Because I'm Worth it (8 page)

Dan could picture his dad drying his hands on the frayed red towel hanging on the back of the bathroom door and then pulling his rolled-up copy of
The New Yorker
out from under his hairy arm so he could read Dan’s poem again.

“The deans of admissions from Brown and Columbia just called to tell me what a prodigy you are,” Rufus explained. It sounded like his mouth was full of something, and Dan could hear water running. Was he brushing his teeth? “They were slobbering all over themselves, the greedy bastards.”

“Brown and Columbia? Really?” Dan repeated in disbelief. Ahead of him the sidewalk, shopfronts, and pedestrians suddenly all blurred together into a slow-moving, oceanic mass. “Are you sure it was them? Columbia and Brown?”

“As sure as my piss is still yellow,” Rufus answered blithely.

Usually Dan blanched at his father’s crudeness, but right now he was too preoccupied with his own success. Maybe being a published poet wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. Ahead of him the black metal doors of Riverside Prep’s upper-school entrance loomed before him. “Hey Dad, I have to get to class, but thanks for calling. Thank you for
everything
,” he gushed with a rush of affection for his belligerent old dad.

“That’s all right, kid. Don’t let this go to your head, though,” Rufus joked, unable to hide the pride in his gruff voice. “Remember, poets are a humble bunch.”

“I’ll remember,” Dan promised earnestly. “Thanks again, Dad.”

He clicked off and pushed open the school doors, waving to Aggie, the ancient front-desk receptionist who wore a different wig every day of the week, as he signed in. His cell phone beeped and he realized he’d missed a call while he’d been talking to his father. Cell phones were forbidden during school hours, but first period had already begun and the halls were empty. Trudging up the concrete stairs on the way to the chemistry lab, he called his voice-mail.

“Daniel Humphrey, this is Rusty Klein from Klein, Lowenstein & Schutt. I read your poem in
The New Yorker
and, assuming you don’t have an agent yet, I’m going to represent you. I’ve got you on the guest list for the Better Than Naked show Friday night. Let’s talk then. You may not know it yet, but you’re hot shit, Daniel. The public needs a serious young poet to make them feel worthless and superficial. And now that we’ve got their attention, we’d sure as hell better keep the momentum going. You’re the next Keats, and we’re going to make you so famous so fast, you’ll think you were born that way. Looking forward to it. Ciao!”

Dan wobbled outside the door of the chemistry lab as he listened to Rusty Klein’s loud, breathless message for a second time. He’d heard of Rusty Klein. She was the agent who’d negotiated the million-dollar book deal for the Scottish jockey who’d claimed to be Prince Charles’ illegitimate son. Dan had read about it in the
New York Post
. He had no idea what the Better Than Naked show was, but it was pretty cool of Rusty to put him on the guest list for it when they’d never even met. He also loved being called the next Keats. Keats was one of his major influences, and if Rusty Klein could recognize
that
after reading only one of his poems, he definitely wanted her to represent him.

Tucking his phone back into his bag, he pulled out his copy of
The New Yorker
again. This time he turned to the Contributors page, reading his short bio before he turned to his poem on page forty-two. He read the poem from start to finish, no longer ashamed to see his own work in print. Rusty Klein thought he was good—
Rusty Klein
! So maybe it was true. Maybe he
was
good. He looked up and peeked through the little window in the chemistry lab door at the row of boys’ heads, all lined up like chess pieces facing the blackboard. School suddenly seemed so trivial. He was on to phenomenally bigger and infinitely better things!

Suddenly the lab door swung open and the bizarrely short Mr. Schindledecker stood gazing up at Dan, wearing an ugly double-breasted suit and pulling on his wiry brown mustache. “Are you planning to join us, Mr. Humphrey, or would you rather stay out here and watch through the window?”

Dan rolled up his copy of
The New Yorker
and tucked it under his arm. “I think I’ll join you,” he replied, stepping inside the lab and walking calmly to a seat at the back of the room. How strange. Dan never did anything calmly, and he’d barely recognized his voice when he’d spoken just now, for in it was a brazen note of cockiness, as if something new inside of him had blossomed and was ready to be let loose.

It was like that line in the Keats poem, “Why Did I Laugh Tonight?”
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed. . . .

