Dream Girl Read online

  Mom looked up from her magazine flipping and smiled in her hazy way at my stockinged feet. God, it was weird what made her happy. I cast Henry a remind-me-how-we’re-related-to-her look, but he didn’t notice. He was crouched by the coffee table, using markers and construction paper to create a new classification system for his dinosaur figures.

  “Claire?” Mom said. “These came for you—a card and a couple of letters from Henry Hudson.”

  “What do you think the chances are that they’re writing to say they realized they made a mistake when they let me in?”

  “What do you think the chances are that you’ll give it a chance?” Mom shot back.

  I sighed my defeat and walked over to collect my mail. There was a flimsy envelope from my new school as well as a thick cream-colored envelope with Kiki’s signature pink trim.

  “There’s only one thing from Hudson here,” I told Mom.

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s what I meant.”

  Her attention to detail was unbelievable. I ripped open the bargain-basement envelope first to see that Hudson’s administrative office had sent an undersized sheet of paper that looked as if it had been xeroxed a hundred times. “Attention, incoming students,” it read. “Our new metal detector system is highly sensitive. All students are advised to keep jewelry, hair accessories, and orthodontic contraptions to a minimum. See you on the fifth.”

  I trusted the cream envelope would be more fun, and headed into the living area to open it in privacy.

  KIKI MERRIMAN

  REQUESTS THE HONOR OF

  CLAIRE VOYANTE’S PRESENCE

  AT THE BELATED CELEBRATION OF

  CLAIRE VOYANTE’S FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY

  SATURDAY, THE TENTH OF SEPTEMBER

  SIX O’CLOCK

  THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL

  At the bottom, Kiki had written in her flawless penmanship: “When you get back, I’ll be in D.C. visiting my dear friends the Lamonts. It would be unfair to deprive you of my company and your present. If you don’t put it on immediately, I’ll be most offended.”

  My confusion lifted when I realized the envelope was slightly heavier than usual. With my back turned to Mom, I stuck my hand in and fished out a rectangle of tissue paper with something stuck inside. Seeing that my grandmother lived uptown, only a short bike ride away, I was surprised that this present couldn’t have waited, but as I pulled the paper off my gift, I realized why she’d sent it. It was a cameo pendant with the cream-colored silhouette of a woman on a black stone background. It wasn’t the kind of thing you stuck in a drawer and waited to give to someone.

  I’d seen plenty of cameos, but this one was different. It was as if it actually contained more than just two dimensions, and the longer I stared, the deeper I was pulled in.

  “Anything good?” Mom asked absently, snapping me out of my haze.

  “Not really,” I mumbled, clenching the present in my fist. She and her mother had a weird relationship, and if I could avoid mentioning one in front of the other, I did.

  Without further ado, I snuck into the bathroom and flicked on the light. I fumbled with the clasp until the necklace was securely in place, then let my arms drop to my sides and looked in the mirror. The chain was thin nearly to the point of invisibility, and the pendant hit the sweet spot just below my collarbone. I didn’t know how it was possible, but set against my dehydrated, bleary-eyed, jet-lagged self, the cameo looked even prettier than it had before.

  Sorry, Henry Hudson, I thought—the new metal detector was going to have to deal.

  { 3 }

  Lawn Twister

  Mom was too tired to go shopping that night, so she scrounged up some nonperishables for dinner. After I wolfed down my frozen ravioli and canned peas, I got a surge of energy and was crazily inspired to tackle my entire life at once. Why just unpack when I could unpack and hang up my new Folies Bergère poster and clean out my closet and check the Farmhouse Web site?

  “Claire!” Mom yelled as I slid out of my chair and nearly crashed into Dad’s wheeled desk. “Stay seated at the table and digest!” Digestion was a favorite topic of conversation among my parents’ friends in France, so naturally Mom had developed an interest in it.

  “The human stomach is a miraculous organ,” I said, backing away from the table. “It can do its work in any number of rooms.” And this evening my bedroom would have to suffice.

