Girls We Love (13 page)

Instead, I found my sister, February, nodding off in a chair with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her short black hair was choppy and jutted in several directions, and her mascara
was definitely running a little bit. She was wearing a silver sequined sheath dress and ripped black tights. Maybe it was that I was half asleep, but the whole thing looked surreal. I went over, took the cigarette out of her mouth, and tossed it into the sink. She opened her eyes slowly.

“Flannie … I must have fallen asleep,” she said, smiling at me. She took her feet off the table, and when she did, her collection of silver anklets made a loud jangling noise.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Working,” she said. By work, Feb means promoting. She's out every night, promoting various clubs, which basically means socializing and telling your friends how to think, but they pay her real money to do it. And then during the day she designs her own line of jewelry, so she's very busy. “I hear there's a big party for you tomorrow,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. Feb can be pretty opinionated about what's cool and what's not, and I really didn't want to talk about it right then.

But she just stood up, put me in the chair, and said, “That's nice.”

“I guess.”

“Why are you up right now, anyway?” she said.

“Couldn't sleep.” I shrugged.

“You want me to heat you up some milk?” she said, patting my head. I nodded, and she went to the fridge and took out a bottle of milk and poured it into a saucepan. As she heated it up, she lit another cigarette and smoked contemplatively. “I don't think I can come. To the party,” she said. “Work.”

“Oh … that's okay,” I said, suddenly disappointed. I hadn't really thought that she would come anyway, but now that I'd heard it out loud, it made me sad.

“But I'm glad I caught you,” she said as she poured the milk from the saucepan into a mug and handed it to me. I took a sip and felt my mind unclench and my body begin to relax. I hadn't had warm milk in a long time. “Do you know what time it is?” Feb asked after I had taken a few sips.

I shook my head, and then we both looked at the microwave clock as it flipped to midnight. Feb gave me a big red-lipstick smile and came over and kissed me on the head. “Happy birthday, little sister,” she said.

When I finished my milk, I went back upstairs and fell right into a deep sleep, and it was as though the whole scene in the kitchen with Feb and her ripped stockings was a dream.

Liesel came home early on Thursday night, feeling she had sufficiently spread the word about Candy, her new friend Flan, and her old new boyfriend, Arno. She had a light dinner of salmon tartare with the cook in the kitchen, drank two liters of spring water, and climbed into bed to watch twenty minutes of
The Philadelphia Story.
She always liked to absorb a little Hepburn before any really big event.

She had put her eye mask on and was happily floating into some much-needed beauty sleep, when one of her cell phones started vibrating. She pushed her eye mask back onto her head, looked over at her night-stand, realized it was her work phone, and checked the caller ID. “Vinky!” she cried, answering it. “What's happening? It's kind of late.”

“Reid, you've screwed me!” Vinky screeched. “And you of all people should know that there's no sleep in PR.”

“Vinky,” Liesel said, her heart racing, “what's the matter?”

“What do you mean,
what's the matter!?
” Vinky snapped. Liesel had known Vinky for years, because they had the same godmother, and Liesel could just picture her marching down the street in a white trench and spiked Manolos and a flowing mane of blond hair. At twenty-eight, Vinky was Liesel's model of how to rise quickly into a public relations legend. “Your little friend Arno never showed up tonight, and he made Eddie look like an idiot.
That's
what happened.”

“But how … ?” Liesel sat up. She was trying not to say too much before she fully understood the situation.

“Well, Eddie called him onto the stage, just like we talked about, and Arno didn't come out, because he never turned up, so poor Eddie was just left there by himself with nothing to say. And you know Eddie isn't that bright, so of course the whole thing was painful. Painfully,
painfully
awkward.”

“Oh deah, how could he… ?”

“I don't know, darling, but whatever you owed me before, quadruple it!”

“Vinky, I'm so—” Liesel's head was full of questions about Arno, and why he had ditched the Eddie thing, but she wasn't so muddle-headed that she wasn't going to try and smooth this one out. Unfortunately, Vinky wouldn't let her get a word in.

