Upper East Side #1 Read online

  The girl blinked. “I just can’t believe I’m talking to you. I’m Bree. You’re Chanel. I—” The girl bit her tiny lips. “I know everything about you. You’re amazing. You’re like, famous.”

  The girl, Bree, was almost a foot shorter than Chanel, with soft dark eyes like those adorable baby seals’ eyes in the World Wildlife Fund updates that Chanel’s mother received in the mail twice a year.

  Chanel took a step toward her. “Like what? What do you know about me?”

  “Not all those silly rumors,” the girl said, quivering from head to toe.

  For all Chanel knew, this little curly-haired, button-lipped, seal-eyed imposter had been sent there by Porsha, like some sort of suicide bomber, just to rile Chanel up.

  “I won’t tell anyone anything,” Bree promised, turning to go. “And don’t worry, I can use the bathroom upstairs. I just wanted you to know how cool I think you are.”

  Sure, you won’t tell anyone anything, Chanel thought bitterly. No one on this goddamned island could ever keep their mouth shut.

  “Wait!” Chanel called sharply.

  Bree turned around and blinked her big brown eyes up at her idol.

  Chanel hesitated. When was this going to end? How many more people was she going to have to hide from before she and Porsha became friends again? Wasn’t that why she’d come back? To repair her friendship with Porsha? But it wasn’t happening. Things were different now, irreparably different. She and Porsha would never be friends again.

  “Never mind,” she said dismissively. “I was going to ask to borrow a hairbrush, but I just remembered I have mine.” She tried to smile. “Nice meeting you, Bree.”

  The younger girl’s face flushed with Chanel’s utterance of her name. “You too!” she squealed before closing the bathroom door behind her.

  Pulling another paper towel from the dispenser, Chanel rubbed at her cheeks, trying to bring some color back into them. She spied the turquoise heart again, reflected in the mirror. C + P FOREVER.

  She’d come back to the city and to Willard hoping everything would go back to the way it had been. But then she’d slipped up. She’d slept with Kaliq again. And whether Porsha knew about their trysts yet or not, Chanel could never be the friend Porsha wanted her to be. Because Chanel loved Kaliq and wanted him for herself. And Porsha would always hate her for that.

  Last fall at Hanover, Chanel had studied the reign of the Tudors in England, featuring Henry VIII, the famous king who’d beheaded two of his six wives and hundreds of his loyal servants. She and Porsha were sort of like King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief officer. Their bond was so strong it eventually became toxic, because both men wanted the same thing—power.

  Still looking in the mirror, Chanel lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes into a regal glare. When their friendship had finally played itself out, King Henry VIII had had Thomas Cromwell beheaded for treason. And so it went with her and Porsha. They would always keep fighting over Kaliq until one of them probably ended up dead.

  Chanel glanced at her watch. Only three more classes left in the day. She was late for Double Latin, and after that she had an appointment with Willard's college admissions advisor. She figured Porsha would probably be busy again after school with one of her many activities.

  Cutting yet another class, the three boys lay on their backs in the grass, far too high now to kick the ball. Anthony, whose grandfather was an Oscar-winning film director, took this moment to show off his extensive knowledge of film.

  “How come so many famous old movies, you know, like The Big Chill—movies that our parents watch—show people getting high? If it’s such a cool, acceptable thing, then why is it illegal?”

  “Because people become assholes after college,” Charlie explained. “They start policing themselves. But it’s all a bunch of bullshit. Weed is good for you.”

  “Word,” Jeremy agreed. “Unless you’re like that kid Chris and you smoke some bad weed and your fucking eyeballs explode.”

  All three boys tapped on their eyelids with cautious fingertips.

  “Man, why’d you have to bring that up?” Charlie moaned. “Now I’m all paranoid.”

  Kaliq was already paranoid, but the paranoia was of a different sort.

  It was only Wednesday. Was it possible that Porsha could remain ignorant about him and Chanel—having sex not once, but twice—until Friday, even though she was in school with Chanel every day and they were still sort of best friends and probably still told each other everything? Chances were, no. And what about Jaylen Harrison? He wasn’t exactly good at keeping secrets. The entire Upper East Side probably knew by now.

