Dream Girl Read online

  On Tuesday morning, I woke up feeling short and groggy, but I pressed on. Inspired by my dream, I threw on the sportiest thing in my closet: a bright yellow cap-sleeved dress with a line of blue buttons along the front.

  When I went to the kitchen to get some juice, Mom was watching the French news on the Internet in the living room.

  “Hey, Mom, remember when you said you owe me one for doing your column?”

  Mom looked up at me and yawned.

  “I’m calling in that favor. Any chance you can make a batch of your special lemon crêpes?”

  “You’re never hungry in the morning.”

  “It’s not for me. It’s Silent Eleanor’s birthday.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “She’s a Hudson friend. We sit together at lunch.”

  “Another friend at school?” She leapt up from behind her laptop. “And on top of a weekend away with Becca? Fantastique!”

  “I’m going to refrain from reminding you that you were born in this country.”

  “And I’ll refrain from reminding you that it’s a free country.”

  We squeezed into the kitchen, and I helped her by measuring pancake mix and breaking eggs. Mom was in charge of the frying pan and spatula. The crêpes were coming out paper thin and slightly golden. All smooth sailing until she turned around to pick up her water bottle and ended up with her nose in my collarbone.

  Mom pitched forward, and before I knew what was happening, her batter-covered fingers were coming at my neck like ten sludge monsters emerging from the bottom of the sea. My heart started pounding and my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in.

  “My mother used to have a necklace just like it. It’s not the same one, is it?”

  “Not so close!” I flinched. I knocked over the bowl of remaining mix and it sluiced all over the floor.

  Mom just looked confused.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t want to get my dress messy.”

  “Of course not.”

  She switched her stare from my dress to the expanding pool of batter. I could tell I’d let her down.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  “It’s okay. I think there are more paper towels under the sink.”

  Luckily, she’d already made five crêpes—more than enough to feed my lunchtime posse. I thanked her by cleaning up the mess I’d made and letting her go back to watch whatever important news was happening in the motherland, knocking her away had been a strange reaction that I couldn’t stop thinking about as I wiped Aunt Jemima off the floor. Math would have to go on without me that day.

  When Eleanor saw me take the lid off my Tupperware container to reveal a short stack of crêpes with a birthday candle, she waved me away with her hands.

  “There’s no hiding,” I said. “Ian told me. Happy birthday.”

  Zach presented her with a thermos of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and Ian gave her a comic he’d made. “It’s based on the classic Little Lulu,” he explained. His version starred Little Eleanor, an all-black-wearing daredevil who befriends a crow and convinces him to peck at Henry Hudson High with his beak until the building crumbles.

  Eleanor was beaming with every page, and there was a slight bounce to my step when I strode over to English. For once, I was ready to face Mr. Bunting. A tall man with a little stub of a nose, Mr. Bunting was the only English teacher in the eastern United States who (a) hated books and (b) fell asleep and woke up at least a couple of times during every class.

  When I got to class, Mr. Bunting was in his seat, reading the newspaper and turning the pages in a loud, energetic fashion. This was a method favored by many Hudson teachers to avoid having to make conversation with the students.

  When the first bell rang, he stood up and, moving in the stiff manner of a robot, he approached the blackboard to write: “The Short Story.”

  “Now that the poetry unit is over,” he announced, “we are going to focus on a new mode of expression.”

  He said the word expression so unexpressively I couldn’t hold in my laughter. Shooting me a dark glare, he brought his long fingers to his forehead, as if I were personally causing his headache.

  He started walking up and down the aisles, passing out a new book: Fictional Impressions.

  I flipped to the introduction. It was written in 1953 and said that the ten stories in the book were the ten best stories ever written. Not ten “of the best.” The ten best.

  Who knew God guest edited crappy textbooks?

  “Miss Voyante,” Mr. Bunting said. “Is something amusing?”

