Upper East Side #6

by Ashley Valentine

  "Yay!" Chanel hugged her tightly. "It's going to be great, you'll see!"

  The other girls eating in the lunchroom looked on curiously. "Maybe Bree's agreed to donate the fat tissue from her boobs for Chanel's implants," Mary Goldberg said.

  Or maybe Chanel had found the perfect way to avoid the gang of Ivy League suitors coming to the city to see her on Saturday.

  36

  "Happy birthday." Mekhi handed Yasmine the poem he'd written for her and leaned against the door frame. "I wanted to give you this before anyone gets here."

  "Don't say, 'If anyone is coming,'" Yasmine warned. "They'll come." She leaned over the bathroom sink, squinting at her reflection as she applied Tiphany's purpley-black lipstick to her lips. Then she sat down on the toilet and began to read the poem out loud.

  a list of things you love:

  black

  steel-toed boots

  dead pigeons

  dirty rain

  irony

  me

  a list of things I love:

  cigarettes

  coffee

  you and your brown cinnamon arms

  but the thing about lists is they tend to get lost

  "Thanks," Yasmine said. She folded the piece of paper and nicked it into the drawer in the vanity under the sink where Ruby kept all her hair goop and makeup. It was kind of a weird response to a poem that was supposed to be bittersweet.

  "Jesus, dude, you need to start taking happy pills," Tiphany muttered from out in the hall. "How can you write your girlfriend a birthday poem that sounds so melancholy?" She nudged Mekhi out of the way, grabbed the tube of lipstick from off the sink, and smeared some on her lips. "Roses are red, violets are blue." She pulled Yasmine upright and kissed her on the cheek, leaving a smudgy, purpley-black imprint. Then she kissed her on the other cheek. "Babe, you look hot with lips all over you!"

  The two girls giggled and checked each other out in the mirror. Tiphany was wearing a black silk camisole borrowed from Ruby's closet. "Nice shirt," Yasmine noted.

  "Nice pants," Tiphany said back. Yasmine had borrowed Ruby's zebra-striped leggings and they actually kind of worked with a black denim miniskirt, a black T-shirt, and combat boots.

  Mekhi wandered away, wishing Tiphany hadn't been her usual rude self and eavesdropped on his poem. So what if it wasn't all happy and cheerful and fun? It was still a love poem. And there was a message in it, if only Yasmine had taken the time to listen.

  "I was thinking tonight might be a good night for a little piercing," Tiphany announced.

  Yasmine glanced at her in the mirror. Tiphany's ears weren't even pierced. "Really? Like where?"

  Tiphany grinned and wiggled her eyebrows ominously. "Not me, silly. You!" The downstairs buzzer rang repeatedly and Tiphany grabbed Yasmine's arm and tugged her out of the bathroom. "I invited some people. You don't mind, do you?"

  "Of course not," Yasmine said, glad to get away from the topic of piercings.

  Mekhi buzzed them in and a moment later a troop of enormous guys in dusty, paint-smeared overalls stomped into the apartment in their work boots.

  "Hey boys." Tiphany dragged her army-issue duffel bag across the living room and opened it up. It was full of pint bottles of Grey Goose vodka. "This is my construction team. They don't speak much English." She handed each guy a bottle and then cracked one open herself. "Time to get happy!"

  Mekhi went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of bad coffee. The construction guys smelled like paint thinner and were probably all psychopaths, just like Tiphany. But if they didn't speak English, he wouldn't have to talk to them, which was a good thing.

  Yasmine didn't mind a bunch of strange guys in her house as long as they behaved themselves. At least now it felt more like a party. She went over to the stereo and put on Ruby's band. Because it was her birthday she kind of missed her sister.

  "'Prick my finger, kiss my ass!'" Ruby's voice howled from out of the speakers.

  "Chanel! I just met a girl named Chanel!" a more melodic group of voices echoed from outside the apartment.

  The front door was still open. Out in the hall stood a brown-skinned boy followed by nine other guys, all wearing navy blue suits and Yale ties, with red roses in their buttonholes.

  "Is Chanel here yet?" the boy asked. Actually, he didn't ask the question so much as sing it.

