by Tish Cohen
“The interior designer?” Carling pushes hair off her eyes. “She did my aunt’s penthouse in Paris. She’s huge.”
“Anyway, his name is Ned.”
“Ned?” Isabella squeals.
“It’s nerdy cool,” I say. “I like it.”
“Big surprise,” says Izz.
Sloane slaps my hand. “See? London knows what’s what. I have our whole lives planned out. A house on the Cape. Four kids in six years, born in the following order: boy, girl, boy, girl. All of their names will start with N. I’m going to pee, so think of some names while I’m gone. And keep an eye on him, girlies. You’re sitting across from my future, and I don’t want some tramp to come by and snag it.” She crawls away.
Without missing a beat, Carling says, “Watch this. I’m going to go mess with his head. I’m going to tell him Sloaney’s a dude.”
I grab her arm. “Don’t. Sloane really likes this guy.”
“Oh, please,” she says. “Sloane likes every guy.” She pulls away, slinks across the room, and folds herself up next to Ned, playing with her sunny streaks. They chat for a few moments, then Ned’s expression changes. He glances toward the door a few times, then settles in to talk to Carling. Just when I can’t believe what a bitch she is, she takes it one step further. She grabs both ends of Ned’s tie, pulls him close, and starts making out with him.
I look at Isabella, horrified, but Izz just sips from the bottle and grins. “Go, Carling,” she says, holding the bottle up in a toast.
Of course Isabella would support this, even if it hurt Sloane. Like any good cult member, Isabella is so Carlinginfatuated she’d probably shave her head and drink poison for her leader. I can’t take these people anymore. I have to leave the room. Crawling across legs and purses to the door, I bump heads with someone climbing in.
Leo.
From where he is, I’m certain he cannot see Carling deep-tonguing the interior designer’s son. He sits back and rubs his forehead, stares at me.
“Told you I was spastic.”
“You weren’t kidding.”
“Leo, about the T thing. I didn’t thank you—”
“Forget it. We all just reacted.”
“Still. Could’ve been ugly.”
He laughs a bit. “I’d say we reached ugly the moment she jumped. You having fun in here?”
“Not really.”
“I lost Griff. I think he got carried off by a herd of blind females.” He sits up taller and looks around the room. “Is he in here?”
“No.”
Leo stops. His mouth settles into a hard line. He’s seen Carling.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I say, tugging on his white shirt. “She’s just goofing around, playing a joke on Sloane….”
He turns to face me again, leaning over his knees and releasing a long breath. His hair is growing shaggy, so long in the front it flicks upward in front of his eyes. Up close, his lashes are long and curly. Lashes every girl wishes for but that usually get doled out to boys. Shaking his head, he lets out a sound so tired it makes me sad. “You can’t do it, Sara.”
“Do what?”
“Make Carling Burnack a decent person.”
I try to hide my shock, looking down at the carpet and picking at the fibers. “I don’t know, she doesn’t have it all that easy….”
“You don’t have to make excuses for her. She’s a big girl who makes big decisions.”
“But she’s your girlfriend.”
“Was.” He glances over to where she’s sitting with Ned. They’ve stopped kissing now, and she’s writing something on his hand with a pen. Her number, no doubt. As she writes, Ned massages her shoulder with his free hand.
“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” I say, watching.
“Carling can take care of herself.”
“No. That’s my sweater. The threading on the beadwork can’t take much stress.”
Leo grins. “Want me to go strip it off her?”
The thought of Leo removing any of Carling’s clothing makes my stomach juices curdle. I shake my head.
“Want to get out of here?” he asks.
Fighting back a smile, I follow him into the crowded corridor, where we snake through wall-to-wall bodies in the near dark. It isn’t easy keeping up, and I lose him before we even reach the dance floor. On my tiptoes, I pause beside enormous speakers and try to peer over the sea of throbbing arms, legs, heads, hips, but it’s too crowded. I can’t find him.
