Mekhi ripped open a clear plastic packet of fluorescent orange duck sauce with his teeth and squirted it onto an egg roll. “Not really.”
Bree and Rufus both stared at him in shocked surprise.
Mekhi looked up. “What?”
“Idiot,” Bree breathed across the table at him. She’d worked with Yasmine on Rancor, the Willard student-run arts magazine, and had hung out with her enough times to know that she was fiercely independent and not at all into this sort of lovesick-puppy-dog shit Mekhi was pulling. Besides, wasn’t she supposed to be going out with Porsha's stepbrother now? “Idiot,” she muttered again.
Rufus didn’t say anything. He just picked up his glass of wine, carried it out of the dining room, down the hall, and into his office, slamming the door shut behind him.
Mekhi shrugged his shoulders and opened up another packet of duck sauce. “I really don’t know what everyone’s problem is.”
Bree was about to tell him what an ignorant, presumptuous asshole he was when her iPhone began to jingle with the first few notes of “Happy Birthday to You,” the Raves recording she’d sung backup for. She bit her lip, still glaring at Mekhi with her big brown eyes.
“It’s your phone. You better answer it,” Mekhi told her with his mouth full.
“Fine.” Bree reached into her imitation Louis Vuitton purse and pressed the answer button on her phone. It was probably Elise, calling her from Cape Cod to complain about how bored she was of eating lobster with her parents. “Just to warn you, I’m in a really bad mood,” Bree said in greeting.
There was silence on the other end.
“Hello?” Bree demanded impatiently.
“Yes? Is this Brianna Hargrove?” a polite male voice replied.
Oops.
She sat up straight in her chair. “Speaking.”
Bree reminded Mekhi of someone just then, but he couldn’t quite place who. Their mother, maybe? Except the only real memory he had of his mother was of her trying to teach him how to tie a tie when he was only five. He’d kept messing up because her perfume was so pungent it had made him dizzy.
“This is Thaddeus Moore, director of admissions at Bridgeport Academy,” the man introduced himself. “Do you have a moment?”
Did she ever!
“Yes,” she answered cautiously, her heart beating so hard, she could practically feel her ribs cracking. Mekhi’s pack of Newports was sitting on the table. She reached for them and pulled one out, tapping it on the tabletop like a veteran smoker. If only her dad had left the wine behind.
“Good. Well, I wanted to let you know that we received your application and the package you sent, and we were very impressed, especially with your artwork,” Mr. Moore informed her. “I myself spoke with your headmistress, Mrs. McLean, and she couldn’t say enough kind, enthusiastic things about you. Of course, applications for next fall have been closed since December. However, due to unexpected circumstances, a space has just opened up for the fall. So if you’re still interested in attending Bridgeport next year, we’d be happy to have you.”
Bree whipped the unlit cigarette at her brother and it bounced off his stupid, staring forehead and onto the floor. “Really?!” she nearly shouted. “Oh my God. Really?!”
“Yes, really,” Mr. Moore responded with what sounded like a tinge of amusement. “We’ll send you the paperwork today if you like.”
Oh, what a nice, nice man. “Yes, please!” Bree stood up and then sat down again. She was so excited, she thought she might wet her dress. “Thank you. Oh my God. Thank you so much!”
“You’re quite welcome.”
She realized she should hang up before she said something really stupid and he changed his mind. “I better go tell my father now. I’m so glad you called. Thank you.”
Bree hung up, danced around the table, and threw her arms around Mekhi. “I’m going to boarding school!” she shrieked giddily, grabbing his shoulders and shaking his skinny body like a rag doll. “I’m going to boarding school!”
“Cool,” Mekhi responded, relieved that the attention had shifted away from his own dubious predicament. He fished a fortune cookie out of the bottom of the paper bag he’d brought his Chinese food home in. “Good for you.”
Bree spun around and hurtled toward her dad’s office. Ignoring the strict rule Rufus had laid down when she was just a babe, she flung open the door without knocking.
Rufus looked up in surprise, lit match and translucent green water pipe in his hands, the window flung open and the warm air pungent with the stench of weed. “Grr,” he growled.
