The girl in the red bikini—skinny and pale, with long, shiny light brown hair and beautiful hazel eyes—held out her palms to them. “One more minute and you-know-who was gonna come along and nab these,” she told them with a bright smile. Jenny stared at the girl’s palms, which were dotted with little white pills.
“April, you rock.” Harry scooped a tab of Ecstasy out of the girl’s hands and popped it in his mouth. “Go on, Jennifer,” he urged Jenny, pointing at April’s outstretched palms. “The quicker you eat one, the quicker you’ll fall in love with me.” He grinned devilishly. “I mean, our school.”
Oh, really?
Jenny had been offered drugs before. She’d even been stoned once, with Nate Archibald, the first day they’d met, in Sheep Meadow in Central Park. She’d fallen in love with him that day and had stayed in love with him until he broke her heart on New Year’s Eve. Probably if she hadn’t been stoned, she’d have understood that she and Nate had only just met and that she needed to get to know him a lot better before she kissed him.
She reached out to pinch one of the tabs of Ecstasy out of April’s hand with no intention of actually ingesting it. It was so tiny, no one would even notice.
“Yum,” she cooed, pretending to be delighted as she cupped her hand over her mouth and let the teeny pill fall past her chin and cascade down into her ample double-D-sized cleavage.
We always knew it would come in handy!
“We were about to play Duck, Duck, Goose,” one of the Coors-drinking guys announced with a completely straight face, as if he were trying to organize a friendly touch-football scrimmage. He was wearing nothing but a pair of electric blue bike shorts, and he looked like a Tour de France bicycle racer, with ropy muscles, a shaved head, and intense blue eyes. “Wanna play?”
“Sure!” Harry Bass responded enthusiastically. He wrapped his arm around Jenny’s waist and kissed the top of her head. “My little cucumber,” he murmured affectionately.
Jenny had the feeling the tab of E Harry had just taken was not his first of the afternoon. She was about to shrug him away when she realized that she was going to have to at least pretend she was on Ecstasy; otherwise, it would be obvious she hadn’t taken it. Problem was, she didn’t even know how long it was supposed to take to start working. “Yay!” she squeaked. “Let’s play!”
They joined the circle and sat down between a chubby Japanese boy sporting Madras plaid Bermuda shorts and a cute rocker haircut and the muscular boy in the blue bike shorts. Everyone was grinning so hard, it looked like their teeth hurt. “I’ll go first,” April volunteered. “But first I think we’re going to need some of this.” She passed around a few packets of cinnamon Dentyne gum.
“You’re a goddess,” blue bike shorts boy told her appreciatively. He shoved three pieces of gum into his mouth and began to chew them voraciously. “Mwa, mwa, mwa!”
April cracked tiny pink bubbles with her gum and then clapped her hands together. “Okay, people, let’s go!” She wound her way around to the outside of the circle and began to walk counterclockwise, tapping each person on the head as she passed. “Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, goose!” she shouted as she tapped the Japanese guy with the cool haircut on the head and then sprinted away. He jumped to his feet and gave chase, catching her in his arms and wrestling her to the ground. They lay like that for a while, panting and sort of petting each other.
Jenny noticed that none of the other kids were even watching them. They were too focused on their gum-chewing, or they were rubbing their hands up and down each other’s backs and giggling. Then she felt a hand on her back, too, underneath her shirt.
“Let’s take our shirts off,” Harry suggested eagerly.
“Okay,” Jenny agreed, not wanting to be a prude. She only had three buttons left buttoned, anyway. The guidebooks were definitely right about Croton. It was wild, and maybe—once she got used to it—exactly what she needed.
“Wow,” he murmured as she folded her shirt neatly and placed it on the grass beside her. The look on his face was the absolute definition of the phrase to gawk.
“Now you,” Jenny said, feeling confident in the knowledge that she was the only sober one in the forest. Well, almost.
“What the hell are you kids doing back here?!” a deep voice boomed. An athletic-looking man with curly brown hair and a brown mustache strode down the path, barefoot, wearing faded Levi’s and a threadbare light blue oxford shirt, unbuttoned to midchest.
