The Insiders Read online

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.” Kelli tugged her sweater up, so more of her belly was visible. And then she shrugged and smiled at Liza and Jane. “It’s like I already forgot you,” she said, and raced up the stairs after Mickey.

  Liza Komansky watched Kelli go. From Liza’s vantage point, the lines of Kelli’s purple thong were visible. Kelli wobbled once and Liza stared at her cheap red pumps.

  “That was unpleasant,” Liza said to Jane as they watched Kelli go. They could just hear her make a whooping noise as she arrived at the top floor.

  Jane looked contemplative. “She definitely has that cat eye thing going for her though.”

  “Sure,” Liza said. “You know that completely overblown sexiness they taught Christina Aguilera in the Mickey Mouse Club? She’s got it, too.”

  “I see you’re not a fan.” Jane stared after Kelli.

  “I’m over it,” Liza said. “Let’s go find Jonathan.”

  i can’t keep track of everybody!

  “I’ll see you later,” I said.

  “I’ll be asleep later,” said Flan.

  I stroked her hair, just for a second, and then I said, “Oh, right.” I tried to laugh. I absolutely would not call what I had on Flan a crush. I tried not to stroke her hair again but I couldn’t help it. She smelled like clean sheets and flowers and cinnamon-flavored lip gloss.

  “And I was having fun hanging out with you,” Flan said. “So what if Arno saw us? Wasn’t he fooling around with David’s girlfriend? David needs to chill with her anyway. She’s way too snarky for him.”

  “I know. But David shouldn’t find out that they were together, not till he can handle it, anyway. Promise me you won’t tell anybody about that.”

  “How will you know when he can handle it?” Flan asked. Her eyes were big and round and blue, like when you look at the earth from really far away. I sighed.

  I tried to stand up and walk out of the room, but I was still stroking her hair. At that moment, although she was built like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, she had on a pair of floppy green-striped boy’s pajamas that had probably belonged to Zed and slippers that had rubber-duck heads on the toes. She’d grown up so fast that her chest was about to burst the big white buttons off the front of her pajamas. And she didn’t look tremendously upset about that.

  “You two dressed yet?” I called out, low, to Arno and Amanda.

  “No,” they said back. There was the sound of clothes getting adjusted and then Amanda said, “I’m going down first.”

  Arno said, “I’m coming in there, and you better not have your hands on our best friend’s little sister.”

  “Whatever, Arno,” I said. “Let’s get downstairs and figure out what’s going on.”

  Arno came into the room. I’d been sitting in a sky-blue velvet chair that Flan had by the side of her bed, and I got up. Flan had been curled in bed, and she got up, too.

  She said, “Can I get a beer?”

  And Arno started laughing and I kind of did, too.

  “No way,” Arno said. “Bad enough we can’t ever find your brother. We don’t want to lose you, too.”

  “My sister lets me have beers.”

  “Yeah,” Arno said. “Somebody should talk to February about that.”

  I gave Flan a quick kiss on the cheek and she sort of rubbed her nose on my nose in this heartbreaking sweet way she has and then me and Arno got out of there. We slid down the stairs fast, like we were on skis.

  “Dude, you cannot fool around with an eighth grader,” Arno said.

  “I wasn’t. I was just taking a break from all the craziness.”

  “Do not shovel me that bullshit,” Arno said. “You’re not new to me.”

  “I would bet anything I own that your universe is more morally fucked up than my universe,” I said.

  “You’d bet your shoe collection?”

  “Don’t be insane,” I said.

  “Hmm. How about if I win, no more Flan Flood for you?”

  I stopped for a second. Give up Flan Flood? I looked back up the stairs. It wasn’t like I had her to give up, but I knew that a lot of the reason I liked the Flood house so much was because she lived there. It wasn’t like we saw Patch nearly as much as we used to. We talked about him, sure, but we didn’t actually see him.

  “No way. I can’t turn my back on her. She needs me.” We slowed on the staircase when we came across Liza and Jane. “Hi, Liza.”

  “Hey, I met your sleazy cousin,” Liza said. “And where’ve you two been?”