  Alone in my own little space, I got busy sorting dirty laundry and organizing the pens and scissors in my drawers and taking down a sunflower poster that had grown a million times uglier since June. I was running on all cylinders—until I wasn’t, and my room melted away.

  Everything was a whorl of motion—hundreds of circles were growing and bumping into one another like so many ripples in a lake. And I was floating in the middle of it all. I couldn’t see up or down or tell what was spinning faster: myself or everything else.

  The black and white circles slowed down and started to melt into one great sea of gray. I was still suspended like an astronaut when a tiny paper doll appeared before me. I reached out to touch it, but I just missed it. The doll turned on its side to reveal a paper-doll twin. The doll continued to roll over, leaving behind a dozen or so replicas, all linked by their little paper hands. And then another hand entered the picture—a human hand holding a pair of scissors. All it took was one quick snip for the string of dolls to break apart. And I started tumbling down, down through space until the dolls shrank to no more than little white specks in the distance.

  I woke up with my clothes still on and my face buried in my fake polar bear rug. From this vantage point, I could see a family of chocolate bunnies hidden under the bed. I’d bought them at half off the week after Easter—a huge act of defiance against my parents’ très French rule against snacking (we’re only allowed a four o’clock goûter and it’s always yogurt or, even worse, cheese). As I reached out for a bunny, the dream I’d just been having came back to me. It was definitely weird, and not just because it had been in black-and-white. It was exhilarating, more like an amusement park ride than my usual dreams, in which I’d find myself running around the Washington View courtyard in my underpants or on a Broadway stage with no idea what my lines were.

  My clock said it was 3:08 a.m., and I felt like I’d run a marathon. I shuffled out to the living room, completely disoriented. All appeared to be normal—still and empty, with everyone else in bed. I poured myself a glass of water and sat on my favorite butterfly chair by the window. Almost all the other lights in Washington View Village were off, the curtains drawn, though I could make out a pixie of a woman in building one standing in front of a television set and lifting weights. Something creaked behind me, and I turned around to see Henry letting himself into the apartment, his Tintin backpack sagging to the backs of his knees.

  “What on earth? Do you have any idea what time it is?” I cried through a mouthful of stale bunny tail.

  “Relax,” he said. “I was just walking the halls.”

  When Henry had started taking his walks, Mom and Dad had tried to lay down the law and forbid his wanderings, but eventually they came around. When a family lives in an apartment the size of an average Starbucks, everyone needs to get out from time to time. I had my bike, Dad had his classes, Mom had her coffee meetings with Cheri-Lee, and now Henry was free to go out whenever the mood struck, so long as he didn’t go any farther than the corner. And starting at eight he could only walk around inside the building. Still—it was three in the morning.

  “What floors?” I was testing him. When Henry lies, he gets nervous and makes up a million unnecessary details.

  His curly silhouette drifted toward me, and he lowered himself onto the other butterfly chair, backpack still on. “Seven and nine.”

  I waited a beat to see if there was anything he wanted to add. Nothing. He was off the hook.

  I broke off a bunny ear and handed it to him. “Okay, but if you ever go outside in the middle of the night and let yourself get kidnappe
d and beheaded, I swear I will track you down and kill you.”

  Henry coughed. “Wouldn’t I already be dead then?”

  I got up and started to stagger toward my room. “See you tomorrow,” I said, yawning.

  “You mean today.”

  “Hen,” I said softly. “There’s a very fine line between being smart and being a huge dork. Please tell me I don’t have to worry about you.”

  “Whatever.” Henry kicked his feet up to the windowsill, assuming the universal position of complete and utter unconcern.

  The next time I woke up, the sun was beating through my window and the sky was a majestic shade of sapphire. I felt slow and groggy, but you would have to be a soulless cretin to spend such a beautiful day inside.

  Or part of my immediate family.

  When I cracked open my bedroom door, my parents were both in the living area, lost in their work. Mom was tapping away on her laptop, probably writing her latest astrology column. Dad was in the corner reading Émile Zola’s Nana, one of the novels he was always rereading and marking up with different-colored Post-its.

