Upper East Side #8

by Ashley Valentine

  Bree peered inside the open door. A few girls lounged in leather armchairs in the crystal-chandeliered common room reading magazines and listening to their iPod minis. Bree recognized a rose-patterned Marc Jacobs top on one of them. And one girl was wearing the pair of gold Prada sandals she wanted all spring but had never saved up enough to buy. They looked exactly like the types of girls she would have wanted to be friends with. All that was missing were the boys with the pipes and the vodka.

  “I’ll stay here,” she told Fiona firmly.

  “Okay.” Fiona hitched her ugly green backpack up on her shoulder. “I’ll come back and get you in, like, an hour and ten. We can get bagels in the café and I’ll show you my room.”

  Whoa, sounds like a party.

  Bree was already sure she was never going to see Fiona again because Fiona was going to get so caught up in her irregular verbs or whatever, she’d forget all about how she’d left Bree with the coolest, worst behaved girls at Hanover. She pulled a tube of lipstick out of her bag and smeared some on. Then she stepped inside the common room.

  “Hi,” she announced shyly. “I’m Brianna. I’m visiting from the city? I go to Emma Willard—you know, where Chanel Crenshaw went?” She knew it was lame to mention Chanel right away, but she wanted these girls to know that she was cool, that she was one of them.

  One girl with short black hair and beautifully painted toenails glanced her way but then looked quickly away again. Other than that, no one seemed to hear what she’d said. The wood paneling in the common room gave off an amber glow, and the oriental carpet beneath Bree’s feet was in perfect condition. She felt like she was in the den of some old mansion rather than in a school.

  “So, I hear Hanover can get pretty crazy sometimes. At least, that’s what Chanel told me,” Bree babbled on, still standing in the doorway like an idiot. She wanted to make it very clear that she didn’t just know of Chanel. They were pals.

  “Shush,” whispered a beautiful girl with legs so long and so smooth, they looked fake. “You’re going to get us in trouble.”

  Hello? Since when were Hanover girls worried about getting into trouble?

  “Sorry,” Bree muttered meekly. She sat down in an empty leather chair, wincing at the noisy farting sound it made when her bare legs rubbed against it. She placed her imitation Louis Vuitton bag primly on her lap, wishing she’d at least thought to bring a book. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the girl with short black hair checking her out once more. Bree pulled an old receipt from Target out of the side pocket of her bag and then hunted for the stubby Hello Kitty pencil she’d had since fifth grade.

  What’s the deal? I thought Hanover was supposed to be totally WILD, she scribbled on the back of the receipt. Then she folded up the receipt and daringly tossed it in the short-haired girl’s lap. Less than a minute later the receipt came back with blue pen all over it. Well, basically, the little episode with your friend Chanel (who used to be my neighbor here in Riley—when she was actually around) ruined everything. After getting rid of her, they instituted the disciplinary code, which basically says that if you tell on your friends, you get privileges. There’s so much incentive to tell on your friends that no one ever does anything worth talking about anymore. This place is totally dry, quiet, and B.O.R.I.N.G!!! I’m a senior, though, so I’m outta here—YAY!

  Bree looked up from the note and studied the other girls in the room more carefully. One of the iPod listeners was muttering to herself, and Bree realized she wasn’t listening to the latest downloads but rather memorizing Spanish conjugations. A petite Hispanic girl with thick pigtails who Bree had thought was reading a fashion magazine was actually completely engrossed in Science Digest.

  Uh-oh.

  I probably wouldn’t get in anyway, Bree scribbled back. She tossed the note to the girl, then stood up. Applications for boarding school were supposed to have been done in the fall, so she was pushing it timewise wherever she decided to go, never mind who would have her. But surely there were other schools that weren’t quite as strict as Hanover clearly was now.

  She went outside and wound her way back to the school gates, wishing that she hadn’t sent her father away in such a hurry. Heading down the path toward town she came upon a tall boy in a Ralph Lauren baseball cap and a white V-neck, smoking a cigarette as he shuffled slowly back toward campus. He was completely adorable.

