Because I'm Worth It Read online

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  Q: Dear GG,

  So I may have misread what was going on, but I’m pretty sure I saw A from Bronxdale with this other girl in our class, and he was all, “I’m the man, I’m into Harvard,” and she was all, “You’re so hot. I want you.” Um, doesn’t he have a girlfriend?

  —S.I.B.

  A: Dear S.I.B.,

  What does S.I.B. stand for, anyway? Seeing is believing? Sad in Biloxi? Small is beautiful? If what you say is true, I’m S.F.A.C.B.—sad for a certain blond.

  —GG

  Q: Dear Ggirl,

  I heard B got caught doing drugs in school and now she secretly has to do community service. She’s going to rehab, too, which is why she cut all her hair off. They make you do that, like, in prison.

  —Daisy

  A: Dear Daisy,

  It sounds like a bad made-for-Lifetime special. You don’t really believe all that, do you?

  —GG

  Oops. I’m late for my fake-tan rubdown at Bliss—it’s the only way to stay smiling till summer!

  You know you love me.

  gossip girl

  n buys a dime bag

  On Tuesday after school, Nate wandered into Central Park to check out the dealers in Sheep Meadow. He’d gone a full twenty-four hours without getting high, and instead of feeling healthy and energized, he was bored out of his drug-free mind. His classes at school seemed twice as long, and even Jeremy Scott Tompkinson’s lame-ass fart jokes barely made him crack a smile.

  The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky, casting an eerie golden glow on the frozen brown grass in the meadow. Two heavyset guys dressed in black sweatshirts with the word Staff printed on the back were passing a football back and forth, and a tiny old woman wearing a red Chanel suit and a fox fur stole was walking her freshly groomed bichon frise. As usual, the dealers were all sitting on benches around the perimeter of the meadow, listening to WFAN on their Discmans or reading the Daily News. Nate spotted a familiar redheaded guy dressed in a light gray Puma tracksuit with matching gray-and-white Puma sneakers, gray wraparound shades, and a fuzzy black Kangol hat.

  “Hey Mitchell!” Nate called delightedly. Damn, it was good to see him. Mitchell raised his hand in greeting as Nate walked over. “I thought you were in Amsterdam, man.”

  Mitchell shook his head slowly. “Not yet.”

  “I’ve been looking for you. I was almost going to buy from one of those other dirtbags. You’re carrying, right?” Nate asked.

  Mitchell nodded and stood up. They began walking down the pathway together, just two friends taking a stroll in the park. Nate pulled a folded-up hundred-dollar bill from his coat pocket and held it in his fist, ready to slip it into Mitchell’s palm as soon as he passed over the goods.

  “I got a new shipment in from Peru,” Mitchell said, pulling a plastic baggie of pot out of his pocket and handing it discreetly to Nate.

  If you happened to be in the park watching them, you might have thought they were just sharing a snack or something. That is, if you were completely naïve.

  “Thanks, man.” Nate handed over the hundred and tucked the plastic baggie into his coat pocket, breathing out a deep, relieved breath. Too bad he didn’t have any rolling papers with him or he would have rolled up a big fatty right then and there. “So,” he said, figuring it was only polite to make some casual conversation with Mitchell before taking off. “You still moving to Amsterdam or what?”

  Mitchell stopped walking and unzipped his Puma jacket. “Nah. I’m stuck here for a while.” He pulled up his gray thermal shirt to reveal his bare, freckled chest. There were wires taped to it.

  Nate had seen Law & Order enough times to know what those wires meant. The bleak scenery seemed to close in on him, and he stumbled backwards. Had he blacked out or something? Was this all a bad dream?

  Mitchell let his shirt drop and zipped his jacket up again. He took a step toward Nate, as if he was worried Nate would try to make a break for it. “Sorry, kid. They got me. I’m working for the man now.” He jerked his head at the benches behind them. “Those ‘dirtbags’ on the bench are all cops, okay, so don’t try to run. You and I are going to wait here until I give the sign, and then one of them is going to walk you down to the precinct on Amsterdam. Amsterdam—pretty ironic, huh?”