  “Crossing swords in the upstairs bathroom,” Arno said. He ran down the stairs, away from us.

  Liza looked after him and shook her head. “He’s headed in the wrong direction. All that’s down there is David Grobart, and he’s pulling a pity party for one. Mickey went in the other direction, upstairs, and he took your cousin with him.”

  “That’s weird,” I said. “I didn’t see Mickey. I wonder how she got to him.”

  “It’s not like that bitch is going to heel if you leave her alone.”

  “I thought you were over it,” Jane said.

  So we turned and raced back upstairs to the roof.

  The Flood roof was something special. The usable area ran the whole length of their brownstone, and they’d covered it with trellises and all kinds of plants. There was a gardener who came every other day to make sure all the growing things kept growing and that the place looked extremely cool and kind of like a jungle, with all sorts of hidden areas and babbling brooks. Toward the end of the school year we liked to blow off days and go up there and hang, if we couldn’t make it out to somebody’s house in the country. At night, it got better. There was a fridge up there that we kept stocked with beers and cans of Red Bull and bottles of vodka.

  We got upstairs and Mickey was screaming, “Philippa! Where are you?”

  Philippa Frady had the same setup as the Floods, across the gardens, on Charles Street. Sometimes we yelled to her, and when we were younger, we used to toss water bombs and stuff onto her roof and into her garden. But that was all before she and Mickey became Romeo and Juliet. Her dad was some big investment banker who had invested in Mickey’s dad’s career early on and then they’d had this huge falling-out and were always fighting at the dinner parties all our parents can’t stop having—the ones that inevitably result in somebody’s parents not talking to somebody else’s parents for six months or a year.

  “Dude, she’s coming over, can’t you see her?” Arno said. He grabbed Mickey by the scruff of the neck and pointed his head down at the garden. Philippa was coming through her garden to the Flood house. They’d cut a hole in the wood fence back when we were in kindergarten and they’d just left it open.

  “Philippa!” Mickey yelled.

  “Hi, Jonathan,” Kelli said. “You ditched me.”

  “Did I?” I asked. “I can’t say that I did, no.”

  “I’m saying it,” Kelli said. “Some cool city cousin you are.”

  There were half a dozen of us up on the roof. Me, Arno, Mickey, and then there was Kelli, Liza, and Jane.

  “Where’s Amanda?” Arno asked.

  “Where’s David?” Liza asked.

  “Well, they go out,” Kelli said. “Maybe they’re together.”

  “How’d you know that, Ooh?” Mickey said. We all looked over at him. He was clambering over the side of the roof.

  “I can get down with a scene very fast,” Kelli said. She smiled and all of us looked at her. She was still in her pink sweater and white skirt, but she looked different than she had at dinner, more comfortable and sexy. Then she must’ve felt all our eyes on her—because she pointed at the place where Mickey had been, and he wasn’t there.

  “Mickey!” I screamed.

  “Philippa!” he yelled. “I’m coming.”

  We heard him as he tried to scale down the trellis. Then we heard the trellis loosen from the side of the brownstone.

  Liza called out what I was thinking: “Hey, Mick-head,
why don’t you take the stairs?”

  Then we heard a whistling noise, and a thud.

  david tries to get himself and his girlfriend back on track

  “What’ve you been up to?” David Grobart asked. He was with Amanda on the parlor floor, where all was relatively calm. He’d taken his hood off. Someone had put on some old Air and though nobody was dancing, the vibe in the room was good. David still had his seat on the couch and Amanda was next to him, but they hadn’t been touching.

  “Nothing,” Amanda said. “What about you?”

  “Well, first I couldn’t find you, and so I hung out with Jonathan’s cousin Kelli. Then she left and I couldn’t find anybody.”

  “Me neither, I couldn’t find anybody.”

  David sidled up closer to Amanda. He tried to work his arm around her back, but she wasn’t having it.

  “Don’t cuddle me,” Amanda said.

  “I’m a cuddler,” David said. He was using a voice that made him sound like Elmer Fudd.

  “I know, but we’re at a party.”

  “Be my Tweety Bird.”

  “Shut up!” She wriggled away from him.

