Upper East Side #6

by Ashley Valentine

  "Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!" Eleanor panted.

  "Now!" Mrs. M barked into the phone.

  Porsha extracted her phone from her bag and called Cyrus. "Mom's in labor," she told his voicemail flatly. "We're going to the hospital." She clicked off and tucked her hands under her mom's armpits. "You don't want to have her here, Mom, do you?"

  "No," Eleanor whimpered, and staggered to her feet. She wrapped one arm around Porsha's shoulder and the other around Mrs. M's waist. "Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh," she panted as the odd threesome made their way down the hall and out Emma Willard's great blue doors.

  "I'll call the hospital and tell them you're coming," Mrs. M told Porsha competently.

  "Heart attack?" the driver asked as he opened the car door for them. He almost looked happy about it.

  "No, idiot," Porsha snapped. "She's having a baby. And if you'd shut up, we'd be there already."

  "Whoosh, whoosh, whooee!" Her mother panted, grabbing Porsha's hand in a death grip.

  Porsha looked up at Emma Willard's tall third-floor library windows as the car pulled away from the curb. The windows were crowded with the faces of girls peering down at the street.

  "Oh my God. I think she just had her baby in Mrs. M's office!" Rain cried.

  "Who? Porsha?" asked Lauren.

  "No, stupid. Her mom," Rain corrected.

  "It's totally Porsha's fault. I heard stress can cause you to go into labor early," Imani observed.

  "Her poor mom. It's like, oh, by the way, your daughter is a prostitute. And oops, here comes another kid for you to fuck up!" Nicki added.

  "Baby's coming! Wheeesh!" Eleanor hissed, getting on all fours in the back of the town car. "Baby's coming now," she growled, biting the vinyl headrest.

  Porsha turned away from the window and reached up to pat her mother's shoulder. "We're almost there, Mom," she murmured, glad that she'd been around when her mom went into labor, instead of some annoying salesperson in Saks or something. "Just imagine you're..." She tried to think of something Ruth had told them in class, but the only thing she could remember was the buttocks-deflating-like-a-balloon thing, and no way was she saying that. Instead she tried to think of what made her relax. "Just imagine you're eating a big bowl of chocolate ice cream and watching Carmen Jones," she said finally.

  "Baby's coming now!" her mother shrieked again, her face sweaty with effort.

  Porsha realized it didn't much matter what she said. The baby was coming—it was only a matter of minutes. The car stopped at a light at 89thand Park. She scooted forward and leaned close to the driver's ear. "Do you want us to completely fuck up the backseat of your car, or are you going to run this light and get us there in the next thirty seconds?"

  The driver stepped on the gas, pressing down hard on his horn at the same time.

  Baby's coming!

  31

  Kaliq was on his way out of school to pick up a burrito and a dime bag for lunch when he stopped short. An almond-skinned woman with burgundy hair was seated on the brown leather bench just inside the school doors, her pocketbook perched neatly on her knees and a Brown University duffel bag at her feet. A fat novel lay open in her lap, and it looked like she'd been there for hours.

  Kaliq crept backwards down the stairs to the basement locker area. This time he would have to ignore the munchies and forgo his usual joint. Either that or risk facing Brittany.

  "Bro, what're you sneaking around for?" Jeremy asked, watching him from the foot of the stairs.

  "No reason," Kaliq grumbled. "Hey, you eat yet?" he asked hopefully.

  "Nah. I'm headed to the deli right now. Wanna come?" Jeremy patted his baggy khaki pants pocket so Kaliq could hear the dry crinkle of rolling papers and a bag full of weed. "Have a little appetizer first?"

  Kaliq pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to his friend. "Just get me a tuna sandwich and a Gatorade or something."

  Jeremy took the money. "What, didn't finish your trig homework again?"

  "Didn't even start it yet."

  Jeremy swung his backpack around and pulled a notebook out of it. He handed it to Kaliq. "Start copying. I'll bring your food down when I get back."

  "Thanks, man," Kaliq said gratefully. The truth was, Jeremy sucked even worse at trig than he did, but he was still world-class as far as friends went.

  "Hey," Jeremy called, stopping at the top of the stairs. "Did you hear about Porsha's mom? Guess she had her baby, like, in a meeting at Porsha's school."

