Poseur #3: Petty in Pink: A Trend Set Novel (4 page)

Like “you” was something she didn’t need to change.

The Girl: Miss Paletsky

The Getup: Beige pleated linen-blend pants, white polyester chiffon wraparound blouse, nude nylon trouser socks, and white
strappy sandals, all from Marshalls. Watermelon-shaped shoulder purse from Russian street market

“Do you see the
earrings
on that one?” gasped Ms. DeWitt, pant-suited fossil of Winston’s Earth and Sciences Department and proud proprietress of
the wondrously wide and fantastically flat posterior Winston students had nicknamed
the Tundra
. Ms. DeWitt ritualistically scanned the babbling horde on the brushed-concrete Assembly Hall floor, picking one face out
of hundreds for critique. “They’re enormous,” she continued, clucking under her dinosaur breath. “I’m surprised she can hold
her
head
up, poor thing!”

Miss Paletsky, the young Russian Director of Special Studies, blinked behind her octagon-shaped LensCrafters, noting the “poor
thing” in question. The flaxen-haired eighth-grader’s fist-size golden bamboo hoops swayed below her ears and bumped against
her canary yellow cardigan-clad shoulders, causing the surrounding girls to collectively gasp in… dismay?
No
—she revised her judgment, regarding their ecstatic expressions—
admiration.
During the past month, Nikki Pellegrini’s social standing had swung dramatically—she was popular one minute, persecuted the
next—for reasons no teacher could fathom. Now, it seemed, she was popular again—and Miss Paletsky surmised it had something
to do with Poseur. Nikki had just been recruited as their new intern, replacing a devastated Venice Whitney-Wang. (Upon her
dismissal, Venice had flailed into her office wailing like a war widow; evidently, Poseur was
the
class to be in, and (even as she folded the sobbing girl into her arms) Miss Paletsky had to admit—she was the teensiest
bit proud. After all, without her urging and foresight? It would have never existed.)

“Did you see Charlotte Beverwil?” Mrs. Dang worried aloud, interrupting the younger teacher’s rumination. Despite the screaming
volume, the geometry instructor lowered her voice to a whisper. “Those
shoes
, I mean… what if the poor dear falls?”

Miss Paletsky shifted her focus to the west wall, the designated domain of Charlotte Beverwil and her venerated überwealthy
indie set: pouty girls in black eyeliner, angled bangs, and knotted silk scarves, bored boys in rumpled shirts, stove-pipe
pants, and tousled pompadours.
The Bardots and Belmondos of Beverly Hills,
she mused, referring, of course, to the icons of the French New Wave. Kate Joliet, Laila Pikser, Bronwyn Spencer, Tim Beckerman,
Luke Christie, Emma Raub, Adelaide Dallas, Jules Maxwell-Langeais, and (recently added to their ranks and not quite blending
in) twin scholarshipniks Janie and Jake Farrish; all sat on the floor, backs against the brick wall, except, of course, the
stunning chlorine-eyed brunette, who’d remained standing, one controversial shoe kicked up behind her—an imperious flamingo
among a flock of pigeons.

“I’m sure
one
of those shoes costs a
month’s
salary,” sighed the incredulous Mrs. Dang, shaking her head.
Imagine.

“Oh, at
least
.” The Tundra narrowed her eyes and quaked.

“Stop,” lisped Señor Smith. The ginger-haired, baby-faced Spanish instructor clutched his heart, darted his pale eyes between
them. He affected a scandalized expression. “You people make
that
much?”

“All right, people!” Glen Morrison, the self-elected moderator of Winston Prep’s biweekly Town Meeting danced along the north
wall and halted their banter, clapping his hands. “Let’s get this party started!” Like a well-trained mime troupe, the collected
faculty snapped into character and dispersed through the boisterous crowd. Every three seconds, one stopped to loom above
a cheerfully unaware chatterer, until, sensing a creeping chill, the offender glanced up and immediately withered into silence.
Inevitably, the faculty reconvened at the Back Wall, aka “Stonehedge,” a ruined country of cackling, semicollapsed potheads
who could not, no matter how urgently and repeatedly they were hushed, shut the hell up. Trudging into this unruly mass, teachers
often became mired, unable to emerge until Town Meeting was dismissed. They just stood there, trapped, like cows in a swamp.