  Bree smiled shyly at him as he approached, mustering up the courage to ask him if Hanover was really as bad as that short-haired girl back in Riley had made it out to be.

  “You’re not going to tell on me, are you?” the boy demanded, glaring at her with more hostility than anyone deserves.

  “N-no,” Bree stammered. Was everyone at Hanover totally paranoid?

  “Right,” he sneered back, still glaring as he shuffled away.

  When she arrived at the coffee shop, her dad was behind the counter whipping up a soy milk chai latte, even though he and Mekhi had spent an hour one day lecturing Bree on how chai was just some made-up Starbucks bullshit and how the only real hot drink on the planet was Folgers instant coffee. “The air is so fine, I was thinking I might move up here. They even offered me a job here in the café,” he crowed, beaming at her. “Mekhi’s off to Evergreen in the fall anyway. We’ll sublet our place—make a fortune!”

  “Sorry, Dad, but I don’t think so,” Bree sighed. “I mean, I don’t think I want to go here.”

  Rufus carried the paper cup of frothy hot liquid around the counter and handed it to Bree. “You mean you want to stay home with me?” he asked, his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows arched hopefully.

  Bree smelled the drink, made a face, and then handed it back. “No. I just have to keep looking. Croton’s on the way home anyway.”

  Rufus winked at the big-hipped, frizzy-haired woman coming out of the kitchen with a tray of buckwheat scones in her hands. He sighed. “You sure?”

  From what Bree could remember, the prep school guidebook she’d read from cover to cover in the corner by the window upstairs at the Broadway Barnes & Noble had listed Croton Academy in Croton Falls second on the list of party schools, right after Hanover. Croton was supposed to be full of kids who’d been kicked out of their New York City private schools for bad behavior. Obviously the book hadn’t been updated recently if it still listed Hanover as the number one party school, but maybe what it said about Croton was still true.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Bree tugged on the pocket of her father’s shorts, all excited about Croton now.

  It sounded way cooler than Hanover. And hopefully it had no disciplinary code.

  Professor Pierre Papadametriou

  English Dept., The Evergreen State College

  2700 Evergreen Parkway NW

  Olympia, WA 98505

  Mekhi Hargrove

  815 West End Avenue, Apt. 8D

  New York, NY 10024

  Dear Mr. Mekhi Hargrove,

  I saw your query in Seeking Paid Summer Internship on college employment site. I am poetry and biology professor at college and I seek summer intern. You live in my house. I have two dogs and a son. My wife left for Greece. Son is fisherman. Dogs live outside. You work on my very interesting book with me. I feed you good Greek food! Tell me when you come and I will fix hammock in attic. Must go feed dogs. They love my moussaka!

  Please write back soon.

  Pierre

  5

  “Wow. Your place looks really…lavender,” Mekhi remarked when Yasmine let him in. When he’d lived there the walls of the small nondescript apartment had been plain, peeling, and white, and there’d been black Halloween sheets hanging in the windows in place of curtains. Now the walls were painted a delicate light lavender with celery green trim, and black-and-white chintz curtains hung from real curtain rods in the windows. There was a nice modern wooden table and chairs in the living room and a cool, modern gray sofa. The place looked like it had been decorated by a real decorator.

  Yasmine blushed, which was weird
for her. Since when did she blush? “Porsha kind of spruced it up a little. You like?”

  Mekhi was sweaty from the subway ride, and because he’d run all the way from the L stop, thirteen blocks away. He traced a sticky finger over the freshly painted wall, his heart beating fast. “It’s different, I guess,” he responded nervously. Yasmine was checking him out in that unabashed, direct way of hers, making him sweat even harder.

  When Yasmine had gotten home from school, there’d been a little white box waiting for her on the kitchen counter. She’d opened it to find a silver ring in the shape of two hands holding hearts that were welded together. Inside the ring was the inscription FOREVER AND ALWAYS. LOVE, TAHJ.

  Except for a brief dalliance with a lip ring, Yasmine rarely wore jewelry, and this type of friendship/love ring was so corny it made her laugh. She’d certainly never have considered wearing it, no matter who had given it to her. She’d dropped the ring back inside the box and tucked it into the silverware drawer. It was possible Tahj had given her the ring as a joke, but then why would he have bothered to have it inscribed? Even when they were going out, Mekhi would never have given her such a sappy gift.

