A Long Way from You (Where I Belong) Page 5

  “Promise me you’ll check in on Kiki,” I urge.

  “Kit-Kat,” Hands says, “I already promised twice that I would. I’ll go by tomorrow after practice. . . .”

  I hear Corrinne rummaging through her closet and I feel like I should get off the phone and hang out with her. But I hear a strain in Hands’s voice, something off in his tone.

  “Something wrong, Hands?” I ask.

  “No,” he says and pauses. “It’s just you didn’t call and I was worried about you getting to Corrinne’s okay. Plus, when Bubby and me were tossing around the football, he mentioned that there’s a transfer from Bulston . . . and I know this kid, Kits. He plays quarterback, too. I think I’ll definitely have competition for my spot this fall.”

  “Oh, Hands,” I say, and take a breath.

  Football is not only Hands’s thing. Football is all of Broken Spoke’s thing: It’s also our only thing.

  “I’m sure you’re better than him. Y’all won state, don’t you forget that. No one is going to take that or your position away. You got all summer to work out. It’ll be okay,” I say, trying to sound confident. I notice it’s a little hard to be a cheerleader with major pep-and-go on a long-distance call.

  “I gotta go,” I say. “Corrinne has big plans for us, and I can’t be late.”

  “What kind of plans?” Hands asks.

  I pause. “We’re going out for supper,” I lie. Corrinne told me over our manis (Corrinne’s word, not mine) that it was a huge party, and that there might be college kids and live entertainment. It will not be a supper at all, and if it were, they’d call it dinner. “No one uses the word supper here,” Corrinne said. “Trust me.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you go then. O O O,” Hands says, and he almost sounds like himself again. “Call me later. I know it’s only been a day, but it’s weird not doing stuff together. Bubby even asked me what it’s like to have Hitsy separated for a month. Get it, Hitsy? But really, Kitsy, I do feel I’m missing part of me without you here.”

  “That’s sweet, Hands. X X X,” I say softly and hang up. I put my cell phone down on the bathroom counter.

  I don’t feel like I’m missing part of me in New York. Instead I feel like I’m finding new parts of me here.

  I breathe in and look in the mirror. My blond curls look a little frizzed out, and the bags underneath my eyes aren’t doing anything good for my normally bright blue eyes. I feel tired, as if I’d space-traveled from one world to another rather than flew across country, but I do what I always do when I have to cheer tired: I smile bigger and add more concealer.

  “Corrinne Corcoran!” I chirp as I open the door. “How about the best night of our lives?” And part of me thinks it could actually happen, since anything can happen in New York.

  Corrinne’s face breaks out into a giant smile. “Thank God, I thought you got homesick. You freaked me out until I remembered that you’re good person, and you were acting like one by calling home.”

  And as soon as she finishes her sentence, she swings open her closet door.

  “Pick out whatever you want!” Corrinne says. With all the incredible clothes she owns, Corrinne could open a boutique right out of her closet. Luckily, I get to go shopping there for free.

  I find myself wishing my real life was always as easy as it is at this moment.

  Chapter 4

  When I Was Seventeen, I Went to a Party at The Pierre Hotel

  DRESSED IN CORRINNE’S WHITE SLIP dress and black tights and wearing a feathered hair extension, I know I don’t look like myself, and I definitely don’t feel like myself. And I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.

  We step out into the cool of a summer night. I can see people strolling, biking, and jogging down the Hudson River Park. Summer in Texas basically means avoiding the outdoors and opening car doors with pot holders so you don’t get scalded. We have heat advisories and you can be arrested for jogging because it’s dangerously hot. If I were wearing tights in Texas right now, they’d melt permanently onto my legs. I think I could get used to the New York version of summer.

  “Are we going to take that underground train thing?” I ask Corrinne.

  Corrinne stops strutting up the block in her three-inch wedges and bends over at the waist. I wonder if something is wrong until I hear her high-pitched laughter.

  “It’s called the subway. Oh Holy Holly Golightly, I don’t know if I can leave you in New York alone,” she cackles.

  Blushing, I fib easily, saying, “I knew that. I was just practicing the part of a naïve country girl. How’d I do?”

