Girls We Love (14 page)

“Wait, does he know you still like him?” SBB asked.

“No …,” I said slowly. “My brother said he did break up with his most recent girlfriend, but I kind of have this feeling that he might like somebody else … ”

“Oh, like who? We are going to make you look so extra super gorgeous tonight, he won't have any choice but to fall at your feet. 'Kay?” SBB gave me her most radiant smile. “And whoever this mystery chick is, she's not going to stand a chance, right?”

I nodded happily, and then SBB finished up with mascara and lipstick. For a final touch, she put a wig on me that exactly matched hers. When I looked in the mirror I almost cried, until SBB warned me not to, because of the mascara. The butterflies were all set free in my belly. I was so glamorous, I didn't even recognize myself.

On Friday afternoon, Philippa had nothing better to do than sit with her parents during their afternoon cocktail hour. She couldn't hang out with her last best buddies, Sonya and Mickey, because Mickey hated her, and she couldn't hang out with her lesbian friends, because she was afraid they would laugh at her and tell her she wasn't a real lesbian. And she couldn't go to this party at this club that her old friend Liesel was promoting, because who knew who she might run into there.

Instead, she sat looking out the windows and listening to her father say things like, “Is this Macallan? This is damn fine scotch.”

He was reading what he insisted on calling the afternoon paper, which was actually just the morning paper read in the afternoon, and her mother was updating her Rolodex. Philippa thought she might die. Luckily, ever since she had broken up with Mickey, her parents had let her drink with them, so she was sipping
from a glass of her mother's favorite Pouilly Fuisse. Of course, they didn't yet know that she was a lesbian.

“Phil, you're awfully quiet today,” her mother said. She didn't look up from the business card she was gluing into place.

“Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm hungry,” Philippa said without thinking. She took a fistful of hair, which she had tried halfheartedly to put in a ponytail. It had ended up sort of low and toward the side of her head, eighties style, and she now realized that her hair was also really dry looking. “Maybe I should switch shampoos,” she added.

“What?” her mother said.

“You're sounding odd, Phil-bear,” her dad said, peeking over his paper.

“Huh?” Philippa said.

She was wondering how she could possibly stand her parents for the next hour, much less the next year or so before she went away to college, when there was a rapping on the window frame. “Excuse me,” Mickey said, and then climbed through the window. In the old days, Mickey was always doing reckless things to get in the Fradys' place, and it made her all giddy to see him doing it now.

“Mickey!” Philippa gasped. He was wearing an old cable-knit sweater with the arms cut off, with pin-striped pants and those stupid white clogs, and he was smiling.

“Hello, Fradys,” Mickey said.

“Mickey,” Philippa's dad said, “what are you doing here? And I want you to know that if you hurt my trellises, I'm sending your father a bill.”

“Whatever,” Mickey said. “I'm just here to say, first of all, Phil: You've really made me feel a lot of things lately. And some of them were not things that I wanted to feel.”

“I'm sorry,” she said in a small voice.

“What are you talking about, Mickey?” Philippa's mom said.

“Do your parents know that you're here?” Mr. Frady added. His favorite way of complicating the Mickey-Philippa relationship was to get the Pardos involved. That was usually when things got really psycho.

“Sir,” Mickey said, “if you'll just bear with me. Phil, the thing is, there's a party tonight. And all my friends are going. And I want to go, too, but it just wouldn't be a party for me if you weren't there.”

“But what about Sonya?” Philippa asked.

“Who's Sonya?” Philippa's dad asked.

“Dad, shut up!”

“I really liked Sonya,” Mickey said, giving Philippa's dad a big fake smile. “That's why this is so complicated. But if I had a chance to get back with you, then there was really nothing else I could do. I had to break up with her.”

“You broke up with her?” Philippa gasped.

“Yeah, I had to. I mean, plus the shit she said to you last night was totally wack.”

Philippa ran up to Mickey and threw her arms around him and covered his neck with kisses. “It
was
really mean,” she said eventually. Philippa shot her parents an apologetic look, and then looked into Mickey's eyes. “So, after everything, you still want to be with me?”