  I quietly closed my door before they could see me spying and logged on to my computer. Even if I wasn’t going back to Farmhouse, I could at least pretend. As promised, my friend Louis had forwarded me the Farmhouse Summer Living Agenda, the school’s version of a summer reading list. It included teachers’ recommendations for street fairs and day trips, and even the names and numbers of Farmhouse alumni who were open to receiving visitors at their offices. At the end of the summer, kids were supposed to go on the Farmhouse Web site and post photos and write-ups of what they’d done. Trust me, it’s cooler than it sounds.

  Some of this year’s suggestions, like the International Tomato Day festivities and the Animate This! Film Festival, had already passed. And I had to rule out others, like the American Folk Art Museum and “Take the Q train to both ends of the line and take pictures of what you find,” on account of the glorious weather. In the end, I settled on a visit to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Mr. Claxon, my history teacher from last year, had written a convincing recommendation: “You’ll find trees full of wild green parrots, Gothic tombs, and tons of dead celebrities. Write a story there—it’s the perfect setting for an Agatha Christie–ish mystery.”

  As if I needed more proof that I still belonged at Farmhouse. This trip was practically tailor made for me.

  Back in sixth grade, when my love for Agatha Christie was verging on pathological, I got it in my head that I was a detective. I spent several months sneaking around the building trying to listen through people’s doors. After a few complaints, the Washington View Village board banned me from going to floors other than my own for a year. To this day a handful of neighbors still avoid making eye contact with me on the elevator.

  I got ready as quickly as I could, and Mom didn’t look up from her computer until I was on my way out the door. “Claire, there’s a departmental meet and greet in the Sunrise Room today, and people are bringing their chil—”

  “I can’t do it,” I said too quickly. “I’m supposed to do this…write-up. It’s for school.”

  It wasn’t exactly a lie—I just left out the part about it not being my school.

  “They already gave you an assignment?” Mom looked perplexed, but Dad was smiling at his diligent daughter. He’d been waiting fifteen years for me to embrace my studious side. Before Mom could ask any more questions, I blew them both a kiss and sailed out of the apartment.

  I was walking my prize possession—my vintage red Schwinn—down the path outside our complex, congratulating myself on fibbing my way into what might be my last day of freedom, when I spotted a familiar pair of curly red bobs glinting metallically in the near distance.

  Of all the thousands of neighbors to run into. Sheila Vird and her mom.

  Without really thinking about it, I let my bike drop and ran into the courtyard. When I was younger, I always hid behind the hideous fake Picasso sculpture—I couldn’t have grown that much since then, right? But just as I was sprinting across the patch of worn-out grass, our half-deaf neighbor Dr. Larson came out of nowhere and greeted me with what was possibly the loudest “Hi, Claire!” in history.

  I was toast.

  Cheri-Lee spun around, her eyes crinkling in puzzlement.

  “Is that our Claire?”

  “Hi!” I squeaked from my spot on the grass, spastically bending down to touch my right ankle. I could feel how purple my face was, and I was reminded of when my parents went through an after-dinner Twister phase.

  “I’m stretching,” I peeped by way of explanation.

  Cheri-Lee galumphed toward me, and Sheila followed, an expression of annoyance washing over her potato-like face. She brought her hands to her hips and thrust out her whopping shoulders, a move she’d learned at one of the sword and sorcery role-playing conventions she’d gone to before she’d disowned that side of herself. If I recalled correctly, this pose was supposed to inspire fear in others. And it did, along with a tiny little bit of glee. Sheila was ridiculous.

  Oblivious to her daughter’s displeasure at seeing me, Cheri-Lee started yammering away about anything and everything on her mind. “Isn’t the weather resplendent?…It just harkens back to the days I used to go back-to-school shopping with my mother…. Then we’ll finish off with fro-yo at Bloomie’s, the tangy natural-flavored one…don’t you think?”

  The sight of Sheila had instantly transformed me into a wobbling mound of idiocy, and I had no hope of following anything her mother was talking about.

