In Too Deep

by Jennifer Banash

  Right, Casey thought, sitting down in an empty chair next to Sophie. And monkeys will momentarily fly out of my butt.

  “Well, if it isn’t Juliet,” Phoebe chirped with a small smile while picking apart a fat-free blueberry muffin with her short, white-lacquered nails. Phoebe liked to absentmindedly obliterate whatever she happened to be eating—before it ever made the short journey from her fingers to her mouth. It came across as totally mindless, but Casey knew that it was actually something Phoebe forced herself to do on a daily basis so that she wouldn’t scarf down the entire thing in two bites. Better to act like you didn’t really care about food at all than to come off as a giant pig. “Where’s Romeo running off to?” she asked as Drew paused at the door to the dining hall and turned, raising one hand in the air at Casey with a grin, before ducking through the door and out of sight.

  “I think he’s got AP Film . . . or maybe Chem,” Casey mumbled, her face flooded with heat.

  “Funny thing, chemistry . . .” Sophie added with a sly smile, stealing a hunk of Phoebe’s crumbled muffin and popping it into her mouth as Madison glared at her disapprovingly from behind her shades. “I never did understand what Juliet saw in Romeo anyway—he’s totally DNDL if you ask me.”

  “Good thing nobody’s asking you,” Madison said with a snort.

  “What’s DNDL?” Casey looked at Sophie quizzically. Why did it always seem like whenever it came to The Bram Clan there was a secret code she was never going to crack, even if she worked at it night and day?

  “Date now, dump later,” Phoebe said, splaying her fingers out and inspecting her manicure, which was predictably perfect. Did she do her nails every single night? Casey wondered, looking over at the smooth polish. She’d never seen Phoebe have so much as a chip. It just wasn’t natural. Casey looked down at her own nails, which were ragged and bitten almost all the way down to her cuticles, and promptly hid them under the table.

  “Not that you’d know anything about it,” Madison said coolly, picking up her glass of Perrier with a bright green lime wedge the color of her eyes smashed at the bottom. “You don’t really date—or dump.” She sipped her fancy water, her lips set in a smirk.

  “But I will,” Phoebe said with impatience. “I’m just choosy.”

  “More like petrified,” Madison answered as she retrieved a Lancôme lipstick from her Furla tote and ran the baby pink stain over her lips with a practiced hand. How the hell did she do that without using a mirror? Casey marveled while staring at Mad’s perfect pout. Casey could barely apply ChapStick without getting it everywhere—much less anything that involved actual color and a steady hand . . . Further proof that she’s some kind of alien grown in a pod in outer space, Casey thought as Mad threw her lipstick back into her tote, and pushed her platinum hair from her shoulders with a graceful swing of her head. Kind of like Katie Holmes . . .

  “So, speaking of dating . . . how are things with the Drewster?” Sophie turned to Casey and smiled, her small, even teeth shining in her face like pearls. “Has he forced you to sit through Woody Allen’s complete oeuvre yet?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Phoebe deadpanned. “They couldn’t make it through the first five minutes of The Rocky and Bull-winkle Show without making out.”

  Sophie giggled around her straw, slurping her iced latte like someone was going to rip it away from her. Casey laughed nervously, but couldn’t help noticing that Madison was staring at the floor—and rapidly shredding her paper napkin between clenched fingers.

  “I know,” Sophie said, turning to Phoebe. “I get a chronic case of third wheel-itis whenever they’re around.”

  “Sure,” Casey broke in good-naturedly. “Just talk about me like I’m not here—it’s okay . . .”

  “Well, at least we’re not talking about you behind your back . . .” Phoebe grinned slyly and swept the crumbs of her muffin off of the table and onto the floor. “Yet.”

