by Compai
Petra pushed open her bedroom door, blushing at the sensation of Charlotte’s appreciative gaze. “Petra,” she gushed. “You look . . .”
“Thanks,” she breathed, and beckoned Charlotte to follow her downstairs. She cut through the foyer, swinging open the heavy front door.
“Oh!” Charlotte gasped, stopping in her tracks. Turning on the blue silk heel of her Manolo Blahnik boutonnière pump, she bounded into the kitchen, returning moments later, the black Barneys bag clutched to her chest.
“Wouldn’t want to forget this!” she nervously tittered, shaking her perfectly coiffed head.
“Omigod,” Petra proclaimed, pressing a hand to her heart. “I can’t even think about it.”
The door shut behind them with a resolute thud.
The Girl: Charlotte Beverwil
The Getup: Restored ruffled silk and antique lace bow top, from Paris 1900, green silk petticoat skirt by Omo Norma Kamali, blue silk boutonnière stiletto pumps by Manolo Blahnik.
The Girl: Janie Farrish
The Getup: Multitiered lilac cotton petal dress by Lanvin, silver flip-flops by Haviannas.
The Girl: Petra Greene
The Getup: Long dress in white cotton with gold embroidered daisies by Charles Chang Lima, gold flip-flops by Haviannas.
The Girl: Melissa Moon
The Getup: Strapless black chain-link glitter gown with tulle overlay by Versace, silver satin stilettos by Dolce & Gabbana, and (coming soon!) the Trick-or-Treater by POSEUR.
“Omigawd-uh!” Deena teetered across the Showroom wearing too-small white kitten mules, a white satin corset, a bobbing pair of marabou-feathered angel wings and a tiny pink card in her hand. Melissa had arrived to school forty minutes early, sliding the paper inserts into locker vents, taping them to bathroom mirrors, classroom doors, and tree trunks, and scattering the rest along the Showroom floor (after Miss Paletsky’s go-ahead, of course). She realized she could have asked Venice, but ultimately was glad she didn’t. She wanted the satisfaction of doing the job herself. Not to mention the peace of mind Venice wouldn’t screw it up.
“ ‘It’s October first . . .’ ” Deena clattered at her side, reading the card in a dramatic voice. “ ‘Do you know where your candy is?’ ” She widened her purple-shadowed dark brown eyes in anticipation. “What is this?” she whinnied. “Where’s my candy?”
“Read the back,” Melissa laughed, watching Deena’s face as she flipped the card on its head.
“ ‘POSEUR tells you where: Town Meeting, 8:00 a.m. Be there.’ ”
“And?” Melissa added, prompting her to read the tiny font.
“Can you read it?” She pouted, handing Melissa the card. She adjusted the glittering gold halo attached to her white headband. “I’d have to put on my reading glasses, and there are no glasses in heaven.”
“It says —” Melissa slammed her gleaming platinum trunk, returning the card to her friend — “in five seconds this card will Britney? You know, like, self-destruct?”
“Oh.” Deena rolled her eyes, pinched the card between her manicured finger and thumb, and fanned her somewhat horsey face. “Guess I’ll take my chances.”
Melissa unzipped her patent leather messenger bag, removed a rubber band–bound pack of index cards, and rolled the rubber band until it leaped free with a snap. In the Jungle, kids were already opening their lockers, jumping back in surprise as pink cards fluttered to their feet, and the Showroom thrummed with discussion: What was this about? Was this lame, or was this cool? And were they getting candy out of it? Melissa ignored their curious glances and shuffled through her index cards, knitting her perfectly gelled eyebrows in concentration.
“AwrrrOOOooo!” Marco howled from the other end of the parking lot, inviting the fawning attention and appreciative laughter of everyone within a thirty-foot radius. Everyone, that is, except his girlfriend. Undaunted, he pimp-walked his approach, swaggering his weight to one side, brushing his painted nose with the back of his hand. In addition to the standard T-shirt and track-pants combo, he wore an enormous white fox fur vest, plush brown slippers, and fuzzy tan ears to match.
“Holler,” Melissa murmured urgently under her breath. Town Meeting was starting in less than ten minutes, and she had yet to commit her speech to memory. “This Halloween, the trick is our treat, and the treat? Is tuh-ricked out!”
“Melissa,” a male voice hotly puffed against her neck.