  My classmates were all staring at me, as were the U.S. presidents bordering the top of the walls. “Well, I don’t know, I just think it’s funny that the book says these are the ten best stories. I mean, how can anyone say that?” My voice sounded small, and I felt even smaller. The room had gone completely silent, and Ian sent me a stealthy thumbs-up from his seat.

  Mr. Bunting flipped through the book. “Jack London. Ernest Hemingway. Nikolay Gogol. I’m sorry that’s not good enough for you, Miss Voyante.” He glared at me and then proceeded to circle the room, his beige dress sneakers squeaking on the linoleum until he reached my desk. “How about this? If a story’s value is so subjective, why don’t you create your own stories? We can compare them to the ones in the collection and see if it really is all relative.” I slunk into my chair as he clarified the assignment for us—we were going to work in pairs, and then we’d present next Thursday. “You can partner up after class. In the meantime, we have a lesson to learn.” He returned to the blackboard and wrote: “Noun. Verb. Adjective.”

  The halls were vibrating with more than the usual amount of end-of-the-day excitement as I made my way to my locker. Kids were standing around in tight clumps, all chattering and studying what appeared to be the same green piece of paper.

  I wondered what groundbreaking change in school policy the paper detailed—maybe they were going to start allowing us to use calculators during tests or rounding our grade point averages to the nearest whole number. But within a few more seconds, I realized I hadn’t given my fellow Hudsonites enough credit. They were getting worked up about an upcoming social event—and it wasn’t a citywide bagpipe competition.

  “A party?” I overheard a girl say, utterly dumbfounded. “And it’s not for anyone’s birthday?”

  “I hope my parents will let me go,” another chimed in.

  “You can’t tell them, dumbass. You’ll ruin it for all of us.”

  I slowed down some near a guy who, despite a four-inch-high flattop, still stood shorter than me. Peering over his shoulder, I confirmed that the Hudson student body was about to have its first big party. At least, the first big party I’d ever heard of.

  And from what I could tell, the school itself had nothing to do with it. The invites didn’t have the Hudson insignia, and the layout was actually cool—a mash-up of bubbly handwriting and slightly blurry pictures of different people set at different angles. The only one I instantly recognized was Lisa Simpson.

  The short kid must have felt me breathing behind him.

  “Sorry,” I said when he whipped around. I started to barrel away, but he reached out to stop me.

  From behind a pair of frameless glasses, his eyes were alternately narrowing and widening.

  “Wait—are you…?” He looked back down at the invite and focused on me again. His friends were doing the same thing, until one of them, a kid in a SPACEMEN DO IT BETTER T-shirt, turned to the rest and said, “Close approximation, but ultimately negative.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but as I made the rest of the short walk to my locker, I couldn’t help noticing that other kids were looking at me, too. And I wasn’t being paranoid. Nobody at Hudson knows how to pretend to be looking somewhere near you if they actually want to get a look at you. They’ll just look straight at your eyeballs.

  “Claire!” somebody shouted from behind. I knew from its tone and assertiveness that it had to belong to one of my
favorite girls.

  The BDLs were coming at me in lockstep, wearing matching white tank tops and leers. Brown-haired Lauren was holding a basketball. I had no idea what this meant, but it kind of freaked me out.

  “Like anyone would think of having a party without you!” curly blond Lauren crowed.

  “Let’s just hope she stays this time,” Ariel cackled.

  “We decided to have a little shindig this weekend,” Janice said when they’d all caught up with me. She was carrying the stack of green papers. “You should definitely come.”

  “Superdefinitely,” seconded brown-haired Lauren, tossing the basketball to Sheila. What on earth was I supposed to make of this? “You’re practically essential.”

  “I’ll bet,” I rasped, trying to pack as much sting as possible into my reply. Sadly, I don’t think it was a smashing success.

  “A bed?” Sheila asked me. “Is that what you said?”

  “Yes,” I said, sarcasm oozing through my voice. “And a nightstand.”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Never mind,” I said, suddenly acutely aware of how many other kids were staring at us and thinking that I was the one who was out of her mind.