  Phoebe and Sophie broke into a fit of giggles, and proceeded to slap each other a noisy high ten. Although she still had her shades on, and was still busily shredding what was left of her napkin into something the rexies might consume for a light snack, Casey was sure that behind those dark lenses Madison was rolling her green eyes in annoyance. In truth, Casey was feeling kind of conflicted about her newly minted couple status. Even though Mad and Drew weren’t exactly “together” when Casey hooked up with him that night at his party, she knew Mad well enough at this point to realize that there was no way she could actually be happy for her. Madison Macallister had an ego the size of the tiniest yacht in the Hamptons—which was to say humongous.

  But what bothered Casey even more was the thought that she might have turned into one of “those” girls—the kind that blow their friends off to hang out with some random guy. The kind that practically glues her cell to the palm of her hand, and checks her e-mail a hundred times a day—and her MySpace for any new messages. Ugh. She had officially become a teen cliché. Casey drained the last of her raspberry Italian soda and pushed the cup to the side, resting her elbows on the table. Had she magically turned into a backstabbing boyfriend stealer overnight, the kind of girl she used to loathe? And, worse yet, did she care enough to do anything about it?

  “So what’s the 411?” Sophie turned to Casey while exasperatedly pushing her bangs from her face, and reached into her bag with one hand, pulling out an amber prescription bottle. She popped the top off and placed a pill nonchalantly into her mouth, swallowing hard. “Or are you guys keeping things on the DL for now?”

  “Are you still taking Adderall?” Madison asked with astonishment. “I thought you stopped seeing that shrink months ago.”

  Sophie blushed deeply and looked down at the table. “I did. I mean, I still see her sometimes. It’s no big deal.” Sophie bit her bottom lip and threw the prescription bottle back into the depths of her bag.

  “Whatever,” Phoebe interjected with obvious impatience. “We were talking about Casey and Drew. So,” she said, a wicked glean animating her deep blue eyes. “What’s the deal?”

  Madison gazed at Casey impassively, waiting for her to speak.

  “We’re just . . .” Casey’s voice trailed off as she tried to think of an appropriate yet descriptive way to explain what was happening with her and Drew. Lust was the one word that immediately sprang to mind.

  “If you say ‘friends’ I’m going to vomit,” Phoebe blurted out as her cell phone began to beep and buzz frantically again.

  “Okay, that’s it.” Madison leaned forward on her elbows and removed her shades. Her green eyes swept over Phoebe, who looked up from the screen of her iPhone, a guilty expression crossing her heart-shaped face, her peaches-and-cream complexion flushing like vanilla ice cream mixed with strawberry. “Who the hell has been texting you all day?”

  Phoebe threw her phone into her tote, and began gathering up her books. Casey didn’t know about everyone else, but to her at least, Phoebe looked rattled and nervous as she tucked her French book under one arm and stood up, throwing the length of her dark, silky hair over one shoulder.

  “It’s my mom, okay?” Phoebe said crankily as her phone began to buzz yet again from the confines of her bag. Madison raised one eyebrow in what Casey was beginning to see was her signature move, and crossed her arms over her chest without answering. “She’s so annoying lately.”

  “Tru dat,” Sophie quipped as Phoebe reached into her bag and pulled her phone out again, staring at the screen, her brow furrowed. “I mean, aren’t they all?”

  “I’ve got to take this,” Phoebe said, beginning to walk away, her voice as rushed as her footsteps. “But I’ll see you guys later, ’kay?” As she walked quickly toward the door, Phoebe raised her phone to her ear and began to speak, her voice hushed and secretive. “Hey, yeah, I can’t really talk right now. Wait. Let me go outside . . .”

  Casey watched openmouthed as Phoebe practically ran out of the dining hall. At the rate she was moving, she was probably creating enough friction with
her cashmere-coated legs to send the school up in flames.

  “What’s her problem?” Sophie said, stealing the last chunk of Phoebe’s forgotten muffin, her brow furrowed. “Too many Diet Cokes again?”

  “Yeah.” Madison laughed, gathering up her trash. “That girl’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

  “Well, whatever’s going on, she’s a total basket case lately—have you noticed?”

