by J. Minter
“What?” her mother said.
“You’re sounding odd, Phil-bear,” her dad said, peeking over his paper.
“Huh?” Philippa said.
She was wondering how she could possibly stand her parents for the next hour, much less the next year or so before she went away to college, when there was a rapping on the window frame. “Excuse me,” Mickey said, and then climbed through the window. In the old days, Mickey was always doing reckless things to get in the Fradys’ place, and it made her all giddy to see him doing it now.
“Mickey!” Philippa gasped. He was wearing an old cable-knit sweater with the arms cut off, with pin-striped pants and those stupid white clogs, and he was smiling.
“Hello, Fradys,” Mickey said.
“Mickey,” Philippa’s dad said, “what are you doing here? And I want you to know that if you hurt my trellises, I’m sending your father a bill.”
“Whatever,” Mickey said. “I’m just here to say, first of all, Phil: You’ve really made me feel a lot of things lately. And some of them were not things that I wanted to feel.”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.
“What are you talking about, Mickey?” Philippa’s mom said.
“Do your parents know that you’re here?” Mr. Frady added. His favorite way of complicating the Mickey-Philippa relationship was to get the Pardos involved. That was usually when things got really psycho.
“Sir,” Mickey said, “if you’ll just bear with me. Phil, the thing is, there’s a party tonight. And all my friends are going. And I want to go, too, but it just wouldn’t be a party for me if you weren’t there.”
“But what about Sonya?” Philippa asked.
“Who’s Sonya?” Philippa’s dad asked.
“Dad, shut up!”
“I really liked Sonya,” Mickey said, giving Philippa’s dad a big fake smile. “That’s why this is so complicated. But if I had a chance to get back with you, then there was really nothing else I could do. I had to break up with her.”
“You broke up with her?” Philippa gasped.
“Yeah, I had to. I mean, plus the shit she said to you last night was totally wack.”
Philippa ran up to Mickey and threw her arms around him and covered his neck with kisses. “It was really mean,” she said eventually. Philippa shot her parents an apologetic look, and then looked into Mickey’s eyes. “So, after everything, you still want to be with me?”
“Philippa, no matter how many mistakes I make, we’re always just still so right for each other. And besides, it was about time you were the one making the mistake.” Mickey squeezed her and lifted her up and put her back down. “I guess it boils down to the fact that I love you whether you’re a lesbian or not.”
Philippa’s heart had a quick spasm, and she looked at her parents in time to see her mother spit white wine all over her Rolodex and her father bunch his newspaper up.
“Mickey,” her mother said, “I think I misheard you. Did you say… lesbian?”
Philippa turned her expression of frozen, bug-eyed terror on Mickey. They didn’t know, she mouthed. Philippa couldn’t help but feel that her life as she had known it up till now was over. Her parents were not going to take this whole lesbian thing well.
“Oh, shit,” Mickey said.
“I’ll be home by midnight!” Philippa yelled. Then she allowed herself to be pulled by Mickey down the stairs. They went hustling down, two steps at a time, and when they hit the pavement they looked up and saw the Fradys leaning out their second-story window with looks of utter incomprehension.
Mickey looked up at them, and yelled, “See ya, suckers!” Then he turned to Philippa, and said, “That was way more awesome then riding a Vespa across the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“I know,” Philippa said.
“Anyway, they’ll get over it. They always do.”
“I hope so…,” Philippa said. She closed her eyes and pulled even closer to Mickey.
Mickey hailed a passing cab and pushed Philippa inside. “Hit it,” he told the guy, and then they peeled off. Mickey put his fists in the air, and let out a loud “Whooo-hooooo!” Then he turned a big grin on Philippa and said, “Sister, it is officially party time.”
tonight’s the night, for deluded girls on the lam
“Oh, there you are!”
The giggling voices that had been ricocheting down the stairs finally appeared on the front steps. Liv looked up and saw Flan and SBB. They looked like twins, except that Flan wasn’t quite as miniature, and her dress was big and gold, whereas SBB’s was short and black. But they both were wearing black wigs of bob length, and they both had the artfully done faces of movie stars.
