Dream Life Page 8

  “It’s okay, I’ll figure it out,” I said, trying to project a little annoyance and not give away the pathetic fact that I was happy to have a task. In truth, if she’d asked me to unclog the toilet with my bare hands, I would have jumped at the option—anything to keep my mind off the Blue Moons and how I wasn’t one of them.

  After I’d reorganized the platter of raw vegetables for the fifth time, there was nothing left to do but wait for the party to start. I lay down on the couch and let my eyelids flutter closed, the sounds of my household filtering in from all corners. There was Mom humming in the bathroom. And there was Dad muttering “Imbécile!” at some less-than-brilliant student’s paper.

  I was wearing a cat mask and scaling the wall of a grit-colored building. I effortlessly hoisted myself onto the roof, slunk across the surface, and slid all the way down the dove-gray chimney. Midway through my descent, a gray pair of hands reached out and pulled me into a secret compartment and someone started kissing me. Andy’s lips felt more rubbery than usual and when I pulled back and looked closer I saw why: my secret lover was none other than a rubber chicken.

  “Wake up or you’re going to get baked, couch potato.”

  Henry and Rio were standing over me, both sporting eyeliner mustaches. Henry’s blond curls were flopping over his eyes and he was holding the cardboard robot happy birthday sign he’d gotten at his eight-and-a-half birthday party. Thanks to a vigorous application of Wite-Out, the two-foot-tall robot now had a bow tie, heavy undereye circles, and a droopy mustache just like Proust’s. Above him were the words HAPPY 108½ BIRTHDAY.

  Feeling way too sleepy to contend with a couple of hyperactive eight-year-olds, I wiped sleep from my eyes and slowly came up to a seated position. Rio passed me a copy of Proust’s Swann’s Way and pointed to the author photo on the back. “You see?”

  “One and the same,” I said, glancing between the guy in the picture and the transformed robot. “Nice job.”

  “We’re not done yet,” Henry said. I could feel a grin curling on my face as Rio drew a line above my lip. Who knew the path to a better mood was to let a couple of eight-year-olds graffiti your face?

  I got up to check out my pencil mustache in the mirrored Renault ad, then placed the Proust Robot over it. Then the three of us planted ourselves on the couch, where we patiently waited for the guests to arrive and marvel at Henry and Rio’s wit.

  But when our parents’ friends started to trickle in, they just walked past the robot of honor and headed straight for the table, where they stuffed their mouths with Mom’s cooking and tried to say clever things about Proust.

  It was only a matter of minutes before conversation turned to French department gossip—namely, how Rudolphe Clavet had plagiarized his paper on the extermination of the Huguenots.

  Party on, dudes.

  “I think I’m done,” I mumbled to my brother.

  “Me too.” He got up and motioned for his sidekick to follow. “We have a project on the twelfth floor.”

  Before I could ask what he was talking about, somebody tapped me from behind.

  I put on my best face and turned around, ready to assist a newcomer who was looking for the wine stash.

  The girl standing there was dressed in standard-issue French department garb—head-to-toe black. She had a hood over her head and she was holding a lit candlestick in front of her for the ultimate Left Bank effect.

  “Red’s by the window, white’s in the fridge,” I monotoned.

  “I’m actually not thirsty.”

  I gasped. A loose red tendril fell over her cheek. This girl was no friend of my parents. It was Diana “Horsey Moon” Stoeffels, and gathered behind her were the other girls dressed in identically creepy getups. There was no sight I would’ve been happier to behold. Becca hadn’t forgotten about me after all!

  Poppy, the one Blue Moon I’d never seen before, was easy to pick out of the lineup—she was about six feet tall, and her yardstick-straight posture only accentuated her height. On the far end, Becca was biting down her lip the way she does when she’s trying to tamp down her excitement. Looked like I wasn’t the only one who was feeling good about things.

  “No way!” I cried happily, my exhaustion letting up for the first time since Henry and Rio had crashed my sleep party. “How did you guys get in here?”

  Diana brought a finger to her lips and handed me a small box. “Open it.”