  "Noooot yeeeet," Tiphany sang back. "But cooommmme oonnn innnnn!" She handed each boy a bottle of Grey Goose. "Do you guys dance, too, or just sing?"

  Mekhi stood in the kitchen, chain-smoking and gulping coffee. The party was turning into something out of West Side Story—the construction workers versus the singers. Maybe there'd even be a rumble.

  Yasmine perched on the windowsill, filming people. The party was already so random, she couldn't imagine what would happen next.

  Then the front door edged open a crack and a white monkey wearing a little red T-shirt scampered in.

  "Sweetie!" Tiphany cried, scooping the monkey up in her arms. "Tooter's asleep in the closet. But if he knew you were here, I bet he'd come out and play."

  "Anyone want a cigar?" Jaylen asked, brandishing a handful of them. "My dad's footman just brought back a whole suitcaseful from Cuba."

  His footman?

  The Whiffenpoofs and Tiphany's construction team helped themselves to cigars. Tiphany carried Jaylen's monkey over to the closet where Tooter was sleeping on the floor, curled up on top of Mekhi's favorite gray sweater. "No monkey business in there, okay, kids?" she said, closing the door partway to give them some privacy. She turned to Yasmine. "Now how 'bout that piercing?"

  Yasmine smiled nervously. "I always kind of wanted one on my lip."

  "Done!" Tiphany grabbed one of her burly construction guys by the shirt. "Ice, needles, vodka, matches. In the bathroom. Go," she ordered, pushing him away again.

  Suddenly four girls wearing gray Georgetown sweatshirts—three of them white and one of them Asian—appeared at the door, holding hands. "Is Porsha Sinclaire here yet?" one of them asked.

  Apparently so many people had used Georgetown as their safety this year that the school was doing all sorts of stuff to get people to go there. For example: sending a group of girls up to New York this weekend to recruit all the kids that got in. This particular group of girls happened to have dyed blond hair and shaving scars on their legs.

  "Not yet," Tiphany replied, as if she'd known Porsha all her life. She doled a bottle of vodka out to each girl. "But I'm giving piercings in the bathroom if you want to come."

  The four girls glanced giddily at one another, their eyes shining. They'd always wanted matching tattoos. Matching navel piercings would be even better.

  "Let's do it!" they cried in unison.

  Yasmine put down her camera and followed them down the hall to the bathroom. After all, it was her birthday. Why shouldn't she?

  Because it was going to hurt like hell?

  37

  Yale had a full-time nurse who was sharing Myrtle's room, but whenever Porsha heard the baby fuss, she'd dash into the room before the nurse even got there and stroke Yale's head until she settled down again. She'd been doing it so regularly, the nurse didn't even bother to get up when she heard Yale cry through the baby monitor, for soon enough she'd hear Porsha croon, "Who's my little princess?" in a voice no one knew Porsha was capable of.

  Tonight, though, the nurse would actually have to do her job, because Porsha was going out.

  "I'll be back in two hours," she promised her tiny sister.

  The cab let her off on a scrap of Broadway in Williamsburg that could only be described as miserable. Garbage was strewn all over the sidewalk and every doorway was scrawled with graffiti. She supposed that shaven-headed freak Yasmine and her sister thought it was urban and tough and cool to live in a place like this, but Porsha could live without urban and tough and cool, thank you very much. Fifth Avenue suited her just fine.

  She mounted the pigeon-shit-spattered cement slab that served as a st
ep and buzzed up to Yasmine's apartment. No answer. She buzzed again. Again, no answer. Now what was she supposed to do?

  "I think they left it open," said a familiar voice.

  Porsha whipped around to find Kaliq standing below her on the sidewalk. There they were, together, in Brooklyn. It was so unexpected.

  As if he wasn't the reason she'd come to the party in the first place.

  "I only came by to see who was here. I can't stay for long," she told him hastily. Kaliq looked kind of tired and unkempt, but in a cute way. Like he'd taken a nap in his clothes. Actually, he looked exactly the way she felt.

  "Me too," he said, shyly checking her out with those glittering green eyes of his. "You look pretty. I like your hair."

