Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies

by Laura Stampler

  “I think I actually like this guy,” I say after a few more rounds of e-mails. And, in a strange twist of fate, I think this guy might actually like me.

  “How would Bobby feel about this?” Brie asks, back at her computer.

  “Bobby . . . ?”

  “McKittrick. He just posted on your wall. There’s a picture of you two making out.”

  “What?”

  “I was a victim!” Bobby writes, linking to my Make-Out Bandit article.

  Gross. I do not need the world to know that I made out with Bobby McKittrick. I’m about to delete it from my wall when a new comment appears.

  A comment from Adam Lockler. “Great story, Harper,” he writes.

  I click on Adam’s profile and realize that he doesn’t look half as cute as I remembered. But that doesn’t diminish how satisfying it feels that he read my article. Actually, as I keep getting new Facebook notifications, I realize that lots of people from Castalia are reading my blog. I’m getting comment after comment.

  When I look up, I see that I’ve moved up to eighth place on the Leader Board.

  And as if my day couldn’t get any better, it does.

  FROM: carter@deviant.com

  TO: Harper_Anderson@Shift.com

  SUBJECT: Re: Two questions

  So, I have another question. What are you up to this weekend?

  17

  I HAVE A SHADY FAVOR to ask you. . . .

  This is how I start my first-ever text-message conversation with Ben. Maybe I should have led with a “Hey” or a “How’s your Saturday?” or “Princess made it to her food bowl and back to my room without panting!” but Shift has taught me that you have to grab readers’ attention from the get-go. (We’ve learned this important journalistic lesson through repetition, after overhearing McKayla’s “Boring! Boring! Boring! This is me clicking away because I’m so bored !” tirades echo through the office halls. Jamie was recently on the receiving end of a public freak-out after she wrote a short post McKayla said “would have gone viral if your headline and lead weren’t so damn dull.”)

  Also, I’m desperate and don’t have time for formalities.

  After a series of extreme e-mail flirting (each one of my messages was written as a group with the other Shift Girls), Carter asked for my number and invited me (“plus whoever”) to a dive bar in the Lower East Side tonight. But while the other Shift Girls, apart from Abigail, seem to have fake IDs tucked between their Sephora Insiders and Metro Cards (“The older girls at my sorority ‘will’ them down to the freshmen after they graduate. It’s like sorority law,” Brie said.), I don’t. After hours of Googling “where to get fake ID New York” led nowhere reliable, I decided to possibly abuse the fact that Ben gave me his number to beg his help.

  I nervously watch Gossip Girl (ever since seeing the steps of the Met, I’ve been binge watching the series in my free time) while I wait for Ben to respond.

  Apparently he’s into shock-tactic rhetoric, too.

  Ben:

  Drugs, guns, and other potential felonies?

  Harper:

  Revision: I have a borderline shady favor to ask you. Zero drugs. Zero guns.

  Ben:

  Shoot.

  Harper:

  Zero shooting of any kind.

  Ben:

  Shoot = ask. lol

  I hold my breath as I type: Do you know where I can get a driver’s license that would magically make me twenty-one by tonight?

  I decide to add a prayer hands emoji since I can use all the help I can get.

  Nothing.

  Followed by nothing.

  Followed by more nothing.

  I stop holding my breath because, well, a girl can survive without oxygen for only so long, and send Kristina a “hey girl hey” text just to make sure it goes through and my phone is in working order. (It is.)

  An episode later, when Blair Waldorf descends into a full-fledged panic attack (Will she get into Yale? Will she be forced to endure attending a different Ivy League college?), my phone buzzes. It’s the most beautiful four-letter word I could ever hope to see: “Sure.”

  He texts again: “We have to go to St. Mark’s. Meet me in the Starbucks by the Astor Place subway stop. Be there in an hr.”

  My squeal wakes Princess from her late-morning nap, which Aunt Vee has warned me is the pug’s second most important respite of the day, before her early-afternoon siesta and after her late-afternoon nod.