  Kaliq stared at his friend, too scared to reply for fear Brittany would hear. He raised his hand and nodded stiffly before stalking into the crowded locker area. Jesus fucking Christ. Could Porsha's life get any more melo-fucking-dramatic?

  Stick around and find out.

  The downstairs locker area was the only place in school where you could use "handheld devices." Boys milled around listening to music on their iPhones or huddled in groups watching a DVD on someone's laptop. Kaliq sat down on the cold floor in front of his locker, whipped out his phone, and buzzed Chanel on her cell. Of course he couldn't call Porsha, not when she was at the hospital attending to her mom and everything.

  As if he'd call her anyway. Scaredy-cat.

  Chanel sat in a coveted window seat in the Emma Willard library, pretending to ignore the gossip flying around the room, especially since half of it was about her. She was perfectly aware of the fact that the school reception area downstairs looked like an exhibit at Macy's flower show, and that all the flowers were from her Ivy League admirers. But how could she enjoy being in love with three different guys when she had no one with whom to share the excitement? And how was she supposed to pick one boy without some objective advice from her best friend?

  Wait, isn't she supposed to be picking a school?

  Obviously Porsha was pissed as hell at her over the whole Yale thing and wasn't about to talk to her. Plus it looked like Porsha was going to be kind of preoccupied for a while anyway, what with her baby sister arriving so unexpectedly. And it wasn't as if Chanel could go up to one of her supposed friends and classmates like Imani or Alexis, because, based on the loudly whispered rumors circulating at school, it was generally thought that Chanel had had sex with the entire orchestra at Harvard, every professor in Brown's art department, and every Whiffenpoof at Yale.

  "I heard she even did it with the first-chair violinist," one girl murmured indiscreetly. "He's like this fifteen-year-old prodigy from Japan."

  "You know the art professor she hooked up with at Brown? He's like the oldest teacher there. He's been there since the school was founded. "

  Since 1764? Wow, he is old!

  "I heard she stole that Audrey Hepburn screenplay Porsha wrote for Yale. That's how she got in. Porsha found out and now they're, like, complete enemies again."

  Being the subject of such outrageous tales was nothing new to Chanel. Her mysterious return to Willard that fall after almost two years away at boarding school had turned her into a veteran of half-truths and petty gossip. She knew the best way to handle it, too: ignore it.

  All of a sudden her cell phone buzzed and vibrated in her pink canvas rucksack. She took a peek and recognized Kaliq's number. "Hey," she whispered, holding the phone to her ear behind her giant chemistry textbook. "Did you hear about Porsha's mom?"

  "That's why I'm calling," Kaliq replied. "What happened?"

  Chanel wasn't the type to tell tall tales. "I'm not sure. All I really know is Porsha went to a meeting with the headmistress and her mom, and then all of a sudden she and her mom were, like, running into a car outside school. The receptionist told some girls in our class she was in labor and the car was headed for Lenox Hill."

  "Damn," Kaliq muttered.

  "I know," Chanel responded. "She wasn't supposed to have it until June."

  “Do you think we should go to the hospital? Like maybe tomorrow or something? We could bring flowers and—”

  "I don't know," she answered doubtfully, although she certainly had a lot of f
lowers to recycle. "It's kind of a private family thing. We may not be welcome."

  Actually, Porsha's mom had always treated them like family. Porsha was the one who wouldn't welcome them, and they both knew it.

  "Yeah," Kaliq agreed. "You're probably right. I guess I just..." His voice drifted off.

  "I know," Chanel said softly.

  They both wished they were a threesome all over again, there for one another in times like this. Too bad Porsha was mad as fuck at them.

  "The crazy thing is, I'm kind of leaning toward going to Yale," Kaliq admitted. "Porsha's gonna kill me."

  Chanel stared out the window. A dog walker led twenty dogs at once down the street toward Central Park, his head tilted back, singing at the top of his lungs. "I'm kind of leaning toward Yale, too," she said, even though she wasn't completely convinced. Drew, Christian, or Lars? How would she ever decide? "Or maybe I should just take a year off."

  "We could all wind up at Yale together," Kaliq mused.

  Now that would be something.

