UPPER EAST SIDE

by Ashley Valentine

  Considering the turbulent state of her present existence, Porsha really wouldn’t have minded being someone completely different, which was part of the reason she’d decided to submit herself to Gianni in the first place. She’d even settle for Dorothy Stratten instead of Dorothy Dandridge as long as the look was totally new.

  “Yes,” Porsha answered feebly.

  “Good,” the guy on the phone replied. His voice was deep and cajoling, making it hard to guess how old he was. Nineteen or thirty-five? “This is Owen Wells. Your father mentored me at the firm when I was first starting out. We’re both Yalies, and I understand you’re interested in going there yourself.”

  Interested? Porsha wasn’t just interested in going to Yale—it was her sole purpose in life. Why the hell else would she be taking five APs?

  “Yes, I am,” she squeaked. She glanced up at Gianni, who was mouthing the words to a Beyonce song wafting out of the salon’s sound system. “I kind of messed up my interview, though.”

  Actually, she’d kind of told the interviewer her whole life’s sob story and then kind of kissed him, which was more than kind of a major “whoops.”

  “Well, that’s exactly why I’m calling,” Owen Wells replied, his sexy voice resonating like the bass notes of a cello. “Your father’s support means a lot to the school, and they want to give you a second chance. I’m volunteering my services as your alumnus interviewer, and the admissions office has already agreed to use my write-up when they review your application, instead of the interview you did back in November.”

  Porsha was dumbstruck. A second chance—it was almost too good to be true. Tired of waiting, Gianni dropped his scissors on the wheeled cart next to Porsha’s chair, snatched the latest issue of Vogue out of Porsha’s lap, and minced away to complain about her to his colleagues.

  “So when are you available?” Owen Wells persisted.

  Now, Porsha wanted to say. But she couldn’t very well ask Owen to sit and watch Gianni cut her hair while he asked her all those boring stereotypical interview questions like, Who are the most influential people in your life?

  “Anytime,” she chirped. Then she realized she shouldn’t sound too desperate, not when she was supposed to be a total whiz kid with an insane schedule. “Actually, today is kind of busy for me and tomorrow might be a little crazy, too. Wednesday or Thursday after school would be better.”

  “I tend to work pretty late, and I’ve got meetings up the wazoo this week, but how about Thursday night? Around eight-thirty?”

  “Fine,” Porsha responded eagerly. “Do you want me to come to your office?”

  Owen paused. Porsha could hear his office chair creak and she imagined him surveying his Tribeca office with its view of New York Harbor, wondering if it was an appropriate place to meet. She imagined him tall and dark, like her father. But Owen Wells would be at least ten years younger than her dad, and so much better looking. She wondered if he knew how cool it was that there was a W in each of his names.

  “Why don’t we meet at the Compton Hotel? They’ve got a nice little bar that should be pretty quiet.” He laughed. “I can buy you a Coke, although your father tells me you prefer Dom Perignon.”

  Porsha’s face burned. Her stupid-ass father—what else had he said? “Oh, no, Coke is fine,” she stammered.

  “Good. I’ll see you Thursday night. I’ll be wearing my Yale tie.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.” Porsha tried to maintain a businesslike tone despite her vivid Owen-at-the-office fantasy. “Thank you so much for calling.” She clicked off the phone and looked directly into the gilt mirror in front of her. Her eyes already seemed larger and more intense now that she had less hair.

  If she were really an actress starring in the movie of her life—which was what she always liked to imagine—this would be the turning point: the day she transformed her look and began rehearsing for the biggest role of her career. She glanced at her watch. There was only half an hour left before she was due back at Willard for gym. There was no reason to rush back, though, especially not when Bendel’s was only three blocks away and a new dress for meeting Owen Wells on Thursday night was calling her name. It was absolutely worth getting in trouble for cutting gym if her new haircut and new dress were going to help get her into Yale.

  Porsha had heard the expression “senior slump” many times, but she never knew what it meant exactly. Now it was crystal clear. Senior slump was when you blow off your afternoon classes and go back to your friend’s apartment to order lo mein, drink chardonnay, and smoke cigarettes. It’s when you wind up in bed with a boy at three o’clock in the afternoon. It’s when you skip third-period calculus to stock up on clingy silk dresses at Diane von Furstenberg’s private sale. It’s when you accidentally sleep till ten on a Thursday. Oops.

