Upper East Side #1

by Ashley Valentine

  The girl just stood there, staring at Porsha. “New Jersey,” she admitted, her accent suddenly gone. “I was born in Mahwah. My real name is Nancy.”

  “Shut up!” Porsha cried. She dangled the greasy pizza slice in front of the girl’s face. “I got you some pizza,” she taunted. “You looked like you were pretty hungry, eating my boyfriend’s pizza.” She grabbed the girl by the back of the head and rammed the entire slice into her lipsticked mouth. “Here, have a bite.”

  The girl gagged and stumbled backwards, teetering on her heels and falling into a pile of broken pizza boxes that had been put out to be recycled. For good measure Porsha cut a big slash through the girl’s slutty gray uniform skirt.

  Ooh la la!

  Kaliq stood in the window of the pizzeria, facing the side street while his second slice with extra cheese was in the oven heating up. The window was lined with shiny chrome, and in the reflection cast by the streetlights he thought he saw his girlfriend use a metal pizza cutter to slit sexy French Nadège's skirt.

  “Dude.” Kaliq pressed his fingertips to his eyes. They felt okay, but surely there was something wrong with the weed in the last joint he’d smoked.

  “Dude!” he said again as Nadège started crying in the pile of broken pizza boxes. Porsha sprinted away down Madison Avenue, tossing the pizza cutter into the trash can on the corner.

  "I'm fucking hallucinating. It's this fucking weed."

  Kaliq staggered outside, waving his arms wildly. A cab pulled over and he got in.

  “Hurry,” he breathed after giving his address. Maybe he was just anxious about his crazy ass girlfriend discovering that he’d cheated. Maybe he was worried about their hookup this Friday night. Or maybe his weed was laced and his eyeballs were really about to explode all over the taxi before he even made it home.

  18

  “Yum,” Chanel said the next morning, eyeing the cookies laid out on a table in the Emma Willard lunchroom. Peanut butter cream, chocolate chip, oatmeal. Next to the cookies were plastic cups full of orange juice or milk. A lunch lady was monitoring the cookies, making sure each girl took only two. This was recess, the daily twenty minute break Emma Willard gave its girls after second period, no matter what grade they were in.

  When the lunch lady’s head was turned, Chanel grabbed six peanut butter creams and glided away to stuff her face. It wasn’t exactly a healthy breakfast, but it would have to do. She’d stayed up late the night before watching the original Natural Born Killers so she’d be better prepared for Yasmine’s film, and had woken up five minutes before school began.

  Yasmine stood on the other side of the cafeteria, blowing into a cup of hot black tea, wearing her usual black turtleneck and bored, angry expression. Chanel waved a cookie at her and strode over to say hello.

  “Hi,” Chanel greeted her cheerfully. “Oh my God. I totally took your knife yesterday. I’m such a dope with stuff like that. I steal pens, lip gloss, knives. I’m an idiot.” She shook her silky mane to indicate how scatterbrained she was. “I'll bring it back to you tomorrow. Anyway, I watched the original movie last night. Insane—loved it! Yours is going to be even better though. When do we start shooting?”

  God, she was cocky. Yasmine waited a moment before answering, allowing the steam from her tea to open up the pores on her chin. She’d tossed and turned all night trying to decide between Chanel and Marjorie. Obviously Chanel was perfect—too perfect. Yasmine would never forget the moony, dazed, lovestruck expression on Mekhi’s face when he read with Chanel. She never wanted to see that again, and she certainly didn’t want to capture it on film, unless it involved sawing Chanel’s pretty head off with a chainsaw on film too.

  But that would be a different movie.

  Yasmine sipped her tea. “Actually,” she responded in a measured voice, “I haven’t told Marjorie yet, but I’m giving her the part.”

  Chanel dropped the cookie she was eating on the floor, stunned. “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” Yasmine continued, scrambling for a decent reason why she was using Marjorie when Chanel was obviously perfect for the part. “Marjorie’s really rough and innocent. That’s what I’m looking for. Mekhi and I thought your performance was just a bit too...um...polished.”

