Oh Yeah, Audrey!

by Tucker Shaw

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Shaw, Tucker.

  Oh Yeah, Audrey! / by Tucker Shaw.

  pages cm

  Summary: Months after the death of her mother, sixteen-year-old Gemma Beasley and friends she met through her Tumblr page meet in New York City to celebrate the life and style of Audrey Hepburn and her famous character, Holly Golightly.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-1223-4

  [1. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Motion picture)—Fiction. 2. Hepburn, Audrey, 1929–1993—Fiction. 3. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 4. Runaways—Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction. 6. Grief—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S53445Oh 2014

  [Fi]c—dc23

  2014001465

  Text copyright © 2014 Tucker Shaw

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 Malika Favre

  Book design by Maria T. Middleton

  Published in 2014 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

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  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1

  SATURDAY, 5:00 A.M.

  5:05 A.M.

  5:10 A.M.

  5:15 A.M.

  5:20 A.M.

  5:25 A.M.

  5:30 A.M.

  5:35 A.M.

  5:40 A.M.

  5:45 A.M.

  5:50 A.M.

  5:55 A.M.

  6:10 A.M.

  6:15 A.M.

  6:30 A.M.

  6:55 A.M.

  8:30 A.M.

  10:00 A.M.

  10:15 A.M.

  10:35 A.M.

  11:15 A.M.

  11:25 A.M.

  11:40 A.M.

  11:55 A.M.

  12:00 NOON

  12:40 P.M.

  12:50 P.M.

  2

  6:45 P.M.

  6:58 P.M.

  7:05 P.M.

  7:25 P.M.

  7:40 P.M.

  8:15 P.M.

  8:30 P.M.

  9:10 P.M.

  9:40 P.M.

  10:30 P.M.

  11:00 P.M.

  11:20 P.M.

  11:25 PM

  11:30 P.M.

  11:45 P.M.

  12:00 MIDNIGHT

  12:05 A.M.

  2:35 A.M.

  3

  3:05 A.M.

  4:20 A.M.

  4:30 A.M.

  4:35 A.M.

  4:45 A.M.

  5:15 A.M.

  5:20 A.M.

  5:30 A.M.

  5:40 A.M.

  5:45 A.M.

  6:00 A.M.

  6:15 A.M.

  7:00 A.M.

  The End

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  It’s not like I officially ran away. Actual running away is when you just can’t take it anymore—your family or school or life in general—and you hop a bus to some big city, change your name, and find a job clearing plates or checking coats at a restaurant. Or worse. If you fall in with the wrong people, there’s no telling what you’ll end up doing. Actual running away means you don’t intend to come back, ever. But that’s not what I did. I always planned to go back home.

  I took a train from Philadelphia to New York City last night without telling Dad. I would have told him if I’d actually seen him before I left. But he wasn’t home, and I didn’t have time to wait around, so I just left. He thinks I’m spending the night at my friend Casey’s, which I used to do sometimes. Little does he know Casey and I haven’t spoken to each other in weeks.

  So, no, it wasn’t running away.

  That’s where Audrey Hepburn and I are different. She ran away for real. She had no intention of going back to being Lulamae Barnes from Tulip, Texas. Which I can totally understand. Her life pretty much sucked back home. And so does mine.

  I call her Audrey Hepburn, but really I mean Holly Golightly—you know, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a.k.a. the best movie ever made. Have you seen it?

  I read somewhere on the Internet that Truman Capote, the writer who created the character Holly Golightly, really wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part. Can you imagine? Marilyn Monroe, with her platinum blond hair and little girl voice, playing Holly Golightly? No way. Audrey Hepburn, long and tall and with that way of calling everyone dahling . . . she’s the only one who could have played that part. As far as I’m concerned, Holly Golightly and Audrey Hepburn were pretty much made for each other.

