Where I Belong
Authors: Gwendolyn Heasley
Tags: #Fiction, #Schools, #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #High schools, #Adolescence, #History, #Love & Romance, #United States, #State & Local, #Self-actualization (Psychology), #Family & Relationships, #New Experience, #Texas, #Moving; Household, #Family Life, #Southwest, #Parenting, #Family life - Texas, #Grandparents, #Grandparenting
Where I Belong
Gwendolyn Heasley
F
OR
M
OM
, D
AD
,
AND
A
LICEYN
. T
HANK YOU
.
Contents
Family Meeting
National Sweetbread
Corrinne, You Are Not in the Village Anymore
No Potential Needed
If That Mockingbird Doesn’t Win, Broken Spoke’s Going to Have a Breakdown
Her Name Was Billie Jean, She Caused a Scene
This Is My First Rodeo
Is This a Mall?
Not Just Another Day at the Spa
After the Lights
Back in the Saddle
Who’s Kate Spade?
Welcome to the Broken Spoke, Waverly
Not Unless There’s a Helicopter to New York in It
Swimming What?
New York, New York
The Best Day of Our Lives
Dear Reader,
Have you ever heard of the Butterfly Effect? I learned about it in science class last year. Probably the only lesson I remember because it’s way more relevant to real life than the three types of sediment rock or the properties of noble gases. And it’s also not revolting, like dissecting a frog. Basically, the butterfly effect is a chaos theory, attributed to a guy named Edward Lorenz. Here’s the CliffsNotes version: A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, and it sets off a tornado in Texas. It means the smallest moments of the past, even the ones that don’t have anything to do with us, affect our future and our future selves.
When Wall Street nearly collapsed, I didn’t pay much attention. I used to care a lot more about the hottest starlet’s weight fluctuation than the current prices of stocks. But when the economic problems caused my dad to lose his seven-figure job and me to move to a Texan town that’s so teeny tiny it’s not even on Google Maps, I realized how seemingly distant events can change your life forever.
This is the story of how I was transformed. How the pieces of the global economy toppled like dominoes and made a teenage ice princess from Manhattan (me) melt and find her long-dislocated heart. So if you hate me at first, keep reading. You might just surprise yourself. I know I did.
And just think, somewhere right now a butterfly might be flapping its wings and altering your future in some peculiar, yet beautiful way.
Sincerely,
Corrinne Corcoran
Family Meeting
M
Y I
P
HONE LOUDLY SINGS A LITTLE DITTY
.
She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes.
The Barneys saleswoman, dressed in a hideous avocado green dress, gives me a look of disgust. Maybe she doesn’t like Paul Simon’s music. Stupid, it’s a classic, and I don’t have to change my ring tone each time Lady Gaga makes a costume change. Have you ever been to a party where twelve people have the same ring tone? So pathetic, it’s almost as bad as two girls having the same signature scent.
From a distance, I am pretty sure the avocado lady is rolling her eyes: Maybe she’s one of those people who don’t believe in using cell phones in public? Please, isn’t that why they were invented? To make us mobile? And
look around, Miss Barneys employee; I am the only customer on floor three, the designer collection department. It appears that whole recession thingamajig scared everyone else away.
She keeps staring at me, and I know it isn’t my clothes: I am wearing an Alice and Olivia summer white dress and Jimmy Choo pink heels with my mousy brown hair slicked back. And she’s the same shopgirl who still hasn’t brought me the pair of Hudson jeans that I asked for more than twenty minutes ago. She’s probably ignoring me because I am a teenager. I just
hate
age discrimination, but I still refuse to shop in Juniors. First of all, I am a size five in Juniors and only a size four in Womens. Second of all, most of the clothing in Juniors is cheap. I might be only sixteen years old, but I own plastic. That should count for something. The saleslady keeps on glaring at me like it’s a new pastime, so I finally silence my phone. It’s my mother anyway, and I don’t want to talk to her.
I don’t want to talk to anyone. I shop alone. Sure, I’ll occasionally have lunch with friends at Fred’s, the restaurant at Barneys. And I’ll be sociable and make a courtesy loop or two of the store afterward, but I won’t wardrobe (aka power shop) with them. They’ll either move too slowly or claim they spotted that yellow eyelet Milly dress first. And right now, I am shopping for my first year at boarding school. This is serious. There are no Barneys in
the middle of Connecticut, and online shopping should always be a last resort. And of course I don’t do malls on principle.
When “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” booms in once more, I silence it again…. I mean, really, Mom? We just spent the first two weeks of August in Nantucket, and I have less than three weeks before I need to leave for Kent, my new boarding school. I haven’t even finalized my bedding and drapery because Kent has yet to tell Waverly, my best friend, and me if we are permitted to be roommates. Having never shared a room before, I totally tried to finagle a private room by lying and saying that I have a serious snoring issue. But the dean of students said all roommates have to work out differences and mine will just need to wear earplugs or I’ll have to wear one of those nose strips. Since a private room isn’t going to happen, bunking with Waverly is a better option than some foreign exchange student who doesn’t shower daily.
Moving over to accessories, I model shades in the tiny mirror. After trying to remember if I have the tortoiseshell Ray-Bans at home or if I just have the white, the black, and the neon pink, I decide to buy the tortoiseshell ones just in case. I should look at round Jackie-O glasses, too, because I totally hear they’re having a revival.
