Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (9 page)

“What are you guys
doing
?” Petra cried, immediately clapping a hand over her mouth, as shocked by the sound of her voice as her parents were. She stood up to flee, but it was too late. They were already staring up at her, stunned.

“Young lady,” Robert intoned while Heather rose to her feet, tugging the skirt of her dress to cover her exposed lacy cream slip. She pressed her cabernet-stained lips together and stifled a laugh, burying her face in Robert’s shoulder while Petra looked on with horror. That she thought this was
funny.
It was just so, like,
pathetic.

“Go to bed, Petra,” her father ordered while her mother snorted into his armpit. “Now.”

“Don’t” — Petra gritted her teeth, balling her ink-stained hand into a tight fist — “talk to me like a child.”

“Petra!” her mother gasped in genuine shock. “How dare you?”

“How dare
I
?” Petra seethed, her tea-green eyes welling up with tears. “God, Mom. You don’t know
anything.
”

“I know you’re in deep trouble.” Robert stepped forward, hardening his tone.

“
I’m
in trouble.” Petra returned his threat with a menacingly contemptuous smile, and an expression of genuine concern flashed across his face.
Not for her,
her mind raced.
But for him.
His lips parted.

“Pet . . .”

But she’d already whirled on her heel and escaped down the hall. Rounding the corner that led to the maid’s quarters, she thudded downstairs and within moments was in the backyard, streaking across their perfectly manicured lawn, the wet grass pushing up between her toes and sticking to her ankles in itchy thatches. She pushed through the thick Cyprus hedge and rounded the edges of their glowing green swimming pool, avoiding the painted grin on the duck decoy which bobbed on the surface, slowly dispensing chlorine. She had to get to her playhouse — not that it was hers, not anymore. Sofia and Isabel had captured it long ago, replacing Petra’s green flag with their own pink one, and, for mysterious reasons all their own, rechristening it Mooyaka Baka.

Petra stooped at the tiny red door, with its heart-shaped window and real brass knocker, punched in Isabel and Sofia’s top-secret code (P-R-I-N-C-E-S-S), and pushed into the castle’s miniature interior. After a moment’s fumbling, she flicked on the track lighting, mounted the spiraling stairs to the roof, and clambered up the silky rope ladder fixed to the castle’s right turret, spilling into the crow’s nest. Above a battery-operated lantern and a mini-arsenal of water balloons, an antique-looking toy telescope dangled on a hook. Petra took the instrument into her lap, twisting it counterclockwise until it fell into two parts. In one, she kept a blue Bic lighter and a small blue and green glass pipe. In the other, a baggie of weed.

She lit up and exhaled, watching the smoke slowly swirl, turn inside of itself, and disperse. She searched the night sky for the North Star and imagined she was at sea, where nobody judged you for drifting.

“Hey.”

Petra ducked low into the crow’s nest, sucking in her breath. Did somebody just say “hey,” or had she imagined it? Above her, the pink castle flag whipped around in the wind, the nylon rubbing into itself, sounding small whirs of friction. She exhaled.
Just the wind,
she reasoned.
Playing tricks.

“Dude!”

Okay.
She swallowed hard. Had the wind just called her “dude”?

“Come on, man. I know you’re up there. I can smell you from here.”

With all the courage she could muster, Petra lifted her tousled head and peered over the edge of the crow’s nest, scanning her night-cloaked backyard. “Over here,” the voice instructed, punctuating his command with a splash of water. Petra redirected her gaze to a corner of her neighbors’ Olympic-sized swimming pool, where a boy around her age grinned up at her, his finely chiseled face pale in the moonlight. He pulled right up to the pool’s edge, the muscles in his arm tensing as he pushed a dripping mop of dark blue hair from his eyes. Petra couldn’t believe it. She’d seen this guy before, months ago, from the corner of her bedroom balcony, and had looked for him every night for a week, but he’d never showed again. After a while, she filed him away under “vivid dream.” It was either that or “hallucination.”

She wasn’t hallucinating now, was she?