  If you haven’t seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, go to Netflix and watch it. Seriously. Right now. Or at least check out YouTube for the opening credits, which last, like, two minutes. Trust me. Besides, if you watch it, the rest of this story will make a lot more sense. Maybe you’ll understand where I’m coming from. Maybe you’ll understand exactly what happened. And why.

  I finally did something worth writing about. The kind of thing that stories are made of. Mom would have liked that, I think. She was a writer. To her, nothing was more important than stories. Especially if they were true.

  Anyway, I didn’t really run away like Audrey did in the movie. Holly, I mean. But we both ended up at the same place anyway:

  New York City.

  Tiffany’s.

  For breakfast.

  SATURDAY, 5:00 A.M.

  The sun is just a vague suggestion somewhere low in the sky. A soft, pinkish light pulsing slowly across the tops of the glass-and-limestone buildings that line Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

  I can’t believe I’m here.

  Yes, I can.

  I’m standing on the sidewalk at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, near the curb, just a few yards from the grand, granite-carved sign that reads: TIFFANY & CO. New York stretches into the sky above me. I’m alone here, not another soul on the street, and I swear I can hear “Moon River” floating through the air. I close my eyes, inhale, and breathe in the city.

  This is where she stood.

  I’m happy for this hour alone, before the others come. If they come.

  Across the sidewalk, I catch my reflection in the Tiffany’s window. It’s hazy, just an outline. My hair is up, just like hers, and my dress is long and sleek, just like hers. I’ve got the triple strand of pearls and cat’s-eye sunglasses and low sling-backs with kitten heels. Opera gloves, an ivory cape slung over one arm, and a shimmering diamond tiara. If I don’t look too closely, I’d swear it was Audrey Hepburn in that reflection. Tall and willowy and glamorous.

  There’s no trace in that hazy reflection of normal, boring, sixteen-year-old Gemma Beasley from normal, boring Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. No trace of the fake rhinestone tiara or the sixteen-dollar thrift-store gown that wouldn’t even know how to pronounce Givenchy. It’s a movie star in that window, a real one, in a real Givenchy evening gown.

  I close my eyes, imprinting the image on my brain. I don’t want to forget it
, ever.

  I’m here. I’ve escaped. I’ve transformed. I’m not Gemma. I’m Audrey. Today, I’m Audrey Hepburn.

  5:05 A.M.

  I shiver. It’s chilly, an early June morning.

  I suppose I could slip on my cape.

  But no, I can’t put it on. I have a script to follow. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the opening scene, where Audrey Hepburn (a.k.a. glamorous young socialite Holly Golightly) steps out of a cab at Fifty-seventh and Fifth—Tiffany’s—in the early Manhattan morning after a night out. She gazes at the jewels in the Tiffany’s windows while sipping coffee from a paper cup and munching on a pastry. She looks gorgeous. “Moon River” plays in the background—that soft, melancholy song with the swelling violins—and the credits run. Audrey Hepburn. George Peppard. Patricia Neal. Mickey Rooney as “Mr. Yunioshi.” Based on the novel by Truman Capote. Directed by Blake Edwards.

  I wonder if Audrey was cold that morning, too. I bet she was, but she never put on her cape. And so my cape stays draped over my arm even as goose bumps crawl past my elbows. Audrey didn’t need hers, and neither do I.

  I look around. Will anyone else come?

  Stop being anxious, I say to myself. They won’t even be here until six.

  It’s going to be a big day. We’ve been planning it for weeks and weeks.

  As soon as I saw online that the Ziegfeld Theater was planning a midnight showing of Breakfast at Tiffany’s as a way to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Audrey Hepburn’s death, I knew I had to be there.

  I also knew that Dad wouldn’t allow it. Hence the (so-called) running away.

  Anyway, I used Google Maps to make a walking tour of landmarks from the movie and made plans (and reservations) for lunch and dinner at places Holly Golightly went to; and the marquee event—a midnight screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Ziegfeld Theater, which is the most massive, spectacular movie theater in the entire universe—will be the cherry on the cake.

