Dream Girl

by Lauren Mechling

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I said. “You always complain about working from home.”

  She looked at me as if I had a discarded pistachio shell for a brain. “It’s not a good thing. It’s so they can watch over me and make sure I’m not doing other things with my time.”

  “Like writing an astrology column?” I asked unhelpfully. Henry fired a look my way, but luckily, Mom was too upset to notice.

  “I’m going to lose both my jobs, and then what?” she said.

  I guided Mom’s fingers back up to her nose and oversaw her breathing. When it calmed down some, I offered to write a draft of her column. “It won’t be perfect,” I said, “but it’ll be something. You can fix it in the morning.”

  She thought long and hard. “Well, it can’t hurt to try.”

  I helped her get to her feet and I walked her into her room.

  “After some rest, everything will feel completely different,” I told her. “The world makes no sense when you’re not sleeping right.”

  Don’t I know it.

  She crawled under the covers and dug a book out from under the bed.

  “Not tonight, Mom.” I removed the book from her weak grasp and turned off the lights. “Just get some rest. You can do all the work in the world tomorrow.”

  When I went back out into the living area, Henry came over and put a napkin on my head. “It’s a miniturban,” he told me. “It’ll get you in character.”

  I didn’t mind staying up and channeling Priscilla Pluto. This way, at least, I didn’t have time to read the chapter in my global studies textbook about Central American farming practices. I didn’t have to think of a fake-happy response to Louis’s last e-mail, in which he’d informed me that he’d met a girl in the waiting room at his shrink’s office. Robyn with a Y—the name alone made me want to gag. As did the thought of another nasty Noctolux pill.

  Before starting to type, I gazed out the window. A group of teenagers were huddled under the statue, drinking out of brown paper bags. The moon was full, and a V of birds blazed across the sky. I drew in a deep breath and got going on the column.

  By the time I went to bed, there wasn’t a single other light on in our complex. I’d outlasted everybody, and I still wasn’t ready to fall asleep.

  “I hope last night wasn’t too weird for you,” Becca said as we walked through the Hudson lobby. We had to make our way around a lanky kid who was passed out under the fire extinguisher, a chemistry textbook open over his face in lieu of a sleep mask. “Thank you so much for coming to the stuffiest club in America.”

  “I didn’t think it was that out of control. It was kind of funky, with all the pictures and statues.”

  “And the dress code? And the requirement that at least eighty percent of the members be senior citizens?”

  “Okay, maybe not funky. But it was…unique. And I loved meeting your family. They’re surprisingly nice.” Becca cut me a sidelong look. “I mean—I knew they’d be nice, but they’re pretty low-key.” I scrambled for something to add that would make it less obvious that I had any particular reason to expect them to be uptight. I still hadn’t fessed up that I knew about the Soul Sauce connection. “You know,” I said, “considering they’re members of the so-called stuffiest club in America.”

  “They’re just people.” She shrugged. “And it’s my grandparents who belong to the club, not my parents.”

  “Of course, of course,” I responded quickly. I was wide awake and jittery, no doubt thanks to the huge Noctolux pill I’d forced down my throat in the wee hours of the night before.

  “Well,” Becca said, “my family really liked you, too.”

  I pictured Andy playing with his pecan pie, and a jolt of adrenaline burned through me.

  “They did?” My voice cracked, and I felt as though I had three Noctolux pills stuck in my throat.

  “I wouldn’t sound so surprised if I were you.” She looked around to make sure there were other kids within earshot, then raised her voice. “It’s not like I told them about that sick thing you do to puppies with Scotch tape and string.”

  I snorted. “You need help. Have you ever considered laying off the creepy movies?”

  When we got outside, the air was thick with humidity and the sun was blinding.

  “Congratulations, Claire!” It took me a second to realize it wasn’t Becca speaking. It was one of the BDLs, who were standing in their usual post next to the entrance. “You made a friend here!” Sheila squealed sarcastically. “I’m really proud of you.”

  Becca tossed me a confused look.

  “I knew it was just a matter of time,” Ariel added.