  Porsha touched her hair. He was the only person in the entire universe who'd noticed that it was slightly darker than before. "Thanks."

  "So how's everything at home with the baby and all?" Kaliq asked. He shoved his hands in his pockets as though he wasn't sure what to do with them.

  Someone threw a bottle of vodka out of an upstairs window and it splintered on the sidewalk only twenty feet away. Porsha stepped down off the cement slab. She wasn't going upstairs, not now.

  "Yale is..." Her voice trailed off as she struggled to find the right words to describe her little sister. "Perfect," she said finally. There was a happy sheen in Porsha's eyes that hadn't been there before.

  "I'd really like to meet her sometime," Kaliq said.

  Porsha reached for his arm. What were they doing at a party in Brooklyn that neither of them wanted to go to? "Let's go now."

  Just then a taxi pulled up and Chanel, Bree, Elise, and two guys dressed in matching banana-yellow Dolce & Gabbana suits stepped out. Then another cab pulled up and out came four models complete with fruit bowl headdresses. Then another cabload of models, and then the Raves—yes, the entire band, minus the lead singer, who had just quit—pulled up in yet another cab.

  "Our Hummer limo broke down so we had to get cabs," Bree explained to Porsha and Kaliq with a happy giggle.

  Porsha tightened her grip on Kaliq's arm and pulled him toward the first empty taxi. "Come on."

  Chanel winked as they climbed into the backseat. "Be good, you two!"

  Porsha smiled and let her head fall back against the cab's fake-leather upholstery. Kaliq's leg was touching hers and her whole body was burning with the warmth of it. She felt kind of like Sandy at the end of the original Grease movie, when she and Danny ride off into the sky in that souped-up car, leaving everyone else at the school carnival. It was always pretty obvious to Porsha what Sandy and Danny were about to do next, what with Sandy wearing those black vinyl hot pants and everything. He couldn't keep his hands off her.

  "You're the one that I want—ooh, ooh, ooh, honey!"

  Kaliq slipped his hand between Porsha's knees and left it there.

  Oh, she'd be good all right.

  38

  Mekhi hardly recognized his sister. She and Chanel burst into the party looking like movie stars in matching turquoise-and-black striped leggings, white pointy ankle boots, and turquoise leather vests. Their hair was blown out, they had on fake eyelashes, and their lips were smeared with hot pink lipstick.

  Very eighties biker bitch meets the Mod Squad.

  Better still, they were followed by a whole crew of models and fashion people from their photoshoot, and the members of a very hot indie band called the Raves. Elise was there, too, wearing the bright orange jumpsuit that Jonathan Joyce had given her as a gift for being such a doll on the shoot.

  Bree sashayed up to Mekhi and kissed him on the cheek. "Happy birthday!" she squealed, even though she knew perfectly well it wasn't his birthday. She'd had the time of her life today and she was brimming with adrenaline. "Where's Yas?"

  Mekhi tucked his ninetieth cigarette of the evening between his lips and lit it quickly. "In the bathroom, getting pierced," he answered bitterly.

  "Wow!" Bree kissed him on the cheek again. "What a cool party!"

  The band began to set up their equipment in the room and Elise came over to drag Bree away. "If you'll excuse us, Mekhi, there's something I'd like to show Brianna." She grabbed Bree's elbow. "You've got to see this. It's in the closet."

  Would that be two little animals making fuzzy whoopee, perhaps?

  Mekhi didn't know what he'd been so worried about. Bree was fine. Maybe that was the difference between fourteen and eighteen. When you were fourteen, something that seemed like the end of the world today could be completely forgotten tomorrow. When you were eighteen, your life was that much closer to being over.

  Oh, please. He's not even eighteen yet!

  The band began to play and immediately people started throwing their bodies around. In the last hour a steady stream of people had trickled in and the apartment was packed with kids from every private school in Manhattan. Now that they were second-semester seniors, it didn't matter whether they knew Yasmine or not. Give them a reason to get crazy and people would turn up.

