Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (4 page)

No doubt about it,
Nikki realized, baby-pink fingernails trembling above her Apple wireless Mighty Mouse.
I’m out.

Unable to wrest her cornflower-blue gaze from the laptop screen, she’d reached for her pearl-pink Nokia flip-phone, and clumsily uprooted it, charger and all, from its Winnie the Pooh outlet. She had to contact Jake. Not just because she’d kissed him, but because
he’d kissed her too.

Which meant they were in this together.

To: Jake Farrish

From: Nikki Pellegrini

Are you ok?

She went outside and paced the gentle slopes of the private tree-lined lawn, eyes fixed to her phone, waiting for him to respond. The hours passed: shadows grew longer; sprinklers spattered and hissed; and then, terrifyingly, a black Bugatti sports car
verroomed
over the curb, barreling down the brick-paved drive toward their six-car garage. She gasped and staggered backward, her flimsy pink floral knee-length skirt aflutter in its wake, as the Bugatti came to a screeching halt. The gleaming doors opened, unfolding into the air like insect wings, and revealed, at long last, the dreaded driver.

“You are trying to kill me?” Her father squawked, clutching the glistening gray curls on his Banana Tropic–tanned cave of a chest. With his scrawny neck, beaked nose, and shock of white hair, seventy-one-year-old Giovanni Pellegrini brought to mind a newly hatched chicken, a resemblance not lost on Lucia, his twenty-seven-year-old Brazilian girlfriend, who liked to call him “Clucky.” He emerged from the ticking car, took one swipe at the lapel of his deep purple silk Valentino suit, and locked Nikki into his dark-circled gaze. “You are trying to give me an attack?!”

“No.” Nikki cowered, hoping to appease his tyrannical heart. He ignored her, turning instead to address Lucia, who remained inside the gleaming black car, staring into the rearview mirror.

“Oh, Looocia!” he sang. “Perhaps you did not know my daughter has murdered me? Lucia, I am speaking to you from beyond the grave!”

Lucia picked the inside corner of her bored, mascara-encrusted eye. As founder and CEO of the legendary Italian lingerie line La Mela, Mr. Pellegrini thrived on a diet of non-stop attention, but if you desired
his
attention, it was better to pretend he didn’t exist. Simpler said than done — not one of his previous wives
or
girlfriends (including Nikki’s own mother, God rest her soul) managed to do it. Until, of course, reptile-hearted Lucia, who had the skill down pat. The curvy black-rooted blonde exited the car — her dark eyes and spidery lashes now concealed by enormous black Fendi sun-glasses — and headed slowly, tick-tock, to the main house.

“Never have I known such a sow!” Mr. Pellegrini cried to her retreating, Versace-clad, apathetic ass. Lucia didn’t so much as twitch. She planned to ignore him all the way to the altar.

Unable to cope with her father’s ridiculous antics on top of her far more serious stresses, Nikki fled to the secluded orange-tree grove along the west wall of their estate. Within the dense, citrus-scented shade, she listened to the noisy bustle at the main entrance: the jangle of jewelry and dog leashes, the rise and fall of her father’s Italian-accented voice, the icy click of Lucia’s stilettos, the door’s resounding slam. Nikki sighed, twisting her hands. It was already dusk. The world was spinning, whether she wanted it to or not, and bringing her closer to all she dreaded most.

Monday morning.

“Nicoletta!” A weary old voice leaked into the twilight, croaking like a bog creature. “What are you doing out there? Digging like a gypsy in the leaves. You make me
pazzesco.
”

“Sorry, Nonna,” Nikki addressed the last in a long row of windows on the estate’s ground floor. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“What is wrong?” Her grandmother coughed behind the antique lace curtains. “Are you
sique
?”

“No,” Nikki squeaked.
If only I
were
sick,
she thought.
I wouldn’t have to go to school.

Wait a second.

“I-I mean
yes,
” she stammered, cringing with guilt. She never,
ever
lied. “I . . . I threw up.”

“Il mio povero bambino!”
her grandmother cried. (Nikki wondered if nothing thrilled her grandmother so much as illness.) “Let me see you,
cara.
Come inside!”