  I apologize to Princess and close my computer so quickly that it takes a few seconds for Netflix to realize that it can stop streaming. Blair’s lament serves as brief background noise through my closed MacBook while I throw on a sundress and bound out of the apartment toward downtown.

  * * *

  When Ben plops down across from me at Starbucks, I’m so startled that I almost jump out of my seat. He laughs and reaches out to steady my iced coffee.

  “I waved to you through the window too, but you were busy concentrating,” he motions to my open notebook. “Working on your next article?”

  “No.” I nod my head in the direction of the couple at the table to our right, lean in, and confess with glee, “They’re having the best worst first date ever. He’s making her fist bump whenever they have something in common. It’s happened, like, ten times.”

  As if on command, the guy sitting next to us loudly declares, “No way! I’ve seen Kanye in concert too. Pound it!” He holds his fist in front of his date’s reddening face for an awkwardly long time until she meekly bumps it, just to make it go away.

  “And boom goes the dynamite!” Bad Date Guy exclaims.

  Ben bursts out laughing, which causes the fist bumpers to look at him like he’s a crazy person. I quickly grab my notebook and fully jump out of my seat this time, dashing to the door. I am the anti-possum. I don’t freeze; I run.

  “I can’t believe you got us caught!” I hit him in the chest when he joins me outside in the humid air. “The first rule of listening in is to never get caught!”

  “Not to point fingers, but you running away might have been the real tip-off that we were eavesdropping. We could have passed it off like you’d told a funny joke.” He ruffles my hair like I’m a little kid, and I slap his hand away, laughing. “Anyway, sorry I was so late. I thought I’d be done sooner.”

  I fight my inner grammar freak from correcting “done” to “finished,” something that has gotten me in trouble with jocks before, and instead ask him what he was doing.

  “I was at a Bark Mitzvah,” he says, like that’s a totally normal event.

  “Pause, rewind, explain?” I ask, as we walk up 4th Avenue. “Bark Mitzvah, like a bar mitzvah but for a dog?”

  “I told you my clients are intense.”

  Apparently being the employee of helicopter dog parents comes with its strange perks, including high-society pet parties. So that the owners can take advantage of the bar, Ben sometimes gets hired to chaperone soirees like mastiff birthday parties, Chihuahua Cinco de Mayo fiestas in the park, and apparently “Bark Mitzvahs” in Chelsea to celebrate when a Shiba Inu puppy becomes a dog.

  “Should I feel slighted that Princess wasn’t invited to this?” I say as we turn onto St. Mark’s Place, which it turns out is a street and not a, um, place.

  “Probably. It was pretty sick.”

  Ben hands me his phone and lets me scroll through his photos while we walk to our undisclosed, shady location. And they’re actually pretty good. No, scratch that.

  “Ben, these are really good.” His pictures capture in-between moments at the party. I pause on an image of a man in a patterned shirt trying to pin a yarmulke onto the Shiba Inu’s fluffy head. Even on the small iPhone screen, the details are vivid.

  “Nah, the pictures basically take themselves,” Ben replies as we walk past cheap sushi bar after cheap sushi bar. Lined with three-star Yelp restaurants, sunglass stands, karaoke spots, and stores displaying bongs of all shapes and sizes in their big glass windows, St. Mark’s Place is a b
roke summer intern’s dream.

  “Not buying it. These details, these moments”—I zoom in on a teacup poodle with his head stuck in a kiddush cup. I wish I could capture moments with words as well as he does with pictures. “Ben, have you ever thought of doing this, like, professionally? You shouldn’t just chaperone your next Bark Mitzvah or whatever. You should be the photographer!”

  “I dunno.”

  “This can’t be the first time you’re hearing this. I mean, your Instagrams are all awesome. Even just the ones of Delilah playing soccer—and I’m not even into sports!”

  “Delilah thinks I Instagram way too much.” Ben slows his pace. “She’d give me so much shit if I were pimping myself out to be a dog photographer.”

  “Why?”

