Elite 03 Simply Irresistible

by Jennifer Banash

  Every night Casey stared at her Swarovski-covered Verizon Venus—another gift from Pulse—for what seemed like hours, simultaneously willing it to ring while thinking hard about calling Drew, but chickening out every time. It seemed like the minute her fingertips pressed SEND, she immediately began fumbling for the END button, her heart flailing toward her mouth. Wasn’t calling him kind of desperate? After all, he’d walked out on her—shouldn’t he be the one to call? Casey crossed her arms across her chest stubbornly, her cheeks aflame again just thinking about the way he’d left her standing by herself on the dance floor, scanning the crowd for his lanky frame, so happy and relieved that things seemed to be okay again after the weird, tumultuous weeks that had led up to Sophie’s party. Ever since Drew had begun a documentary film project about wealthy kids on the Upper East Side for his advanced cinema class at Meadowlark, he’d been paying less attention to Casey, and more and more attention to Madison—and interviewing her for the film certainly hadn’t helped matters. It was so annoying—no matter how straight her hair, how cool her clothes, when it came to Drew, Casey felt like she was perennially at odds, and always, always making the wrong move.

  “I have no idea,” Casey finally managed to spit out woodenly, her voice strained. “I really haven’t talked to him much. Unfortunately,” she muttered, looking down at her hands and concentrating on her bitten fingernails.

  “How come?” Sophie asked, pulling her legs swathed in black tights underneath her. “Did you guys have a fight or something? I ran into him in the hall yesterday and he looked like ass.”

  “Tell me about it,” Casey deadpanned, sighing loudly and hoping Sophie couldn’t tell that she was lying through her teeth. With his artfully tousled dark hair and piercing blue eyes, no matter what Drew was going through, Casey had never seen him look less than utterly, stupidly, ridiculously gorgeous—even when he resembled a walking poster boy for Prozac. “It wasn’t a fight . . . exactly,” Casey mused, her words both jumbled and stuttering, sounding as confused as she currently felt. “We’ve just . . . stopped talking, I guess.”

  “Is it because of the terminally angsty Mr. Hollingsworth, by any chance?” Sophie asked with a smile, slurping the last of her latte and placing the empty cup down onto the stainless steel coffee table that separated the two couches from one another. “What’s up with you and Fallout Boy anyway? I didn’t think you guys were really a thing yet.”

  Casey furrowed her brow, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them tightly, unsure whether or not to tell Sophie the truth. For the last few weeks, she and Darin had been hanging out more and more—checking out revival film festivals of Pasolini and Godard, and meeting for coffee before school most mornings, sitting side by side at Uncommon Grounds, scribbling in their respective notebooks. Casey loved how comfortable she felt around the tall, lanky, dark-haired boy—she rarely erupted into an uncontrollable pool of sweat, or blushed and stammered in his presence. Being with Darin was like hanging out with your brother—or some other male entity you’d known for years. That being said, she, umm, wasn’t exactly filled with the burning desire to rip his clothes off . . .

  Just last week they’d said good-bye in front of The Bram after a late-afternoon study session. The sky was beginning to darken rapidly, as it always did in winter, the streetlights twinkling magically as they came on one by one, illuminating the white clouds that hung between them—a by-product of their warm mouths mixed with the shock of cold air. Darin looked at her, shaking his shock of shaggy dark hair from his eyes, and shifted his weight awkwardly. Casey knew that Darin wanted to kiss her, she knew that the way that you know it’s going to snow right before the first flakes come tumbling out of the sky, blanketing the world in a soft white haze.

  He leaned slightly forward, his lips turning up in a half-smile, and as much as Casey knew this was her cue to lean in and touch her lips to his, as much as she knew she was supposed to want to (hell, she should’ve been on cloud nine), she couldn’t escape the overwhelming fact that it just didn’t feel right. Casey exhaled loudly, flopping down on the couch and staring over at the huge widescreen plasma TV attached to the far wall. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Almost-seventeen-year-old girls should want to be kissed, right? Just maybe not by Darin Hollingsworth, her inner bitch added smugly.

