Poseur #4: All That Glitters Is Not Gucci (2 page)

The Getup: Gray American Apparel racer-back tank, black BDG skinny jeans, red high-top Converse All Stars, thirty or so black
gummy bracelets, and underwear fit for a pinup (so to speak)

In eighth grade, Janie decided to practice kissing, and so (actual boys
not
being an option) started with an apricot (according to Farrah Frick, apricot skin and human lips feel
way
similar). The trouble was, after macking the orange fuzzies for say, twenty minutes, Janie ended up eating it, which made
her feel kind of soulless and creepy. Like, if she wasn’t careful, she might train herself into becoming the human version
of a praying mantis. To stave off her guilt, she dug the moist pit out of the trash and apologized, stopping halfway through,
of course, because honestly—she was apologizing to a piece of fruit. Any more of this and they’d be in a full-on relationship,
which was seriously so weird they haven’t even done it in Japan.

She decided to break up with apricots and graduate to something healthier… like her hand. Her inner elbow. She even tried
her knee, pinching the skin so it resembled a protruding tongue. If tongues were riddled with shaving nicks, that is. And
tasted like Skintimate.

Okay, so that didn’t work either.

She moved on to the mirror—at least she’d understand the sensation of another face deliberately approaching hers, even if
that face happened to be her own. Afterward, she stepped back to discover the glass mottled with drool-smeared, gaping mouth-prints.
Janie pulsed with something like panic.
Did people seriously do this to each other’s faces?
With a wad of paper towel and Windex, she urgently wiped them away, ignoring the mirror’s plaintive squeaks.
Like, willingly?
she thought.
Like, on a daily basis?
It seemed impossible.

And yet.

She rejected physical engagement in favor of drier research. She compiled lists of how-to-kiss tips cobbled together from
select magazines, slo-mo’d movies, overheard bathroom gossip, and Google. Then, just as she began to feel prepared, Amelia
returned from visiting her aunt in Texas and proudly reported
she’d been kissed
. Janie swallowed her envy, even feigned happiness for her best friend, cheerfully asking what it was like. It wasn’t until
Amelia replied, “I dunno… depends on the guy,” that Janie’s heart grabbed her esophagus and hung itself. For the first time,
Janie understood the terrible extent of her behindness.
What’s the point of research?
she scolded herself. Obviously, God had a plan, and part of that plan, after dividing light from darkness, water from sky,
included dividing Janie Farrish, for all eternity, from the opposite sex. (Okay, unless you count Jeremy Ujhazy, ninth-grade
author of the admirably
succinct “I need you,” followed by “please,” love notes left in her locker. But,
come on
: with his distressingly slick cherry Popsicle pout, sprouting man boobs, and evident taste for pastel pink stationery, he
was more woman than
she
was.

The nice thing is, once you accept life as a predestined march through a sexless desert of meaningless despair, you can relax.
Which is precisely what she’d been doing last Saturday night at the now notorious Pink Party. While everybody else mingled
indoors, bubbling over with laughter and champagne, she retired to the empty pool deck, prepared to stare with resigned melancholy
at the surface of the Moons’ infinity pool. But then, just when she’d accepted her fate as an outsider, a wallflower, a Shakespearean
clown, Evan Beverwil took a seat next to her, filling the night air with the scent of salt, sand, and sun-warmed cedar, and
changed everything. After months of fleeting glances, accidental physical contact, and fumbled attempts at actual conversation,
after months of wondering whether he just sort of liked her or full-on loathed her, he looked into her eyes and answered the
question. He answered in a way she could not in a billion years have anticipated.

That kiss was waking up and falling asleep at the same time. That kiss was like dying, maybe. The moment their lips touched
her entire being coiled into a tiny, tight ball and levitated—just a quaking planet where her face used to be. Her body ceased
to exist, and then he’d touch her, conjuring
it back in bursts. He’d touch her shoulder; it throbbed back to life. He’d lift his hand, and it drifted away, fading like
a firework. Not that she’d notice; the next touch always eclipsed the last. Her cheek, her chin, her waist, her hip: one by
one they’d explode, hot, bright, shimmering—and all the while there was that kiss, returning her to nothingness, the velvety
black abyss without which she’d have never known the shivery intensity of all that light.