April sat up and wiped her mouth, her brown eyes shining. “Hi, Mr. Tortia.”
Mr. Tortia didn’t look as angry as he’d sounded. He almost looked like he wanted to hang out. “So, what did I miss?” he demanded eagerly. Then he noticed Jenny. “And who, may I ask, are you?”
Harry rubbed the spot between Jenny’s bare shoulder blades. “She’s a prospective. And I think maybe she took your share.”
Jenny crossed her hands over her chest. Actually, his share of the E was somewhere inside her nude-colored Bali extra-support bra with double-duty underwire and chafe-free superwide straps, but she wasn’t about to volunteer that information.
Mr. Tortia picked something out of his tobacco-stained teeth and flicked it angrily into the grass, looking genuinely pissed off. “This is a school, not a strip club. Put your clothes back on,” he snapped at Jenny.
Gladly.
Jenny snatched up her pretty Japanese-style shirt, rising to her feet as she slipped her arms inside the sleeves and buttoned it up to her chin. Who the hell is this guy, anyway? she wondered with frightened indignation.
“You can’t be serious about attending this institution,” Mr. Tortia observed, his thick brown mustache slick with sweat and spittle. “Croton prides itself on its discretion. Our students are the crème de la crème!”
Jenny gazed down at the circle of Croton students, their bare navels and nipples blinking up at her in the warm summer sun, their mouths working the Dentyne, blissed out from the Ecstasy, and exhausted by a single round of Duck, Duck, Goose. Discretion? Crème de la crème? The crème de la crème of fuckups, maybe. And what right did this dude with the mustache have to tell her whether she could go there or not?
“Are you a teacher here or …?” she asked politely.
Mr. Tortia squatted down and held his palm out to April, who handed him a piece of Dentyne. He stood up again. “As a matter of fact, I’m the headmaster,” he replied flatly. He pulled on his mustache and offered her his first smile. “Discretion lesson number one: Let’s not mention this little incident to anyone. Got it?”
Jenny nodded mutely.
Mr. Tortia held up both hands and waved with his palms facing backwards, like the Queen of England. “Arrivederci, little prospective girl!” he chimed, dismissing her.
Harry reached up and patted Jenny on the bottom. “Drive safely,” he told her affectionately, even though she was obviously not old enough to drive.
Arrivederci, fuckups!
Her whole body trembling with outrage, Jenny hurried down the path through the woods, wishing with all her heart there was a subway stop right there by the duck pond. She could swipe her MetroCard and catch the 3 train down to Ninety-sixth Street and Broadway, and be home in time for American Idol. The green-headed mallard quacked at her mockingly as she hurried by. “Crème de la crème! Crème de la crème! Crème de la crème!” he seemed to be saying.
Jenny whipped out her cell phone and dialed information. “Taxi. In Croton Falls, New York,” she instructed.
“We have no listings for Taxi,” the operator responded blandly. “I’ll check Limousines.”
“Fine.” Jenny typed the number for the Village of Croton’s only limousine service into her cell phone. With the money her father had given her combined with the money already in her wallet, she could probably get the driver to take her all the way home.
Who said she wasn’t the crème de la crème?
V experiments with double happiness
When Aaron came home from band pract
ice Vanessa was standing in front of the bathroom sink, contemplating her hair—or lack thereof—in the round, toothpaste-spattered mirror, still wet from her shower. She’d ridded herself of Dan’s musty smell and was horrified to discover that she sort of enjoyed the fact that Aaron had absolutely no clue.
When she’s bad, she’s bad.
“Nice towel,” Aaron observed, planting a kiss on the nape of her neck.
“Thanks.” Vanessa batted her eyes and placed her hands on her hips, modeling the lavender-and-black chintz floral bath towel, one of the many Blair had purchased for the apartment during her short but sweet stay.
Aaron wrapped his arms around Vanessa’s waist. “Did you get my present?”
He looked cute in an orange T-shirt and baggy green army shorts, and he smelled like hay from the herbal cigarettes he was always smoking.