She obliged, finding her Nonna exactly where she always found her: in bed, propped into place by plump virgin-white lace-trimmed pillows. Her four poodles — Belinda, Bambi, Fausto, and Spot — were curled into motionless balls, pinned like fur buttons on the four corners of her mattress. “What happened?” She lifted a thin, pale hand, beckoning her closer. “Why are you
sique
?”

Nikki perched on the mattress’s outermost edge (she was only half-convinced old age wasn’t contagious) and stared into her wrinkled cotton lap. “I have a sore throat,” she ventured, amazed how easy it was to lie once you got started. “And, um, my stomach hurts.”

“Terrible, terrible . . .” Her grandmother reached for a forbidden pack of Capri cigarettes. “Perhaps you went to another party last night like the one last weekend?” She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, squinting.

“No.” Nikki flushed, still embarrassed by the memory. To her grandmother’s concern, and her father’s outrage, she’d come home drunk. Mr. Pellegini had threatened to send her to a nunnery, but her grandmother had intervened. “When I was her age I was pregnant . . .
with you.
If
I
learn from my mistake,
so
will Nicoletta.”

“I promised I’d never do that again,” Nikki reminded her, staring at the plush beige carpet.

“I know,
cara,
” her grandmother consoled her with a gravelly laugh. “I only ask to get your mind on other things. Because you are so
sique.
”

“I
am,
” Nikki emphasized, sounding more defensive than she would have liked. She sighed, looking at her lap.

“What is it?” Nikki the First exhaled, careful to direct the smoke away from her precious granddaughter’s face. She smiled, settling back into her pillows. “Tell me.”

“It’s just . . .” She hesitated. “Something happened at that party. Something I didn’t tell you.” She confessed the final words in a whisper. “Something bad.”

“Something bad?
You?
” Her grandmother laughed, bringing on a second fit of coughing. Clutching her heart, she reached for a glass of water. “Go on,” she gasped after a sip. “Please, continue.”

Nikki examined her grandmother’s face. The wrinkled mouth, the rice-paper skin, the floating halo of downy white hair:
she is so . . . old,
Nikki surmised, resolving to change the subject. But then she looked into her eyes. They were a lively shade of blue, and bright — almost as if fourteen-year-old Nonna was
in
there,
watching
— merrily observing life from behind a ninety-two year-old’s mask.

“Nonna.” Nikki cleared her throat, summoning every ounce of her courage. “Do you, um . . . remember your first kiss?”

“Ach!”
She collapsed against her pillows, and for a terrified second, Nikki thought the question killed her. “I try to remember,” she roused herself. “I must have been, what. Five years old? Six?”

“Not
that
kind of kiss,” Nikki clarified. “I mean like a
real
kiss. Like the way adults do it.”

“Adults!” Her grandmother rasped with laughter. “Adults do not kiss,
cara.
Only children.”

“You don’t understand,” Nikki sighed, shaking her head. But her grandmother only smiled, patting her white knit blanket until she found her granddaughter’s hand.

“So you kissed someone at this party?”

“Yes,” Nikki confirmed in a whisper.

“This is what you call your
bad thing.
Why is this bad?”

“He . . . he has a girlfriend,” Nikki stammered, once again unable to meet her eyes. “
Had
a girlfriend. They broke up because of me. And now she, like,
hates
me, and everyone
else
hates me, too, which isn’t even fair because, it’s not like I
meant
to do it! I just . . . Oh, Nonna.
I just like him so much.
I swear I’ve never, ever felt this way. Not about anyone
ever.
” Her grandmother squeezed her hand, and Nikki’s emotions rose in her throat. “It’s like I
love
him,” she choked. “And he won’t even text me back!”

“Forget about this boy,” her grandmother sniffed, mashing her fuming cigarette into a flowered, porcelain dish. “Men can rot in the ditches. Concentrate on the girl. Try to earn her for-giveness.”

“Okay,” Nikki blotted fresh tears with the backs of her wrists. “But . . .
how
?”

