A Long Way From You (7 page)

In the white-and-gold-marble-adorned lobby, complete with shiny black-and-white-checked floors, people whisk in and out accompanied by bellmen carrying their luxury logo-stamped luggage. One lady, with hair as red as a barn, makes a silk T-shirt and leggings look as beautiful as a ball gown. She could wear a potato sack and get away with it.

“Is there a model convention going on?” I ask Corrinne in a hushed voice.

“Get used to it, Kitsy,” Corrinne says. “It’s the way everyone here looks. People either want to be models, were models once, or are currently models. Don’t let it get you down. You’re here to be somebody, too.”

I’m not sure what Corrinne means by that, but I hope it’s somehow a compliment. “We’re early,” Corrinne announces. “Let’s go to the bar.”

I start to sweat. I’m not wearing my own clothing, which makes me even more nervous. The only bar I’ve ever been to is a ballet bar back when we could afford my lessons. Besides, I’m four years away from being the legal drinking age. I know that Corrinne has some ID that says she’s twenty-one and that her fake name is Mauve, who is actually some third cousin of hers.

“Okay,” I say. “You know I don’t have an ID, right? I’ll just get a Shirley Temple. I’m totally fine with not drinking,” I add because it’s true.

“They don’t ID. It’s pretty alienating to ID your customers when you’re charging eighteen dollars a drink,” Corrine declares.

Eighteen dollars?
You could order half of the Sonic menu for that.

Corrinne marches on into the bar, which is a long, narrow room. Gold drapery hangs from the windows, pink couches and striped armchairs line one wall, and a gold-and-navy mirrored bar takes over the other.

I make a move to find the remotest and darkest corner when I see Corrinne hop onto a barstool in the very front. Hesitantly, I push myself up onto the stool next to her.

“You ladies look nice tonight,” the bartender, who also looks like he could strut a catwalk, says from his perch. He puts out two fancy, cloth napkins, one in front of each of us.

I’m nearly positive he’s using the word
ladies
as a trick. It’s probably a code word for
underage
. Soon, the cops will be called, I’ll be exiled back to Texas, and everyone will say, “It figures. It’s Amber’s daughter, after all.”

Corrinne doesn’t bat a smoky eye and orders us two Tanqueray and tonics.

Without another word, the bartender starts making our drinks.

As Corrinne sets a speed typing record on her iPhone, I text Hands to make sure all is okay. He responds immediately:

Decided tonight’s going to be a drinking night. It’s off-season anyway. Bubby’s driving, he’s the DD. OOO.

Hands must be taking the whole there’s-a-new-Tony-Romo-in-the-Spoke thing hard because he usually never drinks, no matter the season. I wonder if I should excuse myself and call him when a gaggle of girls enter the bar, throw open their arms, and embrace me.

“Kitsy!” a girl in a strapless cobalt blue dress that barely covers her bottom exclaims. “Corrinne has asked us to adopt you.”

“Great,” I say and nod uneasily since I already have a family. Maybe we’re a semi-dysfunctional one, but it does include an irreplaceable and darling little brother.

“Make that disappear,” Corrinne directs, motioning to my drink. “We’re going to the suite.”

I decide not to finish it because I don’t want to look like Amber when she sucks one down. No one’s paying attention anyway. Everyone’s complimenting one another’s clothes, which, if I’m hearing correctly, were all bought new for this event as if it were prom.

We cluster into the elevator, and I see more buttons than there are on one of those fancy algebra calculators. There are thirty-two floors. I want to press all the buttons and see them light up, but I hold myself back. We step out on seven.

A door flies open and Vladlena stands before us, surrounded by silver buckets on the floor. I wonder if her room has leaks before I realize the buckets are each holding ice and a bottle of champagne.

“Seventeen buckets for seventeen years!” Vladlena exclaims in the most exotic Russian accent.

All the girls squeal. I think if Vladlena can fit in from another country, I can fit in from another state . . . although I’m pretty sure Vladlena’s from the same society as Corrinne, even if it is of the Russian variety.

Corrinne drags me over to Vladlena and introduces us.

“Kitsy,” Vladlena says, “so good to finally meet you. I’ve been dying to ask you if you could find me a cowboy like Corrinne’s Bubby.”