  Mekhi didn't much feel like dancing or getting crazy. Instead he decided to get drunk. Wandering into the living room, he grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose from Tiphany's half-empty sack and then hunkered by the wall to drink and watch the band play. Jaylen was dancing with one of the girls from Georgetown. The girl's newly pierced navel was covered with a Band-Aid and the metal whistle hanging from a chain around her neck kept bobbing up and slapping her in her seriously pugged nose.

  Considering her dance partner, that whistle just might come in handy.

  A girl in army fatigues, complete with dog tags, walked up to Mekhi and saluted. "Have you seen Porsha Sinclaire?" she asked.

  Mekhi shook his head and took a giant swig of vodka. He wasn't exactly sure how it would manifest itself, but his own brand of craziness was not far off.

  39

  Chanel danced with the two gay stylists from the shoot, their bright yellow suits clashing with her turquoise-and-black leggings in a garish eighties way she just couldn't get enough of.

  "Chanel?" A tall dark skinned boy with silver-rimmed spectacles bobbed into her line of vision and took her hand. Chanel stopped dancing, her heart all aflutter. It was Drew, from Harvard. Or was it Brown?

  "Hi," she said slowly, batting her fake eyelashes at him. She pointed at her crazy striped leggings and pointy white boots. "You see, this is the way I normally dress." She was struggling now to place Drew. Already the boys had blurred together. Was he the xylophone player or the painter?

  Drew smiled tightly. He looked sort of uncomfortable in his neatly pressed J. Crew ensemble and brown suede shoes. It was as if he couldn't wait for her to say, Let's blow this joint and go have an intimate cup of coffee someplace nice and quiet.

  Chanel hesitated. She wanted to be that girl, she really did. The girl who drank coffee with her boyfriend. A couple. But she didn't want it badly enough to miss the party.

  All of a sudden someone grabbed her around the waist and lowered her into an exaggerated dip. Chanel's breath caught in her throat as she gazed up into the square-jawed face of Drew's meathead roommate. "Whoa!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide.

  "You remember Wade," Drew said, looking even more uncomfortable than he had before. "He insisted on coming."

  Wade pulled her close and kissed her on the lips. Smack! "Aren't you glad?" he demanded.

  Chanel didn't want to appear easy, but she had to admit that she was glad. The more the merrier, as far as she was concerned.

  A petite burgundy-haired woman with a tidy purse suddenly tapped her on the shoulder. "Do you know Kaliq Braxton?" the woman asked.

  Chanel nodded. "He already left." Drew was still standing next to her, hands in his pockets, looking as if he needed something to do. "This is my friend Drew," Chanel told the woman. “He goes to—”

  "Harvard," Drew said, holding out his hand in that geekily charming way of his.

  On the other side of the room the Whiffenpoofs began singing backup for the Raves. It was like a mi
x of R&B and Rock and they actually sounded fantastic. Chanel stood on tiptoe to wave at them and all ten boys blew her a kiss. But wasn't there somebody missing? The artist from Brown. Didn't he love her as much as the others?

  Oh, did he ever.

  People were huddled by the windows, looking out at something happening down on the street. "Put me on your shoulders?" she asked Wade sweetly.

  Wade carried Chanel over to the windows and she gazed over the tops of the onlookers' heads to see what all the fuss was about. Down on the street, someone was spray-painting a mural in shades of green and gold. It was Christian, his curly head bent seriously over his work. As the mural took shape it became apparent that it was a portrait of Chanel, with fluorescent green butterflies in her hair and gold wings sprouting out of her shoulders, like some sort of glorious angel.

  Chanel giggled, embarrassed by Christian's gaudy adoration, but reveling in it just the same. Maybe it wasn't true love she wanted after all. Maybe it was just...love. And that was all around her.

  40

  "Walk on this side of the room," Porsha whispered. "The floorboards creak over there."

  Kaliq followed her across the nursery, lit only by a paper moon nightlight, to where Yale lay sleeping in her white, lace-covered bassinet. In the corner by the window, the lifesize gray pony he'd had sent over stood watching them like a guard. The baby was swaddled in a pink blanket and was lying on her back, her face puckered and red and new-looking.

  "See how her eyes are moving underneath the lids," Porsha whispered. "She's dreaming."