  “Stop worrying about it. I’m good doing what I’m doing. I’m ready for a simple senior year.”

  I’ve been surprised by how unsimple Ben is, and now he’s selling himself short. But before I can say anything, Ben stops walking and announces, “We’re here.”

  I almost forgot the whole point of this journey. The ID.

  “ ‘Ice Cream and Ink’?” I read the sign in front of the store.

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Ben says as he pushes open the door to reveal a joint ice-cream/tattoo parlor, with one side relegated to soft-serve machines and the other for the inking of skulls, Chinese symbols, and intricately drawn designs. The back room secretly caters to a different vice altogether. Fake IDs.

  A man with sleeves of tattoos approaches and gives preppy Ben a fist pound. Tattoo Guy is a Saint Agnes alum and has been serving his underage high school community with fake driver’s licenses for years—a fun factoid I imagine has never made it to the alumni newsletter. I leave the mismatched pair alone to catch up and slink over to the ice cream, catching my reflection in the shiny label for the salted caramel machine. I smooth down my brown hair and twist it up into a bun, trying to figure out if I look more mature with my hair up or down. Before I have time to send a Snapchat to the Shift Girls to ask which one looks more “twenty-one” to them, Tattoo Guy calls me over to go to the back room to take my picture.

  He doesn’t ask for my name or the name I’d like to have on the fake. And when I inquire about the address that’s going to be on the ID so I can start memorizing, he just shrugs and takes the picture. There is no “say cheese” warning.

  “I think I blinked. Can I redo?”

  He shakes his head. “Come back in a few hours.”

  This might not be the DMV, but it definitely has the same dedication to good customer service. I can’t complain, though. This has all been suspiciously easy. So easy that it should be illegal. . . . Which it is. God, I hope I don’t get in trouble for this.

  And then my phone buzzes and it all seems worth it. It’s a text message from Carter asking if I’m coming tonight. I am so coming tonight but remember Kristina’s dating guru advice and respond with a cool, “Think so. I’ll keep you posted.”

  He replies without even waiting the “I have to seem busy and desirable, so I’m not texting back for a few minutes” window. Never one to have a poker face, I walk out of the back room blushing.

  “Why are you all smiley?” Ben shouts across the multipurpose parlor.

  “Nothing, just a text.” I click off my phone, as if Ben were going to run over and comb through my unscandalous text messages.

  “Is it from whatever guy you’re planning on using this ID with?” he asks.

  “Dude, we don’t discuss the merchandise!” Tattoo Guy chimes in. “We never discuss the merchandise!”

  “Who said there was a guy?” I ask.

  “The Make-Out Bandit guy.”

  I shrug.

  I don’t know why I don’t tell Ben about Carter or my group excursion tonight. Carter did say to invite friends. But for some reason, I want to keep Ben in a separate box from my Shift life. With him, I can be my clueless self. With the others, I can’t. Besides, I don’t think Ben and his uniform of Saint Agnes sports shirts and flip-flops (“I absolutely detest man sandals, and if I were straight, they’d be my deal breaker,” Sunny says.) would mix with the chic new world I’ve landed in.

  Things are starting to get complicated.

  18

  SHARON SMITH.

  My name is Sharon Smith, and I’m from 111 Main Street in Salt Lake City, Utah.

  The name sounds faker than fake. The address sounds faker than fake. The ID looks faker than fake. But hey, at least the tattooed forger made Sharon Smith an organ donor. Maybe I’ll get lucky and bouncers will only notice “my” posthumous generosity and overlook all the other questionable details.

  Still, I go over and over my new identity’s birthday, zip code, and astrological sign on my way to dinner with Gigi, Brie, and Sunny at a new restaurant in Tribeca before we go out to Carter’s dive bar. Abigail doesn’t have an ID (“And I don’t want one!”) and Jamie has to work.

  “Ah, to be young again,” Aunt Vee said as I pregamed my 9:15 dinner with french fries I picked up on my way home from picking up my ID from Ice Cream & Ink. (My stomach leans toward the early-bird special rather than trendy late-night reservations.)