  I pull a piece of paper out of my clutch.

  Itinerary for the First (Annual?)

  Beyond-Fabulous Breakfast at Tiffany’s Weekend!

  Saturday and Sunday, June 11–12

  SATURDAY

  6:00 A.M. Meet at Tiffany’s with pastries and coffee.

  7:00 A.M. Breakfast at a Third Avenue diner.

  9:00 A.M. Return to individual hotels to change.

  I’m staying at the Malcolm, a supercheap hotel in Chinatown with a shared bathroom down the hall. I’m not sure where the others are staying yet.

  10:00 A.M. Begin walking tour of Breakfast at Tiffany’s landmarks, starting at Holly’s apartment building on Seventy-first Street, where she lived alone with a cat (named Cat), downstairs from the handsome Paul Varjak (who Holly insisted on calling Fred and refused to allow herself to fall in love with). Even though both of them had dates with other people—mostly rich people who always gave them money—it was obvious they should be together.

  11:00 A.M. Continue walking tour with visit to Central Park, where Paul Varjak met up with Doc—the husband Holly left behind when she ran away from Texas. Doc still called Holly by her old name, Lulamae Barnes, and he came to New York to convince her to come back. Holly never told Paul that she was married, of course. Not that she was trying to hide it from him or anything. I think she was just trying to forget her old life back in Texas.

  1:00 P.M. Lunch at Hamburger Heaven, where Holly Golightly met Mr. O’Shaughnessy to give him the “weather report.” The weather report was coded information that Holly got from a mobster named Sally Tomato whenever she visited him in prison. He’d give her money and a bogus weather report, like “Snow showers in New Orleans,” and then she’d repeat it to Mr. O’Shaughnessy. She claimed she had no idea what the arrangement was about—who knows what those weather reports really meant—she just took the money and didn’t ask questions. Hey, she didn’t have a job, and a girl has to survive somehow, right? The only problem is, Hamburger Heaven closed, so lunch will be observed at Burger Heaven instead, just a block over.

  2:00 P.M. Continue walking tour to Port Authority Bus Terminal, where Holly said good-bye to Doc and told him she wasn’t coming back to Texas with him.

  3:00 P.M. A hot dog on the sidewalk on Park Avenue, where Holly told Paul that she was going to Brazil to marry José da Silva Pereira instead of staying in New York to be with him. Even after Paul told her he loved her, and sort of asked her to marry him, a proposal that she sort of ignored.

  4:00 P.M. Return to Tiffany’s to browse and to ask the clerk if we can get a Cracker Jack ring engraved, just like Paul and Holly did.

  6:00 P.M. Return to individual hotels to change.

  8:30 P.M. Dinner at “21” Club, which is where Holly was supposed to be when Doc surprised her at her apartment. It’s still a pretty exclusive restaurant—I had to make the reservation more than three months ago to get in. I told the others to pretend we were in our twenties; I don’t know if they’d allow a group of teenagers in.

  11:00 P.M. Arrive at Ziegfeld Theater on Fifty-fourth Street for a special midnight screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  SUNDAY

  12:00 MIDNIGHT Settle into theater chairs and watch the greatest movie in the world unfold before our eyes.

  6:00 A.M. Reconvene at Tiffany’s for another breakfast. Decide whether to stay in New York forever, and if not, why not?

  5:10 A.M.

  My toes are pinched in my low black pumps, which almost fit but not quite. I take short steps, a delicate ballet shuffle across the sidewalk, like Audrey did. Back and forth, avoiding the windows. She floated. I don’t. I should have practiced a little more.

  It took forever to do my hair this morning. I’m not exaggerating. I woke myself up at 4:00 A.M. to do it. Well, 4:09, actually. There must be two dozen bobby pins in there. The shared bathroom at the hotel was flammable with Aqua Net by the time I was finished. I used it to weld the diamond tiara to my updo. I wonder if I’ll ever get it out.