  “Aced it,” Corrinne says, throwing her hand in the air. A yellow cab comes barreling toward us.

  “Here’s the thing about the subway, Kits. It’s fine for getting from place to place, but it’s no good for making an arrival. Think about celebrities and how sexy they look getting out of cars.”

  “Corrinne, you can usually see those celebrities’ privates, which isn’t sexy. And they ride in limos, anyway,” I argue.

  “Kitsy,” Corrinne says as she climbs into the cab, “we can’t be going places in limos. We were just in a recession. It would be insensitive. East Sixty-First Street and Fifth, please. The Pierre Hotel.”

  I slide into the cab next to Corrinne and buckle my seat belt, even though Corrinne tells me nobody wears seat belts in cabs. “It’s a cab, Kitsy, not a pickup truck.” I’m not sure I follow her logic, and there’s no way that I’m letting anything, especially a taxi collision, mess up my summer and my chance at becoming a real artist.

  The cab zooms off into traffic. I stay quiet in fear of saying something else stupid and watch the city out my window. Bike messengers wearing twenty-pound chain locks around their waists weave through traffic. Several almost collide with our cab, and each time I white-knuckle grab the door handle. Corrinne keeps on calmly typing on her iPhone.

  Once I can relax, I stare out the window at all the places I want to visit. There’s an entire restaurant devoted to dumplings and a store that sells only jeans! I’m also shocked by all the different types of people I see. There are little kids by themselves on scooters zooming around. Adults on skateboards. I could paint the rainbow with the many different-colored Ray-Ban sunglasses I spot. I see a couple, the woman in an evening gown and the man in a tux, walking casually down the street as if they got that dressed up all the time. Every single person I notice seems interesting enough that I want the cab to stop, so I can ask them: “Who are you? How did you get to live here? Why not me?”

  We approach a green forest, which I immediately recognize as Central Park.

  “Ohmigosh,” I squeal. “It’s the park. It’s from Sex and the City when Carrie and Big fall in the water, not to mention it’s in every movie about New York. It’s so beautiful. I read all about this statue called Angel of the Waters above a fountain in the park. A sculptor named Emma Stebbins created it in the late 1800s! I must see it.”

  Corrinne looks up from her iPhone, which she had been obsessively typing on throughout the entire ride, not even noticing the incredible city outside.

  “There’s my Kitsy,” she says. “I was beginning to worry that the city turned you into a mute. And who’s Emma Stebbins? Hopefully, your art friends understand you, since I’ve no idea what you are saying.”

  That reminds me of Art Boy from MoMA. I hope that was just the first of a whole summer of conversations about art.

  We pull up in front of The Pierre, a white hotel with arched windows and two beautiful awnings. Men dressed in green suits with top hats guard the hotel as if it were a palace and they its protectors. As Corrinne hands a wad of cash to the taxi driver, a doorman swings open my door and grabs my hand to help me out. I’m having a total princess moment.

  “Does your friend live in a hotel like Eloise?” Corrinne and I, teetering on her highest heels, enter the lobby.

  “No,” Corrinne answers. “Vladlena’s just renting a suite for her birthday. It’s totally winning. No one has to use a fake ID, and
we can still party in style without getting caught by someone’s parents. Besides, Eloise lived at the Plaza.”

  I don’t ask about how Vladlena, a high school exchange student from Russia at Corrinne’s boarding school, can afford to host a birthday party like this. I think that this must, like most things here, fall under the category of T.N.O.M.W.: Things Not of My World.

  In the white-and-gold-marble-adorned lobby, complete with shiny black-and-white-checked floors, people whisk in and out accompanied by bellmen carrying their luxury logo-stamped luggage. One lady, with hair as red as a barn, makes a silk T-shirt and leggings look as beautiful as a ball gown. She could wear a potato sack and get away with it.

  “Is there a model convention going on?” I ask Corrinne in a hushed voice.

  “Get used to it, Kitsy,” Corrinne says. “It’s the way everyone here looks. People either want to be models, were models once, or are currently models. Don’t let it get you down. You’re here to be somebody, too.”