  “I like how one of you is short and fair and the other is tall and dark.” Curly blond Lauren was appraising us as if she were a judge on a reality show. “You’re a modern-day Betty and Veronica.”

  “Except,” Sheila turned to her friend, “wasn’t Betty cool?”

  I was mortified, but Becca seemed unscathed. A subtle grin rose to her face, and she took her time giving them the once-over.

  “Very good,” she said. “And if you keep practicing your act, you might actually be intimidating one day. But if I can make one suggestion—avoid dressing identically. It makes you look like you all work at Starbucks.”

  Sheila’s eyes were popping out, and at least two of her friends were fingering their hoop earrings as if considering whether to take Becca’s advice and remove them.

  Becca poked me. “Ready, Veronica?”

  “I think you’re supposed to be Veron—” I said, but I was laughing too hard to finish my sentence.

  At dinner that night, Mom seemed considerably more relaxed, and when Dad was clearing the table, she pulled me aside. “Nice job,” she said softly. “I barely had to change anything. It’s funny, you wouldn’t know it from how little you talk, but you have a way with words.”

  “Scorpio,” I told her, “you will damn your daughter with faint praise.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean!” She wrapped her arms around me from behind and buried her face in my ponytail.

  Saturday night Louis invited me to go to the movies with him and Robyn with a Y, but I was feeling a little sick, so I stayed in and wrestled over the remote control with Henry. He wanted to watch the World’s Strongest Man competition and I wanted to see Mystery! on PBS—it was a Hercule Poirot double feature. We ended up changing channels every ten minutes, which was fair because that way we didn’t understand what was going on in either show.

  I was still feeling sniffly the next morning, and apart from a quick run to the West Fourth Street magazine stand for a fresh pile of November issues, I didn’t end up leaving the apartment until it was time to head to Kiki’s for my Sunday-night visit.

  The second I stepped into the Waldorf’s lobby, every morsel of stress and confusion left my body. You would have to be Ebenezer Scrooge to be there and not feel as if all was right with the world. People were pacing around and talking on their cell phones while honeymooners held hands and floated about, overstuffed on sleep and love. The enormous Art Deco clock rang its quarter-hourly chime.

  I had to pull myself away, and walked over to the elevators.

  Kiki’s gray eye came to the peephole before she unlatched the lock.

  “Am I too early?”

  “No, you’re nice and punctual! I’m practically ready.”

  She had on a robe and her hair was in rollers.

  “Sure looks that way.”

  “Oh poppycock.” She engulfed me in a big hug and reeled back to readjust my cameo necklace.

  “Have you been wearing it regularly?” she asked.

  “Always, except for baths and showers.”

  “Good.” She ushered me into the main room and shuffled back into her bedroom. “Now, keep your shirt on. I’ll be back in a flash.”

  “I’m in no rush.” I free-fell onto one of the damask couches and inhaled deeply. The best perk at the Waldorf is the twice-daily maid service. The cleaners wear
French maid outfits—the nonsexy kind—and they keep the apartment smelling like marzipan and lemon zest. Which reminded me.

  I slipped into the bathroom and helped myself to a shrink-wrapped oval of almond soap. I was on my way back to the couch when I stopped and looked out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes when I walk past mirrors, I try to trick myself into seeing what I really look like. This entails making a conscious effort not to look in the mirror and forcing myself to be surprised by my own reflection. Of course, surprising yourself on purpose is, by definition, impossible, and in this exercise I always come out looking like the same old me: blond and duck-like. As was the case this time. Sighing, I leaned in closer to the mirror and tried to force my face into Rye’s sour expression, with her puckered lips and quick, critical eyes.

  “For pity’s sake!” Kiki cried from the doorway. “What on earth is going on in here?”

  Her hair was set and she was dressed, hugging her Deluxe Scrabble board to her chest.

  “Just, you know, practicing a new self-defense technique I read about in Seventeen,” I said feebly. “People are more likely to leave you alone if you look like you have a medical condition.”

  “I’ll say,” she said with a sniff, and strutted out the door, indicating for me to follow.