  Nate could tell Mitchell was trying to get him to smile so the dealer wouldn’t have to feel so bad for busting him. “Okay,” Nate said woodenly. How had this happened? He’d never been double-crossed before, and it was a pretty crappy feeling. He dropped the baggie of pot on the ground and kicked it away from him. “Shit,” he swore under his breath.

  Mitchell picked up the baggie and put his hand on Nate’s shoulder. He raised his free hand in the air and waved to the cops on the benches. Two guys stood up and hurried over. They didn’t even look like cops. One of them was wearing black Club Monaco jeans and the other was wearing a stupid red pom-pom hat. They flashed their badges at Nate.

  “We’re not going to cuff you,” Club Monaco explained. “You’re a minor, right?”

  Nate nodded sullenly, avoiding the cop’s gaze. He didn’t turn eighteen until April.

  “When we get to the precinct you can call your parents.”

  I’m sure they’ll be thrilled, Nate thought bitterly.

  Across the meadow the two guys playing football and the old lady and her fluffy white dog were all huddled together, watching Nate getting busted like it was the first episode of some hot new reality show.

  “You’ll be out in a couple hours,” the red pom-pom cop said, writing something in a notebook. Nate noticed the cop was wearing gold hoop earrings and he realized she was a woman, despite her broad shoulders and thick-fingered hands. “They’ll fine you and probably give you mandatory rehab.”

  Mitchell kept his hand on Nate’s shoulder as if to offer moral support. “You’re lucky,” he added.

  Nate kept his head down, hoping no one he knew would see him. He didn’t feel very lucky.

  introducing the new d

  Tuesday afternoon, Vanessa stood outside Riverside Prep, filming the frozen remains of a dead pigeon carcass and thinking about sex while she waited for Dan to appear. Dan had left a message for her at the reception desk at Constance Billard to come and meet him after school. Urgent. Meet me here at four, it said. What a freak, Vanessa thought lovingly. What could possibly be so urgent? He was probably just having an attack of paranoia because his poem had come out in The New Yorker today. Either that or he was feeling extremely stimulated and couldn’t wait to do it again. Before even taking a shower that morning Vanessa had run downstairs and bought six New Yorkers from the newsstand on the corner. That way there would always be a spare copy to wave in Dan’s face when he was feeling especially inadequate.

  When she really thought about it, she was the one who should have been freaking out. The poem was all about a guy feeling insecure around women, particularly his dominating girlfriend. People who knew them were going to think Vanessa was a real ball-breaker. But the last line was so sweet and sexy, she couldn’t really complain.

  Take care of me. Take me. Take care. Take me.

  Reading it made her want to rip off all her clothes and jump him. Gently, of course.

  Just then Dan burst through the black doors of Riverside Prep practically in midsentence. He waved his rumpled copy of The New Yorker at Vanessa and galloped up to her in his worn-out white Pumas and navy blue cords, planting a sloppy, wet kiss on her mouth. “This has been the best day of my life!” he trumpeted. “I love you!”

  “You don’t have to be romantic to get in my pants again,” Vanessa giggled and kissed him again. “I’m always available. And by the way, I love you, too.”

  “Cool.” Dan smiled goofily back at her.

  Vanessa couldn’t believe this was the same old Dan she’d seen only yesterday. He was still pale, thin, and overcaffeinated, but his brown eyes were shining and there were traces of smiley-face dimples in his usually sallow cheeks.
Wait a minute. Since when could she actually see his eyes? “Whoa, you got a haircut,” she observed, standing back to check it out.

  Dan had asked the barber to cut his hair short with long sideburns, figuring the sideburns would keep him from looking like all the preppy assholes in his class. He swept his hand over his head self-consciously. It felt odd, but somehow cleaner than before, more . . . homogenous. And that was exactly what he wanted—to be judged by his work, not his hair.

  Whatever you say, Sideburn Man.

  Vanessa put her hands on the hips of her black parka coat. Something about Dan’s haircut was so deliberate, like he was actually going for a certain artsy, bohemian look instead of just stumbling upon one by mistake. “It’s different,” she mused, already feeling a little nostalgic for the old scruffy-haired Dan. “I guess I’ll get used to it.”

