Poseur (16 page)

The Girl: Charlotte Beverwil

The Getup: Sacred Ceremonial Garb

Charlotte liked to claim she was born a century late. She imagined herself as a drowsy-eyed courtesan in 1910 Paris, or perhaps
a depressive ballerina, or perhaps a rosy-cheeked nun who runs off with a daring young sculptor named Sebastien-Pièrre du
Pont. “But you wouldn’t have
liked
it, Blue Bear,” her father declared in his booming, theatrical voice (he’d invited Charlotte into his study for one of his
monthly fireside chats). “All that disease! The bad teeth! The horse shit in the streets! And besides,” he chortled to himself,
“a hundred years ago, actors were treated no better than whores!”

Charlotte added “actors treated like whores” to her list of positives.

Toward the tail end of eighth grade, Charlotte’s romance of times past began to show up in her closet: silk stockings and
chemises, hunting coats and corsets, velvet capes and lace gloves, a bustle. Not that she ever wore this stuff. Not in public
anyway. She dressed up in the privacy of her own room and stared deep into her own reflection. “Sebastien-Pièrre,” she would
whisper with all the longing she could muster. “Take me away from this place.” And then she’d press a hand to the mirror,
kissing the glass until it fogged.

Seriously.

Of course, as soon as Charlotte landed her first real-life boyfriend, she broke up with the mirror and never gave their time
together another thought. But then Jake Farrish stopped calling, and Charlotte reconsidered. With careful, measured movements
she’d draped herself in a black widow’s veil from 1905, clutched a rosary from 1906, and faced her first and only dependable
love: herself.

“I loved you, Jake,” she sighed, staring deep into her mirror. “But you have parted for another world. And so I say . . .
adieu.
”

The next day she bounded out of bed, blasted an old Beck CD, and danced until she actually laughed out loud. Her little funeral
had done the trick! Now that the relationship was officially dead and buried, that was it. She was free!

Charlotte slipped into her newest Blumarine dress and headed for school with all the sparkle of a freshly corked bottle of
champagne. Sometimes, she realized, the future wasn’t so bad.

The Girl: Nikki Pellegrini

The Getup: Paige “Laurel Canyon” jeans, Ella Moss extra-long magenta cotton tank, silver Joie ballet flats, Kate Spade wicker
lunch tote

Jake leaned against a tree, cracked open his Physics text, and cursed, quietly, in the key of F. Jake, like many Winston students,
studied according to the time-honored Procrastination Method. If you saw him studying at 7:48 a.m., his test, most likely,
was at 9:00 a.m. He dropped into his books like a bomb, his heart ticking like a countdown. And the slightest disturbance
— from a mild
good morning
to a locker
click
to a gentle
purr
of a far-off Jaguar — could set him off.

As Charlotte pulled her cream-colored Jag into the Showroom, and the purr grew into a full-fledged growl, Jake’s hair-trigger
panic exploded. Without thinking, he stopped, dropped, and — clutching his Physics text to his chest — rolled into a nearby
hedge. He wished he could say this was the first time he’d ducked for cover.

It wasn’t.

Of course, hidden as he was, Jake could still hear. At the ringing chime that was Charlotte’s laugh, he pushed aside the dense
branches, picked a leaf from his hair and squinted. She stood at a distance of twenty feet, leaning against her left fender,
her foot against the wheel. The morning sun shone through the flimsy fabric of her flowery dress. A triangle of light glowed
behind her knee. Jake swallowed, hard. He had never seen anything so beautiful, so pure. . . .

And so
completely
surrounded by tools.

Tim Beckerman crouched at her feet, tilting his head and brushing back his sensitive, emo-boy bangs.
Tool.
Theo Godfrey sat up on the hood, his skateboard in his lap.
Tool.
Luke Christie pushed up his shirtsleeve, indicating a small space on his bulging bicep. (Luke was forever inviting girls to
brainstorm his next tattoo.)
Tool.
But Charlotte allowed them to crowd her; she even seemed to enjoy it. Jake frowned. Why the hell was she giggling so hard?
It’s not like any of those guys were funny.

“Hi, Jake.”

Jake tore himself from the overpowering spectacle of Charlotte to find his new little friend, Nikki Pellegrini, smiling down
at him. He blinked.

“I was wondering,” she began in a rush, “would you wanna have lunch in the projection room today? It’s empty on Fridays.”
And dark,
she thought with a deep, happy blush.

