Trinkets (2 page)

“Yeah,” Noah Simos adds. “You never showed up at Ferber’s.”

“Didn’t your mom tell you?” Brady says. “She had me come over to your house so she could suck my dick.”

Have you ever noticed how boys love making jokes about sleeping with each other’s mothers? Either that or discussing how gay the other person is. If you have a penis, you apparently possess an endless supply of this type of unfunny comedy.

Noah punches him, and Brady laughs, slinging his arm around me. I smell his D&G cologne. It isn’t entirely unpleasant.
I look up at him like,
You are the most charming person I know, and your arm around my shoulder makes me happier than anything in the entire world.

“What time should I pick you up tonight?” he asks, kissing me.

“Like, nine?” I say. He may be kind of a D-bag, but he does have nice lips. And he’s six two, which is good, since I’m an inch or so taller than most of the girls in my grade. Sometimes people ask if I’ve ever modeled. My mom took me to get professionally photographed once, but I hated it. It was all hot lights and faking it, and it got boring fast. Although, in a weird way, I guess you could say that’s what I’m doing now, looking up at Brady and playing the part of Perfect Girlfriend. Either that or I’m giving him my very own Mirror Face.

I know I wasn’t directly responsible for Lindsay Manatore having to run track with one half sweatpants, one half short shorts, but I probably should have stopped Alex from cutting the leg off them with Janet’s pocketknife. But in a way I’m glad I didn’t, because it was funny. Anytime we crossed Lindsay’s path on the track, I would start to sing, “Who wears short shorts?”

Alex befriended me in the first place because she thinks I’m funny. That, and she assumed because I dress the way I do, I belonged in their social circle. I told her, “Oh no, I just have a terrible fashion sense.” Next thing I know, I was introduced by Alex to her friends as her hilarious, sarcastic new friend Moe. That was at the beginning of freshman year, and that’s the person I’ve stayed ever since. Before
that, I was just kind of friends with losers, but I’ve got to say being with the tough kids or the “burnouts” or whatever you’d call them has its perks because no one effs with you. The problem is people mostly just avoid you because they assume you’re dangerous or you’ll beat the crap out of them or something, so you don’t really have the chance to mingle a whole lot.

The only person who sees something close to the real me is Noah. He probably would not admit that in HIS journal. But he’s a popular kid, and those kids don’t even keep journals. Their lives revolve around status updates, and by status I mean STATUS. He hangs out with people like Tabitha Foster and Brady Finch and Jason Baines. Noah only talks to me after school when we’re alone, then he leaves before my aunt gets back from work. Or I leave before his mom gets home.

Yesterday I waved at him when I saw him walking into his house with his parents. He didn’t wave back. I heard his mom say, “Who’s that?” His response: “I don’t know.” Hey, asshole, if you’re going to pretend not to know me, that’s fine, but I live next door to you. Couldn’t you just say, “I think she lives next door to us”? I don’t need him to proclaim undying love for me or tell the world that we make out and sometimes do even more than that, but at least admit I’m a person you’re familiar with. Douche.

“Please tell me it’s not gonna rain later.” Kayla points, looking at the gray sky as we walk up the perfectly manicured walkway to Taryn’s front door.

“Sorry. It’s gonna rain later,” I say. It’s Portland. It rains 155 days a year.

Kayla rings the bell, which echoes out some cathedral-on-crack-style chimes. The house is a gaudy white McMansion perched right on the water in Lake Oswego. Not my taste, but in our neighborhood new money reigns supreme, and this is the perfect example of what it buys you. Taryn’s parents have oodles of fresh cash, courtesy of her dad’s sweet upper-management job at Nike and her mom’s at Wieden+Kennedy.

“I’ll drive,” Taryn offers, tossing her curly blond hair as she swings open the front door.

“I want to find something
hot
,” Kayla says, fingering her belly-button ring, which is proudly on display thanks to a strategically rolled-up sweatshirt, designed to show off her lean, flat stomach.

Kayla has a gym in her house, and she wears a red rubber “core bracelet” on her wrist to remind her to suck in her stomach. Her personal hero is Tracy Anderson, Gwyneth Paltrow’s trainer. I’m pretty sure she owns Tracy’s entire workout wardrobe, down to the shoes. If her mom would let her, she’d probably dye her hair blond to match Tracy’s, but fortunately she realized that “blond Asian” is not the greatest look. Thanks, Bai Ling.

We climb into Taryn’s red Mini, a present from her parents for the incredible accomplishment of turning sixteen. Kayla crawls into the backseat.

“Don’t you already have a closet full of hot?” I nudge her.

“Too much is never enough,” she singsongs.

