The Real Real (2 page)

Caitlyn and I swing around to face each other. “Did he just
wink
at Nico?!” she asks, mouth open.

“Or he has an astigmatism.”

“In his
pants
.”

“All right, students!” Stevens claps his hands. “You heard Mr. Chapman. This is a very exciting opportunity, so let’s show XTV what an orderly student body Hampton High has! Let’s start with the front row on the right.

The first six, let’s go! Fill in at the desks! The rest of you can consider this a study hall period. And let’s remember, study halls are
silent
.”

“Aah,” I whisper, tugging out my AP Physics. “This is where it gets boring.”

Caitlyn, however, whipping out her contraband nail polish to do emergency touchups, is riveted by the proceedings.

I get a Maybelline pen to the ribs when Courtney Metler wriggles her ginormous bra out from under her shirt and lets the girls get some air. And again, twenty minutes later, when she bounds up to the stage and they nearly hit her in the face. Until XTV is presented in 3-D she’s probably a no-go. And then again when Gary Sternberg attempts a backflip to his assigned table and Shana Masterson bursts into her glass-shattering version of Mariah Carey.

Caitlyn slumps farther and farther into her chair, finally sliding full to the floor when Tom Slatford starts playing fart music with his hands. “Is it too late to transfer?” she moans.

I slip my hand under her armpit and drag her back up.

“Isn’t it cruel and inhumane to put us through this when it’s so obviously going to be
Nico, the Show
?” I ask.

“Starring Melanie, as Nico.”

“And Trisha, as Nico.”

“Come on,” she says, straightening her gray sweater dress, her look of determination returning. “Maybe they’re looking for two minimum-wage-working brunettes who love Pinkberry and think Chace Crawford is just a little bit too pretty. We
have
a shot.”

I don’t disabuse her of that notion.

At that moment, with a good-luck kiss to Jase, Nico gathers up all her fabulously understated possessions and struts her radiant, lanky everything up to the stage. She’s like some wild, exotic animal that roams the hallways: 8

You might not want to pet her, but you can’t pull your eyes away. Her hair is always shiny, her face matte, and her subtle veneer of disdain firmly in place. To be around her is to wonder if she’s thinking your sweater gives her a migraine, your Spanish pronunciation grates on her ears, or your highlights are so ’07. Tossing her long blond mane, she straddles the interrogation chair like she’s about to do a number from
Chicago
. Anyone else and I’d snicker, but when Nico Sargossi does it you actually wish she was about to perform a number from
Chicago
.

Mrs. Gesop snaps at us, and Caitlyn hustles up the steps with me in tow, bras in place, hands in our pockets.

I swing my bag to my feet and sit down across from Kara, who’s removed her baseball cap and knotted her glossy brown hair above her head with a pencil.

“Name?”

“Jessica O’Rourke. But everyone calls me Jesse, no ‘i.’”

“Eighteen?”

“Since November third.”

“Social security number?”

I reel it off, trying to catch Caitlyn’s eye to see if she might also be having her identity stolen.

Kara sits back, putting a breath of space between the table and her impressive superstructure, which seems to be tamped down in a sports bra. “Okay, Jesse, no ‘i,’ tell me a little about yourself, your family, activities, who are your best friends?”

“Um, Caitlyn Duggan. She’s sitting right there.” I point to her, sitting two interview desks over.

“How long have you been friends?”

“When we were little we lived across the street from each other, so our moms traded off child care. You know, each working part-time.”

“So your mom works. Anything . . . ”

“Glamorous? No.”

“Okay.” She scrunches up her little ski-jump nose and chews on the end of her pen while I wonder if Caitlyn is re-casting the rusted crapbox as a vintage sports car. “And school?”

“I, uh, like school just fine. I mean, we’re all on the home stretch to parole, right? We probably liked it more four years ago.”

“Who do you hate?”

“Large corporations?”

“In school.” She suppresses a smile.

“Oh.” I think for a moment, and she taps her chewed pen impatiently. “No one, really. . . . I mean, you know, trapped with the same people since first grade, some are bound to get on your nerves, but am I, like, feuding with anyone? No, I cannot afford to feud.”

“What do you mean afford?” She writes
afford
on her notepad, and I notice the tenacious remnants of brown polish at the base of her nails.