To Nikki’s increasing amazement, she and Jake had been having lunch together for a week straight. It started when he invited
her to the roof of the gym so she could educate him a little on the subject of Jewel. At first she thought he was joking.
He wasn’t. Nikki talked music for twenty minutes (in addition to Jewel she really liked Sarah McLachlan), and Jake totally
listened to what she had to say. When she was done, they gazed down at the glinting river of cars in Coldwater Canyon, the
long slope of the hillside, and the cityscape beyond. Never had the wide plain of telephone poles, billboards, and traffic
looked so beautiful. After a long pause, Jake cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if the iPod people, like, came alive
and leaped down from the billboards, wreaking havoc on Los Angeles?” It wasn’t the kind of line that worked for everyone.

It worked for Nikki.

For the rest of the week, the lunches didn’t stop. Tuesday, they sipped sodas on the roof. Wednesday, they shared bags of
chips in the stairwell. And Thursday, in the quiet shade behind the lockers, they split a pastrami sandwich. For some reason,
Jake insisted they keep their lunches secret (they ate where they would not be seen). As much as Nikki found the secrecy of
their lunches confusing, it also gave her a thrill. She felt special somehow, chosen — like a sacred cow.

“Not now, Nik,” Jake muttered, his eyes still fixed on Charlotte. Why the hell was she scruffing Tim Beckerman’s hair? The
whole notion of Charlotte’s hand on Tim’s body made Jake sick.

“Oh.” Nikki panicked. Maybe she should have waited for Jake to invite
her
to the projection room. Then again, she’d waited
all last week
— and
someone
had to ask. The projection room was the perfect spot: dim and quiet, warm and cramped — private. It was where lunching types
went to share
more than just a sandwich.
If her instincts were correct, her hair soft, and her lips freshly glossed (she picked Lancôme Juicy Tube in Caramel Delight),
Jake would just
have
to kiss her.

“You wanna take a rain check?” she asked with a brave smile.

“Huh?” Jake said in a semi-absent way. Before she could respond, he moved past her. Nikki followed him with her eyes, her
heart sinking. She knew where he was headed. Charlotte Beverwil wore a sun-drenched flowered shift dress and brown leather
boots that laced to the knee. Her hair fell in shiny dark ringlets around her laughing face. Nikki had never seen anyone more
gorgeous. As Jake broke into a trot, she wiped the slick of gloss from her lips. The message was all too clear: she was nothing
more than procrastination.

Charlotte Beverwil was the big exam.

Jake paced around the Showroom in easy, measured steps. He had to give her ample time to look up and happen to see him. He
would happen to see her too, smile, wave, and approach. After two laps, however, Charlotte had yet to glance in his direction.
Jake opted for an alternative tactic.

“Hey,” he began, clearing his throat. Charlotte didn’t seem to hear him. She was too busy listening to Joaquin Whitman.

“So I’m staring into this cup of noodles, right? And fuggin’ Ziggy’s jammin’ with all these cellos and shit, and I’m, like,
totally trippin’, cause all of a sudden the noodles turn into these craaaazy dreads, and the little dehydrated carrot things
are, like, his
eyes
—”

“Shut up, Whitman,” Luke said. Charlotte tilted her head back and laughed.

“Dude, I’m serious!” Joaquin insisted. “That shit’s, like, instant cup of
demon,
man.”

The bell rang and the tools dispersed to opposite sides of the lot, unlocking their luxury cars with electric chirps and grabbing
books from their places in the trunk. Jake followed Charlotte around her car. She popped open the back, located her notebook,
her organizer, her
L’Étranger,
and dropped them into her black vinyl Chanel shopper.

“Hey,” Jake said again. Charlotte slammed her trunk shut. Her eyes fixed into the depths of her bag; she walked right past
him. “Charlotte,” Jake walked to keep up with her. “Are you gonna talk to me?”

“Why should I talk to
you
?” she flashed. “Do I look crazy?”

“A little,” Jake teased. She pinned him with a warning glance and steamed ahead. “Did I mention you look like an extremely
attractive
crazy person?” he added, his tone hopeful. If Jake ever realized the error of “taking some time to think,” he realized it
now, trailing in the wake of this fed-up, fuming, and furious female.

“Ugh!” Charlotte groaned. “You know what you are, Jake? You’re like that guy in
A Beautiful Mind.
The guy Russell Crowe
thinks
is his best friend, only to find out . . . wait!
He’s a hallucination.
”

Jake knit his eyebrows. “I think you’ve been talking to Joaquin too long.”