  Last term they were such goody-goodies, teachers’ pets. This term they were badasses. Porsha was pretty sure half the girls in her P.E. class were off kissing boys on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art instead of doing chin-ups on the monkey bars in the gym.

  Keep it up girls— hooking up is much better exercise.

  Gianni was drinking coffee and flirting with the shampoo boys. Porsha shot him a menacing look, daring him to fuck up her hair.

  “Whenever you’re ready, miss,” he called over in a bored tone, as if he couldn’t have cared less if he cut her hair or not.

  Porsha took a deep breath. She was erasing the past—her failed relationship with Kaliq, her mother’s revolting new husband and embarrassing pregnancy, her botched Yale interview—and recreating herself in a new image. Yale was giving her a second chance, and from now on she would be the master of her own destiny, writing, directing, and starring in the movie that was her life. She could already see the headline in the Styles section of the New York Times, featuring her haircut. Ahead of the Times: Porsha Sinclaire Goes Short for Yale Debut!

  Her face broke into the winning smile she was already practicing for her interview with Owen Wells on Thursday night. “I’m ready.”

  4

  “So...” Yasmine said, bouncing her knee against Mekhi’s thigh as they lay naked on their backs, contemplating his cracked bedroom ceiling in a postcoital daze. “What did you think?”

  Yasmine had already tried sex a couple of times before with her ex-boyfriend CJ, an older bartender she’d gotten together with briefly in the fall, when Mekhi (along with the rest of the predictable male population) had been too busy mooning over Chanel Crenshaw to notice that Yasmine had fallen in love with him. Even if Yasmine had just done it for the first time, she would have been matter-of-fact about it, because that was the way she was about everything. Mekhi, on the other hand, wasn’t matter-of-fact about anything, and he was the one who’d just been deflowered. She couldn’t wait to hear his reaction.

  “It was...” Mekhi stared unblinkingly up at the gray, turned-off lightbulb dangling from the center of the ceiling, feeling immobilized and overstimulated at the same time. Their hips were touching under the thin, burgundy-colored sheet, and it felt like an electric current was running between them, pinging out of Mekhi’s toes, his knees, his belly button, his elbows, and the ends of his hair.

  “Indescribable,” he finally answered, because there really were no words to describe how it had felt. Writing a poem about sex would be impossible, unless he resorted to boring, clichéd metaphors like exploding fireworks or musical crescendos. Even those were totally inaccurate. They gave no sense of the actual feeling, or how sex was this whole discovery process during which everything commonplace became absolutely amazing.

  For instance, Yasmine’s left arm: it wasn’t a particularly spectacular arm—fleshy, covered in cinnamon-brown skin, and sprinkled with moles. While they’d been having sex it had no longer been the same old arm he’d known and loved since he and Yasmine had accidentally gotten locked out of a party in tenth grade—it had been an exquisite, precious thing that he couldn’t stop kissing; something new and exciting and delicious.
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br />   Oh, God. See? Everything he could think of to describe what sex was like sounded like a lame ad for a new cereal or something. Even the word sex was wrong, and making love sounded like a bad soap opera.

  Electric would have been a good word to describe what sex was like, but then again, it had too many negative connotations, like the electric chair or an electric cattle fence. Teeming was another good word, but what did it mean exactly? And quivering sounded too dainty and puny, like a scared little mouse. If he were ever going to write a poem about sex, he wanted to provoke thoughts of sexy, muscular beasts like lions and stags, not mice.

  “Earth to Mekhi?” Yasmine reached over and flicked her finger against his earlobe.

  “Pinnacle,” Mekhi muttered senselessly. “Epiphany.”

  Yasmine ducked under the sheet and blew a giant raspberry on Mekhi’s dark, hollow stomach. “Hello? Are you in shock or something?”

  Mekhi grinned and scooted her up his chest so he could kiss her mouth and dimpled chin. “Let’s do it again.”

  Whoo!