I don’t clarify to Vladlena that Bubby’s way more into catching pigskin than roping a horse because I don’t want to pop her Texan cowboy dream.

She gracefully bends down and hands me a bottle of champagne. Vladlena must be over six feet tall, and I feel small in more than one way.

Even though I’ve never had champagne, I brace myself for the cork flying, and the champagne spraying everywhere like it happens in New Year’s Eve movies. But when Vladlena gently twists off her bottle’s cap, there’s just a soft pop. “A trick from Russia,” she says and smiles.

I can especially appreciate Vladlena’s trick because I’m currently admiring the expensive suite. It has a quilted ivory couch and the white-and-peach drapery perfectly matches the bedding. I have to resist my sudden urge to buy a plastic drop cloth and cover the suite with it. Cleaning falls under the things-that-won’t-get-done-unless-I-do-them category at home, so I have become a bit Martha Stewart about housekeeping.

When someone slips an iPod into a docking station, the entire suite turns into a dance party.
This
I can do. To the ditty of the moment, Corrinne and I dance throughout the palatial suite.

For a few short minutes, I feel like I belong.

That feeling ends when seven popped-collar, pastel-Polo-wearing guys show up at the door. When the boys enter, the girls stop dancing, pick up their champagne glasses, and refill.

The flock of guys sit on a couch and start passing around a flask. Corrinne makes no motion to introduce me, and the girls huddle like an opposing football team on the other side of the room.

All the girls gather on the bed and drink more of the champagne. My head starts to feel lighter and lighter, so I decide to stop drinking.

Corrinne brings me over to talk to Blake and Breck, identical twin brothers, who apparently haven’t gotten over wearing nearly the same outfits.

“You’re from Texas?” Breck or Blake asks. “We know tons of Texans. Do you know the Bensons, the Heads, or the McLinns?”

All the names ring bells as rich oil families I’ve read about online in the
Dallas Morning News
. But I most certainly don’t know any of them, nor do they live anywhere near Broken Spoke.

I shake my head. “No,” I repeat again and again until they run out of names. And then there’s a pause.

“Do you live on some sort of farm?” Blake, I think it’s Blake, asks.

“No,” I say, “farming has pretty much dried up. Unfortunately, crystal meth’s the only crop that’s selling well in my part.”

Blake and Breck look at me as if I just said that I grew up in a jungle raised by benevolent wolves.

Corrinne immediately interjects to rescue me. “Kitsy’s going to be an art student at Parsons’s Foundation summer program,” Corrinne says, redirecting the conversation like a captain steering a ship. I’ll have to thank her later. Usually, I can find something in common with anyone, but it isn’t working with these twins.

“Really? Our cousin Iona is taking that course, too,” Breck (I think) says and points to a girl sitting alone on the couch. She’s dressed in a polka-dot shirtdress and red combat boots. While she’s definitely pretty, with brown ringlets and a slim figure, she doesn’t blend into this ripped-from-a-Polo-advertisement scene.

“Ah, I-ona,” Corrinne groans. “As in I-don’t-wanna-know-ya Iona. Looks like this party’s no longer VIP. You know no one likes her since she cut off Waverly’s ponytail in fourth grade and called it art, right? Good thing Waverly had a work event tonight—she still blames having thin hair on Iona. She would go totally Lindsay Lohan on her.”

Not that I’d ever say so to Corrinne, but I’m already taking to this Iona. Waverly is Corrinne’s best friend from New York and boarding school, and let’s just say we didn’t see eye to eye (or cowboy hat to cowboy hat) when she visited Broken Spoke last year. She’s a lot like Corrinne except minus all the redeeming qualities.

Blake—or Breck—rolls his eyes at Corrinne and beckons Iona over. Corrinne storms away in a huff, leaving me to fend for myself.

“Hey,” he says to Iona, “this is Kitsy. She’s attending the Parsons summer program.”

Then the twins disappear to find more champagne. I vaguely hear in the distance, “We couldn’t have drunk it all, there are seventeen bottles. Okay, order delivery. You only turn seventeen once!”

“Hello,” Iona says. She inspects me as if she’s a referee trying to determine something like whether a ball (the ball being me) was out of bounds. If this were football, I get the feeling she’d definitely throw a flag.

“I’m surprised I don’t know you already,” she says as she twirls a brunette ringlet around her finger and raises her hazel eyes. I notice that she has a reverse widow’s peak; at the middle of her hairline, she’s missing a tiny patch of hair.

