuck on, turned to me. He was holding a glass box that was full of little suns, moons, and stars that were all twinkling in and out of sight. Mesmerized, I felt myself pulled closer to the warmth of the box. I reached out toward the heat, though my body started to float away. I drifted, focusing on his receding figure as he drew a dark cloth over the box and blew out all the lights.

  When I woke up, I felt tired, but not as freaked out as I had after my other black-and-white dreams. I had no idea what—if anything—they meant, or where they were leading me, but I was getting used to them.

  I nearly bumped into a car on my bike ride to school, and in English class nobody woke me up until the kids started to file in for the next class and a girl needed her seat.

  “Sorry to disturb your nap,” she said, giving rise to laughter from a few of her classmates.

  I mumbled an apology and gathered my books. I ran down the hall as fast as I could, but I was still seven minutes late for chemistry class. Have I mentioned I’m no natural athlete?

  “So you decided to come after all,” my chemistry teacher, Mrs. Marcollini, announced in my direction as I entered the classroom.

  As much as I hated chemistry, my teacher had always seemed nice enough, and I had no idea what her problem was.

  And then I got it.

  All the other kids had study sheets and flashcards stored under their seats. Pencils were moving faster than mice skittering across a kitchen floor. Good God. When I’d slept through class on Monday, she must have announced a test. A chemistry test I hadn’t studied for at all. A test there was no way I’d pass.

  Frank Vitti, the kid who sat in front of me, turned around to shoot me a sympathetic look. I tapped my foot nervously as I waited for Mrs. Marcollini to give me the exam and bubble sheet. The papers landed on my desk with a heavy whoop.

  I could only figure out the answers to about a third of the questions, and
I had to rely on my fabulous hunches for the rest. I don’t know why I bothered.

  I was screwed.

  “Claire,” Clem said when I got up to pour myself another Orangina. “Where’s this Becca we keep hearing so much about?”

  We were up on the Waldorf’s Starlight Roof for Kiki’s Sunday-night Scrabble game. They’d all been begging me to bring Becca up, but so far the timing hadn’t worked out. I turned to my grandmother. “I forgot to tell you. She said she’s sorry that she can’t make it tonight. Her parents were having some people over and she needed to be there.”

  Kiki nodded and said, as an aside to Edie, “You can’t blame the girl.”

  “No,” Edie twittered. “I’m sure her home makes this place look like a halfway house.”

  Kiki turned to me. “Tell her that we forgive her absence. But we’re dying to meet Her Highness.”

  I wondered if she’d started her martini hour earlier than usual. “You feeling okay?” I asked.

  “Oh dear,” Kiki laughed. “It seems our babe has been wandering around the woods with her hood over her eyes.”

  I tightened my fists and felt them whitening. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “You see that red thing at the center of the table?” Edie asked, nodding at a shrink-wrapped miniature bottle of Soul Sauce. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Um, should I say ‘ketchup’ or is this a trick question?”

  George was rocking back and forth, laughing under his breath.

  “Claire,” Edie said evenly, “your friend’s family owns that. Not that particular bottle, of course, but the Shuttleworth Corporation, which manufactures Soul Sauce.”

  I gulped. Normally, I’d assume they were just pulling my leg, but I could tell by their expressions they weren’t.

  “I mean…,” I started to say. “I knew they were well-to-do.”

  “Well-to-do?” Kiki chuckled and rubbed her meaty hands together. “The Shuttleworths are American royalty. A dynasty unto themselves.”

  “The kings of ketchup,” George boomed, and started to hum the Soul Sauce jingle.

  “Wait,” I said, my mind still spinning. Was that why Becca had said she knew her condiments the night we first went out, with Douglas? And how she knew how to score all the food at Bendel’s?

  “Are the pieces falling into place?” Kiki asked.

  “There’s a new Shuttleworth chemistry lab at school, but I didn’t—”

  “They’re a very philanthropic family,” Edie interrupted. “Remember where Kiki and I took you to see Silk Stockings?”

  Of course. At the Shuttleworth Theater. I was such a half-wit.

  The rest of them jumped in, adding the names of museums, sports arenas, and colleges that benefited from the Shuttleworths’ generosity.

  “Um, I just need to sit down for a second.” I sank into a lounge chair.

  So Becca’s family was stonking rich—even richer than her familiarity with Bendel’s had led me to suspect. Part of me was mad at her for not having made this clear, but I could see why she might not have wanted to advertise it.

  At least now I understood where all those great shoes came from.

  Now that I knew about Becca’s situation, I felt embarrassed for not having pieced it together sooner. Did the rest of Hudson know they were sharing oxygen with an American princess? It was well within the realm of possibility. You could set yourself on fire and not get a reaction out of my classmates. Unless, of course, it was during an Emergency Training class they were being graded on.

  “Hey, guys,” I said to my pseudofriends at lunch as casually as possible. “Have any of you ever heard of the Shuttleworths?”

  “Nope,” Zach chirped, too involved in arranging his lettuce and tomato to look up from his burger. Eleanor cocked her head from side to side, to indicate that she was thinking. When she was done, she scratched her nose and took a long sip of iced tea.

  I turned to Ian. He would have to interpret. “Survey says no,” he told me.

