Mafia Girl Read online

I shake my head, but he ignores me and grabs my hand and pulls me toward the dining hall.

  “I have to get my math book from my locker,” I say.

  “I’ll go with you,” he says.

  “Do you think I need an escort?”

  “Yes.”

  We walk down the corridor and I reach for my lock and then stop. I see it before Clive does.

  “What?” he says and then his eyes widen.

  Mafia slut has been keyed onto my locker door.

  Clive sits close to me like my bodyguard in the dining hall. So do Ro and Candy, like human shields. But there’s no need because a dozen kids come over and say, “you were great, Gia” or “you rocked” or “you’re your own person,” yada yada, yada. And they say they’d vote for me any day over those loser candidates, which makes me feel a little better.

  I stop in the bathroom on the way to English, and after I slam the stall door shut, I hear the outside door open, followed by the cloud of eau de pond scum that makes my eyes sting, putting me on alert again.

  I wait while toilets flush and the water runs and hands are dried in a nanosecond in our state-of-the-art dryer. Then finally I hear Christy cackle.

  “Wentworth totally has balls. I didn’t think he would do it.”

  “It was totally proper,” Georgina says so it sounds like prop-pah in that Brit way like her mouth is stuffed with mashed potatoes.

  “I thought the mafia queen would freak,” Christy says with a high-pitched squeal. “How could she hold her head up after that?”

  “She is so going to lose,” Georgina says.

  “We’re going to make her lose,” Christy says.

  The bell rings and the door squeaks open. I stand up and—wham—a roll of toilet paper flies over the top of the stall, smacking me on the head.

  “Bull’s-eye,” Georgina says, laughing as the door closes. I adjust my skirt and yank the bathroom door open fast, but they’re gone and

  I feel paralyzed.

  Fuck.

  Anger mutates into emptiness.

  I go back inside and stare at myself in the mirror. Do I deserve this? Did I invite it? Maybe I am to blame for my dad. But I also know if I weren’t at Morgan, the little hate cabal would target someone else. They need to. It empowers them.

  Tell Anthony, a little voice in my head says. You want me to follow them home? he’d say. I’ll teach them a lesson. But I know I won’t. I can’t. I can’t tell anyone. Growing up is learning to fight your own battles, my dad used to say.

  Compared to school, the bakery feels like a refuge, and it beats going home and thinking about Wentworth and Georgina and yada, yada, yada.

  “You’re late,” Teddy snaps when I show up at sixty seconds past four.

  Someone else on my case?

  “Fire me so I can collect unemployment.”

  “You’re waitressing today,” he says, ignoring me. “Maureen called in sick.”

  I make a face because I’d rather stand behind the counter and count out cookies than ask people what they want and hear that the coffee isn’t hot enough or the pastries are too sweet or too big or too small or too something. I put on an apron and pin back my hair and help an old man from the neighborhood who comes in every afternoon as if cookies and cappuccino are his only pleasures in life and listen to him whisper to me, “if only I were fifty years younger.”

  Then I wait while people take forever deciding and hurry back to refill sugar bowls and creamers, never mind that everyone seems to want one percent milk and I have to explain that it’s either skim milk or heavy cream and then it becomes four thirty and then five.

  At five thirty I take my break and check my phone, and of course Michael hasn’t called and that pisses me off. I think about sending him a text, but what would I say? Can we pick up where we left off? So I forget that and go make six espressos and take a call from Ro who is still amused that I’m working in her dad’s bakery. Then I turn to clean off a table and get clean plates and I hear arguing inside the office next to the kitchen.

  I go back to look, and Ro’s dad sees me.

  “Go help outside, Gia,” he says softly, motioning me away before he closes the door. Only I don’t move. Something in my head puts me on alert. I hear yelling behind the door and then a loud thump like someone or something has fallen to the floor, then a groan of someone in pain. Another groan. I stand in place listening, unable to move.

