Poseur #3: Petty in Pink: A Trend Set Novel (22 page)

He was more beautiful that ever.

“Jules,” she spoke, surprising him, and he flinched, burning his finger.

“Yes?” he turned, sucking the burn, and she paused. She couldn’t break up with him
now
. Not with his finger in his mouth. Not when he looked like a hamster at the waterspout. It wasn’t
right
.

At last, he removed the holdup and frowned, examining the damage.

“The thing is…,” she began carefully. His finger drifted upward, headed once more for the mother ship, and in a burst of panic,
she blurted,
“I can’t be with you anymore!”

He froze—amber eyes wide, full mouth agape—his wounded fingertip just touching his lower lip. He looked less like a hamster
than a cover girl, coyly posed to push a new lip-plumper. But then his finger fell, his mouth clapped shut…

And he looked like a just-been-dumped boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” she exhaled, touching his elbow. And she
was.

But more profoundly, she was free.

The Ghost: Janie Farrish

The Getup: None of it matters now

It would go down in history as the most humiliating night of her life. She knew that much. It would go down in history as
the most humiliating night. In life.
Period.
She wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there, to crawl into bed and never come out again—but she couldn’t. Jake
had the keys, and Jake was inside, and she… she was outside, crouched against the large wall behind a thick camellia hedge.
Filmy gray cobwebs clung to the leaves, some of them dark and glossy, most of them dusty and dull. A few feet away, a garden
hose hissed at the wall, leaking water into dirt that smelled metallic and cold, like pennies. Every two minutes, wobbling
in place, she uprooted her heels from the dampening soil, and thought:
This is what it’s like to be buried.

It was an odd kind of comfort. Unless she thought she was dead, it was like… she seriously wanted to die
.
If she was alive, not only had
it happened
(the look on his face, the look on
her
face, stricken, then scornful, confused, then suspicious; and God, her
own
face, ugly, unhinged, blotchy, and sputtering) but
continued
to happen, the toxic black fallout of her little white lie. How could she ever
explain
it? Even to herself, it was unexplainable. Except that of
course
she’d wind up like this; she was that kind of person, miserable because she deserved it, and mystifying in the worst possible
way, like dirty underwear left in the street. Oh, but if she was dead! Then it was
over
. She was but a kindly spirit now, gazing through the sepulchral leaves and smiling at the living—their exaggerated joys,
their petty sorrows!
Does anybody realize what life is while they’re living it? Every, every minute?

But something always wrenched her back, unearthing her from the grave like a bulldozer. The bad thing about hiding: it protects,
but also traps. At one point, Paul and Petra walked outside, and oblivious to the swarming crowd of guests, talked intensely
on the lawn. At another, Gabrielle pulled Evan by the hand, leading him to the pool. But when Paul and Petra made up, kissing—
literally
—in the moonlight, she had nowhere to run. When Gabrielle kicked a splash of pool water, shrieking with delight as Evan, his
pant leg soaked, chased her back inside, she had no choice but to sit there, alone with her heartbeat, and cry. She wasn’t
dead at all, she realized. She was alive.

Horribly, painfully, absurdly alive.

By the time she lifted her face from her snot-slicked knees, half the deck had cleared. For whatever reason, the raucous party
chatter had reduced to a polite, low-level murmur, and people were heading inside. She gulped down her sobs and sniffed, watching
with interest, startling now and then when stiff petticoats brushed against the bush. A few moments later, she heard a snap—the
glass door sliding shut—and held her breath, waiting for another sound, her ears pricked and alert. Nothing. She counted to
thirty. Still nothing. Her heart pounded. Had everybody left? Was she
stuck
here? Why hadn’t Jake looked for her?
Why?
What would she do? Stay here until morning to be sniffed out by Emilio Poochie? Until Melissa came down in her silk Prada
pajamas?

In a burst of panic and crackling twigs, she scrambled from the hedge, briskly brushed her naked knees, and staggered a short
distance across the lawn. Maybe Jake was waiting for her out front? Then, at the deck, she stopped, gazing into the bright
glass windows. Inside, the rosy pink room was packed, full of beaming, laughing faces. All at once, they lifted their arms,
champagne flutes in the air. Voices swelled, but she couldn’t make out the words.