  While Kiki lives in the forty-two-story-tall Waldorf Towers, the Starlight Roof is part of the regular hotel, which is only twenty-seven stories high. On the elevator ride down to the lobby, which connects the towers to the main hotel, she inspected me and smiled. “You’re looking well.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Or I guess I should say thanks to Noctolux.”

  Kiki’s brow twitched. “Thanks to whom?”

  “I told you I was falling asleep at school, right? My gym teacher called Mom and Dad, and they got me on this blue pill.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It’s a pain to swallow but you might like it—even when I only get five hours of sleep, I feel fine the next day.” I’d always taken Kiki for an advocate of sleeping pills—her medicine cabinet was jammed with them. But oddly, she looked worried, and her eyes were filming over.

  “And let me guess. In the week since you started taking this pill, you’ve stopped having your interesting dreams.”

  Until now, I hadn’t even thought about it.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  We watched the elevator numbers tick down. Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen. My ears felt as if they were about to pop.

  “So am I to take it I messed up?…I didn’t realize there was a connection.”

  Kiki laughed. “Really, you never cease to surprise me. Let me guess, you didn’t see the connection here, either: once you started wearing a black and white cameo, you began to have black-and-white dreams.”

  I pulled out the necklace to examine it upside down. How had I been so clueless? Only now did it click: the black and white cameo perfectly matched my black-and-white dreams.

  “And then you start taking sleep medication and you cease to have the dreams.”

  “Another connection,” I said quietly.

  “Bingo. Now, Claire,” she said, suddenly serious. “Promise me you’ll stay clear of sleep aids.” Kiki’s words came like a jab. “Toss them out. Unless, that is, you’re not interested in reaching your potential.”

  “Okay, but what is this potential you keep referring to?”

  “How are you ever going to learn if I spell everything out for you?” Kiki swallowed audibly. “I’ll say this: it would be a shame to give up now. If you play your cards right, you stand a very good chance of becoming a girl of extraordinary talent.”

  The doors opened and Kiki strode out, not bothering to look over her shoulder to make sure I was following her.

  I wanted to hound her more, but she’d already turned the page.

  “So, darling,” she said in her party voice, indicating we were to put the previous topic behind us. “Aren’t you looking forward to tonight’s game? I’ve been hankering all day for some good conversation.”

  { 15 }

  Mode of Expression

  “Huggy seven!” somebody shrieked. I spun around and watched Sheila’s friend Ariel grab a skinny guy from behind and hold him tightly in her arms. He looked as if he was torn between hating her and enjoying it.

  “Huggy Bear,” Sheila and co.’s new favorite after-school pastime, entailed tackling members of the Hudson student body and smothering them with hugs.

  All of the BDLs were wearing baby-sized Knicks jerseys with their usual black yoga pants. If only there were a way to get Louis’s father to use his position as the team’s general manager to intervene.

  Sheila tossed her hair back, and I wished I could flush her and the rest of the BDLs down the toilet with my Noctolux pills.

  Sheila caught my eye and let her jaw hang, mimicking my gaping stare.

  “What’s up, Claire?” she pressed. “Do you want a hug or something?”

  “No thanks.” I shook my head. Sheila’s eyes narrowed into knife slits.

  “I think she wants a hug and is afraid to ask for it,” Sheila told her friends.

  “No,” I repeated, coming back to my senses. “I’m just fascinated how some people get off on mixing affection and aggression. Call me boring.”

  Sheila looked confused and turned away.

  “Where do those girls get their inspiration?” Becca asked after I’d shambled over to her. She was standing across the street, near the Queen Bee posse.

  “We used to play a game like that at birthday parties,” I said, watching the skinny kid disentangle himself from his flirty perpetrator. “But that was, like, ten years ago. And cooties played a big role in it.”

  Becca snickered and pulled her bag higher onto the shoulder of her ochre washed-silk dress. “My voice lesson’s in half an hour. Walk with me to the train?” In typical Becca fashion, she asked me this when we were already walking. And in typical Claire fashion, I left my bike behind.

  It was one of those sweet-smelling autumn days that make me reconsider calling summer my favorite season. There was a charge in the air, and the leaves were starting to curl like ribbons.

