The Real Real (23 page)
“I was thinking maybe we could lease one to Melanie at a discount, Dad,” Nico implores hopefully.
“Maybe . . . ” He takes the cigar from his mouth and studies it, not even saying good-bye to her as she leaves.
“So, I’ll actually need to speak with you about reselling this, Mr. Sargossi,” Drew ventures.
“Oh no you won’t,” Kara jumps in. “You will be in possession of and seen driving around these cars for at least twelve months from today’s date. Or XTV will revoke responsibility for the tax on this
gift
. It’s in the contract.”
“But it’ll lose value”—Drew’s face darkens, his plan unraveling—“over a year.”
“Oh God,
dude
,” Kara breaks in, her exhausted exasperation exploding. “It’s a car you didn’t have this morning.
Please
try to see the bright side on this one.” She stands from where she’s seated on the radiator cover by the window and squeezes through our cluster out the open door.
“Get some perspective, all of you.”
Drew manages to refrain from telling her how much perspective he, in fact, has, and stays behind to find out how to preserve as much of the resale value as possible 236
while still satisfying the contract.
Jase gives a two-fingered salute, hops in TRHB-JASE, and peels out, followed by Rick and Trisha. I, on the other hand, looking both ways three times and, at no more than two miles an hour, ease TRHB-JESSE gingerly off the lot and probably only get up to fifteen the whole drive across town, my sweaty hands gripping the wheel.
I am sitting in
my parents’ combined annual salaries
.
I am sitting in my
parents’ combined annual salaries
. I check the rearviews every two seconds. There is no way I am driving this thing in high season; I will have a cardiac.
Awash in relief, I turn off the ignition in the parking lot behind the spa, feeling like I should check in on Melanie, even though I don’t know what I can say. Unable to see clearly as the sun drops behind the trees, I fumble with the power lock. I notice the twin car farther down the lot with TRHB-NICO on the plates. Maybe I should leave?
No. Mel should know we’re all here for her.
Tentatively I open the door to the salon and can hear the sobbing from the treatment rooms in the back. I walk past embarrassed-looking clients at the manicure tables and pedicure chairs, murmuring to one another as I pass.
Down the hall, through a cracked door, I can see Melanie balled up in Nico’s arms on a massage table, the uprooted fountain Zacheria could never get to work defunct on the wall behind them.
“Shhh,” Nico murmurs, stroking her hair. “It’ll be okay. There’s so much more than this.”
“No . . . there . . . isn’t,” Melanie chokes out. “I’ll be 237
scrubbing people’s feet the rest of my life. I d-don’t understand. I did e-everything they asked.”
“Enough, Melania.” I hear Mrs. Dubviek order over the clomp of her espadrille mules on the basement stairs. I turn to where she marches up from the storeroom, pushing past me to throw open the massage room door.
Nico reaches out for her. “Mamma D—”
“You, both of you—” She points an accusing red nail at me. “Get out. You dead to me.”
Stunned, Nico unfurls herself from a silently weeping Melanie. “This wasn’t my fault.”
“You supposed to protect her, fight for her,” she says, her accent thickened by rage. “Melania will make new friends, ones she can trust.
Both of you, get out of my store.
You not welcome here.
”
Nico looks to Melanie, but she just pulls her knees deeper into her chest and twists her face into the table.
Nico walks shakily right past me. I hurry behind her, averting my eyes from the openly staring clients, as she lets herself out, a steady stream of Polish invectives at our backs. I follow Nico around to the dark parking lot, and she looks at her car, the hood still sticky where the bow was. She drops her forehead on the top of the roof and starts to cry.
“Nico,” I say softly, awkwardly touching her arm. “It’ll be okay.”
“I just lost my best friend,” she bawls into her arm. “What could you
possibly
know about it?” She turns her head to me, the unleashed disdain shredding my sympathy.
“Plenty.” I step back. “You might not have noticed, but I wasn’t newly born the day Kara forced me on your lunch table. I had a best friend before this started. And your
dad’s show
didn’t pick her.”
“It’s not his show!” she yells. “Just his idea. And at least
I
have someone looking out for me, someone who’s invested in me, someone trying to make something happen for me.”
“Sending you to college is making something happen!
