Seven Deadlies

by Gigi Levangie

  ALSO BY GIGI LEVANGIE

  The After Wife

  Queen Takes King

  The Starter Wife

  Maneater

  Rescue Me

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © 2013 by Last Punch Productions

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Grazer, Gigi Levangie.

  Seven deadlies : a cautionary tale / Gigi Levangie ;

  illustrations by Cecilia Ruiz.

  p. cm

  ISBN 978-0-698-13643-4

  1. Deadly sins—Fiction. 2. Beverly Hills (Calif.)—Fiction.

  3. Humorous fiction. I. Ruiz, Cecilia, illustrator. II. Title.

  PS3557.R2913S48 2013 2013029104

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

  of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To Thug the Elder and Thug the Younger, otherwise known as Thomas and Patrick

  CONTENTS

  Also by Gigi Levangie

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Lust

  Wrath

  Gluttony

  Greed

  Sloth

  Envy

  Pride

  #coda7

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Dear Bennington Admissions Committee:

  What you are about to read is exactly how it happened. I fancy myself a wordsmith—a browner, female Bret Easton Ellis (one of your esteemed alumni), if you will—but what I have attached here as my future admissions essay is strictly journalistic. I am reporting the stories exactly how I witnessed them.

  Thank you for your kind consideration. I look forward to your response.

  Miss Perry Gonzales

  Mark Frost Academy, Class of 20—

  A Brief Monologue to Answer Your Questions:

  Okay, I should introduce myself properly, right? That’s what my mother says. Yelena Maria Gonzales, R.N. I hear her voice inside my head only constantly. My mom’s a nurse, one of nine children, born in the Yucatán, in the southeastern corner of Mexico, in the year 1972.

  My name is Perry. Perry Gonzales, no middle name. I’m fourteen years old. I’m a freshman at Mark Frost Academy (sponsored by Wild Pockets Banking, Ltd.). Do I have to mention that I’m a scholarship student? Figure it out—I’m the daughter of a single mother, I’m full-blooded Chicana, in the heat of a Valley August my skin is dark as coffee grounds, and somehow my face shows up on the school website every year.

  Look it up. There I am. That’s me, in my uniform, playing clarinet, with my black Indian hair in braids, oh, and the braces—it’s an old picture.

  Don’t I look happy?

  My mom and I, we live alone in a one-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood. No brothers and no sisters. My dad is long gone. I catch the bus every morning to go up to the top of Beverly Vista, where Mark Frost Academy sits at the end of a long drive. The first thing you see in front of my school is a huge, Italianate fountain, donated by the Spielberg family.

  You can see what I’m dealing with here.

  I have my own money, though. I’ve been babysitting since I was eight years old. There’s a ton of kids in my apartment building. The moms all work in the city—they clean houses, mostly. Sometimes there’s more than one family living in an apartment. I’ve saved my dollars up. I want some spending money when I get to Bennington.

  I’m going to be a writer. Apparently all you do at Bennington is write. And write some more. And the students talk about writing and take it seriously. And all of this takes place in peace and quiet.

  Away. Away. Far away.

  I’ve been writing things down since before I could talk. No, it’s true—I didn’t say a word until I was five, in kindergarten. That word was abogado. Lawyer. It’s what they have on the back of every RTD bus in Los Angeles. Abogado. The teachers had thought I was retarded, just another little brown-skinned issue to deal with. My mother knew different—she never pushed me to talk, as she never pushes me now. She just . . . listens.

  And when she finally does speak, you’d better listen back. Her words are economic, but they carry great weight.

  In the silence of our lives, I learned two things early on: I learned to read, and I learned to observe.

  Our apartment is white stucco with a few sliding glass windows; it looks like a box on sticks. Every week, graffiti appears on the side facing the alleyway—and every week the Korean owner comes and paints it over. So in certain patches, there are twenty layers of paint. It looks like a white on white quilt.

  Someone named “Clownie” must have been shot and killed over the weekend, because today RIP Clownie is being painted over.

