Girls We Love

by J. Minter

  The courtyard that was Candy was full of movement. They were playing some ridiculously catchy song that Liesel couldn’t quite place—the Black Eyed Peas, maybe?—and that had gotten the crowd going. Deb, one of DeeDee’s five assistants, appeared and gave Liesel a robotically quick kiss on each cheek. “Party’s going fine, Liesel, good job,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Liesel said. “Looks like all that work paid off.”

  “Yeah, anyway, can you pay attention to that Flan chick? I’m afraid that dress you got her is going to get messed up. And the last thing you want to do is piss off Marc’s people.”

  “Sure, catch you later.” Liesel gave her a big fake smile and turned back to Arno.

  “That was real deep, hon,” he said sarcastically.

  “Shut up,” Liesel said, dragging him toward the bar. “I need a drink, then I’ll deal with you.”

  “Drink?” Arno said. “I could use one, too.”

  Liesel pushed people aside as she approached the bar, which had been specially built inside a gigantic strawberry ice cream cone. Once she’d stepped under the ice cream cone roof, she was hit by a nasty case of memory. All the bottles of energy drinks and special waters were lit up by little lights, and the bartender had a ring of candy necklaces around her neck. Liesel could smell Arno right behind her.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “This is a bar,” she said slowly, “that has a policy against stiff drinks.”

  “What?” Arno said. “I mean, what kind of a club is this?”

  Liesel crossed her arms and laughed bitterly. “This is going to be a long night,” she said.

  everything is back where it’s supposed to be. for mickey, anyway.

  “Arrgh!” Mickey shouted. The music was so loud that only Philippa could hear him.

  “What’s the matter!” she yelled.

  “This song! Every time I hear this song it gets stuck in my head for like a week!”

  “Where are your friends?” Philippa yelled. She knew that Mickey was allergic to the Black Eyed Peas, and she didn’t want to have this conversation with him again.

  “I don’t know, but they must be hiding,” Mickey shouted back. “Otherwise you would be able to see them against all the pastel.”

  It was very pastel out there. All the people in Candy-land looked really healthy and happy and like they had just washed their faces, which was weird for a nightclub. Girls on roller skates were going around with trays full of some sort of beverage.

  “Oooohhh … hold it, hold it,” Mickey said. He nodded to himself, getting into the rhythm, and then he grabbed one of the roller girls by her apron strings.

  “Hey, watch it!” she yelled. She turned to Mickey with all her teeth showing, but when she saw who it was, she softened. “Mickey Pardo, long time no see.”

  “Hey Ula,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “What happened to your gig at Bungalow?”

  Philippa stepped up and held Mickey’s hand, just so that everybody was clear.

  “Oh, they fired me for dancing on the bar,” she said disgustedly. “And they call that a club. Now I’m in this place, what a joke! Anyway, here, enjoy.” She handed two of the tall glasses from her tray to Mickey and Philippa. They were filled with a lemon-colored liquid and mint sprigs. “I’m surprised to see you here, actually,” she said. “Toodles,” she called as she skated away.

  “That was weird,” Philippa said.

  “Yeah, anyway,” Mickey said. He took a long pull of his beverage. “Hey, this is lemonade!”

  “I guess this isn’t your lucky day.” Philippa giggled. “Except, you know, getting me back. Come on, let’s find your friends.”

  They kept walking through the crowd, but they had gotten to the center where the dance floor was, and the people were so packed and enthusiastic in that area that it was hard to move.

  “Can you believe how much these people love this stupid song?” Mickey asked.

  “Holy shit,” Philippa said. She had Mickey by the arm to steady her, but she still couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Look! It’s Leland Brinker. I saw him at the Bitter End once, but now he’s all famous.”

  “You still go in for that kind of cowboy junk? Even though you’re a lesbian?” They both giggled, and then Mickey said, “Wait a sec, you mean that guy who’s dancing with Liv?”

  “Who’s Liv?” Philippa wrinkled her nose.

  “You know, we met her last Saturday at that party in Central Park. She’s friends with Patch’s little sister, she’s hot… I mean, you’re a lesbian! I’d think you would notice these things!”