  Two years earlier, she’d been his fantasy. A short girl with long hair, Amanda had the distinction of being an even hotter version of Jessica Simpson, with the same blow-the-doors-down voice and a southern, take-no-crap attitude that she got from her mom, who had been a spokesmodel for NASCAR before marrying her rich dad.

  “What’s the matter?” David asked. “Seriously.”

  “David,” Amanda said. She kept fooling around with the hem of her shirt, which was still damp from the upstairs bathroom floor.

  “I—”

  “What?”

  “We need a stretcher!” It was Jonathan, running down the stairs with a red face. He grabbed David by the sweatshirt and pulled him away from Amanda, who was looking at the stairway, clearly waiting for someone else to appear.

  “Mickey fell off the roof. Let’s go,” Jonathan said. He stared around. “Maybe only guys should come. This could be ugly.”

  Of course everyone ignored him. So with Jonathan, Arno, and David in the lead, they all ran down to the garden floor and streamed out the back, yelling Mickey Pardo’s name.

  When they got there, they couldn’t find him. Finally, David looked up and there he was, cradled in the Floods’ patio awning.

  “You okay?” David called up to him.

  Mickey made a flat, pained noise that basically signified that no, he wasn’t okay, because he’d just fallen off a building.

  “Anything broken?” Jonathan called.

  “My arm. The rest of me bounced. Where’s Philippa?”

  “She called my cell just now,” Liza said. “Her dad saw Mickey in flight and he pulled her back inside.”

  Then almost everyone began to wander back into the house.

  “Let’s get you down,” David said. David and Jonathan got a ladder and pulled Mickey off the awning.

  “That was one good fall,” Mickey said. “I saw everything spinning—”

  “Ow,” David said. “Look at his arm.”

  They stared at Mickey’s arm, which looked as if someone had stuck a softball where his elbow was supposed to be.

  “We need to go to Saint Vincent’s,” Jonathan said. “David, you should come with me.”

  “But,” David said. He made a gulping sound and looked around for Amanda.

  “Come on,” Jonathan said. “Mickey’s destroyed himself.”

  So David hung his head and got on one side of Mickey, and Jonathan got on the other.

  “I broke my arm,” Mickey said.

  “Let’s hope that’s all you did,” Jonathan said.

  “Ow,” Mickey said. “Don’t yank me.”

  Kelli came up quickly and poured beer into Mickey’s mouth. When he dribbled, she patted his lips with her fingertips.

  “Mmm,” Mickey said. “You’re dreamy.”

  “Arno, you’re coming with us, too,” Jonathan said. He opened the door to the Flood house and the four boys stepped outside.

  “What’s up?” Arno asked. “You want me to come with you?”

  They helped Mickey down the Flood steps and then stood in a circle on the street.

  “I guess you don’t need to,” Jonathan said. “Stay here. Um, watch out for my cousin.”

  “Oh, I will,” Arno said, and smiled. “Anything else?”

  “Call us if Patch comes home,” David said.

  “Yeah, right.” Arno said. “I haven’t seen that dude all week. We should probably look for him, actually …” His voice trailed off and he looked back up at the dimly lit house. “Have a good time at Saint Vincent’s. Buy some porn mags or something while you wait,” and Arno bounded up the stairs and back inside.

  The three of them looked up at the now-closed door.

  “What’s up with him?” David asked Jonathan. Jonathan just shrugged.

  “I always feel like the moment I don’t know what Arno’s up to, that’s not good,” David said. “Like he’s, like he’s like the devil!”

  Mickey started laughing and said, “We’re friends with the devil!” Then he cried out in pain.

  “Oh, stop it,” Jonathan said as he hailed a cab. “If Arno’s the devil, then I’m an angel.”

  “You’re a fairy is what you are,” Mickey said, and hung even harder off Jonathan’s neck.

  “Then get off me,” Jonathan said.

  “No way,” Mickey said. “You’re Glenda the good fairy.”

  “Screw you, Picasso,” Jonathan said. “Ask the devil for help. I can see I’m not appreciated.”

  Jonathan let David take Mickey’s weight, and the two of them fell against a parked Explorer and staggered, like a pair of old drunks.

