“You would not believe it, Miss P,” Melissa began, and gestured to the desk, fully prepared to debrief their loyal mentor.
“We think…”
“We’re fine!” Petra stepped in front of Melissa and grinned, maniacally nodding her head. “We think we’re just fine. Thank
you.”
Melissa fluttered her eyelashes, appalled. “Excuse me?”
“Well, weren’t we all just saying how the four of us thought we’d
never
be able to work together? You know, because we were all just so, ha! You know?”
Understandably, this inanity was met with a collective befuddled glance.
“But
now
,” she continued, and linked her teacher’s arm, gently urging her toward the door, “we are all just so totally, totally tight,
and we have
you
to thank for it, Miss Paletsky, because without you we would have never teamed up for a Special Studies class and formed
this totally rockin’ fashion line. I mean, seriously? We should, like, send you a fruit basket, or something.”
It was the most anybody present had heard Petra speak at one given time. Miss Paletsky seemed particularly moved, her brown
eyes sparkling in gratitude behind her LensCrafters.
My ch’eart is so full!
She nodded once, swallowed back tears, and bowed her exit. Petra shut the dark green door
and leaned against it, sighing a sigh of unfathomable relief.
“So,” Melissa stepped in front of her, folded her oyster white running jacket–clad arms, and nodded with new understanding.
“It’s
you.
”
“Come on, Pet…
squatting
?” Charlotte gripped the windowsill and shook her head in disbelief. “I mean, I
realize
you’re dating someone in a band now, but aren’t you taking this whole punk thing a little far?”
Janie wandered back to her chair, chewing her thumbnail. She hated to think it, but she had to agree.
“Um,
I’m
sorry.” Petra sprung off the door, gaping at their ignorance. “But did you guys
not
notice something off about Miss Paletsky’s outfit?”
Melissa scoffed. “Did I
not
notice the sky was blue?”
“She was missing an
earring
,” Petra rejoined. Charlotte sighed, fluttering her chlorine eyes to the ceiling.
“Get to the
point
, Nancy Drew.”
Petra stepped toward her, and lowered her voice. “As in a
gold-plated pineapple earring
?”
Charlotte and Melissa locked eyes.
“Miss Paletsky?” Janie squeaked, glancing between them in horror. “Miss Paletsky’s the squatter?
It made perfect sense, actually. Miss Paletsky couldn’t still be shacking up with her now ex-fiancé, especially not after
the major drams that went down. See, Seedy and
his
now ex-fiancée, Vivien Ho, had hired the diminutive
Russian to play piano at their engagement party, and—assuming Seedy and Vivien exemplified true love (because who could not
be in love with Seedy Moon?) and concluding it was wrong to marry without it—she had worked up the courage to break off her
engagement. A bold move, considering losing Yuri meant losing her chance at citizenship, a convenient fact the sweat-stained
owner of the Copy & Print Store on Fairfax never let her forget, consistently barking, “They will send you back to Russia.
Like
dog
!” But Miss Paletsky refused to care. When it came to choosing between her nonexistent green card and her barely existent
dignity, she chose the latter, and against all inclination to be agreeable stormed out of his Putin-infested apartment. He
could fend for himself on his toadstool leather couch, with his Icy Hot, with his bull neck, with his Tivo’d episodes of
The View.
For once, she didn’t care where she was going. And then she realized.
She had nowhere to go.
Not that Yuri let her off the hook. Convinced there was another man, the squat vigilante infiltrated the Pink Party with his
Bratva
, an elite band of criminals existing in Russia since the days of the tsar, or, in Yuri’s special case, a ragtag band of petty
crooks in waiter uniforms, and then—in front of all those people; in front of Seedy!—accused his would-be bride of “lying
with pigs.” Needless to say, Seedy, who had a posse of his own, leaped to her rescue, and as
that
particular
party was bullet-free, the two gangs had no choice. Before the inevitable loser could belt out “Food fight!,” the Pink Party
had dissolved from a perfect rose-tinted confection to a Pepto-Bismol-pink-stained nightmare. Tables wheeled across the floor,
cakes soared, ice sculptures exploded. But nothing moved with greater velocity than Miss Paletsky herself, who—wracked by
humiliation—flew from the spectacle and escaped into the night.
“I mean…” Petra resumed her seat on the floor. “Where else is she supposed to stay?”