Bree didn’t even care. She’d always suspected he smoked weed, anyway. “Dad, I got into Bridgeport,” she told him breathlessly. “You know, the boarding school I read about with the new art program? I got in!” she practically shouted at him. “I got in!”
Rufus blew out the match, opened his desk drawer, and chucked the evidence into it. Then he opened his arms to give her a big bear hug.
“I just wanted it so badly, it had to happen,” Bree gushed, her face pressed into his warm, smoky shoulder.
We’ve always been told, “Be careful what you wish for.” But maybe Porsha had it right after all: The more you want, the more you get.
33
Still wearing her perfectly fitted satin Oscar de la Renta suit, Porsha sat on Lord Marcus’s knee on a brown leather chair in the Yale Club lounge, feeling weirdly content as throngs of people wandered into her graduation party with their yearbooks tucked under their arms. She and Lord Marcus hadn’t had a chance to consummate her graduation yet, but as soon as the party kicked into high gear, they’d slip up to her suite and do it once and for all. She’d already filled the suite with candles in scents of sandalwood, bergamot, and lime, and underneath her suit she was wearing her favorite new camisole-and-thong set.
The lounge was its same crusty old New York self, except for the six flat-screen TVs hanging from the wood-paneled walls, running Yasmine’s latest film on a constant loop. The fact that all the characters in the film were slowly trickling into the party made it seem like the opening night of an edgy new documentary, and everyone at the party felt totally famous.
“I told you I was telegenic,” Jaylen crowed, watching himself onscreen. He’d arrived with an entourage of boys in gray flannel uniforms no one else there had ever laid eyes on before.
That’s because he’d raided the sophomore class of some random Catholic school near his Sutton Place apartment and paid the boys to come.
“They’re cute,” Imani remarked, eyeballing a particularly innocent, wide-eyed boy who was signing Jaylen’s yearbook with a yellow highlighter pen. Imani had changed into a pair of cutoff jeans and a cut-up red T-shirt and was looking almost indecently slutty.
The boy eyeballed her back. He’d never seen so much well-tended exposed skin. Maybe it was his lucky night!
“They’re only, like, thirteen years old,” Alexis scoffed as she flipped through her yearbook, counting how many people had signed it. She was saving her virginity for college. Sort of. Technically she’d already lost it to Jaylen at a party at Chanel’s house, like, two years ago, but she’d been so drunk at the time, she didn’t even remember it.
Lord Marcus slipped something cool and wonderful around Porsha’s neck. Porsha touched her collarbone and glanced down. It was a Gucci pearl choker exactly like the one she’d borrowed from her mother for her Breakfast at Fred’s audition, only ten times nicer. Each pearl in the strand was its own unique shape, imperfect and perfect at the same time, fastened by an ornate gold clasp shaped like the letter P. “Congratulations, P,” he murmured, kissing her on the nape of the neck.
P? Porsha had always wanted a nickname. She tilted her chin up to kiss him on the mouth, feeling drunk with happiness and all the vodka she’d consumed with Yasmine in the hours between graduation and now. She had an insanely cute new car, an insanely fine new boyfriend, and she was going to Yale in the fall. The pearls were just accessories for her already-perfect life.<
br />
Well, aren’t we smug?
“I’d love for you to come to England this summer,” Lord Marcus whispered, his lips brushing Porsha’s hair. “My family’s desperate to meet you. You could stay at the house. And maybe we could even fly to Paris and see your dad while you’re over.”
Porsha’s breath caught in her throat and she turned around, blinking up at him like a vacant cartoon princess who’d just been woken from a witch’s spell. He’d only asked her to visit him, but it had sounded almost like…a marriage proposal. He was her prince, her knight—well, not exactly, but a lord was almost the same thing. He’d swooped in on his white stallion, swept her off her feet, and now he wanted to take her home to meet his parents because soon—maybe even sometime this summer—he was going to give her an incredibly rare diamond ring, kneel down before her, and ask her to marry him.
Not that he actually mentioned marriage. And when exactly did a white stallion enter the picture?