  Kaliq rubbed his pretty green eyes viciously. It didn’t matter how Porsha found out. Any way he looked at it, he was fucked. He tried to come up with a plan, but the only plan his high mind could think of was to wait and see what happened when he saw Porsha on Friday night. He could tell her then himself. Make a complete confession. After they had sex. Or before.

  Good plan.

  “Can you imagine Chanel with all these guys in her dorm room? Like, Ooh, baby. Harder, harder!” Jeremy mused, wandering back into Chanel territory. “Oh, man!”

  “Wonder if she even knows who the daddy is,” Anthony said.

  “I heard there was a pretty major drug thing going on, too,” Charlie mentioned. “She was dealing and got addicted to whatever it was. She was in rehab all summer. After the baby was born, I guess.”

  “Whoa, that is fucked up,” Jeremy said.

  “You and her had a thing, didn’t you, Kaliq?” Charlie asked.

  “Where’d you hear that?” he shot back.

  Charlie shook his head and smiled. “I don’t know, man. Around. What’s the problem? She’s fine's as fuck.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had finer,” Kaliq said, and immediately regretted it. What was he talking about?

  “Yeah, Porsha’s pretty fine too, I guess,” Charlie said.

  “I bet she gets pretty crazy in bed,” Jeremy agreed.

  “Dude's tired just thinking about it!” Anthony piped up, pointing at Kaliq and cackling.

  Annoyed, Kaliq rolled away, lay back in the grass, and stared at the empty blue sky. If he tilted his head all the way back, he could just see the limestone rooftops of the penthouses along Fifth Avenue jutting out above the treetops, Chanel’s and Porsha’s included. He tucked his chin down so all he could see was blue sky again. He was too high to deal with any of this shit. He tuned his friends out and tried to clear his mind completely, his head as empty and blank as the sky. Images of Chanel and Porsha, naked, rose before him and crowded out the blankness.

  “You know you love me,” they both teased in unison, making him smile.

  13

  Paragon Sports, the only sporting goods superstore in all of Manhattan, located on Broadway near Union Square, carried a large selection of impressive-looking hunting knives. Yasmine and Mekhi had arranged to meet there during his PE class and her free study period after lunch in order to equip Mekhi with a suitable costume to wear as deranged killer Mickey Knox in her remake of Natural Born Killers.

  Right now Mekhi was wearing a tight wifebeater tucked into a pair of camouflage cargo pants, a shiny black belt, work boots, and some sort of black polyester over-the-shoulder harness that Yasmine was sure they could make good use of as Mickey Knox’s multi-weapon holster.

  “I look like one of the Village People,” Mekhi mumbled, regarding himself in the full-length mirror beside the upstairs hunting knife display. The wifebeater emphasized his bony rib cage and skinny arms. Yasmine hadn’t told him he’d have to dress like a tool before he’d agreed to be in her movie.

  Yasmine ignored him as she studied the knives. Mickey Knox was an ace knife-thrower. Of course he carried guns too, but for those she’d have to go to Toys R Us. Even a toy gun was risky on the Brooklyn Bridge though. Unless it was neon orange or electric green, someone might mistake it for a real gun and call the police. Knives were safer.
>
  And way cooler. She’d never appreciated how pretty knives could be, with their variously carved handles and curved, finely pointed blades. And then there was the Leatherman, which included a knife, a pair of scissors, two screwdrivers, a wrench, and a saw, and came in a neat little leather sleeve.

  “May I ask what you need a hunting knife for?” said the sporty-looking hipster behind the display. He wore thick, black-framed glasses and had long sideburns and probably went to NYU, Yasmine thought enviously. She bet he rock-climbed in the Palisades in New Jersey on the weekends and lived in a grubby, loud studio apartment on the Lower East Side on some dismally cool street over a bar, where people like Porsha Sinclaire would never dream of setting foot.

  “It’s a prop. For a movie I’m making.” Yasmine grinned and pointed at Mekhi. “He’s going to slice open a lot of innocent people with it.”

  Mekhi glanced down at his stupid cargo pants with the tags dangling from the belt loops. He wished he could change.

  “It has to look impressive,” Yasmine told the sales guy. She pointed to a fourteen-inch, textured steel knife in the display. “That one’s nice.”