  “Oh,” Chanel repeated. She could hardly believe it. Even Mekhi had vetoed her? But he was so sweet. She could feel the dismay bubbling up inside her. No part meant no extracurricular, which meant no college.

  “Sorry.” Yasmine felt sort of bad for bringing Mekhi into it. He didn’t even know what she’d decided. But it sounded more professional this way; like it wasn’t anything personal, it was strictly business. “You have talent,” she added. “And I’m going to be filming lots of background stuff. Maybe you can do a cameo, you know, if I happen to catch you in the middle of something really wild.”

  “Thanks,” Chanel said. Now she wasn’t going to hang out with Mekhi and practice their lines like she’d imagined. And what was she going to tell Ms. Glos? She still didn’t have any extracurriculars, and no halfway decent college was going to want her.

  Yasmine walked away, looking for Marjorie so she could tell her the good news. She was going to have to change the entire film now that Marjorie was her star. It would have to be a comedy. Or maybe she’d wind up using more background stuff and less acting altogether. At least she’d saved herself from making Endless Love at First Sight on the Bridge After Dark, starring the gorgeous Chanel Crenshaw and the stupid Mekhi Hargrove. Blech.

  Chanel stood in the corner of the cafeteria, the remaining cookies crumbling in her hand. Gone With the Wind was a total cheese-fest, and she was too polished for Natural Born Killers. What else could she do? She chewed on her thumbnail, deep in thought.

  What was that expression—something about turning lemons into lemon juice? Well, she was Chanel Crenshaw, and lemon juice went great with ice and gin. Maybe this was her and Porsha's chance to do something together and become friends again! Maybe she could make a movie of her own. Porsha took film―she could help. When they were younger they’d always talked about making movies. Porsha was always going to be the star, wearing cool Givenchy outfits like Audrey Hepburn, except Porsha preferred Fendi. And Chanel always wanted to direct. She would wear floppy linen pants and shout through a bullhorn and sit in a chair with the word “director” on it.

  This was their chance!

  “Porsha!” Chanel shouted when she saw Porsha by the milk table. She rushed over to her, overcome by the brilliance of her idea. “I need your help,” she said, squeezing her arm.

  Porsha kept her body stiff until Chanel let go.

  “Sorry.” Chanel let her hand drop. “But I have the best, best, best idea! I want to make a movie, but I have no idea how to work the cameras and stuff and you do, because you take Film. Remember how we always wanted to make movies together? Well, here’s our chance! I’ll be the director, and you can be the star!”

  Porsha glanced at Alexis and Imani, who were quietly sipping milk behind her. Then she smiled up at Chanel, and shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got activities every single day after school. I don’t have time.”

  “Oh, come on, Porsh,” Chanel said, grabbing her hand. “Remember, we always wanted to do this. You wanted to be the black Audrey Hepburn.”

  Porsha dragged her hand away and folded her arms across her chest so Chanel couldn’t touch her anymore.

  “I’ll do all the work,” Chanel added desperately. “All you have to do is show me how to use the camera and the lighting and stuff. And we can go shopping and pick out the coolest costumes. We can go to Fendi—”

  “I can’t,” Porsha interrupted her. “Sorry.”

  Chanel couldn’t have been more hurt if Porsha had drawn that serrated knife across her cheek and then stabbed her in the liver. She mashed her lips together to keep them from trembling. Her eyes seemed to be growing larger and larger, and her face was turning splotchy.

  Porsha had seen this transformation in Chanel many
times as they grew up together—she was about to have a tantrum. Once, when they were both eight, they had walked the three miles from Chanel’s country house into the town of Ridgefield to buy ice cream cones. Chanel stepped out of the ice cream shop with her triple strawberry cone with chocolate sprinkles and bent down to pet a puppy tied up outside. All three scoops fell splat into the dirt. Chanel’s eyes had grown huge and her face looked like she had the measles. The tears had just started to roll, and Porsha was about to offer to share her cone, but the shop owner came out with a fresh one and made it all better.

  Seeing Chanel on the verge of tears once more touched something deep inside of Porsha, like an involuntary impulse. “Want to meet up on Friday?” she asked in a neutral tone. “Drinks around eight at the Tribeca Star?”

