Some Kind of Wonderful

by J. Minter

  SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL

  inside

  girl

  Also by J. Minter:

  the insiders series

  the insiders

  pass it on

  take it off

  break every rule

  hold on tight

  girls we love

  the inside girl series

  inside girl

  the sweetest thing

  SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL

  inside

  girl

  a novel by J . MINTER

  author of the insiders

  Copyright © 2008 by J. Minter

  and 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Published by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children's Books

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  Distributed to the trade by Macmillan

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

  eISBN: 978-1-59990-501-3

  Produced by Alloy Entertainment

  151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

  First U.S. Edition 2008

  Printed in the U.S.A. by Quebecor World Fairfield

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  All papers used by Bloomsbury U.S.A. are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  to the OB LC,

  for doing what you do

  Contants

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 1

  GROWING PAINS

  Like it or not, my life changes fast.

  Last week I was rocking the Cinderella-sans-curfew look at my sister's surprise Halloween bash and I was as happy as I've ever known how to be. I wasn't expecting to come home to such a party, and I definitely wasn't expecting to end up in the arms of Prince Charming—my brand-new, indestructible, quarterback boyfriend, Adam, at the evening's finale.

  But the glass slipper had to come off, and soon I was back in my Michael Kors equestrian-style boots with my feet planted a little too firmly on the ground. Stuyvesant High School ground—and I was deep in the heart of final exam freak-out-ville.

  Welcome to hell.

  "Flan! Flan! Over here! Whoops!"

  That was my friend Meredith calling my name as she tripped out of the school entranceway Thursday afternoon. Mer and our other friend Judith have been attached at the dark-wash belt loops since they bought their first matching pair of Mavi jeans in kindergarten. When we all became public school junkies this fall, we took each other under our respective wings. Today, with her curly brown hair springing as she trooped down the stairs, Meredith was half-hidden by a large white pashmina, and she looked like she'd actually sprouted a pair of real wings.

  "Hey, girl," I said as we air kissed. "What's with the Cupid duds?"

  "I've been looking all over for you," she said, out of breath. "What do you think?"

  As Meredith twirled around me, I noticed that the inside of her ivory pashmina had been embroidered with all sorts of sparkly silver stitches. When she held out her arms and gave me a big cherubic grin, she really did resemble an angel.

  "I love it," I said, although I was a little confused. "What. . . uh . . . what is it?"

  "It's my final exam for my design class. I really want your opinion. Tell me the truth—do you seriously love it?"

  I fingered the cashmere shawl and held it up to the light. In the mid-November dusk, it practically glowed.

  But even though the stitchwrork was amazing, the sleek white pashmina didn't strike me as something that screamed Meredith. In fact, it looked more like something I'd find in the closet of one of my old friends from Miss Mallard's Day—during my former life, as I sometimes thought of it. A life full of ritzy parties, famous boyfriends who wore more expensive jeans than I did, and girls who wouldn't be caught dead sporting the same Chloe sweater twice in one semester.

  Meredith couldn't be more different from those girls. She's an über-talented seamstress and an accessories guru, but her style is a lot more boho chic— flowing patchwork skirts she makes herself and usually far more bangle bracelets than any girl should wear all at once. But that's one of the things that first drew me to her—she has an uncanny ability to pull off her crazy fashion inspirations. Since both her mom and her grandma work at their own clothing store in the Village, Meredith has pretty much been groomed to have an awesome eye for design.

  I handed the masterpiece back to her.

  "It's ethereal," I pronounced. "You'll totally ace the class. But you don't need me to tell you that." In fact, I was a little surprised that Meredith was coming to me for fashion advice at all. It had taken me until third period this morning to realize that the Levi's I'd tugged on today were suddenly about three inches too short. And believe me, I'm so not the girl to introduce the ankle-length-trouser-cut look.

  "Actually," Meredith said, "I do need your opinion. The assignment was to design something for Cecily Brown. Her assistant is going to review our pieces and she might even pick one design from our class to incorporate into CB's spring collection. The proceeds would go to the charity of the winner's choice. Do you know how awesome it would be to have the sales of my pashmina go to Make-A-Wish? With CB's blessing?"

  I smiled. Leave it to Meredith to be down-to-earth enough to care more about charity than celebrity. My new friends at Stuy were such a breath of fresh air. True, Meredith, Judith, and I had already had our share of drama over a boy (confession: they'd both had their eye on Adam before I accidentally fell for him), but that felt like ages ago. Okay, so it was only three weeks ago, and maybe the wounds were still a teensy bit fresh. But every clique is allowed a little bit of growing pains, right? Plus, standing here with Meredith, I could already feel the stitches that held our friendship together falling back into place. It was so important to me that things between us got back to the way they'd been in the good old days of early fall. I looped my arm through Meredith's and started to walk her toward her train.