  Come to think of it, he’d never asked her to camp out under the stars with him, either. Yasmine was a running-water-and-flushing-toilets sort of girl. She hated the sun. And the outdoors, with its spiders, ants, bees, and mosquitoes, creeped her out. Of course, Tahj meant well. It was the thought that counted and all that. But she and he would have to talk—something they hadn’t really done much of since they’d hooked up. Despite Tahj pouring on the love notes, giving her gifts, and sleeping over all the time, their relationship had been purely physical thus far.

  Not that she minded. There was something about the stress of finals and graduation and turning a new page in life that was secretly freaking Yasmine out. She simply wasn’t herself. Or maybe living in an apartment with lavender walls with a girl who owned one hundred and seventeen pairs of shoes, including thirty-four pairs of Louboutins, had turned her into someone else. Formerly a loner, Yasmine could no longer bear to be alone, and she’d found that the best way to keep her mind off the future was to drink a little vodka and then fool around.

  She’s only just discovered this?

  “You look skinny,” Yasmine told Mekhi. Then she took a step toward him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled his cute, musty Mekhi scent. “Skinny, but really good.”

  Yasmine was wearing a black ribbed tank top and no bra. Her head was freshly shaved, but she’d allowed the dark hair around her face to grow half an inch or so, softening her broad forehead and hazel eyes. And she’d given up on her lip ring.

  Which was a good thing.

  She was also wearing a flippy black miniskirt that she never would have considered before Porsha Sinclaire moved in. But she’d paired the miniskirt with her ever-present Doc Martens, making it very clear that, despite her roommate’s influence, she wasn’t about to buy a pair of Manolo Blahnik stilettos anytime soon, even if they came in black.

  The smooth slope of her upper arms, the mocking curve of her red lips, and the defiant glow in her big hazel eyes made Mekhi wonder how he’d ever functioned without her. He resisted the urge to whip out his leather-bound notebook and scribble down a poem. Instead he pulled a Newport out of the pack and stuck it between his lips without lighting it.

  “So, you want to take a walk? Get some coffee or something?” he ventured, trying to sound vaguely normal.

  Yasmine shrugged her shoulders without moving away from him. “I’m having a major déjà vu,” she confessed with a bemused smile. Wasn’t this how they’d gotten together again the last time? He’d come over and then they’d basically ripped each other’s clothes off.

  “Me too,” he admitted, secretly hoping that history would repeat itself.

  “Porsha and I just discovered a door to the roof of the building. All this time I thought it was padlocked, but the lock is broken. It’s pretty cool up there—want to check it out?”

  So was Yasmine into sunbathing now too?

  “Sure,” Mekhi agreed. To his surprise, she collected a quart of Absolut and a bottle of tonic water from the fridge, tucking them into a paper bag with two plastic Scooby Doo glasses, which she filled with ice.

  “I’ve kind of developed a taste for this stuff,” she admitted with a wicked grin.

  Mekhi stared at her in amazement, his whole body trembling with anticipation. Yasmine never could hold her liquor. Neither could he.

  He followed her out of the apartment, down the dirty cement-floored hall, and up the building’s cruddy stairs, which were painted black and smelled of turpentine. Two flights up, Yasmine pushed open a black metal door marked DO NOT ENTER and stepped out into the bright hot light of the rooftop. Suddenly the city was all around them, and the Williamsburg Bridge seemed close enough to touch. Off to the right, the East River looked glassy and cool as a sailing yacht glided past a barge pulling a load of Porta Johns, its white sails luffing in the thick afternoon air. To their left was the sugar factory, billowing smoke out of great smokestacks and adding to the smog. Across the bridge, Manhattan loomed large and full of promises. A born Manhattanite, Mekhi could never get over the feeling when he was in Brooklyn that something exciting was going on across the water, and that he was missing out.

  “Over here,” Yasmine called over the roar of interborough traffic. She ducked under a metal beam supporting the giant wooden water tower that dominated the roof. “We’re definitely protected from the sun and rain under here. And see, the condensation from the water tower even keeps the air kind of cool.”

