Isn't She Lovely Read online

  I catch up to her in a few strides, grabbing the top handle of her backpack. I’m tempted to lift her off her feet, simply because I know I can, but instead I yank just hard enough to let her know I’m there.

  She glares up at me, and I’m startled for a second at the close-up view of her eyes. They’re wide and bright blue, and somehow totally incongruous with the rest of her personality. Frankly, I’m surprised she hasn’t gone for black-colored contacts just to stamp out all the color from her life.

  “How was your first day of second grade?” I ask, falling into step beside her. “I mean, seriously, who wears a backpack anymore?”

  “We can’t all afford Prada,” she says, shooting me another of those death glares.

  “Oh, wow, reverse snobbery. So unexpected!”

  I see her blink in surprise that I’ve called her out. Most people seem to find it socially acceptable to jeer at rich people. Maybe they confuse our dollar bills with a shield; I dunno.

  She doesn’t respond, and I’m becoming all too aware that I’m going to be spending a lot of time with this irritable mess of a human being and am not at all looking forward to it.

  “Look, it’s Stephanie, right?” I ask, grabbing her backpack again when she tries to zoom off, and pulling her to a stop like she’s a little kid. “Do you wanna meet and talk about our project now, or do you have other plans? Killing cats, or getting another piercing?”

  Her eyes flit from side to side like she’s looking for a weapon, but then she sighs and shakes free of my grip. “Maybe we have the option to work on our own if we want to,” she said. “I’m not really the social type.”

  I lay a hand over my chest. “You, not social? I’d never have believed it.”

  She gives me a dramatic eye roll.

  “Come on, give me a chance,” I say. “How about a little get-to-know-each-other? I’ll start us off. True or false: you keep a shiv in your boot.”

  For a second I think she’s going to smile, but instead she narrows her eyes and gives me a condescending once-over. “True or false,” she shoots back. “You usually have a pastel sweater tied around your shoulders.”

  I don’t answer. I do technically own a pastel sweater, but only because my mom bought it for me. And I’d never wear it around my shoulders.

  “Whatever,” she says. “I’m going to ask Holbrook if we have the option to work independently.”

  I give her a fake sympathetic smile. “Trust me on this. Martin’s a good guy, but he’s not going to grant you any exceptions because you’re socially challenged.”

  She raises an eyebrow at my use of Martin’s first name, and I make a mental note to start calling him Professor Holbrook on campus. I already feel guilty enough that he let me into a class that had a mile-long waiting list.

  She chews on her lip, looking completely unconvinced.

  “Look, this doesn’t have to be painful,” I coax, rapidly losing patience. “How about we just go grab a coffee and figure out our game plan.”

  “Fine,” she says finally.

  “Starbucks good?” I ask. “Or does their paper cup supplier kill too many dolphins or something?”

  She gives me another of those baby-owl looks. “Exactly how many clichés do you have in your back pocket?”

  “You started it,” I say, slowing my stride when I notice that she’s struggling to keep up. “You think I didn’t notice that you and everyone else assumed I arrived at that classroom by yacht?”

  “You didn’t? I mean, Manhattan is mostly surrounded by water.”

  I study her for a second, trying to figure out if she’s for real right now. I can’t tell, so I default to my usual sarcasm. “Nah, you’ll only find me on the yacht on weekends.”

  This time she’s giving me a look, trying to figure out if I’m serious. This is almost enjoyable, in a warped, I’d-rather-be-dying kind of way.

  “Stephanie, huh?” I ask, when she doesn’t respond. “You go by Steph?”

  “No. Not Steph,” she says as we cross the street to the familiar green-and-white Starbucks logo. “My ex-boyfriend called me that, so I’m kind of over it.”

  God, someone actually dated this cranky little midget? Then my eyes skim the perky cleavage beneath the tiny tank top. Right. There is that.

  “Bad breakup?” I ask, holding the door open for her.

  “I guess. I mean, I walked in on him exploring someone else’s vagina, and I can’t say I was exactly understanding.”

  I choke back a little laugh at her description. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a girl use that word so casually in a sentence. It’s a little … alarming. “Got it. So no on Steph, then.”

  For a second I feel a little stab of envy at her method of moving on from a bad relationship. I wish Ethan had an easy nickname so that I could erase … everything.

  “Let me guess: you’re going to get something with soy,” I say as we get in line.

  She lifts a shoulder, apparently resigned to this particular stereotype. “Grande soy mocha, no whip. And you’re going to go for a manly drip, right? Or maybe straight-up espresso?”

  Even though I know I’m the one who took us down the path of trading clichéd stereotypes, I’m starting to hate that our assumptions about each other are mostly right, so instead of my usual tall drip, I get to the counter and throw out every fluffy word that I can think of: white chocolate, whipped cream, caramel, almond spice. “Oh, and don’t forget the sprinkles,” I add.

  The barista gives a nod, clearly trying to figure out where to find room to write that on a paper cup already covered with the trademark black Sharpie scribblings. It’s a little emasculating, but I roll with it. I’m happy to be “metro,” or whatever it is they’re calling guys who actually brush their teeth and clip their toenails.

