Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (17 page)

And then, out of nowhere, Nikki Pellegrini asked to sit with her.

“Why?” Molly looked up at her, squinting, and Nikki shrugged, struggling to smile.
Because I have no other options!
(It was all she could do not to scream it out loud). All this week, Carly and Juliet had
refused
to eat with her. “Sometimes we just need to be alone,” they’d explained, annoyed.
Which makes perfect sense,
Nikki thought, considering
they
were eating lunch together, while
she
was eating alone. She’d hovered around other groups of girls in hopes some kind member might take pity, but they too ignored her (in her presence, they’d grow quiet, communicating solely by eye contact). Not that Nikki blamed them. Everyone knew she was Melissa Moon’s primary suspect (Venice had wasted no time spreading the word). Who’d want to be seen with someone that not one but
two
popular sophomores happened to hate? It was social suicide.

As was eating lunch with Molly Berger when everybody else was at the carnival. But, at this point, what’d she have to lose?

“It’s just . . .” Molly grimaced, stabbing her strawberry-milk box with a stiff white straw. To her left, a horizontally cut turkey sandwich sat neatly on a flattened paper bag. To her right, a collection of small- to medium-sized geodes sparkled purple in the sun. “I don’t think it’s right,” she explained, after a gasping sip of milk, “to ask to eat lunch with me as a last resort.”

“What makes you think you’re a last resort?” Nikki asked, attempting innocence.

“Well, because you’ve been ostracized.” Molly shrugged, taking a gigantic bite out of her turkey sandwich. Off of Nikki’s blank look, she continued, “That means you’ve been rejected in the most extreme way possible.”

“I know what it means,” Nikki lied. A nearby drinking fountain buzzed awake and shuddered, and she shifted her weight from one leg to the other, exhaling a short, impatient breath. “So, can I eat with you or not?”

Molly winced. “I guess.”

Nikki swallowed a sigh of relief, mounting the cement steps to the computer lab stoop. “Just a moment,” Molly ordered, popping the latch of a blue-and-gray tackle box. One by one, she wrapped her geodes in sage-green velveteen cloths, packing them inside. Nikki gestured to help, but Molly rejected her offer, hulking over the stones like an overprotective bird. “I’d prefer it if you’d just let me handle them,” she explained in a strained tone. “These stones are very fragile.”

“Oh.” Nikki’s hand retreated. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Molly resumed loading the stones. When the last one was safely tucked away, she locked the tackle box and set it to the ground, sliding it to the plaster wall with the side of her orange Croc. Satisfied, she looked up at Nikki and smiled. She kind of had a pretty smile if you could ignore the glob of mustard in the corner of her mouth.

“So,” she said, once Nikki assumed her place next to her on the stoop. She lowered her voice to a confidential level. “Did you do it?”

“No,” Nikki sighed, peering into a humid baggie of baby carrots. “I don’t know why everyone thinks I did.”

“I think it has something to do with being a slut,” Molly offered. Nikki gasped, her cornflower blue eyes wide with shock.

“What?”

“Not that being a slut means you’d vandalize contests.” Molly ripped into an apricot fruit leather and shrugged. “I mean, that’s like saying, ‘that girl’s obese so she’s more likely to rob banks.’” She snorted with laughter. “Absurd.”

“But who says that?” Nikki trembled. “Who says I’m a slut?”

“I don’t know.” Molly tore into her fruit leather and chewed. “People.”

“But I’m not!” Nikki wailed.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Molly leaned back in her seat and flinched. “
I’m
not a dork. Does that prevent anyone from saying I’m a dork?”

Before she could think better of it, a small yet combustible word escaped Nikki’s lips. “But.”

“But what?”
Molly huffed in two hot puffs of strawberry-milk breath. Nikki shook her head, reverting her gaze to her baby carrots. “No,” she persisted, crossing her blotchy pink arms across her oversized M.C. Escher t-shirt, “what were you going to say?”

“Omigawd-uh!”

There — in the center of a nearby alleyway, her eyes fixed to the two unlikely lunch companions in appalled horror — stood Carly Thorne. Juliet stood off to one side, her hand clapped to her mouth, and Venice Whitney-Wang leaned against the cinderblock wall, a fuchsia-legging leg kicked behind her, and Dita sunglasses glinting in the sun. Carly closed her mouth, remoistened her lips, and opened it again.

“You’re eating lunch with
her
?”