“Blair moved out,” Vanessa told him evenly, ignoring his question about the cheesy love/friendship ring he’d left on the kitchen counter that morning. “She couldn’t stand living so far away from Barneys in a walk-up with graffiti on the door.”
“Well, can you blame her?” Aaron smiled at their reflection in the mirror—two dark shaved heads, two pairs of brown eyes, two pairs of thin red lips. “Did you get my e-mail?”
We could almost be twins, Vanessa thought, creeping herself out. She was suddenly reminded of those freaky old V.C. Andrews books she’d read when she was twelve, about a brother and sister who were locked together in an attic and eventually gave birth to twins. “Blair wants to be our senior speaker. If I miss graduation, she’ll kill me.”
Aaron rolled his eyes, flipped the cracked white toilet seat lid down, and sat down on it. He sighed. “I don’t know how she does it.”
“What do you mean?” Vanessa couldn’t help observing that this little bathroom chat was the longest they’d ever talked without forgetting what they were talking about and ripping each other’s clothes off.
“You’re like the most righteous person I know, but she even manages to get you to do her bidding.” Aaron explained, rubbing the back of his neck where the supershort shaved bits were growing in.
“It’s not like that. We’re friends. Anyway,” Vanessa quickly changed the subject. “I think driving across the country and camping out and stuff sounds … cool.” She put her hands in her pockets, hoping that Aaron would forget all about the ring. “I mean, as long as there’s, like, a bathroom and a shower we can use.”
Sounds like she doesn’t quite know the meaning of “camping out.”
“Really?” Aaron stood up, grinning as he turned her around to face him. “So, are you, like, completely naked underneath that towel?” he asked, kissing her neck and shoulders.
Vanessa knew she ought to have been overwhelmed by her outrageous deception. Dan had left only an hour ago. Now here she was with Aaron, her real boyfriend, pretending it was perfectly natural to be taking a shower in the late afternoon, when she normally only took one in the morning. Maybe she was just losing her mind, but somehow it made being with Aaron and Dan all the more exciting.
Aaron turned on the shower and pulled his shirt off over his head. “I say we both need to get really, really clean.” He tugged on Vanessa’s towel. “Come on, I’ll wash your hair for you.”
The towel fell to the floor and Vanessa laughed out loud, amazed at how unguilty she felt. The truth was, in the very near future she wouldn’t be seeing much of these boys at all, so why not enjoy them now, while they were standing right in front of her—naked?
After their steaming hot shower, Aaron busied himself cooking wheat gluten chicken nuggets with sweet potato fries, while Vanessa edited her final film project, a series of interviews with seniors from Constance and other private schools that she’d filmed over the course of the past few months.
Some of the interviews were funny and insightful, but some of them could be interpreted in kind of a bad way if you didn’t know the people. She decided to start with Blair’s interview. Blair looked totally awesome sitting in front of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park wearing a black polo shirt and her jade-and-Swarovski-crystal chandelier earrings. A group of shirtless boys were playing Frisbee in the background, girls in bikinis sprawled at their feet.
“For me it’s not just about having sex, though. It’s about my whole future. Yale and Nate: the two things I’ve always wanted …” Blair declared, sounding unusually psychotic. “And if I don’t get in … someone is going to fucking pay. This is, like, my one chance to be happy, and I think I deserve it, you know?”
Well, hello, crazy bitch.
Vanessa winced. Of course it was good film, but considering how things had turned out with Nate, it would hurt Blair’s feelings too much to use it.
Aaron came out of the kitchen to peer over her shoulder at the little screen on her digital video camera, a carrot stick in his mouth. “When’s my part?”
Vanessa fast-forwarded until she got to Aaron’s interview, taken late one night in her bedroom—which explained why he was wearing only a lavender-and-celery-green striped sheet. The interview had been done before he cut his hair, and brown mini dreadlocks stuck out in all directions from his head.
“I’ve been feeling really, really good about myself since I heard from Harvard,” the practically naked, dreadlocked Aaron told the camera. “I mean, I used to be this skinny kid with braces and frizzy hair, and now I’m, like, the king. It totally rocks!”
