UPPER EAST SIDE

by Ashley Valentine

  Everything about Tahj was so adorable, she just wanted to eat him up with a spoon!

  “Of course I was thinking about you,” she said, taking her latte. She cracked open the lid and blew on the sweet, steaming liquid. “I was thinking we should get tattoos.” She paused, waiting for Tahj to respond, but his soft eyes looked puzzled, so she went on. “You know, like of our names. To show our commitment to each other.” She took a sip of her coffee and licked her lovely, luscious lips. “I’ve always wanted a tattoo that only I knew about. You know, somewhere private.”

  Tahj smiled hesitantly. He liked Chanel a lot. She was intoxicatingly beautiful, a total sweetheart, and completely undemanding. She was above and beyond any girl he’d ever met. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to tattoo her name all over his body. In fact, he’d always thought tattoos were kind of violent, like brands on cattle, and as a vegan and a Rastafarian, he was morally opposed to any type of violence.

  “Tattoos are against my religion,” he stated, but when he saw Chanel’s gorgeous face crumple in dismay he took her hand and added quickly, “But I’ll think about it, okay?”

  Chanel wasn’t one to hold grudges, certainly not against the cutest boy in the universe. Already over it, she tugged on his hand and they started walking toward Fifth Avenue. The sky was a sullen gray, and a chilly wind bit at their faces. In an hour it would be dark.

  “So what should we do?” she asked. “I was thinking it might be kind of crazy to go up to the top of the Empire State Building. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never even been up there. And it’s so cold. I bet no one even thinks of going up there at this time of year. It’ll be empty and romantic, like in a old movie or something.”

  Tahj laughed. “You’ve been hanging out with Porsha too much.” His stepsister always turned everything into a romantic black-and-white movie from the fifties, trying to make her life even more glamorous than it already was. As they turned down Fifth, Mookie scampered ahead of them, tugging on the leash looped loosely around Tahj’s wrist. “Hey, chill out, Mook.”

  Chanel tucked her free hand into Tahj’s black North Face pocket. “Porsha was acting really weird during peer group, that new thing we’re doing with the freshmen at lunchtime. After that she just disappeared. She didn’t even show up for gym.”

  Tahj shrugged and sipped his drink. “Maybe she had cramps or something.”

  Chanel shook her pretty head. “I’m worried she’s a little jealous. You know, of us.”

  Tahj didn’t say anything. Over Christmas he’d developed a huge crush on Porsha, even though she was his stepsister. Being with Chanel had made him forget all about it, but it was still odd to think that Porsha might actually jealous of them, when he’d been pining over her all those weeks.

  “So, are we going to the Empire State Building?” Chanel asked, stopping at the next corner and turning to peer back up Fifth Avenue. A fleet of buses roared by. “If we are, we should grab a cab.”

  Tahj looked at his watch. It was ten after four. “I was kind of thinking I’d like to stop by my house to check the mail.” He grinned bashfully, embarrassed by how nerdy he sounded. “Early acceptance letters were mailed this week.”

  Chanel’s long-lashed eyes opened wide. “Why didn’t you say so?” She tossed her paper cup in a nearby trash can and took off at a run. “Come on, Mook!” she shouted as the boxer bounded happily after her. “Let’s go home and see if your smarty-pants daddy got into Harvard!”

  6

  Bree had always been shy and had trouble making friends, but she had managed to make one in peer group that day.

  “You know, I never really noticed your, um...bra size,” Elise murmured shyly as they were packing up their book bags to go home. On either side of them girls slammed their metal locker doors closed and shouted to each other as they ran downstairs and out the school doors.

  “Yeah, right,” Bree responded sarcastically, trying to wedge her geometry notebook into her bag in between her French textbook and Anna Karenina.

  Elise giggled as she wound a fuzzy pink scarf around her neck and buttoned the black velvet buttons on her nerdy tweed coat. She definitely looked like her mother still dressed her in the mornings. “Okay, I noticed. But I never thought it bothered you.”

