I Like It Like That Page 3

  “So, is Red Letter named after the letter A for adulteress that Hester Prynne had to wear in The Scarlet Letter?” he asked, genuinely interested.

  Rusty stared at him quizzically. “Fuck if I know.”

  How not to talk to the person you're not talking to

  After the Rancor editorial meeting, Vanessa Abrams raced out the door of Constance Billard and down the steps. Her hair didn't fly out behind her, bouncing prettily against her shoulders, because she kept her head shaved and basically had no hair. And she didn't have to worry about twisting her ankle in her heels, because she never wore heels. In fact, she never wore shoes, only boots. Big ones, with steel toes.

  The reason Vanessa was in such a hurry was because Ruby had given her a list of crap to buy at the health food store on the way home from school, and she really needed to get it done and get home before her parents arrived, just in case she'd forgotten to put away some evidence of her filmmaking and they found it and found her out.

  At the bottom of the steps, she nearly mowed down the very last person she'd expected to see. Dan, her former best friend and boyfriend. His light brown hair was neatly styled, with long sideburns framing his serious jaw, and he was wearing a gray suit that looked French and expensive. This from a guy who previously only cut his hair when he stopped being able to see, and who wore the same pair of brown corduroys until the bottoms were frayed and there were holes in the knees.

  Vanessa tugged on her black wool leg warmers and folded her arms across her chest. “Hello.” Why the fuck are you here, anyway?

  “Hey,” Dan responded. “I'm just waiting for Jenny,” he explained. “I got a job today. I wanted to tell her about it.”

  “Good for you.” Vanessa waited for Dan to say something else. After all, he was the one who'd cheated on her with that Mystery bitch, and he was the one who'd completely sold out to become famous. He could at least apologize for that.

  Dan remained speechless, his eyes shifting from her face to the school doors and back to her face again. Vanessa could tell he was dying to tell her about his new job, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking about it.

  She pulled a tube of Vaseline out of her black bomber jacket pocket and smeared some on her lips. It was the closest thing to lip gloss she owned. “I saw your sister inside, talking to her art teacher. She'll be out in a minute.”

  “So what's up?” Dan asked, just as she was about to take off.

  Vanessa suspected he was only asking so she would ask him what was up, and then he could tell her all about how he'd been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize or some such shit.

  “My parents are coming to town tonight,” she responded, caving in a little. “You know how much fun that always is for me,” she added, and then wished she hadn't. It didn't do any good to remind them both that they knew everything about each other now that they no longer spoke. “Anyway. Bye.”

  “Yeah.” Dan held up his hand and gave her a big smile, the kind of fake, shit-eating smile he'd never even known how to give until he started going to fashion shows with air-kissing agents and famous weirdo-slut poetesses. “Good to see you.”

  Good to see you too, asswipe, Vanessa responded silently as she strode toward Lexington Avenue to catch the subway to Williamsburg.

  Actually, it was kind of good to see Dan, and she'd wanted to tell him more. She'd wanted to tell him how her parents' incessant “We are artists, hear us roar” personas stifled every ounce of creativity in her. How her parents didn't even know she made films, even though it was basically the only thing she enjoyed doing. How they didn't even know she'd gotten in early to NYU, purely on the strength of her art. And how they wouldn't know, for the duration of their nearly two-week stay, that her bedroom closet was stuffed with film equipment and her favorite old videos. Ironic though it might seem, Ruby—the kid who never went to college, wore leather pants all the time even though she was a vegetarian, and played bass in a weird, loud, almost all-male garage band—was the creative child, the favorite.

  Yup. Dan would've gotten a kick out of that. That is, if they were still talking.

  Arriving in Williamsburg, she hurried out of the subway and into the natural food store only a few blocks away. Soy mozzarella, wheat-free lasagna noodles, tempeh … , she read from the list Ruby had given her. Tonight Ruby was making her famous soy-tempeh lasagna in honor of their parents' arrival. There was another thing that set Vanessa apart. She was a carnivore, while Ruby and her parents were all vegetarians.

