Poseur #3: Petty in Pink: A Trend Set Novel (19 page)

“You’re not
really
going to wear that, are you?” she frowned, eyeing Janie’s glittering sheath. “You look like the Ghost of Miss Americas Past.”

“Um, exactly!” Don John implored the dainty damsel. “Could she be more
faboosh
?”

“It
is
pretty hilarious,” Janie hesitatingly smiled.

“Janie.”
The petite brunette arched an ebony eyebrow. “You want this boy to think about sleeping with you. Not putting you to sleep.”

“Boy?” young Don John perked up like a nipple in January. “
What
boy?”

“Oh,” Janie stammered, searching for a way out of the subject. “I…”

“His name is Paul,” Charlotte informed him. “He’s in a band, and
apparently
…” Janie watched in horror as she skipped to the open MacBook on her bed, clattered a few keys, and brought up the Creatures
of Habit website.
“He”
—she grinned, triumphantly pointing to the screen—“is into Janie.”

“ ‘Paul Elliott Miller…,’ ” Don John read out loud as Janie, mortified, darted back into the bathroom. “Lovin’ those L’s,
Lady Farrish!” he called after her. “La la
love
them.”

“I’m not going with him, actually!” Janie informed them, feeling braver behind the bathroom door. “We, um, broke up.”

“Oh no…,” she could hear him groan in contempt, closing the laptop. “La la
loser
!”

Quickly, Janie shimmied free of the sheath, tripping in the fabric gathered at her feet. The silence on the other side of
the door worried her. She didn’t want them whispering about how tragic and pitiful she was. Or worse, suspecting she’d invented
the date to begin with.

“Look!” She laughed, waving her hand even though no one could see her, and her laughter echoed back, mocking her. “It’s not
a big deal.”

“But now you’re going alone,” Charlotte reminded her—and Janie detected a
trace
of smugness.

“I’m taking Jake,” she shot back, scowling at the closed door. Clearly, it wasn’t the coolest thing to take your brother as
a date, but at least her brother happened to be Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend.

“Dress is pressed!” Don John eyed his handiwork as Janie emerged from the bathroom in a sexy midthigh-length coral-pink Alaïa
stretch dress. He looked up and instantly stepped back, gazing at her in approval.
“Hot.”

She turned, attempting to study the mirror and at the same time avoid Charlotte’s reflected green-eyed gaze. “Really?”

“And a
half
,” he assured her, gently surrendering the crisp Dior frock to Charlotte. “Next time?” He eyed Janie a second time, brushing
his hands. “I’m using
you
to steam that dress.”

The petite brunette bit her lower lip.

“I’m not wearing this,” she blurted, pushing the dress back into Don John’s arms.

“What?”
Don John gaped between her and the impeccably pressed fruits of his labor. “What do you want me to
do
? Inject it with Botox?”

“Hilaires,” she breathed, disappeared into her walk-in closet, and emerged moments later with a candy-pink strapless jacquard
dress. “Now,” she asked, holding it up like a freshly caught trout. “What do we think of this?”

The dress, strapless, slinky, was infinitely sexier than the Dior—but hadn’t Charlotte been dead set
against
sexy? (“I want classy,” she’d insisted. “Not assy.”) So, what had happened in the last two minutes to make her flip?

Don John and Janie shared a glance.

“Just out of curiosity,” the Valley girl ventured, fairly sure of the answer. “Why’d you change your mind?”

The question had barely left Janie’s lips when Charlotte’s cell phone rang.
Merci bien,
she breathed, dissolving with relief. But then she read the caller ID. “It’s Melissa,” she gulped, clutching her white iPhone
like a cross and catching Janie’s eye. All this time, they realized, the drama of dress-up had been a distraction. Now the
moment of reckoning had arrived, and their hearts were spiked with dread. No, that wasn’t right. The dread had been there
the entire time; they’d merely managed to look
past
it, like you do with spots on a mirror. But the ringing phone shifted their focus, and now—spots were all they saw. What
if the celebriteaser really did fall through? What if, despite her repeated assurances, Melissa couldn’t just “fix this”?

What if they were dressing up for nothing?

“Hey,” Charlotte answered the phone as Janie ravaged an already severely handicapped thumbnail. “Okay. Okay. Right. Yes, I’ll
let him know. Bye.”

With a heavy sigh, she clapped her cell shut and resettled into the chaise longue.

