Poseur #3: Petty in Pink: A Trend Set Novel (20 page)

They’d officially entered Bel Air.

“I don’t know…” Janie gazed at the slowly passing estates—each more spectacular than the last—and bitterly imagined Evan carrying
Gabrielle, his beautiful new bride, across
that
threshold, then
that
threshold. “I
guess
she’s pretty.” She scowled as the disgustingly in-love newlyweds paused beneath a blooming arbor to kiss. “In an
obvious
sort of way.”

“
Man
, Charlotte looked good,” Jake remarked out of nowhere, recalling the sight of his ex-girlfriend getting into Jules’s Ferrari:
her long legs, her perfect ass. “It’s like”—he clenched the wheel, quaking a bit in his cracked-vinyl seat—“you know?”

“But isn’t she, like,
twenty-one
?” Janie folded her long arms across her tightly bound chest and scoffed. Jake shook his tousled head and grimaced.

“I can’t believe she
likes
that douchebag!”

“It just seems a little
old
to go out with some guy who’s still in
high
school, I mean…” Janie rolled her eyes at the window.

“Whatever.” Jake slouched into his seat, landed his hand at twelve o’clock, and shrugged. “It’s not like there aren’t going
to be plen-ty of hot girls at this thing.
Hey
.” He grinned and glanced his sister’s way, waiting for her full attention. “Is it true Gabrielle Good’s gonna be there?”

Janie leaned against the vibrating passenger door and regarded her pink terry tracksuited brother in disgust.

“Oh shit,” he said, to her surprise.
Was he actually going to apologize?
But then she noticed the impressed expression on his face, the encroaching thump of a hip-hop base, a gesticulating valet,
mini-flashlight in his hand… and held her breath.

“We’re here.”

The Girl: Gabrielle Louise Good

The Getup: Orchid pure silk tank dress with scoop neckline and pleated detail by Doo.Ri, neon pink patent platform pumps by
Alexander McQueen, candy pink Trick-or-Treater handbag by POSEUR!!!

“All right, y’all!” Melissa clapped her slender tan hands, manicured as always in Paparazzi Pink, and despite the chaos of
cars arriving, music thumping, cameras popping, and pulses jumping, her tiny clap won the attention of at least thirty people.
For once, she only wanted the focus of five: Charlotte and Jules, looking like they’d stepped from the pages of
Vanity Fair
; Marco, adorable in the Dolce & Gabbana pink crushed-velvet tux she’d picked out; Deena, wearing completely unauthorized
pink satin genie pants that would
seriously
have to be addressed later; and Emilio Poochie, flawless as always in his pink rhinestone-encrusted Harry Winston collar
and matching Paparazzi polish. Pursing her Glossimer-slathered lips, the impatient diva stared at the freshly mown grass,
waiting for her twenty-five nonessential listeners to lose interest. At last they looked away, resuming their excited chatter.
“I want your peepers peeled for a
red 911 Porsche
,” she addressed her entourage in a confidential tone. “If I miss a
second
of this thing,” she paused to spring a warning finger, “I’m holding y’all responsible, ya hear?”

“Ch’ere is stool you ch’ave requested, Miss Melissa,” interrupted a tallish valet with piercing blue eyes and a thick Russian
accent. With a stony formality ill fitting to his youth, he placed a beige plastic stool at her scintillating feet, tipped
a bow, and slunk away. Melissa nodded her thanks and grasped Marco’s hand, gathering the ruched skirt of her floor-length
rose viscose Donna Karan goddess gown. Evan and Gabrielle were going to arrive any second, and she
demanded
the perfect, uninterrupted view.
And if the rest of these jokers got a perfect, uninterrupted view of her?
she softly grunted, mounting the stool in all her goddess-gown glory.
Then all the better.

“Oh my lord,” she gaped, eyes settling on a corner of the crowd. Clapping her hands once, she cackled. “Is he for
real
?”

Marco followed his girlfriend’s twinkling gaze to the end of the drive. “Oh shit!” he doubled over, hiding his laughter in
one hand and jerking his knee to his elbow. From a distance, Jake grinned, yanked the right leg of his pink tracksuit to his
knee, and slowly pimp-walked his approach. Behind him, his sister rolled her eyes.

