The Good, the Fab and the Ugly

by Compai

  “I hate myself,” Jake muttered, and squeezed his dark brown eyes shut, blocking the spectacle of his squandered past. Due to some epically drunk behavior at his sister’s Prada fashion thing the weekend before last, he’d somehow cheated on his supremely hot, now ex-girlfriend, Charlotte Beverwil, with a whatever eighth grader named Nikki Pepperoni (or something). The kiss was meaningless, as accidental as tripping — not that Charlotte cared. She’d dumped his ass like diarrhea.

  “Don’t hate yourself,” Janie sighed as she cranked the wheel, winding the car into now the third level of this dank, subterranean wasteland. I’ll do the hating for both of us. Okay, not that she hated her brother (she could never hate him), but could she seriously pretend she wasn’t a little annoyed he’d so royally screwed things up? Breaking up with Charlotte meant so much more than just “breaking up with Charlotte”; it meant breaking up with an entire Winston lifestyle. Goodbye long lunches at Kate Mantellini, and lounging poolside at Charlotte’s sprawling Hollywood Hills estate; goodbye romantic rides down Sunset Boulevard in her mint-condition cream-colored 1969 Jaguar, and prestigious West Wall seats at Town Meetings; goodbye to Cartier clocks ticking! But of all her brother’s revoked privileges, Janie found his Showroom parking spot the most difficult to suck up and accept. After all, however indirectly, that parking place had belonged to her.

  They crammed into the elevator with a handful of fellow Nomanlanders, and one rumpled, coffee-reeking Winston faculty member, and pressed the glow-white button with the five-point star. Thirteen eternal seconds and one bing! later, they spilled into the terra-cotta-paved courtyard, blinking mole-ishly into the bleach white California glare. Jake and Janie were both on Accutane, a strong acne medication with bizarre side effects, for instance, trouble adjusting to changes in light. Janie re-squinted at their old parking space, now occupied by a glinting fire-engine red 911 Porsche, and sighed. That particular Porsche belonged to Evan Beverwil, Charlotte’s brutally handsome older brother, who Janie had disdainfully rechristened “Alan,” a term coined by her non Winston–attending best friend, Amelia Hernandez. “I mean, Phantom Planet?” she’d scoffed, referring to a sort of trendy band to which Amelia’s own band, the up-and-coming Creatures of Habit, had been recently compared in LA Weekly. “Those guys are total ALANS.” Off Janie’s blank look, she’d impatiently clarified: “All Looks And No Substance?”

  Janie secretly disagreed with her best friend’s harsh take on Phantom Planet (they were good, okay?), but in the case of Evan Beverwil, she decided, the term totally applied.

  Except . . . she got to thinking, having advantageously positioned herself at the Showroom’s bustling periphery, the edge of her painted-black thumbnail firmly lodged between her teeth. What if I’m wrong? Evan leaned against his buffed Porsche fender, his almost-too-hot surfer-boy body aglow in the morning light, and frowned deeply into a beat-up paperback edition of The Bell Jar, one of Janie’s absolute favorite books. Alans didn’t read books by suicidal feminist poets, did they? She sighed, liberating her mutilated thumbnail as he dipped his godly chin, ran his hand through his longish dirty blond hair and absently licked his middle finger. He pushed the moistened digit to the lower right-hand corner of the page, so that it (along with Janie’s poor, baffled heart) arced up and flipped.

  “Ironic,” Jake remarked, and she blushed, paranoid he’d somehow divined her innermost thoughts. As the blush subsided, she realized his comment didn’t refer to Evan, but to his car — or, more specifically, the classic Porsche emblem on the end of its glossy, sloping red hood. Against a shield backdrop, a silhouetted stallion kicked into the air, its sprightly mane like a flame.

  “How is that ironic?” she asked.

  “You know” — Jake shrugged with a tiny, defeated grin — “just that it’s a horse. And not a cow.”

  “Oh,” Janie forced a laugh. “Yeah . . . how embarrassing for him.”

  And then, as if to charitably save them from their lame joke, which only thinly masked their paralyzing envy, the bell rang.

  The Girl: Charlotte Beverwil

  The Getup: White fringed tweed strapless dress and black skinny-bow belt by Chanel, black suede ankle boots by Christian Louboutin, and aquamarine-white-and-black block print silk scarf by Lanvin.