  Bree tucked her curly hair behind her ears and squinted at Elise. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  Elise pulled her fuzzy pink hat down over her bob and hitched her backpack up on her shoulder. She was nearly a foot taller than Bree. “Um, are you busy now? Do you want to, like, do something?”

  “Like what?” Bree zipped up her puffy black parka. Now that she no longer hung out with Kaliq or her older brother, Mekhi, she really needed some new friends, and it might be kind of nice to hang out with a girl for once, even though Elise seemed kind of prissy and immature.

  “I don’t know. Like go buy some new makeup at Bendel’s or something?” Elise suggested.

  Bree cocked her head, pleasantly surprised. For a minute there she’d thought Elise was going to suggest buying an ice cream cone or visiting the zoo. “I’d love to,” she agreed, slamming her locker door closed and starting to walk toward the stairs. “Come on.”

  * * *

  Porsha couldn’t believe how a simple haircut could change everything so drastically. She’d already tried on every flirty empire-waisted top and A-line skirt Bendel’s had in stock—exactly the same types of pieces she’d always worn and looked good in, but now they were all wrong. Her new crop was preppy and sophisticated. It was going to require a whole new wardrobe.

  “From now on I’ll wear only solid colors,” Porsha whispered as she buttoned up her uniform and hung the last unwanted dress on its hanger. “And everything must have a collar.” She pulled open the red velvet curtain and dumped six wildly printed Diane von Furstenberg tops into the sales clerk’s arms. “I changed my mind. I’m looking for simple suits in navy blue and black. And plain white shirts with collars.” She wanted to look sexy in a chic Parisian-woman-wearing-a-simple-black-dress-while-riding-a-bicycle-and-carrying-a-baguette-under-her-arm sort of way. Kaliq had always had a thing about French girls. He would go out of his way to walk by L’École Française just to gape at the girls in their short gray skirts, high heels, and tight black V-neck sweaters. Those tramps.

  Soon Porsha had found the first item in her new wardrobe and the perfect thing to wear for her interview Thursday night: a navy blue knit shirtdress by Les Best with a beaded belt and a cute little white lace collar at the neck. It was prim yet intriguing—just what Porsha was looking for. She paid for the dress and then headed downstairs to cosmetics to outfit herself with navy blue mascara and a subtle shade of lip stick that wasn’t as girly or come-hither as her usual shade of light pink or dark red.

  “Look who’s here,” Bree whispered to Elise in front of the Stila counter. “Hi, Porsha.”

  “Cute haircut!” added Elise perkily.

  Porsha turned around to find two of the freshmen from her peer group: she-really-should-have-a-breast-reduction Bree, and in-desperate-need-of-a-makeover Eliza, or whatever their names were, staring at her admiringly. She was horrified to see that they were trying on some of the same eye shadows and lip sticks that she wore all the time. Couldn’t they just with Maybelline from Rite Aid or something?

  Elise frowned down at the vial of glittery black eye dust in her hand. “Is this stuff any good?”

  Yes, it’s good. But you’re really not ready for it yet.

  Porsha couldn’t help but give them a little big-sisterly advice. She slung her brown-and-white-striped Bendel’s shopping bag over her wrist and got to work. “With your coloring, I’d go for something lighter.” She reached for a sample tube of pale silvery green gel shadow. “This would really bring out the brown tones in your eyes,” she instructed, marveling at how nice she sounded.

  Elise took the tube and dabbed a little on her eyelids. It was barely visible, but it caught the light and miraculously made her small, close-together ey
es look brighter and prettier. “Wow,” she trilled, mesmerized.

  Bree reached for the tube. “Can I try?”

  Porsha snatched it away. “Absolutely not. You need something in beige or peach.” Porsha couldn’t believe herself. The weird thing was, she was enjoying it. “Here.” She handed Bree a fat, rust-colored eye pencil. “It goes on softer than it looks.”

  Bree drew a careful line along the edge of one eyelid and blinked at the result. She looked instantly older, and the color gave her big brown eyes a nice amber glow. She leaned forward to do the left one but something in the mirror’s reflection caught her eye.