  “Go on,” Sheila instructed Janice. “Give her one.”

  Janice did as told.

  Trying to look as if I didn’t care, my eyes grazed over the words and I must have absorbed only half of them—“Theme Party!” and “Freaks and Geeks” and “BYOBB—BRING YOUR OWN BUNSEN BURNER.”

  “Much as I love doing science experiments at social gatherings,” I said, “I’ll be out of town this weekend.”

  “No!” Sheila cried with fake disappointment. She bounced the ball to Ariel.

  “Well, she’ll still be there in spirit,” Ariel pointed out as she caught the pass.

  “Superdefinitely,” I growled.

  Sheila made a cutesy-poo smile and motioned to her friends that their work was done. “If your plans fall through, drop by!”

  Once they’d sloped off, I was able to study the rest of the invite. Interspersed with the lettering was a collage of legendary dorks: Lisa Simpson as well as Napoleon Dynamite and that weird monobrow guy from Star Trek. And, in the bottom right corner, there was a picture of a certain young lady performing with the Weirdo Beardos at her seventh-grade talent show. It didn’t really matter that the girl was hiding behind a long multicolored cloak, stick-on Rasputin beard, and massive xylophone. She had the same blond hair and scrunched-up confused duck expression as somebody who now attended Henry Hudson. And judging by the way my classmates were leaning in to get a better look at me, this resemblance did not seem to be lost on any of them.

  “It is her,” I heard somebody whisper. “You so owe me two dollars.”

  My blood was boiling.

  So what if I had shoe boxes filled with embarrassing pictures of Sheila posing in a padded leotard and wielding a stone-encrusted sword? She’d already beat me to the punch.

  I pedaled freakishly fast uptown, taking out some of my frustration on my bike. Kiki was lending me some of her ski clothes for my Aspen adventure. And thank goodness. After being forced to revisit my Weirdo Beardos phase, I was ready for something slightly more Audrey Hepburn–worthy.

  Somebody had already locked a bike to the one available pole near the hotel, so Ray, one of the nicer bellhops, helped me carry my Schwinn up the hotel’s stairs and into the baggage room. The lobby was overrun with Secret Service men, as only happens when the President stays at the hotel. The presidential suite is on the top floor, and anybody who stays there has to sign a form agreeing to change rooms if the head of state comes to town. Supposedly there’s an underground tunnel connecting the hotel to Grand Central Terminal that President Kennedy and his aides used, but I haven’t been able to find it on any of my searches.

  “So,” I said to Ray. “Have you seen him?”

  “Who?” Ray didn’t blink. The Waldorf prides itself on its discretion, but sometimes the staffers take it too far.

  I didn’t bother to reply and only gave him a thin thank-you when I left.

  “There you are,” Clem said as he let me into Kiki’s apartment. “I’ve been helping your grandmother pick out an outfit for tomorrow night. She’s having dinner with some beau from her past.”

  “Don’t believe a word Clem tells you!” Kiki cried from the other room. “Sergio is a dear old friend, and pure as a lamb!”

  “I’d like to meet that lamb,” Clem whispered, sitting down on one of the damask couches. He had on a navy blazer, a bright orange silk scarf, and a huge silver skull ring. He looked awesome. “Oh Claire, if you’d got here ten minutes earlier you’d have witnessed the Sultan of Brunei throwing a hissy fit down in the lobby. It was splendid.”

  “What happened?”

  “The hotel needed his room, for obvious reasons”—he looked at me pointedly—“and the Sultan had to be moved to a smaller room. You know he owns the New York Palace Hotel, don’t you? But he has it in his head he has to stay here.” Clem made the international symbol for crazy with a finger by his ear. “I told Keeks one of us should just offer to put him up. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

  “I don’t see why you didn’t.” I ducked into the bathroom to fix my hair and pilfer my 157th bar of almond soap.