  “C’mon, slowpoke,” she said, tugging my arm. “I was crazy late last week, and I know I’m going to get booted out.”

  There wasn’t a chance in hell Becca would ever get kicked out of the Young Friends of Lincoln Center program. Unlike the other kids she studied with, she hadn’t been invited to train because of her prodigious musical abilities. She’d gotten in through the golden side door. The Shuttleworths were patrons of the Metropolitan Opera, and the family name was etched into the marble donor wall. Plus, Becca had studied piano since she was little, so she knew the difference between a trombone and a treble clef.

  “Hey, there was something I wanted to ask you,” Becca said. We were approaching the French bistro we had come to dub Chez Illiterate. Indeed, the blackboard in the window pronounced today’s special to be “braised lamp chops.”

  “Looks illuminating.” Becca snickered. “Anyway, lemme run this by you. My family’s supposed to go skiing next weekend and Rye had to pull out at the last minute. She has some school project that she says is going to be too time-consuming.”

  “And?” I was dying for her to get to the point.

  “And, well, if you wanted to use her tick—”

  “Are you messing with me?” I exclaimed. “You’re inviting me on a family vacation?”

  “It’s only two nights. More like a family field trip.”

  “Sounds like a vacation to me.”

  “There will definitely be some boring family stuff, but I’m hoping most of the time we can hang out just the two of us.”

  “You don’t have to talk me into it,” I told her. “I’m in.”

  A smile spread across her face.

  “I do have one question, though,” I said. “Where in the world are you taking me?”

  “Aspen.” She fixed her eyes on me and waited to see if I recognized the name. I gu
ess she could tell I didn’t. “It’s in Colorado. That’s a state in America.”

  I blushed. “Thanks, I think I’ve heard of it. My parents will be pleased to know you’re not taking me to some war zone.”

  “Better luck next friend. My parents don’t really do war zones.”

  Giggling slightly, I added, “Please make sure to send Rye my thanks.”

  “Yeah, we’re lucky she was the one to drop out, and not somebody in the family.” She pulled her MetroCard out of her wallet.

  “Because she’s not your favorite person on earth?” I asked hopefully.

  “No,” she sounded impatient. “Because she’s the reason we’re flying commercial.”

  “What are you talking about?” Was there any other way to fly, unless you planned to sneak onto a FedEx plane or something?

  “My dad is obsessed with all of his planes, but he’s squeamish about letting non–family members on them.”

  “All of his planes? How many are we talking about, here?”

  “I think there are about twelve.” She sounded nonchalant. “But there’s this one, the Dassault Falcon 7X, that’s his true love.” She thrust out her hand and pointed to her ring. “He had it special made.”

  “The ring?”

  “Yes.” She looked slightly embarrassed. “And the plane. He keeps it in London, just so nothing bad will happen to it.”

  I scrunched up my nose. What about London was immune to “bad”?

  “But,” I started quietly, “wouldn’t he want it here so he can, you know, use it?”

  Becca’s face clouded over and she twirled her hair. “Yeah, I don’t know. He’s crazy with his ideas. He’s convinced his planes are safer there. You can ask him.”

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Well…” Becca looked past my shoulder, as if the words she was searching for were floating in the air behind me. “I’m really glad you can keep Rye’s seat warm.”

  “No biggie,” I said, trying to make it sound as if I were doing them a favor instead of the other way around.

  I was playing pickup basketball on the West Fourth Street courts with Rye, of all people. But the fact that she was there wasn’t the weirdest part. You should have seen me going crazy out there on the court—my body was suddenly a million times smarter and faster and, yes, taller than it actually is. In normal life, I’ve never been able to see the point of competitive athletics, but now I was starting to see why people cared. I felt as if I had been put on this earth for no reason other than all this pivoting and dribbling and looking down on my opponent. And I wasn’t even breaking a sweat. Then I cut across the court and pulled off a slam dunk that was so forceful it bounced off the court’s concrete and over the fence. The air filled with whoops, and a few fans rushed out to hoist me into the air. I wouldn’t say Rye looked ecstatic.