  Mekhi went over and ducked under the water tower. A black futon was spread out on the ground, complete with an assortment of black fake fur throw pillows. Yasmine seemed to have her own outdoor love den.

  “You and Tahj must spend a lot of time up here,” he commented awkwardly.

  She sat down on the futon and began pouring vodka into the plastic Scooby Doo glasses. “Actually, I promised Porsha not to hog it. We only just discovered it on Saturday, and yesterday it was raining, so actually Tahj’s never even been up here.”

  Meaning she and Tahj had never had sex up there, which kind of made Mekhi feel better about sitting down on the futon. Yasmine handed him a vodka tonic. “Sorry, no limes.”

  He sat down and lit a cigarette. A helicopter motored loudly by. He had to admit, this was kind of a cool place to be.

  “So, graduation speaker, huh? I was even thinking about maybe skipping my graduation.” Yasmine clicked her glass against his and then took a big, long sip. “To us.”

  Mekhi squinted at her as he drank, holding the plastic glass with his cigarette hand, his dark face to the sun. There was something different about Yasmine this time. Something lazy and dangerous and sexy. Cobra curled on hot cement, his mind began writing furiously, because it couldn’t help itself.

  Yasmine grinned, returning his intense stare with a self-conscious chuckle. “I don’t know why I’m doing this but…” she began. Then she put down her glass, leaned slowly toward him, and shoved her tongue down his throat.

  Whoa!

  Mekhi’s dreamy brown eyes grew huge. He wondered if maybe Yasmine had been drinking all day and had somehow confused him with Tahj. Or maybe he and Tahj had gotten caught in some sort of mind-melt-time-warp-body-swapping ordeal straight out of the type of bad comic book he used to read when he was nine, and he really was Tahj. Nevertheless, it was sheer ecstasy kissing Yasmine again, and sheer agony to even think of pulling away. But after a few minutes, he forced himself to do it. “Um, can I just ask you—what are we doing?”

  Yasmine grabbed the hem of his faded T-shirt and lifted it up, peeking at his dark, flat stomach. “Don’t you sometimes wonder what the big deal is?” she asked, as if that were answer enough.

  Mekhi didn’t say anything. Yasmine seemed to be going through some sort of experimental period, and he wasn’t about
to get in the way, especially since it seemed to involve wanting to take his shirt off. And his pants. Even his socks seemed to be getting in the way of her need to express herself. And just so she wouldn’t feel left out, he helped her off with her clothes, too. Before long they were kneeling on the futon beneath the water tower, naked.

  Talk about déjà vu!

  6

  “Do you have anything that isn’t…shiny?” Porsha demanded as she fingered the dresses on the circular rack in the back of Isn’t She Lovely, a tiny Williamsburg boutique a block away from the apartment she shared with Yasmine. She walked by the boutique every day on her way to and from the coffee shop, where a car service picked her up in the morning after she bought her large latte with an extra shot of espresso and dropped her off after school. Today she’d wandered inside, thinking it might be cool to buy a graduation dress in a place so completely off the map that no other girl in the senior class at Emma Willard could possibly have the same one she did. The problem was, with no designer label to show their merit, she wasn’t sure if the dresses were ugly in a cool way or just plain ugly.

  “This one is very popular for confirmations,” the overly perfumed saleslady told her in heavily accented English. She held up a dazzling white, rhinestone-encrusted, polyester-lace-bodiced sundress with a pleated skirt that was so stiff and shiny, it looked like it had been laminated.

  Porsha glanced in one of the many mirrors all over the store and glared at her reflection, furious with herself all of a sudden. Who was she kidding, pretending not to need a graduation dress that was made to order by Oscar de la Renta or Gucci? She hitched her nude pink Fendi purse up on her shoulder and slid her sunglasses up on her nose, tempted to buy the hideous dress the saleslady had just shown her and bring it home to Yasmine as a joke, pretending she was going to wear it to graduation. But the thought of spending money on anything so hideous, even in jest, made her even more furious. When had her life become so lame?