“Yes,” Porsha responded blissfully. “Oh, yes!”
It was more of a response to the marriage proposal in her head than to Lord Marcus’s original proposal, but in the world according to Porsha, they were intrinsically linked: She would go to England and she would come back engaged to Lord Marcus. Even though she was only seventeen and her mom had never even met him. Not that she ever planned to purposely introduce her mother to Marcus. They could meet at the wedding. Or maybe they’d elope to some remote South Pacific island and have an intimate nighttime wedding on a beach with only the natives as their witnesses. They’d eat fire-roasted goat and dance barefoot in the sand.
Remember, anything can happen on the Island of Porsha.
She’d kept her summer open, thinking she would need all two and a half months just to shop and pack for Yale. She’d even considered going over to Europe to see her dad—but mostly to shop, because the stores in New York never put out any fall fashions until September, and she had to be in New Haven for orientation at the end of August. How on earth would she arrive at Yale with the right cashmere sweaters, ankle boots, and fitted jackets unless she bought them directly from Prada in Milan or Burberry in London?
Now her summer was more defined. She would shop, get engaged, and then shop some more.
“I'm flying home tomorrow and I can’t bear to think this is our last night together,” Marcus lamented, kissing her behind the ear. “It would do my heart good to know you’re going to come over in a couple of weeks.”
Porsha would have closed her eyes and kissed him and then whispered something about how she really, really needed to lie down so would he please walk her to her suite so she could rip his clothes off and they could consummate their marriage a little early, but then Chanel and Kaliq wandered into the party behind a group of L’École girls. The girls were all smoking Gauloises and wearing crocheted halter tops and gold toe-ring sandals because that French model, Pru, had just worn a crocheted halter top and gold toe-ring sandals on the cover of the June issue of Vogue. Chanel had changed her outfit—luckily. Otherwise Porsha would have broken her perfect nose.
“I thought you told me they broke up,” Tina Ford, who’d just graduated from Seaton Arms, commented to Imani. She bit into an Absolut-soaked ice cube. “Isn’t that why they both missed graduation?”
“I heard they were never really together,” Alexis trilled in reply, even though Tina wasn’t even talking to her. “Kaliq’s gay. He came out last week. And he’s in so much trouble. His parents are disowning him. They’re not even going to pay for Yale.”
“So why is Chanel still pretending to go out with him?” Imani demanded, lifting up her ripped red T-shirt and exposing her tummy just to give that innocent-looking Catholic school boy Jaylen had brought with him a little thrill.
The other girls rolled their eyes. “Oh, you know how she is. She always has to be so nice to everybody,” Rain complained. “Kaliq’s dad probably, like, hired her to flirt with Kaliq so he wouldn’t be gay anymore!”
Actually, that does sound like something Captain Braxton would do.
As they’d filed out of Brick Church, and in the seconds before their families caught up with them, Chanel had tried to explain to Porsha why she’d almost missed graduation, while Porsha had pretended not to listen. Obviously Chanel’s second Breakfast at Fred’s audition was way more important than listening to Porsha’s speech or getting her diploma. At least Porsha had the satisfaction of knowing that Chanel would never get the part. She was too tall, too messy, and too wrong for it.
“I got the part!” Chanel screamed at the top of her lungs, so excited, she didn’t care who was listening. She grabbed Kaliq and squeezed him with her long, perfectly toned arms. “Ken Mogul just called. I got the part!”
Porsha nearly fell off Lord Marcus’s knee. She’d already been hating Chanel all over again for missing her graduation speech and for wearing the exact same Oscar de la Renta suit she had. And of course she still secretly hated her for being with Kaliq. It hadn’t seemed possible to hate her any more—until now. But Porsha had already started talking to Chanel again—she’d even taken Chanel’s chemistry exam for her, for Christ’s sake, so now she was stuck with the awkward choice of suddenly acting like a bitch for no reason in front of Lord Marcus, or being completely fake and pretending to be nice so Lord Marcus wouldn’t think she was a bitch and change his mind about wanting to marry her.