“Not with that Russian dude,” Melissa declared, pushing some air between her lips.
“Doesn’t she have any friends?” opined Charlotte.
“Poor Miss Paletsky!” Janie exclaimed, mutilating her thumbnail. Did she honestly have no better option than sleeping at
school
? Was she really and truly…
Ch’omeless?
The Getup: Pink fishnet Hot Topic t-shirt with black thrift store tank underneath, black pin-striped Forever 21 pants, black
and white plastic bangles from Claire’s, black Doc Martens, manicure (in Wite-Out)
“Dude.”
Amelia Hernandez, Janie’s very best friend since childhood, appeared at the top of an elegant flight of polished white marble
stairs that led to Ted Pelligan’s second floor, and held up an acid blue t-shirt. The word TRASH pranced across the distressed
fabric in bold black caps. “Guess how much?”
“I don’t know….” Janie craned around a clearish pink fiberglass palm tree and squinted. Bowler hats clustered above her head
like coconuts. French pop pulsed. “Fifty?”
“
Three hundred and forty-nine
,” Amelia informed her, frowning her disapproval at the shirt. She resembled a ventriloquist addressing her badly behaved
dummy. “I mean, is this a joke?”
“Nah,” Janie tried on a yellow Katie Mawson porcupine hat and tilted her head, regarding herself in a silver-framed full-length
mirror. “The JOKE shirt costs twice as much.” Catching her friend’s sickened glance, she pushed out a laugh—but her heart
wasn’t in it. For once, she didn’t feel like making fun of the clothes at Ted Pelligan. Because for
once she had $15,000 in her very near future. Which meant for once she was going to buy something.
She draped a Robert Rodriguez Black Label strapless sequin dress over a slender arm and smiled.
Good-bye mockery. Hello frockery.
“It’s like, if you took one homeless guy, plucked at random from Third Street, and put him next to some
gazillionaire
, like, outfitted in head-to-toe Ted Pelligan, do you honestly think anyone would tell the difference?” Amelia dropped the
shirt like a used Kleenex and flounced downstairs. “It’s like that game, European or Gay.” She sidled up to the mirror and
licked her finger, fixing some wayward liquid eyeliner. “The Hollywood Jackass edition.”
Janie, who barely managed to nod in response, handed her selections to a striking salesgirl. “Okay.” She turned to Amelia,
her delicate face awash with worry. “Troubadour. What are you going to wear?”
Amelia grinned. Creatures of Habit, her super fierce neopunk band, had booked the legendary club for the first time last week.
The Troubador was the stomping ground of everyone from Miles Davis to Metallica,
not to mention the last place Janis partied before she died
. Hello? Can we say major ghost points?
“I think I’ll just wear the London Vampire Milkmaid Dress,” Amelia confessed, referring to the badass dress Janie designed.
“That dress is pure magic, man. The more I wear
it, the better it gets.
Like a fine wine
,” she mused, her hands pressed to her heart.
“Ha,” Janie cracked, masking her pleasure. “Except you drink wine out of plastic cups.”
“Yeah, well…” Amelia smiled distractedly. “Honestly, I can’t think about what I’m going to wear. I’m too worried Paul’s gonna
to bail on the show to, like, bake gluten-free zucchini bread with his freak girlfriend.”
“She’s not a
freak
,” Janie defended Petra, hiding a smile.
“
Whatever
,” Amelia gaped. “Ever since she and Paul started dating? He’s turned into this total, like,
hemp
seed. I told you he took out all his piercings, right? I swear, if you look closely, you can see his
real
personality, like, trickling out of the holes.”
“I don’t know….” Janie shrugged. “Maybe
this
is his real personality. You never know. Maybe who he was before was the fake version.”
“Wow.” Amelia smirked, rolling her eyes. “Look who’s so evolved.
I wonder why
.”
Janie smiled. She knew what Amelia was getting at: as recently as last week, she’d been brutally obsessed with Paul Elliot
Miller, i.e., any details about his and Petra’s budding romance would have sent her into cardiac arrest.
But now?
Spying a silk tank in deep chlorine blue, she thought of Evan’s eyes, fingered the delicate fabric, and sighed.
“Do you like?” She smoothed the silky blue-green fabric
over her long, thin torso.
“Meh.” Amelia shrugged. She pointed out the same tank in red and black, Janie’s favorite colors. “Check it out.”