  “No, Sophie, we are most definitely not a thing yet. And I don’t really know if we’ll ever be. I like hanging out with him, but it’s more like hanging out with a male version of you that grew up at CBGBs instead of Barneys,” Casey said, imagining Sophie dressed up like a Ramone or, better yet, Debbie Harry. That would be a hot look for her . . . “He invited me to go to see some band in Park Slope on Friday night.”

  Sophie’s mouth fell open. “You’re going to Brooklyn? Of your own free will? For the love of God, why? There’s nothing there but lesbian stroller moms and grimy coffeehouses where unwashed hipsters hang out and talk about their ‘art.’ ” Sophie shuddered and began thumbing through the pages of her dreaded calculus book, shaking her head in mock disbelief while watching the page numbers she was supposed to be studying breeze by in rapid, cartoonlike succession. “Listen, Casey, if things are really over between you and Drew then, I mean, you need to have some new man candy on your arm. But Darin? He’s not exactly the kind of guy who can make your ex jealous.”

  Casey felt a strange jolt in her gut as she found herself silently agreeing with Sophie—overwhelmingly so. She didn’t like that jolt. It seemed wrong and totally alien. Since when have I cared about what other people think? Drew might be an oil painting with a cardiovascular system and a perfect ass, but Casey hadn’t been attracted to him for those reasons alone—although they certainly didn’t hurt. Why should she be worried about what Darin looked like or whether or not Drew was jealous?

  “I’m not just trying to make Drew jealous,” Casey said, not sure if it was just a teeny-tiny white lie or a completely gigantic one. “I really like hanging out with Darin. I just don’t know if I, um, you know, like him.”

  “Your dating life is starting to sound more complicated than this damn calculus,” Sophie said jokingly while throwing the math textbook into her bulging Louis Vuitton cherry-studded satchel. “You know I love you, but if this whole like-versus-like thing gets to be any more like a quadratic equation, I’m going to have to drop you like I wish I could drop calc.” Sophie grinned as she got up and headed for the door, her bag slung over her shoulder. “Call me if you manage to figure all this ‘like’ stuff out. Or better yet, drop it altogether—I’ll be more than happy to talk shop about boys that will undoubtedly make Mr. Van Allen fall to his knees and start bleating your name uncontrollably like a crazed sheep.”

  Watching her friend walk out of the door, Casey imagined the opening credits to De-Luxe—how they’d introduce all the characters with short, pithy montages, summing up their fabulous lives in a few short seconds. Casey imagined how her section might be edited—quick cuts of her laughing over bri oche and coffee at Uncommon Grounds, montages of her walking in the park with Sophie, her newly straightened hair blowing gaily in the wind, and shopping with Madison in some glorious Fifth Avenue boutique. And, of course, the final shot would have to be Casey standing in front of The Bram, her body leaning toward Darin’s in slow motion, his lips gently touching hers, the year’s first snow gently falling from the sky, coating their hair and clothes with traces of delicate white powder . . .

  Wait. Rewind.

  Casey closed her eyes, shaking her head vigorously in order to wipe the scene from her mind, and replay it. As the newly edited montage rolled along, she was suddenly kissing Drew in front of The Bram, her arms wrapped around his neck, the snow blanketing their bodies as she pulled his deliciously warm body closer still, wishing she could climb inside of him and never come up for air—or anything else—ever again.

  Casey opened her eyes and frowned, more confused than ever. The choice that would be made by the producers in the editing room was obvious. It wasn�
��t like Darin was ugly or anything—he was just . . . different. Kind of like you used to be, her inner bitch whispered knowingly as Casey gathered up her books from the sleek leather sofa, hugging them tightly to her chest. But am I really going to live my life for this show? Casey thought, walking toward the door and switching off the overhead lights with a snap that was more decisive than she felt. And why was that thought suddenly so tempting, she wondered as she swung the door shut behind her with a click. But did she really want to give up her newfound social status to go back to being the old Casey McCloy—the girl everyone either laughed at or ignored? It was undeniable. She really, really hated to admit it to herself—or anyone else for that matter—but finally being on the inside was really starting to feel kind of . . . addictive.

