The Real Real (28 page)

At the sight of his boss, Fletch hangs up the phone and swings his high-tops to the floor from his shiny desk. At the sight of Fletch, Nico wavers.

“Find the perfect prom dress?” Kara asks, her eyes darting from us to her boss’s boss. “They were prom dress shopping today, Mr. Hollingstone! Fletch, why didn’t we think of that?! Prom dress shopping! Or an online contest—let viewers pick your dresses! Or a design contest—partner with Bravo!”

Fletch scurries forward, acting for the first time like what he is—a kid who’s not much older than us—one hand extended to shake, the other to pat. “Alistair!”

“Fletch.” Alistair tolerates being shaken and patted.

“Our
enfant terrible
. You’ve redeemed yourself this quarter. This network is one of our top earners again. It’s nice to see her regaining prominence instead of dragging us under.”

“We’re happy to be of service.” Nico shakes her hair, 289

the color returning to her cheeks.

Alistair chuckles. “Well, I just came to see the girls here safely. Take good care of them, Fletch. They’re valuable.”

Emboldened by the validation, Nico slips off the blazer and tosses it across Alistair to Fletch. “Speaking of taking care of me, thanks for the loan,” she says, pulled back up to her full height, her eyes sharp in her luminously cried-clean face. Kara does a double take.

“Right! Well, good to see you as always, Alistair.”

Fletch extends his palm to the door to usher out his boss, his recovered jacket clenched in his other fist.

“A pleasure, ladies.”

“Bye! Thank you!” We wave.

Fletch closes the door with a click, listening attentively to the receding echoes of Alistair’s loafers before whipping around. “
Sit
.”

Nico doesn’t. I don’t. She extends her arm at him, holding out his god-awful phone. “Lose this?”

“That’s not mine,” he says fast. So this is Fletch flustered—I like.

Confused, Kara tilts her head at the sparkly skull and crossbones. “Yes it is.”

Nico and Fletch glare at each other. I take the phone from her hand and go down the three gray carpeted steps to the white leather couch that runs the circumference of the conversation pit. “Kara, you know Fletch is an excellent producer, but did you know he’s also an amateur director?” I stress the last word to bring Nico 290

back. She turns from Fletch and steps down to perch on the couch arm next to me.

I set the cell in the center of the black Lucite coffee table.

Fletch ambles down the steps and, running his hands through his choppy bedhead, sits on the curved couch across the pit from us. “Look, Kara, I was going to tell you.” He lifts an ankle to rest on the opposite knee and fingers the hem of his jeans. “Nico partied a little hard at the finale last night. I lent her my jacket and drove her home. No big deal.” He tosses his hands with a casualness that makes Nico stiffen.

“Is that what happened or how you edited it?” I snap.

Kara looks down from an incredulous me to a glaring Nico to a stone-faced Fletch, concern starting to register. She leans tentatively on the radiator cover, her back smushing the blinds against the window. “Look, Fletch,”

I continue, my voice quivering both from outrage and the fear that I won’t do it justice, “Nico and I have given up a lot, everything actually, to do your show, a show that has made you a
ton
of money.”

“It’s made you celebrities,” Fletch counters, slouching to communicate that I’m as riveting as the Weather Channel.

“With no options,” Nico adds icily.

“Georgetown
dropped
me.” My voice rises. “Nico lost her . . . financial aid. I wasn’t looking to be a celebrity. I was looking to be . . . ” What? I look past Kara, where the 291

blinds have spread to reveal the top executive floors of the surrounding midtown buildings, each filled with people like Fletch and Alistair, the people who make the decisions, call the shots. And suddenly I know. “We’ll sign on for another season . . . ” I pause for a moment, still needing to make abstract “options” into a definitive choice.

Kara and Fletch wait. “
In exchange
for a full ride at . . .

NYU for me, Nico—” They lean forward. Nico is wide-eyed. “—and my friend Caitlyn. Who will join the cast.

She really is funny. And you know what this show could use, in between the shots of sunsets and people saying next to nothing? Some funny. Seriously.”

“Seriously,” Nico murmurs.

“Wait, were you even accepted at NYU?” Kara shakes her head in confusion.

“I didn’t apply.”

“Me neither.” Nico shoots me a furtive look. I push on.