“You will think of something.” She chuckled softly. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her chin sunk into the hollow at her throat. “I am sorry,” she apologized, cracking her eyes open. “All of a sudden I am tired.”

“Okay.” Nikki nodded, sliding from the edge of her mattress, then hesitated. “I lied to you about being sick,” she confessed in a rush. Her grandmother bobbed her nonexistent eyebrows and smiled.

“Yes . . . you are a bad liar, Nicoletta. You need to learn to
fake
being sick — like me,” she remarked with another gravelly laugh. Gazing at her prescription bottle–cluttered night table, she sighed. “I am a professional.”

Perhaps it was punishment for her lie, or perhaps reward for confessing it; in any event, Nikki woke up that Monday with the worst sore throat of her life. While three hundred plus Winstonians roused themselves to attend that morning’s Town Meeting, Nikki stayed home. She sipped hot tea and lemon, reread her favorite Sailor Moon manga, and tried her best to recuperate, to gather her strength.

She knew she’d need every ounce of it to return to school.

The Girl: Petra Greene

The Getup: Sapphire blue and parrot green Ella Moss chemise, United States of Apparel black cotton-stretch leggings, and turquoise Havianna flip-flops.

On Rodeo Drive, beautiful sixteen-year-old girls are a dime a dozen, but a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl bending over a gigantic metal trash bin and rummaging through garbage like a beggar —
that
was worth noticing. Petra gritted her teeth and scowled, ignoring the beeping horns of passing luxury cars, the averted eyes of appalled pedestrians, the stupid catcalls: “Come on baby. Don’t throw yourself away!” Weren’t any of these materialistic bastards even the tiniest bit
concerned
? Wouldn’t someone like to know how she ended up in such desperate circumstances?

She woke that Tuesday to the sound of her phone. Judging by the cool, bedroom dark, it was early — five in the morning, tops — which meant whoever was calling had to be a nut job, most likely a member of her family (most nut jobs were), which meant one thing: do
not
pick up. With a dramatic groan, she executed her reliable Human Taco Defense: 1) stuff face into pillow, 2) wrap pillow around ears, 3) pin pillow in place with arm, and 4) enjoy. Within seconds she was fast asleep.

But then her phone rang again.

Kicking aside her tangled sheets, she embarked on the angry pursuit of her Nokia, a task you
might
compare to finding a needle in a haystack, except that gave haystacks way too much credit. When it came to concealing the whereabouts of tiny objects, Petra’s bed had haystack’s butt kicked. In addition to the rumpled green-and-purple-paisley patchwork bedspread, her lofted futon boasted a lopsided mound of dirty laundry, a toppled pile of clean laundry, her crocheted hemp hobo, a scatter of loose change, two mechanical pencils, and a random peppering of grayish-pink eraser boogers. (There was also a half-eaten brownie encased in tinfoil, but she would not learn of its existence for another two weeks, when her sheets hacked it up like an old metallic hairball.) Despite the increasing chaos of her room, Petra refused to allow Imelda, the Greenes’ cheerful Guatemalan housekeeper, to clean it up. When her exasperated mother claimed she
didn’t hire Imelda to sit around and do nothing
(Imelda was almost always within earshot, bent over an ironing board, or crouched by a dryer door), Petra would retort: “I can clean up after myself!” And she
could.

In theory.

She found her phone at last, bleating like a lost lamb in the narrow crevice between her futon and bedroom wall.
“Hello?”

“Finally!” crowed the bright voice on the other line.

Petra sighed with mind-altering exasperation, belly-flopping across her mattress. “Hey, Melissa.”

“Alright, listen up. Emilio Poochie, down! I was talking to my dad, right? And he was saying all we have to do is bring him
one
vandalized tag and he’d take it to his guy in K-town to have the handwriting
professionally analyzed.
Apparently, the man can tell your
shoe
size from, like, the way you cross your
T
s!”

At the goatish staccato of her friend’s laughter, Petra winced, rolling onto her back. “Melissa,” she yawned, blinking her bleary eyes at the ceiling. She’d have to choose her next words carefully. “What?”