  "So," Meredith continued, "since I know that your fam is totally in with CB, you're the only one whose opinion I can trust."

  I sighed. Scratch what I said before—sometimes my Stuy friends were just as into all the socialite hype as my private school friends were.

  "Meredith," I said. "My family isn't really in with CB."

  "Whatever," she laughed. "She lives down the street from you! And Rachel McHenry totally came to your sister's pool party in September and you two were wearing the same bathing suit!"

  I cringed when I remembered showing up at Feb's benefit party in the same forest green Gucci racer-back two-piece as Rachel McHenry. It was bad enough feeling like I could barely fit into the thing— which I'd tried on at Bendel's just two months before—but to be such a blatant target for mega-star body comparisons . . . I spent the whole party sweating through my YSL cover-up in shame.

  "Mer, just because Cecily
Brown and Rachel McHenry were in Wars of Our Mothers together doesn't mean they share the same fashion brain. And that was my sister's party, which I had nothing to do with. Anyway, that's not even the point. The point isn't what I think Cecily Brown will like, the point is that you're proud of your work. And you are, right?" I said, adjusting the strap of my hobo bag as we crossed Sixth Avenue. "Anyway, it's making me really jealous that you've already finished one final project. I'm one hundred percent going to fail bio this semester."

  "You always say that," Meredith said. "And then somehow you ace every test. I don't know how you keep up with school, your wild lifestyle, and having a boyfriend."

  I sighed and smelled the tough rush of New York all around us. There it was, that little edge in her voice that bordered on passive-aggressive. I was about to open my mouth to argue that she was mistaken about my wild lifestyle, which had recently consisted of mostly studying, studying, and okay, occasionally taking a study break to grab a quick ice cream with Adam. But before I could defend myself, Mer flashed her yellow MetroCard at me in good-bye.

  "Call me later?" she yelled as she disappeared into the underbelly of Manhattan. "Thanks for your CB insight!"

  I was left alone, half-chuckling on the corner of West Fourth. Sometimes it felt like Meredith thought I had a toy chest full of movie stars at home that I took out and played with every night.

  I started to make my way home, winding my way through the streets of the West Village. Fall was totally the best time of year to wander around in New York City. All the ginkgo trees were full and hanging low over the zigzagging downtown streets. Every block I turned down today had a new scent: the cheesy deliciousness of John's Pizza on Bleecker; the new perfume wafting out of L'Occitane; the sharp, sweet scent of someone's fire escape barbecue.

  I was about to turn down Perry Street when I felt my iPhone buzz in my bag. I fished it out and saw the lit-up JPEG of my mom standing atop Mount Kilimanjaro that my dad had taken on one of their recent jet-setting jaunts.

  "Hi, Mom," I said into the phone.

  "Flan, darling. You're taking Home Ec this semester, aren't you?" My mother always sounded a little breathless on the phone, but today she was practically panting.

  "Um, I don't think Stuy has taught Home Ec since 1957," I said. "Why? What's up?"

  I paused at my street corner to read a sign for a stoop sale on MacDougal Street this weekend. Ooh, hopefully it would be my crazy Peruvian neighbor who made those handblown glass earrings. I'd have to remember to tell Meredith about it.

  "Oh, Flan," my mother said, coughing. "It's just that . . . I had a little disaster in the kitchen."

  "Mom," I said, stifling a laugh, "did you bake?"

  I shuddered to think back to a couple of months ago, when Feb had caught the Martha Stewart bug and had become bent on serving me three hot—if inedible—meals a day for a week. At least I could count on the fact that Alom wouldn't find Feb's since-discarded stash of Anthropologie aprons. My mother rarely strayed from her typical uniform: a black Prada pantsuit and her Hearts On Fire diamonds.

  Usually my mother only opened the oven in our professional grade kitchen to look for a place to store another pair of shoes. And she was so rarely in the city that when she was home, she mostly just liked to veg out and watch bad reality TV in our home theater. I wondered what could have possessed her to decide to cook something.

  "Well," she continued, "there's no use crying over burned . . . whatever this is. What do you say the two of us pop over to The Little Owl for an early dinner so I can let this place air out?"

  I grinned. I adored The Little Owl. "You should burn dinner more often," I said. "See you there in a few."

  Normally I wouldn't think twice about meeting my mother at one of her favorite neighborhood haunts for an impromptu dinner out, but as I backtracked to Grove Street, I remembered the conversation I'd had today over a sashimi lunch with Meredith and Judith. Judith was lamenting the fact that she'd been scouring opentable.com for weeks, trying to get a reservation at The Little Owl for her father's birthday, but the place was interminably booked.

