Upper East Side #7 Read online

  “Here, look!” Chanel squealed, stabbing at the page with a long, slender finger. “Don't we look like badasses?!”

  Bree leaned in closer to see, happily inhaling the sweet scent of Chanel's custom-blended patchouli oil perfume. Across Chanel's perfect lap lay a spread of the two girls dressed head-to-toe in Les Best couture, motoring down the beach in a dune buggy with the Ferris wheel at Coney Island rising up behind them, all lit up. The style of the picture was typical Jonathan Joyce—the über-famous fashion photographer who had shot the spread—totally natural and unposed, like he'd just happened upon these two girls riding their dune buggy on the beach at sunset and having the time of their lives.

  Indeed they did look like badasses in their crazy turquoise-and-black-striped leggings, leather vests over white bikini tops, and white leather knee-high go-go boots. Their hair was winged back, their nails were painted white, their lips were painted cotton candy pink, and peacock feathers dangled from their ears. It was all very retro eighties/futuristic/cutting edge, and absurdly cool.

  Bree couldn't pull her eyes away. There she was, in a magazine, and for the first time ever her enormous chest wasn't the focal point of the picture. In fact the two girls looked so fresh and pure the picture was almost wholesome. It was beyond what Bree could have hoped for. It was heavenly.

  “I love the look on your face,” Chanel observed. “It's like you've just been kissed or something.”

  Bree giggled, feeling very much like she had just been kissed. “You look pretty too.”

  Oops, look who has a major crush on Chanel—just like everyone else in the universe! But Bree's crush was deeper than most: she actually wanted to be Chanel. And the thing Chanel had that she still lacked was a questionable past—that alluring air of mystery.

  “Bet it seems like forever ago that you were kicked out of boarding school,” Bree ventured boldly, her eyes fixed on the magazine.

  “I was worried I'd never get into a single college because of all that,” Chanel sighed. “If I'd known I'd get into all of them, I'd never have applied to so many schools.”

  Poor thing. If only we all had that problem.

  “Did you like boarding school?” Bree persisted, turning to gaze up at Chanel with her big brown eyes. “I mean, more than going to school in the city?”

  Chanel lay back on the four-poster bed and stared up at the white canopy overhead. She'd been eight years old when she'd first gotten the bed, and she'd felt like a little princess every night when she'd gone to sleep. As a matter of fact, she still felt like a princess, only bigger.

  “I loved feeling like I had my own life, apart from my parents and the friends I'd known practically since I was born. I liked going to school with boys, and eating with them in the dining hall. It was like having a whole class of brothers. But I missed my room and the city, and weekends hanging out.” She pulled off her white cotton socks and threw them across the room. “And I know it sounds really spoiled, but I missed having a maid.”

  Bree nodded. She liked the sound of eating in a dining hall with a whole bunch of boys. She liked it a lot. And she'd never had a maid, so it wasn't as if she'd miss that.

  “I guess it was good preparation for college,” Chanel mused. “I mean, if I actually decide to go to college.”

  Bree closed the magazine and held it against her chest. “I thought you were going to Brown.”

  Chanel pulled a pillow over her face and then pulled it off again. Was it really necessary to answer so many questions? All of a sudden she kind of wished she hadn't invited Bree over. “I don't know where I'm going. I might not even go. I don't know,” she mumbled, tossing the pillow on the floor next to her socks. Her silky hair fanned out around her perfectly chiseled face as she gazed skyward with her enormous almond-shaped eyes. She looked so lovely, Bree half expected a flock of white doves to flap out from underneath the bed.

  Chanel grabbed the stereo remote from off her bedside table and clicked on the old Rihanna CD that she'd been listening to a lot lately. The CD had come out last summer and reminded her of a time when she was completely carefree. She hadn't been kicked out of boarding school yet. She hadn't thought about applying to college. She hadn't even started modeling yet.

  “What's so great about Brown?” she questioned aloud, although her brother Cairo went there and would be totally pissed off if she decided not to go. Plus, she'd met a sexy Latin painter at Brown who was still totally in love with her. But what about Harvard, and that sensitive nearsighted tour guide who'd also fallen in love with her? Or Yale and the Whiffenpoofs, who'd written a song for her? And there was always Princeton, which she hadn't even visited. After all, it was the closest to the city. “Maybe I should just defer for a year or two, get my own apartment. Model some, and maybe try acting.”