And Dan was definitely feeling it.

the scoop on the stoop

“Let’s go outside and smoke cigarettes,” Elise whispered in Jenny’s ear as they headed down to the cafeteria for recess, Constance Billard’s 11
A.M.
juice-and-cookies break. Only second-semester seniors were allowed to leave school during recess, so she was very clearly proposing something completely illegal.

Jenny stopped on the stairs. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

Elise unzipped the small outside pocket of her beige Kenneth Cole backpack and pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights halfway out. “Only every once and a while,” she replied, pushing the pack back inside in case a teacher came down the stairs. “Are you coming?”

Jenny hesitated. If the receptionist noticed them leaving, she might yell at them and then call their homeroom teacher or even their parents. “How—?”

“Let’s just
go
,” Elise urged, tugging on Jenny’s hand. She started to run down the stairs, pulling Jenny after her. “Go, go,
go
!”

Jenny held her breath as she followed Elise downstairs and sprinted across the red-carpeted reception hall toward the front doors. Trina, the school receptionist, was barking into her headset and sorting the mail at the same time. She didn’t even notice the two freshman girls streak past without stopping to sign out.

Blair sat alone on the East Ninety-fourth Street stoop favored by the Constance Billard senior girls, furiously smoking a Merit Ultra Light and running through the college interview questions she’d been prepared to answer since October. There were only two days left until her interview with Owen Wells, and she absolutely refused to fuck this one up.

Tell me about your interests. What kinds of things are you involved in after school?

I’m president of the French club and the social services board at school. I’m also a peer group leader, counseling freshmen on social issues. I’m nationally ranked in tennis—I play all summer, but only twice a week during the winter. I volunteer in soup kitchens whenever I can. I also chair the organizing committees for about eight charity functions a year. We were going to do a Valentine’s Day ball this Sunday to benefit Little Hearts, a charity for children with heart problems, but the ball got canceled because of Fashion Week. We were worried no one would come. I sent a letter to everyone on the guest list and still raised almost $300,000. Fundraising has always been one of my particular strengths, and I definitely plan to volunteer my services at Yale.

Blair could just imagine Owen’s eyes widening in impressed surprise. How could Yale
not
accept her? She was first class.

A first-class liar is more like it. The whole soup kitchen thing is completely bogus, and she’d sort of skipped the part about the seven
other
chairpeople who’d helped raise the money for Little Hearts.

“Hey Blair!”

Serena was ambling down the sidewalk toward her, wearing black fishnets with a hole in one knee, her luminous blond hair pulled up in a messy bun. For some girls this would have been a very white-trash moment, but for Serena it was an I-can-get-away-with-this-because-I-look-good-in-anything moment. A cab rushed down the street and the driver whistled out the window and honked as he drove by. Serena was so used to the sound of men whistling and cars honking, she never even bothered to turn around.

She sat down next to Blair and pulled a crumpled turquoise-colored pack of American Spirits out of her pocket. She’d started smoking them when she and Aaron had gotten together, because they were supposed to be all natural and additive-free.

As if there’s such a big difference between all-natural carbon monoxide and fake carbon monoxide. Get real.

“I still can’t believe how cool you look,” Serena breathed, admiring Blair’s hairdo as she lit her cigarette. “Who knew you’d look so
hot
with short hair.”

Blair touched her head self-consciously. She’d thought she was supposed to be mad at Serena but now she couldn’t even remember why. Her haircut
was
hot, if she did say so herself.

Flattery can work wonders.

“So, I’ve been trying to think of a good present to get for Aaron, you know, to congratulate him on getting into Harvard? Can you think of anything he really wants, or maybe something he needs?”

Now Blair remembered why she was mad at Serena.
Aaron, Aaron, Aaron.
It was boring to the point of utter nausea. “Not really,” she yawned in response. “A makeover?”

“Very funny,” Serena replied. “Hey, don’t we know those girls?”

Across the street, Jenny and Elise were walking in that self-conscious, bumping-into-each-other way fourteen-year-old girls have of approaching people they’re embarrassed to talk to.

Eventually the two girls bumbled across the street. “We brought our own cigarettes,” Jenny announced as nonchalantly as she could, still a little freaked out that she’d just sneaked out of school.