Liv smiled at them. “There you are!” she replied, trying to mask her irritation. She herself was wearing a strapless white eyelet dress that she had bought at Barneys that day. It had cost two thousand dollars, but it had reminded her of the dress that Liesel Reid had worn to her sweet sixteen party and was thus obviously the winner, so she had charged it to her mom’s credit card and worn it out of the store.
She had superstitiously wanted Patch to be the first one to see her in the dress, but now that was ruined. “You look amazing!” she said, stretching her big mouth into what she hoped was something like a genuine smile.
“What have you been doing out here?” Flan asked.
“Waiting for Pa—Um, never mind.”
Flan stared blankly back at her. “Oh, okay,” she said.
“Liv, you look really nice,” SBB said. “Almost as nice as Flan. Almost, but not quite.” Then she pinched Flan for emphasis.
“Um, thanks, I guess,” Liv said, standing up awkwardly on her Miu Miu mules. They stood there, in the leafy evening, and smiled at one another until the car drove up.
“Hello, beauties,” said the man in the black Lincoln. “Which one of you is Flannery Flood?”
Flan stepped forward and waved shyly. “That’s me,” she said.
“Well, hello, gorgeous,” he said, reaching to the seat next to him and then extending a bouquet of mums in her direction. He smiled, and she caught a mouthful of gold teeth. “These are from DeeDee Rakoff. She’s sorry she won’t get to meet you tonight, but she says she’s sure she’ll get to meet you soon.”
“These are gorgeous!” Flan said excitedly.
“Ladies, get in. The party awaits,” the driver said, and then Flan and SBB piled into the car. Liv took one look back and wondered where Patch was. She imagined him in some bathroom somewhere, getting ready to go. He was probably being very serious, putting on a casual, summer-weight suit that was white (to match hers!) and brushing his sandy hair behind his ears in a belated attempt to look cleaned up. Of course, silly Patch, he wouldn’t know that he looked even cuter that way—a little bit scruffy, a little bit the gentleman. Like Brad, when he belonged to Gwyneth. Maybe she would tell him later, when they were alone and …
“Liv, what are you daydreaming about?” SBB called from the car, and so Liv had no choice but to get in and travel to the party with a bunch of girls.
Candy was on one of those wide cobblestone streets on the far West Side that looked like it had been as empty as a movie set until the party showed up. In this case, the party meant a long line of would-be revelers who were still in high school, and a gaggle of camera people taking pictures of the red carpet. There was a twenty-foot wall, and the sounds of blaring speakers and screaming girls rising above it.
“Oh my God, look at all those people!” Flan said. She brushed the strands of fake black hair away from her face and gazed out of the car window. “Can you believe it?”
“What a great sweet sixteen, right?” SBB said.
“Where is your brother, anyway?” Liv demanded. Both of the black-wigged girls turned to stare at Liv, who felt compelled to say, “He’s your brother, he should be here!”
“Come on,” SBB said. She jumped out of the car and strode to the photographers. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she called. “The lady you’v
e all been waiting for! The sweet sixteen-year-old herself! Flannery Flood!”
Flan jumped out of the car and walked up to the cameras. She went slowly at first, but the roar from the crowd and egging from the cameramen to work it and own it galvanized her, and soon enough she was turning and vamping for the guys.
“I can’t believe it,” Liv said. She almost felt a twinge of jealousy for all the attention her old friend was getting, but she knew that, in the grand scheme of things, tonight was really her night—her and Patch’s night—so she didn’t worry.
She had been talking to herself, but apparently, since she was still sitting in the car, the driver thought she was talking to him, because he said, “Eh, I seen it all before.”
“Really?” Liv said, noticing the guy again. “You must have been to a lot of parties.”
“Not a lot of parties. I been to a lot of press cluster-fucks. Or driven up to them, I guess.” He paused meditatively. “Excuse my French.”