“No, I’ve been talking to
you
too long,” she snapped, shifting the strap of her shopper from one shoulder to the other. “If you’ll excuse me. It’s time
for me to take my little Russell Crowe pill and make you disappear.”

“You have a Russell Crowe pill?”

“Of course I don’t. But if I did, I would take it like
that.
” She snapped her fingers in his face.

“Okay.” Jake unzipped his backpack. “Just wait a second.” Sometime last year, if he remembered correctly, he’d spilled a box
of Sweet Tarts and never bothered to clean them out. Sure enough, the Sweet Tarts were still there, buried in the darkest,
lintiest corner of the pocket. He pinched one between his fingers. Once upon a time the Sweet Tart was a bright green — now
it was more of an algae gray. Jake rubbed the candy on his cords. He reached for Charlotte’s hand.

“Charlotte,” he began, trying to ignore his trembling fingers. Charlotte stared fiercely at the ground. “I’m sorry I’ve been
. . .”

“An utter and complete jerk?!”
she erupted. Jake’s mouth fell open, and she couldn’t resist a smile, pleased to have finally put him in his place. Little
did she know, far from feeling wounded, Jake felt flattered.
Excited,
even. There is no greater moment in a guy’s life than the transition from “nice guy” to “jerk.” Jake smiled a little himself,
cherishing the moment.

“I just . . .” He sighed to communicate the weight of his confession. “I kind of freaked out.”

Charlotte nodded with cold comprehension. “Because of your sister, right?”

“Actually, she had nothing to with it.”

“She didn’t?”

“I’m telling you,” Jake insisted, “I just freaked out. And I thought if I put some, like, distance between us . . . I would
feel
less
freaked out. But instead I got
more
freaked out.”

“Really?” Charlotte looked perplexed. “Why?”

“Because . . . ,” Jake continued after a soulful pause. “I
missed
you.”

Charlotte raised her eyes from the ground and, for the first time during their conversation, looked directly into his. All
she wanted to do was trust him. To bury her face into the soft cotton of his faded plaid cowboy shirt and breathe in until
her lungs were full and her heart was bursting. But she was scared. Just when she’d gotten over him, here he was — reeling
her back in. It wasn’t fair.

Jake pressed the gray Sweet Tart into the palm of her hand. “Here.”

“What is this?”

“It’s, um, a Russell Crowe pill.”

Charlotte rolled the little disk between her finger and thumb. “It’s a Sweet Tart, Jake. A really gross, really old Sweet
Tart.”

“It’s a Russell Crowe pill,”
he cried out with mock severity. She cracked a small smile. “If you take this pill,” he instructed, “I promise you — I’ll
go away. I will disappear into the ether. Just like Russell Crowe’s Australian roommate dude.”

“
British
roommate,” she corrected.

“British roommate dude. Whatever.”

Charlotte looked at Jake for what felt like a long time. And then, with a small but significant bob of her perfect, arched
eyebrows, she popped the pill into her mouth. She touched him on the arm, turned on the hard, brown heel of her L’Autre Chose
boot, and walked away. Jake watched her go, stunned. There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could say.

He had lost.

But then he had a thought.

“You didn’t swallow!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

A crew of passing skaters slowed their boards. A nearby basketball game called time-out. Two ninth-grade girls shared a glance.
Everyone was thinking it:
Drr-rama!

Charlotte shot Jake her best
how-dare-you
look.
“Yeth, I didth!”
she replied.

Which was all the evidence he needed. In three swift steps he was at her side, pulling her to him. He wasn’t sure if he felt
like a baller or a total doofus, but he crossed his fingers for baller and went in for the kill. He took her small, sweet
face in his hands and he kissed her. He kissed her until the whole world shrunk to the size of a laundry room and the laundry
room became the whole world.

The Showroom erupted into whoops and hollers. “Get a room!” some guy yelled.

“
That’s
original!” some girl replied.

“Yeah, you’re
face
is original!” the guy shot back.

Embarrassed, Jake and Charlotte broke apart and started walking toward Assembly Hall. “By the way,” he said, pulling on one
of her curls. “You’re a really bad liar.”

“I am?” She looked up. She was still a little dazed.

Jake opened his mouth. The stolen Sweet Tart stuck to his tongue like a button.
“Ew,”
Charlotte laughed, realizing what he’d done. He crunched down on the candy and chewed. His chews were loud, grotesque — triumphant.
“You’re disgusting,” she declared. Jake dropped his arm across her shoulder and beamed.

They walked to Town Meeting together.