  The box was made of blue stone and it contained a tiny ivory sculpture of a boat, just like the one on Becca’s key chain.

  One of the other girls—Sills, I think—stepped forward. “Blue Moon,” she said. “Do you accept?”

  “Sure,” I rushed to respond, as if they were going to take away the gift if I didn’t accept it within a nanosecond. I was still in shock from the whole Moon invasion as I tried to pry the boat out of the box, but it was stuck to the bottom, like the ceramic frog inside of Henry’s Kermit surprise mug.

  “I can’t get it out,” I said, frustrated.

  Becca reached out for the box and grinned. “Not the boat, silly girl. Do you accept the whole thing?”

  “The box?” I squinted at her.

  “No.” Becca rolled her brown eyes. “The … Moons. Do you accept our invitation?”

  I was suddenly wide awake. Was it possible I’d fallen asleep on the couch and was having another crazy dream? Come to think of it, with all the candlelight, everything in the apartment did look black and white.

  So I pinched myself hard. And again. Nothing changed, though—all the girls were still standing there, staring at me.

  Next thing I knew, Becca and Reagan were holding on to my elbows and pulling me to my feet.

  “The boat isn’t yours just yet.” Becca took back the box. “First you have to go through our initiation process.”

  “That is, if you live through it,” Reagan tittered.

  “Attends, Claire!” my dad called out.

  Oh right. My parents. My stomach dropped like an anchor.

  What was I going to say when they asked what was going on? Oh, nothing, just letting a quintet of New York princesses abduct me and take me to places unknown. If you need to reach me, you can check out their Web site. It doesn’t have the address or phone number of their secret clubhouse, though there’s a hot Cabbage Patch doll.

  But to my eternal relief, Dad’s curiosity didn’t extend beyond the party’s purposes. He showed no signs of registering the alien invasion—he must have mistaken my visitors for weirdly dressed grad students. “We’ve run out of lemon. Can you bring some back, poupée?”

  “You got it!” Reagan answered for me, and pulled me into the hallway just before the door shut.

  As we waited for the elevator to arrive, everyone was looking a little bashful. At first I thought it was because of my hallway’s ugly multicolored walls, but then Becca pressed something wet into my palm.

  I felt a rush of embarrassment as I realized what she was looking at. I wiped away my mustache and stuffed the dirty cotton pad in the garbage chute. Becca threw me a nod of approval.

  “Here,” Sills said, handing me the green Courrèges jacket she’d grabbed from its hook by the door. I was flattered that she’d recognized it as mine.

  I finished zipping as we filed into the elevator. The fluorescent lights didn’t exactly jibe with the sacred mood the girls were trying to project, and it didn’t help matters when we got down to the lobby and Stanley, the night doorman, started freaking out about the candlesticks. “When I told you to put your fire hazards out, I didn’t mean when you got around to it!”

  I shot him an apologetic glance, but the troupe just kept going. Just as well, though. No sooner had they burst through the doors and into the winter night than the wind snuffed out their candles.

  Sills led us around the corner, to La Guardia Place, where a van was waiting for us. It had seen better days—or more like better decades. I was so distracted checking out the shark-sized dent on its side that it took me a few seconds
to realize what the lettering said: AIRPORT EXPRESS.

  Becca hadn’t mentioned where the clubhouse was. Could it possibly be out of state?

  “Wait.” I turned to Becca, more confused than ever. “I don’t even have a toothbr—”

  “I wouldn’t get too excited,” she said dismissively “This and ‘Mama’s Plumbing’ were the vans the rental agency had that would fit us all. We’re not going to the airport. There are two more inductees after you.”

  I felt a rush of confusion. “What two—”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” she said brusquely, and before I could say anything else, she pushed me forward. “We’ve decided to be a little more inclusive.”

  Still feeling dizzy, I crawled through the open door and found a seat in the back. Becca climbed in next to me. “You’re okay with this, right?” she whispered.

  I nodded, trying not to let on just how pathetically okay with it I was.

  In the row ahead of us, Reagan reached into her pocket and pulled out a fistful of Mon Cheri and Bacci chocolates.

