Break Every Rule Page 7

  David made the brave decision, and tried to be honest. “I don’t know…,” he said. “They seem a little plastic.”

  “Yes,” Rob said, nodding emphatically. “The plastic surgery is excellent on them.”

  “Oh,” David said. That was pretty baffling. And yet, so fitting.

  “So… what’s el problemo?”

  “I just think that Sadie might not be my type, exactly,” David said. He said it slower than he meant to, but Rob still looked like he was having trouble chewing on that one.

  “Mmmmm… you don’t feel love for Sadie?” Rob said. In fact, he was talking pretty slow as well.

  “No,” David said. For the first time that night, he felt like laughing, “I don’t feel love for her.”

  “And you have a, how you say, different type?”

  David nodded. “I think so….”

  “I knew it!” Rob said.

  “You did?” David asked. He was surprised, but also a little relieved. Maybe someone did understand him.

  “You feel love for another girl!”

  “Well, love, that’s a big word….”

  “It is hard to tell sometime.” Was this romance advice from Rob? “She is very beautiful, in a different way.”

  “I know.” David was actually smiling now. “But I think that’s why I like her. She’s different, you know?”

  “Yes! I get her back for you!”

  “Back?” David was confused again. Rob looked like he was about to do a merry little dance.

  “Yes, we get Flan back for you!”

  “Flan?” David’s mouth hung open. “No, I—”

  “David, don’t be shy. I have many powers….”

  “I know, it’s just that Flan’s not—”

  Rob held his hand up. “I know, she’s not single. And Jonathan is your friend. But he’s also not really, am I right?”

  David paused. Jonathan had been pretty weird and mean at his party. Which he hadn’t even invited David to, which was also pretty weird and mean.

  “And Flan, she is lovely, is she not?”

  David nodded. He wished he hadn’t had those three vodka crans back there. His head was sort of swimming, and Rob was confusing. From now on, he was definitely a beer-only kind of guy.

  “Rob, the thing is…,” David said.

  “No buts!” said Rob.

  “What?”

  “David, I’m making this my number one priority, right after the Hot School Boy party. Flan will be yours again!”

  The sky was starting to turn purple, and tomorrow was Tuesday. It was a quarter past three in the morning, and school would be starting in a few hours. That was when David stopped trying to convince Rob that he didn’t want to steal Flan away from Jonathan.

  Because right then, thinking about the way Jonathan had completely abandoned him, and how he’d asked David to leave his house that night… well, David felt like that might be just what Jonathan deserved.

  mickey visits the love doctor

  If Philippa didn’t have to go through with it, too, Wednesday would definitely have been the worst day of Mickey’s life—a life that included several emergency room visits, and a whole lot of time when he was grounded. Boredom, to Mickey, was more painful than pain, and where he had to be Wednesday afternoon was definitely going to be boring.

  He’d spent all morning dreading it, and could hardly concentrate at school, which he had been attending reliably all week because his parents were on a crackdown. When he got out of school, he saw Caselli, the dude who ran his dad’s studio, waiting for him.

  “Ready for therapy?” he asked. Caselli was also Mickey’s unofficial guardian. He was wearing the white coveralls worn by all of Ricardo Pardo’s assistants, and his head had been recently shaved. He looked like Mickey’s older, cleaner brother.

  “Yeah, I’d rather be torn apart by sharks.” Mickey paused. “Actually, that sounds kind of cool…. But seriously, man—you really didn’t have to escort me. I wouldn’t make Philippa go through this alone.”

  “Dad’s orders,” Caselli said, smiling only a little bit. “Get on.”

  Mickey climbed on the back of Caselli’s vintage Triumph. It hurt him to be a passenger, and not the runaway driver of the motorcycle, but at least the ride was something exciting on the way to Dr. Chivers’s office.

  Philippa was already there when he walked in. She was looking unusually tiny and Goth today, wearing an oversized mohair sweater, which she had belted at the waist, over a long black skirt. Her straight brown hair was parted down the middle, falling below her shoulders, and her lips were painted a deep red. She was also glaring at him.