“But I’m sure donating a building like the Hollingstone Library, which I did take a tour of, earns this company one free phone call.” I sit back and cross my clammy hands.

Fletch stares straight into me, taking his time, because he can. “You fucking idiots. You think Alistair gives a
shit
about what’s on that phone? You haven’t done a single thing that I didn’t set in motion. I put the drinks in your hands. I put the boys in your reach. Jesse, I knew I could get you and Jase to hook up; it was just a matter of getting the ingredients right, and Nico,
you
and your insecurity were the perfect ingredient. You think you’re acting on your own now? How do you know you aren’t doing 292

exactly what I’ve planned?” He grins, his eyes flashing as he leans forward to drop his elbows on his knees. “Affording me the pleasure of looking you both in your pathetic faces to inform you that we own you
already
. Your parents signed you away in perpetuity for forty thousand dollars and some snack chips. You will continue to go
where
I say and do
what
I say or find yourselves in breach of contract.

Your families sitting on a few million they’d like to cough up? Get up, go back to Long Island, and we’ll call you when we have our shooting schedule.”

There is an airless silence in which I can hear hope drain into the gray shag. Options die. I can feel Nico struggling to breathe beside me, see her fist tighten on the armrest. I look from Fletch, smug as hell, to Kara—

“What
is
on that phone?” She walks down the steps.

Not waiting for Fletch to redirect, I snatch the cell off the table, scroll, and press play. I reach it up to Kara, who watches as the color leaves her face.

“Trisha’s barely eighteen,” I inform her.

“Exactly! Perfectly legal,” Fletch spits.

Kara straightens, stunned. Her expression blank, she holds the phone out to Fletch. “Wait!” I stand to take the phone back and scroll a few names to something that hadn’t registered in my initial viewing. I hit
Mel
.

And I hold the phone out so we all can see and we watch for twenty mortifying seconds, as Melanie, half-naked on spread knees above Fletch, looks so eager to please. We all listen as he gives her his shtick. “—
ready to explode
.”

“Mel’s seventeen, which
is
illegal,” Nico says evenly, 293

reining in her rage. “And I’m more than happy to smile for our new friends at
OK!
and tell my story.”

“Jesus, this is getting blown completely out of proportion.” Fletch stands, crossing his arms protectively over his Chrome Hearts shirt.

Still pale, Kara sits on the carpeted steps. “This is not what I signed up for.”

“Kara—”

She cuts him off. “Hollingstone will care, Fletch, because
the media
will care. There’s too much attention on these girls for a story like this not to have legs. And I think—I
know
you crossed a
huge
line, here.”

“Which brings us to our last demand.” I glance at Nico now that we’re driving the bus we could’ve thrown each other under. “Fletch is out. Kara takes over. You two can explain that to our new best friend, Mr. Hollingstone.” I lob the phone to Fletch and climb past Kara with Nico in tow.

“No worries, we have plenty of copies,” Nico tosses over her shoulder with satisfaction.

“One question, ladies,” Kara asks, still catching up as she takes off her glasses to rub her eyes.

“Yes?” we answer from the door.

“Do you want to live in the dorms or an apartment?”

Nico and I look at each other for a split second and then turn to them both. “Whatever works best on camera,” we say in unison.

PART IV

THE REAL REAL

“
Jesse, wait!” Mom calls down to the living room as I grab my white suede Gucci bag—a souvenir from the finale to remind me of the value of nice and quiet—and retrieve my car keys, ready to head out into the warm June night. “Wait!” She comes running down the stairs with the camera, jogging right past me to call to the basement.

“Mike, she’s leaving!”

Patting my shorts pockets, I glance around the living room for my phone, fairly sure I was channel surfing the last time I had it.

“That’s it?” Mom asks me as Dad emerges from the basement in his new NYU sweatshirt.

“What do you mean, is that it?” I ask, wriggling out 297

my cell from between the couch cushions and checking the display, happy to see that no one’s called. I must be part of a very small club of eighteen-year-olds who get giddy at an empty call log.

“You’re not changing?” Mom hands the camera to Dad and crosses her arms over her tank top. “Is someone from the show going to at least do your hair?”