“All right, bitch,” her Texan sidekick clucked after a full beat of silence. “The suspense thing is getting old.”

“Please?” Janie added. “I’m seriously dying.”

“Good,” Charlotte replied, cool as a cucumber face mask. Janie’s lower lip trembled.

“Isn’t what happened bad enough?” she warbled, feeling a little unhinged. “Do you have to be so…”

“
Gabrielle
Good,” Charlotte interrupted, melting into a radiant grin.

Janie crumpled her brow, utterly confused. “What?”

“By Jonas, I think I’ve got it,” Don John realized out loud. “Gabrielle Good is your celebriteaser?”

“What?”
Janie gasped. “How is that possible? What about the contract?”

“Back on the table, bébé!” Charlotte laughed, clapping her small hands. “Melissa totally got Miss Paletsky to talk to Mr.
Pelligan, and apparently it
was
all a misunderstanding!”

“But
what
was the misunderstanding?!” Janie sputtered.

“Melissa said she’d explain later, and besides, Janie, who cares? I swear, your obsession with every little
detail
is seriously, like,
autistic
.”

“Just because I’m
curious
,” the slender, tall girl bravely defended herself. “Doesn’t mean…”

“Shh.” Charlotte serenely glided to her bed and pried her laptop open. “I have to Skype Evan.”

“Isn’t he, like, next door?” Don John reminded her, crowding her at the computer. Janie melted to the floor. Not to imply
she’d
forgotten
, exactly—she could practically
feel
Evan’s presence pulsing through the walls.

“He’s at Joaquin’s,” Charlotte replied, lightly clacking the keys.

Janie flushed.
Oh.

And then he appeared on screen—not that she could see him through the Charlotte–Don John fortress.

“You’re going on a date with Gabrielle Good!” his sister burbled, clapping her hands at the pristine white screen.

“Who?” the laconic surfer replied, decidedly unenthused.

“You know,”
she groaned, rolling her greenish blue eyes. “She’s on that reality show,
The Good Life
? Garrett R. Good’s illegitimate daughter?”

“Illegitimate then adopted,” clarified Don John, shouldering Charlotte aside and hogging the Evan-filled screen. “She used
to be kinda fug. But then she got all waify and fab, you know, with the hipbones and the bug glasses and the Starbucks? She’s
totally, like, this fashion icon now.”

“Uch!” Charlotte pushed him aside and resumed her place, smacking the feather-topped mattress (she could
see
Evan had no idea who they were talking about). “Ev-van…,” she enunciated, “the blond girl in that one SNL video. Remember?
The one who spanked Andy Samberg?”

“Oh
yeah
…” Her older brother smiled, his memory successfully jogged. “She’s hot.”

Janie fluttered her gray eyes shut.
It’s nothing,
she reminded herself. He’d already diced up her heart and skewered it like chicken satay. “Hot,” was just like… the dipping
sauce.

“She’s at the Mondrian,” Charlotte went on, referring to the sleek, trendy hotel on Sunset. “You’re supposed to pick her up
at eight.”

“Word.”

Charlotte closed her laptop with a snap.

The Guy: Jake Farrish

The Getup: Um… more like the upchuck

Charlotte devoted an entire floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcase to her cherished fashion magazine collection—organized in alphabetical
order by month—and from these hallowed shelves discovered one
Nylon
, one
W
, and two
Teen Vogues
with Gabrielle Good on the cover (of course, the reality starlet dominated countless copies of
Us
and
People
, but Charlotte deemed those publications “too common” for permanent library placement). With Don John departed for acting
class, she and Janie dressed, and Jules and Jake not due to pick them up for another two hours, there was nothing else to
do but pore over every page, scrutinize each photograph, and to her delight (and Janie’s private horror), pronounce Miss Good
“gorgeous” in every single one. “She’s so perfect for the Treater I could scream,” Charlotte remarked in a tone meant to convey
she’d never be so uncool as to scream: it was just an expression. After all, she wasn’t exactly in awe of Gabrielle Good—merely
grateful that other, potential Treater-buyers were. “She could carry a bucket and people would snap them up like Birkins,”
she sighed. Janie had no choice but to agree. To do otherwise would look like lack of support for Poseur, or worse, jealousy,
and it’d take Charlotte two seconds to put together why. And then God knows what humiliations she’d endure.

