Elite 03 Simply Irresistible

by Jennifer Banash

  Both of the girls continued to sit in silence, Mad stock-still except for the tip of one perfectly manicured finger that she was running around the rim of her cup. Casey, on the other hand, was shaking and shivering like a baby rabbit, one foot tap, tap, tapping manically against the base of her chair, a small quiver at the corner of her mouth showing how badly she wanted to talk to Drew, and how much it was killing her to hold back.

  “You know what, I feel exactly the same way,” Drew said, holding up his end of the nonexistent conversation. “It’s like, how could you drink that many Frappuccinos in one day? I think it’s all a conspiracy theory. That it’s not really her in all the pictures, but a small group of well-disguised aliens dressed up as Britney Spears. Remember the whole bald thing? Totally an alien.”

  Mad imagined that if her life had suddenly been transformed into a bad teen comedy—which, come to think of it, would definitely explain a lot about the whole virginity do-over disaster—the sound track would’ve had crickets chirping in the background right about then. She had moved from tracing the cup’s rim to swirling around her last few sips of mocha, and the rolling, milky coffee that pulled back to show a few sparse grounds on the cup’s bottom had Mad wondering if it was at all possible for those grains to tell her anything about her future or what she should do about Drew.

  “Yeah, that Britney . . . she’s probably dead at this point. But don’t think we’ll stop seeing her and all of the frappés and craziness anytime soon. They’ll just send down more and more of the aliens and put ’em in Britney suits. Maybe they’ll eventually figure out the finer points of their construction and we’ll have Hot Britney back again for good. But who knows. Anyway, it’s been great talking to you guys, but I’ve got to head to class.”

  Drew got up, throwing his blue-and-yellow Timbuk2 messenger bag over one shoulder, and then stood there awkwardly before opening his mouth again and looking expectantly in Madison’s direction. It’s about fucking time, Madison fumed to herself, raising her left eyebrow and trying to throw her best how-are-you-going-to-make-this-up-to-me vibe in his direction. Surely now he would take her by the hand and lead her to an intimate corner of the Dining Hall where he’d inform her that not only was last night the best night of his life, but that he loved her and only her. He’d then drop to one knee and profess his undying love, quoting Shakespearean sonnets and Elizabethan rhyming couplets until she died of embarrassment—or he’d just make out with her until her MAC Lipglass was hopelessly smudged. Either one would just about do.

  But instead Drew dropped his gaze to the floor before turning to Casey, looking her dead in her gray eyes, and saying quietly, in a voice that was almost a mumble, “So, can I call you later, maybe?”

  Madison felt like the room had just frozen over completely. Her mouth opened and closed, her light pink, heavily glossed lips sticking together, and then releasing. She shook her head briefly from side to side on the pretense of shaking out her hair to give it more volume. Was she going deaf? She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she’d just heard Drew ask Casey if he could call her later. Because although Drew definitely owed Casey some kind of apology for acting like a horse’s ass for the last month or so—as much as Madison hated to actually admit it—his obligation to the girl he recently deflowered was much more pressing.

  Casey’s foot tapped faster, her mouth moving from quivering to a quake as she fought back the urge to blurt out an answer. Instead she fixed her gaze somewhere over Drew’s head, her gray eyes distant and unfocused before she stared down at her almost empty latte cup, grabbing onto it like a life preserver and raising the lukewarm coffee to her lips. Drew, being predictably terrible at reading women—a skill he’d managed to actually get worse at over the years rather than better—obviously thought he was getting the cold shoulder. He quickly scooped up his still-steaming coffee from the table, and took off through the hall, not looking back.

  Madison sat there in shock, still steaming a bit herself, trying to regain what was left of her composure. How. Dare. He. Well, that settled it—no matter what he said or did, no matter how much he begged, there was no way Drew was ever getting into the tangled, silken web of her La Perla again. Count on it, Madison thought, her green eyes suddenly watery. She grabbed a napkin from off the table and patted her nose delicately, trying not to draw too much attention to herself.

