Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (14 page)

“I guess Honduras is a little extreme,” Jake deadpanned. “What about . . . Rwanda. One of the nice parts?”

“What?” His mother gaped, eyeing the TV with sudden suspicion. “Is that that
terrible
video game again?”

Jake glanced at the TV, where C.J. sat flexing his 50 Cent–caliber biceps in a warehouse of deathly rocket launchers. “Uh . . . no?” He grinned, attempting to block the TV with his scrawny body. “I mean, it
is
a video game. But not the one you’re thinking. It’s Mrs. Pac-Man.”

His mother narrowed her eyes.

“The next generation,” he added.

“You,” she said, pointing her finger. “Turn that off and take out the trash. You,” she addressed Janie. “Set the table.”

Janie was far too busy thinking about Winston Goggles, and all that it implied, to eat, and went to bed without dinner. What if, she wondered, flipping through her sketches, Winston Goggles also applied to her designs? She’d worked far into the night interpreting and reinterpreting the Trick-or-Treater proposals, brewing enough Yogi Stomach Ease tea to steep a blue whale, and yet, come Wednesday morning, doubt continued to weigh on her mind. She blinked into the not-quite-morning dark, hugged her blankets to her chin, and shivered.

With its lush lawns, evergreen hedges, and brimming pools, you could forget Los Angeles is a desert — but then, nothing quite reminds you like the morning. At night, the temperature plummets, and by dawn, the lawns and hedges are gray with frost, and the pools are sharp as mirrors. For Janie, getting out of bed was more than “a challenge”; getting out of bed was, like, a total aberration of nature. Her limbs grew stiff, her movements slow, her breathing labored — almost like she was part reptile — and every bodily cell begged her to find a nice sun-warmed rock, somewhere to flatten her chilly lizard belly and gape.

Working up her will, Janie whipped aside her bedding, and thought better of it, snatching her red-and-black-checked comforter and wrapping herself inside. Grabbing her sketchbook, she shuffled out of her bedroom, the tail end of her makeshift robe trailing along the linoleum, and headed toward the kitchen. Her brother sat at the table, staring grimly into a bowl of Peanut Butter Bumpers, and so thoroughly swaddled inside his comforter he resembled a gigantic larva.

“Ha.” The gigantic larva pivoted in its chair. “You look like a gigantic larva.”

“And you look like a bee-yoo-ti-full princess,” Janie rejoined, slapping her sketchbook to the linoleum table.

“Seriously,” Jake scoffed, hugging his gray T-shirt cotton comforter close. “Can we
not
put on the heat for
five
minutes?”

“Go for it.” Janie raised her eyebrows. “If you want to die by the hands of Mom.”

“Why do we have heat if we can never use it?” he moaned, withering into his cocoon. Janie sighed, blinking into the glowing depths of the fridge. Her dad had remembered to bring home her favorite Stonyfield low-fat lemon yogurt, and yet, the sight of it made her sick. She shut the door, surrendering to another wave of queasiness.

She plopped down next to her brother, slid her sketchbook across the table, and flipped it open. “Can you tell me what you think of these?” she asked, locating the drawings in question. “They’re designs for the
POSEUR
bag,” she explained, biting her nail.

“Oh yeah.” Jake nodded, and promptly returned to his Bumpers. “They’re good.”

“Jake.” Janie’s tongue clucked in dismay. “You didn’t even
look.
”

“Dude.” He winced. “They’re purses, alright?”

“I’m just,” she sighed, removing her nail from her mouth. “Do you think Winston Goggles apply?”

“How do you mean?” Jake frowned, examining the cereal box for new fun facts.

“I mean . . .” Janie leaned on her elbow, tucking her sleep-tousled bob behind her left ear. “Do you think the girls at school . . . I mean, they’re so used to wearing, like,
designer
stuff. Maybe they’ll think these purses look . . .”

“Poor?” Jake suggested.

“No, not
poor.
” Janie drew her eyebrows together. It was ridiculous to think of themselves as poor — they bought organic yogurt, for god’s sake. “But just like, not . . .”

“Rich,” he offered, causing her to cringe. “Rich” was one of those déclassé words, right? That
poor
people used?

“Okay, well, for the sake of argument,” she surrendered in a rush. “Do you think they’ll think that?”