Whoops.

Still, now that she was out, the hedge held less appeal. Trusting no one would notice her, she tugged off Georgina’s pink
satin Yves Saint Laurent heels and crept across the slate-tiled deck, sitting beside the pool. Her designer dress was so short
and tight, she had no choice other than to sit sidesaddle, knees bent to one side, propped up by one palm. Brushing her knees
more thoroughly, she gazed into the midnight water. Rather than dip below a border, like most pool surfaces she’d seen, this
surface brimmed to the top, as if the deck itself had gradually turned to liquid. Because the pool was built on a cliff, the
effect was particularly breathtaking on the opposite side. The pool didn’t end so much as vanish—dark water dissolving into
the huge night sky. If not for a sudden smattering of stars, you could imagine it went on forever. Wouldn’t that be nice?
If she could just slip into the water and swim out to the stars? If all she had to do to leave this party, this glass house,
these dark hills, was plunge into the cool, opaque water and
swim
, only occasionally rising for breath, until finally she’d check behind her shoulder and the earth would be far away, bobbing
behind her like a bright blue buoy.

A sudden burst of chatter wrenched her from her thoughts. Reluctantly, she looked up and her heart, which had finally mellowed
into something approaching peace, rattled awake and careened against her chest, urging her to flee.

But like an elephant in a tar pit, she was stuck.

“Hey,” he called from the open door, his hand still gripping the handle. “You’re missing the toast.”

“It’s fine,” she told him, surprised at her voice. It sounded exhausted. And mean. “I’m fine,” she waved a bit, attempting
a different tone. Nope. Just as bad.

Evan nodded and stepped forward, sliding the door shut behind him. She blinked, confused.

He was coming toward her.

“Nice night,” he commented, thrusting his hands into his pockets. Blood rushed into her face, and her ears throbbed
shhhhhh
, like the sound of static or the inside of a shell. He was standing right beside her. Oh God, he was
sitting
right beside her, displacing the air, which was both warm and cold. “Cool pool,” he noted, training his chlorine green eyes
on the horizon. In her restricting dress, Janie awkwardly rocked forward to hug her knees.
He knew
. Of
course
he knew. Was that why he was out here? To gingerly tell Janie Farrish, girl psycho, he was longer in need of her tattoo services?
Or perhaps to clarify, in case her
particular
brand of crazy extended past Paul Elliot Miller to include other boy innocents, like himself, that they’d
definitely
never dated? In fact, he’d inform her, he was dating Gabrielle Good. In fact, he’d confess, they were in love.

“Where’s Gabrielle?” she asked, and inwardly cringed. So much for aloof, breezy interest.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged as if he couldn’t care less.

“She seemed cool,” she added, hoping to push him to admit what she already knew:
They were perfect for each other
. “Don’t you think?”

“I don’t
know
,” he repeated, running his hands through his mop of sandy gold-brown hair. “What about you? Where’s your
boyfriend
?”

Janie stared, overcome by the miraculousness of his ignorance. She’d just assumed everybody knew. And if
everybody
didn’t know, then—at the very least—Evan did. Wouldn’t Charlotte have said something? She considered responding, “Oh, we
broke up,” and then flinched, appalled for even
thinking
it.
There’s only one way out of this,
she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut. A short breath later, she spat it out.

“I made him up.”

He looked at her with a hesitating half-smile, like a person who thinks he recognizes someone only to realize
nope
—not who he’d thought. All she could do was shrug. Then, to her astonishment, he laughed. It wasn’t the
best
laugh in the world—more
wow, you’re freakin’ weird
than
aren’t you a card
—but a laugh nonetheless.

“So…” Unable to look at him since confessing her pathetic lie, she leaned forward, drawing a line in the tepid water. “Did
you decide which tattoo you wanted?”

“Nah,” he said, hugging his knee. She could hear his clothes crease, shifting on his skin. “I actually think tattoos are kind
of dumb.”

“What?”
She started to laugh and stopped, startled by the sound. Behind the hedge, she’d believed so intensely she’d never laugh
again that, having done so, she felt ashamed. “So, then,” she continued in a more blasé tone, “why’d you ask me to design
one?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, picking at his dark coral flip-flop. His sandy blond hair swept across his eyes; when he blinked,
it twitched. “Just wanted an excuse to chill with you, I guess.”

