Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (18 page)

“No way.” Jake shook his head, his voice husky with stress. “You didn’t just do that to save my ass.” Charlotte tipped the bag on its side, raining the rainbow candy into a waiting Waterford crystal bowl. “Admit you miss me.”

“Ew.” Charlotte pinched the empty bag at either corner, snapping it clean. “I think you should leave.”

“No,” he replied, with a simple bob of his eyebrows. “My sister told me to come.”

“You did?” Charlotte flashed, causing Janie to drop a corner of the banner and wobble in her chair.

“I told him between one and two,” she explained in a rush. “During your break.”

“During her
break
?” Jake observed. “Gee, Janie. Way to bend over backward.”

“I just . . . I didn’t want it to be awkward!” she stammered.

“
We’re
not
awkward
,”
Jake and Charlotte cried in unison, aggressively avoiding eye contact.

“Um, excuse me?” Melissa planted a manicured hand on her hip, temporarily halting her distribution of pink-and-black
POSEUR
buttons.

“We’re promoting
POSEUR
awareness,” Petra explained.

“And you two are
not
representing,” Melissa bristled. With a hard look, she raised a bullhorn to her lips.
“Free Starburst!”

“What I don’t understand . . .” Charlotte locked eyes with Jake and resumed her rant at a low hiss, stuffing candy into anonymous outstretched hands. “. . . Is the way you just, like,
go around.
Like nothing ever happened.”

“
I
go around like nothing happened,” Jake scoffed in abject disbelief, looping the periphery of the booth. Eager to escape his advance, Charlotte sprung from her seat, scurrying to the foot of the table. Jake instantly rooted himself in his tracks; it was one thing to argue with your ex in public, quite another to chase her around a booth. From either end of the long table, they faced each other, eyes narrowed like rival tennis champs.

“
You’re
the one who’s in love with someone else,” he informed her, lobbing the first ball.

“Oh please,” Charlotte sent it flying back. “I never said we were
in love
.”

“Really,” Jake retorted with an expert backhand shot. “That’s not how Janie tells it.”

“He forced it out of me!” Janie explained, descending from the wobbling chair to safer ground.

“Well,” Charlotte sniffed. “Fine. Maybe we
are
in love. So?”

“So?” Jake gripped his face and sort of smeared it around. A rueful laugh escaped his lips. “We broke up, like five minutes ago!”

“As if you care.” Charlotte tightened her jaw. “Janie told me all about how
happy
you are.”

“You
did
?” Jake turned to his sister, agog.

“Omigod.” Janie covered her face in her hands. “Please, don’t put me in the middle of this.”

“You’re not in the middle!” they cried again in unison.

“You wanna know who’s in the middle of this?”
Melissa blasted into her bullhorn, causing every person in a fifteen-foot radius to cringe, clapping their hands to their ears.
“
Me.
And I do not want to be here.”

“Fine.” Jake scowled, shoving his hands into his beat-up corduroy pockets. And then, to no one in particular, he muttered, “See you around.”

“Don’t forget your free Starburst!”
Melissa bellowed, and Charlotte shot her a defensive glance. Removing her heels, she took off at a sprint, chasing Jake down. She waved her hand above her harried head.

“Jake! Wait!”

Melissa unwrapped a yellow Starburst and popped it into her glossy pink mouth. “That was crazy,” she pronounced with a bob of her perfectly groomed eyebrows.

“I don’t know what to do.” Janie shook her head and solemnly chewed. “I don’t think I can take it.”

“Oh, come on. Stiffen up.” Petra smiled, unwrapping a green Starburst. “I’ve seen way worse.”

“Marco and I
never
fight,” Melissa informed them proudly, after a disapproving glance in the direction of the slowly turning, spastically flashing Ferris wheel, where Jake and Charlotte continued to rave, gesticulating wildly. “Those two need to learn to resolve their conflicts in a mature manner.”

“You mean like us?” Petra scoffed at the irony. “We can’t even decide on a
bag
without death threats.”

“Please.” Melissa slapped the air with her hand. “This is not the time.”