  “What else do you have in there?” Becca called ahead, then glanced at me. “Reagan’s always loaded up with the most random stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her use the same lipstick twice.”

  I bit down a smile. Feeling like this much of an insider wasn’t something I was used to.

  Reagan turned around and shrugged as she fed herself a Bacci. “It’s unsanitary not to refresh your makeup regularly.”

  “Whatever.” Becca rolled her dark eyes.

  The van’s driver gunned the engine and started toward Bleecker Street. I was checking out the nightclubs’ MARDI GRAS MONDAYS and 2 4 1 LADIEZ NITE signs when my vision went out.

  And it had nothing to do with my strange dreams.

  Somebody had slipped a silky blindfold over my head and I didn’t like it one bit.

  “What are you doing?” I sat up straight. I was totally disoriented. And a little embarrassed for how scared it was starting to make me.

  “Just relax.” Becca’s voice was calm. “We’ve all gone through this and lived to tell.”

  The words were probably intended to take the edge off, but they had the reverse effect. I’d seen enough after-school television to be wary of secret societies.

  “We’ll explain everything soon enough,” she promised. “Once we get back to the clubhouse.”

  Then I heard some papers rustling and the girls broke out into a chant. Apart from the couple of mentions of Blauwe Maan that flew by, it sounded like complete and utter gibberish, and a few giggles leaked through—it was a good thing their fore-mothers weren’t around to hear their rendition of the song.

  Being blindfolded, it was hard to keep track of time or judge distance, so I had no idea how long it was or how far we went before we stopped for a couple of pickups. The first newcomer kept quiet and the second one had a California valley girl voice and kept asking what was going on. I felt like an old hand already, which made as much sense as somebody gloating over having been born two minutes before her twin.

  At last, the van came to a halt, and I was led by my hand through a doorway and down a staircase. The air was warm and smelled of mothballs and pine needles. I stumbled after the last step, not realizing I’d reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Ready or not …,” Becca said as she pulled off my blindfold. “Ta-da.”

  Given how fancy the club’s members were, it was shocking how austere the clubhouse was. A collection of mops and dustbins was stashed in the corner, and furnishings were limited to a hanging iron candelabra and a semicircle of wooden chairs with exceptionally tall backs. High-ceilinged and narrow, the room’s walls were bare but for a stained-glass window whose panel depicted a glorious blue ship. And it smelled dank, like cold stone covered in moss.

  “This is the inner sanctum,” said Poppy, the tall girl the Moonwatcher.net Webmasters had nicknamed “Man on the Moon.” I was surprised by her gap teeth and her build—she was bordering on stocky. As I watched her pull three seats out for the newbies, I thought about how bizarre it was that out of the group, she was considered the boy magnet.

  “By ‘inner sanctum’ she means the basement,” Becca said, stealing an amused look at me.

  Easing into my seat, I checked out the other inductees. One of them was staring at me. Her baggy clothing and brown bob made her look a bit like a mushroom. I couldn’t get eye contact from the other one, who was the picture of punky-chic, with her tight black jeans and rainbow-colored hair. I could only imagine what I looked like, with my blond bedhead and trace of a Proust mustache.

  The only thing any of us had in common was we were equally as un-Moon as it got.

  Poppy cleared her throat. “Now I know each of you has a friend in the Blue Moons, and you’ve all been briefed on what the group does, correct?” She didn’t wait for any of us to answer. “Today’s your lucky day. Our society has chosen to open up to a few girls without preexisting ties.”

  I took that as a nice way of saying girls without gobs of money. It was a little embarrassing, her putting it out there like that.

  The mushroom girl sounded skeptical. “Is this some sort of affirmative action thing?”

  “If you want to call it that,” said Diana “Horsey Moon.” “But to be honest, it’s more for our benefit than yours.”

  “We all agreed this place could use some livening up,” said Becca. “And you all have some pretty big talents.” She looked at me dead-on.

