Petty in Pink

by Compai

  Copyright

  Text copyright © 2009 by Rachel Maude

  Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Rachel Maude and Compai All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Poppy

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  Poppy is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.

  The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: August 2009

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-05270-2

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  BEGIN READING

  CHARLOTTE’S TOTE BAG

  JANIE’S DRESS

  PETR’S BIKINI

  MELISSA’S BUTTERFLY BELT

  To ma clique:

  Annie “Kashi” Baker

  Jamie “JayJay” Lawrence

  and

  Crow “Tom” Meaney

  The Girl: Charlotte Beverwil

  The Getup: Skirt and top by Valentino, shoes by Christian Louboutin, crocheted cashmere cowl “by moi, thank you”

  Bonjour! It’s Friday morning at Winston Prep. Okay, fine. It’s Friday morning a smackload of other places, too—but do we really want to start our day at your mama’s house? No, we don’t. We want to start here, at Winston, the exclusivicious private high school in the Hollywood Hills and so-called stomping ground of the young, rich, and phatuous. Not that girls here stomp—not if they want to stay standing. In their Fendi flats, Blahnik booties, and precarious Prada pumps, the best they can do is teeter-totter, clitter-clatter, and—on occasion—pitter-patter. Mere stomping they leave to the Ugg-clad masses.

  Every Friday is sweet—the promise of Saturday unfurls into the air, like a baking birthday cake behind closed doors—but this Friday’s sweeter, Charlotte Beverwil smiled, directing her gleaming, cream-colored 1969 Jaguar into her coveted Showroom parking spot. Allowing a quick glance into her gold-rimmed rearview, she feigned cool obliviousness to the fifty or so stares firmly fixed in the direction of her ruby taillights. As Winston’s only outdoor parking lot, the Showroom, as it had been nicknamed long ago, was all about “see and be seen,” and with her tumultuous long dark hair, flickering chlorine green gaze, and perfect too-tiny body (the girl was like supermodel bonsai), you can bet your bottom trust fund Charlotte was more than just watched.

  She was worshipped.

  The heavy Jaguar door swung open, all buttery tan leather, polished walnut accents, and in the side pocket, the glossy top half of the latest French Vogue—a glimpse of well-oiled interior that served as backdrop for the main event: a gorgeous gray suede asymmetrical strap stiletto pump. The size six four-inch heeler hit the pavement, followed tout de suite by its mate, and then: step, step, pivot, slam.

  She’d barely been out of the car three seconds when her two best friends, Kate Joliet and Laila Pikser, materialized in two fragrant bursts of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle. “Oh-oo-o-oooh!” Laila whinnied like a pony stranded in the rain. A wing of burnished copper hair swept across her high, Elizabethan forehead, skimming her clear mascara-lacquered lashes. “You look so puh-retty.”

  “I know,” Charlotte frowned, smoothing her high-waisted gathered skirt in lustrous navy silk. A sheer gray cashmere top clung to her delicate arms, gathering into curling, cabbage-like layers at her throat and cascading in thick frills down the front. “The question is…” She placed her hands on her hips, tilted her china cup chin, and faced her friends at a saucy three-quarter angle. “Do I look profesh?”

  “Omigod, très,” Kate assured her, her underfed fox-face awash with envy. Smoothing her platinum Agyness Deyn pixie cut with a bony-fingered lavender-polished hand, she sighed. “I wish I had a business meeting to go to.”

  “I know, right?” Laila pouted, unsnapped her brass-studded Balenciaga tote, and stared inside—as though deep within its black canvas–lined depths commenced the business meeting to which she, not Charlotte, was invited. “You are so lucky.”

  “You guys make it sound like I’m not working,” Charlotte chastised them in her best no-nonsense tone. Never mind her nonsensical heart, pumping giddiness into her veins until they fizzed like soda straws. “Do you even know how hard it is to balance school, a boyfriend, and a career?”

  Wheee! She’d always wanted to say that.