  "Maybe," Chanel agreed. The library felt incredibly still all of a sudden. She peeked over her textbook to see what was up, and forty pairs of eyes glanced quickly away. The entire room had been eavesdropping on her conversation.

  Well, it served her right for talking on the phone in the library, which we all know is against school policy.

  "I better go," she told Kaliq quickly. "Bell's gonna ring any minute."

  "Hey," Kaliq said before she could hang up, "is that girl with the shaved head still interviewing people in the park?"

  "I think so," Chanel replied.

  "Cool," he answered, sounding distracted. "Later," he abided, before clicking off.

  Chanel popped her textbook closed. Maybe she could press some of the flowers she'd been sent inside that very book and use them to make Porsha's mom a cute card or something.

  Meanwhile, Kaliq tucked his phone back into his pocket and shot upstairs from the locker area, on his way to the local florist to send Porsha's mom some flowers. Just in time, he remembered why he'd been hunkered down in the locker area in the first place. Brittany was still camped out up there, waiting for him.

  He swung around and walked slowly back downstairs again as he dialed 411. Porsha had always talked about how when they had an apartment together she would order flowers from Takashimaya three times a week. She was pretty fussy about flowers. He got the number and punched it in.

  "I'd like to send flowers to a patient at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan," Kaliq told the woman on the other line.

  Jeremy tripped down the stairs behind him. "Nice," he noted, handing Kaliq a brown paper bag and a handful of change.

  "Just put, 'Love, comma, Kaliq,' on the card," Kaliq instructed.

  Nice.

  32

  Mekhi walked into first-period English on Tuesday to find every guy in his class poring over some teen girl magazine.

  "What people don't realize is they look even bigger in person," Jaylen Harrison, Mekhi's least favorite person at Riverside Prep and perhaps the world, observed from his usual place in the back of the classroom. Jaylen was wearing the army green, military-style beret he'd picked up at West Point that weekend. It was his favorite new accessory besides his pet snow monkey, which he carried with him everywhere, even to the bathroom. Apparently his dad had the brilliant idea that military school was the place for him.

  Four more years of uniforms. No Prada. A buzz cut. And no more monograms!

  Jaylen looked up. "Am I right?"

  Mekhi had the uneasy feeling that Jaylen was talking to him.

  "It's like they're full of helium or something," another boy added, leaning over Jaylen's desk to see.

  Jaylen shook his head. "Bro, if they were full of helium, she'd fucking float away." He squinted down at the magazine again, his gold monogrammed pinky ring glowing beneath the harsh classroom lights. Then he looked up at Mekhi again. "Dude, she's your sister. What's her fucking deal?"

  Mekhi's instinct was to tell Jaylen to go fuck himself, but since it involved his little sister, Bree, who often blundered into all kinds of trouble, he felt he ought to check it out for himself. He sat down on the desk in front of Jaylen's and put his foot up on the chair. On the floor, something wriggled inside Jaylen's orange Prada messenger bag. Suddenly a white head with eyes like golden marbles popped out. It was Jaylen's monkey, grinning devilishly.

  Mekhi glared at Jaylen. "What about my sister?"

  Jaylen smirked and handed over the magazine. "Don't tell me you don't know about this."

  The magazine was open to a two-page spread entitled "Does Breast Size Matter?" The article was an earnest discussion of girls' social status based on breast size. Apparently if you were flat-chested or supersized, you were more likely to be ostracized. If you were buxom but not hideously so, you were a slut. Popular girls tended to have nice, medium-sized 34Bs.

  Mekhi studied the picture. Bree and five other girls wearing matching blue bras and shorts were lined up in breast size, biggest to smallest, in front of a volleyball net. The other girls were all models—tall, with cheesily perfect smiles and flat tummies. The girl next to Bree definitely had implants, but her chest still wasn't as big as Bree's one hundred percent naturals. Bree's chest looked abnormal and almost freakish, stuffed inside a jog bra that was way too small. Worse still, she was sticking out her tongue and her big brown eyes were shining, like she was having the time of her life.