Bing!
bounces from inside my neon blue Marc Jacobs purse.
A text message from “her.” That’s how I put my mom into my phone. Funny, right?
Her: Family meeting, 7 pm, get home
It’s six, and I am supposed to do seven thirty sushi with the girls at a BYOB (bring your own bottle) restaurant in the East Village. My friend Sarita’s older brother taught us to frequent BYOBs, so we don’t get our fakes swiped because when you bring your own booze, the restaurants don’t even card. I guess I’ll have to be a little late to my friends’ dinner since I’ll need to swing by home.
I text her back.
Corrinne: Fine. The meeting better last only nanoseconds. I got plans.
I bring my purchases—two pairs of Notify jeans, the tortoiseshell Ray-Bans (why not?), and the orange Tory Burch flats—to the counter where Little Miss Bitter Saleswoman sits perched.
“I’d like those Hudsons I asked for,” I try to gently remind her how to do her job.
The saleswoman huffs off to find my jeans. After she packages up everything into two Barneys white and black logoed bags, I decide that I am definitely cabbing it. Those bags look heavy! And August in New York is too hot for the subway. Even though I could use the subway-stair exercise since I didn’t ride or go to the gym today, I simply can’t bear the thought of descending into hot, crowded
mugginess. And especially not on a weekday: there are too many sweaty worker bees in tacky, cheap suits.
After I catch a cab outside, I text Waverly and tell her that I might be late.
Waverly: Don’t B 2 late, we might drink all the vino.
And it’s never fun 2 B the sober kid.
I want to call Waverly and say there had better be wine left when I arrive, but the cabbie’s blasting the radio news. All I hear is “layoffs” this, “layoffs” that, “another Ponzi scheme.” Gross. I am sick of all this bad economic news, and it doesn’t even make any sense. Our math teacher, Mrs. DeBord, tried to explain last year when things got really bad: something about defaults, mortgages, shorts. I definitely didn’t get it. But hey, I don’t even understand algebra. Letters for numbers, really? We might as well learn hieroglyphics. At Kent, I am going to need a math tutor if I want to get into the Ivies. And I for sure want to get into the Ivies because that’s where the boys are not only cute but smart and rich.
When the recession first began last year, some kids’ parents had to pull them out of school. But it’s hard to tell who left because of money fiascos and who left for other reasons, like rehab and divorce. Thank God my dad made it through all the layoffs, and he even still got his bonus. I was scared that it was going to be a pauper’s Christmas like Tiny Tim had in
A Christmas Carol
, but everything I
asked for, all four pages (single spaced), sat right under the tree.
The cabbie pulls up to my building at Morton Street and the West Side Highway. I bound out of the cab, buzz to open the gate, and jog up to the marble front desk.
“Rudy, favor, please: Hold on to one of these for me,” I say, extending a Barneys bag.
Rudy, our hot 6'6" doorman who models on the side, takes the package out of my hands and puts it behind the desk. I always leave one bag downstairs with Rudy so my parents don’t know how much I am shopping. Then I retrieve it when I know my parents aren’t around. This way, they’re only mad at me once a month when the credit card bill arrives versus every time I make a big spree. My mom says my shopping is “O.O.C.,” which is an abrevs for out of control; my dad says that “maybe she’ll go into fashion, and it’s an investment.” They argue about it. Actually, they argue about me a lot. Yeah, I’ve gotten a few detentions and had sit-downs with the parents over learning to filter my comments, but compared to other teenagers I know, I am practically a wunderkind. No mug shot in the
Post
like the girl at school who got busted for smoking pot in a club. Good thing because mug shots, as a rule, find your most unflattering angle and make even celebrities look homeless.
I nudge Rudy with my elbow: “Thanks, Rudy. You
totally help my publicity with the parents,” I say, and head to the elevators.
Rudy is awesome; he keeps all my secrets, like the fact that I come in right before curfew, make sure my parents know I am home, wait for them to fall back asleep, and then leave again. And then there was the time I drunkenly threw my keys down the trash chute with the late-night pizza box. Rudy even dug them out for me. If he weren’t a doorman, I’d totally marry him. Waverly’s doorman will rat her out to her parents for a good Christmas tip, so I know how fortunate I am.
Stepping out of the elevator onto the thirteenth floor, I smell chicken. I haven’t eaten all day because I am trying to go vegan to shed some poundage for back-to-school. But still, it smells divine, and I’d kill for a little piece. I am shocked to find the aroma’s coming from my own kitchen where my mother, J.J. Corcoran, stands over a stove. She’s wearing a seriously unglamorous apron that reads “Kiss the Cook” with a gigantic lipstick mark over her perfectly coiffed clothes, a black Diane Von Furstenberg dress with a full skirt, and a long string of pearls. The black-and-white color combo highlights her naturally honey blond locks. It makes me mad to see that dress because I had picked it out on a rare shopping excursion with my mom, but the store only had it in her size: a size
two.
She told me that she would order me one in my size, but I couldn’t bear
the depressing notion that I would be Jumbo-J.J. Being fatter than your mom is a common issue for the kids at my school. And even worse yet, my mom told my hairdresser that I couldn’t get blond highlights until I am in college. “You have such beautiful brown hair, Corrinne; you’ll thank me someday,” she said. So I am fatter than my mom and a brunette. I imagine that I will spend a great portion of my adult years on a couch discussing these two injustices with my shrink.