  “Welcome to couples’ counseling, Mickey,” Dr. Chivers said. He had a kind of brittle, ingratiating smile that made Mickey feel uncomfortable. He was wearing a red shirt, pink tie, and mocha suit jacket. This also made Mickey uncomfortable. Dr. Chivers waved to the armchair next to Philippa’s and said, “Please have a seat.”

  Mickey leaned over to kiss Philippa on the cheek. She jerked her head away from him.

  “Let’s begin with that,” Dr. Chivers said. “My methodology is: Start small, and grow the concept of your relationship, so that we can understand it as never before. So, Mickey, why do you think Philippa pulled away from you like that?”

  “Because she’s pissed she has to spend her afternoon talking about feelings…?” Mickey said as neutrally as possible.

  “Mickey, could you shut up please so that we can just get this over with?” Philippa snapped.

  “What’d I say?”

  Philippa rolled her eyes, and Mickey sunk back into his chair.

  “Okay,” said Dr. Chivers, “that might not be the best approach for you two. We could try a method that involves a special, malleable clay of my own design. You play with it and just see what flows out of you. You’d be amazed at how your subconscious reveals itself in the clay’s form.”

  Philippa and Mickey stared at him in silence.

  “It has been remarkably effective with both sets of your parents,” he offered.

  “No!” Mickey and Philippa shouted instinctively.

  “Well, what do you say we go simple, then?”

  “That would be best,” Philippa said.

  “Whatever,” Mickey muttered.

  “So… why do you think this relationship is so plagued by fighting and betrayal? What is rotten in this union? Mickey?”

  “Dude,” Mickey said. He tried to calm his voice, but only a little bit. “Nothing’s rotten. Like, I’m an intense motherfucker, you know? We’re intense. That ain’t rotten.”

  “That’s an interesting interpretation. Philippa?”

  Philippa shifted in her chair uncomfortably. She looked at Mickey, whose eyes were blazing in her direction, full of the hope that she would say to hell with this, and ask him to elope or something equally wild and intense. “I think the problem with our relationship is that I’m gay,” she said calmly. Then she put her face in her hands.

  Mickey made a cackling noise. God he loved her! Philippa was definitely the only girl who could keep up with his games.

  Dr. Chivers clapped his hands together in irritation. “Now, Philippa, many people deal with the discomfort of discussing their feelings by lying and employing the tone popularly referred to as sarcasm in our modern culture. But that’s really not what this place—and this practice—is all about. So please, if you want to continue, check your games at the door. Mickey and I know perfectly well that you are not a lesbian.” When he said “lesbian” he made quotation marks with his fingers, which seemed odd to Mickey. “Would you like to try again?”

  Philippa made an exasperated noise. She looked up at the ceiling and seemed to be thinking. She examined her cuticles, uncrossed and recrossed her legs, and sighed. Then, in a voice that sounded both tired and very, very old, she said, “Well, Mickey and I have been going out since freshman year, and that’s a pretty long time. At first, it was really wild and fun, and we just surprised each other all t
he time. But the shit Mickey does now doesn’t surprise me anymore, you know what I mean? I just think the days when we excite each other might be… over.”

  Mickey wasn’t sure how the rest of the hour passed, or how he got home. But for the rest of the night all he could think about was the fact that he wasn’t exciting anymore, even to his girlfriend. Especially to his girlfriend. It was not a fun feeling. It was the opposite of fun.

  He looked so bummed at dinner that his parents didn’t even yell at him much.

  “How was therapy, mijo?” Lucy Pardo asked. She was a gorgeous ex-model, and Mickey got all of his good looks from her. When she was in the right mood, she thought Mickey was the most amazing thing to have happened in the history of man.

  Mickey shrugged.

  “How was school?”

  “Whatever,” Mickey said. “Will you pass the empanadas?”

  Ricardo passed him a platter covered with a dishcloth. “The reviews of the Vogel show have started to come out,” he said. “I didn’t really think it was all that bad.”