Our Friday afternoon shopping excursions are a ritual. I used to love them, but then about a year ago, it started to seem like spending my dad’s cash was just another form of taking his hush money; if he didn’t have so much of it, my mom probably would have divorced him a long time ago. Every time I buy something with a fifty-dollar bill he’s given me, I’m going into greater debt with the enemy. But if it weren’t for the enemy, I wouldn’t have gotten Tiffany diamond-stud earrings for Christmas last year, so there you go.

We peel into the Washington Square parking lot, and Taryn does one of her typical “I need two spaces instead of
one” parking jobs. She nearly plows the Mini into a guy in a wheelchair.

“Jesus!” I yell.

“Just because he’s handicapped doesn’t mean you need to put him out of his misery,” Kayla adds.

“Whatever. He’d thank me for it if he knew Macy’s doesn’t carry Miu Miu,” Taryn sniffs. She is one of those girls who live for any razzle-dazzle chance at fashionistadom and the possibility of possessing couture. Not that the Washington Square Mall is crawling with couture, but you’d be surprised at how many kids in our grade have dads with Learjets and moms who still trot out furs for parent-teacher meetings. If anyone can sniff out the couture in a mall, Taryn can. She once used the bio lab tables as an impromptu fashion runway when Mr. Lopez left the room for one of his infamous fifteen-minute bathroom breaks.

Kayla starts gravitationally beelining toward Forever 21, the home of all her slut-wear. “Let’s go to Forever Twenty-One,” she says.

“We’re going to Bebe,” Taryn says firmly. Spring Fling is almost three months away, but she’s hell-bent on nabbing the perfect dress early.

“Why do you want to go to Forever Twenty-One? They print Bible verses on the bottoms of their shopping bags.” I roll my eyes.

“They do not!” Kayla gasps.

“See for yourself,” I say with a shrug.

“I’m going to Nordie’s.” I know neither of them will want to go there, since it’s “too nineties.”

“Meet back at Yopop for fro-yo afterward?” Taryn says, and I nod.

Kayla points at the Forever 21 window. “Ooh—glitter tube top!”

“Watch out,” I say. “Total sinner wear. You might need some redemption.”

Kayla sticks out her tongue, and I can’t help but laugh. She may be a bit of a ludicrous idiot, but she’s at least somewhat trustworthy. When I drunkenly told her about my dad having an affair last year, she never mentioned it again. And in exchange, I never talk about all the slutty things she’s done with half the guys she’s done them with. Last year in Family and Consumer Science (formerly known as Home Ec), Mrs. Sykes talked about a study where girls who had good body image were more likely to abstain from sex, and girls with bad body image were more likely to be slutty. How weird is it that if you like your body, you don’t let anyone see it, and if you
don’t
like your body, you want to show it to everyone? And why wouldn’t Kayla love her body, since there isn’t an ounce of fat on it?

“See you in forty-five minutes,” Tayrn says. As they head off, I breathe a sigh of relief because I can finally do what I came here to do.

Marc and I played Rage after school. Beached Whales were exploding left and right when he started giving me shit because I hang out with dirtbags and a guy who doesn’t even acknowledge me in public. I told him I don’t need his overprotective brother speech. It’s not like his friends are a ton better, since all they do is blaze up and ride bikes. He argued with me for a while and said that pot and bikes are different from actually doing bad things like tagging buildings or being mean to people or constantly partying and whatever else we do. I said it’s none of his business what we do, and besides, who else am I supposed to hang out with? So he let it drop and said he’s just looking out for me, and then he killed a shit ton of Gingers and Fattys. I was pissed until I realized that’s just what brothers do. They try to protect you from the bad guys, even in a video game.

Even if you have enough money to do what you want, it’s still fun trying to get something for free. In my case, something from the Nordie’s jewelry case.

“Can I see that one?” I ask, pointing to a Maya Brenner bracelet with chunky gold chains and a little coin with small stones of turquoise and coral. The other day I saw Alexa Chung wearing it on a blog, and I vowed to get one of my own.

The despondent saleslady unlocks the case. She has frizzy brown hair and looks like all the gloomy weather has soaked straight through to her soul. Either that or she’s been sprayed with a little too much Eau de Homeless on her walk to work. That could bum out anybody.

“Oh, and the earrings,” I say once she plunks the charm
bracelet on the velvet pad on the counter. She turns to get them.

“No, not those.” I point. “The pearl ones. And that silver bracelet with the big chain links? And can I see the rose gold hoops? Thanks so much.” As the saleswoman sets out one thing after another, I smile sweetly. “Do you mind getting out that skull pendant necklace too? Sorry.”

“Which one?” She’s starting to get confused.

“It’s so hard to make up my mind here,” I say, holding up the rose gold hoops. “By the way, I love your blouse. It looks amazing on you.”