  Casey walked across the gleaming marble lobby that had begun to feel as familiar to her lately as the house she’d left back in Normal, Illinois—the white Victorian with the slightly sagging porch she’d loved to sit out on during hot summer nights—and stepped into the elevator, holding her breath as the lurching movement made her suddenly dizzy and, as the elevator climbed higher and higher still, her head fuzzy and light.

  beautiful stranger

  Drew sat in a cracked red leather booth at Uncommon Grounds, a mug of inky black Colombian coffee before him as he watched the early morning sky through the plate glass window lighten to a smoky gray streaked dramatically with lavender. Drew forced himself to quit contemplating the dawn and looked down at the blank page of the spiral-bound notebook in front of him as he tried desperately to think of something to say—but, as usual, it was an exercise in futility. Maybe it was because he had a tragically hopeless case of writer’s block, but just maybe, he told himself, it had more to do with the fact that it was six o’clock in the morning and he could barely read a stop sign at that hour, much less produce anything even vaguely coherent on the written page.

  Drew looked around at the comforting interior of the coffee shop. The bright yellow walls and gray Formica tabletops were comforting and familiar, along with the hurried New Yorkers that surrounded him, slurping organic coffee made from freshly roasted beans, and feasting on free range-egg omelets with imported Parma ham and baby asparagus. With the SATs coming up this spring, and a course load that threatened to give him an academic hernia, now more than ever Drew needed to stay focused. He’d decided to get an early start before school to try to hack out some much-needed final interviews for The Upper Crust, a documentary he was making for his advanced film class, a film that would hopefully explore the lifestyles of the rich and famous—otherwise known as the crème de la crème of the Upper East Side. But lately, his work ethic seemed to consist of an endless feedback loop of the same old story. No matter how hard he wanted to write, his thoughts stubbornly crossed their arms over their metaphorical chest and refused to come out—and even when they did make it halfheartedly out onto the page it seemed like Drew was incapable of expressing himself in anything other than a jumble of nonsense. His depression was so deep and persistent that it made him feel strangely surreal most of the time, like he was walking around in someone else’s life entirely.

  Not helping matters much was the fact that Drew began to panic slightly every time he remembered that he had only a few short weeks before his film was scheduled to be screened in front of the entire class—and, for once, Drew found himself semi-caring whether the final result was actually any good at all, as the class was taught by none other than Paul Paxil—the enfant terrible of the indie film world and Meadowlark alum—who had returned to his alma mater this semester as a guest lecturer.

  Paxil had taken Sundance by storm a few years ago with the release of Blue Blood, a critically acclaimed tour de force of a documentary that chronicled the life and recent murder of an infamous New York socialite. Paxil was a grade-A asshole and a certifiably pretentious lunatic, but weirdly enough, the more time Drew spent in his class, the more he found himself actually starting to respect the guy. So what if he made films about dead socialites and had a tendency to scream bloody murder every time someone walked into class carrying a Starbucks cup or dared to wear anything with a logo? Listening to Paxil’s insane anticapitalist rants was definitely preferable to thinking about Drew’s own messed-up life—which had fallen completely apart with a speed and velocity that left him breathless and unsure of just about everything, and more than a little terrified.

  Ever since Drew had found his father in a clandestine lip-lock with Madeline Reynaud, Phoebe’s mother, in a darkened corner at Sophie’s sweet sixteen party, Drew felt like his whole world had been turned inside out. He’d always thought that his parents were the only couple left on the Upper East Side who were really, truly still in love with each other—not just faking it for flashbulbs and charity luncheons. Maybe Drew’s life up until now had been an utterly predictable cliché only made possible by a certain kind of willful blindness. But the truth was that Drew liked things that way, he liked living in a protected little bubble fostered by the security of a two-parent household—two parents who loved one another desperately. But the moment Drew saw his father bend down and tenderly push Madeline Reynaud’s hair from her face, that illusion—along with everything he thought he knew about his life—came crashing down, shattering his world into a million messy and irretrievable pieces.