  Mickey looked up at his dad. That was it.

  He ran out of the slightly decayed formal dining room, down the hall, and into the library. The Pardos kept all their art books there, as well as bound copies of all the little art journals that Ricardo read obsessively for mentions of his work.

  Mickey found the Vs (one of Ricardo’s assistants had the weekly task of alphabetizing their collection), and pulled out the Luc Vogel monograph. He flipped through the pages, from one naked scene to another. Vogel had been right: not a restaurant in the bunch.

  Mickey thought about how bummed Luc Vogel had been at the opening, and that cheered him up a little bit. That guy was an artist, and he’d been making sure that his career meant taking life to the maximum for years. He was exciting, and he could still feel low. Then Mickey remembered the dare.

  That’s when Mickey knew what he had to do to make himself exciting again. He knew what he had to do to get Philippa back for real. He was going to take that dare. He was going to stuff a restaurant full of naked people, and he was going to photograph every minute of it.

  i get jealous about something way important

  My world was still pretty dark and cruel-feeling midweek, and on Wednesday, when I got home from school, I had the unpleasant surprise of finding Rob in my room. He was wearing a royal blue robe with gold piping that had been my dad’s in the eighties, and his feet were up on my desk.

  I realized that I hadn’t seen him since my party, which was when I saw something weird happening between Flan and David, which had been unsettling my mind ever since. I sort of knew I’d blown it out of proportion when I’d asked David to leave, but also I kind of felt like all those guys had it coming for thinking they were so cool. Now, seeing Rob didn’t make me feel any better. It just reminded me that he—and David—were in the Hottest Private School Boy club, and I was not. They must have been out doing fabulous things all week.

  “Hey, Rob, it’s cool that you stay at the apartment now,” I said, even though it actually wasn’t. “But this is still my room. Okay?”

  Rob looked at me like I had suggested he get off my island—which actually would have been quite pleasant—and it looked like he took my comment pretty hard.

  “Well I’m sorry, Jon, I only needed a surface to work on my scrapbook, and there is no desk in my room.”

  Scrapbook? I was ready just to pick up the whole mess and hurl it out the window, but the sad look on Rob’s face stopped me. I went over to have a charitable look at the many snapshots that Rob had laid out on my nice, clean desk. This seemed to make him happy, and then something occurred to me. Maybe Rob, for all his bravado and all the weird ways he can smell, was giving me a clue about something.

  “Want to see?” he asked. He was smiling now. And was that niceness in his voice? It sounded like nice. “You recognize some of these characters, no?”

  And I did. There was Rob, in the Floods’ house, making out with February. (Not so pleasant.) And there were Feb and Flan, sitting at the big butcher block table in the Floods’ kitchen, drinking wine. Same picture, plus David. The pictures kept going like that, with David getting closer and closer to Flan like a horrible flip book: David moving stiltedly across the room, Flan sitting on his lap, everyone lifting their wineglasses. Cheers! Then her arms around his neck, then kissing his cheek. Feb making a “Gross!” face at the camera.

  Some of the color must have drained from my face, because Rob said—still sounding like he cared, a lot—“Are you fine?”

  No, I really wasn’t. David was in the HPSB elite crew now. He could probably have any girl he wanted, so why not take Flan? He’d obviously almost had her already while I was away.

  I was going to lose my girl, I could feel it, and that really was not fine with me.

  “Jonathan, does this bother you? I know you and Flan are together now, and I’m sure you wonder what happened between David and her over last winter.”

  I shook my head, too vehemently, and said, too quickly, “Not really.”

  “Because it would worry me, too. But nothing happened!”

  I felt my shoulders relax a bit, but then Rob added:

  “They were just insanely attracted to each other, that is all.”

  My impulse was to run, but here was Rob, and he was giving me information. Information I really needed. “Do you think he—they—might… again?” I said.