The room goes pitch-black before a strobe light starts flashing. On. Off. On. Off. It’s nausea-inducing and makes me want to leave. Out of the violet shadows, Poppy appears. “Hey!” She’s clearly overjoyed to see me and pulls out her camera to zoom in on my face. “I was hoping you’d be here. You look really great.”
“So do you.”
“Who were you looking for?”
I see him now. Leo. He’s weaving through a crowd of girls wearing pink wigs, making his way back to me, looking sheepish and mouthing, I’m sorry.
Poppy repeats herself. “Were you meeting someone? Because it would be cool to hang out. I’m making a mini documentary about underground parties and people are getting all whacked backward when I film them. Even the bouncer threatened to kick me out, which is insane. I could totally tell he didn’t like me, because some guy peed on the bathroom door and even he didn’t get kicked out.”
A trio of Goths pass between us and flip her off when she points her camera at them. It makes me feel sorry for her, actually. She’s just doing her thing. Can she help it if that turns off the rest of the world?
Leo is getting close now and I have to make my exit. “Maybe later, Poppy. I have to take care of something right now.”
“Cool,” she says. “I’ll look for you.”
There’s a little-known bathroom in this place. Leo found it. Probably meant for staff only, it’s down a long, drafty passageway, past the locked office. Just outside the men’s room, between a time clock and an ancient payphone, sits a padded bench. Leo sits down beside me and we both stretch out our legs at the same time. The music is muffled in here, making it sound as if we’re underwater. I don’t know if it’s Leo, the atmosphere, or Carling’s vodka, but my heart is racing and my head feels swimmy. I shiver.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I’d offer to drive you home but I have no wheels.”
“It’s all right. I’m meant to be sleeping over at Carling’s.”
He grunts. “That would go well. Me dropping you off.”
Yeah. Considering Carling’s big plans for him. “She’d implode. Or else Isabella would implode for her.”
He laughs and leans forward, resting his forearms on his thighs and poking at the ground with his boot. “I’ve been rotten to you.”
I giggle. “I guess I should lie and say you haven’t.”
“No, you shouldn’t. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It had nothing to do with you. It’s just that you got a firsthand look at my dirty little secret.” He glances down again. “You can probably tell, I’m not good at talking about this kind of thing.”
“So don’t.”
He sits up, surprised.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” I say. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation. Your past is your past just like my past is mine.” I laugh softly and tuck my hair behind my ears. “I have a few secrets myself.”
Leo is so still he can’t possibly be breathing. His eyes travel across my face—from my forehead to my mouth to the stray hairs that are blowing against my cheek. Blinking softly, he moves closer. So close I can smell the soapy shower he had before he left home, the greasy iron rails of the ladder from the train tracks. Then, just when I think I’ll pass out from anticipation, Leo Reiser kisses me, and everything else vanishes. His soft lips, his probing tongue, erase my mother’s packed suitcases. My father’s peeling hands. My faraway best friend. Gone are the never-ending nights stud
ying, my lopsided bedroom, and my mother’s Parisian postmarks. All that exists for that moment is me, Leo, and the faintest whisper of Carling Burnack’s musky perfume.
Our moment doesn’t last. About twenty minutes later, Leo’s phone goes crazy with desperate text messages from Griff. Turns out the girls grew tired of his perv-child advances and reported him. Leo doesn’t want to send the tot home alone on the T, so he apologizes, kisses me one last time, and heads outside to where Griff waits with a bouncer.
Which leaves me to return to Carling and Company, my eyes swimmy with happiness. And guilt.
Once Leo is gone, Carling sees no point in staying, so we head to the door. Out on the street, in the cold night air, we shiver and pool our money to determine whether we have enough cash to take a cab all the way home or whether we’re heading back underground. Carling sends an emergency plea for transport. Ten minutes later, a black car flashes its high beams from down the block. Noah. I keep my head turned the other way as he pulls up, then stand behind the others so he doesn’t see me.
Sloane says, “What’s he doing here? I thought he was in New York.”
Carling yanks open the back door. “Guess he got dumped. No big surprise. Would you date a guy whose scalp hadn’t been scrubbed in, like, five years?”