“Don’t you just
love
her emerald eyeliner?” Charlotte pointed her Pink Satin polished finger to a photograph. Of course,
she
would have restricted the liner to the upper lid only. Around the
entire
eye was a little vulgar.

“Yeah,” Janie murmured, as if the eyeliner mattered, and not the brown eye itself, alive with a sparkle that said “I’m fun,
fearless, and seriously
not
a virgin.” She wanted nothing more than to stab that sparkle with a sharp object—Charlotte’s antique ivory-and-gold chopstick
hair ornament would do—and two hours of resisting the impulse completely wore Janie out. By the time Jake rumbled up in their
black Volvo sedan, she almost whimpered with gratitude.
At last! For at least one car ride, I can relax.

But, of course, she was wrong.

“You are
not
wearing that!” she gasped as soon as she carefully placed herself in the car seat.

“Um, okay,” he agreed, just to piss her off. The Beverwils’ combed gravel drive crunched under their wheels as they pulled
through the automatic wrought-iron gates and turned onto Mulholland Drive. Predictably, her brother sat up, both hands gripping
the wheel. Most of the time on the road he spent slumped into his seat, one hand on twelve o’clock, and nodding mindlessly
to the radio. But Janie saw through his Wu-Tang ways. Every time they got on a canyon road at night he’d freak out, straighten
up in his seat, and drive like Grandma Firestein. Under normal circumstances, she found this endearing.

But
normal
no longer applied.

“Is there something wrong with you?” she sputtered, still gaping at his outfit. “The invitation said to wear
pink
, not
crazy
.”

“Uh, sorry,” he scoffed, easing on the brake. “But if I actually spent money on an all-pink clown suit for a Pink Party—something
that’s bound to happen
never again in my lifetime
—
then
I’d be crazy.”

“
I
spent nothing,” Janie pointed out with a lift of her eyebrows. “Okay? You can spend nothing without reducing yourself to
mom’s
tracksuit.
” Against her better judgment, she eyed the offending outfit a second time. Of course, the pink terry tracksuit was about
five sizes too small, halting above her brother’s inevitably hairy-guy ankles, straining across his broad yet skinny chest,
and inching above his narrow waistline. God, he was so
gross.

“Stop!” he mock whined, hiding his profile behind his raised shoulder. “You’re undressing me with your eyes!”

“I’m strangling you with my eyes,” she snapped back.

“Come on.” He lowered his shoulder and defended his choice. “It’s Juicy Couture.”

“It’s GAP, Jake.” She narrowed her eyes. “It says so in huge white letters on your ass.”

“Well, whatever the label,” he lisped in a motherly falsetto. “It’s
extremely
comfortable, I mean… the fabric really
breathes
.”

“I totally hate you,” Janie grumbled, gazing out the window at the night sky and shadowy, hulking hills. They were on the
freeway now. High above, the stars glittered, but rather than surrender to their magic, she was reminded again of Gabrielle
Good. The
Nylon
issue featured this totally obnoxious photo spread of her traipsing around Venice Beach, spaghetti strap slipping off her
shoulder, blond hair cascading to her waist, a quote in bold orange font:
I’M MORE OF A “DO FIRST, THINK LATER” KIND OF GIRL
.
Ucchh…
Janie unconsciously glared at a blue Toyota in the neighboring lane.
Do
what
first, exactly?

Behind the Toyota’s backseat window, an androgynous Goth kid bugged out his or her liquid-eyelinered eyes and sarcastically
waved. Janie snapped from her stupor and blushed, averting her eyes. Not that she’d needed to; Jake was switching lanes. In
seconds, they’d coasted down the off-ramp, and he carefully began to turn right, inching ahead to the tick of his blinker.

“What do you think of Gabrielle Good?” Janie ventured once the Volvo groaned onto Sunset. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“That’s Bellagio, right?” Jake tapped the brake and stopped at the red light. To their left, at the end of a short drive,
stretched a giant wrought-iron gate flanked on either side by moon white Spanish arches. Tucked into recessed plinths, pruned
potted ivy plants sat like icons in a church. Above the gate, propped into place by ornate wrought-iron swirls, a lantern
glowed. The traffic light switched green, and Jake eased into the intersection, waited for a black Bentley to pass, and turned
left. As they rolled past the arches and under the gate, a pale light swept through the car.