  Rob looked left and right, as though someone might be listening in on our conversation. Which was ridiculous, of course. My mom had had all the walls reinforced three years ago, so she wouldn’t have to listen to my brother and me playing loud music, not to mention that she wouldn’t care about this chat—not at all.

  “Jonathan, I really shouldn’t say…”

  I nodded. Of course he wasn’t going to say. He was David’s friend, after all. “I gotta go,” I said, moving to the door. “To meet Flan. Take as long as you want, really.”

  I backed into the door, and reached for the knob. What was that look he was giving me? Was it guilt? He said: “But be careful of your feelings, brother Jon, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  When I got to the Floods’ place, I tried to call Flan, but she didn’t pick up. I went up to her room, but she wasn’t there, so I wandered out to the backyard, where I found Patch cooking tuna steaks.

  It was a lovely twilight time of day, and that nice smoky cooking smell filled the backyard.

  “Hey, man,” he said. He reached his hand out for a behind the back high five. “You hungry?”

  “Um, Patch? What are you doing?” None of my guys cook, unless making sandwiches or dialing Odeon counts. The Wildenburgers, Pardos, and Floods (at least when they’re in Connecticut) all have personal cooks; the Grobarts have Zabars deliver prepared foods to their apartment four times a week, and my mom has Zone meals come to our place three times a day and lets me order in whatever I want.

  “Cooking.” Patch flipped one of the pieces of fish. “There’s rice and soy-lime marinade, too,” he added.

  “But why are you cooking?” I took a can of Asahi from the six-pack sitting on the picnic table.

  Patch seemed to be seriously considering my question for a minute. “I guess I wanted to try something new. My parents were supposed to be coming down from the country today, but they canceled. And Flan had to stay at school for an algebra study session because she has a test tomorrow. February is upstairs. Maybe she’ll want some. But there’s plenty for you.”

  “Actually, I’m going over to Freeman’s a little later. With Flan, I think. Hey, are you okay?”

  There was definitely something weird going on with Patch. I took a sip of the beer and wondered what it could be, and also why Flan hadn’t told me that she had a test to study for. Maybe David was skipping basketball practice…. I wondered if she was really still at school.

  “I guess I’m having one of those moments where I don’t really know why I should be excited about life, you know?” Pat
ch flipped another piece of fish, and then the other three. He cracked a can of Asahi, too. “Like, I feel like I’m always looking for something to want and need, but nothing can really hold my attention that long. I was thinking today how, when we were in the Mediterranean, everything was cool, know what I mean? Just hanging out with you guys and Greta. And it made me want seafood.”

  Greta was this girl Patch hooked up with on that cruise ship. I think he really liked her, but she lives in California.

  I am not proud of what I did next. But Patch is not a needy guy. Things are easy for him, and I have just never known him to be depressed. But I was pretty depressed right then, too, so I did what I had to. I changed the subject back to me:

  “Hey, does Flan really have a test tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I just feel bad I didn’t know,” I lied.

  “Anyway,” Patch said, giving me a weird look, “I just keep doing new things and it all seems old already.” He lifted the tuna steaks off the grill and put them onto a big dish. Then he put two of them on plates, drizzled marinade across them, and gave each a clump of rice. “Just try this, okay?” He handed me one of the plates, and sat down. Then he continued, “I’m just trying to figure out what it’s all about, you know?”

  I took a bite of the fish, and to my total surprise, it was really good. Shockingly, celebrity-chef good. “Maybe you should start a restaurant?”

  “Nah, cooking’s boring. I mean, how do people get so excited about something you have to do three times a day for the rest of your life? It sucks.” Patch sighed.

  “Yeah, I don’t get people,” I said. “I mean, do you understand how Arno could be chosen for Hottest Private School Boy? He’s so obvious. I mean, that Justine lady told me… I mean, it seemed like she was telling me that they wanted me. And then… the world just doesn’t make sense sometimes, you know?”

  “Yeah, like that Justine person is so incredibly concerned with stupid shit. It’s like everything has to be reduced to little bite-size pieces, and…”