You Just Can't Get Enough Read online

  “Hey there!”

  Baby whirled around to see J.P., clad in khakis and his blue Riverside Prep blazer, standing at the corner. He was holding a rainbow sno-cone in one hand, his BlackBerry in the other.

  Baby loved how J.P. seemed so buttoned-up but wasn’t really. Not when you got to know him. And now that she was officially here to stay on the Upper East Side, she intended to get to know him a whole lot better.

  As in, know him in the biblical sense?

  “Celebratory sno-cone? Did everything go okay with your meeting?” J.P. pushed his floppy brown hair from his eyes nervously.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Baby said triumphantly. “You can tell the dogs not to worry,” she teased.

  “Good.” J.P. grinned. “I wouldn’t want them to lapse into their bad habits without you.” Baby instinctively looked down at J.P.’s feet. Before she’d started walking his dogs, Nemo had had an attitude problem and had taken to pooping on J.P.’s shoes. Today J.P. wore soft leather moccasins that looked like they’d been stolen from a Native American exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, but Baby knew they’d been picked out by a personal shopper at Barneys—all of J.P.’s clothes were.

  Rule of thumb: The uglier a boy’s shoes, the more expensive they are.

  Baby grabbed the sno-cone and licked it, enjoying the rush of cold and sugar on her tongue. She felt giddy and relieved. She wasn’t sure what was making her happier: that she was staying at Constance, or that J.P. cared enough about her fate to leave school early and surprise her.

  Just then, the bell rang, and hordes of uniform-wearing, shiny-haired girls came streaming out the royal blue doors. They moved toward the sidewalk or stood in clusters on the school’s steps, gossiping about their days. A few stared at Baby and J.P., whispering behind their Bliss-manicured hands.

  Baby spotted Jack Laurent, J.P.’s bitchtastic ballerina ex-girlfriend, exiting the double doors. She stopped walking when her green eyes landed on Baby, her back ramrod straight. With her lightly freckled nose held high and her glossy, pin-straight auburn hair, she looked like she belonged on the catwalk rather than the steps of Constance Billard.

  Baby shrugged and turned her back to Jack, facing J.P. instead. Who even cared about Jack Laurent? All that mattered was that she’d spent the past week hanging out with an adorable boy who got more adorable every day. And she intended to spend the next year doing the same thing.

  Impulsively Baby leaned into J.P. and planted her lips on his. His eyes widened in surprise, but he eagerly kissed her back. Baby wrapped her thin arms around him. His lips tasted like eucalyptus. She felt a shiver go up and down her spine and settle into her stomach as she kissed him again. His arms felt strong around her, and his mouth tasted so clean and uncomplicated.

  “Thanks for the sno-cone,” Baby whispered as she finally drew back, still in J.P.’s arms. She felt another shiver run down her spine. Wow. Why hadn’t she done that sooner?

  “Let’s get out of here,” J.P. whispered huskily, pulling her down the school’s steps. Baby took his hand, her hip bumping against his as they walked west toward the goldfish-colored sun and the lush greenery of Central Park.

  Maybe it’s time to trade in the tie-dye for an I LOVE NEW YORK tee?

  j is for jealousy

  Jack Laurent gripped the metal railing of the Constance steps with her petal pink fingernails, feeling like she’d been slapped. No, slapped wasn’t the right word. She felt like she’d been pushed off a high dive into an empty concrete pool. The kiss she’d just witnessed replayed on a loop in her mind. She could not believe that bohemian hippie slut had just kissed her boyfriend.

  Doesn’t she mean ex-boyfriend?

  Jack tried to regain her composure. She focused on breathing in and out, ignoring the Constance girls streaming past her. Perfect, perfect, perfect, she chanted in her head. In the past, the word had always helped her get composed. But lately, it hadn’t been working so well. She couldn’t tune out the whispers of the eighth graders bounding down the steps.

  “I heard the reason Baby Carlyle was gone this week was to walk, like, all the shows at fashion week. Apparently, there’s this whole hippie revival that Marc Jacobs is doing, starring her,” one wiry blond eighth grader whispered to her unfortunately turnip-shaped friend as they clattered down the steps.