She searched his profile—was this some kind of joke? He glanced up from his foot and smiled, but she only stared, too stunned
to return it. With an exaggerated bob of his eyebrows, he returned to his flip-flop, and her stomach flopped, fluttering with
regret. She was vaguely aware of an opportunity lost, but what? Desperate to recapture the moment, but why?

“You have attached earlobes,” she blurted.
Noooo!
Her dignity howled its last, dying breath. First the I-made-upmy-boyfriend confession, now
this
? Seriously, what was
wrong
with her? “It’s a recessive trait,” she blathered on like a mental patient
.
“Attached lobes are recessive and unattached lobes are dominant. Like
my
lobes.” Her eyes glazed. Something about referring to your own lobes. Something about the
word.

Lobes.

“Yeah, I understand the genetics,” he assured her
.
“It’s just…” He tugged his ear and frowned. “You’re
sure
mine are attached?”

Double-checking felt way too intimate. Staring at his calloused thumb, she adjusted her super-short hemline and slowly nodded.
“Yeah.”

“Man,” he sighed, sitting back on his hands. He shook his tousled head, blowing some air between his perfect rose-wax lips.
“I’m recessive.”

She laughed. “You make it sound so serious.”

“It
is
serious,” he insisted. And then, in a tone meant to communicate both anguish and acceptance: “My earlobes are pussies.”

“What?”
she shrieked. He was trying his best not to smile, and failing. “You’re earlobes are not”—despite herself, she lowered her
voice, kind of like her mother when she said “diarrhea”—
“pussies.”

“Ah, man. Don’t…” He winced in mock distaste. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I am not patronizing you,” she beamed.

“You are,” he insisted, and turned to face her more closely. “And you know why? ’Cause you know you’re dominant.”

“Oh my God…” She flicked some water off her fingers, rolling her eyes.

“See? You can’t even take me seriously.”

“Dude!” she sputtered, and—before she could think it through—pushed his shoulder. “It’s my
earlobes
that are dominant. Not my entire being.”

“Yeah, well… you’re wrong.”

“You
actually
think I dominate you,” she said with a self-conscious smirk, like,
Thanks for making me say the stupidest thing in the world,
and bobbed her eyebrows, cuing him to respond. But he just looked at her. And this time she didn’t look away. In the corner
of her eye, she saw him rubbing his knee, wiping off miniscule grains of gravel. Her mouth twitched, begging for a joke, for
something to
say
—but then his hand left his knee, and she forgot how to think. He was brushing back a strand of her hair; he was hooking it
gently behind her ear. Tiny thrills branched across her face and neck, electrifying her veins. She’d never felt so awake.
She’d never felt so completely out of it. She’d dreamed of this moment a million times—to have a boy brush her hair from her
face, to hook it gently behind her ear; it was the most romantic thing in the world, even more than kissing because it required
nothing
from her: she wouldn’t be able to mess it up. He did it again, and this time lingered at her ear, slowly tracing the edge,
his brow furrowed with boyish concentration. At last, he found it—the softest part—compressing it gently between his forefinger
and thumb. She willed herself to look at him, to actually sustain eye contact, but, except for that one time, didn’t have
the courage. Instead, blushing into her lap, she thought about the big bang—how a tiny speck of nothing became an infinite
everything—not only stars and planets but, like,
time
. And
light
. And
space
. It had always seemed so impossible; now, it made perfect sense. The mystery was something else. The mystery was
when.

How do you choose your moment to explode?

And then she looked up. For no reason at all. Except, she found out, to kiss him. So, they were kissing.

They were kissing.

The Gangsta: Seedy Moon

The Getup: Eat it or wear it

They were kissing.
Y’all see that?
Everything cool. Never mind it felt about as natural as kissing a coatrack. Or his cousin Malaika in the second grade. But
if he could get through a kiss, then things were
all right
. That seaweed ingredient? Just a coincidence. Vee wasn’t Swamp Thing, she was
Miss Thang
. Which was why, in just a few minutes, in front his family, friends, and Tila Tequila, he was gonna get up and
say
so. Everyone else had made their damn toasts, why shouldn’t he?