“Oh right.” She affected a pensive expression, only briefly acknowledging the other tank before returning to the one in blue.
“I just like this one for some reason. Wait while I try it on?”
“A’course,” Amelia assured her, plucking a pair of pink Ed Hardy tattoo-hearted sweats off the rack. She whip-turned toward
a pouty salesgirl. “Do you have these in medium?” Janie giggled, heading toward the fitting room. Amelia never left a store
without trying on the most hideous thing she could find. (She called it the
Que La Chinga
Challenge.)
“… to
kiss
her?!” a girl’s voice almost yelled just as Janie entered her stall and clattered the lock. Janie stared at the partition,
but the girl, no doubt sensing an intruder, lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper.
Puh-lease
, Janie rolled her eyes and shimmied out of her wife beater.
Like she cared.
“I’m sorry,” the disembodied voice continued. “It’s just… of all the girls in the world, why
her
? No, I
know
. It’s just… was she a good kisser?”
Janie squared her shoulders and faced the mirror.
God
, she thought, fingering the safety pin in her bra strap. She could not
wait
to buy a new bra.
“Liar,” the girl next door giggled, her voice gradually mounting in volume. “No, she did
not.
She did
not drool.
You are so full of… what?” She gasped, pealing with melodious laughter. “She kisses like a
dogfish
, what? What in the hell is a
dogfish
?”
That laugh
, Janie realized, staring at the partition a second time,
sounded all too familiar
. But was it really her? If so, who was she interrogating?
“Ja-nie-kins!” Amelia’s voice rose above the pulsing music, bubbling brightly into the room. “I’ll show you mine if you show
me yours!”
“One sec!” Janie yanked the silky green tank over her head, quickly smoothed her hair, and exited the fitting room. Amelia
turned from a triple-angle outside mirror, where she’d been admiring her butt cleavage in its hideous Ed Hardy–exposed splendor,
and narrowed her liquid eyelinered eyes. “Well?” her best friend inquired. “What’s the verdict?”
“I don’t know,” Amelia admitted. Which wasn’t to say she didn’t think Janie looked hot. She did. But she also looked rich.
And, like,
mean
. Like the popular girl in an eighties movie with better hair. “Maybe it’s just a little generic,” she exhaled.
“Generic?” An incredulous salesgirl looked up from a “rejects” clothes rack and abruptly ceased sifting. Her huge, star-lashed
amber eyes perfectly matched her blond
Balayaged afro. “Sweetie,” she sighed, and emphatically impaled her hair with a purple pick. “That tank is
not
generic, it’s
versatile.
For day, you dress it down with some cute little high-waisted shorts and fun wedges. For night, you throw on a statement
necklace, a shrunken blazer, and
walla
! Instant glamour.”
“Totally,” agreed Janie, ignoring Amelia’s contorted
ew
face in favor of making mental inventory of the things she’d now need to purchase along with her “versatile” tank:
cute little high-waisted shorts, fun wedges, statement necklace, shrunken blazer….
“I have it in every color,” gushed the salesgirl, “but that blue-green’s definitely my favorite.”
“I know, mine, too.” Janie almost blushed, briefly fantasizing an imaginary friendship with this way older, way hipper woman.
They’d share silky tank tops, paint each other’s nails black, sashay down Melrose in bug-eyed sunglasses and, scowling at
those less awesome than they….
“As soon as I get my paycheck,” she addressed her soon-to-be BFF, “I’m so coming back and buying it.”
“You don’t have a platinum Pellicard?” The salesgirl wrinkled her gleaming brow in concern.
“Oh.” Janie’s face fell, loath to disappoint her new muse so soon.
“Don’t worry,” she beamed, fluttering her light, cool fingers to Janie’s bare shoulder, “I can hook you up right
now. Seriously, it’s super easy to sign up,
and
you get a free gift with every thousand dollars you spend.”
“Cool.”
“Excuse me?” Amelia, freshly freed from her Ed Hardy grossness, clatteringly burst out of the fitting room. “Janie, you cannot
be serious. A
credit
card?”
“
Pellicard
,” the salesgirl corrected, ushering a hypnotized Janie out of the fitting room. Amelia watched them sail away with gaping
disbelief.
Then she came to her senses.
“No, your mom will seriously kill you,” she warned, catching up with them at the register. “She’s probably, like, beached
out on your couch, watching a
20/20
special on the dangers of credit
as we speak
.”