“Ew!” She judo-smacked her boyfriend’s chest, pushing him off in disgust. “Tell me you did not just lick my ear.” She frowned, checking her floor-length black Versace gown for drool.
“Who me?” Marco replied with a devilish grin. He hooked a finger to his blue Louis Vuitton rhinestone-studded dog collar, and slid it around his muscular neck. “Why would I do that?”
“Omigod.” Melissa’s eyes darted to the heart-shaped name tag on his neck. She clapped her hand to her mouth, and gasped. “You are not Emilio Poochie! Ah-hahahah!” She grabbed her best-friend’s arm and squealed. “Deena, he’s Emilio Poochie!”
“I heard.” Deena shrugged, refusing to glance away from her black Bobbi Brown compact.
“Oh, Marco.” Melissa threw her arms around her boyfriend’s neck, peppering his face with butterfly kisses. “You are too cute!”
“I know.” Marco grinned, pressed his hand to the small of her back, and pulled her in close. Maybe it was on the sick side, but he’d had a feeling dressing up as Melissa’s dog might encourage a little bonus TLC. Now all he had to do was dress Emilio up as him, and he’d have Melissa all to himself.
“You know what you get,” Melissa purred into his ear, “if you’re a real good dog?”
“Ho-kay, this is giving me a bad case of bulimia.” Deena gagged, flicking Marco’s bicep as she passed. “Later, flea baiter.”
“Yeah, in a while, duck-child,” Marco muttered, still riveted to his flirtatious girlfriend. He put on his best puppy-dog face. “What do good dogs get?”
Melissa stood on her tiptoes and leaned in toward his ear — so close that as she opened her lips, Marco heard a soft pop. “They get . . .”
“Melissa!” a shrill trio of female voices cried out in unison, and Melissa landed on her heels with a startled thump, twisting around. Charlotte, Janie, and Petra huddled together, dressed to the nines in floor-length gowns, a shimmering vision of gleaming satin, foamy taffetas, ruffled cottons, and glittering diamond-embellished appliqués. They couldn’t resist a collectively smug look as they impatiently tapped their feet and reminded Melissa, Miss Queen of Punctuality, of . . .
“The time!” they cried in perfect unison, indicating their nonexistent watches.
“Oh, baby.” Melissa planted a distracted kiss on Marco’s cheek. “I’ll see you in Town Meeting, okay?”
“No problem,” he croaked, mustering every ounce of will power to summon a smile. As Melissa and her pack made their swift departure, traversing the Showroom in a conspiratorial huddle, he even called out, “Save you a spot!”
And it wasn’t until they were out of earshot that he tilted his head back, dropped his jaw, and yowled to the sky.
“NoooOOOoooo!!!!”
“Okay,” Melissa slammed the bathroom door. “Let me see it.”
Charlotte crossed toward the mirror, the pearly-gray tiles echoing under the heels of her pale blue buckled brocade pumps, and lifted the black Barneys bag from the sink. “Shall I do the honors?”
Unable to handle the suspense, Melissa snatched the bag from her hand, tearing the white tissue out in tufts. The crinkled sheets floated to the tiled floor, and Charlotte and Petra shared a giddy moment of eye contact, anticipating her reaction. Melissa stared into the mouth of the bag.
“Is this . . . ?” Melissa looked up, darting her gaze from girl to girl, each of them grinning. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Excuse me?” Charlotte ruffled, wounded to her Pilates core. She’d spent forever on that thing, pricking her fingertips so many times they were bound to call
ous, and for what? Another one of Melissa’s childish tantrums?
“Petra told me she loves it!” she cried, stamping her tiny foot.
Melissa frowned, reaching into the bag. The stiff paper crackled around her bangled wrist as she lifted the object in one upward sweep, bobbing her perfectly gelled eyebrows.
Charlotte clapped her hand to her mouth.
“I don’t get it.” Janie, who had yet to see the new bag, winced in confusion. “What is that thing?”
“It appears to be a pumpkin bucket.” Melissa frowned, hugging the grinning orange plastic jack-o-lantern to her chest. She bore into Charlotte with her sternest glare. “We do not have time for this.”
“But I have no idea where that came from!” Charlotte insisted in her defense, removing her trembling hand from her open mouth. On her palm, a gaping red lipstick print appeared to gasp in surprise. “I swear to God,” she warbled, glancing at the stricken Petra. “I just showed it to you. At your house!”