“Oh,
can
it, Reid. And don't think I didn't consider pulling Leland from your little club opening tomorrow. I did try, in fact, but it seems that our friend Leland has developed a crush on Flan because of that stupid picture you sent.”

“Well,” Liesel said, struggling to stay diplomatic, “thank you for that, Vinky.”

“You're welcome. Now I've got to go take poor Eddie over to Schiller's for a nice late dinner and some sympathy. Calm him down, reconvince him that he's the next Bono.”

“Please tell him I'm sorry about this whole debacle.”

“I will,” Vinky said hotly. “And say hello to your mother for me.”

After Liesel got off the phone, she sunk back into her mountain of silk-covered goose down. What a nightmare. She didn't know whether she was more angry at Arno for embarrassing her in front of Vinky, or for missing the opportunity to make a big, public show of how hot he still was.

She gave it a few minutes, just to calm herself down. Liesel firmly believed that anger released an ugly chemical into the bloodstream that would leave her with stringy hair and dull skin, and she really had to look great for the event tomorrow no matter what.

When she was relatively not filled with rage anymore,
she reached for her personal phone, clicked through her phone book to
Stud
, and hit CALL.

“Yo,” Arno said when he answered.

“Yo?!” she snapped back.

“Oh. Hey, you. How's your night?”

“Well, blissful, until the phone call I got from Vinky Morningside a few minutes ago. She's fuwious, as well she should be, that you didn't show up for your cameo at the Bowery tonight.”

“Huh?” Arno said. She could hear video game noises in the background.

“Where are you?”

“Patch's.”

“Oh,” Liesel said. “I get it. I set you up with a big night hanging with Eddie Turro and the Glories, and you thought it would be more fun to stay home and play video games with the friends you've had forever?”

“Oh, that…,” Arno said distractedly. “Yeah, I guess I just thought the Glories were a little too pop for me to mesh with them.”

“Oh, really!?”

“Yeah…,” Arno said. Liesel could hear congratulations going around for some big video game moment in the background. “Anyway, your big event is tomorrow night right? Am I your date?”

“Yes, you are!” Liesel yelled. “And believe me,” she said bitterly, “it's going to be a fun freaking time!”

Then she hung up the phone and threw it into the covers piled up at the end of her bed, where it disappeared.

By this time in the school year even the valedictorian has forgotten how to do homework, and so I guess it was natural enough that all anybody could talk about was summer and parties and, well, one very big nightclub opening. I mean, I guess some speech in front of your junior high teachers and classmates just can't compete with that. All anyone wanted to talk about, this particular Friday afternoon in June, was whether so-and-so was actually going to be at my party and what I was going to wear and how crazy it was that I had gotten them on the list. By the time I had collected my books and headed for home, I almost felt like this stupid party had happened already.

Nobody seemed to remember that the whole reason for the party was my birthday—nobody had even sung me a song or wished me a happy
one yet. Not to mention, I didn't even have a dress. When I woke up this morning, I just decided that I'd wear my same old yellow sundress and give the anxiety a rest.

But that was before I got home from school and saw the package.

SBB was sitting on my front steps, and the package was in her lap. Two, actually: a white box with a big white bow around it, and a smaller, pink box on top. SBB was wearing a black djellabah that could have been a shirt but was, on her, a dress, with her black wig and her black sunglasses. She was like the mod version of my favorite TV character.

“Hey, beautiful!” she said when she saw me.

“Hi, SBB,” I said, quietly because I know she gets freaked out whenever her name gets uttered in public.

“Have you been treating yourself decadently?” she asked with a bent head that suggested I was in trouble if I hadn't been.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Whatever, it's just my birthday. I'm going to have a lot of them.”

“That's some crazy talk! This is the birthday all your other birthdays from here on out are going to have to compete with. Here, take this,” she
said, handing me the pink box. “Go ahead, peek!”