“Man.” Melissa’s boyfriend exuberantly bumped his fist, beaming with pride (at this point, almost everyone was laughing, even
Charlotte, who tempered her capitulation with a disapproving shake of her head). Flashing a grin that could guide Santa’s
sleigh, Marco declared, “You got
balls
.”

“I don’t understand.” Jules, by far the most tastefully dressed in a classic pink lightweight cotton twill Ralph Lauren suit,
furrowed his handsome dark brow, gently tugging his girlfriend’s arm. “What is funny?”

Charlotte’s smile wavered;
that she had to explain!
“Well,” she began, and Janie couldn’t help but eavesdrop, wondering if at any point she’d acknowledge her hypocrisy.
Why,
she wished she had the nerve to interrupt.
Why is it when Jake intentionally wears stupid clothes, you think it’s hot, and Marco gives him props? Your mom’s eighties
dress was ten
times
funnier than that tracksuit. And yet, oh no—God forbid I
wear
it.
Of course, the hypocrisy wasn’t Charlotte’s. It was the world’s. When a girl dressed for laughs, it was like, even if a guy
did
think she was sexy, he wouldn’t admit it. Meanwhile, members of her own gender reacted with that special mixture of mirth
and disgust, like dressing weird was equivalent to public drunkenness. Or involuntary drooling.
It wasn’t fair,
Janie decided.

“Hey…” A melodious voice diverted their attention. Her honey gold hair, which gleamed in gratitude from a rare shampooing,
tumbled freely about her shoulders and fell to her waist. A sheerish cotton pink tie-dyed maxidress billowed about her ankles,
exposing in glimpses her perfect, tanned ankles and open-toed espadrilles. Not that Janie noticed this stuff. She was too
busing gawking at the guy to her left: hot pink vinyl pants, torn pink Patti Smith t-shirt, black, fuchsia-tipped mohawk.
“This is Paul,” Petra smiled, grasping his hand; on his thumb, a mood ring (
a mood ring?!
) gleamed.

“Omigod,” Charlotte almost tittered, and immediately glanced between Paul and Janie, who fluttered her gray eyes shut, struggling
to organize her horror into one actual coherent thought.
Pautra was with Pet?! No, no, wait… Traul was with Pépé?!

Arcing an ebony eyebrow, Charlotte sang under her breath. “Awkward!”

“What?” Petra frowned, confused, wounded, and mostly just stoned. “Wait…”

“Hey…” Paul, who’d heard Charlotte and chose to ignore her, recognized Janie at last. “I know you.”

“
Know
her?” The petite brunette folded her tiny arms over her fitted pink jacquard bodice. “Is that what badass punk rockers who
still let Mommy buy their underwear are calling it these days?”

“Charlotte,” Janie rasped, the bile rising in her throat.
Oh God. Of course, she’d recognized him. Of course she had!
“Don’t—”

“Don’t
what
?” the smaller girl gaped in exasperation and disbelief. “Come
on
, Janie. Don’t let him treat you like that.”

“You d-d-don’t,” she stammered, simultaneously swallowing and gasping for air. “It’s-s-s not…”

“What’s going on?” Petra blurted, pulsing with paranoia. Imploringly, she looked at Paul.

“Isn’t it obvi, Pot-tra,” Charlotte scowled, bored already. “These two went out.”

“Wait,
what
?” he grimaced, staring accusingly at Janie. “No, we didn’t.”

“I know!” Janie grinned in this terrible, face-melting way.
I don’t even
like
you anymore!
she wanted to scream.
Get over yourself.
The world was spinning,
actually
spinning, like that time at the Santa Monica pier when she was eight and ate too much kettle corn and rode the Ferris wheel
and got off and smelled the fish-filled sea and puked on the boardwalk. Everyone was looking at her, their faces alternately
baffled and appalled.
Don’t cry,
she swallowed as her eyes began to burn.
Do not
…

“Excuse me,” she whispered, pushed past her brother, who was still talking to Marco, and fled. Petra stared after her, her
comprehension dawning.

“I’m
serious
,” Paul insisted earnestly, touching her bare shoulder. “Petra
—
she’s just this friend of Amelia’s. I barely
know
her.”

“Whatever,” she grimaced, closing her tea green eyes.
Focus,
she ordered herself. But she couldn’t. Her feet were blocks of static, her brain was too big for her skull, and his hand…
his hand was a tarantula. She shivered, shrugging it off. “I’ll be right back.”