  “Fucking allergies,” she sniffed when Sophie and Phoebe turned to look in her direction, balling up the tissue in her fist and chucking it across the table littered with half-empty cups and plates. Mad rummaged around in her Coach hobo, trying to pretend like she was looking for something important, just so she could keep her head down to hide the tears that were rapidly welling up in her eyes. It was moments like these that made Madison wish more than anything that she had someone, anyone, she could trust enough to confide in. But even if she did, the thought of having to explain to anyone that she’d slept with Drew the night before, only to have him ignore her the next day and subsequently kiss Casey’s ass during lunch, was too potentially humiliating to even contemplate.

  “I think I’m allergic to milk,” Sophie piped up, pushing away her empty vanilla latte, clearing her throat with an exaggerated cough. “Or maybe the air around here. Something is making me feel all phlegmy these days.” Sophie grabbed her throat with one hand, massaging her smooth, pale skin with her fingers. “Whatever. I am not getting sick this close to Christmas.”

  “Maybe it’s the noxious scent of your Designer Imposter’s perfume,” Madison snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Bite your tongue,” Sophie said with faux indignation, shuddering slightly. “You know perfectly well I only wear Missoni.”

  “I didn’t know they sold Missoni at CVS now,” Phoebe said contemplatively, a wicked glint in her dark eyes. “Huh.”

  Sophie rolled her eyes and began to giggle. “You guys suck,” she said good-naturedly, smoothing her long bangs back from her face with a practiced hand. “So, what did the Drewster have to say for himself anyway?” Sophie and Phoebe started distractedly gathering up their books and brushing stray crumbs from their clothes, readying themselves for the end of lunch hour.

  “Nothing interesting,” Madison said darkly, stuffing her leather notebook into her Coach bag. It was amazing—Madison always essentially viewed Meadowlark as the one place she was completely in control, and now, school had become just as—if not more—complicated as home. She’d given Drew everything a guy could ever want, and after all that he still preferred Casey. Madison Macallister could put up with a lot, but the sting of that kind of humiliation was not only inexplicable, but entirely too much to bear. If she couldn’t live happily ever after with Drew, there was no way some Midwestern moron stuffed into designer clothes she didn’t deserve was going to. No way. Once she told Casey what had happened between her and Drew last night, she doubted Casey would want to have anything to do with him ever again—much less pick up the phone and take his calls.

  “So, Casey,” Mad began, turning to face her and smiling sweetly. “What are you doing later tonight?”

  Casey’s mouth fell open slightly as she stared at Madison uncomprehendingly. Sophie’s hand froze in midair as she was handing Phoebe a hot pink YSL lip gloss, the gold cap flashing in the light.

  “Me?” Casey said after a long pause, pointing to her chest with one unpolished index finger. “Umm, not much. Studying, probably. The usual.”

  Madison stood up, shielding her eyes from the fluorescent glare with a pair of gold Dior aviators, the lenses tinted a rich, glowing amber. “Why don’t you come over later?” she said airily, as if she issued such invitations on a regular basis. Madison threw her bag over one shoulder and looked over the top of her shades, her green eyes burning over the golden frames, one newly darkened brow arched imperiously. “We definitely need to talk.”

  the first cut is the deepest . . .

  “I mean, not shopping at Barneys isn’t exactly going to put an end to the war in Iraq.
I donated money to Obama’s campaign this year and everything.” Meadowlark junior Briana Sharp flipped her golden locks away from her perfectly tanned, oval face and smiled warmly into the camera, her bronze lip gloss sparkling. “So, I guess you could say I’ve done my part.”

  Drew couldn’t help cracking a smile as he watched Briana’s earnest face flickering at the front of the classroom gradually fade to black, and his own name outlined in bright white illuminating the now-darkened screen. Drew felt the hair on his arms stand up in a rush of pride mixed with excitement, and his stomach felt like it had suddenly been infiltrated by a band of alien invaders who were hell-bent on performing somersaults and back flips after drinking a bottle of Mad Dog. Drew rubbed his blue eyes, which were now tinged with red, a spider’s web of broken blood vessels that made his eyes feel like they were full of sand. He’d barely slept at all last night. Instead of allowing himself to drift off into oblivion, he’d laid in bed until well after three A.M., the soothing sounds of Gold frapp’s Seventh Tree streaming through his earbuds doing nothing to slow his adrenaline as he lay there obsessively mulling over what Paxil might say once the final credits rolled and the lights came up.