  Jack glared at them with her catlike green eyes, trying not to freak the fuck out. She felt like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, right before she gets carted off to a mental hospital.

  She checked her watch impatiently. Where the fuck were her friends? And what could J.P. Cashman, her mogul-in-training ex-boyfriend, possibly have in common with a girl from nowhere, Nantucket, who looked like she was just waiting for Woodstock 3? It was absurd.

  But the trouble was, everything in Jack’s life was absurd lately. Ever since her wealthy former French ambassador father had cut her and her mother off from his black AmEx—and forced them to move into the musty garret above what had been their Upper East Side town house—nothing in Jack’s life had gone according to plan. A picture-perfect family, including a five-year-old girl named Satchel, had moved into the house below. From her bedroom, Jack could hear the family having cocktail parties, laughing, and clinking their silver, which made her feel like the crazy lady in Jane Eyre, relegated to the attic. It was all too depressing. When she’d begged her father to reconsider, all she’d gotten was a lecture about responsibility. Until Jack could prove that she wouldn’t end up a chain-smoking, histrionic shopaholic like her overly dramatic French mother, Charles Laurent wasn’t going to finance anything except school.

  Whatever. Jack had already sucked it up and nailed her School of American Ballet scholarship audition over the weekend, and she had just bought the most adorable kitten-heel Miu Mius with one of the Barneys gift cards she’d found stuck in her Hermès wallet, left over from her sixteenth birthday. She looked down and smiled at how cute the shoes looked at the ends of her bare, ballet-toned legs. The ten-dollar pedi place on Third actually wasn’t as gross and dirty as she’d thought it would be. So her father wanted to play games? She’d become fabulously successful and make her own money. Then she’d write a tell-all memoir, set up a dance camp for less privileged girls like herself, and appear on Oprah. The famous talk show host wouldn’t be able to help but cry when she heard Jack’s story, and her father would start throwing money at her.

  Sounds like a plan!

  Jack sighed impatiently and pulled her long auburn hair over her shoulder, examining the ends. She could definitely use a trim from Raoul, her favorite stylist at the John Barrett Salon, but, sadly, that was out of the question. She pulled her hair back into a sleek bun, securing it with a Sephora barrette. She hated waiting. The free time just made her start obsessing over everything. Like, for instance, why the fuck did her friends think it was okay to keep her waiting? She pulled out a pack of Merits from her large, rust-colored Givenchy satchel, a constant reminder of the girl she once was and the things she’d formerly taken for granted. She lit up with her Tiffany engraved lighter, not caring that smoking on school property was technically grounds for disciplinary action. After all, their lesbo headmistress, Mrs. McLean, had apparently let Baby back in after she’d practically been expelled. Jack doubted she’d get in trouble for something so minor as smoking.

  “You’re allowed to smoke here?”

  Jack heard an annoyingly perky voice behind her. She turned around to see none other than Avery Carlyle, who sounded like she was really fucking curious about Constance’s rules.

  “Hey Avery,” Jack replied fake-sweetly, wishing she could blow smoke in Avery’s face. Avery was the only person at Constance who knew about Jack’s financial situation, and, as such, pretty much owned Jack. Jack had tried to destroy Avery and her bid for the student liaison for the board of overseers position by secretly calling the cops at the out-of-control party Avery had hosted at her grandmother’s town house a week ago. Instead, when the cops had broken up Ave
ry’s party—arresting the hostess—everyone had treated her like a rock star, and she’d even won the board of overseers position. Not like Jack had really wanted it anyway. But it hurt not to have been elected by her classmates, and it would have made her dad a little more likely to open up his checkbook for her.

  “Hey.” Avery smiled, pushing her thick, blond, split-end-free hair back under an extra-wide black leather Coach headband. It made her look like Alice in fucking Wonderland.

  Jack stared in disbelief as Sarah Jane Jenson, Jiffy Bennett, and Genevieve Coursy—her friends—emerged from the building and immediately circled around Avery like tourists around an umbrella-toting Fifth Avenue tour guide on a rainy day. Jack glared. For the past week, her friends had included Avery in everything they did, and while Jack was by no means out, Avery was certainly in.