  She pulled a brick of tempeh out of the store's fridge. “You don't even look like food,” she told it, tossing the tem-peh into her shopping basket. She shook her head and smiled bitterly as she walked down the aisle in search of the wheat-free section. Her father was always talking to inanimate objects. It was part of his whole “kooky artist” mystique. But Vanessa wasn't really an artist—yet—and if she didn't find someone to talk to besides a brick of vegetarian meat replacement she didn't even like the taste of, she'd be worse than kooky: She'd just go plain insane.

  “Why don't you go out and do something with your friends?” Ruby always asked whenever Vanessa looked particularly sad, bitter, and lonely. Vanessa always treated this question the same way she treated the question, Why don't you wear colors instead of only black? Because to her, black was a color—the only color. Just like Dan was her only friend. It was going to be weird when her parents asked about him, and even weirder not having anyone to hang out with over break.

  Unless … unless she found someone to hang out with.

  I appreciates a good fake fur

  There he was! Jenny flew down the school steps. Leo—which was short for Leonardo, which was clearly representative of Leonardo da Vinci, who was a great, if not the greatest, artist in her opinion—Leo, her Leo, was waiting for her after school like a good boyfriend, the best boyfriend. Supertall and superblond, with happy blue eyes, an adorable chipped front tooth, and a loping gait. And he was hers, all hers!

  “Look, it's your brother,” she heard her new best friend, Elise Wells, say behind her as she raced toward Leo. Only a few feet away, Dan stood hunched with his hands in his pockets, as if she were ten years old again and he was waiting to pick her up.

  Jenny stood on tiptoe and kissed Leo's cheek as Dan stood watching. “Hi,” she murmured into Leo's ear, feeling extremely mature. With luck her entire class—no, the entire school—was watching enviously right now.

  “You're all warm,” Leo mumbled, taking her small hand in his awkward, gangly one. His wrist accidentally brushed her boob and he blushed.

  Jenny Humphrey was tiny, the shortest girl in her ninth-grade class, but she had the biggest boobs in the entire school, or maybe the entire world. They were so big, she'd considered getting them surgically reduced, but after some consideration, she'd decided they were part of what made her her, and so she'd decided to keep them. And after living with them for fourteen years, she'd grown accustomed to people accidentally bumping into them because they stuck out so far, but Leo was clearly still figuring out how to deal with them.

  Sure he was.

  “So, what should we do?” he asked, his voice barely audible. At first, Jenny had trouble understanding him when he talked, since he spoke in near whispers and preferred e-mail to the phone. But when she thought about it, she kind of liked that no one else could possibly overhear what Leo said to her. It was like they had their own private language. And it made Leo seem more troubled and mysterious, like someone with a dark past.

  Dan had heard all about Leo Berensen, the boy Jenny had met online, but he'd never met him. He walked over and introduced himself. “So you're a sophomore? At Smale? I hear graphic art is pretty big there.”

  “Yeah,” Leo replied inaudibly, his hazel eyes barely skimming over Dan's face. Jenny hung on his arm and beamed up at him as if he'd just saved the world with his words. “Pretty much.”

  “Cool.” Dan was kind of annoyed that he'd gone to all the trouble of meeting Jenny afte
r school so he could brag about his Red Letter internship, and now this blond half-wit was in the way.

  “Um, I hate to break this up, guys, but can we like, go somewhere?” Elise Wells begged from outside their little circle. Her stiff blond bob was tucked behind cold, pink-tinged ears. “I'm getting hypothermic.”

  Not at all surprising, considering that her gray pleated uniform was rolled up so high it barely covered her butt cheeks. Elise's style had always been preppy-good-girl-meets-cheap-slut, but lately she'd been erring on the cheap-slut side.

  “Let's take the bus across town to my house together,” Jenny chirped happily. She had never felt so … sought after in all her life. “Maybe Dad will be home. He's dying to meet you,” she told Leo.

  Dan smiled to himself as he followed them up Fifth Avenue to Ninety-sixth Street. More likely, their dad was going to eat Leo for lunch.