  "Christ," Mekhi muttered, and tossed the magazine back on Jaylen's desk, his hands beginning to sweat and shake as they always did when he needed a cigarette. He knew the article was intended to empower girls with big chests. There was Bree, looking freakish but proud of it. But that wouldn't stop every guy who saw the picture from ripping it out and writing some lewd comment underneath it before pasting it on the door of a bathroom stall.

  "Says here eight out often guys prefer a gorgeous girl with average-size breasts over an average girl with supersize tits," Jaylen elaborated.

  Thanks, Captain Asshole, sir.

  It was pretty obvious to Mekhi that his sister was so eager to be a model, she hadn't thought about what the picture would actually look like. Still, not long ago, a very compromising video of Bree had been posted all over the Internet. People had talked about it for a day or two, and then it had gone away. And Bree had never even seemed that bothered by it. She was like Mr. Magoo, running blindly into the most embarrassing, awkward situations, and then walking out of them, unscathed and blaming nobody. Hopefully this would be the same, but just in case, Mekhi felt obliged to warn her.

  Bree sat by herself near the mirrored wall in the back of the Emma Willard basement cafeteria, eating a grilled cheese sandwich with pickle slices. She concentrated on neatly lining the pickles up on top of the toasted bread, trying to pretend that she didn't mind eating alone. There was a strange stillness in the air that she couldn't quite explain, but every time she glanced up at the mirrors, all she saw were the heads of the other upper-school girls, bowed over their plates, eating quietly.

  Right. Since when did upper-school girls ever eat quietly? As a matter of fact, the room was buzzing, buzzing with the sound of that morning's juiciest scoop.

  "Last night I found my older brother reading my Treat magazine in bed. I got it back from him, but he showed me the page he was all into. It's Bree in a jog bra that's way too small for her standing there with all these other models, like in boob-size order. My brother asked if he could rip it out and put it in his locker. I told him no, but I think he's going to buy the magazine and do it anyway. If I was that girl, I'd die," Mary Goldberg informed her posse.

  "I heard she didn't even get paid to do it—she volunteered," Vicky Reinerson whispered.

  "But Chanel put her up to it, remember? In peer group?"

  Mary hissed. "She was like, 'Oh, Bree, anyone can be a supermodel.'"

  "Easy for her to say," Cassie Inwirth agreed. "But it's not like I feel sorry for Bree. It's so obvious she just
wants attention."

  "Yeah, but nobody wants that kind of attention," Vicky countered.

  The three girls stole a glance at the back of Bree's head. How could she just sit there eating her lunch like nothing was wrong?

  Bree's cell phone rang quietly inside her bag. "Hey," she answered without even checking who'd called. Mekhi and Elise wore the only ones who ever did anyway, and she and Elise were no longer friends. She tucked the phone under her curly black bob to hide it from the lunch ladies. "What's up?"

  "I'm just calling to check that you're okay," Mekhi mumbled back.

  Bree stared at her reflection in the mirror. She'd worn pink metal barrettes in her hair today, and she thought she looked sort of retro and cool. "Um, I think so."

  "So no one's, like, said anything to you or..." Mekhi faltered.

  "About what? Why, did you do something weird, Mekhi?" Bree accused.

  "About the photo of you in that magazine? The guys here all stole it from their sisters. They're putting it up in their lockers and stuff."

  A little shiver shot up Bree's spine. Mekhi wouldn't be so concerned if the picture was as good as she thought it was. "Did you see it? What's wrong with it?"

  He didn't respond.

  "Mekhi!" Bree practically shouted. "What's wrong with it?"

  "It's just..." Mekhi fumbled. "Okay, the whole thing is about how girls with no chest or really big chests aren't popular. I guess the article is supposed to make you feel better, but you kind of look like a...circus freak next to the other girls. I mean, they basically made you look as big and freakish as possible."

  Bree slid the tray of food away and rested her head on the cold wooden table. No wonder the room seemed so quiet. Everyone had been busy whispering about her, the big-boobed freak.

  Yup.

  It was even worse than a Stayfree ad. She was the circus freak. Maybe she should just run away and live with her neurotic mom in Europe or something. Change her name. Dye her hair orange.

  "Bree?" Mekhi said gently. "I'm sorry."

  "Never mind," Bree said miserably, and clicked off. She kept her head on the table, wishing she could just disappear.