  As much as he hated himself for it, Drew couldn’t help but hold out some hope that the black-clad auteur might be so moved as to leave his famously caustic wit at the door for once, stunned into humble silence by the sheer virtuosity of Drew’s cinematic skills. When he closed his eyes, Drew could almost see himself on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, brightly colored boats sailing by in the distance, the choppy blue water lapping at the shore, the spiky, gold-encrusted top of St. Mark’s Basilica rising from the square like a mirage. Paxil would undoubtedly be busily eviscerating some unsuspecting reporter, and Drew would be staring down at his Pumas, too overwhelmed to even think about forming words as Jim Jar musch, Robert Rodriguez, and maybe even Woody Allen—his favorite filmmaker of all time—made their way down the red carpet, so close that Drew could almost reach out and touch the sleeves of Allen’s nubbly tweed jacket for luck . . .

  A polite burst of applause scattered through the class as Paul Paxil jumped from his seat on the side of the room and flicked on the overhead light with a flourish of his wrist, flooding the room in fluorescence. Drew blinked rapidly and looked down at the desk, his cheeks flushing bright red. Drew wasn’t exactly socially retarded by any stretch of the imagination, but the one thing that made him uncomfortable beyond belief was praise. Not that he didn’t want it, need it, and seek it out at all costs, despite being filled with self-loathing for doing so—he just never knew exactly how to respond to such ef fusiveness when it came his way, especially when it was about his own work.

  “Well, Drew,” Paxil said, his voice sounding level and calm, a perfectly cool register that seemed so right for words of praise spoken from up high. “You really did a fantastic job of eviscerating your peers. The contempt and disdain you have for them echoes throughout the entirety of this piece.” True, Drew thought to himself, so what he’s basically saying is that my thesis is clear and that I’m getting my point across. Awesome.

  Paxil paused, perching one black denim-clad hip on the edge of the gleaming, rectangular stainless steel desk at the front of the room. Drew felt his heart race even faster in that small pause, feeling unable to wait any longer before hearing all of the wonderfulness that he had to say. “And while we don’t see you in the film, those that you interview act as stand-ins, showing that even in your compiling of their thoughts and opinions, you’re constructing yourself as an amalgam of them all—the ultimate monster.”

  Drew couldn’t believe his ears. Was this really happening? A monster? He shook his head in disbelief, too stunned to speak. He felt his mouth opening and closing without sound, suddenly dry as paper. It was supposed to be an exposé, a look inside the cloistered, revered world of money and power, showing its corrupt core with himself acting as the guide. “Uh, I . . .” Drew stuttered, feeling that if only he could find the right words he could make Paxil understand how much he had misunderstood—help him to see the true genius of the whole thing.

  “Oh, did you have something to add, Drew?” Paxil said in mock surprise, still affecting that same cool tone, the tone that Drew was quickly realizing meant the exact opposite of what he had hoped for when the lights flooded the room.

  “Uh, well, uh. That wasn’t really the point.” Drew felt himself beginning to sweat, the underarms of the black T-shirt he wore beneath an olive Triple Five Soul sweater quickly turning very damp indeed. “This isn’t supposed to be about me—it’s supposed to be about all of this,” Drew said, waving his arms around the air for emphasis.

  “All of what?” Paxil threw back, his eyes narrowing behind the heavy black glasses he habitually wore. “This world of wealth, power, and privilege that you are so very much a part of?”

  “Well, yeah,” Drew stammered again, feeling his face turn horribly, embarrassingly crimson as he felt the bodies in the classroom around him tense up in anticipation, his peers suddenly at full attention. “I mean, that’s what I was trying to expose.”

  “I see,” Paxil said thoughtfully, sitting on top of the desk and crossing one leg over the other, his dirty black Converse swinging in the air. “And how did you think you were going to do so without acknowledging your own part in this world of excess and irresponsibility? How could you even hope to get your point across without explaining to the audience exactly where you see yourself fitting in?”

