Break Every Rule

by J. Minter

  All of his friends were acting like freaks, too. Except Patch maybe, who, true to form, was nowhere to be seen.

  Jonathan wasn’t making the make-up part of David’s plan easy, either. He had been standing in a little huddle with Flan and her girlfriends all night, pointedly ignoring David. Eventually the girls started dancing and hanging out with other people, but it looked like poor Flan was stuck with Jonathan, either sulking against the wall or making rounds to talk to other guys from Gissing.

  Arno seemed to have rotated the It Girl on his arm, once again. It looked like Lizzie was the one scoring points in their little competition tonight. David decided he should definitely avoid that whole scene.

  David couldn’t help but notice that Sadie, the girl that Arno had at one point pushed him to hook up with, was gone, too. Her absence hadn’t really made a dent, though. It Girls with whitish blond hair and artificial tans were everywhere. They seemed to be multiplying.

  And just when David thought the night couldn’t get worse, he caught his first glimpse of Mickey. And Mickey was naked.

  David pushed through the crowd, and said “What’s up?” to Mickey.

  “Hey, man!” Mickey said. At least one of his friends was glad to see him. He felt kind of weird when Mickey gave him a naked hug, but he realized that he should probably just be glad that anyone wanted to hug him at all. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, you know,” David said. “Partying, I guess. But, um—you aren’t wearing any clothes. You knew that, right?”

  Mickey laughed like that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Actually, he looked more bleary-eyed and crazed than usual. “Anyway,” he said when he’d managed to stop laughing, “you’re coming to the Fresh event, right?”

  David was momentarily confused by Mickey’s total nonchalance about the nudity thing, and said, “Yeah, I’ll totally be there.”

  “Good man. It’s been too long,” Mickey said.

  “Seriously,” David said, “why are you naked?”

  “Listen, if I want anyone to go to the Fresh event, I’m going to have to show them that it’s okay. Bodies are beautiful. We can all be comfortable in the buff. It’s like an advertisement.”

  “Are you okay?” David said instinctively.

  “Shit, man!” Mickey was yelling now. “Never been better! Now I’m off to sell my body! I mean, my art!” Mickey headed into the crowd, calling back over his shoulder, “I’ll call you with the details.”

  To David’s surprise, a clump of girls standing nearby began responding to Mickey’s naked event idea with huge enthusiasm. They all seemed to be giving him their numbers and asking if they were definitely in. He overheard one of them say, “Yeah, he’s part of the Hottest Private School Boy’s inner circle. I mean, there’s no way it won’t be hot. Arno’s totally going to be there.”

  David moved away from them and over to where Jonathan and Flan were standing. Jonathan loved parties, David told himself, so perhaps he would be in a good enough mood that he would stop acting like a freak.

  But as soon as he opened his mouth to say hello, he realized this was not the case.

  “David,” Jonathan said. “You really don’t get it, do you? Everyone just likes you because you’re friends with Arno. Nobody wants to hang out with you alone. Now would you get lost before you ruin my cred, too?”

  David hung his head and turned to go. As he walked away, he thought he heard Flan say, “Why did you say that, Jonathan? It was so mean….”

  David thought he might actually cry. He desperately needed to leave this scene. He pushed through the girls writhing on the dance floor toward the door. On the way he saw Mimi, who hadn’t disappeared after all. She was hanging on that Danny Abraham guy’s arm now. After tonight, David wasn’t going to be disgusted by anything ever again. If he could just leave this party right now, he was going to transform himself into a very hard kind of person who never let things get to him.

  The coat check girl seemed to have abandoned her post, so he went into the little room right before the stairs to see what had become of his throwback Celtics warmup.

  There was no coat check girl in there either, but there were four guys in police uniforms. Rob was there, too. And so was Jonathan’s mom.

  David was shocked. For a moment, he was happily convinced that this was all a weird dream.

  “What I don’t understand, Rob,” Jonathan’s mom was saying, “is how my Rolodex and ATM card ended up in the pocket of David’s jacket….”

  “I am not understanding, either,” Rob said. “Although it is all, how you say, coming together now. When I started arranging this party I am in a panic because the deposit on the loft is very gigantic. Then David say, no worry Rob. I have ten thousand dollars, easy breezy, and all of a sudden he have it….”

  David couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He also couldn’t believe how much thicker Rob’s accent had gotten. Rob continued: “In my country, you see, we are not having much money at all, and so I think maybe ten thousand dollars, that’s not all of that much in Nueva York….”

  “Well, it’s not your fault, Rob. What we have to do is find David, and…”

  “Dare he ees! Dare he ees!” Rob yelled. Everyone in the room turned to look at David. The guy who seemed to be the head cop moved toward him, and David flinched.

  “Don’t worry, young man,” the head cop said. “We’re just going to have to take you down to the station for some questioning.”

  “David,” Jonathan’s mother said, shaking her head.

  “What are you doing here, Mrs. M?” David asked lamely. He had the unfortunate habit of acting guilty even when he wasn’t. It had been this way since he was a little boy.

  “Trying to get my money, and a little bit of my professional dignity, back in order,” Jonathan’s mother said coldly.