  “You ordered that just to prove me wrong,” she says as we grab our drinks and head for a table.

  “Just like you let me pay for yours because I was assuming you’d insist on paying for your own.”

  “That, and it was hard to miss the wad of twenties in your wallet.”

  “Drug money,” I lie, taking a sip of my drink. I wince at its painful sweetness, and Stephanie smirks, showing off a really cute dimple I haven’t noticed before. Probably because the girl’s not exactly throwing grins around for free.

  “Tell me you understood some of that babble from class,” I say, shoving my drink aside. “What in God’s name is a ‘common film narrative’?”

  I put air quotes around that last part, and I see her grind her teeth a little bit.

  “I knew it,” she said, leaning forward. “You’re not a film student.”

  “Eh, no. Whatever gave me away?”

  She nods in the direction of my upper arms. “The biceps. No respectable film student would be caught dead with guns like that.”

  I let out a small laugh. “Goth, nobody calls them guns anymore.”

  For a second I think she’s blushing, but then she resumes that dead-behind-the-eyes look. “So why are you in this class then? I thought it was Tisch students only, and I know there was a waiting list. I was on it.”

  The guilt stabs again, and I just try to remember that had I not weaseled my way into this course, I’d be all gussied up in a suit right now for yet another Price Holdings internship. Which normally I would actually enjoy. But not this summer.

  Since Stephanie looks pretty gung-ho about her little movie class, I’m not about to tell her I enrolled only because there were no summer business courses available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Nor am I going to spill my guts and explain that I’ve got school is the only excuse my father would accept for why I can’t be his right-hand man at the office.

  And I’m certainly not going to tell her why I don’t want to be spending a lot of time with my dad this summer.

  I force a smile. “I guess something opened up.”

  Big blue eyes roll. “I’m sure. Anyway, I’ll check out that website tonight. I’ll figure out the easiest theme to work with
, and I can email you the game plan.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I hold up a hand. “I get no say? Because I’m pretty sure this is a group project.”

  She leans forward, looking all fierce and scary and weird. “Do you know what a ditty bag is used for?”

  I choke out a laugh, my eyes inadvertently dropping to her chest. “That’s a thing?”

  She doesn’t even crack a smile. “It’s for hauling around camera equipment on set. And can you name even one Hitchcock film? Do you know what a key grip is?”

  Shit. Of all the possible partners, I get a pit bull puppy.

  “Okay, look, you caught me,” I say, raising my hands. “This isn’t my thing. But I do have a four-point-oh GPA, and I’d like to keep it that way. And how do I know you won’t go rogue on this project and turn in our screenplay with a dead bird smashed on the front?”

  By now I’m done expecting a laugh from this girl, but she surprises me, letting out a little giggle that reminds me of a rainbow escaping from a mud puddle.

  The laugh fades as quickly as it appeared, but she leans back in her chair, and she seems to have relaxed a little. “Look, I promise not to screw it up, okay? Screenplay writing’s not my focus, but I know my way around a script and I get pretty decent grades myself. And I wouldn’t hand in a dead bird on a school project.”

  “Good to know,” I mutter.

  “I never take my dead bird collection out from under the bed.”

  This time it’s me who’s caught off guard, and I laugh, but she’s already moving on to a lecture about what the assignment will be, based on the course description in the NYU brochure. Yeah. Because everybody reads those.

  I dutifully try to pay attention as she rambles on about how once she figures out our narrative focus, we’re supposed to come up with modern cinematic examples.

  As I listen to her babble, I try not to stare at her boobs, absently wondering why all these film geeks are lurking around in New York City instead of invading Hollywood. Not that I can picture this little gremlin in Southern California, but she obviously knows her way around the world of movies.

  “Your backpack’s buzzing,” I say, gently kicking her bag and interrupting her tirade about why she thinks Casablanca’s overrated.

  “Sorry,” she mutters, grabbing the bag and digging around for her phone. Why she doesn’t utilize the front pocket of the bag is beyond me.

  I’ve never understood why the girls in my life make everything needlessly difficult. With Olivia, practicality ranked somewhere between monster truck shows and fishing on her priority list. Her car keys were always in the bottom of her purse, never the side pocket. She never could tie back her hair when it was windy. An umbrella on a rainy day? Forget it. And apparently this is a trait shared by Park Avenue princesses and whatever graveyard this girl clawed her way out of, because Stephanie’s still digging for her phone.

  I mean, it’s not as though I expect them to carry around flares and a Swiss Army knife on their belt or anything, but sometimes it’s like chicks go out of their way to be unprepared.

  “Hello?” Stephanie finally finds her phone and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear as she listens to whoever’s on the other end. I notice that she has like five earrings, and for some reason I find it kind of hot. Olivia only ever wore the pearls that I got her for high school graduation.

  I realize that Stephanie’s doing a lot more listening than talking, and I tear my eyes away from her ear long enough to see that she looks distraught.

  “It’s no biggie,” she says finally to the person on the other end. “I have until the end of the week before I have to be out of campus housing. I’ll find something before then.”

  “Everything okay?” I ask as she drops her phone back into the bag. The bottom of her bag.