  “And what about you?” I asked him. “Does it ring a bell?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Shuffleworths. Isn’t it, like, a famous golf club that’s racist?”

  “Not quite,” I said, feeling slightly less ridiculous about my own obliviousness.

  “Well,” Ian said impatiently, “what is it, then?”

  “It’s just something I overheard some other kids talking about,” I lied, my eyes sweeping over the green and black linoleum floor until they landed on a loose flyer promoting a debate-a-thon. The last thing I wanted to do was blow Becca’s cover. So I picked up the decoy and threw it at the table. “I think it’s supposed to be some big-deal…mock trial competition or something?”

  Ian pulled a Tupperware container out of his suitcase. He pried the lid off and threw a carrot stick at me. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

  “Yeah,” said Zach. “Way to lead up to a letdown.”

  Eleanor kept her eyes trained on me as she helped herself to one of Ian’s carrot wands. She took a bite and shifted her sights to the scuffed-up debate-a-thon flyer, mouthing the words. The edges of her lips curled into a smile. I didn’t know exactly what she was thinking, but I could tell she was no fool.

  “The bad news is most of you did poorly,” Mrs. Marcollini said, walking up and down rows of desks to hand back our tests. “The good news is this will give you incentive to study properly for the remaining exams.”

  Upon receiving their grades, students were falling forward, one by one, like dominoes. I was actually looking forward to getting the test back and putting it behind me once and for all. When Mrs. Marcollini came to the last row (V–Z), she stopped at my desk. “And you—quite a performance.” She tossed my paper on my desk.

  Frank Vitti whipped around. “What’d you get?”

  “No idea,” I said. “I’m too scared to look.”

  “Allow me.” He plucked my paper off the table. “Holy cow. That’s just nuts.”

  “Thanks for the commentary,” I said, snatching my test back, facedown. What business of his was it if I sucked at chemistry?

  Mrs. Marcollini was up at the blackboard, talking way too rapidly about “dipole-dipole forces.” I waited until I felt sure nobody was looking, and I curled up the corner of my test. I rolled it over bit by bit until a 16% came into view. Ouch. I knew I hadn’t aced the test, but this was a new personal record in underachievement.

  Not caring about school had been a lot easier when I was doing well at it.

  I stuck my test sheet in the back of my notebook and set about copying down the circles and dotted lines Mrs. Marcollini was drawing on the blackboard.

  Holding back tears, I copied her Hs and Os as accurately as I could. The words sixteen and percent kept running circles in my brain. God, I was a loser.

  It wasn’t until I was done drawing that I noticed it: the exam book was upside down. The 16% I’d thought I’d received had been a 91%.

  Something seriously weird was going on.

  My heart banged against my chest as I balled up the booklet and shoved it in the side pocket of my striped bag.

  “Now you’re thinking,” a girl seated to my right said. She copied me and crumpled her exam in her fist. Then she punched her fist in the air and mouthed something not very nice at Mrs. Marcollini’s back.

  A few other kids gave me sympathetic looks.

  If only they knew.

  “Yes!” Becca said as she came out of our bathroom. “I finally got the hang of your toilet handle. You have to hold it to the right, then jiggle it at the end.”

  “Bravo,” I said. “Ever consider plumbing school?”

  In truth, I was touched. Becca had spent more afternoons at my place than I could count, enough time to absorb our family’s strange rhythms and customs. She knew how to read Dad’s erratic moods and what it meant when Henry left the apartment without saying goodbye. She was even aware of the fact that Mom’s crêpes were made out of Aunt Jemima pancake m
ix.

  My parents loved Becca, and not only because her existence hinted that I might not be so miserable at Hudson forever. Even if I were the most well-adjusted kid in Washington View Village, Becca would still be a parent’s dream: she was inquisitive about my parents’ work, she laughed at their not-very-good jokes, and when Mom wanted a captive audience to talk to about her latest ghostwriting project—a memoir-cum-diet-book by last year’s Miss Rodeo America—Becca was all too happy to look through a rodeo coffee table book with my mother and feign interest.

  It was only natural, then, that with Kiki’s revelation and Becca’s visits to apartment 8C becoming more frequent, I found myself feeling more curious about meeting her family. And as time wore on, I was becoming certain it would never happen.

  Which might explain why when it finally did, it practically sailed over my head.

  “So? What’s the word?” she asked me. We were in my bedroom, waiting for our toenails to dry and hiding out from Henry, who was going through a Harry Potter phase and violently crashing around the living area on a broomstick.

  Becca and I were flipping through a stack of ancient Life magazines I had found abandoned on a stoop in the West Village.

  “What do you think?” she said, her tone mildly annoyed.

  “Weird,” I said, hoping that was all that was needed.

  I’d been too focused on a pictorial about the Kennedys’ 1961 trip to Canada to pay attention to what she’d been talking about.

  “So is that a yes?” She looked at me intently.

  “Repeat the question?”

  “God, C, you are such a space cadet. As I was saying, my grandparents are taking us to dinner for my aunt Jocelyn’s birthday next Thursday, and they said I could bring a friend. So, once again, do you want to come?”

  “Wait.” I put my magazine down. “You’re inviting me to meet your family? To what do I owe this honor?”

  “Um, to being my friend? And to the fact that you keep dropping pathetic hints.”

  My ears felt hot. “That’s not—”