  “So, Stella McCartney’s having a sample sale downtown. Want to go?” Avery stepped back to let Jack into the circle and cocked her head expectantly.

  “We’re going.” Genevieve shrugged as she thrust her hand in Jack’s purse, pulling the pack of Merits from its depths and taking out a cigarette.

  “Want one?” She offered the pack to Avery, hardly acknowledging Jack.

  Avery shook her head primly and smiled. “No thanks, I don’t smoke. Are you coming?” Avery asked Jack expectantly. Her blue eyes were wide open and friendly, making Jack feel like the extreme bitch that she was. It was as if Avery was this new and improved friend to Genevieve, Jiffy, and Sarah Jane, all freshly scrubbed and idealistic.

  And carcinogen-free?

  Jack again fought the urge to blow smoke all over Avery’s self-righteous face. After all, Avery hadn’t been that innocent at her party. After being hauled to the police station, she’d been thrown in the drunk tank until her brother, Owen, came to rescue her. Jack mutinously grabbed the pack of Merits out of Genevieve’s hands and stuffed it back into her bag. Just two weeks ago, they had all been talking about what a loser Avery Carlyle was.

  “Fine, I’ll go.” Jack shrugged and sighed deeply, as if going to a sample sale was a huge sacrifice. It wasn’t like she could fucking afford it, but she didn’t want to leave Avery with her friends unattended.

  “Great.” Avery smiled and put her hand out to hail a cab. Immediately, one screeched to the curb. Avery opened the door as the rest of the girls crammed in next to her, giggling. It was a regular-size cab where really only three people could fit in the back, but no cabbie would say no to five cute, uniformed private-school girls who were willing to sit on one another’s laps.

  Jack sighed and stalked to the front seat of the cab. It was the ultimate humiliation to sit in the passenger seat, next to the cab driver, as if they were pals or something. Jack thought wistfully back to the days when she’d had a sleek black Lincoln Town Car at her disposal to take her from ballet classes to school. It all seemed so long ago.

  Just then, Avery’s phone erupted into the first few notes of “Material Girl.” Old-school ’80s Madonna? Was she serious? Jack wrinkled her nose and turned around to roll her eyes at Genevieve, but she was texting furiously on her Treo while Jiffy and Sarah Jane looked over her shoulder. No one had even asked Jack how her day was.

  Avery pulled her phone out of her purse and looked at the display. She didn’t recognize the number, which was actually sort of exciting. She was getting calls from people she didn’t even know! After a shaky first week, all of a sudden it felt like everyone wanted to hang out with her. She was on a constant high, as though champagne bubbles were coursing through her veins. Avery flipped open her phone and answered excitedly. “Hello?”

  “Avery Carlyle?” An unfamiliar, wavery, old-lady voice was on the other end of the line.

  “Yes?” Avery replied suspiciously.

  “Muffy St. Clair.”

  Avery racked her brain, then remembered the kindly old woman who had announced her student liaison to the board of overseers win at the Constance mother-daughter brunch at Tavern on the Green. Avery sat up straighter and smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her Constance uniform.

  “Yes, how are you, Muffy?” Avery asked in her sweetest, most professional voice. Jiffy giggled when she heard the name Muffy. Jiffy of all people shouldn’t laugh, Avery sniffed. Muffy was an old-fashioned and New York–y name. She shot Jiffy a disapproving look and turned her full attention back to the phone. This was important!

  “We’re having a meeting at the Pierre to discuss Constance. You can make it? Tomorrow at four,” Muffy boomed into the phone. Avery had to pull it away from her ear. Muffy was obviously of the generation of women who didn’t trust cell phones and thought she had to speak extra loud to be heard. Her grandmother had been the same way. If Avery rolled down the cab window, she could probably hear Muffy bellowing down Fifth Avenue.

  “Sure!” Avery squeaked. “Can’t wait!” She hung up quickly. “Constance stuff.” She shrugged apologetically to the girls.

  “Fun.” Sarah Jane rolled her eyes and pulled out a copy of Tatler magazine from her bag. Sarah Jane’s mom was the editor in chief of Bella, a major fashion magazine, and Sarah Jane, determined to follow in her mother’s patent-leather Manolo footsteps, was always reading British magazines and complaining about American media.