  She shrugs. “That was my cousin. I was supposed to be subletting her apartment for next to nothing while she went home to Arizona, but her plans there changed, so she’s staying in town.”

  It takes me a second to comprehend what she’s saying because her tank top’s slipped down a little bit, and I’m not a pervy lecher, but damn …

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  She stares out the window for a second, and I’m expecting her to look a little annoyed or worried, but instead she looks totally resigned to the shit card she’s just been dealt. As though she doesn’t deserve any better.

  “I’ll see if I can crash with David, I guess. At least he lives close to campus.”

  “Who’s David?”

  “My ex.”

  I squint at her profile as I try to put the pieces together. “Wait, the guy you caught exploring a dodgy vagina?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She says it in this flat, whatever voice that totally bums me out, and I almost open my mouth to offer something stupid, but that haunted look on her face stops me. I have no use for new girls in my life at the moment, especially weird ones. Nobody’s ever accused me of being the sensitive type, and I’m not going to start now. I’ve got my own shit to figure out.

  “That sucks,” I say, pushing my gross drink toward her as though it’s supposed to be consolation to a girl who’s probably a vegan or some crap like that.

  Stephanie gives an apathetic shrug. “Pretty much par for the course, actually.”

  Huh.

  Maybe somebody else’s life does suck worse than mine.

  Chapter Three

  Stephanie

  I’m not what you’d call a girl’s girl. Like, at all.

  I used to be.

  I used to have vitally important debates with my friends about whether we should paint our nails blue to match our cheerleading uniforms or yellow because we read in some magazine that it was that season’s “it” color.

  I used to pay attention to brands of lip gloss, whether my lingerie matched, and pedicures. When my mom told me that lime green wasn’t my color, I listened, and when I found that my best friend had a crush on the boy I secretly liked, I backed off simply because that was the girl code. I used to know who’d be at every party, and would plan my outfit accordingly … a month in advance.

  In other words, I was your typical teenage nightmare.

  That was before my whole world went to shit. But now?

  Now I find female friends suffocating and interfering. They ask too many questions and demand too many answers.

  And parties? Parties are my personal version of hell.

  But I do make exceptions. Both on the friend front and the party front.

  Jordan Crawford would never admit it, but NYU was never her dream the way it was mine. I mean, sure, it was on her list of schools when we used to sit around eating ice cream and talking about life after high school. But I don’t know that it would have even been on her radar if I hadn’t been so dead set on New York. Although back then it wasn’t about film school. It was about the bright lights and the high heels and the fact that people in New York were doing stuff.

  And New York was big. When you grow up in the smallest state in the country, big can feel really important.

  Anyway, Jordan and I have never really talked about why she came to NYU. But senior year of high school, after my mom was gone and Caleb was out of the picture … Well, all of a sudden Jordan was going to NYU with me. Just like that.

  Which is not to say we’re in each other’s back pocket or anything. When I miraculously got into Tisch School of the Arts, Jordan merely said “Yikes” and showed me her pamphlet for NYU’s Carter Journalism Institute. She wants to be a sportscaster someday. It sounds awful to me, but Jordan will totally rock it. She’s got that classic just-one-of-those-guys charm, but without looking like one of the guys. Basically, she’s every dude’s dream girl.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to see if there’s an extra room at the sorority house this summer?” she asks, linking her elbow with mine.

  I give her a look. The one that says, Do I look like I belong in a sorority house?

  She a
cknowledges the validity of my silent point with a long sigh. “I can’t believe that between the two of us, we can’t find a single alternative housing arrangement for you for the summer.”

  “I can believe it. My social circle’s more like a social dot.”

  Her glossy lips press together for several seconds, which I’m able to translate perfectly since we’ve been friends since eighth grade: You used to have a social circle.

  “Well, I’ll ask around at the party tonight,” she says. “We have three days before you have to be out of campus housing. We’ll find something.”

  “Okay, so about this party,” I say, feeling the familiar tug of dread. “You’re sure it’s just a small get-together?”

  She stays silent, and I groan. “Jordan. This is a Greek party, isn’t it?”

  Jordan gives me a guilty smile. “Please, Steffie? It’s the last one of the season. Finals are over, summer’s here … Don’t you want a break?”

  My stomach has more knots than a chapter of Moby-Dick. “You know why I don’t go to big parties.”

  “But I’ll be right there by your side the whole time,” she says, grabbing my hand and giving my fingers a reassuring squeeze. “Just don’t drink anything unless I hand it to you. It’ll be fun. And we haven’t hung out with each other on a Friday night in forever.”

  That’s not entirely true. We hang out a fair amount. It’s just always in my dorm room. Usually watching some black-and-white movie with wine. Not frat parties with keg cups and puking sorority girls.

  I’m dragging Jordan down, and I know it. She’s always coming onto my turf, playing by my rules. I owe her at least this.

  Plus she’s probably right. Maybe I should try to get out more. This whole housing crisis has made me painfully aware of how few friends I have. Hell, how few acquaintances I have. Maybe this stupid party will be the first step in avoiding a future of living on canned beans and having a thousand cats.

  There’s some Greek symbol on the door of the thumping house, but I have no idea what it means … guys, girls, whatever.