Upper East Side #1

by Ashley Valentine

  As if being late was such a terrible crime.

  “But Mom,” Chanel moaned, yanking her skimpy gray nightgown down over her hips. “It’s freezing!”

  Ignoring her daughter’s protests, Lillian opened the closet door and rifled through the clothes. Something scratchy and heavy landed on Chanel's long, bare legs.

  “There’s your new uniform,” her mother instructed. “Hurry up and put it on.”

  Before leaving for boarding school, Chanel had burned all her old school uniforms and flushed them down the garbage chute. Last week Lillian had purchased two new ones from Emma Willard’s online store. One for winter and one for spring.

  Chanel sat up and fingered the pleated maroon skirt. “Pretty,” she yawned with lazy disinterest. She glanced outside. The Metropolitan Museum of Art stared coldly back at her from across Fifth Avenue, its cool limestone steps abandoned and lifeless save for a lone tourist wearing a backpack and a beret. “Wait,” she demanded. “Where is everybody?”

  Her mother pulled open the top drawer of her dresser, frowning with displeasure at the tangled array of bras, underwear, and socks tucked inside. “Where do you think they are? At school already. Tights. Where do you keep your tights?”

  Chanel bolted out of bed and shoved her mother out of the way. “Thank you. I’ve got it. I can dress myself.”

  Ten minutes later, Chanel stood in the penthouse foyer, chewing a croissant as she waited for the elevator. Her Burberry raincoat was unbuttoned. Her Ralph Lauren boots were untied. Her tights were old and holey. Her Brooks Brothers boy’s shirt was tattered and frayed. And her hair was unbrushed.

  But at least she was on her way.

  “Welcome back, girls,” Mrs. McLean said, standing behind the podium at the front of the school auditorium. “I hope you all had a terrific long weekend. I spent the weekend in Vermont, and it was absolutely heavenly.”

  All seven hundred students at the Emma Willard School for Girls, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and its fifty faculty and staff members, tittered discreetly. Everyone knew Mrs. McLean had a girlfriend up in Vermont. Her name was Vonda, and she drove a tractor. Mrs. McLean had a tattoo on her inner thigh that said “Ride Me, Vonda,” with a picture of two naked women with snakes for hair and wolf heads.

  It’s true, swear to God.

  Mrs. McLean, or Mrs. M, as the girls called her, was their headmistress. It was her job to put forth the cream of the crop—send the girls off to the best colleges, the best marriages, the best lives—and she was very good at what she did. She had no patience for losers, and if she caught one of her girls acting like a loser—persistently calling in sick or doing poorly on the SATs—she would call in the shrinks, counselors, and tutors and make sure the girl got the personal attention she needed to get good grades, high scores, no criminal record, and a warm welcome to the college of her choice.

  Mrs. M also didn’t tolerate meanness. Emma Willard was supposed to be a school free of cliques and prejudice of any sort. Her favorite saying was, “When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.” The slightest slander of one girl by another was punished with a day in isolation and a seriously difficult essay assignment. But those punishments were a rare necessity. Mrs. M was blissfully ignorant of what really went on in the school. She certainly couldn’t hear the whispering going on in the very back of the auditorium, where the seniors sat, dissecting the social dramas of the day.

  “I thought you said Chanel was coming back today,” Rain Hoffstetter whispered to Imani Edwards.

  That morning, Porsha and Alexis and Imani and Rain had all met on their usual stoop around the corner for cigarettes and coffee before school started. They had been doing the same thing every morning for two years, and they half expected Chanel to join them. But school had started ten minutes ago, and Chanel still hadn’t shown up.

  Porsha couldn’t help feeling annoyed at Chanel for creating even more mystery around her return than there already was. Her friends were practically squirming in their seats, eager to catch their first glimpse of Chanel, as if she were some kind of celebrity.

  “She’s probably too drugged up to come to school today,” Imani whispered back. “I swear, she spent like, an hour in the bathroom last night at Porsha’s house. Who knows what she was doing in there.”

  “I heard she’s selling these pills with the letter C stamped on them. She’s completely addicted to them,” Alexis told them. “And last night these guys I know got a handful of pills from some light skinned chick on the steps of the Met. They had the letter C all over them. Coincidence, or what?”