“Oh shit!” He floated a little ways from the wall before yanking himself back again. “Are you, like, a
girl
up there?”

Petra forked her fingers through her tangled honey-blond mane and gave it a little tug, grabbing her brain by the reins. If he was a hallucination and she answered, wouldn’t she technically be talking to herself? “Hey,” she began slowly. “You weren’t here before, were you? Like in July?”

“Probably,” he replied, still gripping the wall. “My grandparents live here. What are you, some kind of spy pervert?”

“No!”
she cried, appalled at the accusation. “I was just on my balcony, and I, like,
happened
to see you. It’s not like I . . . I mean, I seriously didn’t even think you were
real
.”

“Man,” he snorted after a pointed pause. “It’s a good thing I know you’re stoned. Otherwise I’d think you were retarded.”

Petra laughed, allowing the insult to slide. “I even had a name for you,” she confessed with a tiny shiver. The pot had made her skin hot and the night air liquid and cold, like forgotten bathwater. “I called you the Naked Moon God.”

“The Naked Moon God?”
He curdled with scorn. “Wait.” He paused, plastering himself against the side of the pool. “Are you saying you saw me naked?”

“Well, yeah,” Petra answered, bewildered. “I mean, you’re naked now, right?”

He didn’t respond, and was so firmly stuck to the side of the pool that he resembled one of those figurines, suction-cupped to a car window.

“Omigod,” Petra realized. “Are you, like . . .
embarrassed
?”

“No!” he scoffed, venturing a few inches from the wall, as if to prove his point.

“Okay,” she challenged. “If you’re not embarrassed, then get out of the pool.”

“No way.”

“Come on,” she urged him. “I’ll roll you a joint that’ll last you ’til January.”

Naked Moon God cocked his head in interest, drifting farther from the wall. “February,” he countered, treading water.

“January and a half,” she countered back.

“Deal.”

Before she could respond, he ducked beneath the surface, pushed off the wall, and propelled through the glowing green water, sleek and quiet as a seal. He rose with a gasp, drifted into the shadow of the diving board, and grabbed hold of the stair railing. He glanced up at Petra in the crow’s nest, stalling for time, and her heart rose in her throat. She opened her mouth to call out —
forget it, never mind
— but his foot found a step she couldn’t see, and he hoisted himself up and out of the pool. A pause passed between them, filled with sounds quieter than no sound: the crack of a twig inside a tree, a howling dog in the distance, and all that water kissing the walls of the two pools, the bobbing underbelly of the plastic duck, and dripping off the edges of this boy’s perfect, perfect body.

“So, what’s your name?” he asked, wrapping a white towel around his trim torso.

“Petra,” she called, wrapping her chilled body with her arms.

“Petra.” He frowned, squinting up at her. “Is that one of those fruity New Age made-up names? Like Shaleelo or whatever?”

“No.” She frowned, fumblingly rescrewing the telescope. She could feel him watching as she descended the taut white rope ladder and leaped to the roof. “It’s actually been around forever.” She brushed her hands and turned to face him, but she was too low, and all she could see was the high woodplanked wall and its lush ramble of ivy. She missed the sight of him, she realized, but wouldn’t dare return to the crow’s nest and live up to her “spy pervert” reputation. Jumping from the low roof to the soft earth, she casually approached the fence. “Petra means stone,” she explained. “In Latin.”

“Stone?”
He snickered behind the ivy. “Man, your parents had you figured out at birth.”

“My parents have their own assholes figured out, and that’s about it,” Petra ruffled.

“Whoa,”
he laughed, impressed. “You got a streak of anger in you, Miss Stone?”

Petra blinked into the dark, stunned. Wasn’t she the girl who floated around in mud-stained ankle-length cotton skirts, a dreamy, sad smile on her face, bifurcating blades of green grass with her thumbnail and answering basic questions with befuddled, but well-meaning,
“Whats?”
She loved petting zoos, naps outdoors, and harp music. Joaquin called her the Mistress of Mellow, and Theo, Queen Serene. No one in her sixteen years had ever called her angry, meaning no one (she now realized) had ever truly known her. Until this boy, who’d seen right through the fence, past the dark cascading ivy, and straight into her raging, smoldering soul.