  Chanel took a deep breath and swallowed her rage. “Just like old times?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  “Right,” Porsha assured her. “Exactly.”

  Porsha made a note in her mental Google calendar to tell Kaliq not to meet her until later now that Chanel was coming out. The new plan was to knock back a few calming, highly alcoholic drinks with Chanel at the Tribeca Star, leave early, go home, fill her room with candles, take a bath, and wait for Kaliq to arrive. Then they’d have sex all night long while listening to the Hawaiian R&B music she’d loaded on to her iPod late last night. She wanted Friday night to feel special and different, like they were on the beach in Kauai with nothing but the waves and their warm naked bodies, thousands of miles away from any slutty French girls or boyfriend-stealing frenemies.

  “Cool,” Chanel agreed. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the sleeve of the camel-colored cardigan she’d stolen from her mom. “Can’t wait 'til Friday.”

  The bell rang and the girls went their separate ways to class: Porsha, Alexis, and Imani to their AP Academic Achievers afternoon, and Chanel to her plain old regular classes.

  On her way, Chanel popped her head into the photography lab to see if there was any equipment she could steal to make the film she had absolutely no idea how to make, especially not without Porsha’s help. God, Porsha was mean. Chanel still didn’t feel one hundred percent calmed down. In fact, she was still sort of shaking.

  She examined the video cameras clustered on a shelf. The cameras were complicated and intimidating. Even if she stole one she wouldn’t know how to use it. Besides, she and Porsha were going out for drinks tomorrow night with Kaliq and the rest of the gang. Maybe after a few drinks she’d be able to talk Porsha into making the movie with her. And if Porsha still didn’t want to, she might let loose with that tantrum after all. She wouldn’t give up so easily.

  Her picture wasn’t on the side of a bus for nothing.

  19

  Yasmine skipped the first five minutes of Calculus to call Mekhi on his cell phone. She knew he had Study Hall fourth period on Thursdays, and he was probably hanging out outside, reading poetry and smoking cigarettes. A girl was using Emma Willard’s pay phone in the hallway by the stairs, so Yasmine slipped outside to the pay phone on the corner of 93rdStreet and Madison. Mekhi was probably hanging out outside, writing suicidal poems while he suffocated himself with nicotine. She held the pay phone in her hand, waiting for him to venture out of his manic-depressive vow of silence and answer his fucking phone.

  The lower school boys were using the Riverside Prep courtyard for a game of dodgeball, so Mekhi had exiled himself to a park bench in the traffic island in the middle of Broadway. He’d just cracked open L’Etranger, by Albert Camus, which he was reading in French class that term. Mekhi was psyched. He’d already read the English translation, but it felt especially cool to read the French original, especially while sitting outside drinking bad coffee and smoking a cigarette in the middle of noisy, smelly Broadway. It was very poetic. People hurried past in a busy blur, while he, Mekhi, just sat there on the bench in the median, poisoning his body with caffeine and nicotine, slowly dying, with a book of indecipherable words. There was a certain calm about him today. A certain beauty.

  People visiting all day—

  in between

  the quiet of the peony.

  No one paid him any mind. They didn’t even realize that he was different today. They didn’t notice that the circles under his eyes were more pronounced than usual. That his dark cheeks were more hollow. They didn’t know that Mekhi was in love.

  As people walked past in a hurry to get somewhere, Mekhi felt aloof and removed from the chaos of everyday life, just like the guy in the book. He’d lain awake all night, thinking of Chanel. They were starring in a movie together. They were even going to kiss. It was too good to be true.

  Poor dude, he has that right.

  His cell phone was still ringing. “Yeah?” Mekhi said, answering it.

  “About fucking time,” Yasmine snapped. “I thought maybe you were dead.”

  “Not yet,” Mekhi joked. It was fun to make a joke.

  “Listen, I’m supposed to be in Math, so I have to make this quick. I just wanted you to know that I told Marjorie she has the part.”

  “You mean Chanel,” Mekhi said, flicking his ash and taking another drag on his cigarette.

  “No, I mean Marjorie.”

  Mekhi exhaled and pressed the phone tight against his ear. “Wait. What are you talking about? Marjorie, with the red hair and the gum?”