“Um . . . it kind of is,” Petra pointed out. “October thirty-first is Monday. And today? Is Thursday. If we plan to have a bag ready, we better make a decision, like, yesterday?”

“Actually,” Janie timidly intruded. “I have a possible solution?” Melissa and Petra waited, solemnly sucking their Starbursts. “I just thought,” Janie continued, blushing at their attention, “instead of choosing
one
design, we could, like, take the best elements of
all
our designs and combine them into one. You know . . . come to some sort of . . .”

But before she could say “compromise,” they were distracted by a long and terrified scream.

Thursday, October 27 — 7:33 p.m.

Are you there, Tom? Itís me, Nikki.

I have been a member of MySpace for more than 13 months (I wasn’t allowed to join until seventh grade or else I would have been a member for much, much longer ;-)). I remember when I first joined MySpace and my page said “you have 1 friends” and that friend was you! I was excited but at the same time a little freaked out because a) I didn’t know who you were and b) you’re way, way older than me (Happy 32nd, btw!!!) Anyway, the combination of these two things meant I was worried you were a cybermolester and/or i-Perv.

To be on the safe side, I called my best friend (ex-best friend now) because she’d already been on MySpace for two months and I figured she’d know what to do. But she just started laughing like, “Oh my God, you’re not talking about Tom, are you?” And I was like, “What?” And she was like, “Nikki! He started MySpace. He’s an automatic friend, not a friend friend!”

Well, then I felt pretty dumb.

But a lot has changed since then and I have totally changed my attitude. I realize I should have never felt dumb or embarrassed — that feeling excited was the right way to feel. Because when you think about it, it’s a lot like how my grandmother says it is with God. I mean, she says God accepts everybody no matter what — so does that mean we should all be like, “Oh yeah. God. He accepts everybody so He doesn’t count?”

Answer to my own question: No!!! LOL!

Basically I would like to apologize for not thinking of you as a “real friend.” And please don’t think I’m only writing you now because you’re my only MySpace friend left (besides celebrities and my cousins in Florida) because that is so not the reason. The real reason is we have so much in common. For starters, we both don’t smoke, are from L.A., and have “General Interests” such as karaoke and finding new food!!! Also, we are both air signs (you’re a Libra, I’m an Aquarius) and like Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson, and movies such as Beauty & The Beast and Gladiator.

Okay, this comment has gotten waaaay too long. Sorry! Basically I just wanted to say I’m looking 4-ward to getting to know you better. And please write back soon!!!!:-)

Luv <333

Nikki

P.S. Happyyy Halloweennn!!!!

Thursday, October 27 — 7:37 p.m.

Are you there, Tom? Itís me, Nikki.

Sorry!! I know I only wrote you four minutes ago, LOL!! But I just wanted to say that just because I wrote you a super-long comment does not mean you need to write me a super-long comment back!;-) Even if you wrote me a small to medium-length comment back, that would totally, totally make my day!!

Luv <333

Nikki

P.S. I heart your sideburns!!!!

Thursday, October 27 — 8:58 p.m.

Are you there, Tom? Itís me, Nikki.

So, so sorry I’m writing you again! Please don’t think I’m psycho — I totally get that you have 213,957,272 friends and your mood is “busy,” so it’s not like I expect you to write me back right away!! It’s just I happened to be looking at your profile again and I just noticed that under “About Me” you wrote: I’m Tom and I’m here to help you — send me a message if you’re confused by anything. And even though I know you probably mean “confusion about MySpace,” and not “confusion about life in general,” I still thought maybe you could help with just one thing?????