  “Wait till you see her,” Imani told Rain. “She’s a total mess.”

  “Really?” Rain whispered back. “I heard the police in New Hampshire found her naked in a field, with a bunch of dead chickens. They thought she was into some kind of voodoo shit or something.”

  Alexis giggled. “I wonder if she’ll ask us to join.”

  “Hello?” said Imani. “She can dance around naked with chickens all she wants, but I don’t want to be there. No way.”

  “Where can you get live chickens in the city, anyway?” Alexis asked.

  “I don't know, Brooklyn? Ew,” Rain shuddered.

  “Now, I’d like to begin by singing a hymn. If you would please rise and open up your hymnals to page forty-three,” Mrs. M instructed.

  Mrs. Weeds, the frizzy-haired hippie music teacher, began banging out the first few chords of the familiar hymn on the piano in the corner. Then all seven hundred girls stood up and began to sing.

  Their voices floated down 93rdStreet, where Chanel was just turning the corner, cursing herself for being late. She hadn’t woken up this early since her eleventh grade final exams at Hanover last June, and she’d forgotten how badly it sucked.

  “Hark the herald Angels si-ing!

  Glo-ry to the newborn king!

  Peace on Earth and mercy mi-ild

  God and sin-ners reconciled.”

  * * *

  Emma Willard ninth grader, Bree Hargrove silently mouthed the words, sharing with her neighbor the hymnal which she herself had been commissioned to pen in her exceptional calligraphy. It had taken all summer, and the hymnals were beautiful. In three years the Pratt Institute of Art and Design would surely be knocking her door down. Still, Bree felt sick with embarrassment every time they used the hymnals, which was why she couldn’t sing out loud. To sing aloud seemed like an act of bravado, as if she were saying, “Look at me, I’m singing along to the hymnals I made! Aren’t I cool?”

  Bossy and defiant at home with her father and brother, Bree rarely spoke at all in school. She had only one friend in her class, a pushy, overconfident girl named Asia. Mostly Bree watched the popular and beautiful older girls, like Porsha Sinclaire, Alexis Sullivan, Imani Edwards, and Rain Hoffstetter, studying them with hungry intensity, hating them and loving them, mimicking them and dreading them. She wanted desperately to be a part of their special world, but at the same time they terrified her. To them she was smaller than a pimple. She was practically invisible.

  Bree was also a curly-haired, tiny little freshman, so invisible wasn’t a hard thing to be. Actually, it would have been a lot easier if her boobs weren’t incredibly huge. At fourteen, she was a 34D.

  Can you imagine?

  Her boobs were so unfortunately gigantic that they were her only noticeable feature besides her big, brown, baby-doll eyes. She was like the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, except instead of a sponge with feet and arms she was a walking pair of boobs.

  BreeBob BoobyPants?

  “Hark the heavenly host proclaims,

  Christ i-is born in Beth-le-hem!”

  Bree was standing at the end of a row of folding chairs, next to the big auditorium windows overlooking 93rdStreet. Suddenly a movement out on the street caught her eye. Silky hair flying. Plaid Burberry coat. Scuffed brown suede boots. New maroon uniform—odd choice, but she made it work. It looked like...it couldn’t be...could it possibly...No!...W
as it?

  Yes, it was.

  A moment later Chanel Crenshaw pushed open the heavy wooden door of the auditorium and stood in the doorway, looking for her class. She was out of breath and her hair was windblown. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright from running the twelve blocks up Fifth Avenue to school. She looked even more perfect than Bree had remembered. When it came to utter beauty and absolute coolness, Chanel Crenshaw blew every last one of the other senior girls away.

  “Oh.My.God,” Rain whispered to Alexis in the back of the room. “Did she like, pick up her clothes at a homeless shelter on the way here?”

  “She didn’t even brush her hair,” Imani giggled. “I wonder where she slept last night.”

  Mrs. Weeds ended the hymn with a crashing chord and Mrs. M cleared her throat. “And now, a moment of silence for those less fortunate than we are. Especially for the Native Americans that were slaughtered in the founding of this country, of whom we ask no hard feelings for celebrating Columbus Day yesterday.”