  Madison nodded, inspecting her nails, but offered no comment. Casey just shrugged. It wasn’t like she really knew Phoebe that well in the first place—she’d only been in Manhattan for six weeks—she could still barely navigate the subway without getting ridiculously lost, much less figure out the intricate workings of Phoebe’s brain. And out of all the girls, Phoebe struck her as the most difficult to crack. While Madison’s bitchiness was an obvious defense mechanism designed to keep people at a distance, Phoebe struck her as quietly, politely closed off. She seemed like the kind of person who not only had a lot of secrets, but who made it a habit not to share them easily either. Every time Casey tried to ask Phoebe anything even vaguely personal, she’d usually blink her incredibly long lashes a few times, then change the subject.

  “So, what are you two lovebirds doing tonight?” Sophie asked, tucking her clutch under one arm and standing up. Casey blushed, gathering up her dreaded Algebra books and pushing her chair away from the table.

  “He wants to take me to some Russian restaurant after school to eat blinis or something.” Casey shrugged again, trying to act like it was no big deal. Madison pulled her shades off and slid them into her bag, which was trimmed with so much fox fur that it resembled a small pet.

  “Oh, hell to the NO,” she moaned, rolling her eyes up so far in her head that Casey was sure they’d get stuck. “Don’t tell me he’s taking you to the Russian Tea Room—it’s so FTO!” Sophie and Madison cracked up, throwing their heads back in tandem so that their straight, silky hair swung down their backs. Noticing her confused expression, Madison leaned in, an amused expression enlivening her green eyes, and enunciated every word:

  “For. Tourists. Only.”

  Casey’s cheeks flushed red as she followed Madison and Sophie out the door and into the hallway, blinking back the tears filling her gray eyes. Every time she felt like she was on the verge of fitting in at Meadowlark, some random, unforeseeable incident would invariably put her right back in her place—which just happened to be light-years away from the glamorous world of the Upper East Side. Casey sighed heavily, twirling a curl around one finger as she watched Madison lean over and whisper in Sophie’s ear. Casey bit her bottom lip and attempted to focus on the sudden pain as her sharp teeth bit into her tender flesh as she tried to keep from crying. What did it matter if she was dating the hottest guy in school—in all of Manhattan maybe—if she always felt like an outsider?

  As usual, and without even trying, Madison had won again.

  welcome to the real world

  Drew walked into room 14C, his pulse still jumping from the touch of Casey’s lips as much as from the anticipatory excitement of meeting Paul Paxil, the visiting filmmaker who would be taking over his AP Cinema class for the next six weeks. Paxil had catapulted to indie stardom two years ago when his low-budget documentary Blue Blood won accolades at Sun-dance, garnering massive critical acclaim and glowing reviews when it opened at the New York Film Festival a few months later. Blue Blood investigated the unsolved murder of a teenaged socialite, Miranda Dime, in an affluent town in upstate New York, and consequently succeeded in not only unmasking the killers, but in reopening the case. His gritty, in-your-face documentary style landed him a three-picture deal with Miramax, and his first big-budget feature, a courtroom thriller starring Naomi Watts and Denzel Washington, had recently wrapped in London.

  Paxil was not only a critic’s darling, he was also a former graduate of Meadowlark Academy, and showed his pride by donating a pair of gleaming editing bays that hugged the far side of the room. He was also rumored to be the cash behind the school’s plans to have 14C outfitted as a proper theater—with plush velvet theater seats to complement the sixteen-foot screen that dropped down from the ceiling with the touch of a button. Unfortunately, Paxil was also known as a bit of a diva and enfant terrible—recent articles in the tabloids linked him with Hollywood A-listers like Keira Knightley, Kirsten Dunst, and the Olsen twins, and lately his behavior had been described as more eccentric than professional by those who knew him best. Still, it hadn’t exactly stopped the dean of Meadowlark from offering him a six-week guest lecturer spot in the fall curriculum.