  Behind them a group of eighth-grade boys spilled out the school doors singing “Hello Dolly” at the top of their lungs. They’d just been released from music class and were still too young and innocent to realize how gay they sounded.

  Hello, Dolly! Well hel-loo, Dolly!

  It’s so nice to have you back where you belong!

  Dan pulled a pack of unfiltered Camels out of his black messenger bag, tipped one out, and stuck it between his lips. His fingers trembled wildly as he lit it. Well, at least that hadn’t changed. He offered the pack to Vanessa. “Want one?”

  Vanessa stared at him and chuckled in disbelief. “Since when do I smoke?”

  Dan exhaled into the air above her head and rolled his eyes. “Sorry. I don’t know why I just did that.” He shoved the pack back into his bag and grabbed Vanessa’s frozen fingers. “Come on. Let’s walk somewhere. I have something major to tell you.”

  As they were taking off, Zeke Freedman walked out of school bouncing a neon blue basketball. Zeke was big and lumbering, but he was Riverside Prep’s star basketball player. He’d grown out his curly black hair so it hung down to his shoulders, and he was sporting a new slate gray snowboarding jacket. Zeke and Dan had been best friends since second grade, but they hadn’t really hung out in the last few months because Dan had been preoccupied with other things.

  Namely, women and poetry.

  Dan realized he didn’t even know where Zeke had applied to college. The distance between them was mostly his fault, and he felt bad about it. “Hey Zeke,” he called over.

  Zeke stopped walking, his heavy body looking even more massive than usual inside his new parka. “Hey Dan,” he replied with a careful smile, bouncing the blue ball in place on the frozen sidewalk. “Hey Vanessa.”

  “What do you think of Dan’s new haircut?” Vanessa asked with a wry smile. “It’s part of his new Mr. Published Poet image.”

  “Oh yeah?” Zeke didn’t seem to know what Vanessa was talking about. He glanced down the street, giving the basketball a good hard bounce before holding up his hand. “See you guys.”

  “See ya,” Dan called, watching his old friend dribble the ball down to the end of the street.

  “So, what’s the big news?” Vanessa asked as they started to walk west on Seventy-eighth Street.

  Cold air blasted the clouds across the pale gray sky. Down the block, through the leafless branches of the trees in Riverside Park, Dan caught a silvery glimpse of the Hudson. “Well,” he began suspensefully. “This morning this big-deal literary agent named Rusty Klein called my cell phone and left me this crazy message. She thinks I’m the next Keats and she said we have to keep the momentum going now that we have the public’s attention.”

  “Wow. Even I’ve heard of her!” Vanessa responded, impressed. “What does that mean, though?”

  Dan blew a puff of smoke into the air. “I guess it means she wants to represent me.”

  Vanessa stopped walking. She wasn’t sure where they were going anyway. “But you only wrote one poem. What’s she going to do? I don’t mean to be a downer Dan, but you have to be careful of people like that, you know? She could be trying to take advantage of you.”

  Dan stopped walking, too. He flipped up the collar of his black wool army-navy coat and then flipped it down again. Why was Vanessa being so negative? All of this was totally unexpected, but it was also extremely fucking cool. And it wasn’t like he was going to sell out and start writing clichéd

  Gap ads just because he had an agent, if that was what she was worried about. “I don’t know. I think she can help me with my career. Maybe I can put a book together and she can try to get it published or something.”

  Vanessa blew on her hands and then rubbed her cold, bare ears. “Can we go over to your house? I’m freezing my ass off. We’d better work on the film, too.”

  Dan threw his cigarette on the ground. “Um, actually, I was thinking I might go back and read through all my note-books. You know, see if there’s a thematic link to some of the poems. Something I could work into a book.”

  Vanessa had been about to offer her services as a reader, but it didn’t sound like Dan wanted any help. “Okay,” she said coolly. “Call me if you need anything or whatever.”

  Dan flipped his collar up again and lit another cigarette, experimenting with his new look. “Oh, wait. I wanted to ask you something. Rusty Klein invited me to this thing called Better Than Naked. ‘The Better Than Naked show.’ That’s what she said. Do you know if that’s a band or something?”