  Elise walked beside him, her pink sweater sleeves pulled down over her hands to keep them warm. “So you're a real poet, huh?” she asked as the bus pulled up and they got on. Jenny and Leo were already sitting together, holding hands. Dan scooted into a seat right behind them, and Elise sat down next to him. “I hate creative writing. Our teacher acts like everyone is full of ideas all the time—we just have to write them down. But every time we have an in-class writing assignment, I can't think of anything to write. You know?”

  Dan didn't know. For him in-class writing assignments were total gifts from heaven. He was so full of ideas he didn't have time to write them all down. Still, it was kind of refreshing to talk to someone who thought of him as a real poet.

  “Actually, I just found out I'm going to be doing an internship at Red Letter during spring break. I'm pretty excited about it. I mean, those internships are pretty hard to get.”

  Elise cocked her head and pressed her lips together. “Red what?

  “You know, Red Letter. It's like the most successful avant-garde literary quarterly in the world.”

  “Oh,” Elise glanced at him sideways, like she was checking to see if he was even cuter in profile.

  He kind of was, especially with those new hipster sideburns.

  “Can I read some of your poetry?” she asked brazenly.

  Jenny turned around when she heard this. So Elise was flirting with her brother. She glanced up at Leo and considered whispering something to him about it, but Leo wasn't really the gossiping type.

  Can you spell b-o-r-i-n-g?

  But then Leo surprised her by leaning in to whisper in her ear. “See the coat that woman across from you is wearing? It's fake, but you can tell it's J. Mendel by the color. Most fake furs are done all in one color, but real mink fur is lots of different colors. J. Mendel makes the best fakes.”

  Jenny stared at the woman's coat, unsure of what to make of all this. Fake fur was kind of a weird thing for a guy to know about. She hadn't asked what his parents did for a living yet. Maybe they were importers of exotic Russian furs or poachers or something.

  “How—?” She turned her head to reply, but Leo was staring intently out the window as they zoomed through Central Park, so deep in thought, she didn't want to interrupt him. Gazing into the dark hollow of his left ear, she wondered if he might even be partially deaf, and hence the mumbling. He even had a little scar on his neck that might have been from chicken pox, or a gunshot.

  She gripped his hand more tightly. Oh how wonderful to have a Leo, a wild and wonderfully mysterious Leo!

  gossipgirl.net

  Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

  hey people!

  Me, glorious me

  It seems that lately everyone who is anyone is talking about me. Totally flattering, yes, but also totally fruitless. There's no better place to go incognito than here in Manhattan, where anyone notable at least pretends not to want to be noticed. You know how celebrities like Cameron Diaz are always walking around in baseball caps and sunglasses to hide their identities? Normal people don't have to do that, so if you do it, you immediately draw attention to yourself and people constantly try to figure out who you are, which is exactly the point. Basically, I'm a glutton for this kind of attention—I love it! Why would I give it up by revealing who I am? Then again, if you happened to be a certain boy I happen to have an undying crush on, and you took an interest in finding out who I was, I just might kiss and tell. …

  Your e-mail

  Q: Dear GG,

  So I was wondering what you think about the idea of taking a year off instead of going to college, and following a band I like that tours a lot. I could earn some money by selling cookies or tie-dyes in the parking lot at their shows or whatever and just find out what life is about. I mean, my parents want me to go to college, but I thought it would be more fun maybe to just do my own thing, you know?

  —cheese

  A: Hi cheese,

  I don't know. It doesn't sound like the best-thought-out plan to me. I don't suppose you have a major crush on the lead singer of that band or anything, do you? Cuz it's not like he's going to fall in love with you, even if he sees your face in the front row at every show for a year, and especially not if you're out in the parking lot selling cookies. Also, I think college is going to be fun. A different kind of fun, but a lot of fun. I know guys in bands are totally sexy, but from what I've heard, every college is full of guys in bands, and you and they will all be living and sleeping on the same small campus. Now doesn't that sound like fun?

