Chanel knew better than to ask what had happened. “But tomorrow is Christmas,” she pointed out. “Won’t your mom be pissed?”
Porsha squeezed the water out of her hair and it dripped on the sand, leaving a trail behind her. “Like I care.”
The two girls walked slowly down the beach and back to their villa, relishing each other’s company and the soothing sounds of the waves breaking on shore. If only they could have carried on walking forever.
When they finally reached the villa, they found what looked like a large wrought-iron birdcage covered with a red and white dustcover waiting for them by the door.
Merry Christmas!
Chanel picked up the birdcage by its brass handle and carried it inside. She put the cage down on top of her bedside table and pulled off the dustcover as Porsha flicked on the light. Inside the cage a gorgeous green and blue parrot with a yellow beak perched on a tiny wooden swing. The parrot blinked up at Chanel with its beady eyes. “I love you, Chanel! I love you, Chanel!” it squawked. “Marry me. Marry me.”
Porsha snorted. “Do you think it’s from Alexis and Imani?”
Chanel giggled back. “I don’t know. There’s no card.”
“I love you, Chanel! Marry me. Marry me,” the parrot said again and ruffled its feathers. Chanel slid the dustcover back on and stepped away from the cage. Flow might have been insanely gorgeous and flatteringly generous, but this was going way too far. She looked up at Porsha. “You know what you said about leaving tomorrow?”
“Yeah?” Porsha peeled off her soaking wet dress and threw it in the direction of the wastebasket in the corner.
Chanel walked over to the closet and pulled her suitcase down from the top shelf. “I’m ready when you are.”
26
Stuck in the house with nothing to do but read and daydream, Bree felt like Rapunzel, only with shorter hair and bigger boobs. She'd put her white satin thong away in the back of her underwear drawer until the next time she’d see Kaliq. New Year’s Eve wasn’t too far away, and maybe she wouldn’t even have to wait that long. She was secretly hoping he’d miss her so much, he’d come back from Maine and sneak up to her room in the middle of the night via the fire escape. Imagining what they’d do when they saw each other again kept her occupied for hours.
Poor Kaliq, trapped up there in cold, snowy Maine. Yesterday was Christmas, and he’d probably spent the whole day watching old movies with his parents, every now and then looking out at the snow and wondering when he was going to hear her voice again. Bree didn’t even mind not talking to him on the phone—this forced separation was only making their love that much stronger—but she still had to do something to show Kaliq that she was thinking of him and loved him more than ever before. Which was why she’d decided to send him a care package.
First she found an old Nike shoe box, which she lined with tinfoil. Then she put a well worn paperback copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into the box. The plight of the lovers in the tragic play was so much like their own: They were deeply in love and had been forbidden to see each other, yet love would win out in the end. Of course, she and Kaliq wouldn’t die, the way Romeo and Juliet had. They’d get married and have a big family and tell stories to their grandchildren about how they’d met in the park one sunny autumn day when all the forces in the universe were perfectly aligned.
Next, Bree added a foil package of two blueberry Pop-Tarts to the box. They were one of her favorite foods, although she rarely ate them because they had too many calories and absolutely no nutritional value. But she liked the idea of Kaliq eating something she loved to eat and missing her.
Then Bree added a picture of her that Mekhi had taken last summer. She was wearing a yellow tank dress and standing at the edge of a swimming pool at a motel in Pennsylvania, where Rufus had taken them to get away from the city one weekend. She liked how shiny her hair looked in the picture, and how her brown, hazelnut arms covered the sides of her boobs so you couldn’t tell how big they were.
Next, she put in the playbill she’d saved from the Nutcracker. Bree wanted Kaliq to know that, starting with the Nutcracker, that day had been the most amazing day in her life, the day they had said, “I love you.”
Finally, she cut off a thick lock of her curly black hair, tied it with red thread, and dropped it inside the box. It looked a little strange with all the other things, like a memento of a dead person or something, but she wanted Kaliq to feel like she was right there with him, and that seemed to be the best way.
With the addition of the lock of hair, the care package felt complete, so she closed the box and taped the lid shut. Then she wrapped it with pages from various teen magazines she had lying around in her room, being careful not to include any pages with embarrassing ads for tampons, birth control pills, or yeast infection medications. Finally, she taped a yellow Post-it to it and carefully wrote out Kaliq’s address in Maine, which she’d written down in her address book along with the addresses of all his family’s other houses in Montauk, St. Anton, and Barbados, just in case.
After sticking the box with twenty stamps she’d stolen from her father’s desk drawer, Bree carried the parcel into the kitchen and opened the back door to leave it for the postman. That was the great thing about living in an old building like hers. There were no mailboxes downstairs, so the postman rode the service elevator and delivered mail right to their door.
She placed the box on the floor beneath the little rack where the postman put the mail and frowned down at it, wondering if maybe she ought to open it up again and put her thong inside to make the care package a little sexier. On second thought, that seemed sort of slutty. Besides, Kaliq had given her the thong for Christmas. He might think she didn’t like it if she sent it back to him.
Mekhi came into the kitchen and saw Bree standing in the back doorway. “What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously. Their dad had asked Mekhi to keep an eye on Bree, and he was taking his job very seriously.