“Theo, Christina, Petra!” bellowed the bullnecked Coach Hollander, squeezing his fists until his ’84 garnet class ring just
about popped. “I mean it!” he sputtered as Joaquin Whitman stuffed his iPod headphones into his nose and emphatically sneezed
them onto Theo’s shoulder.
“Joaquin!”

“So, I have a very exciting announcement to make,” continued Glen. Once the volume decreased to his satisfaction, he gripped
the podium and turned around. “Regarding one of our newest teachers.” Sitting on one of the metal folding chairs reserved
for faculty along the North Wall, Miss Paletsky smiled blandly, then froze, realizing herself to be the subject of Glen’s
twinkly-eyed attention. He extended his left arm, sleeved in wide-grooved, olive-brown corduroy, and beckoned her forward.
“Miss Paletsky?”

Squeezing a sheath of papers to her chest, she nervously approached, aided by the encouraging, if sporadic, claps from the
student body. What could he possibly want with her? Reaching the podium, she tipped into a tiny bow, spilling her octagon-shaped
LensCrafters down her nose. As she fumbled to correct them, Glen dropped his hand on her shoulder, disarranging her shoulder
pad.

His smile was menacingly gentle.

“Because she’s
too shy
to tell you herself,” he reported, offering the crowd a teasing wink, “I’m just going to have to announce the happy news
for her.” The young Russian teacher’s face paled—it was only too clear what Glen was up to—and she tried to shake her head.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried. She closed her eyes, clutching her papers like a life raft. “Miss Paletsky’s engaged!”

Predictably, all three hundred students erupted into deafening, shrieking applause. Miss Paletsky struggled to smile. She
couldn’t imagine they cared—not
really
. More like they needed an excuse to scream and Glen gave them one (they’d expressed similar mania when he’d announced the
availability of raisin-free cinnamon bagels). Under different circumstances, of course, she might have enjoyed their overly
enthusiastic outburst, but circumstances being what they were, she could only stand there and endure.
If only you knew,
she mentally addressed them, struggling to smile.
You’re rejoicing the end of all ch’appiness. You’re cheering the death of my ch’eart!

Miss Paletsky had finally agreed to marry Yuri Grigorovich, the stocky, stained-wife-beater-wearing owner of the Copy & Print
store on Fairfax, not for love—
ch’a!
—but for green card. Her worker’s visa was about to expire, and unless she took action, it was (in the words of her fetid
fiancé) “back to Russia like a dog.” She had deliberated her answer as long as possible, fretting in her doll-size bungalow
apartment, staring through her one window at the avocado trees on North Vista Street. She may loathe Yuri, but at least she
trusted him—and how could she go back to Moscow? It was a city of ghosts: her parents, grandparents, temperamental, laughing
Masha, and Otar—beautiful Otar in his Kobe Bryant jersey! All of them dead. And then, the terrible night she was robbed at
gunpoint walking home from the conservatory—she’d been practicing until two a.m., transported, as usual, by Beethoven. That
winter had been breathtakingly cold. At home, with only a thin blanket for warmth, she slept under a pile of laundry, clean
and dirty mixed together. Her landlady gave her a space heater, but she never used it—the wiring was faulty, and there were
fires.

That, she would never forget.

Compared to such things, what was it to marry Yuri? Nothing, and yet…

One night, walking home after a particularly grueling commute on the L.A. Metro bus, she’d misread
N. Vista
as
No Visa
. Twilight had obscured her eyesight, the street sign was old and faded, she was dead tired: all good excuses, all wrong.
It was either to make decision,
she realized, lying awake at night.
Or slowly to go mad.