  My mom and I could move. She makes pretty good money. But she and I, we’re savers. Plus, she sends a lot of her salary home, to the Yucatán, to her family. Besides, we’ve grown used to it—we know our neighbors, we’ve watched the little ones grow. They’re familia. Whenever we think about moving, we ask ourselves—where?

  Where is better than here, for us? For now?

  So, I’m not one to brag, but I’m pretty much the smartest girl in my class. There are about sixty kids per class, from seventh to twelfth grade. My grades are excellent. My motivation is high. I don’t drink or do drugs or hang out with the bad kids. I’m pretty much all business. My life is not going to end here, in this part of Los Angeles, or even at Bennington.

  I’m going places.

  Which brings me to my latest business venture. Babysitting teenagers.

  A few of the moms at school talk to my mother. You should see them. They gather around her like fans. She’s barely five feet tall in her nurse’s shoes. Her thick black braid circles her shoulders. She is beautiful and regal, a Latina queen. And she never, ever wears makeup, not even lip gloss.

  They want to know the secret. Why is your daughter such a good girl? How is Perry so smart?

  And . . . Where did we go wrong?

  Their diamond tennis bracelets shimmer with every gesture. I look at those bracelets and want to eat them.

  Where did we go wrong?

  Can Perry help out this weekend? I have to go to New York for Fashion Week. Can Perry help out Thursday night? I have to go to a premiere. Can Perry come over after school? My daughter needs help with biology . . . and staying out of my medicine cabinet.

  I get paid $40 an hour. I have business cards.

  I cannot be corrupted.

  I will not be corrupted.

  I am just taking notes.

  I swear.

  We
lcome.

  My name is Perry Gonzales. I am a ninth-grade student at Mark Frost Academy. The stories you are about to read are true. The names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

  Dear Admissions Committee:

  Hi.

  In my opinion, there are three types of ignorance:

  Deliberate (conspiracy theorists, Ron Paul, KKK Grand Wizards)

  Stupid but Teachable (children and grandchildren of KKK Grand Wizards)

  Just Don’t Know Any Better (Real Housewives of Anywhere, 98 percent of celebrities)

  The Blogsnot family (pronounced “BLOG-snoot”) falls somewhere between Deliberate and Just Doesn’t Know Any Better. They do not appear to be Stupid but Teachable. There’s no evidence of their being teachable.

  This story will serve as an example.

  As you know, my mother, the estimable Yelena Maria Gonzales, is a registered nurse. In other words, Mama ain’t no dummy. She is the four-foot-ten distillation of the Mayan culture; her people created chocolate and the number zero—imagine a world without chocolate or zero. Let’s give the Mayans some props.

  So I noticed the dreaded Mark Frost Academy parent potluck dinner looming on the school calendar. Potluck dinners don’t happen at my old public school. Trust me.

  I made it clear to my mother that she didn’t have to go, certainly not on my behalf.

  My mother insisted on going. She would change shifts to be on time. She made her famous (in our apartment building, anyway) chimichangas in a Pyrex dish that outweighed her and packed it in the trunk of her car.

  I was nervous. My mother is strong and confident, but even Beyoncé would feel insecure next to the Mark Frost parents. And to be honest, in the weeks that I’d been a student, I’d kept a lot from my mother. For the first time, I didn’t tell her everything that happened in my day. I didn’t, for example, tell her about what I learned outside of class: the difference between a Bentley and a Tesla, a Birkin and a Chanel—things I knew nothing about when I started.

  Things I wish I didn’t know now.

  I didn’t tell her about the sideways glances and the snickers. About the girl who asked me if I cleaned toilets during recess.

  About the boy who asked me if I spoke English.

  I didn’t want to burden her.

  Let’s put it this way, Admissions Committee: These Mark Frosties just weren’t our peeps.

  I did homework at our kitchen table and pictured Mama driving the ten-year-old Toyota Camry she was so proud of, with its seat heater and pop-up coffee cup holder, chugging up the hill to Blogsnot Manor.