  Or someone, to be precise.

  The store was bustling with shoppers stocking up on winter sale items, but Bendel’s only caters to women, so all of the shoppers were female. All but one. He looked about sixteen, tall and thin, witha fresh haircut and a gaunt body.

  “Wow,” Bree said softly.

  “Isn’t it great?” Porsha chimed in. “Smudge it in a little with your finger. You should use brown mascara, too. It will make your eyes look even bigger.”

  “No, I mean wow, look at him,” Bree clarified. “Behind me.”

  Porsha glanced over her shoulder to see a geeky, too-young-for-her light skinned boy perusing the Bendel’s signature cosmetics bags. She turned back to Bree. “What? You think he’s cute?”

  Elise giggled. “He’s kind of goofy looking.”

  Porsha’s little Help the Hopeless campaign was starting to wear thin. “If he’s shopping in Bendel’s, he’s probably gay. Why don’t you just go up and talk to him if you think he’s so cute?”

  Bree was mortified. Just go up and start talking to him like some sort of desperate, stalking freak? No way.

  “Come on,” Elise prodded. “You know you want to.”

  Bree could barely breathe. Every time she thought she was getting more confident, something like this happened to prove that she was just as insecure as ever. “Maybe we should just leave,” she muttered nervously, as if Porsha and Elise were about to rope her into participating in some shady drug deal. She picked her book bag up from off the floor. “Thanks for you help,” she told Porsha quickly. Then she grabbed Elise’s hand and dragged her out of the store, keeping her eyes straight ahead as she passed the light skinned boy.

  Pathetic. Porsha sighed as she watched them go. But she’d been in such a good mood ever since Owen Wells’ call, it wouldn’t kill her to give Bree a little more help when she so obviously needed it. She pulled the receipt for her dress out of her shopping bag and, using the rust-colored eye pencil, drew a big heart on the back of it and wrote Bree’s Emma Willard e-mail address inside it. Everyone’s school e-mail addresses were the same, just the first initial and the last name, so it wasn’t hard to figure out. Then she crumpled the receipt into a tight little ball and walked past the skinny boy, tossing the balled-up receipt hard at his back and spinning through the revolving doors before he had a chance to see who she was.

  Porsha Sinclaire making an effort to do something nice for someone else? Talk about a makeover! This was more than just a Jiffy Lube change of hairstyle. Like a true diva, she was going for the entire weekend spa package, including the spiritual overhaul.

  7

  Just as Tahj had suspected, there was a cream-colored envelope from Harvard waiting for him beside the vase of white roses on the side table in the foyer of his father and stepmother’s penthouse apartment. Tahj let an extremely thirsty Mookie tear down the hall to the kitchen with his leash still on and picked up the letter with rigid fingers. Chanel was waiting expectantly behind him, but he would really rather have opened it alone. What if he didn’t get in?

  Chanel slipped out of her coat and tossed it on the upholstered chair in the corner. “I’ll still love you no matter what,” she said breathlessly.

  Tahj stared down at the envelope, annoyed at himself for feeling so tense. He was usually pretty mellow about this kind of thing. “Fuck it,” he declared under his breath and tore open the sealed envelope. He unfolded the neatly creased cream-colored piece of paper and read the short paragraph typed on it, twice. Then he looked up at Chanel. “Uh-oh.”

  Her face fell. What a horrible thing for her sweet love to go through! “Oh, poor baby. I’m so sorry.”

  Tahj handed her the letter and she glanced at it reluctantly.

  Dear Mr. Archibald, We have reviewed your application and we are very pleased to inform you of your acceptance to Harvard University’s class of—

  Chanel’s almond-shaped eyes were suddenly enormous. “You got in! Oh baby, you got in!”

  Behind them, Myrtle, the cook, walked briskly down the hall with a drooling, panting Mookie trailing after her. Her light yellow maid’s uniform was spattered with something orangey-red and she looked pissed.