  Charlotte Beverwil pinched her aquamarine silk scarf at both ends, snapped it open, and guided its fluttering, floating descent to the assembly hall’s cool, brushed concrete floor. For this Monday’s school assembly, known to Winstonians as “Town Meeting,” she’d worn her brand-new fringed white tweed dress — emphasis on the white — and planned to keep it pristine (emphasis on the priss). Her two best friends, Kate Joliet and Laila Pikser, chattered on either side of her, brainstorming sexy Halloween costumes, their bright eyes all but bolted to identical MAC compacts. Charlotte planted her ballet-butt on the square of designer silk, her long legs folded and modestly angled to one side, and propped her posture-perfect back against the West Wall. At the cool yet rough touch of brick, a pleasurable shiver of triumph ran up and down her spine. A West Wall seat not only broadcasted popularity, but also popularity of the very best (in Charlotte’s humble opinion) type. West Wallers exuded elegance, culture, sophistication; they were classically beautiful, they were beautifully bored; and among these refined urbanites it was she, five-feet-two-inch-tall Charlotte Beverwil, who reigned supreme.

  (Okay, technically Adelaide Dallas reigned supreme. But only because she was a senior.)

  Two hundred and fifty plus students, grades seven through twelve, were already seated on the brushed concrete floor, buzz-ing like worker bees on a slab of honeycomb. Charlotte fluttered her starry black eyelashes and scanned the expanding swarm, her chlorine-green eyes alert for signs of her latest little project: Jules Maxwell-Langeais. Illegitimate son to French playboy racecar driver Marcel-Antoine Langeais and eccentric British socialite Minnie Maxwell, founder of luxury candle and fragrance chain “Minnie Maxwell, London,” Jules’s arrival to Winston had been the hot topic of Showroom gossip for weeks. Sadly, Charlotte had been far too wrapped up in Jake Farrish to pay attention.

  Good thing that was over.

  Okay, not that it was over. Not completely. Jake had been the first boy to weasel his way into her heart since Daniel Todd, the Australian fashion photographer to whom she’d lost her sacred virginity in Paris last spring. She’d feared her return to L.A. might tear them apart, but passionate Daniel had calmed her anxiety, dismissing their rupture as “mere geography.” He promised to call, to write . . . or else throw his camera into the sea and never take photographs again (their adieus had been thrillingly tortured). But to Charlotte’s anguished disbelief, he never contacted her again. As for throwing his camera into the Atlantic, well . . . a recent photo spread in French Vogue suggested otherwise. Unless the subject of his shoot — a vacant eyed, pucker-mouthed, floaty-looking model named Kinga — was actually a rare species of fish, Charlotte could safely assume Daniel Todd’s Nikon D300 was not underwater.

  As painful as the Daniel episode had been, the Jake Farrish fallout was a million times worse. She actually had to see him, five excruciating days a week, with his obnoxiously caressable dark brown hair, and his heartbreakingly familiar laugh. Uccchh! That he dared to laugh at all! Did he not realize he had cheated on her and they were living in a post-laughter world? Unless, of course, you counted the fact that she, the revered and ravishing daughter of Hollywood Royalty, had ever deigned to date him, the lowly and (until very recently) pimpled, pony-tailed spawn of Valley Village Peasantage. Even in a post-laughter world, that remained hilarious.

  She attempted to recover in the usual ways — spa days at Pore House, shopping sprees at Ted Pelligan, fizzy peach cocktails at Chateau Marmont — but then she’d spot Jake in line at the food truck (that he dared to have an appetite!), and a week’s worth of pampering — down the drain. By the time Monday rolled around, there was only one sensible, mature way to proceed . . .

  Revenge.

  She could
give him a taste of his own medicine, she decided. Let him stew in his own rancid juices. As her bosom friend and neighbor, Don John, advised in his cheerful Texas twang: “nothing goes down harder than a good, old-fashioned Jealousy Julep. No sugar, straight up . . . and honey, make sure that cup is chilled.”

  “Enfin,” she gasped in French, springing her back from the West Wall. Having fixed her chlorine-green eyes on her target, she clutched Kate’s bony knee with one hand, and shot the other into the air. “Jules!” she sang, fluttering her pearlescent fingertips. “Jules, over here!”