  Last weekend, her original designer brand, Poseur, made the leap from negligible non to absolute on, and all in the time it takes to say “nice to meet you.” Like a tangled Diane von Furstenberg dress, it was hard to wrap her mind around, especially when she remembered Poseur began with a Winston elective called (of all humiliating things) The Trend Set. When she’d learned she’d been enrolled, against her will, in a class with Melissa “Me-Me” Moon, Petra “Petri Dish” Greene, and Janie “Pompidou” Farrish—three people with whom she had nothing in common—she was not beside herself (“beside herself” was where everyone wanted to be), but far away from herself in despair. And nothing, not even Yves Saint Laurent himself descending from heaven for the express purpose of saying “zaire, zaire,” would console her. And if Yves had gone further? If he had, for instance, declared, “Togezaire, you and zeeze gayrls will create zee fabulous fashion!” she would have replied, “Whatever, Yves. Lay off the angel dust.”

  But she’d be wrong.

  Case in point? Winston’s premier couture handbag, the Trick-or-Treater, had been discovered by Ted Pelligan, the larger-than-life fashion luminary behind such exclusive retail wonderlands as Ted Pelligan: Beverly Hills, and Ted Pelligan: Santa Monica. Simply put, Ted Pelligan was more than just a person; he was an institution. And you can’t spell institution without the most fashionable word in the English language.

  In.

  Now, in just a matter of nine hours, Charlotte and her courtiers in couture—1) Melissa Moon, Duchess of Diva, 2) Petra Greene, Princess of PC, and 3) Her Royal Shyness Janie Farrish—would depart from their peach stucco and wrought-iron school gates, wind into the dappled shade of Coldwater Canyon, sail down sunny Sunset Boulevard, hang a right on Crescent Heights, and meet their destiny/destination: Ted Pelligan: Melrose, the Ted Pelligan flagship store. Janie’s mother had made the call last week, setting up the four o’clock appointment, but apart from the dreary time-and-place details had gathered no clues as to what the four girls should expect. “He definitely wants to carry the handbag though, right?” Melissa had urgently checked. “Did he say we should dress up, or is it more, like, business casual?” Charlotte had wondered. “Will we have to drop out of school?” Petra had hopefully inquired. “Did he even sound excited?” Janie had blurted at last. “Do you really think he’s, like, serious about this?”

  “I think that’s the point of this meeting, girls,” Mrs. Farrish had patiently replied, clapping Janie’s cell phone shut and blinking behind her funky turquoise cat-eye glasses. “You can ask all your questions then.”

  To say the week passed slowly was an understatement of the first degree.

  At the Jag’s smooth fender, Kate and Laila arranged their ballet bodies into languid positions of repose, and Charlotte scanned the increasingly bustling Showroom floor. Metallic luxury cars poured through the main gate, tooled around the boisterous crowd for empty spots, or headed—dejected—to park underground. Popular uppercl
assmen clambered aboard already-parked car hoods, chattering like penguins on tricked-out ice floes, or nodding solemnly to the boom-boom-thump of competing bass lines. United as they were in Poseur, Charlotte and her three partners belonged to entirely different social scenes, congregating on opposite corners of the lot: spotting them was no easy task. She just about abandoned her search when two bright beamers squeezed past each other, bumpers parting to reveal a flashy platinum Lexus convertible—not to mention its equally flashy owner. Whipping a yard-long, black-as-licorice braid over her right shoulder, she popped the trunk and bent over.

  Her bedazzled badonkadonk glittered in the sun.

  “No!” Charlotte cried, plunging a manicured hand into her classic black satin Lanvin tote. Kate and Laila sprang from the Jag and trotted to her side, but Charlotte only shook her head, uprooted her vintage gray-and-red Dior sunglasses, and clattered them to her face. Sharing a wondering look, her friends slipped on their matching white titanium Ditas and, together with Charlotte, returned their nonglare-impaired stares to the platinum Lexus. They blinked once, gasped.

  “No!”

  For the first professional appointment of her career, Poseur Public Relations Director Melissa Moon had paired a black corset top with a cropped black, gold, and cream Chanel tweed jacket, black matte satin skinny pants, black Jimmy Choo stilettos, and classic antique-white pearls. It was the kind of chic, understated ensemble socialite-cum-designer Tory Burch might wear—except while Tory kept her pearls around her neck, Melissa had hers studded on her ass—and in no random order, either.