“That’s okay,” Liv said. “So, do they always look like these look?”
“Yeah, because DeeDee pays the photographers to show up and act like that. Makes it feel like a big event. Half of them probably don’t even have film in their cameras.”
“Really?” Liv said. “Well, thanks for telling me that.” She leaned over the divide and kissed him on the cheek. “Have a good night, okay?”
Pumped with confidence, Liv strode past the cameras, and along with SBB and Flan, she went through the gilded gates and into Candy, which was not so much a club as a gigantic courtyard paved with pink stones and filled with trees that had been stripped of their leaves and decorated with candy-themed decorations. There were gigantic Skittles and jelly beans dangling from the branches, catching the candy-colored searchlights and glittering.
Inside the walls, they were playing Beyoncé and everyone was dancing and screaming. When Flan walked in, a woman with a clipboard yelled, “It’s Flan!” and a cheer ran through the crowd. Or at least, the crowd of ten or so people in T-shirts that said DDR immediately surrounding them.
Flan looked flushed and excited, and she reached for Liv’s hand and squeezed it. “Can you believe this?” she whispered.
“No, it’s amazing,” Liv whispered back. The air was thick and humid, and everyone inside the walls of Candy appeared to have a fine sheen of sweat on them. In between the candy-decorated trees, there were topiaries decorated with little Christmas lights, so everything felt very packed and bright. They were the same topiaries that they had seen at Liesel’s party last weekend, but whatever, they still looked cool.
“I can’t believe this is how I get to celebrate my sweet sixteen,” Flan whispered.
“Isn’t this special?” SBB said. She was still standing on Flan’s other side.
“Yeah,” Flan said. “One question, though. Where do we go now?”
“I can answer that,” the woman with the clipboard said. She was wearing Sevens and had a curtain of very straight dark hair, and she looked like she hadn’t been without a cup of coffee in hand since six o’clock in the morning. “I’m Deb, from DeeDee, by the way. What you should do is go sort of toward the bar for maximum attention, and make sure you look like you’re having fun. The bartender will give you your first round of sparkling apple juice on the house.”
“Oh, okay,” Flan said, looking mildly frightened by this news.
“And Flan?” Deb added. “The dress looks great, just don’t spill anything on it, because we have to send it back to Marc’s people tomorrow. Got it?”
Flan nodded, and then SBB dragged her forward into the crowd and toward the bar. “Ignore her,” Liv heard SBB saying. “You’ll have as much sparkling apple juice as you want.”
Just then, Liv spotted Patch’s friend Jonathan. He was wearing a white blazer and a black T-shirt over some stylish jeans, and he was surveying the crowd. His eyes fell on Flan for a minute, and then he looked a little confused, and his eyes kept on roving. When he saw Liv, he smiled and waved.
Liv tried to think quickly. It was possible that Jonathan knew where Patch was, but it was equally possible that he would just distract her and want to talk about Flan or, worst case scenario, he would know about that whole David slippage, and would somehow bring that up. So Liv decided that the best way to avoid that kind of negative contact was to bring maximum attention to herself. She shimmied to the center of the dance floor, where the most eyes and the most lights were on her, and started grinding with the first guy she saw.
When she looked up, she saw the slender face and wisps of dirty-blond hair that had decorated Flan’s wall. Leland something or other. “Well, awwwright,” he said, after he’d looked Liv up and down. Liv smiled right back. Because it wouldn’t hurt anybody to send a subtle little signal that this was her big night, too, right? And that she was the most glamorous eighth grader on the block.
liesel questions her fate
“Well, don’t you look lovely?”
Liesel looked behind her in the mirror, and saw her mother standing in the doorway. “Thanks, Mom,” Liesel said, and ran her fingers through her hair. She was wearing a little black dress with a deep V-neck that showed off the flat, pale middle of her chest.
“Are you going to see that Wildenburger boy?”
“Well, tonight’s the Candy party and he’s my date. So, yes, I guess I am.”