  “Oh my God.” Kate lowered her powder puff in shock and smoothed the immaculate fingerwaves in her platinum pixie cut behind her Jo Malone orange blossom-scented ear. “You know him?”

  “Not yet,” Charlotte trilled, as Jules, with a confused-yet-pleased expression on his face, carved a path through the floor-seated crowd, heading toward her while tying his wavy-ish black hair into a neat ponytail at the nape of his deeply tanned neck. Charlotte decided he was the spitting image of Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean — if you could ignore the Eurotrash-tight Rock & Republic jeans. She smiled. With his transcontinental accent, moneyed lineage, acid-green Ferrari, and guy-in-a-Folgers-ad stubble, Jules exuded everything Jake did not. And nothing rankles an ex more than moving on to his or her direct opposite. It’s like saying: all those things I found oh-so-attractive about you? Turns out I was lying.

  “Charlotte!” Laila cheeped in high alarm. A swooping wave of copper hair concealed her right blue eye, leaving the other to bug out for the both of them. “He’s a senior.”

  “Mon dieu, you have to be kidding.” Charlotte beamed through her dear friend’s complete idiocy. “Wasn’t the guy you hooked up with at Villa, like, twenty-three?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t go to this school!”

  “Um . . . congratulations.” Charlotte crumpled her porcelain brow. “You made zero dollars and no sense.”

  “Seriously, Lie.” Kate clapped her compact shut, dropped it into her Tory Burch floral-print ballet tote, and sighed. “Don’t be a leotard.”

  Charlotte giggled, rewarding her friend with a quick kiss on her freshly powdered cheek. “Listen” — she lingered, whispering into her tiny silver Me&Ro hoops — “do me une petit faveur and tell Janie Farrish she should sit with us.”

  “What?” Kate wrenched away with abject disbelief, her NARS lip-lacquered mouth agog. “Why?”

  “Just do it,” she hissed, before quickly tilting her face, fixing the full light of her attention on Jules; he had arrived, finally, in the grand tradition of most Winston boys . . .

  At her feet.

  “Okay, everyone!” Glen Morrison gently leaned his buttercup-yellow guitar against the North Wall, tucked his wiry gray bangs behind his ears, and surveyed the boisterous student audience at his Jesus-sandaled feet. In addition to chairing Winston’s estimable Social Studies Department and founding their bongo-therapy elective, Glen also found the energy to conduct the bi-weekly Town Meeting. As the babbling horde continued to ignore him, he clasped his hands and chuckled, shaking his shaggy head — the absolute image of parental indulgence. But behind his mild-mannered smile and crinkly brown eyes, there was a glow, a near-imperceptible pinpoint of hellfire.

  Unless they shut up soon, he’d seriously lose his mind.

  “We have a lot to take care of today, people! So please, settle down and take it down a notch, or two . . . or three.” The hot light in his eye dimmed at the same rate the volume decreased. At long last: peace. “Thank you!” he exhaled. “Welcome to the first Town Meeting of October. As you know, October culminates with one of Winston’s oldest and most anticipated events of the year: The Happy Hallow-Winston Carnival!”

  The student body erupted into a round of whoops and hollers, and Glen straightened his posture, beaming. (He didn’t mind outbursts of enthusiasm when he was directly responsible.) The Hallow-Winston Carnival served as a “fun way” to raise funds for ongoing Winston improvements: last year the board agreed to establish Doggie Day Care (Melissa Moon being their most impassioned and vocal advocate), and this year they hoped to install state-of-the-art cedar wood saunas for the respective boys’ and girls’ locker rooms. Not to say the piffling two-thousand-something dollars raised from an annual sale of pumpkin cookies, carnival rides, and raffle tickets could possibly cover one of their extravagant construction projects. But they could pretend, right? The Monday following the festival, Bronwyn Spencer would stand up at Town Meeting and say, thanks to everyone’s participation, our saunas are a go! She’d clap her hands like a bored flamenco dancer while the good people of Winston hollered and cheered, congratulating each other for a job well done.

  The following day their parents would mail in their checks.

  But back to the present. While Glen blathered on about carnivals past and pending, Evan Beverwil seized his moment. Abandoning his seat at the Back Wall, he boldly clambered forward into the great uncharted masses. He tapped a few unsuspecting shoulders, muttering his polite excuse-me’s, but all they could do was turn around and stare, identical masks of confusion on their faces. Peering eyes followed his journey into the crowd with wonder and vague concern. What was he doing? Who in their right minds left a coveted seat along the wall to sit here, with them, in No Man’s Land?