The world around Nikki seemed to ripple. All she wanted to do was leap to her feet, run toward Carly, and hug her forever. But, in respect for Molly’s feelings, she restrained the impulse.

“Aren’t you going to the carnival?” Juliet frowned in confusion.

Nikki beamed. “I just thought —”

“Not
you,
” Carly interrupted.
“Molly.”

Nobody moved except for Venice, who lowered her leg to the ground. A sparrow fluttered down to the cinderblock wall, hopped once, and cocked its sleek feathered head in interest.

“I don’t see the point of carnivals,” Molly started to explain. “They —”

“Why are you doing this?” Nikki blurted, interrupting Molly’s sure-to-be tedious observation. Her eyes danced between Carly and Juliet, wounded and bewildered. “You guys are supposed to be my
friends
.”

“It’s not like we haven’t tried.” Carly folded her arms across her padded chest and stared at the ground. “But it’s kind of like, you’ve made it impossible.”

“Seriously, Nikki.” Juliet flashed. “This isn’t all about you.”

“That is
so
not fair,” Nikki pleaded against all better judgment. Nothing annoyed her friends more than accusations of unfairness. Sure enough, Juliet rolled her eyes, readdressing Molly.

“You want to go on the Moon Bounce?” she asked. “I think there’s this new rule, like, you have to go in pairs of four.”

“Really?” Molly furrowed her brow in thought, stuffing the remains of her half-eaten lunch into a brown paper sack. One crushed milk box, two mustard-stained husks of sourdough bread, a semi-gnawed fruit leather, and two wax-sealed Baby Bell cheeses later, she replied. “Okay.”

“But we were going to have lunch!” Nikki reminded her, desperate beyond all reason.

“We can have lunch tomorrow,” Molly informed her, stuffing her bulging paper lunch sack into her backpack. “If you so desire.”

Nikki grabbed her by the bony elbow. “I hope you realize,” she croaked with emotion, “they’re only asking you to go on the Moon Bounce to make me feel bad. It’s not ’cause they actually
like
you.”

Molly drew herself up and gazed down the length of her narrow nose. Her skin had the blanched quality of uncooked macaroni. Her nostrils were so pink they glowed.

“You know what?” Her pale eyes winked with disdain. “You’re a really
mean
person.”

Before Nikki could defend herself, Molly pivoted the toe of her orange Croc and propelled her wedgie-butt toward the New Nicarettes. The three girls walked slowly, bumping into each other, laughing, taking their time, and Molly loped in their wake, squinting at the sky, and oblivious to her blue-and-gray tackle box, which — in what had to be a historical first — she’d left behind.

With a shuddering breath, Nikki lifted the box into her lap. She popped the latch, lifted the light plastic lid, and pinched aside a corner of sage-green velveteen fabric, revealing a small corner of the gray stone. She hesitated, bracing for Molly’s frantic return, before lifting the geode from its folds of velveteen. She liked the way it sat inside her palm, the eggish shape and dense weight of it, the way the purple crystals glittered in the sun. She turned the stone over and examined the rock shell, an ordinary gray, scarred in places by more ordinary grays. Before long tears spilled down her cheeks, raining like lemmings from the edge of her chin, splattering to the quiet asphalt, and dissolving everything in sight, even the geode, which she continued to turn in her hand until both sides looked the same.

With the exception of a spastic white ghost creature whipping around the inflatable roof, the Haunted Barn Moon Bounce was the same as all Moon Bounces. Puffy plastic walls creased, bowed, quaked, and trembled, a massive air pump droned, and, inside, a mass of seventh and eighth graders tossed about in chaos, masks of unbridled glee on their squealing pink faces. If they’d paused to look, they might have noticed Jake Farrish, his doleful face smashed against the net, observing them with the glazed eye of a trapped tuna.
Junior high
. . . he thought with a wistful sigh.

Such a happier, simpler time.

“Hands off the net!”
a crackling voice bellowed from behind the ticket booth, and Jake looked up. The Carnie couldn’t have been older than nineteen, but with his tattooed, sunburned arms, and massive, burly chest, he looked about thirty. Jake watched as one of these arms dislodged from its coordinate armpit, moved like a crane toward a large scuffed buzzer, and punched the button, sounding an alarm.

Needless to say, Jake’s hands were off the net. “Sorry,” he apologized.