Jake returned his attention to her sketches, frowned for a long second, and shook his head. “Dude.” He scooted his chair from the table. “I’m sorry, but they all look the same to me.”

By the time she got to school, all she wanted to do was find a quiet place in the shade to lie down and vomit. But such luxuries weren’t available to her. “Janie!” Charlotte cried the moment she emerged from the underground elevator, and broke free from her Jaguar orbit. She scampered excitedly to Janie’s side, pinning her chlorine gaze to the sketchpad tucked underneath her long and lanky arm. “Are those
them
?” She squealed, clapping her little hands. Janie hugged the sketchpad to her chest, attempting a smile. “Can I see? Can I see, puh-lease?”

“Um . . .” Janie lowered the sketchbook to waist level and slipped her thumb under the first page. Her stomach dropped. “Actually,” she croaked, retreating a step, “they’re kind of not ready.”

“Come on,” Charlotte begged, and teasingly reached for the sketchbook. “Can’t I just see what you have so far?”

“No,”
Janie squawked, whipping the book from Charlotte’s light grasp. Charlotte retreated a tiny step, fluttering her soot-black eyelashes — stunned. At some distance, Kate and Laila, who’d remained wilted across Charlotte’s shining Jaguar hood, shared a bemused glance. “I’m sorry.” Janie flushed, sweat prickling her armpit. “It’s just . . .”

“Charlotte!” Jules called from the opposite end of the Showroom, diverting her attention. Janie seized her window and escaped, her sketchpad flapping against her flat chest, Pumas pounding the pavement. A basketball rolled by and she stumbled into it, kicking it clear across the Showroom and under Evan Beverwil’s forest green Range Rover. “Yo!” Marco Duvall bellowed in dismay. But she had no time to apologize, let alone retrieve the ball and risk running into Evan, whom she’d been avoiding since their totally awkward “moment” together at the Viceroy.

She felt sick.

“What are your symptoms?” the school nurse inquired in a cereal-crisp voice, subjecting Janie to a calculating once-over. Nurse Jackie wore her silver hair in a short, angular bob that never seemed to grow out or be cut, and appeared to subsist on a strict diet of Pepsi One and York Peppermint patties, nibbling around the edges like a rat at a wheel of cheese. Her fake-baked rail of a body, with its galaxy of sunspots across the arms and chest, earned her the nickname “Nurse Crackie,” which everybody used, including some teachers. She was in her sixties, but still dressed sixteen — a cause of major distress for Winston’s more fashion-forward females. Nothing quite compared to the trauma of arriving to school in the same outfit as their sour-faced school nurse, an experience collectively referred to as “crack,” as in, “
ew-uh
. . . my pink Burberry driver’s cap is totally on crack!”

But Nurse Crackie restricted her purchases to luxury retailers like Barneys, Saks, and Ted Pelligan, so the chances of Janie appearing in her clothes were slimmer than Crackie herself. Today, for example, the school medic wore light blue high-waisted jeans (Stella McCartney) with a wide fruit-roll-up-red belt (Marc Jacobs), a patterned navy blue blouse with puffed sleeves (Nanette Lepore), cherry patent-and-cork pumps (Tapeet), and plastic bangles (Jessica Kagan) that clacked when she extended her bony arm to slide the thermometer from Janie’s waiting pursed lips.

“You don’t have a fever,” she remarked, shaking the thermometer with a decisive flap of loose underarm flesh. She observed Janie with an appraising look. “Would you like to lie down?”

“Okay,” Janie nodded weakly, crawling across the crackling butcher-papered cot. She sent Nurse Crackie her bravest smile. “Is it okay if I call my mom?”

“Of course,” she replied, and swiveled in her seat, returning to her gray computer. Janie unearthed her cell phone from her crocheted bag and pressed 1.

“Hello,” answered a breathless voice on the first ring. Janie smiled into the phone.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m at the nurse’s office,” Janie explained, lowering her voice.

“Oh!” Amelia cackled with comprehension.
“Faker.”

“I’m actually not.” Janie frowned, peeling the lid of a mini Kozy Shack rice pudding. “I actually feel really nauseous.”

“Oh no.” Amelia mulled this new information over. “Have you immaculately conceived Paul’s love child? Are you Juno?”