  “Or you could do both,” Bree suggested. “I mean, once you stop going to school, it's probably really hard to go back.”

  As if you'd know, Little Miss Helpful.

  Chanel rolled off the bed and stood in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the back of her closet door. She'd rumpled herblouse, and her blue-and-white uniform was hanging lopsidedly on her hips. That morning she'd been late as usual and had tripped running to school, losing her orange Miu Miu clogs and landing facedown on the sidewalk. Now the pink polish on the big toe of her left foot was chipped, and a purple bruise stood out on her right knee.

  “What a mess,” she complained.

  Bree wasn't sure how Chanel could even stand to look at herself in the mirror every day without passing out in amazement at her own perfection. That anyone as perfect as Chanel could have issues was totally unfathomable.

  “I'm sure you'll figure it out,” she told the older girl, becoming suddenly distracted by a photo of Cairo Crenshaw, Chanel's fine older brother, propped up on Chanel's bedside table in a silver Tiffany frame. Tall and lanky, with the same silky hair and golden beige skin, Cairo was a male version of Chanel. Same huge almond-shaped eyes, same full mouth that turned up at the corners, same straight white teeth and exotic features. In the picture he was standing on a rocky beach, tan and shirtless. Bree squeezed her bare knees together. Those chest muscles, that stomach, those arms—oh! If boarding school was filled with boys who were even half as gorgeous as Cairo Crenshaw, they could sign her up!

  Easy there, cowgirl.

  Chanel's pink iMac beeped, indicating that she had just received e-mail. “Probably one of our fans,” Chanel joked, although Bree thought she was serious. Chanel went over to her antique desk, jiggled her mouse, and clicked on the latest e-mail message.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Dear Chanel,

  Our sorority totally worships Les Best and some of us were at his New York show this spring, so you can imagine how completely thrilled we were when we heard you were considering attending Princeton this fall. And if you do go to Princeton, you have to become a Tri Delt. We already have all these amazing fundraising ideas for this year, including a Les Best fashion show to benefit the Wild Horses of Chincoteague, featuring us, the Tri Delts, as models! The best part is you won't even have to pledge. Congratulations, Chanel, you're already a sister! All you have to do now is get your behind up to Princeton a few days early this August so you can get a good room in our house.

  We can't wait. Big kisses.

  Your sis,

  Sheri

  Chanel read the message again and then logged off, staring at the blank screen in shock. Pushy sorority sisters were just about the last people she wanted to hear from, and anyway, wasn't Princeton supposed to be sort of intellectual? She picked up the phone to call Porsha and then slammed it down again, realizing she'd completely forgotten that Bree was even there. Bree was sweet and adorable and everything—but didn't she have, like, homework or a movie to go to or something?

  See, even perfect goddesses have a bitchy side.

  Bree slid off the bed and hitched up her extrawide supportive bra straps, g
uessing that she was about to be dismissed. “You know, my brother Mekhi is singing for the Raves now,” she announced. “His first gig with them is tomorrow night. I can put you on the special guest list if you want to come.”

  Bree wasn't even sure if there was a special guest list. All she knew was she was getting in free because she was Mekhi's sister. Mekhi thought he was so famous now that he was a member of a band with the number one album on the East Coast, but if she showed up at the gig with Chanel—two gorgeous models out on the town in matching Les Best dresses—she'd completely outfamous him.

  Chanel wrinkled her nose. She wanted to go to the Raves gig, she really did, but she and her parents had already RSVPed to some Yale prospective students' get-to-know-you party tomorrow night. She couldn't exactly make her parents go by themselves.

  “I don't think I can,” she explained apologetically. “There's this Yale thing I have to go to. But I'll try to get down there if it finishes early.”

  Bree nodded and stuffed the issue of W into her Gap tote bag, disappointed. She'd envisioned making an entrance at the Lower East Side club with Chanel. Never mind the Raves—they were rock stars, big deal. She and Chanel were supermodels—at least Chanel was. Heads were guaranteed to turn.