“I work after school at the Prickly Pear, I help my mom at her job on weekends, I keep my grades up so I can get a scholarship—I’ll be the first in my family to go to college.

I don’t have the time not to get along with people.”

“Or date?”

“I date,” I say defensively. “I mean, not
at this exact
second
. Last year. Dan. We broke up.”

“Which one’s Dan?” she asks, dropping her glasses down her nose to survey the seated masses, her green eyes twinkly when unshielded.

I point over the rows to where Dan sits with his lacrosse teammates, blowing his nose. Probably has another sinus infection. Poor Dan.

“Oh. Okay.” She scribbles more notes on the yellow paper. I try again to get Caitlyn’s attention, but she’s engrossed in her interview, flipping her freshly released hair from shoulder to shoulder.

Knuckles rap on our desk, and I swing my head back to see Fletch Chapman standing over us, a whiff of some spicy fragrance hitting my nose. “I’ve gotta jet,” he says more to his BlackBerry than to Kara. “Everything under control?”

“I think so.” Kara nods nervously.

“No ‘think.’ You want an office on the nineteenth floor? You want us to produce your doc? It’s riding on this, babe.” He squeezes her shoulder and, with a tongue click and gun fingers at me, he hops off the stage.

“No worries, Fletch!” she calls after him. “It’s covered!” She takes a second before she turns back to me.

“Wow. He seems intense.” I smile.

“What? Oh. Yes, well, he’s just compensating—” She halts, her mouth dropping open. “I did not say compensating. I just meant that he’s a crazy prodigy—finished college at eighteen, MBA by twenty—running the network at twenty-four. He’s put all his energy here, into this, 11

so . . . I’m really lucky to be working for him. You know, you have a great profile.”

“Thanks.” I glance down at the stats she’s compiled on her pad.

“No, your nose. The side view. Very telegenic.”

“Can you tell that to Georgetown?” I ask, trying to absorb this new piece of information about myself. She laughs in a way that suggests she didn’t expect to be laughing today. Over her shoulder, I watch as Nico swipes up her interviewer’s pen and twirls it gracefully between her long fingers. “Sorry, are we done?” I say, because sitting here, expected to talk myself up not six feet from
that
, feels like a useless exercise.

“Sure. Thanks for sharing, and here’s a baseball cap for your time.”

I take it, imagining a hundred-plus of them flying in the air at graduation.

We don’t hear the first oak tree fall in the adjacent field until lunch. Word ripples fast over the flattened manicotti in the steamy cafeteria. “
Somebody
has donated an Olympic-sized pool to Hampton High,” Caitlyn says as she whips upright on our bench from the reconnaissance that extended her to the similarly stretched Jennifer Lanford at the next table.

“Hm,” I say, taking this in as I twist off the cap on my Snapple with a dull pop. “Wonder if that
somebody
’s going to tile a mosaic X on the bottom.”

“Or hand out our diplomas in his Prada sneakers.”

TWO

Stomping my boots on the salted pavement outside the kitchen door at Cooper’s, the only two-star Michelin restaurant on the island, I wave good-bye as Caitlyn inches to the exit of the inadequately plowed parking lot. She wriggles her fingers out the cracked window, rocking her shoulders to the beat thumping through the sagging Camry.

I pull open the wood screen and step out of the storm into the bright buzz of the kitchen, greeted by a familiar wave of sizzling garlic.

“Jesssss-ee!” Lester yells over the music as he tempers a stovetop of sauté pans, simultaneously nodding approval to sous-chefs garnishing plates en route to the floor. “Your dad’s out front.”

“Hey, Lester,” I say as he runs a napkin around a plate’s 13

rim, erasing stray drips marring the presentation. “Hey, guys.” I give a little wave to the rest of the staff before tugging down my coat zipper. “Wow, it’s crazy in here for a Monday.” I dump my bag straining with books onto a nearby stack of crates—“
Heads up, Jess!
”—ducking as a laden tray glides over me.

“Sorry!” I say to Angela’s retreating back as she passes through the double doors to the dining room.

“The owner’s here with the wife’s family,” Lester reports as he lowers the flame on the
au poivre
sauce.

“How’s school?”

“Oh. My. God. XTV’s doing a show of our class.” I shrug off my coat and tuck it over my bag.

“They gonna make you eat intestines?”

“That’s called Sloppy Joe Day.”

