Pride & Princesses

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Arrivals

   
The first time I saw Mark Knightly, my world changed forever.

   
That morning began almost like any other. Eyes closed, under a cloud of dark hair, I tried to avoid waking up. I had trained myself to sleep through almost any noise, including the sound of the builders constructing a new house, across the road from my own.
 
But when the jackhammer rang out for the third time, my best friend, Mouche (pronounced Moosh), screamed. She was curled up in a cashmere blanket on the faux chaise lounge in the corner of my bedroom catching up on her beauty sleep.

    
‘Enough already...’ she said theatrically, throwing her pillow at me as a sliver of light streamed through the open curtains. ‘Another bright and shiny Los Angeles day,’ Mouche added as she flipped off the couch and flicked her blonde highlights off her face. Mouche rubbed her eyes and glanced at the framed photograph of the Statue of Liberty. She gave it to me for luck, for my birthday and because Mouche and I have wanted to live in New York City for as long as I could remember.

     
‘Never give up on the dream, Phoebe,’ Mouche said when she presented the picture to me, ‘New York is a great place to be a triple threat whereas Los Angeles is all about the movies, darling.’

     
I glanced at the shifting sky and wondered how Mouche managed to look like a movie star at 8am. I threw the pillow right back at her.

   
‘You have glitter face, Mouche.’ I said as I stretched my legs, ‘and I’m running late. My mom’s plane arrives at the airport in...exactly eight minutes...I promised we’d pick her up. C’mon, we’ve got to be ready...you need to get dressed.’

   
‘Touché,’ Mouche said (she’d been listening to French phrases on her iPOD all summer). ‘By the way, you have mascara under your eyes, Phoebe. Better wipe it off before we leave.’

   
‘Okay, but I don’t have time to put on make-up...’

   
‘That could be a mistake.’

    
I looked at her incredulously.

    
‘You never know how many casting agents could be at LAX,’ Mouche added as she dragged a brush through her tangles.

     
Because we both trained as ballet dancers, we were familiar with the art of stage make-up but I only liked to wear it on special occasions. I grabbed some gloss from the top drawer. I read in a helpful guide to dating called
Mrs Robinson’s Advice
, that, ‘
a girl who can’t be bothered with lipstick can’t be bothered with life,’
and I’d never want to be accused of that.

   
Mouche has always been good with make-up tips. You could see the results of our make-up experiments in every far flung corner of my bedroom. The place looked like a local beauty salon. It was obvious my bedroom hadn’t been tidied the whole time my mother was away in London. Oh, that’s something else you should know about me. I was born in England and sometimes I use British-isms like ‘tidy’ and ‘lolly’ and ‘shop’ instead of store.

   
‘We’re practically adults,’ Mouche said, ‘your mom’s going to expect better housekeeping skills...’

   
‘It’s true, this place is a mess, but at least I remembered to stack the cupboards with fresh food from the market,’ I said, as Mouche and I grabbed our sweaters and pulled on our Uggs in differing shades of caramel and pink.

   
‘Unusual combination - boots and pyjama pants,’ Mouche noted, assessing her feet in the mirror. The only part of the glass not covered in used dancing shoes and feather boas from all the school plays we’d performed in, was the bottom right hand corner. Mouche flexed her ankles in the light.

    
‘We should go. Better to be unfashionable than late,’ I said using words destined to return to haunt me.

    
‘Uh huh, I’m not so sure,’ Mouche said.

    
I gathered my car keys and locked the front door. Mouche gave the builders across the road a V for Victory sign as we drove out of our little gated community. Sunrise is a tiny suburb, not far from Bel Air, but not nearly as posh. Mouche turned the volume of my car stereo up high. Music blared out of the windows as we drove past urban scenery. Suddenly we felt like we were in a classic road film as
Mouche
and I sang along with the words.

    
We were driving along the Los Angeles freeway for the first time, feeling very grown up, and this was a cause to celebrate.
 
The fact that we were running extremely late by the time we arrived at LAX, ensured that I was in the right spot at the right time to view the arrival of ‘the hot ones.’

    
It’s just a pity that I wasn’t looking my best when I saw Mark Knightly. I was looking, as Mouche said, ‘like a ‘slept-in’ blanket’. But as Teegan, one of the meanest Princesses in school, duly noted later, ‘he never would have noticed you anyway...’

   
Mouche had dropped me off at the international lounge at LAX and was looking for a car space. I was searching the arrivals board when people started to walk from the customs area to greet whoever waited for them.

   
I saw Mark Knightly first, but he was too busy to see me.

   
Teegan, who ran with a clique of besties known as ‘The Princesses,’ was also at the airport that day with her family. She noted the arrival of the hot ones (as Mark and Jet became known) in her childish but addictive blog, ‘
Fresh off the boat and new in town
,’ she wrote. Then she proceeded to dissect every item of clothing both the boys and the girl who travelled with them wore.
 

   
‘Even the sister could be a mini model if she just wore some make-up,’ Teegan sniped in her blog, ‘
but the boys
...’

    
They lit up the scenery as they spoke and I should know. After they entered the public arrivals area, they stood slightly in front of me. The boys paused and looked around them, speaking as they waited for the girl who trailed slightly behind. I was waiting for my mother, trying to hide my out of date boots and messy hair, behind a pole. So, although we never spoke, I think fate played a part when I saw Mark and overheard him talking first...
  

   
‘Seems like the locals are pretty tame after the recklessness of Ibiza,’ Mark said languidly.

   
‘I can’t believe your uncle is such a tightwad he made us fly commercial.’ Jet replied.

   
‘He’s trying to teach us how to
rough it
,’ Mark mused sarcastically, using an expression he’d picked up on his travels.

   
‘Never mind, the food was great and the flight attendants were hot...’ Jet said, focusing on the upside of any given situation.

    
As the boys walked through the arrivals lounge, Mark Knightly looked at his surroundings with disdain. The thought of what he imagined his new home to be, an expanse of satellite suburbs beyond the hustle and smog of Los Angeles, seemed to fill him with distaste.

   
Suddenly Mouche appeared alongside me, breathless from the carpark.

  
‘Hey Phoebe, I managed to find a parking space...whoa...who are they?’ Mouche whispered.

  
‘The new boys in town...I guess,’ I replied.

   
Mouche acted swiftly. She whipped out her cell and took a few photographs of the hot ones.

  
‘Quick, you take some from another angle,’ she added. ‘Why can’t guys that hot ever go to our school?’

   
The new arrivals were dressed like stylish English hippies in dark sunglasses as they met with the girl, collected her luggage and strode towards a fancy car.

   
‘Nobody even came to greet us,’ we heard the girl say sweetly.

   
‘She sounds a bit...’

   
‘Lost?’ I added.

   
‘I was going to say, vacant,’ Mouche whispered.

    
The dark haired, slightly taller boy took her arm in a brotherly gesture of solidarity and gave the younger girl a ‘make the best of it,’ smile.

     
Yes, they were soon to be Sunrise High’s newest and most talked about ‘poor little rich kids.’

   
‘But so fashionable,’ Teegan remarked in her blog.

    
It’s true that Mark and Jet wore cool, faux leather jackets (‘friends of the wildlife,’ Teegan told Tory who told Freya who told Brooke who told Mouche, who told me).