  “So what do you say, Claire?” Cheri-Lee brought her hand to her ear, and her rainbow-colored stars-and-anchors charm bracelet rattled.

  I figured it would probably be a good idea not to keep talking to them with my face buried in my knee. I did one more toe touch for good measure and came up for air, only to be overwhelmed by the perfume Sheila had worn since fifth grade. Why had nobody ever told her she smelled exactly like a peach muffin?

  “So,” Cheri-Lee pressed on, “what are you doing tonight?”

  Sheila shot her mom a loathing look.

  “Probably taking it easy.”

  As opposed to my usual nighttime fare of nightclubbing and sitting on the backs of motorcycles.

  “You’re too young to take it easy.” Cheri-Lee honked. “Sheila was just telling me about some gigantic party she and her friends are all going to.”

  “It’s not gigantic,” Sheila blurted out. “It’s a little gathering at some kid’s brownstone.”

  “So?” Cheri-Lee elbowed her daughter in the side. “Claire’s small. I’m sure she could fit.”

  “Hilarious, Mom.” Sheila stared at me as if I were made of millions of minuscule rat droppings. And then, as if she could no longer bear the sight of me, she blinked hard and reached down to tuck her sneaker tongue under her yoga pant leg.

  “Where’s the party?” Cheri-Lee persisted.

  “I don’t know.” I could tell Sheila was working hard to drain her voice of any trace of life. “We’re all going to Lauren’s for an intimate get-together first.”

  “Great! That might be an easier atmosphere for Claire’s big debut.” She laughed at the term, clueless to what her daughter was really trying to say to her. “Why don’t you give her the address and she can meet you there?”

  I don’t know if it was because I abruptly realized that I wouldn’t mind meeting some new kids or because I was enjoying how much her mother’s idea was driving Sheila crazy, but suddenly I wanted in.

  “You know, that would be really nice.” I shot Sheila a sickly sweet smile.

  “I can’t just…do that,” Sheila sputtered.

  “Oh, please,” Cheri-Lee said. “Since when were you so uptight? If Lauren has a problem with Claire, tell her to call me.”

  It was a recipe for disaster, but before I knew it, Cheri-Lee was smiling and congratulating us on our freshly hatched plans.

  { 4 }

  Meet the Beatles


  I’ll admit that a cemetery might be seen as a slightly odd destination, especially on my first day back in New York, but really, it wasn’t morbid in the least. The sun followed me on the ride out there, and the grounds were more quaint than creepy—all rolling hills and overhanging branches and Gothic cathedrals. I only saw one person visiting a grave in the traditional sense—everyone else seemed to have come for a jog or, in one classy instance, to make out.

  I got home a little after five, which gave me barely enough time to get ready for my big night with the Sheila posse. Mom and Dad were entertaining spillover from the French department meet and greet. My parents’ scratched-up Jacques Dutronc CD was playing, and the apartment was buzzing with French chitchat.

  Hoping to drown them out, I went to my room and put on “Peanut Duck” by Marsha Gee, one of my all-time favorite songs. Without showering first, I threw on a black skirt and shirt and fastened a thick leather belt around my waist, a rump-concealing trick I learned from Kiki. Thanks to all the wine my parents’ friends were drinking, the bathroom was occupied every time I tried to use it, so I used the mirrored Renault car poster in the living room to do my hair and makeup. I could barely see anything through all the lettering and had to lean in breath-foggingly close for my quick ponytail and eyeliner job.

  I must have been working hard on my eyes—I didn’t notice that the phone had rung until I saw Mom’s reflection holding the receiver. “Hello? Hello?” she said with growing agitation before hanging up. “Gus,” she said to my dad, “it’s happening again.”

  My parents are convinced that the reason Mom regularly gets hang-ups is that one of Dad’s students is in love with him and is determined to harass my mother. Nobody ever stopped to consider that it could be Mom’s mother calling for me.

  Before the phone sounded again, I ran back to my room and waited. Didier and Margaux, my pet fish, were swimming around peacefully, unmindful of the irritating racket in the next room. I picked up before the first ring had completely played out.