  Crap. Unless she was referring to my exceptional command of girl group music trivia, Becca had to be on to my flair for seeing more than meets the eye. But how could she? I’d never said anything to her about my dreams, and she hadn’t so much as hinted at suspecting anything before. I squirmed in my seat and looked away, focusing on a patch of moonlight that was streaming through the window onto the cold concrete floor.

  “What talents?” the punky newcomer asked.

  Reagan stepped forward and brushed back her pale hair. “Sig here is a computer dynamo who will be running the CIA before we know it.”

  “Google,” the mushroomy girl spoke up. “Better pay scale and killer cafeteria.”

  Poppy gave a gap-toothed smile. “Of course. And Hallie is a master of all things edible.”

  The punky girl smiled modestly and looked down at her pink Converse shoes. “Well, most things. I don’t cook red meat. Or anything genetically modified.”

  “Thanks for the clarification.” Becca looked at her impatiently. “And my friend Claire …” There was a torturous pause and I could feel my heart beating against my chest. What was she going to say? Even if she had a hunch about my supernatural talents, she couldn’t just out me here. Was she going to tell them that I was good at taking standardized tests and hiding chocolate under my bed?

  “Claire is an expert in etiquette and entertaining,” Becca said at last. “Plus she saves my life approximately every other day.”

  She said it in an offhand tone that suggested I regularly lent her pens and told her when she had food in her teeth, but I knew that she was talking about the photo in the park and last semester’s averted plane crash. I felt bashful, relieved, and still no closer to knowing whether she had so much as an inkling about my special talents.

  I nervously fingered my cameo necklace and tucked it under my shirt, as if that would keep my secret safe.

  Sills stepped forward and pulled off her black hood to reveal her Jessica Rabbit curls. I wasn’t sure what was more mysterious—how she styled them to look that good or why anything that good-looking had ever gone out of fashion in the first place. “The initiation process is three months long,” she said. “If you make it to the end you go from being Half Moons to Blue Moons. Good luck.”

  I felt myself rising to the challenge. If there was one thing I wanted, it was to belong.

  “We have some pretty big plans this year,” Sills went on. “And we need your help.”

  “Do we have to pay dues?” Sig sounded dubious. “Be
cause I’m flat broke.”

  Kiki would have had a fit over the inappropriateness of her introducing the subject of money, but I was glad she had the courage to bring it up.

  “Me too,” added Hallie.

  “Me three,” I murmured bashfully. Sorry, Kiki, but you’ve been outnumbered.

  Sills shook her head and smiled. “You don’t have to do anything but share your skills with us. And clear next weekend for initiation. We need you.” Her tone was soft, and it didn’t sound like we were being completely used.

  “And no more kidnappings?” Hallie raised a skeptical eyebrow, and I noticed that she had a thin ring through it.

  Becca held back a smile and turned to face her sisters. “No more kidnappings.”

  Too bad. Looking back, this whole adventure had been kind of fun.

  “Allow me.” Diana stepped forward and came to stand over Hallie. “Are you in?” she asked her.

  “Sure.”

  Diana looked at Sig. “And you?”

  “Okay.”

  “Me too,” I jumped in, slightly ahead of turn. “Finally, a little enthusiasm.” Diana’s green eyes burned appreciatively.

  And thus one and a half moons were born.

  { 8 }

  Talent Show

  The week leading up to the Blue Moon inauguration, I was so riled up I could barely focus on anything as attention-draining as homework or conversation. Eating, sleeping, and regular deodorant application weren’t happening all that much either.

  I was desperate to know what Blue Moon adventure was coming next, but Becca was staying mum. Between making preparations for the upcoming weekend and her typically busy roster of family obligations, she was hard to track down and sweet-talk into giving away any secrets. Apart from the Gramercy Park address where I was to show up at eight o’clock on Friday night, the only thing she would share was that I was to bring one of Kiki’s old etiquette books. “It can be an old one she never uses, it’s more symbolic than anything,” she said after school on Wednesday—one of our few encounters that week. I was walking her to the subway stop she uses for her weekly voice lesson at Lincoln Center. “But whatever you do, don’t tell her about any of this, okay?”