Not getting you a publicist!”
“What world do you live in?” she spits contemptuously.
“You’re just jealous because I have
everything
.” Her face splotches red beneath her wet eyes.
“Jealous?”
“You’re nobody. I’m Nico. Jase
loves
me. He has some growing up to do, but he
loves
me,” she sobs. “My dad
loves
me.” She pauses to fill her convulsing lungs with breath.
“And I have star quality,” she chokes out.
Shaking, I step around her to the other side, unlocking my new car. “Nice reality. I, however, am willing to admit that I’ve lost my best friend, my life, a chance with Drew, my senior year,
and
my parents’ respect. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Oh Perfect One, I have to go home and cry about that.”
“
Hello?” I rasp into my cell, still breathing deeply into my pillow, my finger hovering to click the off button, braced to hear that I’m a bitch, a slut, that I give good head, bad head, that my panties smell like fish. And these lovely classmates of mine shockingly weren’t deemed XTV
material.
“Jesse?” Her voice is so quiet and it’s been so long it takes me a groggy moment to place it.
“Caitlyn?” I sit up in bed, exaggeratedly blinking to wake myself up. “Caitlyn, what’s wrong?” I check the glowing clock on my night table—only 11:08. I must have passed out after the last round of pre-finale interviews.
Four a.m. start times are turning me into a senior citizen.
Eating dinner at five, passing out by eight—pathetic.
“Jesse, I need you to come pick me up,” Caitlyn says furtively. “Can you? Can you just come, please, right now?”
“Yes, of course. Yes!” I jump up to tug on my leggings, simultaneously pulling a hoodie over my T-shirt. “Where are you?” I grab my wallet and keys off my desk.
“At the mini-mart. Down the road from the hospital.”
“Are you okay?” I whisper as I sneak down the stairs in my bare feet, careful to jump the creaking step.
“Just come.” She hangs up.
I screech into the Qwik Fill lot and am relieved to see Caitlyn immediately push through the glowing double doors. I start to get out, but she jogs directly to the passenger side, where we have an awkward misstep of locking and unlocking her door before we get in sync. She drops into the seat next to me, and I take her in under the harsh flickering lights of the pump overhang. Her face is drawn, her eyes puffy.
“Sorry, I haven’t figured out this thing yet,” I comment too late for it to make sense because I’m distracted by how much I want to hug her, but don’t.
“Can we just drive?” She rests her elbow on her door and leans her temple into her fingers.
“Sure!” I back up and then turn us toward the exit, only to slow to a stop by the neon arrow. “Um, where do you want to go?”
“I didn’t get any financial aid from American,” she states to the dark road before us.
“Oh, Cay—”
“Or GW, or Trinity. My dad refused to submit a letter saying he wasn’t contributing. So even though his, quote,
support
has been sporadic, at
best
, they’re accounting for his income and have decided we can afford the close to two hundred grand in debt.”
“That’s awful! What an asshole—”
“So my mom moves right into the now-you-can-go-tocommunity-college-and-live-with-me thing, and
I can’t
. I mean, I couldn’t before, but now I really can’t. I
can’t
stay in this town. And we got in this screaming fight while I was driving her to her shift, and she started crying like she always does when it’s about Dad, and it was horrible, and she was late for work, and she said if I hate it here so much I should go now, so I get out of the car.”
“In the middle of the road?”
“We’d pulled over by the station to scream at each other without getting in an accident. And she keeps calling me, and I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
“Okay,” I say, focusing on the pale green dashboard glow glinting off the steering wheel emblem.
“So I didn’t have anyone else to call.” She twists her face to the window. “And I remembered you got this car, and I don’t know where to tell you to go.”
“You don’t have to.” I screech us onto the empty road.
* * *
Pulling to a stop, I cut the engine, and we both watch as the headlights beam out over the crests of sand to the crashing surf beyond. They fade off, leaving us in the dark, listening to the rhythmic roar. We used to bike here in the summer, back before they carved up the property into McParcels. Back when the Johnson family had just started selling off the estate to developers, and Caitlyn and I were the closest thing for each other to being in someone else’s brain.
She sinks down in her seat, pulling her knees up against the glove compartment. “I haven’t been here in forever.”