Suddenly I’m grabbed from behind and swung into a salsa by Manny. “Jessica, when you gonna marry me?” He steps me to the front of the kitchen, his sweaty hand working south on my jeans.

“Ah-ha-ha!” I laugh like an idiot because I’m only at Level Three Spanish and I still don’t know the polite word for yuck. A busboy hands Manny a dish-filled bucket and I dart away, parking myself in a nook by the walk-in fridge to wait for Dad.

I’m watching Lester carve a duck when the radio suddenly flicks off. The double doors beside me swing open, the orderly chaos morphing into a taut machine as Dad steps in followed by his boss, Cooper, and some old man 14

I don’t recognize, bristling down to the hairs of his cashmere trousers. Cooper addresses the man. “Again, I am
so sorry
. As you’ve pointed out, this is
my
restaurant and I hold myself
personally
responsible for the lack of lobster.

Mike?” he spits at Dad, his eyes conveying that he’s pissed.

For a nanosecond I debate slipping into the walk-in but opt for flattening myself against the stainless steel instead.

In full triage mode, Dad buttons his blazer and turns from his irate boss to face the kitchen staff. “Lester?” he says pleasantly.

“Yeah, Mike?” Lester whips the bandanna from his back pocket and dabs at his glistening forehead.

“Think you could show Cooper’s father-in-law, Swifton, here, how you prepare the
foie gras tatin
? Mario Batali’s been after Lester’s recipe for years.”

“Sure thing, Mike. Right this way, sir.” The waitstaff clears an aisle.

His father-in-law safely on the other side of the kitchen, Cooper bears down on Dad. “You like watching me get humiliated, Mike?”

Dad sees me and I see the “yes” straining through his blank expression. He slips his finger under his blue tie and slides it down the fabric. “Cooper, of course not.”

“Then what the hell?”

“None of my fish guys could go out with the storm.

Lester prepared a number of delicious alternatives as well as a traditional Caesar with fresh—”

“Don’t tell me how to do what I do.” Cooper’s face 15

condenses, his year-round tan making him look like dried fruit. “I wanted to serve him a Caesar like the one we had in Paris. End of story.”

“I’m sorry.”

“A gourmet Caesar should have lobster. But I don’t know why I’d expect
you
to know that,” Cooper mutters dismissively, his grin reappearing as he collects Swifton and passes back out into the dining room.

Dad gazes down at the plastic grid of floor tiles, his eyebrows lifting and lowering before he turns to the frozen staff. “Okay, guys! Cooper’s blown his steam. Let’s keep the evening moving.” Like someone took their finger off pause, the frenzy resumes. Dad rubs the back of his neck and walks over to me. “Hey, kiddo, how was your first day back?”

“Totally weird, we had this assembly and—”

“Crazy night.”

“Yeah . . . ” My story drains as I see him still nodding to himself.

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Come, I’ve got lasagna for you.”

“Well, if it doesn’t have lobster, forget it,” I mug as he hands off the bag packed with dinner for Mom and me.

He lets out a little laugh, glancing through the porthole windows of the double doors to where the Hadleys are cooing delightedly over their first bites of Lester’s foie gras.

“Crisis three thousand seventy-two resolved.” Dad 16

sighs. I throw on my coat, pull my bag onto my shoulder, and he holds open the screen door, breathing in the crisp winter air. “Homework status?”

“Halfway there.”

“Finish it.” His mustache brushes my cheek as he pulls me in for a hug. “So you can be the one dishing the bull—”

“Not taking it.” I salute him and step out into a blur of fat flakes.

He smiles into the pool of light from the flood lamp, the white clumps wetting his face, which, for a moment, is really relaxed—not the show of relaxed he offers as a buffer between Cooper and the staff he manages for him.

“What were you saying about an assembly?”

“They’re making a show about my class.
XTV is making a show
.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not!” I jump up to him, the excitement to share returning. “They wanted a setting that is, quote,
glamorous
.”

He laughs satisfyingly.

“Thought you’d appreciate that. See ya at breakfast!”

I slide the plastic bag containing our dinner to my elbow, fumbling for my iPod as I cut down the alley.

Wedging in my earbuds, I come to a stop at a hip-high mound barring me from the snow-blown Main Street sidewalk. I hoist one leg to straddle the snowbank and swing myself over, the momentum nearly tossing me headlong 17