  Better Than Naked was the antifashion fashion label that Vanessa’s older sister, Ruby, blew all her gig money on. Most of their clothes looked like old thrift-store rags that had been run over by a fleet of street-cleaning machines, which was completely intentional. Very downtown “fuck the trends” fashion.

  “It’s Fashion Week starting on Friday,” Vanessa explained. “It sounds like she’s inviting you to the Better Than Naked runway show, which I only know about because Ruby is totally crazy about their clothes and always watches the shows on the Metro Channel. I don’t know why Rusty Klein thinks you would want to go, though. What do you care about clothes? And it’ll be full of posers and wanna-bes—you know, that whole vapid fashion scene.”

  Dan looked thoughtful as he puffed on his cigarette. “I think I’m gonna check it out.” He wouldn’t have cared if Rusty Klein had asked to meet him at a pro wrestling match. This was about building his writing career.

  Filming Dan at the Better Than Naked show would have been perfect material for her film, but Vanessa didn’t want to butt in if Dan was meeting someone as important as Rusty Klein at the show. “Okay, Mr. Hot Shit Poet. Don’t forget your old friends when you’re driving around in a limo drinking champagne with naked models and whatnot.” She reached up and mussed his neat little haircut. “Congratulations.”

  Dan grinned widely back at her. “It’s pretty amazing,” he agreed happily. Then, with one last sweet kiss, he turned and walked up Riverside Drive toward home, the iridescent silver Puma logos flashing on his heels as he went.

  Vanessa smiled fondly at the spring in his step. “See you later, alligator.”

  s has just what they’ve been looking for

  “I’m looking for one of those groovy new men’s golfing jackets in a funky Day-Glo color like bright green or yellow,” Serena told the salesgirl in the Les Best boutique on Tuesday after school. During French that day Serena had remembered admiring the new Les Best men’s golfing jacket in the latest issue of W magazine and decided it was the perfect gift for Aaron. She never got tired of giving Aaron gifts. Everything she bought just looked so cute on him. It was like dressing a doll, her own adorable life-sized, dreadlocked, guitar-playing, Harvard-bound doll.

  The boutique was on West Fourteenth Street in the meat-packing district, where the streets actually smelled like carcasses and manure from all the old meat warehouses. Leave it to Les Best, creator of the most beautifully tailored leisure wear in the world, to think that the rawness of the neighborhood was so cool, he just had to open up shop there. The space was huge and decorated all in white muslin with only one or two brightly co
lored tennis dresses or polo jackets hanging from giant steel hooks sticking out of the walls. The idea was that unless you really knew enough about the clothes to ask to see more, you had no purpose shopping there.

  “We’re all out of the golfing jackets, I’m afraid,” the bleached-blond salesgirl answered in an English accent. She was dressed all in white, too. Even her sneakers were made of white pony fur. “My manager nicked the last one for himself.”

  Serena examined a gorgeous red-and-white-striped silk tennis dress hanging on a hook nearby. “Damn,” she said under her breath. “I keep seeing that jacket in magazines and I thought it would be the perfect thing.” Les Best was her favorite new designer, but maybe the clothes were a little too haute couture for Aaron anyway. He was more of a skater-boy kind of dresser. She hitched her deep gold leather Longchamp bag onto her shoulder. “Thanks for your help,” she called, hoping to make it over to XLarge—a skate store on Lafayette Street—before it closed.

  “Wait!” someone called out.

  Serena paused in the doorway and turned around. Were they talking to her?

  A tanned guy with a bleached-blond crew cut wearing the exact bright green golfing jacket she’d been hoping to buy for Aaron was holding open a white door in the back of the store. He smiled as he walked toward her. “I hope you don’t mind my asking.” He cocked his head and gave Serena the once-over. “Les asked me to look for a ‘real girl’ for his show in Bryant Park on Friday. I only caught a glimpse of you as you were leaving, but I just know you’d be perfect. I’ve seen your picture in the society pages. You’re Serena, right?”

  Serena nodded, unfazed. She was used to being recognized from photographs in gossip columns. She’d even had an unnamed body part photographed by the famous Remi brothers in October. The photo had been picked up by a New York Transit Authority arts project and had wound up being pasted all over the city.