  “Myrtle, Tahj got into Harvard,” Chanel announced proudly. She put her arms around her him and gave him a squeeze. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  Myrtle was unimpressed. She thrust Mookie’s leash at Tahj, her fleshy wrists jangling with gold bracelets and her work-weary hands smelling of onions. “Better take that dog with you where you’re going,” she chided before stomping back to the kitchen in her new white Nike tennis shoes.

  Chanel and Tahj grinned mischievously at each other. “I think this calls for a little celebration, don’t you?” Tahj asked, his relief mutating instantaneously into cockiness.

  Chanel tweaked his adorable nose with a slender forefinger. “I know where they keep the champagne.”

  * * *

  Porsha rode the elevator up to her family’s penthouse overlooking Central Park at 72nd Street. When the elevator doors rolled open she instantly recognized Chanel’s new cashmere pea coat flung carelessly on top of the chaise in the foyer. It was still hard to get used to the idea of Chanel hanging out at her house when she wasn’t even home.

  “Porsha?” Chanel’s voice echoed out of the former guest room, which now belonged to Tahj. “Get in here. Where have you been?”

  “Hold on,” Porsha called. She pulled off her light blue duffle coat and hung it up in the coat closet. She didn’t really feel like explaining her drastic new look to Chanel and Tahj while they were sitting around in their underwear or something equally nauseating, but she didn’t see how she could get out of it. If she ignored them, they’d soon be banging her door down, bouncing up and down on her bed, and demanding her attention like immature imbeciles.

  The smell of herbal cigarette smoke wafted out into the hall. “Hey,” she called, standing outside the half-opened door.

  “Come on in,” Tahj slurred. After two glasses of Dom Perignon he was already tipsy. “We’re having a party.”

  Porsha pushed open the door. The room had been redecorated for Tahj in shades of aubergine and cerulean, with funky fifties metal shutters in the windows instead of curtains and giant beanbag chairs on the floor to lounge around on. The woven organic hemp mat covering the hardwood floor was littered with CD cases, computer games, DVDs, music magazines, and library books about Jamaican Rasta culture and the evils of the meat industry. Chanel and Tahj were sitting on the disheveled four-poster bed, drinking champagne out of her mother’s best crystal flutes, in their underwear, just as Porsha had predicted. Actually, Chanel was wearing one of Tahj’s oversized BRONXDALE ATHLETIC T-shirts, with her white satin panties peeking out from underneath it.

  Well, at least it was nice underwear.

  Porsha was about to ask what the big occasion was when Chanel blurted out, “Tahj got in! He got into Harvard!”

  Porsha stared at them, bile rising in her throat. It was hard enough to look at Chanel’s gorgeous abundance of long, silky hair now that her own hair was sitting in a trash can back on 57th Street, but the smug smile on Tahj’s annoying dreadlocked face was enough to make her want to vomit all over his stupid cruelty-free rug.

  “Pull up a beanbag,” Tahj offered. He pointed to the Harvard mug sitting on his desk. “That mug’s pretty clean if you want some champagne.
”

  Chanel waved a sheet of cream-colored paper in the air. “Listen to this. ‘Dear Mr. Archibald,’” she read aloud. “‘We have reviewed your application and we are very pleased to inform you of your acceptance to Harvard University’s class of—’”

  Porsha had gone to the hair salon without eating any lunch, and this little we-love-Tahj worshipfest was making her dizzy with disgust. She was the one who should have been opening her early acceptance letter, but after her botched interview Emma Willard's college advisor had told her it was best not to apply early. Getting into Yale had been Porsha’s sole mission in life—well, besides marrying Kaliq Braxton and living happily every after in the ivy-covered brick town house just off Fifth that she already had picked out—but now she’d have to wait until April along with all the rest of the morons in her class to find out if she’d even gotten in. It was completely unfair.

  “Sorry, Porsh.” Tahj sipped his champagne. He’d always been supersensitive about ruffling Porsha’s feathers, but he was feeling too good about himself right now to bother. “I’m not going to apologize for getting in. I deserve this.”