In the end, a man named Christopher Duane Moon made up her mind. He breezed into her office last month, smiled, and the whole
world… opened up. Just like that, she could breathe again. She felt
free.
But feelings are feelings, reality is reality.
My fiancée,
he’d said, casual as anything—and the world squeezed tighter than ever before. He was
engaged
.

Of course he was.

She moved into the smallest and beigest of Yuri’s three bedrooms—the “Mankiev room,” named after Russian wrestler and Olympic
gold-medalist Nazyr Mankiev, whose imposing five-by-six-foot poster, lovingly hung on the windowless east wall, constituted
the room’s sole decoration. Upon her arrival, her pungent prince presented her with a pair of bride and groom stuffed bears,
two polished brass keys, and an engagement band of roughly the same color. The bears she placed on her Ikea Billy bookcase
alongside the framed photograph of her grandparents, a potted philodendron, her lock-and-key diary, and a small plaster bust
of Beethoven. With the exception of her old Emerson upright piano, which she’d had to leave in the living room opposite Yuri’s
gigantic plasma screen TV, these meager tokens served as the only evidence of her former existence. She’d sold her pale green
flower dishes, donated her birch-wood futon, and bought a new toothbrush that—for the first time ever—wasn’t blue, but yellow.
Her yellow toothbrush said:
I am starting a new life
.

Her yellow toothbrush said:
I am dead.

The town meeting applause had yet to die down, and so Lena Paletsky hid her pale face behind her hands, masking her despair
as modesty. Through the bright slats of her fingers she witnessed Charlotte Beverwil spring to her heels, clapping daintily,
and Janie Farrish follow suit, bouncing on her toes. Nikki Pellegrini hammered her knees—earrings aquiver—and a dancing Petra
Greene floated her arms into the air, twirling like a wind sprite.
Such exuberance!
But (she couldn’t help but wonder) where was the most exuberant girl of all? Where was the daughter of the man who so casually
opened and closed the world?

Melissa Moon remained seated, nudged against the East Wall, her defined chin planted firmly on her knees. A soft, resigned
sadness darkened her lovely face, and recognizing it, the Russian teacher lowered her hands from her face.

They locked eyes and almost smiled.

The Guy: Jake Farrish

The Getup: Navy blue Dickies, gray low-top Converse All-Stars, black-and-white-checked vintage button-down, dark green American
Apparel hoodie

“Girl, I’ll be there in a
second
.” Marco Duvall tore his focus from his pickup half-court game just long enough to catch his girlfriend’s indignant you-cannot-be-serious
eye. At times like this he really resented the court’s center Showroom placement.
Whatever,
he grimaced, glancing away. Could she
not
see Farrish had the ball palmed (for a skinny dude, hands were
big
), and ticktocked above that crazy rooster hairdo of his? Did she seriously want him to miss this opportunity?

“Yo!” Marco shouldered his way through the sweat-stained, sneaker-squeaking dude mass, envisioning himself a pinnacle of masculine
prowess. Jake spotted him, readied the ball, and—

“No, no, please!” A formal transatlantic male voice pierced through the grunting cacophony. Jules Maxwell-Langeais, all GQ’ed
out in charcoal chinos, a body-hugging white Henley, and powder blue boaters, raised a deeply tanned arm. “I yam open!” he
called, squinting like a man saluting from his yacht.

Marco’s eyes bulged in their sockets. Had he
not
made himself clear?

“YO!!!”

But Jake had made a promise and was, for the time being, a dude of his word—especially where Charlotte was concerned. She’d
come to see him that morning, braving the dismal descent underground, a surprise move in two respects: 1) Charlotte was strictly
upper level, a purebred “Showroom pony,” and underground parking was, literally and figuratively, beneath her, and 2) they’d
just emerged from a pretty epic breakup. Yes, at his twin sister’s insistence, they’d agreed to cut out the dramatics, but
without dramatics, what had they been left with? “Hey.” “Hey.” “So…” “How was your weekend?” “Oh. Um. It was good. Yours?”
“Good! I DustBustered my car.”