  Yasmine giggled and rubbed her nose against his unruly eyebrows. “So I guess you enjoyed it, huh?”

  Mekhi kissed her right eye and then her left. “Mmm,” he sighed, his whole body humming with pleasure and desire. “I love you.”

  Yasmine collapsed on his chest and squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t a very girly girl, but no girl can help but melt the first time she hears a boy say those three words.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered back.

  Mekhi felt like his whole body was smiling. Who’d known this mundated Monday in February would wind up so damned...great?

  So much for flowery descriptions and poetic turns of phrase.

  All of a sudden his cell phone sounded its startling, vibrating ring from where it sat on the bedside table, only inches away. Mekhi was pretty sure it was only his little sister, Bree, calling to complain about school again. He turned his head to read the number on the little screen. PRIVATE, the message flashed, which only happened when Yasmine called him from home.

  “It’s your sister.” Mekhi propped himself up on one elbow as he reached for his phone. “Maybe she’s calling to tell you to get your own damn cell phone, finally,” he joked. “Should I answer it?”

  Yasmine rolled her eyes. She and her twenty-two-year-old bass-guitar-playing sister, Ruby, shared an apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Ruby had made three New Year’s resolutions: to do yoga every day, to drink green tea instead of coffee, and to be more nurturing toward Yasmine, since their own parents were too busy being art-hippie freaks up in Vermont to nurture her themselves. Yasmine was pretty sure Ruby was only calling to ask when she’d be home so Ruby could have the meatloaf and mashed potatoes all done when she got there, but it was so unlike Ruby to call Mekhi’s phone right in the middle of the school day that she couldn’t resist answering.

  She took the ringing phone from Mekhi and clicked it open. “Yeah? How did you know where to find me?”

  “Well, good afternoon to you, darling sister o’ mine,” Ruby chirped cheerfully. “Remember? I stuck your schedule up on the refrigerator so I’d know exactly where you are and what you’re thinking about at all times, like the new and improved version of Big Brothers Big Sisters. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that the mail came and there was a suspicious-looking envelope from NYU addressed to you. I couldn’t help but open it. And guess what? You got in!”

  “No fucking way!” Yasmine’s body was already shot through with adrenaline from saying, “I love you,” and now this. Not to be cheesy, but talk about orgasmic! She’d never been sure of her chances of getting in early, and just to show the NYU admissions office her artistic range and to prove how serious she was about being a film major, she’d sent them the New York film essay that she’d shot over Christmas break. Once she’d sent it in, she’d worried they’d think she was trying too hard. But now her worries were over. They liked her! They wanted her! Yasmine could finally shake the bitchy, shallow shackles of Emma Willard for good and focus on her craft at a place for serious artists like herself.

  Mekhi was gazing up at her from the bed. His sweet brown eyes seemed to be shining a little less ecstatically than they had been before.

  “I’m so proud of you, sweetie,” Ruby crooned in her most motherly voice. “Will you be home for dinner? I’ve been reading Eastern European cookbooks. I’m thinking of making pierogi.”

  “Sure,” Yasmine answered quietly, suddenly concerned about Mekhi. He hadn’t applied anywhere early, so it would be a couple months before he found out where he was going next year. Mekhi was so sensitive. This was just the sort of thing that could throw him into an insecurity-induced depression, the kind where he locked himself in his room and wrote poems about dying in a car accident or something. “Thanks for letting me know,” she told Ruby quickly. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  Mekhi was still staring up at her expectantly as she clicked off the phone and dropped it on the bed. “You got into NYU,” he said, trying but failing to hide the note of accusation in his voice. Oh, how skinny and stupid and inadequate he was! Not that he wasn’t happy for her, but Yasmine was already into college, and he was just this scrawny guy who liked to write poems and who might never get into college at all. “Wow,” he added hoarsely. “That’s great.”

  Yasmine flopped back on the bed and pulled the sheet up around them. The room felt colder now that the sweat of passion had cooled on their bodies. “It’s really no big deal,” she argued, trying to play down the excitement she’d exuded when she’d heard the news. “You’re the one with a poem about to come out in The New Yorker.”