“I know,” Petra whispered, shaking her tangled head.
“So what are you saying?” Melissa crossed to the wall and frantically cranked a paper towel. “The handbag we just spent a month working on went up and shape-shifted into a pumpkin bucket?!”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte whimpered, leaning up against the sink as Melissa continued to madly crank. At last, Janie intervened, ripping the brown paper towel from the dispenser, and calmly handing it to her.
“This isn’t happening.” Melissa crushed the eight-foot-long paper towel into a crumpled ball, squeezed it between her hands, and dropped it to the floor. “First our contest is sabotaged. Now this? It’s like we’re cursed!”
“Do you think that girl Nikki’s behind it?” Charlotte wrung her hands. She could just see Nikki skulking into the showroom and snatching the bag off of her trunk when Charlotte wasn’t looking. But then how to explain the pumpkin bucket?
“No way.” Janie shook her head. “She’d have to be some kind of diabolical mastermind. Which she’s not,” she insisted, reading Charlotte’s mind. “She may have macked on Jake, but she got caught, okay?”
“Not really a mastermind move,” Petra assisted her point. Nevertheless her mind continued to race. How the hell had this happened?
Melissa pushed her fingernails (appropriately manicured in Lancôme’s Code Red) to her eye sockets. “Do you even know how hard I hyped this thing? The whole damn school is waiting for this big-ass reveal . . . what are we going to do?” She blinked, her dark brown eyes glossy with dread. “Go up to the podium and be like, yo. Just kidding?”
“I hate to say this,” Janie whispered. “But TM’s in three minutes.”
“TM meaning what?” Charlotte buried her face in her hands. “Town Meeting? Or Total Mortification . . .”
“It’ll be okay,” Petra attempted a note of cheer, patting her tiny back. “We’ll just go in there and rip off the Band-Aid.”
“Yeah, I can never really do that,” Janie confessed, gray eyes agleam. “I always just leave it on until it gets really gross and, like, falls off in the bath.”
The four girls took her words to heart, staring at the floor in cowed silence. A moment later, the bell rang long loud and clear.
“Well,” Charlotte sang, pushing off from the edge of the sink. She brushed her voluminous petticoats, squared her ribbon-festooned shoulders, and smiled. “Total Mortification it is!”
From their conception, Town Meetings never started on time. According to one of their many nonspoken agreements, Winstonians devoted the first two minutes to trickling in late and another three to four minutes either a) shrieking at pterodactyl frequencies, or b) launching into super-complicated high-five routines. Invariably, Glen Morrison danced about the perimeter, squeezing his hands together, and pantingly lobbing instructions for them to “Simmer down and face forward” or “Put on our paying-attention masks” or “When the hands goes up, the mouth goes . . .”
Very occasionally, someone responded, “Butt.”
Jake weaved through the murmuring throng of seated Nomanlanders and beelined for his freshly re-earned and highly coveted West Wall spot, swinging his black canvas backpack from his shoulder. But before he could drop it to his feet, a streak of purple velvet swept across the floor, claiming his seat. Jake blinked in shock as Jules Maxwell-Whatever, imperious as ever in a powdered Louis XVI wig and royal blue satin sash, lay a bejeweled hand over the velvet garment.
“Um . . .” Jake lowered his backpack to the scuffed rubber edge of his black low-top Converse, scratching the back of his neck in mock confusion. “Sorry, but your skirt appears to be in my seat.”
Jules tightened his jaw, flexing the expertly applied beauty mark on his cheek. “It is a cape.”
“Are you protecting me from a mud puddle?” Jake grinned, pressing his hand to his heart. “What chivalry!”
“The chivalry is for Charlotte, not you,” the humorless amber-eyed king informed him. “This is her seat.”
“Ch’ello, stewdents!” Miss Paletsky’s voice called from somewhere in the distance, striving to make itself heard. “Please take your seats so we can begin.”
“Bronwyn, Amanda, Joaquin, Christina, Jake . . .” Glen Morrison listed the names of the defiantly non-seated, and pointed. “That means you.”
“Jake!” A tiny voice cheeped behind him, and he turned to where an eager-eyed eighth-grade girl sat, her tiny moon-face shining up at him. She patted the patch of floor by her knee. “You can sit here.”
“Uh, no thanks,” Jake replied, his utter lack of enthusiasm inversely proportional to her twittering excitement. “Listen,” he said, extending his hand to Jules. “Charlotte told me to sit here. I’m Jake?”