“Philippa, no matter how many mistakes I make, we're always just still so right for each other. And besides, it was about time you were the one making the mistake.” Mickey squeezed her and lifted her up and put her back down. “I guess it boils down to the fact that I love you whether you're a lesbian or not.”

Philippa's heart had a quick spasm, and she looked at her parents in time to see her mother spit white wine all over her Rolodex and her father bunch his newspaper up.

“Mickey,” her mother said, “I think I misheard you. Did you say…
lesbian
?”

Philippa turned her expression of frozen, bug-eyed terror on Mickey.
They didn't know
, she mouthed. Philippa couldn't help but feel that her life as she had known it up till now was over. Her parents were not going to take this whole lesbian thing well.

“Oh, shit,” Mickey said.

“I'll be home by midnight!” Philippa yelled. Then
she allowed herself to be pulled by Mickey down the stairs. They went hustling down, two steps at a time, and when they hit the pavement they looked up and saw the Fradys leaning out their second-story window with looks of utter incomprehension.

Mickey looked up at them, and yelled, “See ya, suckers!” Then he turned to Philippa, and said, “That was way more awesome then riding a Vespa across the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“I know,” Philippa said.

“Anyway, they'll get over it. They always do.”

“I hope so…,” Philippa said. She closed her eyes and pulled even closer to Mickey.

Mickey hailed a passing cab and pushed Philippa inside. “Hit it,” he told the guy, and then they peeled off. Mickey put his fists in the air, and let out a loud “Whooo-hooooo!” Then he turned a big grin on Philippa and said, “Sister, it is officially party time.”

“Oh, there you are!”

The giggling voices that had been ricocheting down the stairs finally appeared on the front steps. Liv looked up and saw Flan and SBB. They looked like twins, except that Flan wasn't quite as miniature, and her dress was big and gold, whereas SBB's was short and black. But they both were wearing black wigs of bob length, and they both had the artfully done faces of movie stars.

Liv smiled at them. “There
you
are!” she replied, trying to mask her irritation. She herself was wearing a strapless white eyelet dress that she had bought at Barneys that day. It had cost two thousand dollars, but it had reminded her of the dress that Liesel Reid had worn to her sweet sixteen party and was thus obviously the winner, so she had charged it to her mom's credit card and worn it out of the store.

She had superstitiously wanted Patch to be the first one to see her in the dress, but now that was ruined.
“You look amazing!” she said, stretching her big mouth into what she hoped was something like a genuine smile.

“What have you been doing out here?” Flan asked.

“Waiting for Pa—Um, never mind.”

Flan stared blankly back at her. “Oh, okay,” she said.

“Liv, you look really nice,” SBB said. “Almost as nice as Flan. Almost, but not quite.” Then she pinched Flan for emphasis.

“Um, thanks, I guess,” Liv said, standing up awkwardly on her Miu Miu mules. They stood there, in the leafy evening, and smiled at one another until the car drove up.

“Hello, beauties,” said the man in the black Lincoln. “Which one of you is Flannery Flood?”

Flan stepped forward and waved shyly. “That's me,” she said.

“Well, hello, gorgeous,” he said, reaching to the seat next to him and then extending a bouquet of mums in her direction. He smiled, and she caught a mouthful of gold teeth. “These are from DeeDee Rakoff. She's sorry she won't get to meet you tonight, but she says she's sure she'll get to meet you soon.”

“These are gorgeous!” Flan said excitedly.

“Ladies, get in. The party awaits,” the driver said, and then Flan and SBB piled into the car. Liv took one look back and wondered where Patch was. She imagined him
in some bathroom somewhere, getting ready to go. He was probably being very serious, putting on a casual, summer-weight suit that was white (to match hers!) and brushing his sandy hair behind his ears in a belated attempt to look cleaned up. Of course, silly Patch, he wouldn't know that he looked even cuter that way—a little bit scruffy, a little bit the gentleman. Like Brad, when he belonged to Gwyneth. Maybe she would tell him later, when they were alone and …

“Liv, what are you daydreaming about?” SBB called from the car, and so Liv had no choice but to get in and travel to the party with a bunch of girls.