  I’m not sure what Corrinne means by that, but I hope it’s somehow a compliment. “We’re early,” Corrinne announces. “Let’s go to the bar.”

  I start to sweat. I’m not wearing my own clothing, which makes me even more nervous. The only bar I’ve ever been to is a ballet bar back when we could afford my lessons. Besides, I’m four years away from being the legal drinking age. I know that Corrinne has some ID that says she’s twenty-one and that her fake name is Mauve, who is actually some third cousin of hers.

  “Okay,” I say. “You know I don’t have an ID, right? I’ll just get a Shirley Temple. I’m totally fine with not drinking,” I add because it’s true.

  “They don’t ID. It’s pretty alienating to ID your customers when you’re charging eighteen dollars a drink,” Corrine declares.

  Eighteen dollars? You could order half of the Sonic menu for that.

  Corrinne marches on into the bar, which is a long, narrow room. Gold drapery hangs from the windows, pink couches and striped armchairs line one wall, and a gold-and-navy mirrored bar takes over the other.

  I make a move to find the remotest and darkest corner when I see Corrinne hop onto a barstool in the very front. Hesitantly, I push myself up onto the stool next to her.

  “You ladies look nice tonight,” the bartender, who also looks like he could strut a catwalk, says from his perch. He puts out two fancy, cloth napkins, one in front of each of us.

  I’m nearly positive he’s using the word ladies as a trick. It’s probably a code word for underage. Soon, the cops will be called, I’ll be exiled back to Texas, and everyone will say, “It figures. It’s Amber’s daughter, after all.”

  Corrinne doesn’t bat a smoky eye and orders us two Tanqueray and tonics.

  Without another word, the bartender starts making our drinks.

  As Corrinne sets a speed typing record on her iPhone, I text Hands to make sure all is okay. He responds immediately:

  Decided tonight’s going to be a drinking night. It’s off-season anyway. Bubby’s driving, he’s the DD. OOO.

  Hands must be taking the whole there’s-a-new-Tony-Romo-in-the-Spoke thing hard because he usually never drinks, no matter the season. I wonder if I should excuse myself and call him when a gaggle of girls enter the bar, throw open their arms, and embrace me.

  “Kitsy!” a girl in a strapless cobalt blue dress that barely covers her bottom exclaims. “Corrinne has asked us to adopt you.”

  “Great,” I say and nod uneasily since I already have a family. Maybe we’re a semi-dysfunctional one, but it does include an irreplaceable and darling little brother.

  “Make that disappear,” Corrinne directs, motioning to my drink. “We’re going to the suite.”

  I decide not to finish it because I don’t want to look like Amber when she sucks one down. No one’s paying attention anyway. Everyone’s complimenting one another’s clothes, which, if I’m hearing correctly, were all bought new for this event as if it were prom.

  We cluster into the elevator, and I see more buttons than there are on one of those fancy algebra calculators. There are thirty-two floors. I want to press all the buttons and see them light up, but I hold myself back. We step out on seven.

  A door flies open and Vladlena stands before us, surrounded by silver buckets on the floor. I wonder if her room has leaks before I realize the buckets are each holding ice and a bottle of champagne.

  “Seventeen buckets for seventeen years!” Vladlena exclaims in the most exotic Russian accent.

  All the girls squeal. I think if Vladlena can fit in from another country, I can fit in from another state . . . although I’m pretty sure Vladlena’s from the same society as Corrinne, even if it is of the Russian variety.

  Corrinne drags me over to Vladlena and introduces us.

  “Kitsy,” Vladlena says, “so good to finally meet you. I’ve been dying to ask you if you could find me a cowboy like Corrinne’s Bubby.”

  I don’t clarify to Vladlena that Bubby’s way more into catching pigskin than roping a horse because I don’t want to pop her Texan cowboy dream.

  She gracefully bends down and hands me a bottle of champagne. Vladlena must be over six feet tall, and I feel small in more than one way.

  Even though I’ve never had champagne, I brace myself for the cork flying, and the champagne spraying everywhere like it happens in New Year’s Eve movies. But when Vladlena gently twists off her bottle’s cap, there’s just a soft pop. “A trick from Russia,” she says and smiles.

