Poseur #4: All That Glitters Is Not Gucci (15 page)

“I said you are a fun girl,” he repeated, flecks of his spit hitting her neck in a way that should have been gross but actually
wasn’t. Creatures of Habit started in on “Death to Memories.”

It was all so exciting. From the bumping bass to Amelia screaming “fuuuuuuuck meeeeeeeemories” to the flashing lights to the
double thumbs-up, it was like Janie was the star of her own insanely awesome music video. She felt swirly and strange, sexy
and dangerous. She felt invincible. Ezra was talking but she could not hear what he was saying and so she just smiled and
nodded and laughed a hearty laugh and sort of swayed back and forth gently while she drained the cup of its frothy amber liquid.
And she was feeling a bit
woozy, but not necessarily in a bad way, and she was feeling like this guy was going to kiss her soon and she could already
picture herself telling Amelia all about it tomorrow and how awesome that would be and how once and for all she would vault
into the bracket of Amelia’s cool friends and would forever leave behind her old label as Amelia’s sort of quirky little inexperienced
buddy. So Janie just had to keep smiling and laughing and letting Ezra talk and soon he was going to kiss her. It was so obvious.
And now he was taking her hand in his and flipping it over and saying something about her palm and she was sort of swaying
backward on her five-and-a-half-inch heels and then for whatever reason—God only knows why—
he
popped into her head.

Evan.

Evan in the projection room.

Janie let herself relish the memory for a second, of how he had hooked his thumb over the waistband of her jeans so his finger
was touching the right-above-her-butt skin…
Snap out of it!
Janie tried to focus on Ezra, who was tracing the lines on her palm with his own finger now and gazing at her through a curtain
of ink-black lashes. He was close now. Slow-dance close.

Evan flashed into Janie’s head again, this time by Melissa’s pool, that first gentle kiss, before it had gotten truly Frenchy,
when her lips had just locked with his in this
extended peck. No! Stop obsessing. New Janie didn’t waste her precious time reliving the past. New Janie was so busy and fabulous
that she didn’t even
remember
the past. And New Janie sure as heck did not sit around yearning for some board-shorts-sporting surfer dude. She liked the
dark and brooding, tortured artist types. The Paul Elliot Millers and Ezras of the world.

“Are you okay?” Ezra asked. “You look like you’re gonna cry or something.” Janie stared up at him, in all his greasy inked-up
glory, and smiled.

“Beyond okay,” she lied.

’Cause Amelia was right. All Janie needed to do in order to forget about Evan was to replace him with somebody new. As soon
as Janie locked lips with What’sHisFace here, the Evan spell would break, and all of the Evan memories would just be washed
from her mind, a la
Eternal Sunlight of the Spotless Mind.
But wait… didn’t things turn out really badly by the end of that movie?

And right then, that cursed line started playing in Janie’s head on repeat, like it had so many times that week:
She kisses like a dogfish? What the hell is a dogfish? She kisses like a dogfish? What the hell is a dogfish? She kisses like
a dogfish? Dogfish? Dogfish!!!

“Fuuuuuuuuuckkkk meeeeeeeeeemories,” Amelia belted out for the final time, and Janie squeezed her eyes shut and
leaned forward. Ezra took the signal, and before she knew it, his pierced tongue was searching the inside of her mouth, tasting
of cigarettes, stale beer, and broken dreams.

The audience went berserk.

“Show’s over, bitches!” Amelia bellowed into the microphone while Janie regained her footing. Ezra leered at her, hungry for
more.

His face had changed to something famished, insatiable. He reached for Janie’s slender waist and pulled her toward him, way
closer than slow dance close. With her entire body pressed against his entire body, Janie was overcome by a wave of nausea;
an overwhelming, all-encompassing desire to yak. Janie had no clue if it was from the dirty-gym-socks taste of this guy’s
tongue or the feeling of his scrawny body entwined with hers or those two huge hits of weed in the Volvo before the concert
or the empty cup of beer in her hand that had once been full or the image of clean, pristine, and unbearably beautiful Evan
that was welling up in her mind anew now and obviously had not been exorcised through her deep-throated makeout sesh with
the very excited and very scary person holding her against him in a death grip. God, he was strong for his size. Janie closed
her eyes, this time not to invite another throat excavation but to make the spinning stop. But Ezra didn’t know that. And
so he leaned in to lay another one on her—and he would have too, if some insane blond hippie chick hadn’t busted in.

“Hey!” Petra squawked, and snatched her teetering pal away from the lascivious stranger. “What’s with you, dude? Can you not
see how wasted she is?”

“Hold up,” corrected Ezra, “
she
kissed
me.
” Then he added, skeezily for Janie’s benefit, “And she knows what she’s doing.”

But just as Petra prepared to give the butt-chinned creepoid a piece of her mind, she heard her name come through the speakers.
Petra turned to find her onesie-clad beau standing alone on the stage.

“Petra Greene,” Paul repeated into the mic, staring at her and causing everybody else in the room to do the same, “this one’s
for you.”

Paul’s declaration was met by a swell of applause from the audience, peppered with deep grunts and high-pitched wails. Creatures
of Habit was doing an encore! Or so they thought…

Paul pulled out a pan flute and held it to his perfect pink lips. He then proceeded to daintily blow into the bamboo tubes,
producing a sound reminiscent of a Renaissance fair. As Paul slid up and down the instrument, Petra watched, horrified. Then
somebody behind her said what everybody in the room was thinking….

“Boo!”

Paul kept playing, either unaware of or indifferent to the tidal wave of boos steadily mounting in the audience below.

“Go back to Narnia, you freak!” someone bellowed.

“Let’s get out of here,” Petra demanded. A woman could only endure so much. She jostled Janie (the only person in the room
who had been soothed to the point of falling asleep standing up by Paul’s pan flute solo) while the notes continued to tinker
like wind chimes on a breezy afternoon.

“Petra Greene?” called a voice behind them. Petra turned, and a chubby kid with a septum pierce promptly chucked his entire
beer in her direction. Petra gasped, disbelieving—though only slightly sprayed—and then turned to see where the bulk of the
bevy had landed; Janie was drenched.

“Way to go, you jackass
Yoko
,” spat the angry punk.

“You little shit!” wailed Petra, wresting herself away from Janie and lunging toward the little jerk. He sprinted away, cackling
like a wicked fairy, but Jake appeared out of nowhere and tripped him, sending the evil imp flying.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jake advised, scooping his sloppy sister onto his shoulder and leading the way toward the exit. Petra
was more than happy to oblige. The night had been like some kind of trippy nightmare, and she couldn’t wait to wake up.

And Petra wasn’t the only one horrified by the evening’s events. Standing by the men’s room while Jake, Janie, and Petra hightailed
it out of there was an impossibly out of place
blond kid with smooth tan skin and a sickly expression on his rose wax lips. How long had he been standing there? All alone
in his board shorts and flip-flops? And what had he just witnessed that had left him looking so completely and utterly, incomparably
appalled?