Candy was on one of those wide cobblestone streets on the far West Side that looked like it had been as empty as a movie set until the party showed up. In this case, the party meant a long line of would-be revelers who were still in high school, and a gaggle of camera people taking pictures of the red carpet. There was a twenty-foot wall, and the sounds of blaring speakers and screaming girls rising above it.

“Oh my God, look at all those people!” Flan said. She brushed the strands of fake black hair away from her face and gazed out of the car window. “Can you believe it?”

“What a great sweet sixteen, right?” SBB said.

“Where is your brother, anyway?” Liv demanded. Both of the black-wigged girls turned to stare at Liv,
who felt compelled to say, “He's your brother, he should be here!”

“Come on,” SBB said. She jumped out of the car and strode to the photographers. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she called. “The lady you've all been waiting for! The sweet sixteen-year-old herself! Flannery Flood!”

Flan jumped out of the car and walked up to the cameras. She went slowly at first, but the roar from the crowd and egging from the cameramen to work it and own it galvanized her, and soon enough she was turning and vamping for the guys.

“I can't believe it,” Liv said. She almost felt a twinge of jealousy for all the attention her old friend was getting, but she knew that, in the grand scheme of things, tonight was really her night—her and Patch's night—so she didn't worry.

She had been talking to herself, but apparently, since she was still sitting in the car, the driver thought she was talking to him, because he said, “Eh, I seen it all before.”

“Really?” Liv said, noticing the guy again. “You must have been to a lot of parties.”

“Not a lot of parties. I been to a lot of press cluster-fucks. Or driven up to them, I guess.” He paused meditatively. “Excuse my French.”

“That's okay,” Liv said. “So, do they always look like these look?”

“Yeah, because DeeDee pays the photographers to
show up and act like that. Makes it feel like a big event. Half of them probably don't even have film in their cameras.”

“Really?” Liv said. “Well, thanks for telling me that.” She leaned over the divide and kissed him on the cheek. “Have a good night, okay?”

Pumped with confidence, Liv strode past the cameras, and along with SBB and Flan, she went through the gilded gates and into Candy, which was not so much a club as a gigantic courtyard paved with pink stones and filled with trees that had been stripped of their leaves and decorated with candy-themed decorations. There were gigantic Skittles and jelly beans dangling from the branches, catching the candy-colored searchlights and glittering.

Inside the walls, they were playing Beyonc
é
and everyone was dancing and screaming. When Flan walked in, a woman with a clipboard yelled, “It's Flan!” and a cheer ran through the crowd. Or at least, the crowd of ten or so people in T-shirts that said DDR immediately surrounding them.

Flan looked flushed and excited, and she reached for Liv's hand and squeezed it. “Can you believe this?” she whispered.

“No, it's amazing,” Liv whispered back. The air was thick and humid, and everyone inside the walls of Candy appeared to have a fine sheen of sweat on them.
In between the candy-decorated trees, there were topiaries decorated with little Christmas lights, so everything felt very packed and bright. They were the same topiaries that they had seen at Liesel's party last weekend, but whatever, they still looked cool.

“I can't believe this is how I get to celebrate my sweet sixteen,” Flan whispered.

“Isn't this special?” SBB said. She was still standing on Flan's other side.

“Yeah,” Flan said. “One question, though. Where do we go now?”

“I can answer that,” the woman with the clipboard said. She was wearing Sevens and had a curtain of very straight dark hair, and she looked like she hadn't been without a cup of coffee in hand since six o'clock in the morning. “I'm Deb, from DeeDee, by the way. What you should do is go sort of toward the bar for maximum attention, and make sure you look like you're having fun. The bartender will give you your first round of sparkling apple juice on the house.”

“Oh, okay,” Flan said, looking mildly frightened by this news.

“And Flan?” Deb added. “The dress looks great, just don't spill anything on it, because we have to send it back to Marc's people tomorrow. Got it?”