  I could see her squaring her shoulders and arguing with the valet over taking her car keys. “Where exactly do you want to take my car?” she would demand. She would inform them that she could park her own car, thank you.

  I love her so much, you have to understand. She’s all I have.

  And she’s more than enough.

  I watched the clock, finished up homework, heated up leftovers, chased the neighbor kids who played tag in the hallway, watched American Idol, and prayed that Mom would survive her first American potluck.

  I had fallen asleep on the couch when I was awakened by light footsteps coming up the stairs. The screen door creaked open. Keys jangled.

  “Mama?” I jumped up.

  Yelena Maria Gonzales smiled when she saw my expression.

  “Mija,” she said, “why are you worried? Those people are so funny.”

  “Why, Mama?”

  “I can’t tell you how many parents asked me to take their coats,” she said, giggling.

  My heart sank. I knew it.

  “Oh, mija. No worries,” she said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Soon, they will all be working for you. I know this like I know my own heart.”

  She put her feet up, and I took off her shoes and rubbed her tiny feet. They were often sore from standing all day long. She closed her eyes.

  “Mija, you want to be a writer,” she said, opening her dark eyes and staring at me.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Keep your ears and eyes open. With these people, you will find many stories. More stories than any of us have years.”

  She closed her eyes again and started to nod off. Then she startled and fished a card out of her sweater pocket.

  “Call this woman. This Blogsnot woman. Su hija, she needs help,” Yelena Maria Gonzales said. “Oye, does she need help.”

  Sometimes, strange things happen in the strangest of places, and sometimes, strange things happen in the most normal of places.

  This is one of those not-so-normal-places stories.

  About a not-so-normal family. The Blogsnots.

  But first, a word to clarify:

  Dear Admissions Committee: The word lust as used here, in this not-so-normal story, is not about lust as experienced by, say, Angelina Jolie for Brad Pitt, or Brad Pitt for his reflection. There will be no bodily contact at all in this story, and certainly no kissing or, as Patricio, a five-year-old boy who lives in my building, says, “making up.”

  Meet Porscha Crisp Blogsnot, the apple of her parents’ eye. She was cute as a shorter-than-average button and absolutely charming, with her hot-pink lynx-collared coats and her hot-pink dyed-to-match Lhasa apso(s) and her hot-pink diamond stud belly-button ring she got to match Mommy’s.

  Tiny, tubby Irving Blogsnot and his tiny, tubby wife, Shelley Blogsnot, lived with Porscha and her younger, almost-normal-sized (thanks to the growth shots) brother, L.V., in a marble mansion in a gated land known as Beverly Vista, where celebrities and coyotes roam.

  Every morning, a limo picked up young Porscha and deposited her two blocks away at my school, Mark Frost Academy (sponsored by Wild Pockets Banking, Ltd.). As I’ve learned, having been lucky enough to spend time with the Blogsnots (“lucky” being a relative term), Porscha couldn’t possibly walk for two reasons. 1. Rich people live in places where sidewalks don’t exist, and 2. It’s very difficult to walk on five-inch heels (as any full-grown person of the female persuasion will tell you. Or your uncle whose favorite holiday is Halloween).

  A typical, tiring week for Porscha went something like this:

  Monday: Got up late. Ate caviar and blinis in bed. Remembered that it was a school day. Got dressed, matchy-matchy with Mommy. Was taken to school by her driver. Gave teacher a note saying she was too weak to play soccer. Again. Left school during Spanish period for a trunk show at Dolce & Gabbana (it’s Italian).

  Later, I came in to tutor her in math, Spanish, and everything else as she did a fashion show for me in her room. She couldn’t believe I’d never read Vogue magazine. She was afraid I might be “special.”

  Tuesday: Repeated all of the above, but left school during Computer Studies for eyebrow waxing with Mommy at Anastasia Salon.