Last Thursday, I was supposed to eat lunch with this kind of nerdy girl but she left and forgot to take her geodes with her (geodes are like rocks but with crystals inside). I knew she’d be super upset so I decided to return them to her, but when I walked up holding her blue tackle box (that’s where she keeps her geodes), she was like, “You stole my geodes!” I was like, “No, I didn’t. You left them behind!” but she refused to listen and started to cry. Like really cry. Like her nose turned pink and her eyes puffed up like those fat goldfish with puffy eyes and at one point a huge snot bubble came out of her nostril. Pretty soon a big crowd formed around her with everyone looking at each other like, “Why is she crying?” with these “How sad” expressions on their faces even though I know for a fact they’d all made fun of this girl a million gazillion times!!! Then I heard this new girl say, “Nikki stole her geodes,” and right after she said it the nerdy girl cried really loud so of course everybody thought what she said was true. Then somebody called me a bad word (the same bad word had been written on my locker, FYI), and I turned around to see who it was and something cold and slimy hit me on the face. At first I thought it was a loogie (sp????) except the only boy I know who can make a loogie that big is Casey Madigan and he lives in Denver now. Before I could wipe my face, more of them hit me all over my back and my neck and my knees, and there were all these splattering noises, and I screamed really, really loud. I ran and ran until I was in the girls’ bathroom and these two ninth-grade girls stared at me and the one with brown hair said, “Ew,” and the one with blue hair started laughing and it wasn’t until then that I looked into the mirror. I was covered in pumpkin guts. Big disgusting globs of orange pumpkin guts and pumpkin seeds all in my hair and my face and all over my favorite white Lacoste shirt.

I ended up going home early.

The thing is, there’s this hard, hard ache feeling inside my throat and behind my heart that won’t go away. In science class, we learned about petrified wood — which is what happens when trees get buried in the ground where there isn’t any oxygen and they turn into stone. For the last three days, I’ve felt like I haven’t been able to breathe, which probably means I haven’t gotten enough oxygen, and meanwhile the ache feeling is getting harder and harder and I can’t help but wonder . . . are there such things as petrified human beings?

Okay, now that I wrote it down I can tell I’m being com-puh-lete-ly overdramatic!!!! But still, it would be so helpful if you were like, “Nikki, you’re being dramatic!” Also, that things won’t feel this way forever. And that things will get better (soon!).

For some reason it doesn’t help at all when I tell myself these things.

Luv <333

Nikki

“Bravo! Bravo!” Vivien cried from the edge of the embossed gold velvet settee, springing to her feet. She was auditioning pianists for her all-important engagement party, and Seedy had insisted Melissa be there, because, quote-unquote, it’s real important to Vivien. Uh-huh. More like “real important to Vivien” to
ruin
her Saturday morning
and
afternoon.

Melissa wrested her attention from her Apple iPhone — she’d been updating her Web site MoonWalksonMan.com — to focus on her soon-to-be-stepmother’s clapping hands.
She’s still doing it.
Melissa narrowed her eyes, carefully unwrapping a leftover pink Starburst. At first, she’d thought it was only her imagination, but after a week of cold, hard observation, she now knew for sure it wasn’t. She glanced at her father.
Am I the only person seeing this?

Now that six-foot-high, fake-purple-eyed Vivien Ho had a twenty-six carat ring to show off, she’d reassigned all hand-related activity from her right hand to her less-inclined left. She waved with her left. Answered her cell with her left. Opened doors, smoothed her hair, and applied lip gloss with her left. But because
she was actually right-handed
(it was all Melissa could do not to scream this fact out loud), even the most basic gestures looked plain
off.

She can’t even
clap
right,
Melissa realized, fluttering her eyes shut. Woman looked like an underfed porpoise with a double-fractured flipper.

“Ah . . .” She stopped clapping and returned to her seat, tucking a white Juicy Couture pompom boot under her A&G pink denim miniskirt-clad butt. “Wasn’t that just
so
pretty?” she proposed, landing her left hand on Seedy’s knee.

Ms. Beauchamp, the latest in Vivien’s long string of applicants, turned on the round white leather piano seat, her hard coral fingernails pressed firmly to her plump, burgundy slacks–-covered thighs, and attempted a smile. Blobby pearl earrings gleamed in her saggy, soft ears, and a ruffled gray silk blouse spilled over her enormous breasts. She looked like the kind of woman who kept a bird, covered her couches in plastic, and refused to “forgive Charles for what he did to Diana” — and she was.