Lucky Break Page 11

  I sneaked a peek at the flight attendant, who was chewing her brightly lined lip. It might have been the first time any passenger had turned down her fresh-baked cookie offer.

  “I can check in the back, sweetie,” she said to SBB, before turning to the row behind us with her basket of cookies.

  “Ohhhh,” SBB said worriedly. “Why didn’t I take JR’s advice and pack a bigger supply of Energy Glide? I thought I needed the suitcase space for my Gryphon belted cape, which of course was totally wrong for the beach—”

  I cleared my throat, preparing to speak for the first time all day, other than when the TSA security guy had asked me if I had any explosive materials in my carry-on.

  “We’ll be back in Manhattan in, ugh, fourteen hours. I’m sure you can get your Energy Glide fix there.”

  “Well, it can’t come quickly enough,” SBB said, fidgeting nervously.

  My thoughts exactly. We’d been airborne for less than an hour, and I was already going stir-crazy. With nothing to do but stare out the window and listen to SBB yap on about her protein ratio, my mind couldn’t stop running over all the awful details of last night.

  “How much more muscle mass do you need for Gladiatrix?” I asked her, trying to shake up my mind’s only subject, even though I was just about at the limit of my capacity for body-mass-index talk.

  SBB made her hesitant lip-pursing face for a minute, then said, “Actually, I don’t need the Energy Glide for weight gain anyway. I’m just a little bit addicted.”

  “What?” I said. “I thought that was the point of that nasty gel.”

  “It is,” she said, looking down at the cut of her own biceps with an admiring glance. “Or anyway, it was. But … the truth is, Flan, I met my goal when I weighed in with Jo this morning.”

  “What?” I said, not sure whether I should smack her or hug her. “Why didn’t you tell me? SBB, that’s huge! Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” she said, reaching for the airline magazine in the seat pocket, pulling it out, and realizing that her face was on the cover. “Huh. Well, I guess I didn’t mention it today because I know you’re still recovering from last night. You’ve been having such a rough week, Flannie. I didn’t it want to seem like I was rubbing it in that I met my goal.”

  I patted her massive quad. “That’s really sweet, SBB. But seriously, you don’t have to shield me from your success just because I’m having a hard time. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Now all I have to do is mass maintenance until the first read of the script next week. Once Holly Hendrix—she’s the casting director, total hater, one of those unmarried early thirties types—anyway, once she sees the evidence of my commitment,” she said, flashing me another shot of her biceps, “she’ll have to eat her five-syllable words. Hmph!”

  “You’ll show her,” I said noncommittally. I could feel myself starting to zone out of the conversation. Maybe SBB could just talk me into some sort of fourteen-hour-long trance….

  “And the best part is,” she continued, unaware of my waning interest, “Jo’s agreed to help me. We’re going to webcam.”

  “I used to webcam with Alex,” I said robotically, remembering his smile when we’d first connect from our respective computer labs at school. I was always supposed to be doing my French oral practice, but whenever I saw Alex’s screen name—FFslaxguy—online, it was impossible to resist IMing him. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d already changed his screen name to something honoring Cookie.

  SBB sighed. “See, there I go again, getting all wrapped up in my training,” she said, turning to me. “Let’s make the rest of this flight all about you. What do you want to talk about? What do you want to do?”

  “Disappear,” I said, pulling my hood up again.

  SBB flopped my hood back down a little bit more aggressively than she needed to. “Instead of that,” she said, flipping to the back of the in-flight magazine. “What do you say we watch a movie?”

  “I guess.” I sighed. “But no romantic comedies. No tortured love story dramas. No kissing,” I said petulantly.

  “Okaaaay, do you allow human beings in the movies that make your list? Jeez, scratch that idea.” She slid the magazine back into the seat. “I could show you a card trick. I learned a really impressive one from David Blaine when we were at the Magic Castle in L.A.—”

  I groaned. “Card tricks make me think of Dave the Creeper—and I never want to think of him again.”

  “Motion denied,” SBB said, scratching her chin. “And you probably don’t want to meditate, because that will make you think of what a terrible time you had in Thailand, right?”