“Me neither.” I slide my hands between my thighs as the damp May air seeps in.
“I could go for a cigarette.” She runs her finger back and forth across her bangs. “I don’t suppose Mr. Sargossi gave you a lifetime supply of those.”
“Sponsor conflict. A meth lab got there first. Interested? There’s a pipe in the glove.”
She turns to me, one eyebrow up.
“Kidding.”
She shakes her head. “Jennifer Lanford isn’t funny.”
“Really?” I ask tentatively, hopefully. “She seems like fun.”
“She’s fun, kind of. But not funny, not like you.”
“
No one’s funny like you
,” I say emphatically.
“What am I going to do, Jess?” Her eyes widen as she searches my face.
“Options.” I tick off on my fingers. “Go to community college for a year, work on your dad, and reapply. Or . . .
or . . . maybe we could have him offed?”
“
Yes.
Maybe your meth connection?” she deadpans.
I laugh as my cell buzzes in my hoodie pocket. I tug it out, flick it off, open the armrest compartment, and drop it in.
“You can get that,” she offers.
“That’s okay—they can tell my voice mail it’s an anorexic, bitch-faced whore and that
its
boobs are freakishly different sizes.”
“Who’s saying
that
?” Her eyebrows scrunch together.
“Like you haven’t heard.”
“I’ve heard. I just didn’t know you had.”
“It’s a little hard to miss. On my locker, between my windshield wipers, in the mailbox. And every electronic form of communication known to man.” I sigh. “And eggs—when they feel like kicking it old school. It’s all petty and foul and crazy mean. People don’t just hate me.
It’s become the new Hampton High religion.”
“It’s not just you. It’s everyone in the cast.” She looks down at her lap. “Okay, guilty admission. I can’t say it hasn’t been the teensiest bit satisfying.”
“Good. Someone other than Verizon should be benefiting.”
“Well, your boobs are a matched set. You can trust me.
I’m not anonymous.”
“Thanks, man.” I touch her arm.
“Anytime.” She pats my hand, reminding me how much I
do
trust her, how long it’s been since I could just—talk.
“I hooked up with Jase McCaffrey.” My turn to search her face.
“Holy. Shit.”
“Ugh, it feels good to say it out loud.” I fall back against the seat. “It’s grown to IMAX-size, rattling around in my head.”
“Did you have the sex?” She sits up, tucking her legs and shifting in the seat to fully face me.
“We did not have the sex. We had mad passionate almost, twice. And I know he’s . . .”
“A single cell of testosterone.”
“But he’s also a single cell of testosterone! Which is kind of what I needed, I thought. We were in Cancun, and Drew was hooking up with Nico, and I was drunk. Oh God, I had a bunch of these lethal tropical punch things, and then I was going to tell him about Nico cheating on him just to get back at Drew—”
“Wait.” She slices her arm down between us. “Aren’t you two going out?”
“Drew? No! I wish, but no. He acts like I played him.
Like I was using him to get to Jase. Which is so ridiculous it’s almost funny. But not. So we’re just friends. Officially.
His choice—not mine.”
“So why are you getting back at him, exactly?”
I grab her shoulders. “Because I haven’t had you to talk to! I am literally going crazy without you!”
“Okay. I need to know everything from the beginning.
From the beginning all the way through putting your clothes back on. And I should pause to tell you I hooked up with Rob over break. It was in Jennifer’s basement and not Cancun. We are not going out. I had three Coors and it was okay—not great. But, you first. Go.”
I reach across the seat and pull her into a hug, my eyes tearing. She grips me to her and then pushes me back.
“So Jase says . . . ” She prompts me to tell her everything. And I do.
“Thanks for the ride, supastah.” Caitlyn pulls her bag up from the floor as we idle outside Bambette.
“Hey, babe, my wheels are your wheels.”
“So you really think your mom’s friend can let the dress out in a week?” she asks, referring to the Nanette Lepore we scored for her at the outlet mall. “I don’t want to be the only person at the finale party wearing something that looks like a hand-me-down.”
“Caitlyn, we’re all in borrowed clothing. Everything I wear has someone else’s sweat rings in it. Think of that the next time you watch the Oscars.” She makes a “yick”