“I’m from Texas,” I explain for the fourteenth time that night. “I like your name.” Smile and compliment is my routine for one reason: It works.

“Iona means island. Your friend Corrinne calls me I-don’t-want-to-know-ya Iona. I’m not completely wowed by her creativity level, but I’m not surprised either. Look around: It’s like looking at whitewashed walls. Even Vladlena blends in. We’re the only ones that stick out,” Iona says.

Great. So I
do
stick out, even in Corrinne’s clothes. I want to go back to MoMA where it’s the art, not the people, that’s on exhibit.

“What medium do you usually work with?” Iona asks me.

“I mostly sketch,” I answer. “I haven’t had a lot of exposure to other media. Our school budget mainly goes to our football program, so the other programs, like art, get the scraps,” I admit.

As much as I love football and what it brings to the Spoke, I do wish that the art facilities at least
somewhat
compared to our brand-new stadium, complete with a scoreboard that looks like it’s out of the twenty-second century. The art room, on the other hand, is more nineteenth century. Calling it outdated is an understatement.

Iona scrunches her nose and says, “My school doesn’t have a football team. I personally think it’s a barbaric sport, but that’s just my opinion.”

Maybe if I lived in New York where there were a gazillion other activities to do on Friday night, I’d agree with Iona. But without football, Broken Spoke would be a scary place.

Iona continues without waiting for my opinion: “My medium is definitely painting. Like me, most students in our class are just taking this Foundation course to learn about other media to enhance their specialties—what they’ll probably major in at art school. Some of the other students are ridiculously talented. I hear there’s one guy who sold out his entire charcoal exhibit before his first show was even over.”

The only exhibiting I’ve ever done was back on Amber’s refrigerator when she still noticed my work. Cringing, I vividly remember the day she took my family portrait off the fridge after my dad had been gone about six months; I had spent an entire Saturday drawing it. Even though I was eleven, I knew not to try to stop her as she threw it in the trash.

As Iona goes on about specialties and exhibits, I suddenly feel out of my league. I didn’t realize that most of the other students were already art prodigies. My only specialty is makeup, and I don’t think that’ll impress anyone here unless someone seriously needs a makeover.

“I’m hoping that I’ll find my specialty over the next couple of weeks,” I say cheerfully.

“You’ll definitely
need
to if you want to go to art school. Nearly all of them require extensive portfolios,” Iona warns, raising her dark eyebrows. I find myself wondering what she’d look like with makeup. Even though she’s being an art snob, she’s more refreshing than the other snobs I’ve been talking to. I guess it helps that we have a mutual interest.

So I decide to continue the conversation: “I’m not planning on going to art school,” I say. “There aren’t any near me in Texas.”

I’ve spent hours researching art schools, but we’re four hours from Dallas, where the closest one is. It’s just too far. Most likely, I’ll be a day student at the junior college about an hour away.

Iona stares out the window and still doesn’t make eye contact.

“Of course you can’t stay in Texas!” she exclaims with a snort. “You’ll have to come back East. Right now, Yale is ranked at the top and there’s Rizdee, of course. If you can’t get into those, maybe you can stay in the South and go to SCAD. Do you
not
plan to be a professional artist?”

“I would love to,” I answer dreamily and imagine myself living and working in a funky loft/studio. But then the image of Kiki growing up alone with Amber pushes it out of my mind. I hear myself blurt out, “I can’t. I need to be close to my family. I have a younger brother.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Iona says. “You must be really talented to get into the program with no previous formal art education.”

“I guess,” I say, worrying that Iona is now pitying me. I didn’t come to New York to be pitied; I get enough of that back home.

Corrinne snatches my wrist and pulls me away.

I call over my shoulder, “See you at school, Iona,” but she’s already turned away.

“No champagne. All out,” Corrinne slurs. Looking toward the door, she hiccups and says, “Let’s get pizza. I’ve got to start packing.”

We hug Vladlena. Corrinne stumbles and I walk out into the hallway and to the elevator. I’m upset that I didn’t have a camera to take pictures, so I could tell someone about tonight: “I was there once. I was at a party in The Pierre Hotel when I was seventeen.” I’m sure without a picture no one will ever believe me.