Bree closed the back door. “Just seeing if there’s any mail.” She turned and squinted at Mekhi. His twists were matted, and he’d been wearing the same coffee stained white T-shirt for two days. “You look awful.”
Mekhi spooned instant coffee into his cup and ran the hot water tap until it was hot enough to dissolve the crystals. He filled the cup and took a sip. “I’m working on a poem,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Bree opened the refrigerator, reached for a container of Chinese food, and then withdrew her hand and slammed the door closed again. The last thing she wanted was to get fat before she saw Kaliq again.
Mekhi blew into his cup, watching her. “You know it was Yas, right?” he said stonily. “Who filmed you guys in the park?”
Bree turned around, tugging down her bra where it had ridden up between her boobs. She hadn’t returned to the site since she’d seen it on Mekhi’s computer, and it had never occurred to her to try and figure out who had done it. The idea of Yasmine posting it seemed absolutely ludicrous.
“How do you know?” Bree demanded.
Mekhi shrugged. “Watch the film. It had to have been Yasmine.”
Bree crossed her arms over her chest. “I’d rather not,” she said. “Anyway, so what if it was her?” Bree worked with Yasmine on Rancor, the Emma Willard student-run arts magazine, and they had always gotten along fine. If Yasmine had filmed Kaliq and Bree in the park, she probably had a perfectly good explanation for why she’d done it and a perfectly good explanation for how it had wound up on the internet.
“I just thought you’d want to know, that’s all,” Mekhi said and went back to his room. He’d been arranging and rearranging the list of words he’d written down for that writer’s block exercise, and now he was trying to assemble them in some kind of order for his poem, “Sluts.”
Whore, slave, shaved, black, lace, ice, cold, rain, weep, wipe, sleep, coffee, stain, blame...
It was going to be an angry poem, of course, but it wasn’t about being angry. It was
about finding out that the person you love isn’t the person you thought they were. Bree wasn’t the sweet, innocent little sister he’d thought she was, and Yasmine was a slutty, lingerie-wearing Peeping Tom who used other people’s private moments to get attention. He started pulling words from his list, adding the occasional verb or adjective for embellishment.
Wipe the sleep from my eyes and pour me another cup.
I see what you’ve been trying to tell me all along,
Shaving your head and handling me (so delicately)
With satin and lace:
You’re a whore
Mekhi liked the directness of what he’d written, and its energy. He kept writing, invigorated by the feeling of filling up a page again. Once he was finished, he was going to e-mail it to Yasmine. Writing the poem was the only way he knew how to figure out how he felt, and sending her the poem was the only way he knew how to tell her.
27
Ruby popped her head into Yasmine’s room. She was wearing a black rubber jacket, jeans, and pointy black shoes with spiky heels. She’d cut her bangs with a razor blade and they were supershort.
“Any mail?” Ruby asked.
Yasmine shook her head. Their parents were traveling around Europe, touring with some art fair, and they had yet to send even a postcard.
“Phone calls? Messages?”
Yasmine shook her head again.
“Any chance you want to come out with me?” Ruby offered. “You’re supposed to be on vacation, you know.”
Yasmine shrugged her shoulders and zipped her black hooded sweatshirt up to her chin. She was still mad at her sister for taking her camera without asking, and she didn’t feel like doing anything except maybe talking to Mekhi. She hadn’t talked to him since she’d left his house on Friday—the longest stretch of time they’d gone without talking since they’d become friends three years ago.
She wanted to explain everything to him, how the whole web link debacle was just a terrible accident, and how she’d only bought the Victoria’s Secret underwear because she thought it would help him relax and have fun. She wanted to tell him that they had been friends for too long to stay mad at each other like this and to apologize in a million different ways. But she was secretly hoping Mekhi knew her well enough to guess that she would never have posted a site exploiting his sister like that. And she was secretly hoping that he’d realize he’d humiliated her as she stood there practically naked in her skimpy underwear, and that he’d be the one to apologize first.
“All right. See you later. I’ll bring you back some takeout,” Ruby said, turning to go.
Yasmine walked over to her computer to check for the hundredth time to see whether Mekhi had sent an e-mail. This time, he had! And it was a poem!
She pulled up her desk chair eagerly and double-clicked on the file. As soon as it opened, she began to read. She read the poem three times on-screen before printing it out and reading it again. The words were ugly and angry and they broke her heart. Mekhi hadn’t forgiven her, that much was clear. But Yasmine had always been able to see the beauty in ugly things, and she’d read enough submissions to Rancor to know that this poem was special. It was filled with rich metaphors and passionate language, and while it made her want to bury her head in the covers and sob, she couldn’t help but admire the clever turns of phrase. It was brilliant.
Even if Mekhi never spoke to her again, and even though the poem was all about her and what a horrible person he thought she was, she was going to get the poem published. Mekhi had never even tried to publish anything, but there was no way he wouldn’t be astounded when he opened up a copy of The New Yorker and saw his poem “Sluts” printed inside. And what an amazing way to impress the colleges he was applying to. She couldn’t not do it. She owed it to him.