  When I came out, Kiki and Joe, the hotel general manager, were dragging a black and brown checkered trunk into the apartment. Joe let Kiki use the hotel’s storage facilities in exchange for her friendship. I wanted to tell Kiki about the basketball dream and my run-in with the BDLs, but something told me she’d prefer that I wait until we were alone.

  “Curses!” Kiki cried. “Are you sure nobody’s loaded any dead bodies in here?”

  “Let me get that,” I said, taking the trunk handle from her. Joe and I pulled the trunk across the floor until she told us to stop.

  She crouched down to flip open the lid, and a musty smell drifted through the air. “There should be a few goodies in this time capsule,” she said, and started to yank out select pieces.

  Clem and I watched in disbelief as swatches of silk and oversized zippers and sparkly buttons flew through the air. I practically had to wipe the drool from my chin when she handed me her selection: a black hooded cashmere dress, huge black Balenciaga sunglasses, and a white strapless dress with a heart-shaped neckline.

  “It’s all rather impractical for skiing,” she said, “but you won’t actually be going near the snow, will you?”

  Kiki knew I couldn’t ski. The Shuttleworths, on the other hand, had yet to learn about my disability.

  “I might make a snowman or something,” I said.

  “Then take this,” she said, and tossed me a belted blue coat with white mink trim. It was the Rolls-Royce of coats: so luxurious it practically taunted the world to climb inside. I wished I didn’t find fur so repulsive.

  “The only thing is…,” I started.

  “Oh, relax,” she said. “It’s faux. Now, give it a whirl.”

  I stuck around for dinner with Clem and Kiki—creamed chicken hash and Cobb salads from room service (my idea, again). At Kiki’s insistence, we prepared for my trip with the Shuttleworths and reviewed some of her favorite rules.

  “Knife and fork?” Kiki took a sip of her martini.

  “Easy,” I said. “Cross them between bites.”

  “Arrive at the table with…?”

  “A few interesting stories to contribute.”

  “That one’s very important,” Clem chimed in. “And don’t think they can’t be made up.”

  “Embellished,” Kiki corrected him. “‘Made up’ sounds so tawdry. But a little imagination can be a girl’s best friend.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I muttered under my breath.

  “The cameo necklace?” Kiki asked.

  I had to think about this one. “Don’t take it off unless I’m showering?”

  “Right-o.” She smiled. “And getting engaged on a whim?”

  “Um, don’t do it?”r />
  “Correct—unless the man is a Shuttleworth.”

  “What!” I nearly spit out my food. “I’m only fifteen!”

  “Oh, lighten up,” Kiki said. The phone was ringing, and she pushed herself out of her chair to answer it. Kiki’s phone doubles as an intercom for deliveries and visitors; otherwise she would ignore it during meals.

  “Claire.” She shot me a strange look. “For you.”

  Turned out the strange look was justified. It was Mom, who hardly ever calls me at Kiki’s.

  “Claire, we have to talk,” she said. To an outsider, her voice might have sounded normal: soft and breathy, but I could detect a tremor. “I was sneaking in the last sign on the astrology column at the ghostwriting office and my boss caught me.”

  “That sounds okay,” I said, trying to sound sunny to distract Kiki and Clem from the true nature of the call.

  “Hardly. My boss went berserk. I was already so far behind on the book, I was ordered to hand over the project to somebody else.”

  Turning my back on the diners, I whispered, “You mean you were fired?”

  “Yes and no,” she said. “Well, yes, from the Miss Rodeo job. But listen,” she said, and proceeded to explain that Tom Blakeson, her friend and editor at the Planet, had come to the rescue. He’d asked her to come down to Tampa for two weeks to work on the special “Stars We Love” issue.

  “I’m sorry to bum-rush you like this, but everything’s falling into place so fast and I just wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else,” she said. “Cheri-Lee’s offered to pop by and lend a hand when you’re in Aspen. And the rest of the time, you can help out around home, right? Nothing crazy, just make sure everyone washes and eats something green once in a while. Okay?”