“Oh my God, these are so delicious looking!” I almost wanted to cry, because when I looked at the cupcakes in the box I realized that SBB actually knew that it was my birthday and what birthdays were about. I mean, warm milk from my sister is pretty rare, but still. Sometimes a girl wants a cupcake. I was so touched that I stupidly added: “But wait, aren't you not allowed to eat sweets until after shooting?”

“Oh, it's a birthday. On
birthdays
I'm allowed.”

I smiled at SBB—I kind of couldn't believe she was here, for the pre-party stuff, but I was glad she was. “And the other box?” I asked.

“For that, we have to go inside,” she said sternly. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper: “But between you and me, Liesel told me I had to be here at four to sign for the messenger, and I saw where the package was coming from.”

“Oooo! Where? Where?”

“One little word for you, beautiful. Marc.”

I swear to God, we both jumped up and down like children. I know, I know! I wouldn't have believed that a TV star/burgeoning starlet would jump up and down about clothes she could have
had for free, anytime, but I was there, and I promise, it really happened.

“Come on, you,” she said. “Let's go make you look like a star.”

The house was oddly empty of people, but Patch had promised me so many times that he would be at the party, and that he would bring Jonathan, that I just had to stop worrying about that already. When we got up to my room, Sara-Beth and I shared a cupcake—she said there would be cake later, and we should save room by only having half a cupcake now—and then she poured us champagne from the bucket of chilled Veuve Clicquot that had somehow appeared in my bedroom.

“Cheers to you,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, and then we clinked glasses and opened the box.

The dress shone up at me from its place in the box like a solar eclipse—I swearsies, it was like a religious moment or something. It was a cocktail dress made out of champagne-colored silk and tulle, and it had this empire waist, and this crazy big skirt, and this large, decadent bow right under the bodice.

“Okay, sit down,” SBB said. She pushed me into the chair in front of my vanity, which had
been turned into a movie-set-like makeup HQ, and went to work.

I tried to look seriously into the mirror as the most glamorous person I know did my makeup. After a few moments of quiet toner cleansing and cover-up applying, SBB said, “So, have you thought of things to talk about with Leland?”

“Oh, Leland … ” Wait, was I supposed to have been taking that really and truly seriously? I mumbled something I hoped would make sense, along the lines of, “Well, I don't know if I can … be his secret date anymore. Or if he can be mine or whatever.”

“You don't know if you can what?” SBB said. She was wielding a large blush brush, and for a second I was afraid to tell her that my romantic goals had been downgraded. She would think that my wanting Jonathan would be less glamorous, less irreverent, less like the kind of girl that guys love, right?

“If I can, you know, go for Leland anymore,” I said at last.

“Close your eyes,” SBB said. I could feel her start to apply eyeliner. “That's good, he's really sort of a dick. I didn't want to tell you before, because this is
your
night, but after Leland and I hooked up he never called me again. His songs
are all sincere and emotional, but he's not like that in real life. And you know I totally am the peppermint girl on the brink, right? Yeah, that's a real funny joke.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. I felt like a total jerk for ever having been into him at all. Even if it was from a pretty big distance. “I only liked that album the first time I listened to it anyway.”

SBB raised my chin with her hand and looked into my eyes. She didn't look like it bothered her at all. “That's okay, beautiful. He's a glorified reality star who nobody will remember in two years. But my question is, who's going to be your birthday date now?”

“Well … ” I bit my lip and watched SBB closely for approval. “I think I might still be into my ex. Jonathan.”

“You mean David's friend! Oh my God, that's so great. When David and I get back from Gda
ń
sk, we totally have to double-date and you can hear all our stories. That would be so much fun, just the four of us!”

“I know!” I said, suddenly imagining a whole string of glamorous evenings. With the guy I'd always known and trusted and been able to be my goofiest self around. I guess maybe that wasn't glamorous … but it seemed nice anyway.