Let’s just say the apricot did not prepare her for that.

It turned out kissing wasn’t something you could research or practice, but something you had to do, like diving into the deep
end to learn how to swim. Except, of course, when it came to swimming, her brother had to push her (she still hadn’t forgiven
him). With Evan, she hadn’t needed convincing; she’d been incredibly nervous, yes. But she’d also been ready. Which is why—how
else could she explain it?—the kiss had been so spectacular. At least
she
thought so. And if she thought so, he’d have to, too, right? Something so intense couldn’t possibly be one-sided.

Could it?

She replayed the moment in her mind until, like a photograph passed between too many hands, it began to yellow and fall apart.
By the time Sunday night rolled around she was in a state of jittery panic. What
had
happened exactly? I mean, she knew what had happened, but what made her think it had been so meaningful? After all, Evan
could have
just kissed her because he was drunk, or because he felt bad for her, or because, you know, it was
something to do
. It’s not like kissing was a big deal for him, right? He was a
senior.
Oh, and how about how they’d parted ways? Little did they know, but as they’d kissed, a scene of epic chaos was underway
indoors. Finally, the shattering sound of glass diverted their attention. Before they knew it, they were surrounded: a flood
of guests streamed onto the deck, pushing one another out of the way, some of them screaming, some of them laughing. Janie
and Evan leaped to their feet and fled, only to be intercepted by Charlotte and Jake. And that’s when it happened.

They’d dropped hands.

It seemed perfectly natural at the time. After all, Charlotte was his
sister
—his incredibly domineering, terrifyingly popular sister—not to mention Janie’s former tormentor turned colleague turned friend.
Well, sort of. Charlotte wasn’t exactly an
equal
. Theirs was a friendship based on power. As in Charlotte had it. Janie was beta to her alpha, squire to her queen, lowly,
hunchbacked assistant to her sorceress. Was it any wonder she’d dropped Evan’s hand before Charlotte noticed? He was her brother,
after all—her
older
brother; holding his hand (not to mention kissing him for what must have been a full minute) was a major transgression, and
not because it put her and Charlotte on equal footing. Far worse.

It made her the most powerful girl at school.

Of course, now that she’d had some time to think about it, the action wasn’t so clear. She hadn’t exactly had to
wrench
herself free from Evan’s grip. Quite the opposite. He’d dropped her hand as much as she’d dropped his—if not
more
so—and not for the same reason, she was pretty sure. Evan didn’t curtail his needs in respect to his sister’s feelings—or
anyone else’s, for that matter. If he dropped her hand, he did so because he
wanted
to.
Don’t read into this,
she ordered herself.
It’s just something that happened. It doesn’t have to
mean
anything
.

Except that maybe he was embarrassed of her?

By Monday morning, she’d gone completely, irrevocably bonkers. So bonkers, in fact, that when they finally crossed paths in
the Showroom, and his beach glass–blue eyes settled on hers, and their gazes twisted together and locked, and he melted into
a smile, and he seemed happy to see her, she was so overcome with relief that when at last he said, “Hey,” she could only
sigh, “Fine,” but it was okay, because they both just laughed, and she glimpsed his perfect teeth, and his large, square hand
in his beach-tousled hair, and then the bell began to ring, and the sun behind the trees glittered like confetti, and it filled
her to the brim, like she’d just won something big, something grand, and then the bell abruptly stopped, and the air around
her hummed, and he gently kicked her ankle as shyly she shook her head, grinned
at the ground, and croaked, “I should probably go.”

She positively floated to class; she sailed through the door, tethered herself to a chair, reeled herself into the seat, and
chained herself into place. How else could she explain it? This absurd ability to
sit down
, to follow the mundane rules of gravity. In any event, she was grounded. Until her phone beeped, and the sound was a needle-size
arrow of pure delight, and his text said, “God, I like looking at you,” and she floated into the air again, bumping lightly
along the ceiling, cell phone in hand, her thumbs almost pulsing as quickly she wrote back, “I know.” Meaning, of course,
she liked looking at him, too—but what if he thought she was being egotistical? She thought she should clarify, except then
Ms. Bhattacharia rumbled into the room, forcing her to shut off her phone, and then, just as it powered down,
it beeped again
, and the beep echoed in her mind, again and again, like a machine that measures heart rate, until she couldn’t take it anymore
and excused herself to the bathroom, and it was there—with the morning light sifting through the beveled bathroom window,
and three seventh-graders chattering loudly at the sinks—that she finally read his reply.