  Guess she'll just have to satisfy herself with being the lead singer's little sister. Like that would ever be enough.

  3

  “Crack me like an egg!”

  Mekhi Hargrove glared at himself in his bedroom mirror and took a long drag on a half-smoked Newport. A lame-voiced wimp in worn, khaki-colored corduroys and a maroon T-shirt. Not exactly rock 'n' roll.

  “Crack me like an egg!” he wailed again, trying to look angst-ridden, rebellious, and sickly cool all at the same time. The problem was, his voice always broke when he went into the higher ranges, coming out in a breathy whisper, and his face looked soft and young and totally unthreatening.

  Mekhi rubbed at his bony chin and thought about growing a goatee. Yasmine had always had a strong aversion to facial hair, but what she thought was no longer relevant now that they were no longer a couple.

  Almost two weeks ago at Yasmine's eighteenth birthday party at her apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mekhi had been discovered by the megapopular indie band, the Raves. Or rather, his poems had been. Thinking they would both go to NYU next year and live happily ever after, Mekhi had moved in with Yasmine only a few days before. But their relationship had quickly deteriorated. More depressed than usual, Mekhi had been sitting in a corner during the party, chugging Grey Goose vodka straight out of the bottle. Meanwhile, the Raves showed up at the party and their lead guitarist, Kash Polk, stumbled upon a stack of black notebooks filled with Mekhi's poetry. Kash and his band members had gone crazy over the poems, insisting they'd work perfectly as lyrics. Their lead singer had just mysteriously quit—rehab anyone?—and so they decided to ask Mekhi to be their front man. By then Mekhi was pissy drunk and thought the whole thing was totally hilarious. Throwing himself into the task with drunken fervor, he'd stolen the show, electrifying drunken partiers with his brazen performance.

  He'd thought it was a one-time deal, a way of distracting himself from the fact that he'd just broken up with the only girl who'd ever loved him. The next day he discovered that he was a card-carrying member of the band, and completely in over his head.

  During rehearsals Mekhi found that his normally sober self was physically incapable of putting out the same reckless energy that he'd had at the party, and, compared to the other band members, who were all white in their twenties and wore clothes tailor-made for them by innovative designers like Better Than Naked, he felt like a geeky, squeaky little black kid. He'd even asked Kash Polk why in hell the Raves wanted him to be their lead singer in the first place. Kash had replied simply, “It's all about the words, man.”

  Dude, just because he could write didn't mean he could sing. But maybe if he looked more like he could sing, he might actually convince people that he deserved to be in the band.

  Mekhi shuffled through his messy desk drawers searching for the battery-operated beard trimmer he'd bought last year during a week of experimenting with the length of his sideburns. He moved on to his little sister Bree's room, and finally found it under her bed, inexplicably rolled up inside an old pink bath towel.

  Little sister lesson number one: If you want to keep your shit, put a padlock on your door.

  Not bothering to return to his own room, he went over to the mirror on the back of Bree's closet door and tugged at the outgrown Mr. Trendy Artiste haircut he'd gotten soon after one of his poems was published in the New Yorker. It was in the faded twist style that was popular with celebrities and athletes these days—twists on top, fade cut at the bottom. Now that he'd made the switch from bohemian poet to gritty rock star, it was time for a change.

  Doesn't everyone know not to try a new look the day before a big event?

  The trimmer buzzed to life and Mekhi began shaving the back of his neck, watching his hair gather on the carpet in clumps. Then he stopped, worried all of a sudden that a beard trimmer didn't have exactly the right sort of blades to shave one's entire head with. It might leave weird track marks all over his skull, or shave his head unevenly so that it looked like his hair had been eaten rather than cut.

  Sure he wanted to look hardcore, but not chewed-head hardcore.

  He debated whether or not to continue. If he stopped now, the shaved parts would be completely concealed by the rest of his hair until he bent over, and then, voilá—a shaved neck. It was kind of cool knowing the shaved part was there without being able to see it. Then again, an unnoticeable haircut wasn't exactly the look he was going for.