  The room fell silent. Well, almost.

  “Look, see how Chanel’s resting her hands on her stomach? She’s probably pregnant,” Imani whispered to Rain. “You only do that when you’re pregnant.”

  “She could have had an abortion this morning. Maybe that’s why she’s late,” Rain whispered back.

  “My father gives money to Phoenix House,” Alexis told another senior, Lauren Salmon. “I’m going to find out if Chanel’s been there. I bet that’s why she came back halfway through term. She’s been in rehab.”

  “I hear they’re doing this thing in boarding school where they mix Comet and cinnamon and instant coffee and snort it. It’s like cocaine, but it makes your hair fall out if you do it too long,” Nicki Button piped up from her seat in front of Alexis. “You go blind, and then you die.”

  Porsha caught snippets of her friends’ chatter, and it made her smile.

  Mrs. M turned to nod at Chanel. “Girls, I’d like you all to welcome back our old friend Chanel Crenshaw. Chanel will be rejoining the senior class today.” Mrs. M smiled. “Why don’t you find a seat, Chanel?”

  Chanel walked lightly down the center aisle of the auditorium and sat down in an empty chair next to a chronic nosepicking second grader named Lisa Sykes.

  Bree could hardly contain herself. Chanel Crenshaw! She was there, in the same room, only a few feet away. So real. And so mature looking now. Sordid stories about Chanel had already trickled down to the ninth grade, along with tales of her boarding school adventures. To a young girl like Bree, nothing was more alluring than a scandal-ridden senior.

  Her hair is longer, silkier. Her eyes have that deep mysteriousness of kept secrets. She's wearing the same old fabulous clothes, now in rags from fending off New England storms.

  Still staring at Chanel, she uncapped her favorite black calligraphy pen and began to doodle a soaring silky-haired angel in the margin of her hymnal.

  I wonder how many times she’s done it, Bree thought to herself. She imagined Chanel and a Hanover boy leaning against the trunk of a big old tree, his coat wrapped around both of them. Chanel had had to sneak out of her dorm without a coat. She was very cold, and she got tree sap in her hair, but it was worth it.

  Then Bree pictured Chanel and another imaginary boy on a ski lift. The ski lift got stuck and Chanel climbed into the boy’s lap to get warm. They began to kiss and they couldn’t stop themselves. By the time they were done, the ski lift had started again and their skis were all tangled up, so they stayed on the chair and rode it downhill and did it again.

  How cool, Bree thought. Hands down, Chanel Crenshaw was absolutely the coolest girl in the entire world. Definitely cooler than any of the other seniors. And how cool to come in late, in the middle of the term, looking like that.

  No matter how rich and fabulous you were, boarding school does have a way of making you look like a homeless person. A glamorous one, in Chanel’s case.

  She hadn’t had her ends trimmed in over a year. Last night she’d pulled her hair back for the Sinclaires’ party, but today it was down and looking pretty shaggy. Her white boy’s oxford shirt was frayed in the collar and cuffs, and through it, her purple lace bra was visible. On her feet was her favorite pair of brown lace-up boots, and her black stockings had a big hole behind one knee. But her new uniform was what stuck out the most.

  The new uniforms were the plague of the sixth grade, which was the year Willard girls graduated from a tunic to a skirt. The new skirts were made out of polyester and had pleats that were unnaturally rigid. The material had a terrible, tacky sheen and came in a new color: maroon. It was hideous. And it was this maroon uniform that Chanel had chosen to wear on her first day back at Emma Willard. Plus, hers came all the way down to her knees! All of the other seniors were wearing the same old navy blue wool skirts they’d been wearing since sixth grade. They’d grown so much their skirts were extremely short. The shorter the skirt, the cooler the girl. Porsha actually hadn’t grown that much, so she’d secretly had hers shortened.

  “What the fuck is she wearing, anyway?” Alexis hissed.

  “Maybe she thinks the maroon looks like Prada or something,” Lauren sniggered back.

  “I think she’s trying to make some kind of statement,” Imani whispered. “Like, look at me, I’m Chanel, I’m beautiful, I can wear whatever I want.”

  And she can, Porsha thought. That was one of the things that always infuriated her about Chanel. She looked good in anything.