Good for you, dude. Good for you.
Behind them, the timer on the oven went off. “I sound like an asshole,” Aaron observed casually as he headed back into the kitchen. “But you can use it. I don’t mind.”
Vanessa went back to Blair’s segment, watching it over and over and trying to edit it in such a way that Blair wouldn’t sound totally demonic. Maybe Blair didn’t have Nate anymore, but she had gotten into Yale in the end. As she scrolled over and over through the footage in her film, listening to her classmates’ and peers’ hilariously self-absorbed statements and sad truths, she grew more and more reticent about missing graduation. Not that she was actually into group hugs or white dresses, but it seemed kind of wrong to miss out on the one day she’d been waiting for since she started at Constance Billard in ninth grade.
Like hooking up with two guys on the same day wasn’t wrong?
Professor Pierre Papadametriou
English Dept., The Evergreen State College
2700 Evergreen Parkway NW
Olympia, WA 98505
Daniel Humphrey
815 West End Avenue, Apt. 8D
New York, NY 10024
Dear Daniel Humphrey,
I was so excited with hiring you for my summer assistant, I forgot to tell you the subject of my book: sex poems. I mean, poems that are about making sex through the ages, which is interesting to me because I teach poetry and biology, and I am Greek! The book has no title yet but maybe you will help me think of a good one! I also did not explain that you will live in my small home with my two dogs, Plato and Plato Jr., and my son, Mick, because Evergreen does not allow students to move in until orientation in end of August. Hammock in attic is fixed, so come! We will make a good time with Micky’s homemade ouzo!
Sincerely,
Pierre
D chooses real sex over sex poems
Dan sat in the back of AP English class, his hands trembling as he reread the letter. Professor Papadametriou sounded like a nice man, and he’d probably make a good advisor. Dan could totally picture enjoying a few glasses of wine in the professor’s home while he talked about the fall of Troy and his son stuffed grape leaves or whatever. The thing was, Dan didn’t want to go to Evergreen at all anymore.
“Dan, could you enlighten us as to who the narrator is in this poem?” Ms. Solomon asked. She was wearing a tight black lace mini tank dress, her nearly translucent, thin, spidery arms and bony legs poking out of it, making her look like a cartoon witch in a Halloween TV special. She wound a strand of mousy dark blond hair around her i
ndex finger, a gesture she probably thought was irresistible to Dan. Ms. Solomon had a serious crush on him, and whenever she suspected he wasn’t paying attention in class, she stomped her feet like a petulant child and asked him a question, demanding his attention.
He wasn’t even sure which poem she was talking about, although he knew it was Robert Frost, and he’d memorized most of Frost.
“It’s either the guy or the horse,” Dan answered mechanically without even looking up.
“Thanks, Stormfield,” Ms. Solomon cracked sarcastically.
“Even I could do better than that,” Chuck Bass jeered from the front of the room, where he’d decided to sit every day up until the final exam, in his last-ditch effort to get better than a D in English. Chuck was wearing orange-and-white plaid Bermuda shorts, a white polo shirt, white patent leather shoes, and a matching white patent leather belt. It was the sort of outfit a Park Avenue mom would dress her three-year-old son in for church, only Chuck had chosen the outfit himself. Sweetie sat in Chuck’s lap, wearing a tiny rhinestone tiara.
Dan shrugged. He was beyond Chuck’s nasty wisecracks, and beyond Ms. Solomon’s insolent crush. Way beyond. In fact, right now he was so consumed with love for Vanessa, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.
Uh-oh.
On the subway he’d started writing his graduation speech, modeling it after all the stupid graduation speeches he’d heard in movies. We are the future. The ticket to a successful life is a good education. The world awaits us with all it has to teach. But that had been before he and Vanessa had sex on her roof. Now he was pretty sure he was changing the topic. For how could he not write about love?
Double uh-oh.
He glanced down at the letter again, picked up his chewed-on black Paper Mate pen, and turned to a clean sheet of paper in his loose-leaf binder.