Poor Noah. We pile into the back of the car. There’s no way he knows who I am right now. And if I can exit the car as inconspicuously as I get in—head down, hair pouring over my face—he won’t have a clue I was ever here.
The Bentley isn’t as pristine on the inside as it is on the outside. The leather seats are creased flat from wear, and the carpeting is so thin in spots you can see the metal flooring. Not only does the car look depressed, it feels it. Gone is the excitement of a forbidden party. Gone is the feeling it was the four of us against the strobe-lit, adolescent underworld.
Once the car pulls into traffic and Noah is safely separated from us by the divider, Sloane turns on Carling. “You had no right to make out with Ned.”
Carling cracks up. “Ned! I had to make out, just once in my life, with a guy named Ned. Anyway, I was being funny. Wasn’t I being funny, Izz?”
“Funniest ever.”
“He actually believed you were a guy,” Carling explains to Sloane. “I totally had him going.”
“Maybe I don’t want my future boyfriends thinking I’m a guy—not for a single second,” says Sloane. “Call me crazy, but picturing the girl you have the hots for with chest hair and chin stubble is a slight turnoff.”
Carling laughs so hard she collapses sideways on the seat, her head landing in Isabella’s lap. “I didn’t tell him about your chest hair, Sloaney. It’s important to leave some things to the imagination.”
Isabella joins in the laughter. “It was pure genius.”
Sloane crosses her arms and stares out the window.
“Come on,” says Carling, nudging Sloane’s leg. “I gave him your number, not mine.”
“Why would he call? He thinks I’m a man!”
“He’ll call because he thinks he’s calling me. Then”—Carling holds out her hands as if performing magic—“ta-da, it’s you he’s talking to. You tell him I’m a bitch who goes after all your boyfriends, that I’m mentally unstable, and everyone’s happy. Feel free to trash me as much as you want. I can take it.”
“Tell Noah to take me home,” says Sloane. “I’m not in the mood to stay over.”
“You have to,” pleads Carling. “Leo was a total jerk to me tonight. Didn’t come near me once at the party. I think he wants to break up with me.”
“He did break up with you,” I mumble, tracing my lower lip with my finger and watching the city lights race by.
“What?” says Carling.
I sit up taller. “I just said he kind of broke up with you, didn’t he?”
“He was just cranky because of the T thing. I swear, the guy is so sensitive. He’s like a girl. Doesn’t matter. I’ll call him when we get to my place. He’ll come over, I’ll seduce him, and all will be well.”
I can feel the anger rise up from my gut and spread across my chest and down my arms, where it curls my fingers into fists. The thought of Leo in Carling’s bedroom tonight makes me sick. I squeeze my hands shut tighter, if only to curb my instinct to slap her. “I don’t know about that,” I say. “He’s pretty angry.”
Isabella stares at me. “How would you know, London? Are you and Leo trading secrets in the changing room again?”
He won’t go to Carling. Not after our kiss. “No. I just meant he seemed upset, that’s all.”
Carling yawns, completely indifferent to what Leo might or might not be feeling, thoroughly confident that if she wants him later, he’ll be there. I’ve never had that kind of confidence in my life. “Even with Leo coming, I still need you guys. I’ll need someone to talk to after.”
“Can’t,” says Sloane.
“Actually, I’m tired too,” says Isabella in a shocking and unprecedented lack of Carling support. Though, from the circles under her eyes, I’m guessing she’s telling the truth.
“London?” asks Carling.
“No!” Isabella says quickly. Her eyes dart back and forth between me and Carling. “If we all don’t stay over, no one stays over. Right, Carling?”
“Whatever,” says Carling. “It won’t be any fun without Sloaney and Izz anyway. Let’s all go home and we’ll do the sleepover next weekend. I’ll tell the Dreaded One to drop you guys off at home instead.”
Bad plan. I can’t be dropped off at my apartment. I can’t let the girls watch me walk through the cracked glass door of my building and wonder why my neurosurgeon father works for no pay. In the next few seconds, I need to come up with a proper home. Someplace befitting the daughter of a brain surgeon.