Elise pulled a pack of Marlboros out of her bag, but before she could offer one to Jenny, Serena tossed over her pack of American Spirits. “Put those away. These are so much better for you.”

Elise nodded her head seriously. “Thanks.” She pulled two cigarettes out of the pack and stuck them both between her lips. Then she flicked on her mint green Bic lighter, puffing on them simultaneously before handing one to Jenny.

Jenny sucked on it hesitantly. After Nate had broken up with her, she’d tried to take up smoking as part of her new jaded-woman image, but they’d given her such bad sore throats, she’d had to quit after only a few days.

“So, have you checked your e-mail today?” Blair asked her, cocking a freshly plucked eyebrow mysteriously.

Jenny coughed out a lungful of smoke. “My e-mail?”

Blair smirked to herself. Even though that blond boy in Bendel’s had been kind of dorky looking, he and Jenny would make a very cute couple. The beanpole and the big-breasted cutie-pie. “Forget it,” she replied even more mysteriously. “Just be sure to check it regularly from now on.”

Of course now Jenny wanted to sprint back to school to check out her e-mail, but she couldn’t just abandon Elise, especially not when two more senior girls were walking toward the stoop to join the smoking party.

“My fucking feet are killing me in these boots. It’s like Japanese foot binding.” Kati Farkas plopped herself down beside Blair and unzipped her peacock blue Charles Jourdan ankle boots.

“
Stop
whining about those boots,” Kati’s glued-together-at-the-hip friend Isabel Coates moaned. Isabel leaned against the stoop’s metal railing and took a sip from a paper cup full of whipped cream–topped hot chocolate. She was wearing a Kelly green Dolce & Gabbana coat from a weekend sample sale. It was buttonless and tied at the waist with a thick black cord, like a Kelly green monk’s robe.

No wonder it never sold out back in October.

“Maybe if you got some Japanese foot binding
done
those boots wouldn’t hurt so much,” Isabel continued. “Or if you’d let
me
buy them instead of you, since
I’m
the one who saw them first.”

“Chinese,” Jenny couldn’t help but correct. “The Chinese used to bind women’s feet.”

Kati and Isabel stared at her blankly. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” Isabel demanded.

“They’re smoking with us,” Blair said protectively. It was kind of fun having two little ninth-grade sisters. Not that she ever wanted a
real
little sister or anything.

Kati pretended not to notice that Blair was actually being nice to these two little snot-nosed fourteen-year-olds and threw her arms around Blair’s neck instead, kissing her on each Stila-powdered cheek.

Mwah! Mwah!

“I can’t believe I haven’t said anything, but your hair looks totally
gorg
. I just love, love,
love
it!” she squealed. “You were so brave. I heard you got gum in it. Is that why you decided to go so short?”

“Can I touch it?” asked Isabel. She put down her hot chocolate and reached out to pat the back of Blair’s head with a tentative hand. “It feels so weird! Like a boy!”

Blair suddenly wished she’d worn a hat or some sort of turban to school. She dropped her cigarette on the step below her and squashed it with the pointy toe of her boot. “Come on, you guys,” she beckoned, rising to her feet and holding out her gloved hands to Jenny and Elise like Mary Poppins collecting the children at the playground. “I’ll walk you back to school.”

Jenny and Elise tossed their cigarettes into the shrubbery in front of the brownstone next door and stood up, hitching their bags up on their shoulders. Now that they’d tried smoking cigarettes with the seniors on a freezing-cold stoop, they weren’t exactly sure what the attraction was.

“Do you think my hair would look good that short?” Elise asked, hurrying to keep up with Blair.

Anything would have been an improvement on the my-first-haircut bob Elise was presently sporting, but Blair didn’t have the heart or the energy to tell her. “I’ll give you my stylist’s number,” she offered generously.

As they turned down East Ninety-third Street, Mary, Vicky, and Cassie burst through the doors and waved to them.

“We saw you leave at recess!”

“We came out to get you!”

“We didn’t want you to get in trouble!”

Blair put her arms around Jenny and Elise and herded them toward the school doors, wise to the fact that the three girls were just being obnoxiously nosy. “We’re fine,” she told them coolly. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”