  “Enough with the lesbian jokes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, whoever that is, she’s practically humping Leland Brinker…,” Philippa said. When she turned, she saw that Mickey had been distracted by his old friend Patch. They were giving each other high-fives.

  “Hey, Philippa,” Patch said in that totally unsurprised way of his. He was wearing a worn blue T-shirt that said ALOHA on it and brought out his eyes, and jeans that were ripped at the knee. “It’s nice to have you back.”

  “Thanks, Patch,” Philippa said.

  “Aw, damn,” Patch said. Philippa looked at Patch, and for the first time in all the time she’d known him, he looked kind of uncomfortable. “It’s Liv,” he said. “That girl is psycho. Listen, I’m going to have to bail here, but I just got a call from the guys saying they’re at one of the picnic tables in the back…”

  “Paaaatttcchhhh!!!” The girl who had just been dancing with Leland Brinker came bounding across several low-lying couches. She was wearing a white strapless dress that looked somehow too delicate on her, like it might be torn apart by her animal energy. She nearly knocked Patch over with the force of her hug. Then she saw Mickey and Philippa and she moved to control herself. “Hi,” she said to them.

  “Hi,” they said back.

  “Patch,” Liv said in a voice that was trying to be a whisper but wasn’t making it, “do they know yet?”

  “Know what?” Patch said, inching away from her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Understood,” she said, smiling up at him like he was an underwear model on a Times Square billboard. “By the way, that thing back there with the songwriter? I was just trying to make you jealous.” Then she dashed back onto the dance floor, where a cheer of “Go, Liv! Go, Liv! Go, Liv!” went up.

  “Yeah, she’s a wack job,” Mickey said.

  “You don’t even know the half of it.”

  “Can we go see our guys now?” Mickey asked.

  The three of them pushed through to the other side of the dance floor. There were a few powder blue picnic tables clearly visible, but they were all filled with people they didn’t know. Finally they got to the end of the row, and saw that there was one shrouded in candy trees. They walked under the Skittles-laden branches, and that was when they saw their friends. Jonathan looked slick and carefully dressed as usual, and David was wearing a navy hoodie and jeans, and his big frame was hunched over the table. He looked like an aggressively average dude.

  “Hey, Jonathan,” Patch said, extending a hand to his friend. “Have you seen Flan?”

  “No, man, Liesel must be hiding her in a closet for later or something. I saw her friend Liv, though, she’s out there, so Flan must be somewhere.”

  “What’s goin’ on,” Mickey said, reaching out a hand for Jonathan and David to slap.

  “Well, David’s freaking out about—guess what—girls, which is why we’re hiding back here. So that’s good. Oh! And this club is actually for people our age, so they don’t serve alcohol here. Which is not nearly so bad as the suffocating cuteness of everything. Hi, Philippa, it’s nice to see you,” Jonathan said.

  Philippa smiled. She really liked Jonathan, but sometimes he could be weirdly sarcastic about his friends’ problems, which he was also obsessed with. Plus, she thought Candy was sort of adorable, and his criticizing it irritated her. “Hi, Jonathan. Hi, David,” s
he said. “What’s the matter? I thought you broke up with Amanda like a million years ago.”

  “Amanda?” David said. “Amanda was simple compared with this.”

  “You say that now …,” Mickey said.

  “Would you all sit down?” Jonathan asked. “You’re making me nervous.” They all sat down. “Anyway, our David here is all in a tizzy because a starlet’s in love with him and wants him to fly to Gdańsk and be in a movie with her. But he thinks that might be too glamorous or some ridiculous shit. He’s also having a crisis of conscience because he kissed Flan’s friend Liv the other night, and he thinks he might have a crush on her, too, but for some reason she’s one fourteen-year-old who is impossible to get on the phone.” Jonathan gave a final roll of his eyes. “That’s why we can’t leave this table,” he concluded. “We might run into either of these girls, and we don’t know what to say to either of them. I mean, David, not we. David doesn’t know what to say to them.”

  “David,” Patch said, “I don’t give out a lot of advice, so you should listen when I do. That girl Liv isn’t right in the head. Stay away, okay?”