  “Kiss it,” Charlotte read aloud in trembling disbelief. “It actually says ‘kiss it’!”

  “But…” Laila crumpled her heart-shaped face like a day-old valentine. “Kiss what?”

  “Her bootie,” Kate sighed, fluttering her clear gray eyes shut. “Obvie.”

  “We’re supposed to look like career women,” Charlotte whimpered, burying her face in her Jo Malone orange blossom–scented hands. “Not…”

  “Rear women?” Kate offered, knitting her dark brown eyebrows for comic effect. Charlotte glared: so not funny.

  “It could be worse,” Laila pointed out, hoping to deflect attention from her earlier cluelessness. “She could be dressed like that.”

  On the opposite side of the parking lot, Petra Greene laughingly slipped from the torn sky-blue vinyl backseat of Joaquin Whitman’s custom-painted VW (aka VD) bus, a pair of tiny circular Hendrix-style purple shades—the cheapo generic ones sold on Venice Beach—shielding her wide-set tea-colored eyes. Her sleep-tousled, waist-length honey-gold hair was held in place by some kind of blue silk print bandanna two shades darker than her frayed denim cutoffs, all of which she dared to pair with a shrunken pinstriped tuxedo jacket. She stretched like a cat, arching her back, hands high in the air. The cracked white letters on her faded green cotton t-shirt read: RE-use. RE-duce. RE-cycle.

  “Uch,” Kate scoffed. “RE-dic. And is that a Paul Smith tie on her forehead?”

  “It must be cutting off circulation to her brain,” Laila noted with genuine concern. “Why else would she dress like that?”

  “Today of all days,” Kate returned.

  “Do either of you have a light?” Charlotte intruded, lifting a gold-tipped Gauloise to her Parisian pout. Kate gasped, slapping the contraband from her best friend’s slender fingertips. The resigned brunette watched the Gauloise pinwheel through the air and land with a bounce on the pavement, crushed within moments by an unsuspecting silver Barneys CO-OP gladiator sandal. She sighed.

  “About that Calculus quiz!” Kate barked loudly, darting her paranoid gaze in all directions. Laila froze, eyeing the mutilated cigarette like a ticking bomb.

  “Hello,” the scandalized redhead squeezed out in a hiss. “We are at school?”

  “Well, I’m having a total meltdown,” Charlotte explained with a shrug, the twin surfaces of her chlorine irises unruffled as indoor pools. “Isn’t that obvie?”

  “Maybe you should try deep breathing,” suggested Kate, standing between the culprit and her smoking gun.

  “Les ha-ha,” she scoffed, turning the beaten gold bangle on her delicate wrist. “I might as well smoke air.”

  “Maybe you could just ask them to change?” Laila ventured.

  “No,” Charlotte scowled. Last time she calmly suggested Melissa “might want to cover up a little,” the ghetto diva flashed, “Cover up? As in the cover-up you’ll need when I go Chris Brown on your ass?” Last time she told Petra to take a shower (the girl had honey in her hair), the hippie goddess only smiled. Ugh! They were insufferable. “What I need to do,” she resumed, pressing her manicured fingers to her temples. Her greenish blue eyes fluttered shut. “Is think.”

  Kate and Laila nibbled their Nars-lacquered nails and shared a fretful glance. They really, really hated it when Charlotte thought; on the list of activities to which they could not relate, “thinking” topped the list. Of course, a close second arrived in that other incomprehensible commitment. Poseur. If she’d wanted to start a fashion label, then why hadn’t she started one with them? Charlotte explained it hadn’t been her choice; Miss Paletsky, Winston’s sweet-tempered if Dracula-voiced Special Studies adviser, had all but forced her to join, and now it was way too late to drop—that is, not without a gaping hole in her record. Fine, they granted. But if that was the whole reason, then why take the label so seriously? Why care so deeply how her associates dressed, if indeed “associate” remained the accurate term? Janie Farrish, that pathetic pimple, seemed suspiciously close to “friend.” “Oh, puh-lease,” Charlotte had retorted. “She’s not a friend, she’s a project—like a dilapidated Tuscan villa you fix up for fun and sell when you’re bored.” Except (and this is what kept them up at night), what if Charlotte never got bored? What if she decided she liked her Tuscan villa? What if she moved the hell in? The preliminary signs were there: she’d asked Janie to sit with them at Town Meeting, Winston’s very public school assembly; she found totally random ways to drop her name into conversation; once, she’d even invited her to lunch. At Kate Mantellini. With them! “Well, we’d had work to discuss,” she’d explained, exasperated. Yeah, right, they’d thought, bobbing their well-groomed eyebrows. Like a raggedy red rag thrown into pure white laundry, “work” had slowly but effectively bled into “life,” turning it an unsightly and deeply icky shade of pink.