As if he hadn’t already noticed her bitchy side.
Kaliq stood next to Chanel like a hired piece of celebrity arm candy. He rubbed his eyes and smiled at Porsha and Marcus blearily, and for the first time in a long time, Porsha wondered what she’d ever seen in him. No matter how often they broke up, her happily-ever-after fantasies had always featured Kaliq, but now they had a new and improved co-star. She leaned back against Marcus’s chest, making it very clear that she was supremely comfortable on his lap and totally unruffled by Chanel’s news. Her perfectly tailored suit was a little warm in the stuffy room, but it looked so good on her, she didn’t care.
All of a sudden, another good looking but shorter couple stepped around Kaliq and Chanel and gazed tensely around the room, as if they were worried someone might yell at them for crashing the party. Porsha sat up and unbuttoned her suit jacket, flinging it onto the floor in disgust.
The male part of the new couple was her twelve-year-old brother, Brice, attempting to look like a bad boy by wearing a vintage Armani tuxedo jacket over a ripped black T-shirt. The dimple-cheeked girl on his arm was wearing the almost same fucking white suit Porsha was. She was even wearing the same fucking Manolo Blahnik shoes as Porsha. Her fucking hair was the same style as Porsha’s, cut in a short layered bob. Porsha squinted. She had never seen this fucking girl in her life, but if she wasn’t mistaken, she was also wearing MAC's fucking Stroppy lipstick, Porsha’s fucking favorite.
Growl.
Porsha hitched up the straps on her totally see-though, cream-colored camisole. If it hadn’t been for Lord Marcus, she’d have grabbed the girl by the scruff of the neck and thrown her out on the street.
“Hey, sis,” Brice greeted her in a fake stoner voice, puffing up his shoulders in an attempt to look bigger. “This is Destiny. Des, this is my sister, Porsha.”
“Cool,” Porsha’s clone responded casually. Like she hadn’t just spent all day trying to dress exactly like Porsha.
Porsha wrinkled up her pert little nose. “I got the part!” she heard Chanel scream from the other side of the room, for what seemed like the thousandth fucking time. She picked up her cigarette holder, waiting for Marcus to give her a light. “How do you do?” she replied in her best gracious-under-pressure Audrey Hepburn imitation, blowing smoke over her brother’s and his stupid little girlfriend’s heads.
Chanel may well have gotten the part, but Porsha lived it, every day.
34
It was almost surreal how graduation changed everything and everybody. The party was like being at a reunion, except that they’d only just graduated that morning
. Some of the girls were still wearing their white graduation dresses with rubber flip-flops and their hair all undone, looking like runaway brides. The boys had rolled the cuffs up on their neatly pressed khakis, and their school ties hung askew on their bare sun-kissed chests, so that they resembled models in a Ralph Lauren menswear campaign, dressed up for cocktails but sitting on a dock with their feet dangling in a lake as if they’d rather drink beers together than go back inside to the stuffy cocktail party.
Chanel thought of herself as an emotional person. The fashion designer Les Best had even named a perfume Chanel’s Tears when he’d caught her weeping in the snow at a photoshoot in Central Park. She’d always thought she’d be a basket case during graduation. After all, she’d grown up with these people, shared the same ups and downs, suffered the same disappointments and triumphs. But here she was, nothing short of ecstatic. Even Kaliq’s mopey, distracted disposition couldn’t bring her down, because she’d gotten the part!
Yes, we heard her the first time.
In his usual pretentious oddball manner, Ken Mogul hadn’t even watched her second audition. He’d kept his back turned, trying to ascertain whether she radiated the right energy for the part. When she finished delivering her lines, he didn’t turn around, just held up his hand and said, “Thank you.”
The second audition had taken place in an old warehouse in the Meatpacking District, on the opposite end of Manhattan from Brick Church. Chanel was already dressed for graduation, and she’d promised to pay her taxi driver handsomely if he waited for her outside. Within seconds, she was hurtling east on 14th Street, praying that Mrs. M wouldn’t make her repeat her senior year and realizing too late that she’d left her shoes behind.
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