  I wonder how Audrey got her hairdo that way. I wonder how many hours it took. But then again, she just had to sit there, probably, while a team of fourteen people fawned over her, looking at her from all angles and telling her how beautiful she was, over and over again. Maybe that would suck, too, getting poked at and prodded and having your hair pulled and having people tell you to close your eyes while they spray you with whatever toxic substance kept wayward hairs in place back then. But then again, when you’re Audrey Hepburn, a.k.a. the most glamorous movie star of all time, I’m sure everything sucks a little bit less than if you’re just, I don’t know, me.

  I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m deluded. Me? Gemma Beasley? Wearing diamonds? Come off it. Gemma Beasley isn’t diamonds material.

  Well, I’m not deluded. I know they aren’t real diamonds. There’s no way I, age sixteen, with exactly $140 and a round-trip train ticket from Philadelphia to New York City, can afford a diamond tiara. The best someone like me can do is a crown of plastic rhinestones.

  But if you look at it a certain way, the plastic rhinestones are just right. You think Holly Golightly could afford real diamonds on her own? Not a chance. She had to rely on the, well, kindness of others to get her jewels.

  5:15 A.M.

  There’s no one else on the sidewalk. Hardly any cars on Fifth Avenue. This is only my second time in New York but even I know that’s weird in this city, even at this perfect hour. But still, I’m startled at the voice, low and insistent, that cuts through the faint mist.

  “Need a ride?”

  I spin around, nearly dropping my deli bag. A shiny yellow taxi, one of those fancy new electric ones that surprises you because it doesn’t make a sound, is crawling around the corner of Fifty-seventh Street like a cat slinking through a backyard after a bird. The driver, a dark-haired guy much younger than I’d expect a taxi driver to be, nods at me.

  I clear my throat. “No, thank you, darling,” I say, only I try to pronounce it more like dah-ling, because that’
s how Audrey would have said it, with an accent that isn’t exactly British but isn’t exactly American, either. It’s sort of somewhere in between. It took me weeks of practice, recording myself with my iPhone and playing it back again, before I got it down, and even now I still don’t really have it exactly right. I make a mental note to move to Holland someday, which is where Audrey grew up, mostly. She was born in Belgium and went to school in London some, too. I’ve spent my entire life in Philadelphia. But maybe if I get to Holland one day, and I listen to Dutch people speaking English, I’ll get Audrey’s accent right.

  “You sure?” the driver asks.

  “I’m already exactly where I need to be,” I tell him, and I wave him on, my opera-gloved hand swirling through the air, all glamour and nonchalance.

  Nonchalance. That’s such an Audrey word.

  If you’ve never waved a taxi away down Fifth Avenue with an opera-gloved hand, nonchalantly, I recommend trying it sometime. Just saying.

  5:20 A.M.

  I remember the first time I saw Audrey Hepburn. Or, I mean, a picture of Audrey, since she died before I was born.

  I was thirteen, and I came home from doing the grocery shopping with a copy of Teen Vogue. I tried to hide it from my mother because she always got annoyed whenever I bought anything that wasn’t on the list, but she found out about it when she scrutinized the receipt.

  “A fashion magazine,” she said, shaking her head. “Gemma, you know we can’t afford that.”

  “We can’t afford anything anymore,” I said, and as soon as I said it I felt my stomach drop. Mom hated talking about money. Ever since we lost the big house and had to move into the tiny little apartment, which didn’t even have a bedroom for me, it was the one subject that I was never allowed to bring up.

  I pulled out the shoe box that I kept under the couch. There was an envelope in there, a wrinkled one that stuck shut whenever it was a humid day. I pulled out three dollars from the stack of ones that Gram had given me for my birthday and gave them to her.

  “Oh, Gemma,” Mom said, and I could hear her voice catch. “Is this really what you want to spend your money on?”