  Mekhi peered over her shoulder. The knife was huge and beautiful, with a gold and white handle and a wide steel blade that only tapered at the very end, like a mini-machete.

  The salesman sucked in his breath and pulled his plaid flannel shirt away from his chest in a gesture that suggested the room was heating up. “Yup. That is a nice one. For a total of $4,500.”

  Yasmine frowned. Maybe she should have gone to a cooking store. A nice sharp carving knife probably only cost around thirty bucks.

  The salesman picked up the knife and set it down on top of the glass display case. “Comes with a hand-stitched leather sheath and its own sharpener.” He ran his thumb over the blade. “Feel that,” he said, holding the knife up for Mekhi and Yasmine to touch.

  Mekhi pressed his entire hand against the sharpest part of the blade, pulling it away again before the salesman could see he’d drawn blood. “Cool.”

  Yasmine didn’t want to touch it. What was the point? She was already spending a small fortune on Mekhi’s outfit. “Do you have anything in the thirty-to fifty-dollar range?”

  The salesman put the knife down and leaned toward her. His breath smelled like Altoids. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you have this one on loan if you bring it back safe and sound. No one’s going to buy it anyway. Hunting’s not real big in Manhattan.”

  Is that so?

  “You would do that?” Yasmine asked incredulously. Every time she ventured below 23rdStreet the people just got nicer and nicer.

  Mekhi sucked on his bleeding hand.

  “You can return the clothes too,” the sales guy said, lowering his voice. He jerked his chin at Mekhi. “As long as he doesn’t soil them,” he added, implying that Mekhi was mentally challenged and might have trouble keeping his pants clean. “Keep the tags on, hold on to the receipt, and bring them back within thirty days. My girlfriend works as an assistant props stylist for commercials. They do it all the time.”

  Yasmine wanted to hug him, but that wouldn’t be cool. Besides, he had a girlfriend, and she was supposed to be in love with Mekhi. “Thank you. Thank you so, so much.” She glanced at Mekhi, who was staring at the knife, still sucking on his hand. “Go get changed so we can pay,” she told him. Sometimes she wondered if Mekhi was a little slow. Maybe he just needed to eat something.

  Mekhi wandered back to the dressing room where he’d left his school clothes. As he changed back into his regular clothes, Mickey Knox’s lines from Yasmine’s script reverberated in his head. “Life is fragile and absurd. Murdering someone's not so hard.”

  Mekhi bent down to tie his Converse sneakers, tugging violently at the laces and knotting them tight. A true poet, he could see the words from the script in his head, each letter distinct, with glistening edges. He moved a letter here, added one there, deleted a few, until they aligned to form a new haiku:

  Rage, hate, pretty knife—

  October moon, tight white shirt.

  This blade cuts through bone.

  14

  “Well, it’s wonderful to have you back, dear,” Ms. Glos, Willard’s college advisor, told Chanel. She picked her glasses up from where they were hanging around her neck on a gold chain and slid them onto her nose so she could examine Chanel’s schedule, which was lying on her desk. “Let’s see, now. Mmmm,” she muttered, reading the schedule over.

  Chanel sat in front of Ms. Glos, with her legs crossed, waiting patiently. There were no diplomas on Ms. Glos’s wall, no evidence of any accreditations at all, just pictures of her grandchildren. Chanel wondered if Ms. Glos had even gone to college. You would have thought that if she were going to dish out advice on the subject, she could have at least tried it.

  Ms. Glos cleared her throat. “Yes, well, your schedule is perfectly acceptable. Not stellar, mind you, but adequate. I imagine you’re making up for it with extracurriculars, yes?”

  Chanel shrugged her shoulders. If you can call drinking and dancing naked on a beach in Cannes an extracurricular.

  Or how about having sex with your best friend’s boyfriend—twice?

  “Not really,” she said. “I mean, I’m not actually signed up for any extracurriculars at the moment.”

  Ms. Glos let her glasses drop. Her nostrils were turning very red and Chanel wondered if she was about to have a bloody nose. Ms. Glos was famous for her bloody noses. Her hair was thin and white and her skin was very pale, with a yellowish tinge. All the girls thought she had some terrible contagious disease.