  Ro’s dad’s voice rises above another voice, but the sounds are muffled. I get a sick feeling inside, but there’s no one to ask, no one who’d tell me anything. I’m used to that. All my life I’ve been hearing, “Don’t worry about it, Gia” or “There’s nothing going on, don’t worry.” Then the cops would come. So would the FBI. In the middle of the night people would get cuffed and arrested and Super Mario would be everywhere and then magically they’d be out on bail. The next day it would be all over the papers, because there was nothing going on and nothing to worry about.

  Except incidentals. Like dead bodies.

  I downshift into default mode, playing deaf to the sound of angry voices, grunts, pounds, the groans of someone begging for mercy, pleading, “I never cheated you, I swear.”

  I look out at the café. Someone’s waving for the check. Someone else is holding out her hands like she can’t fathom why idiot me isn’t coming over to help her.

  Only I can’t move.

  The hypocrisy of my life overwhelms me. I search for enough strength just to stand instead of crumbling to the floor.

  “Miss, miss!”

  The door to the private office opens. Teddy looks at me. “Gia,” he hisses. “You alive?”

  I rush off robotically to give the woman the check and bring menus to the other table. Then I go back to working behind the counter, my hands shaking as I put delicate cookies iced in rainbow hues on plates, while bodies are beaten steps behind me. I carry out cups of steaming coffee and glasses of chilled milk, pretending my hands aren’t quivering and hoping I won’t drop plates or spill the hot coffee that sloshes back and forth in the cup.

  I walk back to the kitchen area and stop for a few seconds to listen. The door is still closed. The voices get louder. There’s a thud, then another sickening thud, and then another. Someone is getting beaten up again. He’s outnumbered.

  “That’s unfair, that’s unfair,” Anthony would yell when he got into a fight. “You have to level the playing field,” he’d say, parroting my dad.

  Only the rules of the playground don’t apply now. Not here. I stand there frozen. And then the beating seems to stop

  “Teach him a fuckin’ lesson,” someone growls.

  I go out the back door for air. A body lies scrunched up on the ground, thick streaks of blood pouring from his nose and ears, running down his face and neck, dark red pools forming on the ground around him. I open my mouth to scream then stifle the shriek that closes off my throat. I run to the side of the building, crouch down, and start to call 911 and stop. I can’t.

  It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s too late.

  I turn and throw up my guts and break into a cold sweat, my whole body shaking.

  I go back to being deaf and blind, pretending not to see or hear what I’m not supposed to because what good would it do to tell someone?

  I work at the bakery one afternoon after another. Nothing else happens, at least nothing that I see, but I’m haunted by what I saw and there’s no one I can tell, not even an eyewitness hotline for people who want to remain anonymous because that would boomerang and end up in our front yard.

  “Just shut up,” Anthony always says to me when I ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer. Maybe he’s right. That’s all that I can do. Only lately, it’s getting harder and harder to pretend.

  I think of my secret plan for the future and then I don’t and I shut that part of my life off and so-called normal life takes center stage again. One week. Just five days before the election, but front and center in my life aside from Michael is now the Vogu
e shoot.

  The photographer’s studio is down on Varick Street, and the shoot’s on a Saturday because we’re all in school, so I get there at nine a.m. on the dot, and the fashion editor whose face is famous from the documentary about Vogue is there along with the beauty editor who introduces herself. When I walk in they are already sorting through a dressing room hemorrhaging with designer clothes and deciding who will wear what, which will depend on what we look like in what they have, I guess, but how would I know since I’ve never done this before.

  I promised my mom and dad that Frankie, my driver and part-time babysitter would come along, which is annoying and infantile, but he does. And when he walks in with me they fixate on him like, what? Then they immediately assume oh cool, her personal bodyguard, instead of more like baby guard, but whatever, that seems to up my rank to superstar.

  So someone named Taffy Jean Harkness who works for the photographer John Plesaurus comes out with a neon yellow clipboard in her hand with yellow, green, and purple sticky notes stuck in perfectly straight rows down the sides. She attaches herself to me and tells me my orchid Prada snakeskin bag is so divine and then she examines my black patent leather heels with the red soles and about everything else I have on and acts like I’m Kim Kardashian or something.