  Drew sat there, nervously pulling at a loose thread of his APC jeans, and wondered if Paxil, as much as Drew despised him at this very moment for singling him out and embarrassing him, didn’t actually have a point. Wasn’t the whole idea of making the film to attempt to understand his admittedly complicated feelings about his own family’s wealth and status? Instead of really exploring exactly where Drew Van Allen himself fit into the UES scene, the film had ended up a jumbled and judgmental collage of everyone else’s opinions but his own. Paxil was right—there was no way he could keep himself at arm’s length from his subjects, not when he was actually one of them! Drew bit his lip, grateful for the sharp pain that served as a momentary distraction from the fact that he was suddenly scarily close to losing it in front of everyone. His eyes burned in their sockets, and he blinked a few times to try to clear them. The film was only proof of what he already knew—he’d lost sight of himself lately, and in more ways than one.

  Paxil’s face softened momentarily beneath the dark coating of three-day stubble. He removed his glasses and began polishing them absentmindedly on the bottom of his ragged black sweater. “I’m not saying this to upset you, Drew,” Paxil said matter-of-factly. “What I’m trying to do is to get you to see the larger picture here. There’s no way you can make a successful documentary if you don’t examine all sides of the issue and figure out where you stand before you get behind the camera. As a filmmaker, you have a responsibility not just to your audience, but to yourself.” Paxil’s eyes held Drew’s own for an uncomfortably long time, until he cleared his throat with a sound so torturous and raspy that Drew wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the director had sprinkled ground glass on his Cheerios that morning. “Now,” he said with a wry smile, clapping his hands together loudly to signal that Drew was finally out of the hot seat, “where’s my next victim?”

  Andrea Spain, the mousiest girl in the entire junior class, raised her hand meekly, as if she were afraid that Paxil might lop it off with the brute force of his honesty. From her hunched posture, and the blond hair that fell across her face, her insecurity about the DVD she held in one shaking hand was completely transparent. She might as well have been wearing a goddamn sign that read, YOU’RE PROBABLY GOING TO HATE THIS AS MUCH AS I DO. Paxil snatched the DVD from Andrea’s limp fingers with predatory glee and turned it over in his hands with a smirk, clearly taking pleasure in Andrea’s awkwardness before barking, “Lights!” at the back of the room.

  Drew sighed as the lights flicked
off again and the room was plunged once more into comforting darkness. The screen glowed white, filled with the tan, plasticky figure of a headless Barbie in all her nude, pneumatic perfection. Drew could hear Paxil groan audibly as the first acoustic notes of Hole’s “Doll Parts” began to blare from the speakers overhead. Sure, Drew was glad to be off the hook, but as a succession of dismembered Mattel toys rolled across the screen, he couldn’t help but wonder if, in the quest for some kind of self-discovery, he’d managed to make more of a disaster of his life than ever. He knew, as much as he really despised the idea that he was going to have to come to terms with this whole mess his parents had made, that he’d somehow have to try to dig his way out of the mountain of resentment and anger he was currently trapped beneath. The problem was that he didn’t really have anyone to really talk to about the way things were falling apart. Well, he had tried to talk to Madison, but they’d just ended up naked, and the last thing Drew really needed right now was more drama with Miss Expectations herself. Still, he knew that, much like with everything that happened between him and Mad, as usual, he definitely could’ve handled the whole thing better—a lot better.

  From the way she’d acted at lunch today, it was clear that Madison really hated him this time—and with good reason. God, why did he have to act like such an asshole the minute he got within fifty feet of her? Was he acting out for the camera? Trying to get revenge on his family for putting him in this fucked-up position? He still didn’t even know how he felt about the actual sex. The minute it was over panic had streamed through his body replacing the euphoria and adrenaline he’d been feeling only seconds earlier. All of a sudden he felt trapped—like he wanted to run out into traffic just to get away from, well, not exactly her, but just . . . everything. And by the way Casey had glared at him at lunch, it was painfully obvious that he’d really blown things with her, too. All he wanted to do was to call her and try to explain everything—but when he saw the mix of coldness and confusion staring out at him from the depths of Casey’s gray eyes, something inside his chest began to throb uncomfortably, and he had to look away.