  Just then, a couple fell through the door laughing. At first David thought it was one of the It Girls, but then he realized that it was only one of their many look-alikes at the party tonight. The dude appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and he looked like he was probably a professional during the week. His suit was a little rumpled now, though.

  When the intruders saw the policeman, they started laughing even harder.

  “Walter?” Jonathan’s mother said, her mouth hanging open. “Walter Turbler from Merrill Lynch? What on God’s green earth are you doing here?”

  Walter stopped laughing and did his best to stand up straight. “Oh, hey. Um, your intern Rob called and invited me. Great party, by the way. Oh, and your portfolio is really looking good these days.”

  “My intern … Rob? You mean, David, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, Rob, David, whatever, something like that. Whoever it was said you were having a party here tonight, and he was confirming the guest list. Oh, by the way, he didn’t put me on that list. I’m over it, it’s cool, but if I could get a receipt for the door charge and the drinks, that would be great.”

  “Excuse me?” Jonathan’s mom said.

  “Never mind,” Walter said. “I’ll call you. We should set up a meeting about some new investment opportunities coming up.” He pulled the It Clone with him, and as she went she raised her champagne glass to the policeman. “Bub-bye, officers,” she said.

  “Hold it right there,” the head officer said. “How old are you, young lady?”

  “I’ll be eighteen in two weeks,” she said proudly.

  “Seems like we have some underage drinking here,” the officer said sternly.

  David couldn’t believe what was going on. The night was getting exponentially more surreal, and now it was like he was in a cop movie. He was reminded that it was all very much not a movie, however, when the head cop pointed at him, and said, “Looks like you’ve been up to a heap of no good. Stealing, throwing parties, enabling underage drinking. Benson, cuff’im.”

  David felt the cold hard metal around his wrists. Nope, not a dream or a movie. Then the officer started pulling him toward the door. He looked at
Jonathan’s mother for comfort, but she just shook her head and put her arm around Rob and squeezed him.

  “David, you just didn’t seem like the type,” she said. “Not in my wildest dreams did I think you could throw a party like this. I mean, this is all utterly beneath contempt, but at the same time it’s… very, well, it’s very impressive.”

  Rob pulled away from her when she said that, looking like he was ready to throw a tremendous fit. “But he didn’t do it!” Rob shrieked. “This was my party! I made the arrangements! I invited the cute underage girls! I stole the Rolodex and spent ten hours calling all of the professional contacts and telling them I would put them on the list so that they would come, when really only the celebrity people are on the list! David could never pull this off! It was me, all me!”

  David felt the cuffs being taken off. He couldn’t believe Rob would rather get arrested than not get credit for the party. The officer continued, “Benson, escort this woman home. Rodriguez, take this Rob character down to the station. I want you to get him to tell you everything.” He turned to David. “Young man, you’re free to go. But in the future, choose your friends more wisely.”

  Then he turned to the remaining officer and said, “Olenick, let’s shut this party down.”

  i can’t believe people are

  having fun at this thing

  “It just never fails to amaze me how sheeplike people can be,” I said. I took a sip of my beer. It was one in a long line of beers.

  “Tell me about it,” Flan said.

  “I mean, New York magazine says Arno Wildenburger is the Hottest Private School Boy, and all these people just believe it. Doesn’t that make you a little bit sad? None of these people will ever have this Saturday night of their lives back. They’ll have wasted it on Arno, and now it’s almost over,” I said.

  “I know how they feel,” Flan said.

  “I mean, look, they even think David is cool,” I went on, slurring slightly. I actually hadn’t seen David in a while, but I could still quote most of the adoring magazine article, and the parts about David were especially drooltastic. At least he hadn’t made a move on my girl yet. “And it’s made him such an egomaniac he thinks he can get you back.”

  “What do you mean back?” Flan said hotly. Too bad for me, I was beyond listening to anyone else right then.

  “I mean, only a huge media conspiracy could make all these people think Arno is cooler than I am, right? And David… Christ.”

  I didn’t really think there was a media conspiracy at work here, but I did still, for that moment in time, think I was cooler than Arno. We were standing against the wall at his mega-event, which was, I had to admit, a pretty good party. But it mostly just reminded me how people are just magnets for “celebrity.”

  “Hey, what happened to your friends?” I asked.

  “Um, I think you bored them to death,” Flan said. “Thanks to you, all my friends are dead.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. When you’re in a relationship, there are just going to be a lot of little disagreements, and I was getting calmer and more grown up about handling them. But when I turned to look at Flan, I realized that this was not going to be your average tiff. The Balenciaga sack dress made her look a little childlike, especially with her hands on her hips as they were. It might have made me laugh, if it hadn’t made me feel so sad.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she yelled loud enough that me and all the people near us could hear her above the music. “The one night—the one night!—we hang out with my friends you act like an egomaniac and talk about you the whole night! Well guess what, Jonathan? It’s not always about you!”

  Flan was really yelling now. And the thing was, she was right. All I’d talked about for the last week was me and how devastating this whole HPSB thing had been. To me. Even I was sick of … me.

  It was like the whole room felt my shame. Suddenly, the music shut off, and the lights went up, like everybody had stopped talking.