“Step
away
from the Bounce,” the Carnie replied, and Jake took a few obliging steps backward.
“Did you hear what I said?”

“Dude,” he winced, indicating his size twelve Converse. “I
stepped.
”

“Alright,” the Carnie gritted his teeth, and steamrolled toward him, fists swinging. “What’s your name?”

“Why?” Jake asked, flinching in the hot gale of Carnie breath.

“Once again,” he continued, cricking his neck. He didn’t appear to speak so much as tear words from the open air, gnashing them like meat between his teeth. “What. Is. Your.
Name.
”

“No way, man.” Jake held his ground. “I didn’t
do
anything.”

“Will someone here tell me this guy’s name?”
He roared, whirling to face a gathering crowd of goggle-eyed kids. Jake’s eyes darted around in panic. It was only a matter of time before a teacher, sensing the commotion, intruded into the scene, and then . . . and then
what?
He hadn’t done anything!

“His name is Zach Braff.”

The crowd parted and she stepped forward, dressed for the season in a strapless orange silk organza mini dress and black patent-leather heels. Her tumultuous curls, restored to their original black coffee hue, were pulled back into a stem-green double-rope headband to which she’d sewn two delicately crocheted, matching green leaves. Her frosted lips, an iridescent cupcake color, matched her fingernails, which lined like pearls along her dainty hips. Not that Jake noticed this crap. All he saw were her eyes, which — in the half-second they rested on his — sparkled and snapped, alive again with their old familiar light.

“He’s my brother.” Charlotte returned her cool blue-green gaze to the Carnie.

“Really.” He grinned, eyeing Charlotte up and down. “
Someone
hogged the looks in the family.”

“And brains, unfortunately,” she sighed, once he’d finished laughing at his own joke. She returned a sisterly gaze to Jake, sighing with sympathy. “He’s a little . . .
challenged.
”

“No kiddin’.” Carnie mulled over this new grain of information, scratching his sturdy trapezoid of a neck. Charlotte straightened Jake’s collar, brushing some invisible lint from his shoulder.

“Zachy.” She shook her head and touched his cheek. “We didn’t eat too many pumpkin cookies, did we?”

The Carnie pushed some air between his lips. He wasn’t stupid — he knew he was being played — but he wasn’t in the mood to argue with a girl, especially one this pretty. Later that night, he’d heat up a pot of Campbell’s chicken noodle and stir and stir, dreaming up their life together. It would be an isolated life, deep in the heart of an uncharted forest. He would loft the Moon Bounce in the highest part of the forest canopy and invite her there to live, surrounded by brilliant blue sky, moss-covered tree branches, chattering parrots, kindly sloths, and the sound of dripping rain.

He turned toward Jake and, without warning, button-punched his scrawny boy-chest. “No more pumpkin cookies for
you.
”

“Ow . . .”

“Come back later.” Carnie ignored him, returning to Charlotte with a mild wink. “I’ll give you a free bounce.”

“Ooo!” she trilled in an effort to disguise her inner
ew.
Then, affecting an air of saintly patience, she led her “brother” away by his elbow. Jake happily allowed her to guide him (if she’d needed to declare him mentally deficient to save his ass, he might as well return the favor by playing his part). He gazed about the carnival, offering the world an uncomprehending smile. His brown eyes shone with wonder. A small petal-white butterfly fluttered by.

“Bird!”
He pointed. “Bird!
Bird!
”

Charlotte yelped with laughter, ducking her face into her hand — and then quickly threw his arm from her grasp, chastising herself. “Don’t make me laugh.” She shook her head, flashing her eyes. “This isn’t funny!”

Whirling on her tiny heel, she stormed toward Kate and Laila — who, after mutual steely looks in Jake’s direction, closed behind her like double doors. Jake stood for a few seconds, numb with confusion, and in a flash of frustration, followed his ex-girlfriend to the
POSEUR
booth. Melissa sat behind the table, lording over a thumping black boom box. On either side of her, Petra and Janie stood on plastic foldout chairs, mounting their blue-and-gold-silk
POSEUR
banner.

Charlotte found her seat next to Melissa, while Jake steamed ahead, pushing his way through the gathering mob of fashionistas. “What was that?” He panted, laying a hand on the wood table. “Why did you just
do
that?”

“I don’t know.” Charlotte frowned, ripping into a bulk pack of Starburst while the rest of the girls looked on, curiosity piqued. “I hate to see an old friend in trouble.”