  I follow her to the back of the studio where they have a buffet table with food like sashimi and California rolls and miso tofu or whatever.

  “Help yourself,” she says.

  “Thanks, I’m good,” I say, because (gag) I don’t normally eat that at nine in the morning. I sit down to wait while the editors go back and forth, dressed in really drab shit like gray leggings and long blah work shirts and no visible makeup and they could definitely use some, and anyway since they get all those freebies, why don’t they? And like where does it all end up anyway?

  So they continue to look over all the clothes and shake their heads like they’re trying to fathom some really deep mystery because the top editor has some obscure theme idea that they aren’t too sure about. So while they’re racking their brains, I check my cell over and over hoping that Michael texted or called because of the painful way we left things but of course he hasn’t. And that totally depresses me but doesn’t exactly surprise me because I know he is freakin’ confused about me and thinks that not doing anything is the smartest move. But how does that help either one of us? Because now, let’s face it, there is. No. Turning. Back.

  After me the other girls waltz in, because to them being there at nine must mean nine forty-five or whatever works for you. Neary, just Neary, who has no last name, is the daughter of a big Hollywood filmmaker and she looks kind of natural, like she doesn’t have to prove anything because her life is already so totally out there in Soho, Hollywood, Cannes, and elsewhere. She’s wearing no-name jeans, which is like reverse chic, I guess, with Uggs and a sort of low-end type, bulky, cheap-looking, red cabled cardigan with a hood that maybe came from a Salvation Army thrift shop. And she’s got a Starbucks venti in her hand which always kind of annoys me because it’s like what, you’d die without your caffeine fix 24/7?

  Anyway a minute after Neary, Bridget walks in and she’s the daughter of Jade Just, a top clothing designer, and her look is definitely more like “hello, everything that I have on, you just saw on the runway—if you made it there, assuming you’re important enough and all.” She’s in black cashmere that’s all wrapped up with a skinny alligator belt and leggings and some extraordinary black alligator motorcycle boots with killer chains that blow me away.

  The last one to come in is a girl whose name I think is Logan, which I always thought was a boy’s name. Jade whispers she thinks Logan is heir to Exxon. Logan is smiley and friendly and totally no-attitude and proof that money doesn’t necessarily turn you into a pretentious asshole—although, c’mon, it generally does.

  “Does anyone know what we’re doing here?” Bridget Just asks with a laugh.

  “Uh, no,” I say.

  “Or like what we’ll be wearing?” Logan asks.

  “I hope whatever they pick they won’t make us look stuck-up and stupid,” Neary says, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

  We all talk about how we hope, hope, hope they’ll let us keep the clothes, and then finally they bring out the outfits for us to try, and okay, most of them aren’t the kind of things we would want anyway, like gowns with feathers and then some off-the-wall plaid stuff with rips and inserts and diaper pins and what have you, and I’m like, WTF? Only I don’t say that. I don’t say anything. I just try to act like I’m cool with all this.

  The first dress they give me to try is a strapless, floor length satin thing in purple that’s huge. But that doesn’t bother them and they start to pin it because I guess the pins won’t show in the pictures. After about an hour of pinning, pinning, pinning every quarter inch of the seams on both sides with about a thousand tiny pins—occasionally drawing blood—and at the same time draping necklaces over my head, like one from Cartier with grape-size purple tourmalines that match the dress, they stand back and evaluate.

  One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. “No,” says the fashion editor, shaking her head.

  After everybody agrees that the dress and the whole look is dreck and doesn’t work, they come back with a short, frilly thing, which is gross and so not me, even though no one asks.