  “Yes, that’s right. I haven’t got their names mixed up,” Yasmine said patiently.

  “But Marjorie sucked, you can’t use her!”

  “Yeah, well, I kind of like that she sucked. She’s sort of rough around the edges. I think it will make it feel edgier, you know? Like, not what you’d expect.”

  “Yeah, definitely not,” Mekhi sneered. “Look, you’re making a huge mistake. Chanel…I don’t know why you wouldn’t want her. She’s great. This isn't about the knife, is it? I'm sure she'll bring it back.”

  “She didn't bring it to school today,” Yasmine snapped. “Anyway, it's my movie, so it's my choice, and I choose Marjorie. Okay?” She really didn’t want to hear about how great Chanel had been. “Besides, I keep hearing all these stories about Chanel. I don’t think she’s all that reliable.” Yasmine was pretty sure that everything she’d heard was completely bogus, but it couldn’t hurt to mention it to Mekhi.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “What kind of stories?”

  “Like she manufactures her own drug called C, and she has some pretty bad STDs,” Yasmine said. “I really don’t want to deal with that.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Mekhi asked.

  “I have my sources,” she responded.

  A bus roared up Madison on its way to Washington Heights. On the side of it was a massive photograph of a belly button. Or was it a gunshot wound? Scrawled in blue girly writing on the side of the poster was the name Chanel.

  Yasmine stared after the bus. Was she losing her mind? Or was Chanel really and truly everywhere? Every last bit of her?

  “I just don’t think she’s right for us,” she continued, hoping Mekhi would come around if she used the word “us.” It was their movie, not hers. “I’ve been getting all this amazing background stuff for the movie. I’m beginning to think I don’t need actors. It’ll be like, a documentary almost.”

  “Fine,” Mekhi responded coldly. Words from an angry, life-is-shit haiku popped into his head:

  Fleas, lice,

  a horse peeing

  near my pillow.

  “So, want to come out with me and Ruby in Brooklyn tomorrow night?” Yasmine asked, eager to change the subject.

  “Nah.” Mekhi clicked off and tossed the phone angrily into his black courier bag. That morning Bree had stumbled into his room, eyes all bloodshot, hands covered in ink, and dropped an invitation to that stupid birds party on the floor beside his bed. He’d actually dared to think that since he was going to be Chanel’s costar, he might take her to the goddamned party as his date. Now, that little dream was all shot to hell.

  Mekhi couldn�
�t believe it. His one chance to get to know Chanel was gone because Yasmine wanted to exercise her artistic license to make the worst film ever made. It was unbelievable. More unbelievable still was that Yasmine, queen of the alterna-rebel scene, had stooped to spreading rumors about a girl she barely knew. Maybe Willard was finally rubbing off on her.

  Oh, don’t be a spoilsport. Gossip is sexy. Gossip is good. Not everybody does it, but everybody should!

  Mekhi headed back across Broadway toward school. Jaylen Harrison was standing outside the school doors with Cameron Prescott and Rashad Paine, smoking cigarettes.

  “Just wait 'til I get her up in my hotel suite,” Jaylen was saying. “She can suck me off in as many positions as she wants to.”

  Mekhi paused to eavesdrop, pretending to check the messages on his phone.

  “You think Chanel really did all that shit, though?” Rashad asked.

  “Hell yeah! Why not?” Jaylen crowed.

  Mekhi lit another cigarette and then tossed it aside without smoking it. He felt a little sick. Not because he believed what Jaylen and his friends were saying, but because for the first time in his life he truly felt angry enough to kill someone other than himself. Angry enough that he could taste Jaylen’s rich, coppery blood as it streamed out of the stumps left by his amputated, loafer–wearing feet.

  Or maybe it was just instant coffee residue, all gunked up on his molars.

  A bus stopped at a light right in front of the school. First Mekhi noticed Chanel’s name. It was scrawled in blue, in messy girl’s handwriting on a giant black and white poster of what looked like a rosebud. It was beautiful.

  Then, he turned his attention back to Jaylen.

  Oh roses so red—

  my blood is not blue.

  You fuck with me, and I’ll kill you.

  Maybe that movie was going to his head.