  “Oh,” David said. He looked sort of stunned by this advice, but like he had been touched by Patch’s whole zen calm thing. “That’s good. But I still kissed her. What if SBB finds out?”

  “David,” Philippa said, “as the only girl present, I feel I should take this opportunity to give you your get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s okay. You don’t have to tell, just this once. It can just be our secret. You all right with that, big guy?”

  “Really?” David mumbled. “Thanks, Philippa. But the thing is, I don’t know if I even want to be with SBB. I mean, maybe that lifestyle isn’t for me. Not to mention, she’s living in my parents’ house again, which is still just as creepy and incestuous as last time, if not more so.”

  “And, I mean this whole thing about her being ‘undercover,’” Jonathan said, with a shake of his head. “That’s not real normal. Not only did she insist on wearing this wig that makes her look like Milla Jovovich in Zoolander, she has a Mini-Me sidekick who is dressed just like her. I saw them from behind, and it was so bizarre I just had to get out of there without saying hi to her.”

  “Really?” David looked like he was going to cry.

  “To figure this one out, I think we all need a drink,” Jonathan said. “Now, if only we could get a drink around here… ”

  “Drinks!” A tiny girl in a little black tunic thing and a black bobbed wig careened around the corner. She grabbed hold of the table and came to a halt. It was SBB, who Philippa barely recognized from the old days when they were friends. “Do you know where we can get some? I’ve been looking for a drink everywhere.” She smiled, and Philippa suddenly recognized Sara-Beth Benny under the wig. “I mean, I’ve been looking for you, too,” she said. “David, where have you been?”

  “Nowhere,” David croaked.

  “Well, that’s just crackers. Nowhere?” she smiled at the table, like they were all her fans, and then she stage-whispered, “I hope you haven’t been drinking too much, because we have to get on a plane tomorrow night … to get to the film set … in Gdańsk.”

  Philippa noticed Jonathan cringe at her emphasis. “Oh!” SBB said when she saw her. “Philippa Frady! I’ve been trying to run into you forever, it feels like!”

  They kissed hello on both cheeks. “It’s good to see you,” Philippa said.

  “You too,” SBB said. “Anyway, forget the drinks. Don’t you guys know what time it is?” There was a tableful of silence. SBB did a little twirl. “You fools!” she said gaily. “It’s time to light the candles on Flan’s birthday cake!”

  i’m all alone in the crowd

  I have always tried not to be one of those sad sacks who spend their whole birthday feeling sorry for themselves, but it was pretty hard not to feel a little bit—okay, a lot—of self-pity on my fourteenth, also known as my “sweet sixteen.”

  I had somehow been stranded by myself at the bar, and was surrounded by strangers who appeared to be having a great time. They were squealing and dancing and generally enjoying good, clean fun under an open sky on a hot summer night and they all had faces that I recognized, either because they were high school kids who my brother knew and who had always seemed larger than life to me, or they were actual celebrities, people who Liesel had called in for the big event. And here I was, just standing still, too shy to talk to any of them. Leland Brinker was out there, dancing like a big freak, and it was starting to look pretty silly that I had ever been deciding between Leland and Jonathan in my head. Apparently all of my worst fears had turned out to be true: Jonathan was so into Liv that I had become invisible to him, and Leland, well, Leland was pretty much out of my league.

  Which probably should have been obvious to me from the beginning. The me who thought she could be a big party girl seemed very, very far away at the moment, and also kind of insane.

  Nobody out there knew me. I was just another girl in a gold dress, huddled by the bar and well into her fourth glass of sparkling apple juice.

  I mean, why did I want to bring all this attention to myself and have a big party in the first place? It seemed ridiculously obvious to me now that I was not and never would be a party girl, whatever that means, anyway.

  For the moment, though, I was just glad that Deb the PR lady had forgotten about me. Ever since she’d told me to watch my dress, I’d been paranoid about spilling something on it, and by this point in the evening, I felt like the damn thing was clawing at my skin from inside the lining.