“I told you, I’m borrowing a dress from Nico. She’s the one who decided we might as well go. No hair, no nails, no ‘doing.’ It’s not a big deal—”

“
It’s your prom!
” I look up as her eyes go to the framed picture of my smiling, heavily banged parents on the bookcase under the banner Caribbean Carnival Hampton High Prom 1985.

“Yes, this is not working out like that,” I acknowledge, dropping my phone in my bag.

“I know.” Her shoulders slump.

“I’m sorry, Jess.” Dad puts his arm around her. “You didn’t want to go with Caitlyn?”

“She has a hot date, and we’re going to the beach together tomorrow. Really, guys, it’s fine. I’m okay with just swinging by. You should be, too.”

“But, Jess, you don’t
know
what you’re missing.”

I take a deep breath, take her hand, and lead her over to the couch, while Dad starts fumbling with the camera.

“Okay, Mom, you’re right. I won’t ever know what it feels like to have the boy I love,
future father of my children
”—we watch Dad accidentally take a picture of his fingers—“pick 298

me up to take me on the most romantic night of my young life.” I squeeze her hand. “But starting in the fall I’ll be having a lot of experiences you didn’t have.”

“And that’s great. That’s what we wanted for you,” she says, her voice breaking. “Just not as—”

“A semi-celebrity? I know. Me neither. But I get a full ride at an amazing school, close to you guys. And I have to focus on that and let it outweigh any trade-off, anything I might be losing.” Gazing at the picture of my 1980s’ parents, my heart twists at the thought of Drew in a tux.

“Then I’m giving you the camera, and you two take a picture once you’re dolled up.” Dad walks over to pass me the Olympus and offer me a hand up off the couch.

I drop it in my bag. “Okay, but I’m not promising one under the banner.”

“I’ve seen my daughter under enough text to last a lifetime, thank you very much. A nice tree or shrub will do fine.” Mom stands to walk me to the door.

“Well,” I say, unhooking my seat belt over the gold Stella McCartney gown Nico loaned me, a gift from her father last year that I’ve been instructed to wear into the ground or set on fire.

“Yes?” As the Lexus headlights slowly fade over the Hampton Country Club’s full lot, she withdraws her keys from the ignition and turns to me in her red Dolce.

“I wouldn’t have called this twelve months ago,” I say.

“Make that twelve grades ago.”

“What?” She unwraps a bottle of chilled champagne from its safekeeping in an NYU sweatshirt, one piece of the full range of gear we’ve promised to wear in exchange for our tuition.

“You being my prom date.”

She opens her car door to the lull of crickets and looks back at me. “Really?
That’s
the surprise?”

I laugh, getting out on my side into the balmy night.

“Nice parking job, maverick.” I look back at the tire marks she’s etched into the golf course grass as she swerved us to a stop a safe distance from the pillars of the main building.

“Thanks.” Rubber band around her wrist, she leans over to flip her hair up and down before letting it dangle into the grass. She smoothes it into a high bun and rolls up her long spine. “I mean, my ex-boyfriend’s in there with some actress extra wannabe who’s, like, thirty—”

“I bet she’s having the time of her life. I bet her whole career has led her right to this very moment.”

“And my ex-best friend is in there with her agent.”

“Trisha’s multitasking.”

“And I am as far from Prom Queen as a girl can get.”

She leans against the car. “Screw the shoes.” I watch as she kicks one strappy heel and then the other into a sand trap.

“Nico, you could have sold those on eBay with the others for your fund,” I admonish, as she’s putting every penny into renting a tiny studio over the Bridgehampton 300

dry cleaners until we move to Washington Square this fall.

“You mean my Fuck You, Dad, Freedom Fund.”

“We have to come up with an acronym for that—

FUDFF? And yes, no more throwing away profitable accessories.”

“But my toes are so happy now.” She lifts the feathered hem of her dress to her knees and does a little jig in the lush lawn.

“Did you hit the champagne already?”

“High on life. Come on.” Pausing to hold on to the car for support, I step out of my snakeskin heels and pick them up to walk over to her.

“Nice, right?” She sticks the bottle between her knees.

“Yes.” I wiggle my toes in the cool grass.

POP!

We scream as the cork goes flying and white foam bubbles out onto Nico’s extended arms. She takes a long swig and passes it to me. I imbibe a fizzy gulp and pass it back.