“I just think that’s fabulous, darling,” her mother said. She moved her hand from her hip to her ear, which rattled all the gold bracelets on her wrist. The noise wasn’t really that loud, but Liesel found it deeply irritating because everything her mother did lately was deeply irritating.
“Mom, I’m going to be late…,” Liesel said, turning to look at her mother in her all-white pant-suited glory.
“Yes, dear, you get ready. But don’t forget to tell Arno to tell his mother that they’re invited for family dinner, and that my assistant will be calling with potential dates.” Her mother smiled, sending ripples of elegant smile lines along her cheeks. “Ciao, darling.”
Liesel had been working her butt off promoting the Candy party, and she wanted to have fun tonight, but she was still furious with Arno for messing up his big chance at fixing his image. She didn’t want to hang out with him tonight, or ever again, really, much less with his whole stupid family. She thought about how little she wanted to see him all the way to the West Side. Her car pulled up in front of the Wildenburgers’ Chelsea loft building, and she examined her nails until Arno had gotten in the car and given her the requisite kiss on the cheek.
“You look nice,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him and made a guttural little noise of disapproval. “You look like one of those, what do you call them? Singer-songwriters,” she said.
Arno looked down at his corduroy blazer and stretched-out-at-the-neck army green T-shirt. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“I mean I got you that whole Rogan outfit. You couldn’t even try that for one night?” she said, and looked away. Then they both stared out the window until they got to the club.
“Oh shit,” Arno said. “The media.”
“What’s your problem with the media?” Liesel said. She opened her compact and checked her face.
“Oh, you know, that whole Hottest Private-School Boy thing.” Arno sniffed disgustedly. “The press just wasn’t that nice to me is all.”
“Yes, Awno,” Liesel snapped, “I do know. I remember. In fact, I was trying to fix your whole problem with the media so you wouldn’t have to go around like a wounded little puppy all the time, but nooooo, you couldn’t handle somebody doing something nice for you. Some people just can’t handle the riches fate has handed them, can they?”
“Whoa, whoa,” Arno said, putting his hands up defensively. “Chill, lady. All I’m saying is what’s going on out there is shallow, and I’m not just riffing, I’m saying that I have personal experience with this shit that goes so deep, maybe you can’t understand it.”
“Fine, Awno, whatever. For
tonight, I will pretend like you didn’t totally just embarrass me by not showing up at the Bowery and partying with rock stars. But this is work for me, okay? This is professional. So if you could keep your soul-searching, poetry-loving mumbo jumbo to yourself for just a little bit, I’d appreciate it. Got that?”
“Fine, whatever,” Arno huffed.
Then he got out of the car, walked around it, and opened her door. He took Liesel’s hand, and together they stepped into the crowd like the super hot scions-of-art-money couple they were.
“Liesel! Liesel!” one reporter yelled. “You’ve been building buzz for Candy for DeeDee. Do you think it’s a success?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Liesel said as she breezed by.
“Arno, does this mean you’re staging a post-HPSB comeback?” another reporter yelled. Arno held up his hand to shield himself from the unpleasant questions.
“I can’t believe you even had to ask,” Liesel yelled. It was weird how second nature this was for her, making Arno look good. “He’s so obviously hot again.”
Arno put his arm around her and smiled rakishly at the crowd. “Whatever Liesel says must be true, right?” Arno called out good-naturedly. Then he buried his nose in her hair. For a brief moment, Liesel was reminded of the Arno she used to know—the gorgeous publicity hound Arno. Of course, that made his whole quest for depth thing that much more painful. The photographers, and the crowd pushing up behind them, let out a big “Awwwww!” They loved it, of course.
“Time for us to enjoy the party!” Liesel called. She put her arm around Arno and gave him a tug. Someone out in the crowd yelled, “Arno and Liesel, you look like you were born for each other!” And then they were swept through a wall of large men wearing all black and speaking into mouthpieces.
Liesel shook Arno off of her. “That was unpleasant,” she said, pushing her hair around her shoulders.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“I mean, pretending that I even like you anymore is painful,” she said.