  “Try this, Gia,” the assistant to the fashion editor’s assistant says. So I do and I stand around in it and eventually they nix that too and it disappears like the gown that they had to remove four thousand pins from. The same thing happens for the other girls with their loser outfits and for four entire hours all that goes on is trying on more clothes and shoes and trying to put the clothes together with bracelets and necklaces. We have a break for lunch, but I still don’t want to eat. Even when they say that now they’ve brought in deli because, I mean, luncheon meat? So I go with veggie chips and a lemon San Pell.

  Everything starts up again until someone named Carlos who’s emaciated and wearing a short, bulky, ribbed blue sweater that looks hand knit by someone’s grandma—over pants that are tight and way short like something a Michael Jackson wannabe would be all over walks in with a skinny, long-sleeve, black knit dress that is high in front and virtually backless. It looks like something Jil Sander designed when she was obsessing about the photographer Helmut Newton, known for his weird nude shots.

  And omigod. It is undoubtedly. The. Hottest. Dress. In. The. Universe.

  And they give it to me. I put it on and almost jump up and down because it is so cool, and I turn around and see that it just about shows ass crack cleavage, which I guess is the whole point. And I am only sorry when I’m wearing it that I don’t have a tramp stamp that says Michael but of course my dad would crucify me if I did, along with the tattoo guy who gave it to me and Michael, or rather especially Michael, and especially, especially Michael if my dad knew he’s a cop. But anyway, everyone stops what they’re doing and turns and eyes me and wows about how it looks, so that is it!

  I take it off and they do my hair, which they sweep back in a dramatic way and then mousse up with all this exotic European crap you can’t find here.

  Then my makeup: primer, foundation, three kinds of highlighter, two kinds of cream blush, and then smudgy eyeliner in three shades of smoky gray and black, which they blend and blend and it’s all way heavier than I usually wear and definitely high-end slutty, but I guess the camera takes it down a notch. They put on three coats of mascara and deep red lipstick and black nail polish and finally an unreal real diamond bracelet with about eighty karats that was brought over in a ratty backpack on the subway by two guys who are dressed like vagrants but are packing serious heat.

  Overall the look is over-the-top total vamp, and I vow that no matter what happens I am not walking out of there. Without. That. Dress.

  Then comes hours of posing and trying not to feel and look stupid, stiff, and uptight, which I do anyway. Music is blasting in the background, which h
elps a little because I do love Rihanna and I am standing, sitting, shifting, one leg up, sort of twisted so that you get a view of the back and yada, yada, yada, for about two hours. And John Plesaurus, the photographer, who’s about forty-five, but old-guy sexy with longish curly hair, is standing over me, nearly breathing on my neck. Then he’s on the floor in front of me with his camera practically up me and he’s sliding along on his back calling out things like, “Gia, that’s beautiful, that’s beautiful” and “Gia, show me more shoulder” and “Gia, look at me, look at me with those sexy eyes, Gia” and “oh, that’s hot” and on and on like he’s trying to get me down on the floor with him, then finally he must have the pictures he needs because he suddenly stands.

  “That’s it,” he says.

  Boom. Lights out. Music off. It feels like when you’re in a movie theater and suddenly the movie fails and you’re in total darkness and you feel like someone woke you from a dream.

  John talks on his cell and talks some more, but he’s watching me from across the room. He finally ends the call and comes over and takes my hands in both of his and thanks me with a kind of warm, intense look in his eyes that tells me that if I am interested, he is definitely a player. But I pretend I’m not picking up those vibes and say “thanks, really, but no,” when he says you must be hungry and asks if I’m up for going to Williamsburg for incredible Ecuadorian food, whatever that is, with him and Taffy. So I just smile and say, “my parents are expecting me.”

  Frankie is asleep because it’s as hot as a sauna in the studio from all the lights, and anyway he had a massive meatball hero for lunch so he missed the whole John Plesaurus come-on thing, which is just as well. So I go back to the dressing room to put my own clothes on again and now I totally understand why models get thousands of dollars an hour to do this mindless, boring crap all day long.

  “When will the pictures run?” I ask one of the editors.

  “We’re not sure,” she says. “Maybe February or March.”

  That feels like years. “Thank you,” I say. “For including me.”