  Avery leaned back happily, even though they kept lurching and stopping in the midday Fifth Avenue traffic and she usually got sort of carsick in cabs. She heard Jack sigh in the front seat and realized she’d been pretty quiet lately. Maybe it was because of her ex-boyfriend? It was kind of weird that Baby and he were hanging out so much. She wondered how much Jack knew about them.

  Too much.

  Avery reached through the plastic divider window that separated the backseat of the cab from the front and tapped Jack’s shoulder with her finger.

  “Are you okay?” Avery whispered as she leaned her head partway through the Plexiglas partition. The cab smelled like incense and the driver looked annoyed. Five private school girls might look cute, but they weren’t exactly quiet.

  Would you have it any other way?

  “Perfect,” Jack replied crisply. The cab was stalled in late-afternoon traffic outside the Met. She stared out the window at the throngs of people sitting on the steps. All she could think about were J.P.’s lips on Baby’s smart-ass mouth. Suddenly, the overwhelming scent of incense in the cab made her want to throw up.

  “Actually, I have to get going,” she said, not explaining any further. She hopped out of the cab, just as the light turned green.

  “You’re crazy!” the cab driver yelled after her, laying on the horn. Jack shrugged and hobbled over to the steps of the Met. Her shoes might have looked good, but they were a size too small and killing her feet. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck, she whispered under her breath. Then she remembered, Perfect.

  “I can take your picture, no?” A Eurotrashy dude in a lime green button-down shirt and tight black pants approached her. He looked like he had hopped straight off one of those ugly red double-decker tourist buses.

  “No.” Jack regarded him warily. He was probably just fucking up his sentence construction and wanted her to take a picture of him, posing cheesily on the steps of the Met. No thank you. She had more important things to do.

  Like suck down Merits and feel sorry for herself?

  “But you are a model, no? So beautiful! Please give me permission to take a picture?” He bent down on one knee, visibly begging.

  Well, that was another thing. Jack nodded regally and squared her shoulders, her chin held up high, posing for the camera. So maybe J.P. didn’t want to kiss her anymore, and maybe Avery Carlyle had stolen her friends, her classmates, and pretty much her life. But she was still young and beautiful, and at least someone had the good sense to appreciate her.

  Ah, how the mighty have fallen.

  locking it in in the locker room

  Monday after school Rhys Sterling caught sight of himself in the fogged-up mirror in the locker room at the Ninety-second Street Y. He touched his almost-full bla
ckish beard. It obscured his normally angular jawline and made him look sort of like Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean.

  Emphasis: sort of.

  Rhys sighed angrily as he knotted a royal blue towel neatly around his slim hips. He wished he could just go back to two weeks ago, right before school started, when he was dating Kelsey Talmadge, was hands down the best swimmer on the St. Jude’s team, and had pretty much everything he ever wanted. Kelsey and he had known each other since kindergarten, and had been dating since the beginning of ninth grade. Everything about her—her puppyish enthusiasm for anything from a street-cart coffee to an opening night at the Met, her utter lack of pretension, even her apple-scented shampoo—made Rhys’s life a little bigger, a little brighter, a little better. They had spent the summer apart, but Rhys had thought they’d spend the fall reconnecting, and had even planned an ultra-romantic evening for them to lose their virginity to each other. Things hadn’t quite gone according to plan.

  Oh, that’s an understatement.

  On the first day of school, Kelsey had broken up with him, telling him there was someone else. To make Rhys feel better, the swim team guys had all taken a vow of chastity, promising not to shave or hook up with a girl until Rhys got some action first. Which seemed like never, especially with his new Into the Wild look.

  Hey, some girls like a walk on the wild side.

  “Lookin’ good, man!”

  Rhys whirled away from the mirror and glared at Hugh Moore, a muscle-y junior. Hugh pushed his wet golden brown hair out of his eyes. “So, when’s it gonna happen? Maybe you could just borrow one of the ladies who’s been following Owen around. He’s like a fucking chinchilla or whatever those whacked-out animals are that just follow each other off a cliff, you know, man?” Hugh took a long swig of pink Gatorade and let out a large burp, looking pleased with himself as the sound echoed off the mildew-covered walls.