  I was also starting to suspect that certain Candy-goers had smuggled in some contraband booze, because there were definitely a few partiers who were swerving and generally looking a little more wild-eyed than sparkling apple juice would usually allow.

  Seeing as how low and lonely I was feeling, I guess what happened next was inevitable.

  One of those booze-smuggling jerk-offs went skidding across the pink stones and straight into me. I was knocked from my perch and out into the crowd, which graciously parted so that everybody could get a look at me sprawled on the ground. It stung a little bit, when I hit those shiny pink stones, but mostly it was just the humiliation. And the stickiness. There was definitely something sticky on the ground, and I didn’t want to think about what it was doing to my dress.

  “I’m so sorry,” the guy said.

  I looked up and immediately recognized Leland Brinker. “That’s okay,” I said. Well, I guess I can’t complain that my celebrity crush didn’t give me any birthday attention anymore.

  He extended his hand and pulled me up. As I got up on two feet, I saw my wig on the floor, and felt my normal old brown hair falling down around my shoulders.

  “Oh, no way!” Leland said. “You’re the birthday girl, huh?”

  “Oh!” I said. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Flan, right?” he said. He kissed me on the cheek. “Happy birthday, Flan. This might be a good time to tell you I’m your surprise birthday date.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” I said, blushing. Thankfully, now that I was back on my own two feet, the crowd had gone back to not paying attention to me, so I don’t think anybody noticed the pink cheeks. I couldn’t believe how much cuter Leland was in person. His blondish hair was all thin and angelic, and he had really piercing blue eyes, shrouded in beautiful dark lashes.

  “Hey,” Leland yelled in the bartender’s direction. He punctuated it with a loud whistle, like the kind you would use for a puppy. That’s the kind of thing that can really break a spell, but I was still pretty impressed by his prettiness at that moment in time. The bartender gave him a disgusted look. “Two more sparkling apple juices, for me and the birthday girl!” he said.

  “Happy birthday, beautiful,” he said, toasting me with the sparkling apple juice. This night wasn’t turning out at all like I expected, but I figured, what the hell, and downed my drink. Leland did the same. “So,” he said, pumping his eyebrows at me, “sweet sixteen … I guess
that makes you sixteen today. Big milestone,” he said with a shrug, a mere lift and drop of the shoulders, that he somehow managed to make lascivious and gross.

  “Actually, today is my …” I was about to explain to him the whole situation, but then somebody hit the OFF switch on all the colored searchlights, and I saw a glowing cake coming in my direction.

  sara-beth to the rescue!

  “Cake?” Patch said. “I didn’t know anything about a cake.”

  “Yeah, well, Liesel and I thought since it was her birthday and everything… ” SBB shrugged and smiled brightly, and then she climbed over Mickey and Philippa and into David’s arms. “Hi, baby,” she said.

  David’s friends all looked away as she straddled him and gave him a few intense kisses. When she’d had enough of that, she said impatiently, “Come on, people! It’s cake time.”

  David and his friends followed SBB to an area hidden behind planted trees, where Candy staffers were busily washing glasses and generally freaking out about the insanity out there. In the center of all this activity was an incredibly realistic-looking cake, in the shape of a miniature baby elephant.

  “Oh my God,” Philippa said. “That cake is crazy cool!”

  “I know, right? Liesel was planning on a real elephant but then Candy called last night and said that elephants weren’t allowed in the club, and since she’s representing them and everything, she couldn’t really bully them. So we thought of this. Usually, they only do wedding cakes, but it turns out this particular pastry chef is a fan.”

  “Fan of what?” Mickey said. “Clubs for underage people?”

  “No,” SBB said, her face falling a little bit. “A fan of my show.”

  “I got that,” Jonathan said.

  “Thank you, Jonathan,” Sara-Beth said. She continued to put candles into the cake, and as she did she felt David’s eyes on her. That was the kind of rapport they had. She lifted her eyes to him and winked. David, as usual, looked somewhat freaked out by the overwhelming attraction. That was when she realized that David wasn’t wearing the suit that she’d bought him. It didn’t matter, really. He always looked great, even in a simple hoodie and jeans. Especially in a hoodie and jeans.