  Over Christmas break, Yasmine had submitted Mekhi’s poem “Sluts” to The New Yorker without his knowing, and it had been accepted for publication in the Valentine’s Day double issue, which would be out later that week.

  “I guess,” Mekhi agreed, shrugging his shoulders dubiously. “But I still don’t know anything...I mean, about my future.”

  Yasmine encircled Mekhi’s waist with her arms and pressed her cheek into his dark, ribby chest. She still couldn’t believe she was going to NYU in the fall. It was a sure thing, her destiny. Still trembling with excitement, she tried to focus on consoling Mekhi.

  “How many other seventeen-year-old kids have you heard of with poems published in The New Yorker? It’s amazing,” she murmured gently. “And as soon as the admissions officers at the colleges you applied to find out about it, you’re going to get in everywhere you applied, and maybe even places you didn’t.”

  “Maybe,” Mekhi responded hollowly. It was easy for Yasmine to sound so confident. She was already in.

  Yasmine propped herself up on one elbow. There was one sure way of making Mekhi feel better, at least for a little while. “Remember what we were doing right before Ruby called?” she purred like a mischievous black kitty cat.

  Mekhi frowned up at her. One eyebrow was cocked at a sultry angle and her nostrils were flared. He hadn’t thought he’d be up to it anymore, but his body surprised him. He pulled Yasmine down on top of him and kissed her hard. If anything could make a boy feel more like a lion than a mouse, it was a little purring.

  Me-ow.

  5

  Standing in a drift of old snow outside the Emma Willard School for Girls on East 93rd Street, Tahj Archibald waited for Chanel to come hurtling through the towering royal blue school doors and into his arms. Mookie, his brown-and-white boxer, sat panting beside him on the sidewalk wearing the plaid doggie jacket Chanel had bought him yesterday at Burberry. In Tahj’s hands were two steaming cups from Starbucks.

  Ever since they’d gotten together at Chanel’s wild New Year’s Eve party six weeks ago, this had become their little ritual. Tahj would meet Chanel after school and they’d amble down Fifth Avenue arm in arm, drinking soy lattes and stopping now and then to kiss. New Year’s Eve had been a total fuck-it-we’re-both-in-the-mood-so-why-not-hook-up? spontaneous sort of thing, but o
ver the past month they’d spent every out-of-school moment together, and they were now known as the best-looking and most adorable couple—well, threesome, if you included Mookie—on the Upper East Side.

  Suddenly a ray of bright winter sun flashed on Chanel’s cool silky head as she pushed open the school doors, skipped down the stairs in her brown suede boots and navy blue pea coat, and stepped out onto the snowy sidewalk. Her whole face glowed with angelic excitement when she caught sight of Tahj and Mookie.

  “Hi, pup!” she squealed as Mookie wriggled up to her and nuzzled her cashmere-gloved hands. She squatted down and let the dog lick her face as she stroked his head. “You look so handsome today.”

  Tahj watched them with a lazy sense of pride. Yep, that’s my girl. Yep, isn’t she gorgeous?

  Chanel stood up and threw her arms around his neck. The air around them filled with the heady, sandalwood-and-patchouli–based scent of the custom-blended essential oil mixture she always wore. “You know what I’ve been thinking about all day?” she gushed, planting a kiss on Tahj’s pink lips with her full, peach-glossed ones.

  Tahj splayed his feet to keep from stumbling backward and spilling the lattes. “Me?” he guessed. Chanel was the type of girl who gave herself entirely to whatever she was into at the moment, and for the time being she just happened to be into Tahj. It had kind of gone to his head.

  She closed her eyes and they kissed again, deeply this time. Behind them, girls in neat wool coats and tall leather boots spilled out of the school doors, shouting giddily. A few of them huddled together to watch in awe as Chanel and Tahj continued to kiss.

  “Oh my God,” whispered one eighth grader, swooning in the presence of such coolness. “Do you see what I see?”

  Mookie pawed at the snow and whined impatiently. Chanel rubbed her cheek against the scratchy wool of the hat she’d bought for Tahj last weekend in Soho. She loved the way his cute dreadlocks poked out from beneath the earflaps.