There’s a cul-de-sac in a leafy area at the edge of Brookline not far from my building. I’ve seen it while out walking. It’s full of homes so massive several families could live in them. The driveways are always littered with expensive cars and most of the properties have either indoor pools or tennis courts. One has both. It’s set back from the road, nearly obscured by overgrown bushes out front. An old woman lives there, alone, from what I’ve seen. The street is called Hemlock Crescent and the house is number 151. I know this because the little address sign out by the road keeps falling over and I’ve watched the owner set it straight on several occasions.
I’ll give Carling the address, hop out of the car, and disappear behind the bushes. Noah will never see my face. Then, once the Bentley pulls out of sight, I’ll walk to Brighton in the dark. Should take about half an hour if I’m not kidnapped by a passing sex fiend who stuffs me into his van, has his way with me, and kills me before chopping me up into tiny pieces, setting my hands and feet and kneecaps in cement, and dropping them one by one into the Boston Harbor. As long as that doesn’t happen, it’s the perfect plan.
“Where did you say you live, London?” asks Carling.
“Right in town,” I say, trying to sound bored. “One fifty-one Hemlock Crescent.”
Carling raps against the partition. “Noah?”
What happens next may blow my plan into smithereens.
The Bentley speeds toward a yellow light and the glass partition lowers behind Carling’s seat. At the same time, the light turns red and the car lurches to a stop, pitching us out of our seats. Noah says, “Sorry, girls!” and looks back just as I right myself. For a moment we stare at each other, then his eyes widen with recognition and he smiles. “Hey, there …”
“It’s freezing cold back here,” I say quickly, giving Noah a slight shake of my head that’s meant to say Please don’t blow my cover. “Do you think you can blast the heat?”
He looks confused. “Aren’t you …?”
“Noah!” snaps Carling, obviously irritated by his attempt to communicate with the humans. For once I’m thankful for her bitchy condescension. “Change of plans,” she says. “The girls are going to their own places tonight, so we’ll drop them
off in this order: London, Sloaney, then Izz.”
He looks right at me, amused. “London?”
I nod, hoping I don’t throw up. “Sara. But the girls call me London because I moved here from England.”
“England, huh?”
“Yup.”
Noah doesn’t react. His eyes travel from me to Carling, to Izz and Sloane, and back to me. A disbelieving smile crowds his face, then, with a small laugh, he shrugs and turns around. The light turns green and he calls back, “And what would your address be, Miss London?”
“One fifty-one Hemlock Crescent.”
As the glass partition starts to rise, I can see Noah shake his head from side to side. Then he disappears from view.
The closer we get, the more I realize my plan is full of splinters and worm holes. What if the old lady in Brookline is an insomniac, peering through her front window at two in the morning? Worse, what if she forgot to let the cat in and is wandering around in her yard, calling, “Here, Puss Puss,” when we arrive? Or what if her nosy next-door neighbor sees me squatting in her bushes and calls 911? Worse still, what if the old lady drops dead, tonight of all nights, and we find the driveway bustling with emergency vehicles and weeping grandchildren? From the look of her veiny hands and sunken cheeks, it could happen at any moment.
The car coasts into the cul-de-sac and we’re engulfed in trees. Suddenly the street is so thick with fallen leaves it’s as if we’re driving on carpeting. Noah pulls the Bentley to a stop in front of number 151 and I breathe a sigh of relief. The house is dark and the driveway free of paramedics.
Noah comes around to open the door and as I step out into the frigid night air in Sloane’s thin sequined top, Sloane and Isabella peer through the doorway. Sloane nods, looking around the property. “Nice place, London. Though it looks like you could use a good gardener.”
“Yeah, well”—I glance back at the cedars that will hide me from the road—“we’re not quite settled in yet. You know how moving is.”
Isabella is strangely silent, examining the house with great interest. Then, “When did you say you moved in?”
I start walking backward. “Right before school started.” I hold up my hand in a stationary wave. “Bye, guys. See you at school. And thanks … Noah, is it?”