  “Okay, okay,” Mickey said. “I take it back.”

  “You need to retire that jumpsuit,” Jonathan said as he helped Mickey and David stand up straight.

  “Believe me,” Mickey said. “The moment I’m ready to go clothes shopping, you’ll be the first to know.”

  When the cab came, it was Jonathan who talked the driver into letting them get in.

  liza and i do not discuss our past

  Okay, I admit it. Even though I pretend I’m all good at keeping us together, I’m not a pro at it. I’m clearly not in control of everybody’s destiny, since Mickey had ended up in the hospital and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

  So I stood in the waiting room at Saint Vincent’s with Liza, who’d gotten bored at the party and had come to find us. She was on her knees, playing patty-cake with a five-year-old named Kevin whose mother had gotten out of bed and broken her ankle. I was on the phone to the Flood house, but of course nobody was answering. I tried Arno’s cell, but he wasn’t picking up either.

  “I hope Kelli’s okay,” I said.

  “What are you worried about?” Liza asked. “She’s a big girl.”

  “You hate her?”

  “That’d be like hating football season,” Liza said. “It’ll go away soon, so why bother? They’re keeping Mickey overnight?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  “Five minutes,” Liza said. “Kevin promised he’d calm down once we finish our game.”

  So I had to wait while Liza finished with Kevin. And part of me wished she’d do the same for me, and another part remembered that Liza kind of had done that just last weekend.

  We’d been at Patch’s and I’d been blown out and she’d just brought me up to one of the bedrooms on the fourth floor and basically put me to bed. And that was when I got to talking to Flan Flood. I’d been lying there, staring at the ceiling and wondering how everyone was going to handle the night without me, and sort of filling in the blanks of who was going to do what and who was thinking what, like I always do, when Flan peeked into the room. I pretended to be asleep, so she came in and stared down at me.

  “You want me to take off your shoes?” Flan had asked.

  “No.”

  �
�Well, I don’t think my parents would want them on their bed.”

  “These are pretty good shoes,” I said. I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at Flan. “I got them at Barneys. They’re Jasper Fords, from London.”

  “Are you gay?” Flan asked.

  “No. I’m just really into shoes. My friends are cool with it.”

  “Because they’re gay.” Flan sat down in a big white chair on what seemed to be her mother’s side of the bed and she laughed.

  “No they’re not,” I said. “Liza’s friend Jane is. But I’m not, and neither is your brother or Mickey or David or Arno.”

  “The Insiders.”

  “Yeah, in fifth grade that’s what I thought we were.” I couldn’t help sounding kind of nostalgic.

  We ended up talking about how her clique wasn’t a whole lot different from my clique. And then we heard people headed for the roof and I got nervous that they’d come in, but they didn’t. So I tickled her for a while and then got out of there. But not before we kissed. Just once.

  Back in the hospital, Liza finished her game. David had gone home a while ago. We’d called Mickey’s parents, but they were out in Montauk at the farm where Mickey’s dad made all his really big art. Nobody could remember the number out there, and I’d gone ahead and signed Mickey’s bill onto my credit card, so we didn’t have to worry about insurance or any of that complicated stuff.

  Liza and I walked out into the night. It was nearly four and the air was cool, now that the rain had ended. The only cars on the streets were cabs and weaving sedans full of club goers headed down Seventh Avenue to the Holland Tunnel and back to New Jersey. I had to go east to my mom’s place on Fifth and Eleventh Street, and Liza had to walk west, to her mom and dad’s town house on Cornelia Street.

  “I wonder how Kelli dealt with the party,” I said.

  “When we left, she was with Arno.”

  “I can imagine how that’s going.”

  “Jonathan,” Liza said. She was staring straight forward, into the street. We were a normal distance apart, but I could feel how she wouldn’t have minded being closer to me. So I did get closer, but I didn’t put my arms around her. We hadn’t fooled around in six months or something. And when we did fool around it had just felt too appropriate, like that was something everybody expected us to do. I knew I wasn’t excited enough to keep doing it. But I’d never said that. We’d just stopped fooling around, but we never stopped hanging out.