Paul watched in dismay as she ran, chasing after Janie. “This is funny!” some ponytailed douchebag tittered, glancing between
him and his MIA girlfriend. “No?”

“Omigod!” Melissa squealed, resnatching their attention and unknowingly saving Jules from a disciplinary shove. Marco struggled
to hold her steady as she bounced precariously on her stool. “They’re here!” she gasped, clapping her ring-adorned hands.
“They’re here!”

Pop! Pop! PoppityPOPpoppityPOPpopopop! PopPOPop!

Two impossibly long legs swung from the shining red Porsche door, and the paparazzi went ballistic. “Gabrielle!” they cried,
falling over one another as the blithe blond starlet stepped to the curb and unfolded into the air, rising like a rare night-blooming
flower. Bright lights pulsed at a seizure pace, delicate bulbs tinkled and smashed, and all the while Gabrielle Good exuded
hand-on-hip cool, squaring her shoulders, angling her chin, and transitioning from pout to smile with such alien ease, her
true mood (did she have one?) was puzzling to fathom. That is, until Evan Beverwil—beautiful and blasé in breezy pink linen—arrived
at her side, and she lit up in a way that had nothing to do with cameras. With a new, teasing smile, she batted him lightly
with her startlingly fresh pink handbag, and he laughed, touching the small of her back.

Her orchid pink slip dress looked cool and slippery under his hand.

“Aren’t they
perfect
together?” Melissa choked up with emotion, causing Marco to give the couple a second, scrutinizing glance.

“I guess they’re both blond,” he shrugged.

“No, not her and
him
,” she grimaced, like his idiocy caused her pain. “Her and the Trick-or-Treat—
oh
…”

Clattering down the ivory marble stairs that descended from the main house and wearing a strapless pink Versace mermaid gown
the shade of pure rage, Vivien Ho was shimmying, shimmying her way. Her raven hair was pulled back from her face—teased, pinned,
and sprayed into a rock-hard, brain-size beehive—and as she drew close, her poison gaze pricked like a sting.

“What,”
she hissed, grabbing Melissa’s elbow,
“is going on here?”

“Nothing.” Her future stepdaughter back-stepped off the stool, wrenching her arm from Vivien’s death grip. Behind her, Marco
set his jaw, puffing up like a bouncer.

“Nothing?” Vivien repeated, dripping with contempt. “Girl, you think I’m an idiot?”

“All right,” Seedy intervened, materializing at the scene in a cool magenta Givenchy suit. A tiepin featuring a pink Mentos-size
sapphire glittered at his throat. “What’s going on now?”

“She’s doing a celebriteaser!” his fiancée informed her future husband, indicating the flurry of cameras at the far end of
the carpet. Seedy clenched his jaw, bolting his daughter with a disciplinary glare.

“I thought we discussed this.”

“But it isn’t fair!” Melissa reverted to her old argument. She couldn’t
help
it. “Look!” she cried, pointing to the decidedly unlit part of the carpet where the gnome-size Tila Tequila was checking
her BlackBerry, a gargantuan magenta metallic east-west top-lock Ho Bag dangling from her arm. “She’s doing one too!”

“Hardly,”
Vivien pointed out. “You’re hogging all the cameras!”

“Wait,” Seedy frowned, glancing between Tila and Vivien. “I thought you invited Tila ’cause you two are friends.”

“Of course,” she assured him. “But TeeTee’s got her ego, you know?”

“TeeTee?”
her younger rival repeated in disbelief, gaping at her father. “Daddy… she be sellin’ woof tickets, and you
know
it!”

“Enough!”
her father erupted. Melissa watched him press his palm to Vivien’s back and clapped her mouth shut. “We’ll talk about this
later,” he informed her sternly.

“Yeah, we will.” Vivien flashed a final, triumphant look, and then, hanging off her fiancé’s elbow, headed back to the house.

“It’s so unfair.” Melissa whimpered, folded into Marco’s arms, and allowed him to rock her gently back and forth. “It’s so…,”
she began again. And stopped. Through the crook of Marco’s armpit, dangling from Gabrielle’s arm, she could see it.
It’s so worth it,
she realized, melting into a smile.