  I had swallowed my bite of seaweed salad and opened my mouth to say that my mother's college roommate was the owner's wife, and that he'd even come to our house to cook us dinner a few times. I knew I could get Judith a reservation without batting an eye. But sometimes my friends could get either googly-eyed or intimidated when I mentioned a connection to anything they found remotely glamorous. So I ended up keeping my mouth shut. As I sat there, though, the words felt heavy inside me. Friends were supposed to help each other out. What was my problem? I now promised myself that I would mention it to her tomorrow and see if I could hook her up.

  I stopped in front of the restaurant to wait for my mother to arrive, but before I could make a note in my Kate Spade planner, she came up behind me and threw her thin arms around me in a big hug. I grinned and hugged her back. It was always so good to see my mom, especially when she was returning from a long vacation abroad—which was pretty much all the time.

  My parents were professional globe-trotters—a trait that both of my siblings seemed to have inherited, because neither of them felt the need to come home more than once a month to recharge their batteries. They all made fun of me constantly for being the homebody nerd in the family. But I didn't care—I loved being home. I loved the balcony window from my bedroom and the view of the brownstone recently bought by my crazy best friend and teen movie star idol, Sara-Beth Benny. I'd gotten used to spending a lot of time on my own, but home was always more homey when my lovably crazy family was around.

  "Darn your father," my mother said as she steered me into the restaurant. The place was so tiny that it could only hold about thirty people. The decor was comfortable and pretty simple, with small vases of wildflowers dotting the white tables, and everyone agreed that the food was some of the best in the city. It was still pretty early, so the crowd was kind of quiet, but I knew that by the time we left, the restaurant would be bumping. We took our usual seats at the bench table in the back corner.

  "What'd Dad do this time?" I played along. She and my dad loved to antagonize each other. I think getting pissy only to kiss and make up was kind of their shtick. It was cute, I guess, that they still acted like some of the love-struck couples I saw in the halls at Stuy every day. But sometimes I wondered if I was the only grown-up in the Flood family.

  "He promises me he'll be home for dinner, so I order this whole lovely meal from FreshDirect." She paused to open the menu. "Ooh, they have those good scallops today. Anyway, then he calls to say there's too much Hamptons traffic to make it back into the city after his golf game. I told him to take the helicopter, but he just won't listen to reason. I was so flustered about it that I skipped straight out to Aveda and made Janice squeeze me in for a detoxifying facial. I completely forgot that I'd left the oven on with the meatloaf inside it, and—"

  "Well, your pores are absolutely invisible," I said, giving my mom's hand a squeeze. Even when she's being manic, it's nice to have my mom around. I never know when I'm going to come home to an empty house and a Post-it note with the phone number for my parents' hotel room in Dubai or Maui or Bali, so I try to cherish every mother-daughter moment I can.

  "Thank you, darling. Your pores are lovely too. You must have gotten them from your father, the golf-playing slob. Now, do you want to share the pork chop again? Or should we get the fantastic lobster risotto? What am I talking about? You're a growing girl—you probably want your own dish." She turned to the waiter. "We can't decide. Tell Joey just to give us a little bit of everything."

  As my mother nibbled on tiny bites of scallop and I pigged out on the incredible cheesy risotto, we fell into a conversation that was heavier than the meatloaf my mom had burned to a crisp back at home. I was suddenly shocked. My mother wanted to talk about school} Could I be hearing correctly?

  "Are you happy there? That's all I want to know. Do you think the people are, you know, enough like us?"

/>   "I am happy," I said, glancing behind me to read the dessert menu specials. I was psyched to see that they had my favorite bread pudding tonight. "The classes are actually challenging, and I like that. I also like that the people aren't exactly like me. Everyone's down-to-earth. It's refreshing."

  "Refreshing is a week at Spa Montage in Laguna, Flan," my mother said, dabbing her lips with her napkin. "I worry about you. I want to make sure you have all the same opportunities your brother and sister had, the same opportunities I had. You know how much I loved Thoney."

  My mother never ceases to regale us with tales of her wild days at her ultra-glitzy alma mater, the all-girls high school I would have attended if I hadn't made the gut-wrenching decision to make a fresh start at Stuyvesant. No one in my family could understand how anything that had happened to me in seventh grade could be so scarring that I'd want to subject myself to public school. But it was a choice I'd made myself, and I was proud of all the things I'd had to overcome since I started school in September.

  "I know you did, Mom," I said, as the waiter set down a fantastic-looking plate of bread pudding. "But I love Stuyvesant. My friends are so cool. I totally made the right choice." But as I said those words aloud, I couldn't help but wonder if they were completely true. Sometimes I wasn't sure I'd made the right decision. Like when I held things back about myself with my very best friends. I glanced at my mom, who was watching me carefully, and I had the very uncomfortable notion that she might actually be able to read my mind.

  "Well, that brings us to our next important topic of conversation," my mother said, eyeing me as I used the biscotti that came with her espresso to sop up some of my caramel sauce. "The Zumbergs have invited us—"