  “Just don’t marry the first Saudi prince you meet out at a club,” she warns. “I don’t care how big he says his yacht is.”

  Aunt Vee got married very young to a prince she met through Andy Warhol’s personal assistant at Studio 54.

  And then she got married (only slightly young) again.

  And then again and again.

  The only evidence of her string of marriages that I’ve found is a neat row of framed pictures on the bookshelf in her study that display images of her and her husbands at each of their respective weddings, in chronological order.

  Don’t worry, Aunt Vee. Sharon Smith will stay away from all princes.

  Sharon Smith, whose driver’s license number is NQ311452J. On second thought, it would probably be more suspicious to a bouncer if I volunteered my driver’s license number by heart, wouldn’t it? Probably.

  “Should we go over the names on our fake IDs?” I ask the girls at dinner. The restaurant’s so loud that we have to lean in really close to hear each other speak.

  I had suggested we go to Serendipity—Kristina and I have wanted to try its frozen hot chocolate dessert ever since seeing it in a Gossip Girl episode—but Gigi nixed the idea on the grounds that it was (1) too touristy and (2) all the way in the Upper East Side. Instead, she made us a reservation at a popular new restaurant downtown that specializes in updated versions of 1960s classics. Deconstructed pot roasts and retro chic gelatin desserts. Mad Men meals for the modern man. Or if Alice from The Brady Bunch took a master cooking class in molecular gastronomy.

  “Why would we do that?” Gigi asks.

  “So that we know what to call each other in front of the bouncer,” I respond, offering, “I’m Sharon Smith!”

  I get blank looks.

  “No one cares, Harper,” Gigi says.

  We’re interrupted by the arrival of our appetizer. Our waitress sets down a plate of deviled eggs. I wouldn’t expect that a hard-boiled egg counts as “fine dining”—you can get that at any diner in Castalia—but the waitress said we had to try it. According to the menu, it’s the restaurant’s signature appetizer, spiced with smoked Spanish paprika and topped with a black truffle puree. We each pick up an egg half and clink them together in the middle of the table as if they were champagne flutes.

  “Wait, that would make a really cute Instagram. Do it again!” Sunny forbids us to take a bite and pulls out her phone.

  We fake “cheers!” our hard-boiled eggs three more times to get the perfect camera angle and then weigh in (with very strong aesthetic opinions) about which filter best highlights the yolk.

  “Good thing we don’t have to worry about these getting cold,” I say. The deviled eggs have yet to be consumed.

  When I bite in, the flavors explode in my mouth. Okay, you definitely couldn’t get this in a d
iner in Castalia. Our main courses are delicious in a simple but surprising way, too. But everyone is insisting on Instagramming the meal, so the dinner crawls on at a lethargic pace, which makes me antsy. It’s getting late, and I want to get going and see Carter.

  “We should probably head over soon,” I say, after the girls surprise me by opting to share the mandarin orange Jell-O mold with four spoons for dessert. “Carter texted to see what our deal is.”

  Lie.

  I’m the one who texted Carter to make sure he was still at the bar. But they don’t need to know that. Gigi has very strong opinions that the boy should be the aggressor in this kind of situation. Especially considering how strongly I came on at the gallery.

  “We’ll head over soon,” Gigi says. “I put on my dive bar outfit and everything.”

  She’s wearing espadrilles, frayed denim cutoffs, a loose-fitting, white button-up tank, and a pair of big, gold hoop earrings.

  “Where are we going?” Sunny asks. “Pianos? Spitzer’s? Welcome to the Johnsons?”

  I’ve never heard of any of those places.

  “It’s called Maverick,” I say. “Have you been?”

  “Oh, ew. No one told me we were going to Maverick,” Sunny squawks. “One of Cassie’s friends had his twenty-first birthday there last year. Male sock model. I don’t care if Thrillist says it’s ‘grungy chic,’ the place is unsanitary. Hard pass.”