  “Omigod,” I said, slapping my forehead. “I just got an external glimpse of what an absolutely miserable person I’ve become. I can’t believe this. I’m so negative. This isn’t me. This is all Alex’s fault. And Cookie’s. And Kennedy’s. And—”

  “Okay,” SBB interrupted. “Instead of pointing your pretty little fingers—though personally, I wouldn’t mind sticking all of this on Kennedy—maybe what we need to do is turn off the pressure cooker.” She mimicked turning a switch on the side of my head down low.

  “It’s not working.” I sniffed.

  “I’m starting to feel like this is all my fault, for only giving you a week to get over him. I shouldn’t have put a timeline on your emotions.” She put a hand to her chest. “I mean, what am I, a presidential nominee? Some day, maybe—Washington does love its actors, you know?”

  I shrugged.

  “What I’m saying, Flannie, is you’re just going to have to heal on your own time. So your sadness spills outside of spring break.” She gave a Woody Allen shrug. “Who cares? Whenever you do get over it—”

  “If I get over it,” I butted in.

  “When you get over it, I will throw you a party so fantastic you’ll forget we ever even had this silly argument.”

  “I hope you’re right.” I sighed.

  “Of course I’m right,” SBB said, flexing her pecs and her delts and her triceps and some other muscle group near her neck that I never even knew existed. “Do I need to use force to get you to tell me what I want to hear?”

  “Okay, okay—you win,” I made myself say. “I will get over this, and when I do, you will throw me a party.”

  “A fantastic party,” she corrected.

  “A fantastic party. Jeez, I can’t wait until you get this part so you can start taking your energy out in the gladiator pit instead of on me.”

  SBB grinned and snuggled her head into my shoulder. “From your mouth to Holly Hendrix’s ears.”

  Chapter 20

  THE DOG DAYS OF LOVE

  Hey Flan!” a chipper voice greeted me Sunday evening when I went to pick Noodles up from the Village Kennel Club. It was Pam Austin, the owner of the kennel, and possibly Noodles’s second biggest fan in the world.

  “Hi Pam,” I said, stepping over the series of doggie gates to get to the front desk. But Pam didn’t hear me; she’d already ducked into the back room to grab Noodles. For a place that housed up to twenty dogs at a time, Village Kennel Club always managed to smell like cinnamon and vanilla. “Thanks for bending the rules for me,” I called to Pam.

  My flight from Sydney hadn’t landed until seven, and usually the Kennel Club was closed for pickups after six on Sundays, but Pam had agreed in advance to let me pick Noodles up as soon as I got back to the city. I was especially grateful now, seeing as how SBB had taken a connecting flight from JFK to Montreal to see JR. And my whole family was still in the three other corners of the world. And none of my Thoney friends would even land from their Paris flight until almost midnight tonight.

  I really didn’t want to have to go home to an empty house, but I figured, armed with Noodles, my dark foyer would be a little bit easier to handle.

  “Here he is, Mr. Noodley Noo!” Pam sang in her dog voice. She appeared back behind the front desk with my happy, squirming Pomeranian in her hands. She held him out to me, and w
hen I lifted him to my chest to give him a hug, my heart swelled with love. Noodles showered me with such a forceful slew of kisses, I had to sit down.

  “Ooh,” I said, taking in his freshly bathed fur. “A new blue collar. That’s a good color for you, Noods.”

  “Well, I have to tell you,” Pam said, leaning over the desk conspiratorially, “it’s not just the collar making him look so good. While you were off gallivanting all over the globe, Noodles had a very busy week himself.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. He looked like the same old guy to me.

  “Let’s just say he unleashed his inner Romeo.” She nodded. “That’s right. Your Noodles fell in love.”

  I gave Pam a bewildered look. Not because Noodles wasn’t lovable—he was! But because with everything else this week … it was just such ridiculous timing.

  “Frances will be very sad to see him go.” Pam said. “Do you want to meet her?”

  “Oh,” I said. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but … okay. Sure.” When Pam disappeared into the kennel a second time, I turned to Noodles. “You fell in love with a dog named Frances? Who is this girl?”

  At the sound of the tinkle of tags coming from the back, Noodles’s ears perked to attention. He barked once, hopped right off my lap, and went to wait by the back door, tail flying back and forth. The only time I’d never seen him act like this was when we had leftover pizza from John’s.