“Amelia!” Janie yelped, almost dropping her Nokia. She glanced in the direction of Nurse Crackie’s workstation, expecting a hard and reproving stare, but the nurse was plugged into her Nano and engrossed in her MySpace profile, oblivious to every word. “Amelia” — she lowered her voice a harsh whisper — “
tell
me he did
not
hear you say that.”

“Omigod, Janie,” Amelia laughed. “He’s a
million
miles away, I swear. And you’ll never guess what he’s doing.”

“What?” Janie licked her floppy foil pudding lid with great melancholy.

“Making a daisy chain.”

“He is?” Janie smiled. She
knew
Paul had a sensitive side.

“Puh-
lease
don’t sound like that,” Amelia chastised. “This is seriously disturbing shit. Like, the other day? He was listening to
Devendra Banhart.
”

“Um . . . Amelia?” Janie lowered the foil lid to her lap and clutched her stomach.

“I just hope his weird hippie phase doesn’t affect Creatures of Habit,” she blathered on. “It’s, like,
you
are the lead guitarist of a
punk
band. There are no
daisies
in punk.”

“Amelia,” Janie whimpered, “you think my drawings are good, right?”

“Omigod,” Amelia slowly replied. “I was just talking about Paul Elliot Miller, and you
changed the subject.
” She paused, letting it sink in. “You’re, like,
dying,
aren’t you.”

“It’s just it occurred to me, you know? Maybe I’m not that good. . . .”

“Janie,”
Amelia scoffed, “part of being talented is feeling like a fake. If you walked around, like,
I’m so great
all the time, you’d be that girl.
You
know. From the Art Fair?”

Janie smiled, knowing exactly to whom her scornful friend referred. Despite a severe case of tone-deafness (or perhaps because of it) Deena Yazdi genuinely considered herself the next Christina Aguilera. The Showroom, the girls’ bathroom, the end of the Breezeway, the back of the school bus — no place was safe. Without warning, she’d cup a manicured hand to one ear, flutter her brown eyes shut, and unleash her atonal howlings upon the world. As for the Art Fair to which Amelia was referring, she’d performed Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” to an audience of five hundred. At the most dramatic moment in the song (the part where Celine thumps her chest), Theo Godfrey unleashed a warbling dying-dog yowl, and the entire auditorium dissolved into laughter. But Deena remained onstage, completely unfazed.

“Ugh,” Amelia groaned at the memory. “I actually think confidence goes hand in hand with utter lack of talent.”

“Yeah, except . . . you’re the most confident person I know.”

“
And
I’m talented,” Amelia agreed, stunned. “Okay, so my theory doesn’t work. But who cares? You’re still the best artist I know.”

“Yep.” Janie gulped and lurched, clapping her hand to her mouth. Glancing about the room in a panic, she dropped her phone, leaned over the edge of the cot, and — in the spirit of Deena herself — began to spew.

The Guy: Evan Beverwil

The Getup: Forest-green board shorts from Val-Surf, black cotton J.Crew t-shirt, black havianna flip-flops, and pewter “Celtic Knot” dog-tag necklace.

The only place where he truly felt, like,
good
was the beach. Yeah, yeah . . . his little sister was always correcting him on that. “You’re supposed to say you feel
well,
Evan, not
good.
Don’t you even know basic grammar?” Not that he dignified her stupid-ass comments with an actual response, but: he meant what he said. Something about the SoCal beaches — the air, the sand, the gloomy gray Pacific — he actually felt like a better person. Purified on a spiritual level. He didn’t feel well. He felt
good.

Maybe that’s why he felt so out of his element at school. Winston was like this landlocked island — and things could get pretty existential. One time, when he ducked out of class to get this book he left in the Brat (the Brat was what he called the Porsche; the Rover was just the Rover), this seagull came cruising by and landed straight up in the middle of the Showroom — pretty crazy when you thought about it. Bird had to have traveled some serious mileage, and yet he didn’t look tired, or lost, or anything. He strutted about, gray wings tucked behind his back, chest puffed up like he owned the place. And when he spotted Evan, he flexed his hard yellow beak and let out a little bird-yap, like he was indignant, like,
where have you
been? Evan had to laugh. “I been in freakin’
bio,
bitch,” he replied. (Why not? No one was around to judge him. Everyone was in class.) That seagull just tilted his ruffled white head in total confusion:
yap, yap!
“I
know,
dude,” Evan shook his head. “Tell me about it.”