  And Flan wasn’t done:

  “You can be such a stupid idiot sometimes! I mean, whatever gave you the idea that you were so hot in the first place!”

  I should have known that all the hubbub in the room had nothing to do with me. The lights had actually gone on, the music had actually gone off, and not because of me. There were actual policemen on the other side of the room yelling about how they were shutting this party down. But Flan kept on yelling. She was yelling so loud that everyone, including the police officers, stopped what they were doing and listened to her.

  “You think you’re soooo cool, right? You think you’re cool enough to be named the Hottest Private School Boy, that Arno somehow robbed you of your birthright. Well, I got news for you, buddy, you aren’t that hot, and Arno isn’t, either. They didn’t even want him to be HPSB. They wanted my brother, but you know what? He didn’t call them back. He didn’t want it. And you know why? Because he didn’t need it. If you were really cool, Jonathan, you wouldn’t be so anxious to tell everyone all the time. If you were really cool, you wouldn’t be so insecure that you needed a magazine to tell you so.”

  Flan stared at me, her big eyes all full of anger instead of that usual sweetness. Her chest was nearly heaving with all that pent-up irritation.

  I was floored, and as you might imagine, I had nothing at all to say.

  The police officers did, though, and they said it through a bullhorn: “All right kids, party’s over!”

  And then everyone started rushing for the door.

  something’s all wrong with arno’s star

  Arno had been planning to start going to classes again that week, but when he woke up Monday morning he knew today wasn’t going to be the day. He’d gotten pretty blitzed Saturday night, and after his party had been broken up, he’d gone somewhere else and gotten even drunker (it was all a little fuzzy, and he was trying not to think too hard about where he’d gone or whom he’d been with). All he’d really been able to do on Sunday was wake up in the afternoon, eat something, watch something on TV, not think, and go back to bed.

  He still felt like shit now.

  He made himself get out of bed, guzzle water, and do a couple reps of push-ups and crunches. That made him feel more awake, so he went into the bathroom to clean up. The sleep had done him well, it seemed—he still had a camera-worthy face. But today was definitely going to have to be a more healthy kind of day—he thought he’d maybe call Lizzie and see if she wanted to go get some green tea at Teany’s on Rivington, take a long walk through Chinatown, catch a movie, and eat dinner at Angelica’s Kitchen.

  He wondered briefly if there was something he was supposed to do tonight—he felt like there was—but he couldn’t for the life of him think what it might be.

  It took him another fifteen minutes to find his phone, which was stuffed into the toe of his Nike Pigeons, for some reason.

  He found her number in his contact list, and dialed it. Weirdly, after ringing twice, an automated message came on and told him that the number had been disconnected. Arno couldn’t for the life of him think of a reason that a girl like Lizzie would have her phone disconnected. Then he remembered something about programming her number into his phone on the way to the party, because he hadn’t had it before—maybe he just programmed it in wrong? They’d already started drinking, after all.

  He called Mimi to try and get the number. This felt a little bit wrong, but what could he do? He was Arno fucking Wildenburger. She’d get over it.

  But the same automated message came on when he dialed Mimi. Now, that was weird. But Arno had practically forgotten it already. He’d go out and get the tea, and probably Mimi and Lizzie would both call him within the hour. For a minute, he tried to think how he’d deal with that if it got messy, but it gave him a headache, and he had to stop.

  Outside it was beautiful again—the rain had cleared the air, and as he strode down his town-house-lined Chelsea street, he started feeling healthier already. When he got to Eighth Avenue,
he turned and started heading south.

  There was something strange going on that Arno couldn’t quite figure out. He thought about this all the way to 14th Street without a breakthrough. He was walking fast and distractedly, mulling it over, when he caught his toe on something large and lumpy and went flying forward. “Shit!” he yelled, twisting his head to see that the large and lumpy object bore his own image. He was going down fast, adrenaline coursing through his body, and at the last possible moment he grasped a parking meter and managed to swing himself upward.

  Tripping in public was just not hot, he decided.

  Arno jerked around and took a look at the object that had tripped him. It was the Hottest Private School Boy issue, lots of them, wrapped up and put at the curb to be recycled. They hadn’t escaped the rain, though—there were muddy streaks and watermarks all over them. Arno realized, with a twinge of sadness, that they must have been out all night.

  Then he realized what was weird about today. The thing was that people weren’t looking at him—at least, not the way they usually did. He wasn’t feeling the warm caress of passing eyes, the soft murmurs of appreciation that had followed him around for the last week. That made him feel even more sad.

  The sadness followed him as he continued on his way to the tea shop, and soon enough, the sadness turned into memory. The events of Saturday night started coming back to him. He shrugged his shoulders, trying to shake off the bad feeling, but it wouldn’t go away. It was all coming back now: There was Lizzie in the towncar. There was Jonathan, giving him that nasty look. There were the drinks, lots of them. More Lizzie. Policemen. And then there was little Flan Flood, yelling at Jonathan in front of everyone about how uncool he was for wanting to be Hottest Private School Boy. Then she said something about how it was Patch who was supposed to be the HPSB. Not Arno.