  Pam opened the door and a fat little pug with gray whiskers and a pink bow around her neck waddled right up to Noodles. She snorted and sneezed and wagged her own crooked curly tail in a circle while Noodles showered her with kisses, making me feel slightly less special. Of course, I wanted to be happy for Noodles, but did he really have to pick this week to fall in love?

  “It’s always hard when they have to part ways after making such a connection,” Pam whispered. I knew she was a pretty eccentric dog lover, but she actually sounded like she might cry right then. Was her lip really quivering? “If you want, I could put you in touch with Frances’s owner. Maybe”—she paused dramatically—“this doesn’t have to be good-bye.”

  “Sure,” I said, looking down at Noodles. He did look like he’d want to keep in touch with his lady pug. While Pam looked up Frances’s owner’s contact information on the computer, I had a momentary fantasy about whom she might belong to. What if it was a tall, dark, handsome, and eternally faithful guy who just happened to be single and attracted to girls with just a smidge of baggage? SBB had just been telling me to try to see the silver lining in this situation. It could happen, right?

  “Here we go,” Pam said, taking out a piece of paper to make a note. “Doris Westerlake of West Eighth Street. Not too far away. Here’s her number. When she gets back from her hip-replacement surgery, I’ll let her know you might be in touch.”

  Hmm, it sounded like Doris Westerlake was not going to be the next great love of my life. It also sounded like I was getting a little delirious. I needed to take Noodles and go home.

  “Say good-bye to Frances, Noodles,” I cooed. “Maybe you’ll see her again.”

  On the short walk back to our brownstone, Noodles was decidedly downtrodden. I’d thought I’d wanted him to give my own spirits a boost, but it was actually kind of nice to wallow in our loneliness together.

  “What would you say to an order of lo mein from Tang’s and a big long snuggle on the couch?” I asked him. He wagged his tail in response. Neither one of us ever said no to lo mein.

  I opened the front door and set Noodles down to give him free sniffing rein in the hallway, then went to check the mail from the overflowing box on our front stoop. I took the massive stack inside and plopped down on the couch to sort through it. Mom’s spa catalogues … Dad’s golf and wine magazine subscriptions … two boxes of weird earthy products Feb had ordered online … and Patch’s Princeton newsletter.

  And ooh—a nice stack of Frenchie postcards from the girls. Maybe this would tide me over until we all reconvened tomorrow morning.

  With Noodles curled in my lap and the call put into Tang’s for lo mein delivery, I started to go through them.

  The first was a black-and-white picture of a mustached French man standing along the Seine, smoking a cigarette and wearing a beret. On the back, Amory had written:

  ALL THE FRENCH BOYS LOOK LIKE THIS DUDE—YOU TOTALLY LUCKED OUT GOING TO ITALY! CAN’T WAIT TO SWAP STORIES WITH YOU. XX—A

  The second was a print of one of Monet’s water lily paintings, and on the back was Harper’s note:

  MUSÉE D’ORSAY IS FANTASTIQUE. BUT IT WASN’T HALF AS GOOD AS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN WITH YOU BY OUR SIDES. HOPE YOUR WEEK WAS AS TRANQUIL AS THESE WATER LILIES. WE MISS YOU! LOVE, HARP

  The third was from Morgan, the history buff. It was a photograph of an aerial view from the top of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées:

  IF PARIS REBUILT ITSELF AFTER WORLD WAR TWO AND HAS THIS MONUMENT TO PROVE IT—YOU CAN TOO! ANYTIME YOU NEED A BOY BOYCOTT, JUST SAY THE WORD. HANG IN THERE! LOVE, MORG

  When I got to the fourth postcard, I knew it would be from Camille. It was another black-and-white photo of two elderly French ladies sitting at an outdoor café and gossiping. I flipped it over:

  THIS IS RIDICULOUS. I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M HERE AND YOU’RE NOT. LET’S NEVER SPEND SPRING BREAK APART AGAIN. LET’S BE THESE TWO OLD BIRDS, LAUGHING LIKE LUNATICS SIDE BY SIDE FROM HERE ON OUT. LOVE YOU, C

  Underneath Camille’s really heartwarming postcard, there was a fifth and final postcard. Had the girls all written me one together? Was that the Luxembourg Gardens? Why did it look so much like Central Park? I flipped it over:

  FLAN,

  I STAYED IN THE CITY THIS WEEK. I FOUND THIS POSTCARD IN A LIBRARY BOOK I CHECKED OUT. AT LEAST THERE’VE BEEN SOME GOOD BASKETBALL GAMES TO WATCH.