  It was a transformation so large that dealing with it on top of his day-to-day life as a high school teenager seemed impossible, which was why he hadn’t called Casey since he walked out on her that night. He had barely thought about her, and in the few random moments he had, he wasn’t sure what he thought about anything anymore—including his relationship, if you could call it that, with The Bram Clan’s newest member. His emotions were tied up elsewhere, but where exactly that elsewhere was still remained unclear. He had thought that the film could be some sort of key, that if he succeeded in figuring it out, and managed to make the documentary into something that Paxil wouldn’t immediately respond to with one of his hour-long diatribes about corporate America, that his whole life would instantly and magically switch back to normal. The white page in front of him, marked only with a trail of anxiously squiggled pen marks and a few small, beige dots of splattered coffee, told him that achieving such a result was not going to be all that easy. Until that page was filled—and the next and the next and the next—and something in his life began to make sense again, Casey, along with all other unnecessary complications, was out of the picture.

  That doesn’t exactly explain why you’re meeting Madison tonight though, does it? he asked himself with a frown as he closed his notebook, leaning his elbows on the slick surface of the table as Laura Wood, a Meadowlark junior with hair so dark it resembled the wing of an impossibly glossy, frantically groomed crow, squeezed by, pushing Drew’s full, steaming cup perilously close to the edge of the table. Drew reached out and caught the damp cup with one hand in the nick of time, and the hot liquid splashed over the rim and across his knuckles, the sensation pulling him out of his stupor with the shock of sudden pain. Laura turned around, an apologetic grin moving across her delicate features, her white teeth shining in the light.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed, her ears plugged with white earbuds, holding up one hand in greeting, then nervously pushing up her trademark black, rectangular glasses that made her dark eyes look large and mysterious. Laura was always carrying around a stack of thick biochemistry books that looked heavy enough to curve vertebrae on contact. Rumor had it that her dad was some famous scientist at M.I.T. who had discovered the gene sequence responsible for compulsive shopping. Judging by her mother’s collection of almost unwearable couture gowns, it was fairly obvious where that particular sequence had first reared its Lacroix-obsessed, ugly head . . .

  “Whatever,” Drew mumbled, wiping up the spilled coffee with a white paper napkin as he watched Laura walk out the door, fastening her navy pea coat with one hand as she moved. Drew balled up the paper napkin, looked around the crowded room, and sighed. Ever since
he’d found out that his father was a cheating, two-timing bastard, he’d wanted to talk to Madison. No matter how bad or mixed up things had gotten between them, Drew knew that if he needed her to, she’d listen—and that strangely enough Madison Macallister was probably the only person left in his life who could understand exactly what he was going through right now. But that didn’t mean he wanted to get back together with her, did it?

  A loud giggle erupted from a table to his left. Drew turned to the side just in time to catch a group of Meadowlark fresh-men girls who were stealing glances at him over their enormous latte cups. Drew scowled in annoyance and looked away. Working at home would definitely be a lot less distracting, but for the first time ever, home was the last place he wanted to be. Every time his dad began to hover uncertainly in the doorway of his room, Drew smiled tightly and pushed past him, walking into the kitchen, the bathroom, or out the front door—anywhere else was preferable to being caught in a confined space with his father. Drew couldn’t imagine having to make small talk like nothing at all had happened. So what if his parents had an “open relationship”—whatever the hell that meant. It didn’t mean Drew had to like it.

  A day after the party, his mother had flown to Stockholm for a retrospective of her work—a trip that suddenly and inexplicably turned into an extensive European vacation. Drew’s mother, Allegra Van Allen, was a world-renowned artist, and her huge, brightly colored abstract paintings graced the walls of some of the most exclusive museums in the world. During her infrequent and irritatingly chipper calls home, whenever Drew asked when she was coming back, his mother’s voice turned decidedly vague. Icicles ran up and down his spine as she began to demur, deftly changing the subject the way she usually did when faced with a subject she wanted to avoid.