  I came in to tutor Porscha as she lay in bed, tired from the eyebrow waxing. I read to her from her science textbook. Shelley Blogsnot came in after firing the staff—again!—to ask me if my mom was available to clean the house.

  “My mother’s a registered nurse,” I would tell her, suppressing an urge to choke someone.

  “Does she do windows?” Shelley would ask.

  Wednesday: Repeated all of the above (including Shelley Blogsnot firing more staff), but left school early to fly to Idaho on a G5 (a very fast private jet) to pick up a new Lhasa apso (a tiny, not very fast dog).

  I turned down chances to tutor on jet rides. Private jets make me nervous. They are small, and I fear that God doesn’t like rich people and I could get caught up by mistake. Death by association, as it were.

  Thursday: Stayed home from school, too weak to get out of bed because of the plane trip yesterday. Mommy set up in-home manicure/pedicure and seaweed facial. New Lhasa apso got run over in the driveway by Mr. Blogsnot, who drove his bright yellow Ferrari like a rocket.

 
“Oopsies!” Porscha said when she heard the news.

  I came in to tutor, but the Blogsnots needed to meet with the animal communicator to “talk” to Porscha’s newly expired Lhasa apso. Or is it Llasa Appso? (One day, I will remember the correct spelling of Lhasa apso. In my defense, it is not an SAT word.)

  Friday: Went to school late and left early. Had a very special Mommy and Me day at the Rodeo Collection (where they ate sushi and picked out matching tennis bracelets at Tiffany). Made plans to pick up a new puppy in Utah next week.

  Porscha, who was skinny-skinny and had crooked teeth (she cut off her braces with diamond-encrusted nail clippers), had all the friends money could buy. She had all the teeny, tiny dogs that money could buy, too. But she was always losing her dogs—they got hit by cars or eaten by coyotes. Did she care?

  Porscha refused to acknowledge her little brother, L.V. (named after Mommy’s favorite luggage), because she still hadn’t forgiven Daddy and Mommy (or, as she called them, Irving and Shell, or Stupid One and Stupid Two . . . or worse) for having another baby after they’d already had her.

  All of her worries, cares, and incidentals (like disappearing pets) were secondary, however, because all Porscha really cared about in the world was one thing: the Judas Brothers.

  Just who are these Judas Brothers?

  Look, I like the Judas Brothers—they’re cute and bouncy and appear bereft of genitalia. (I’m sorry to use the word genitalia, but my mother said I must be honest if I am going to be a writer.) However, I’m not obsessed with the Judas Brothers. They’re adorable and all, but they’re not paying my rent, got it?

  Here is Porscha’s latest entry from her blog:

  Porscha Crisp Blogsnot

  Okay, wow, like, u know, the Judas Brothers are so friggin’ HOT! I mean, yeah, they are, like, CRAZY HOT! I love them sosososososo much! I mean, I would totally, like, give up everything for just one JB! I mean, I would give up my family if Aspen Judas would just, like, look at me. They are so beeyond talented! They are the best singers like ever in the whole world! They are, like, one million hundred trillion times better than, like, Justin Mayer or John Timberlake or whatever. And did I say they are the cutest ever, because they are sooooooooo super cutie! When I think about the Judas Brothers, I feal sick. Like I’m going to throw up. That’s why I can’t go to school so much, because I feel sick when I think of them and I can’t concentrayt, so I have Perry tuetor me at home now, which is, like, AWESUM. But then I feel sick at home, so Shell takes me out to lunch or shopping. Shopping makes me feel better, so I’m not dizzy. But then when I shop I think about shopping for something the JBs would like. And when I eat, I only eat food that I know the JBs like. Like chicken wings, which are so totally gross and dizgusting, sometimes they have tiny chicken hares, but I eat, like, twenty a day! Also, I learned how to read from Preteen Scream Magazine (online edition), and I read all about how the JBs grew up and their likes and dislikes—they don’t like girls who are mean! That’s so friggin’ cool! So, like, I’m trying to be nicer and stuff, but it’s hard when you’re so much better than other peeple!