  But never mind how Chanel looked. What Bree and every other person in the room wanted to know was: Why is she back?

  They craned their necks to see. Did she have a black eye? Was she pregnant? Did she look high? Did she have all her teeth? Was there anything truly different about her at all?

  “Is that a scar on her cheek?” Rain whispered.

  “She was knifed one night dealing drugs,” Alexis whispered back. “I heard she had plastic surgery in Europe this summer, but they didn’t do a very good job.”

  Mrs. McLean was reading out loud now. Chanel sat back in her chair, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes, basking in the old familiar feeling of sitting in this room full of girls, listening to Mrs. M.’s voice. She didn’t know why she’d been so nervous that morning before school. She was home now. This was where she belonged. Sure, she’d overslept and gotten dressed in five minutes—ripping a hole in her black stockings with a jagged toenail—but so what? She’d even chosen her brother, Cairo's frayed old shirt to wear because it smelled like him. Cairo had gone to the same boarding school as her, but now he was away at college, and she missed him terribly.

  Just as she was leaving the apartment, her mother caught sight of her and would have made her change her clothes if Chanel hadn’t been so late. “This weekend,” her mother said, “we’re going shopping, and I’m taking you to my salon. You can’t go around looking like that here, Chanel. I don’t care how they let you dress in boarding school.” Then she kissed her daughter on the cheek and went back to bed.

  “Oh my God, I think she’s asleep,” Alexis whispered to Lauren.

  “Maybe she’s just tired,” Lauren whispered back. “I heard she got kicked out for sleeping with every boy on campus. There were notches in the wall above her bed. Her roommate snitched on her, that’s the only way they found out.”

  “Plus, all those late night chicken dances,” Imani added, sending the girls into a giggling frenzy.

  Porsha bit her lip, fighting back the laughter. It was just too funny.

  6

  The minute Prayers was dismissed, Bree pushed past her classmates and darted out into the hallway to make a phone call. Her brother, Mekhi, was going to totally lose his shit when she told him.

  “Hello?” Mekhi Hargrove answered his cell phone on the third ring in his toneless speaking-from-the-land-of-the-dead voice. He was standing on the corner of 77th Street and West End Avenue, outside Riverside Prep, smoking a cigarette. He squinted his dark brown eyes, trying to bl
ock out the harsh October sunlight. Mekhi wasn't into sun. He spent most of his free time in his room, reading morbid, existentialist poetry about the bitter fate of being human. His skin was dark, his twists were shaggy, and his body was Wiz Khalifa thin.

  Existentialism has a way of killing your appetite.

  “Guess who’s back?” Mekhi heard his little sister squeal excitedly into the phone. Like Mekhi, Bree was a bit of a loner, and when she needed someone to talk to, she always called him. She was the one who had bought them both iPhones. And it was a good thing too, because Mekhi was more of a loner than she was. Sometimes he went for days without speaking. He’d even considered cutting out his own tongue, just to see if it would make any difference to anyone, including himself.

  “Bree, can’t this wait?” Mekhi responded hoarsely, sounding annoyed in the way that only older brothers can.

  “Chanel Crenshaw!” Bree interrupted him. “Chanel is back at Willard. I saw her in Prayers. Can you believe it?”

  Mekhi watched a plastic coffee cup lid skitter down the sidewalk. A red Prius sped down West End Avenue and through a yellow light. His socks suddenly felt damp inside his brown suede Wallabees.

  Chanel Crenshaw. He took a long drag on his Newport. His hands were shaking so much he almost missed his mouth.

  “Mekhi?” his sister squeaked into the phone. “Can you hear me? Did you hear what I said? Chanel is back. Chanel Crenshaw.”

  Mekhi wasn't even listening. He was too distracted by his golden memories of Chanel: her deep, almond shaped eyes, her swinging swath of luxurious black hair, the way the world seemed to be perfectly lit in her presence. Chanel. He closed his eyes dizzily and then opened them agan. Chanel.

  “Watch it!” a bicycle messenger shouted as Mekhi stepped blindly off the curb. He was always stepping blindly off curbs, as if willing that moment’s sudden intake of breath to be his very last. But now Chanel was back in town. He stepped up onto the curb again.