  He put the beard trimmer down, propped a Newport between his lips, and reached for Bree's phone. If there was one person who knew anything about shaving heads, it was Yasmine. She'd kept her own head shaved since ninth grade, and, shunning the expensive salons like Frederic Fekkai and Elizabeth Arden's Red Door that her coiffed classmates frequented, insisted on shaving it herself. Secretly he'd always thought she look prettier with a little more hair, but since she obviously thought she looked great bald, he wasn't about to say anything.

  “If this is about the apartment-share, I will be calling you once I've reviewed your online application,” Yasmine said robotically when she picked up.

  “Hey, it's me, Mekhi,” he responded brightly. “What's up?”

  Yasmine didn't answer right away. She'd wanted to give Mekhi space to grow and blossom into the next Lenny Kravitz or John Keats or whatever the fuck he wanted to be, but breaking up and kicking him out of her apartment hadn't exactly been easy for her. The casual let's-just-be-friends tone in Mekhi's voice made her heart feel like a deflated balloon.

  “I'm kind of busy actually.” She typed a bunch of nonsense into her computer to make it sound like she was drastically preoccupied. “I have a lot of applications to go through—for the new roommate—you know?”

  “Oh.” Mekhi hadn't been aware that Yasmine was looking for a roommate. Then again, with her older sister Ruby gone on tour with her band, it would be kind of lonely and boring living all alone in the apartment, especially without him to keep her company.

  For a fleeting moment Mekhi was so overcome with regret he felt like grabbing a pen and writing a tragic breakup poem using the words cut or shaved, but then his newly shorn neck began to burn and prickle, and he remembered why he'd called Yasmine in the first place.

  “I just had a quick question.” He took several quick puffs on his cigarette and then absentmindedly dropped it into a vase of daisies wilting on Bree's desk. “You know when you shave your head? Is there like, a certain kind of razor you use? Like a certain blade?”

  Yasmine's first impulse was to warn him that with a shaved head he'd look like a skinny seven-year-old leukemia patient who'd just been through chemo, but she was tired of protecting him from his own mistakes, especially now that they were “just friends.” “Wahl blade number ten. Look, I gotta go.�
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  Mekhi picked up his beard trimmer. It was from CVS and didn't have a blade size. Maybe he'd be better off going to a barber. “Okay. I'll see you at my gig tomorrow night though, right?”

  “Maybe,” Yasmine replied breezily. “If I get this roommate thing figured out. Gotta go. Bye!”

  Mekhi hung up and picked up the beard trimmer once more. “Crack me like an egg!” he shouted, holding it in front of his chin like a microphone. He whipped off his T-shirt and stuck out his dar skinny gut, trying to look saucily bored and rebellious, like a shorter, thinner, less-fucked-up Jimi Hendrix. “Crack me like an egg!” he wailed, falling on his knees.

  His dad, Rufus, suddenly appeared in the doorway, wearing a cigarette-burned sweatshirt and the pink terrycloth headband Bree used to keep her hair back when she washed her face. “Good thing your sister's too busy to hang out with us after school anymore. She might not be too thrilled to find you stripping in her room,” he commented.

  “I'm rehearsing.” Mekhi rose to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster. “Do you mind?”

  “Go right ahead.” Rufus stood in the doorway, scratching his chest and fingering the unfiltered cigarette tucked behind his left ear. He was a work-at-home single dad, the editor of lesser-known Beat poets and abstract writers no one had ever heard of. “I think if you put the emphasis on every other word, it might be more effective.”

  Mekhi cocked his head and handed Rufus the beard trimmer. “Show me.”

  Rufus grinned. “Okay, but I'm not taking my shirt off.”

  Thank the Lord.

  He held the beard trimmer away from his face, as if worried that it might turn on by itself and buzz off his famously unkempt beard. “Crack me like an egg!” he howled, his dark eyes gleaming. He handed back the trimmer. “Try it.”

  Of course Mekhi's dad had sounded just exactly the way Mekhi wanted to sound. He tossed the trimmer onto Bree's bed and pulled his shirt back on. “I have homework to do,” he grumbled.