  I can especially appreciate Vladlena’s trick because I’m currently admiring the expensive suite. It has a quilted ivory couch and the white-and-peach drapery perfectly matches the bedding. I have to resist my sudden urge to buy a plastic drop cloth and cover the suite with it. Cleaning falls under the things-that-won’t-get-done-unless-I-do-them category at home, so I have become a bit Martha Stewart about housekeeping.

  When someone slips an iPod into a docking station, the entire suite turns into a dance party. This I can do. To the ditty of the moment, Corrinne and I dance throughout the palatial suite.

  For a few short minutes, I feel like I belong.

  That feeling ends when seven popped-collar, pastel-Polo-wearing guys show up at the door. When the boys enter, the girls stop dancing, pick up their champagne glasses, and refill.

  The flock of guys sit on a couch and start passing around a flask. Corrinne makes no motion to introduce me, and the girls huddle like an opposing football team on the other side of the room.

  All the girls gather on the bed and drink more of the champagne. My head starts to feel lighter and lighter, so I decide to stop drinking.

  Corrinne brings me over to talk to Blake and Breck, identical twin brothers, who apparently haven’t gotten over wearing nearly the same outfits.

  “You’re from Texas?” Breck or Blake asks. “We know tons of Texans. Do you know the Bensons, the Heads, or the McLinns?”

  All the names ring bells as rich oil families I’ve read about online in the Dallas Morning News. But I most certainly don’t know any of them, nor do they live anywhere near Broken Spoke.

  I shake my head. “No,” I repeat again and again until they run out of names. And then there’s a pause.

  “Do you live on some sort of farm?” Blake, I think it’s Blake, asks.

  “No,” I say, “farming has pretty much dried up. Unfortunately, crystal meth’s the only crop that’s selling well in my part.”

  Blake and Breck look at me as if I just said that I grew up in a jungle raised by benevolent wolves.

  Corrinne immediately interjects to rescue me. “Kitsy’s going to be an art student at Parsons’s Foundation summer program,” Corrinne says, redirecting the conversation like a captain steering a ship. I’ll have to thank her later. Usually, I can find something in common with anyone, but it isn’t working with these twins.

  “Really? Our cousin Iona is taking that course, too,” Breck (I think) says and points to a girl sitting alone on the couch. She’s dre
ssed in a polka-dot shirtdress and red combat boots. While she’s definitely pretty, with brown ringlets and a slim figure, she doesn’t blend into this ripped-from-a-Polo-advertisement scene.

  “Ah, I-ona,” Corrinne groans. “As in I-don’t-wanna-know-ya Iona. Looks like this party’s no longer VIP. You know no one likes her since she cut off Waverly’s ponytail in fourth grade and called it art, right? Good thing Waverly had a work event tonight—she still blames having thin hair on Iona. She would go totally Lindsay Lohan on her.”

  Not that I’d ever say so to Corrinne, but I’m already taking to this Iona. Waverly is Corrinne’s best friend from New York and boarding school, and let’s just say we didn’t see eye to eye (or cowboy hat to cowboy hat) when she visited Broken Spoke last year. She’s a lot like Corrinne except minus all the redeeming qualities.

  Blake—or Breck—rolls his eyes at Corrinne and beckons Iona over. Corrinne storms away in a huff, leaving me to fend for myself.

  “Hey,” he says to Iona, “this is Kitsy. She’s attending the Parsons summer program.”

  Then the twins disappear to find more champagne. I vaguely hear in the distance, “We couldn’t have drunk it all, there are seventeen bottles. Okay, order delivery. You only turn seventeen once!”

  “Hello,” Iona says. She inspects me as if she’s a referee trying to determine something like whether a ball (the ball being me) was out of bounds. If this were football, I get the feeling she’d definitely throw a flag.

  “I’m surprised I don’t know you already,” she says as she twirls a brunette ringlet around her finger and raises her hazel eyes. I notice that she has a reverse widow’s peak; at the middle of her hairline, she’s missing a tiny patch of hair.