“Oh yes, of course!” Jules swept aside the cape, gesturing for him to sit. “Charlotte tells me we are to be great friends.”
“Oh yeah?” Jake smiled, resisting the urge to flick the mole off Jules’s unsuspecting, Frenchie-boy face. “That’s cool.”
“Alright!” Glen clapped his hands together, ignoring a mysterious burst of snickering at the Back Wall. “We have a very special Town Meeting today. Instead of the usual round of announcements, POSEUR, the fashion label–slash–Winston special study, would like to treat us to a presentation of its first design! Let’s go, Community Expression!” he cheered, swiveling his turquoise and black Navajo belt-bound hips.
“Actually . . .” Miss Paletsky tapped the back of his elbow. “So sorry,” she murmured, tipping into a blushingly apologetic bow. “But . . .”
As she leaned into his ear, Joaquin Whitman crowed, “Way to go, Glen!” His Back Wall cronies tittered in amusement.
“Alright, that’s enough.” Glen returned his attention to the hundreds of students gathered on the floor. “Small correction!” He cleared his throat and gripped the podium. “Instead of Community Expression, the young women of POSEUR prefer the term . . .” He cleared his throat again, closing his eyes.
“Chic Preview.” Miss Paletsky leaped to his assistance.
Everyone cheered — everyone, that is, except the clearly crushed Glen. What in the name of Tofu was a “Chic Preview”? He attempted an enthusiastic grin, achieving only a bewildered half-smile. “After the presentation,” he bravely pushed on, “we’ll be conducting our usual bagel sale, along with an exciting new option, the traditional Russian bublik, which are very similar to bagels except somewhat bigger, and with a wider hole.”
“But let us return to POSEUR!” Miss Paletsky stepped sympathetically forward, relieving Glen of his duties. “Are we ready to see what all the buzz is about?” she asked, testing her latest American idiom.
“Yeah!!!” the crowd blasted in unison. Miss Paletsky beamed, her mascara-hardened eyelashes fluttering behind her octagonal eyeglasses. She knew she was expected to follow her question with the standard “Are you sure?” or the variant “I can’t hear you,” but she refused. She had enough volume to deal with at home, thank you — in Yuri’s dismal apartment, with Yuri’s equ
ally dismal family. Always the yelling, yelling, yelling. Why she should drum these students into a crazed froth and invite more screaming into her life was beyond her.
“Without further adieu,” she calmly announced, “we present the POSEURChic Preview.”
Jumping into action, Venice shut the lights, cued the stereo to something Fergie, pumped the cool metal bar on the EXIT, and cracked the heavy glossy wood door open. A flood of semi-hysterical chanting pumped into the hallway — PO-ZEUR! PO-ZEUR! PO-ZEUR! PO-ZEUR! At last the door was all the way open, clicking to the wall with a hollow boom, and framed the four formally dressed girls like a prom picture. The crowd roared at the sight of them (literally, roared ) like a sprawling six-hundred-eyed monster. Melissa was the first to break away, striding ahead, beaming, and waving, and one by one her three blushing colleagues followed in her wake. Underclassmen watched them with heart-wrenching awe. They were so beautiful. So confident. Who would have guessed how they really felt? Like pirate-ship captives walking the plank . . .
“Thank you so much!” Melissa cleared her throat as the monster calmed itself down, its six hundred eyes blinking in the dark. She cleared her throat again. “As you know, we’re here to present our work. Thank you for showing so much support. The energy here is . . . yeah.” She took a breath. “The thing is . . . POSEUR begins with P. Which stands for patience. And at this time . . .”
“Duuuudes!” a doofy-sounding backwaller wailed. “Let’s get this shizzle on the rizzle!”
“Yeah!” his comrade warbled in mock despair. “I want my friggin’ bublik!”
Melissa swallowed, growing pale. Then with all the courage she could muster, she clasped her hands, took a breath, and:
Boom!
On the opposite end of the expansive Assembly Hall, the emergency door swung open, smacking the adjacent wall, and emerging from the flood of daylight, a small figure staggered forward, hauling what looked like a garbage-encrusted wooden plank. For Melissa, the scene was familiar, and after a moment’s bewilderment, her stomach heaved. It was exactly like her dream. The four Oscar dresses, the mysterious intruder . . . Trick or Treat?