  —GG

  Sightings

  N with his buddies in the park, lighting up. A myth, we think. G, his crazy steel-heiress girlfriend, on a rehab-nurse-accompanied trip to the Darien Sport Shop in Connecticut to outfit herself with cute Bogner ski outfits and Rossignol's fastest racing skis. C, also in the Darien Sport Shop, with his mom, buying a new snowboard and ogling G. S and B in Barneys' sleepwear and lingerie department, stocking up on girly things to lounge around in during their extended sleepover party at S's house. D in the literary journal section of Coliseum Books, cramming for his new job. V filming pigeons roosting outside her bedroom window. So that's what she's resorted to? And a couple of middle-aged artists who might sort of resemble V, if she had stringy gray hair, at the opening of their found-sculpture exhibit at the Holly Smoke Gallery in the Meatpacking District. One piece involved a moldy wheel of Brie cheese and an inflatable bed. We won't ask.

  Only two more days left before break, and tomorrow night we've got that party. More before then.

  You know you love me.

  gossip girl

  B gets horny just looking at his shoes

  “You can sleep in here,” Serena told Blair as the two girls dragged Blair's overstuffed Louis Vuitton duffel bags into Erik's room. “My brother took his TV and stereo and everything with him, so it's kind of bare in here, but we'll hang out in my room most of the time. …”

  “That's okay,” Blair said, looking around. Compared to the sumptuous décor of the rest of the van der Woodsens' apartment, the room was pretty sparse. A single antique sleigh bed stood under the double-sized windows that faced Fifth Avenue, the Met, and Central Park. Beside it was a long, low dresser, and on the opposite wall was a desk and chair, all in the same dark wood as the bed. On the floor was a woven Turkish rug in shades of navy blue and tangerine. The closet door stood partially open so that Blair could see the silhouette of Erik's old denim jacket, hanging on the rail.

  Blair breathed in the room's musty wood smell. The idea of sleeping in the lair of an older boy she didn't know that well was strangely exciting. “Do you mind if I unpack my stuff?”

  “Sure, go ahead.” Serena flopped on the bed and pulled a Playboy magazine out from under Erik's mattress, scrunching up her perfectly straight nose as she flipped through it.

  Both girls were too savvy about what boys really do when they're in their rooms alone to squirm and scream at the sight of Playboy.

  Blair pulled a pair of pants out of her
bag and opened the closet. Beside the denim jacket, two white J. Press button-down shirts with frayed collars and cuffs hung next to a barely worn black Hugo Boss tuxedo. On the floor of the closet was a pair of beaten-up Stan Smith tennis shoes, and next to them was a Prada shoe box.

  Blair glanced at Serena, but her friend was completely transfixed by Playboy. She knelt down, wondering what kind of person would leave their Prada shoes behind. The black box was dusty, and when she lifted the lid she found there were no shoes inside, only a small brown leather-bound notebook. Gingerly, she lifted it out and opened it up to the first page.

  I can't believe I'm fucking writing in a journal like a fucking girl, but I'm drunk on tequila from Case's graduation party and instead of passing out like a normal person, I'm fucking freaking out. We just graduated. We're going to college. I don't know who I am or what I'm doing or who I want to be and now I'm leaving everything I know and FUCK! Serena is so lucky—she's only just started high school, and I'll be able to tell her what the deal is with college, so she'll know. No one's going to tell ME. And it's not like I'm going to walk up to any of my friends and admit how scared I am. All they talk about is the girls we can have sex with. And I'm sure that will happen, unless I become one of those freaks who lives in a single and never comes out of his room and they finally have to break in because of the smell. Fuck, this is crazy. I'm going to bed.

  Blair turned the pages to read more, but the rest of the book had been left blank. Obviously, Erik had decided journal-writing wasn't for him. Her heart beat loudly as she reread the first and only entry. How crazy was it that Erik van der Woodsen, a boy she hardly knew, had captured the way she'd been feeling these last few weeks so completely perfectly?

  She stood up and walked over to a silver-framed family photograph on top of Erik's dresser. The van der Woodsens were sprawled on a beach somewhere in their bathing suits, all with tanned skin, pale blond hair, white smiles, and huge dark blue eyes. Blair could tell Serena was about fourteen in the picture because she still had those bangs she'd gotten at the end of eighth grade and spent the next year growing out. So Erik must have been seventeen. In his weather-beaten blue surf shorts his body looked muscular and ready for action, but his handsome face was slightly weary, like he'd been up all night carousing, or maybe he was even a little sad.