Jumping up from her chair, Yasmine prowled around Ruby’s room until she found a copy of The New Yorker wedged under the closet door. She thumbed through it until she found the name of the submissions editor and then went back to the computer and wrote the editor a letter, putting Mekhi’s name and address on the self-addressed stamped return envelope.
28
Chanel had decided that the only way to make up for her lame Christmas was to have a truly fabulous New Year’s Eve, and the best way to insure that she did was to host her own party. She adored planning parties and was extremely good at it, but it was already Wednesday and there were only three and a half days left to get organized. Porsha was no help. She was holed up in her room with her MacBook, a carton of cigarettes, and an espresso machine, and she wasn’t coming out until she had finished the screenplay she was writing for her Yale application. Chanel had always been better at delegating authority than doing all the work herself, so who better to call upon than the two girls who wanted so desperately to be her new best friends?
“Hello? Alexis? It’s Chanel.”
“Hi!”
“Listen, is Imani there?”
“Uh-huh.”
Of course she was.
“Cool. So, I was wondering if you guys would mind coming over and helping me plan my New Year’s Eve party? I kind of decided to have one at the last minute and I really want it to be good, but I’m running out of time.”
The two girls were speechless. Then they both began to squeal. “Oh my God! It’s going to be the best party ever! Don’t worry, we’ll come right over.”
And they did. Chanel came to the door wearing red sweatpants and a tiny little T-shirt with a picture of a snowman on it.
“Oh my God, you’re so tan,” Imani crowed, kissing her on the cheek.
“Did you lose weight?” Alexis added, kissing her, too.
As if Chanel needed to lose weight.
Ever the gracious hostess, Chanel led them into the living room of her family’s enormous Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her parents were up in Ridgefield for the holidays and her brother was in Boston with his college friends, so she had the place to herself.
She had already laid out several sheets of white paper on the enormous glass coffee table and written headings on them: Venue. Booze/Food. Music/Sound. Theme/Decorations/Lighting. Invitations. Guest List. She handed the sheets of paper to Alexis and Imani.
See how good she is at delegating?
“You guys were on the organizing committee for the Kiss on the Lips party in October, right?”
They nodded eagerly.
“Great. Can you call the same caterer and room designer who did that party?”
“Sure!” Imani lunged into her bag for her phone.
“And we’ll need to find a cool DJ,” Chanel instructed.
Alexis looked confused. “Isn’t 45 going to perform?”
Chanel blinked. She had no idea what Flow’s New Year’s Eve plans were, but she was pretty sure she didn’t want him chasing her around her own party. “No, actually, they’re busy recording their new album,” she fibbed. “A DJ’s better, anyway. More variety.”
The two girls looked disappointed.
“I thought we could just use this old guest list from the Black and White Ball,” Chanel continued, picking up another set of pages from the coffee table. “Of course, you guys can add whoever you want.”
Imani peered at the list. “Is Flow coming, at least?”
Chanel faltered. If she said he wasn’t coming, then Alexis and Imani would probably start the rumor mill going again, about how Chanel and Flow’s engagement was off and blah, blah, blah. And it might be a nice gesture to send an invitation to Flow’s house in Malibu, especially after she’d left his parrot at the front desk at the resort in St. Barts and flown back to New York on Christmas morning, completely standing him up. It wasn’t like he’d actually come to the party, anyway.
“He promised me he would,” she said, pointing to Flow’s name on the list.
Without thinking about what she was doing, Chanel thumbed through the guest list until she reached the Ts, checking to make sure that Tahj's name was there. Tahj wou
ldn’t be back from St. Barts until the 30th, but she hoped he’d come to the party. He looked so sad the last time she saw him, she wanted to do something to cheer him up.
“Do you want me to take care of the invitations?” Alexis asked, all business. She whipped her phone out of her tote bag. “I can call the stationer right now.”
“Good,” Chanel said. “And Imani, why don’t you call the party location service? Tell them we want a big loft downtown with a good view of the fireworks. Preferably with a deck.” As she handed the guest list over to Alexis, a name at the top of the list caught Chanel’s eye: Kaliq Braxton.
Where the hell was Kaliq these days, anyway? she wondered. He had to come to her party. New Year’s Eve just wouldn’t be the same without him there.
* * *
Kaliq was busy opening Bree’s care package, which was no simple task, since it was wrapped in a two-inch layer of teen magazines and Scotch tape. The package had arrived yesterday afternoon, but somehow between snowboarding down Cadillac Mountain with John and Ryan and smoking hash in some girl’s hot tub at a party in Bar Harbor, he just hadn’t gotten around to opening it. The only clean pair of boxers Kaliq had left in his drawer were the ones Bree had bought him at Barneys, so he was now sitting on the floor wearing the sailboat boxers and ripping through the teen magazine pages covering the shoebox the care package had come in, just exactly the way Bree had imagined it.
He lifted the lid off the box and looked inside, chuckling to himself as he fingered the lock of Bree’s curly hair. Sending a lock of hair almost seemed like something Porsha would do, except she would probably douse it with perfume first and then put it in a silver box from Tiffany lined with red velvet and monogrammed with Kaliq’s initials or something.
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