  “No extracurriculars? But what are you doing to improve yourself?”

  Chanel gave Ms. Glos a polite, blank look. Who said she needed improving?

  “I see. Well, we’ll have to get you involved in something, won’t we?” Ms. Glos said. “I’m afraid the colleges aren’t going to even look at you without any extracurriculars.” She bent over and pulled a big, loose-leaf binder out of a drawer in her desk and began flipping through pages and pages of flyers printed on colored paper. “Here’s something that starts this week. ‘Feng Shui Flowers, the Art of Floral Design.’”

  She looked up at Chanel, who was frowning doubtfully.

  “No, you’re right. That’s not going to get you into Harvard, is it?” Ms. Glos said with a little laugh. She pushed up the sleeves of her blouse and frowned at the binder as she flipped briskly through the pages. She wasn’t about to give up after only one try. She was very good at her job.

  Chanel gnawed on her thumbnail. She hadn’t thought about this. That colleges would actually need her to be anything more than she already was. And she definitely wanted to go to college. A good one. Her parents certainly expected her to go to one of the best schools. Not that they put any pressure on her―but it went without saying. And the more Chanel thought about it, the more she realized she really didn’t have anything going for her. She’d been kicked out of boarding school, her grades had fallen, she had no idea what was going on in any of her classes, and she had no hobbies or cool after-school activities. Her SAT scores sucked because her mind always wandered during those stupid fill-in-the-bubble tests. And when she took them again, they would probably suck even worse. Basically, she was screwed.

  “What about drama? Your English grades are quite good, you must like drama,” Ms. Glos suggested. “They’ve only been rehearsing this one for a little over a week. It’s the Interschool Drama Club doing a modern, Hip Hop version of Gone With the Wind.” She looked up again. “How ‘bout it?”

  Chanel jiggled her foot up and down and chewed on her pinky nail. She tried to imagine herself alone on stage playing Scarlett O’Hara. She would have to cry on cue, and pretend to faint, and wear huge dresses with corsets and hoop skirts. Maybe even a wig.

  I’ll never go hungry again! she’d cry dramatically, in her best Southern-belle voice. It might be kind of fun.

  Chanel took the flyer from Ms. Glos’s hand, careful
not to touch the paper where Ms. Glos had touched it. “Sure, why not?” she said.

  Ms. Glos closed the binder. “Your friend Porsha Sinclaire might be able to help,” she suggested. “Porsha has always participated in so many marvelous extracurricular activities. Sometimes I wonder how she does it.” She smiled fondly. “Porsha’s applying early admission to Yale, you know.”

  Porsha. Chanel’s heart rate quickened. Her hackles rose. Porsha.

  Porsha was so smart, so perfect, so Ivy League–bound. Porsha had Kaliq. Porsha had friends and a sweet little brother who still lived at home. Porsha had a pretty pedigreed cat and an amazing selection of Christian Louboutin shoes. Porsha was going to Yale, and she was going nowhere.

  Chanel left Ms. Glos’s office as the final class of the day was getting out. Gone With the Wind rehearsal was in the auditorium, but it didn’t begin until six so that the students who did sports right after school could still be in the play. Chanel walked up Emma Willard’s wide central stairwell to the fourth floor to retrieve her coat from her locker and see if anyone wanted to hang out. All around her, girls were flying past, a blur of end-of-the-day energy, rushing to their next meeting, practice, rehearsal, or club. Out of habit, the younger girls paused for half a second to say hello to Chanel, because ever since they could remember, to be seen talking to Chanel Crenshaw was to be seen.

  “Hey, Chanel,” Erica Young, a junior, sang out before diving down the stairs for Glee Club in the basement music room. Please don’t follow me, she prayed silently, crossing her fingers as she went.

  “Later, Chanel,” muttered Anna Quintana, the sophomore sports prodigy, speed-walking by in her gym shorts and cleats. Why didn’t I take kickboxing instead of soccer? she scolded herself. Then I could take you on.

  “See you tomorrow, Chanel,” Lily Reed, a freshman, chirped softly, blushing down at her riding breeches. Sometimes I have dreams that I’m a knight on horseback and I gallop up to you on my horse.