I need to see you again.

And then.

Projection room? Lunch?

At last, the bliss petered out; she plummeted out of the air and crashed to the ground. Because “Projection room?
Lunch?” really meant “Dark and empty room? Lunch?” which really meant
I will touch your boobs at lunch
. After all, lunch lasted a full
forty-five minutes
, and she couldn’t depend on a celebrity-studded stampede to interrupt them. Not this time. Which wasn’t to say she was against
the idea of going further per se. Quite the opposite. She was pro progress. It was her
body
that was all anti. Seriously, she’d seen fifth-graders more developed than she was. And the upshot of it all was she didn’t
even have the nerve to change in front of other
girls
(she’d worked out a pretty awesome maneuver where she almost, like,
birthed
her sports bra through the armhole of her t-shirt), and now Evan Beverwil, whose abject, surf-god gorgeousness replaced Victoria
Falls as the seventh wonder of the world, was going to slide his warm, beach-weathered hands beneath her ribbed, threadbare
gray tank, and… what?

Mistake her for his surfboard?

And, if that wasn’t bad enough, she happened to be wearing her bleach-eaten, held-together-with-a-safety-pin bra from the
Gap. Seriously, the one day it mattered, she’d chosen the underwear equivalent of a lint trap? Evan was probably used to dating
girls who wore couture lingerie, like,
every day.
Girls who bought panties at the rate Janie bought gum. Girls who had their bras professionally laundered in, like, baby shampoo,
lavender water, and the tears of newborn pandas.

By the time the lunch bell rang, she’d settled on one of four inane speeches she had swirling in her head. “Hey,” she’d begin,
perhaps sheepishly biting her lip. “Look, I wanted to say hi, but actually, I can’t stay. I have this, like, doctor’s appointment.
Yeah, my mom’s picking me up. Oh, no, no, you don’t have to walk me there. Seriously, my mom’s, like, super weird about me
walking to the car with, like, other people. Yeah, I don’t know why. I should probably ask her one of these days. Okay, well…
see you around!”

After that, she’d just hide in the bathroom for an hour. And yeah, it was a lame-ass move, but what was she supposed to do?
Seal off her chest with police tape? She smiled to herself, quickening her pace.
A deconstructed pageant dress with a yellow DO NOT CROSS sash could look kind of awesome, actually.
She’d just have to pick up her sketchbook on the way to the bathroom.
Of course
, she exhaled, stopping in her tracks.
First things first
.

She opened the projection room door.

Heat bloomed across her face as he looked up and stepped toward her, reaching around her shoulders to shut the door. She sucked
in her breath, knocking into a rickety fold-out table. A stack of shiny purple programs from last year’s production of
Godspell
spilled to the ground and fanned across the floor. The door clicked. It was dark. The programs slithered under her feet as
she creaked across the small room and perched on the sagging arm of an old club chair, sinking her palms into the worn leather,
frowning at the floor. She refused to look up, not
even when he put his hands on her knees, sliding them up her thighs, his thumbs following the inseam of her jeans; not even
when he gripped her hips and gently urged her closer, his t-shirt sagging forward like a sail, his sweet breath in her hair.
She felt weirdly furious with him, for making her feel so much, for making her want to both run and stay exactly where she
was. “Hey,” she cleared her throat, dimly remembering something she was meant to say.
Oh, right
. She relaxed as the words came flooding back.
The speech
. She looked up, boldly met his eyes, and repeated herself with authority.
“Hey.”

And then her arms flew around his neck, and she pulled him toward her mouth, because it wasn’t a choice, because she
had
to, because blood thundered through her like a river, and each kiss was a rock, a small, jutting island.