  Did Charlotte seriously expect them to wear that color?

  “True or false,” she said suddenly, opening her eyes. “If one outfit’s success is inversely proportional to another outfit’s failure, then those two outfits cancel each other out, equaling zero.”

  “Can you repeat that?” Laila asked, hovering a finger above her cameo pink–suited iPhone. “I lost you after ‘if.’ ”

  “She means,” Kate oozed, clapping shut her frost-white iPod Touch, “does her fashion fab’ness cancel out Petra and Melissa’s fashion fugly? Perhaps,” she told Charlotte, dropping the glossy gadget into her signature Gucci Hysteria tote. “But at one against two, the odds aren’t exactly in your favor.”

  “Two against two,” Charlotte reminded her with a frown. “You’re forgetting Janie.”

  “Janie,” Kate snorted, rolling her eyes. “Sorry, but… what makes you think she’ll dress any better than they did?”

  For a moment, Charlotte’s frown deepened, but then she smiled. “Oh, you know,” she breathed, her chlorine eyes bright with cunning. “A little bird told me.”

  “I don’t think birds are known for their fashion sense,” Laila wisely observed, perching on Charlotte’s trunk and squinting into the willow leaves.

  “Trust me,” she said, eyeing her friend’s black lace over ivory satin Chanel headband. Her smile deepened. “She wouldn’t wear a thing you wouldn’t.”

  The Girl: Janie Farrish

  The Getup: Black-and-white swish dress by Anna Sui (size two), dark red patent pumps by Miu Miu (size nines), and self-respect (size zero)

  “S
o then he texts me. And he’s all, Have you seen Transformers? And I’m like, um, you ignore me at my own party, totally get wasted, barf on the hood of my dad’s Maybach, and you want to know if I’ve seen Transformers? Whatever! So I text him back, like, No. Why? And he hasn’t texted me back! No, yeah, I know. It’s been, like, an hour and a half…”

  Janie scoured the back of the latched bathroom stall door—anything to distract her from Lauren Taylor’s insufferably whiny cell-phone voice. Lauren had installed herself at the sinks over five minutes ago, and from the sound of her fascinating conversation, she wasn’t leaving anytime soon. Janie gazed down at the toilet seat (she was such a cliché, hiding in the stall) and stifled a sigh. How she pined for the bathroom stalls at her old public middle school, where endlessly entertaining graffiti (the Gandhi quotes! the R.I.P. Tupacs! all the people who were apparently sluts, lesbians, or whores!) cluttered every square inch of space; but Winston stalls were made from high-tech, vandalism-repellent Kryptonite, or whatever, so she had no choice but to stare in space and just… listen.

  “I was like, oohhh my God. You are soooo rude-uh!”

  Of course, Janie reasoned, her captivity was self-imposed; she could always step down from the porcelain god, unlatch the stall door, and leave. And yet… no. No way would she have the will-power to exit the restroom without looking at the mirror, and she absolutely hated looking in mirrors in front of other girls, especially girls like Lauren, because they almost always made it into this, like, thing.

  Was Janie the only person who found staring at herself while some other girl stared at her staring at herself seriously nerve-racking?

  Okay, probably.

  “It’s just, like, if he doesn’t have the common decency to—oh my God. Katy-Katy-Katy-Katy-I-have-to-go-he’s-on-the-other-line-I-know-no-I-know-I’ll-call-you-back-okay-bye.”

  A sudden whine of door hinges wrested Janie from her stall stupor, along with a fraction of Lauren’s chirpy, “Hey, baby!” The heavy door swung back, lopping the rest of her greeting with a merciful whoosh. At last, Janie smiled, stepping to the floor.