  Because of Paxil’s celebrity status, the room was packed, and as a result, Drew had to walk slowly around the perimeter for a few moments, looking for an empty chair before finally spotting one at the back of the room. The large classroom was painted a warm beige, one wall lined with long, rectangular windows framed by plush window seats—a Meadowlark trademark—filled with an array of soft, brightly colored cushions. The room was buzzing with the sounds of furtive whispering and giggling, the excitement palpable as the door swung open and Paul Paxil walked briskly to the front of the room. Black jeans, black sweater, and black, thick-rimmed glasses, he looked like a classic hipster auteur. Part I don’t give a fuck and part everything I’m wearing is tremendously expensive, but I’d never let on to it. And maybe just a dash of I kissed the Olsen twins last night—both of them. Just from looking at him, Drew wasn’t sure if he wanted to hate him or if he wanted to be him. Maybe it was both.

  “Just look at all of you,” he said, instantly killing the chattering flowing back and forth around the room—even the Madison-ites of the room broke away from their iPhones and nail polish and looked forward, falling instantly silent. “A bunch of overprivileged, Upper East Side, cashmere-wearing sweater monkeys,” Paxil sneered, the corners of his lips curling in disdain. “Well, we’re going to fix all that,” Paxil went on, waving a hand in the air and pacing back and forth unsteadily at the front of the room, the soles of his black Converse high-tops squeaking as he moved. “This semester you’re going to grow something called a social conscience—and you’re going to do it by making a thought-provoking, politically informed, short documentary film, exploring the subject of your choice.”

  Jenna Baumgarden, a petite brunette who made it a point to always sit in the first row of every class she attended in order to ask as many questions as she could possibly squeeze in during a sixty-minute class, raised one hand tentatively in the air while shaking back her mane of artfully streaked bronzed hair. Paxil nodded curtly in her direction. “Yes?” he snapped. “You have something you’d like to add?”

  “Well,” Jenna began, smiling weakly, “I’m not really political by nature. In fact I don’t really think that—”

  “It sounds like you don’t really think—period,” Paxil snapped, sitting down on the edge of the desk with a sigh and wearily crossing one black-denim-clad leg over the other. Jenna opened her mouth then closed it again like a guppy in a fishbowl, then rolled her eyes at Maria Chase across the aisle, who mouthed the word “asshole,” her cherry-red lip gloss glinting in the light. “What I’m trying to do this semester, folks,” Paxil continued, oblivious to the dissension that was forming in the room with every word he spoke, “is to get you to see beyond the boundaries of this suffocating little world you’ve created for yourselves.”

  Yeah, right. Drew thought, fighting back the urge to laugh out loud. Who did this guy think he was? Everyone knew that Paxil had grown up on Ninety-sixth and Park, and now lived in a humongous loft in Chelsea—he wasn’t exactly living on food stamps or pawning his iPod for cash. He was making big-budget Hollywood movies and wasting millions of dollars in the process. The situation was so ridiculous that the laugh Drew had been stifling suddenly burst from his lips. As soon as it happened, Drew knew it was a mistake and tried to disguise the fact that he’d just laughed in Paul Paxil’s face by coughing loudly, but it was way too late.

  “Yes?” Paxil glared at him. �
�In the back—you, there.” Drew exhaled as the whole room turned around to face him. “Is there something you’d like to add?”

  “Not really,” Drew mumbled, staring down at the smooth wooden surface of his desk.

  “Am I so amusing that you feel the need to burst into hysterics during my class?” Paxil walked up the aisle and stood in front of Drew’s chair, his eyes behind the high-concept glasses narrowing slightly.

  “Kind of,” Drew said quietly, as the room broke into a series of loud giggles and whispers.

  Paxil leaned over and stared Drew down. He was so close that Drew imagined he could see every individual hair of the dark stubble on Paxil’s jaw, so close that he now knew that Paxil smelled like coffee, chalk, and Issey Miyake cologne. “Your name is?” Paxil barked, straightening up.

  “Drew Van Allen,” Drew said tentatively, wondering what fresh hell awaited him now that Paxil possessed this all-encompassing information. Drew watched as Paxil spun on his heel and walked back up to the front of the room, sitting back down on the edge of the desk, his shoulders slumping dejectedly beneath his black sweater.