  He was like one of those poor whales that become disoriented and, like, beach themselves.

  Oblivious to the silent tumult he’d caused, Evan planted his manly palm on a square vacancy of floor and settled into his new seat. Jake Farrish held his breath, the color draining from his boyish face, and forced a sideways glance. Evan trained his blue-green eyes on Glen, of course, but of his purpose Jake had little doubt: the day of reckoning had arrived. Jake had broken his little sister’s heart, and Evan was here to kick some ass.

  “Halloween may be about terror,” Glen pontificated. “But it’s also about togetherness. About ghosts . . . but also about spirit. School spirit!”

  He braced for a second round of applause, but was met with a wall of silence. Jake watched Evan’s strong tanned fingers drum the brushed concrete floor.

  “Alright,” Glen surrendered. “More on that later. Our special studies director, Miss Paletsky, has a few quick announcements . . . Miss Paletsky?”

  As their cute (but in desperate need of a makeover) twenty-eight-year-old teacher shyly approached the mic, Evan flexed his mighty hand, releasing a series of menacing crackles and snaps. Jake clamped his eyes shut. He wasn’t seriously supposed to just sit here and, like, take this, was he?

  “Listen dude,” he muttered under his breath. “Do you wanna say something? Or did you just come here to show off your knuckle-cracking skills?”

  Evan faced him with a blank stare.

  “Because if it’s the latter, man, I give you a ten. Okay?”

  Evan scratched the sandy, golden stubble at his jaw, waiting out a wave of mild applause as Miss Paletsky bobbed into a little bow, heading back to her seat. He cleared his throat, frowning at the rubbery toe of his navy flip-flop. “Um” — his blue-green eyes flicked up to meet Jake’s — “is it true Janie’s into that book, um . . . The Bug Jar, or whatever?”

  “What?” Jake crumpled with relief. Then again, he really wasn’t in the mood to talk about Janie. She’d totally abandoned him to sit at the West Wall, which practically declared to the whole world that, yes, she’d taken sides: Charlotte was right and he, Jake, was wrong. In other words, she’d publicly denounced him — and for what? The cheap and ephemeral thrill of vicarious popularity? Could anyone be so pathetic?

  Never mind he’d done the exact same thing to her last month.

  And now, to make matters a million times worse, here was Evan Beverwil, politely inquiring into her reading habits. The dude could probably justify scalping Jake with a math compass, and yet he’d elected to just sit here, like, “being nice.” Jake’s relief subsided, making room for a slew of unsettling questions. Had his social status so dramatically nose-d
ived as to disqualify him from even the smallest act of vengeance? Or, perhaps, was Evan’s present indifference an act of revenge in and of itself, as if to say: “Dude, I hardly need to punish you. Just being you is punishment enough.”

  “I guess she likes that book, okay,” Jake begrudgingly replied at last. “Why?”

  Evan shrugged, looking briefly pensive. “It’s just, I was wondering if there was another book she liked? Because that one is kind of, like, weird.”

  “I don’t get it.” Jake’s eyebrows collided. “You only read books my sister likes?”

  “Uh . . .” Evan’s pool-blue eyes stared, fixed on nothing, the black pupils afloat like tiny bobbing tops. “It’s for an assignment,” he replied, blinking at last.

  “Holler, people!” Glen obligingly stepped aside as a white-glitter-tanked Melissa Moon leaned into the microphone, whipping her audience into insta-frenzy. She raised her toasted-almond brown arm and swiveled her platinum belly-chained hips, grooving to the beat of their applause. “Thank you. Just wanted y’all to know that our mystery label winner has yet to step forward and claim his or her prize. So, if any of y’all know anything . . .”

  “You know what book she really likes?” Jake blurted under his breath, deciding to reward Evan’s insultingly nice behavior with the most intensely vagina book he could think of, something that would make the feministy Bell Jar read like an issue of Sports Illustrated. He repressed a triumphant smile. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. In fourth grade, he’d picked it up, mistaking it for a companion piece to Super Fudge (both books are by Judy Blume, okay?), and got about ten pages in when the word period blazed from the page, and blinded him like a nuclear flash.