“You
should
be angry,” he proclaimed, his gravelly voice clearer somehow, as if he’d moved closer to the fence.

“I should?” Her heart throbbed.

“We all should,” he affirmed.

“Listen” — she cleared her throat — “I can’t roll a joint right now, so I’m just going to throw the bag over the fence, okay?” She pitched the baggie into the air, watching it rise into the night sky like a jellyfish, and then strained to hear it land. “Did you get it?”

“Yeah . . .” He groaned over a manic rustle of leaves. “Ow! Okay . . .”

She smiled as the rustle died down, and drew closer to the fence. A weighty silence passed. “Hello?” she called, her heart beating in her ears.

“What?” he replied, his voice even more thrillingly close. He had to be right up against the fence, now. Just like she was.

“It’s just . . .” She laughed, brushed aside a tangle of ivy, and flattened her palm against the exposed plank. Under the ivy, the wood was cool, moist with dew and rot, and as it warmed against her hand, she worked up the nerve to ask.

“What’s your name?”

That night, as she lay in bed, it became an incantation. Should her parents return to haunt her head, all she had to do was say
Paul Elliot Miller,
and, in the wake of a deep, happy blush, they’d disappear, like vapors.

The Girl: Melissa Moon

The Getup: Black velour yoga pants by Juicy Couture, jasmine blue tank by C&C, gold icon charm anklet by Dolce & Gabbana, white silk push-up bra by La Perla.

It was Sunday morning, and Melissa had yet to come up with a solid design for the Trick-or-Treater, which was seriously
not
okay, especially since Charlotte, Janie, and Petra had already turned in theirs, which meant Janie would start their drawings first, which meant — by the time she got to Melissa’s — she might just skimp for time. That her design might receive unequal treatment! It was too unfair to think about. She tried to calm down with a brutal round of crunches, but even
that
didn’t work. She’d had to keep fighting the disturbing urge to bite her own knees.

Vivien, of course, had cracked that Melissa needed medication. But her father rearranged a few letters and suggested something nicer:
meditation
.

“Always begin with
om,
” he reminded her, stabbing into a plate of quivering egg whites, while Vivien plunked down a companion plate of two strips of Facon Bacon, a slice of gluten-free toast, and a glistening pink blob of antioxidant-fortified pomegranate jelly. “
Om
is the sound of infinity and immortality, which serves to
focus the mind.
” He picked up a strip of Facon and raised his eyebrows, pointing. “After that, you say
namo
— to
honor
and
appreciate.
For example, when I say,
‘Om namo Shivaya,’
I am giving praise to the deity Shiva, gaining tranquil insight and destroying negative qualities.”

With that, he bit into his Facon, chewing with the ambivalent, glazed expression cats get when they eat grass.

Melissa tried her father’s mantra for a while, but as far as deities went, Shiva left her cold. She wasn’t interested in tranquil insight. She wasn’t interested in tranquil
anything.
She was interested in chaos, commotion, and craziness. Besides. Since her father went all “peace and love,” hadn’t his work paid a price? His latest single, “Buddha Be My Boo,” completely and totally tanked.

Melissa wasn’t about to make that mistake.

She stared hard at the smooth sheet of gold monogrammed paper on her desk, her crème brûlée Dior reading glasses glinting impressively on the bridge of her nose. Emilio Poochie lay sprawled across a sheepskin throw beneath her massive white-and-gold executive desk, and Marco Duvall, her boyfriend of four months, sat on her overstuffed pink floral Princess bed, staring slack-jawed at a digital dribbling posse of three-inch-tall Lakers. Melissa jiggled her foot until the moon-and-star charms on her anklet chimed. She fluttered her eyes shut and inhaled.

“
Om . . . namo
. . .
Kimora
. . .” She exhaled.
“Om . . . namo . . . Kimoraaa . . .”