  ALEX

  Alex? Was this some kind of joke? Or some sort of hate letter in secret code? I didn’t get it. If he was just going to send a cryptic postcard, why had he bothered to write at all? My hands were shaking. What was he trying to do to me?

  Chapter 21

  THE PROBLEM WITH THE POSTCARD

  Since late March in Manhattan often meant late-season snowfall, my friends and I had agreed to forgo our normal meeting spot on the front steps of the Met and convene Monday morning in the Thoney freshman lounge for hot chocolate and even hotter debriefing.

  I arrived early, to give myself some time to figure out how to position The Postcard Incident. I was doling out mini-marshmallow cocoa toppings when the girls burst through the door.

  “Oh my God!! There she is!”

  It was the best kind of ambush: all my Thoney girls, dressed to les neufs, running full throttle toward me. I dropped the bag of marshmallows, and the girls and I flung our arms around each other, resulting in the most convoluted, tangled group hug our school had ever seen. Morgan actually tumbled over from the excitement of the heap and almost knocked over the Fiji water cooler.

  “We missed you sooooooooo much!” the girls all shouted.

  “Tell us all about Italy!” Harper breathed. “And Thailand!” Amory said, squeezing my hand.

  “And Sydney,” Morgan said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Seriously,” Camille said. “I know your family is a walking travelogue, but you bring new meaning to the word Flood.”

  “It was a crazy week,” I acknowledged. “But I missed you guys so much. You have to tell me all about the GPA ASAP.”

  “You mean l’aventure Parisian d’or?” Amory said, in a pitch-perfect Parisian French accent.

  “Oui, oui, bien sûr!” I grinned, taking in her ombre-washed mauve jeans. “Love these pants! Are they Jade Moodswings?”

  Amory shook her head. “Zadig & Voltaire, my new favorite store. But Harper’s getup is a Moodswing orig. It’s from the new line, Sophistiqué.”

  Harper spun around to show off her navy blue sheath dress topped with a pea green cardigan with a peacock-feather neckline. Sophistiqué it was.
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br />   Amory turned to whisper conspiratorially to Camille, “Should we do it now or later?”

  “As if we could wait another second.” Camille laughed, pulling out a huge crepe paper–wrapped package out from her metallic leather Dior satchel. “Speaking of Moodswing originals …” She grinned, shoving it into my hands. “We brought you un petit souvenir. Okay, it’s un grand souvenir.”

  “And since Jade already had your measurements,” Morgan added, “it’s totally couture. You’d better love it!”

  I held the package in my hands, feeling out its magic. Whenever I unveiled a Jade Moodswing outfit, it always felt like Christmas morning. But as I looked around the lounge at all my friends’ expectant faces, this particular unveiling felt even more special. It was tangible proof that I had some really amazing friends at Thoney.

  A lot of cliques might have felt like they had to tiptoe around the juicy details of a trip that one of them had missed. But we weren’t the type to waste any time on awkwardness. Especially when there were stories to be swapped and couture to be unwrapped.

  “You guys!” I practically screamed when the last piece of wrapping paper fell away to expose a glittering red cocktail dress.

  It was a tea-length, strapless, fluffy-skirted gown with gold embroidered poppies under a sheath of gauzy red silk. I’d never in my life seen anything so exotic—and after this week, that was saying a lot.

  “This is unbelievable,” I breathed.

  “It’ll be even more unbelievable,” Camille said, holding it up to me, “on you!”

  Looking down, I was instantly and completely obsessed with the dress, but somehow it didn’t match up with my perception of Jade’s couture. Come to think of it, neither did Harper’s outfit. I loved them both, but it was kind of weird not to recognize the new sophisticated style of my very favorite designer. Had that much changed in fashion in the month since I’d last seen Jade?

  “Is she still doing the urban grit line?” I asked, and immediately all the girls shook their heads.

  “No, she’s sort of moving into a space that’s more glam than grit,” Harper said seriously. “You have to see what she did with her atelier,” she gushed, smoothing out the already perfectly positioned peacock feathers on her cardigan.