Okay, um, I'm not too good at introductions, but here goes. I've been working on this story for a pretty long time; I posted it once before, but I got some bad reviews and was disheartened and took it down and revised it meticulously until it was (in my view) good enough to post again. I'm a bit anal like that with my writing. I'm sorry if it bears resemblance to other modernized P&Ps, but, you know, that's kind of hard not to do. Honestly, the only one I've ever read is Shine, and I know this will be nowhere near that. But even so, I think this is pretty good, and I hope it's worth your time.
A few notes: This story definitely deserves its "T" rating. Within its course, there will be plenty of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Okay, not so much, but it's a pretty liberal PG-13. I've been watching The OC too much lately, and it shows.
Q: What's the difference between a Jersey girl and trash?
A: Trash gets picked up.
(the preceeding was a joke)
Chapter 1
"New Jersey? New effing Jersey?" Caroline shrieked. I winced at her tone of voice. "Charlie, have you cracked?" I wasn't very happy about my friend's decision to buy a new house in Meryton, New Jersey either, but I decided not to be nearly as vocal about it as his sister.
"No, I haven't cracked," Charlie replied. "I just want to get away from all this stuffy New York society. I want to get back to reality, and nothing's more real than the Garden State, right? Right? Besides, I went there to check out the house last week; it's lovely!"
Charlie was special, to say the least. He had been my best friend since high school, and I was pretty sure he had been a space case since long before then. Whenever he was in search of something, he threw himself at the cause, often ignoring the feelings of others, as well as common sense, in pursuit of his dreams. While in some circles this was a plus and was known as "devotion", in this case it was known as "insanity".
"If you really want to get away, let's go to Nantucket or Colorado or something," Caroline continued. "You know, someplace peaceful, yet refined enough for our tastes. But New Jersey? Charlie, you're being completely ridiculous! And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Adam agrees with me, don't you?"
"Adam, is that true?"
I suddenly snapped out of my musings. "Well, I…" I stammered, looking very much like a deer caught in headlights. I hated it when Caroline and Charlie put me on the spot, which probably actually encouraged them. I cleared my throat and fixed my eyes on a framed photograph on the other side of the room. "New Jersey is certainly…different. But it's your life, your money. Do what you want. I suppose we'll have to come with you to keep you from doing anything seriously stupid."
Caroline stared at me incredulously, her mouth hanging open like an animal gasping for its last breaths. "Adam Darcy, I cannot believe you! How can you allow him to go through with this? It's…it's disgraceful! It's embarrassing! It's—"
"Well gosh, Caroline," Charlie retorted, looking obviously pissed (which was definitely not a very Charlie thing to be.) "Nobody said you had to come!"
"What—of course I'm coming with you! After all, it won't be entirely uncultured. Adam's going to be there, and Jennifer and Phil are coming down too. You can't leave me in the city all by myself this summer!"
I blanched at the thought. I could just picture it: Caroline wandering around the house in little more than glorified underwear, hitting on me every waking moment; Charlie's other sister Jennifer and her insanely boring husband Phil cackling with each other and Caroline over white wine and the E! channel; and Charlie himself, waking up around three in the afternoon and spending every single night at clubs dancing like a monkey on crack and attracting every girl who crosses his path with his patented Bingley Perma-Grin™ while I drink rum and Coke in a corner wishing I was anywhere but wherever I was. I whispered, "Oh, please God, no," but apparently the Man Upstairs didn't hear me.
"So what do you think, Adam honey?" Caroline cooed, putting her arm around my shoulder in an eerily affectionate/possessive way. "We'll make the best of it, right?"
I nodded weakly and smiled at her, but the only thing I could think was, Somebody please shoot me.
"Look at them. They're acting like rabid monkeys," my sister Sharon announced. Sharon, my older sister Jackie, and I were sitting on the couch observing yet another spat between Gabrielle and Kat, the two youngest in our family of five girls. Today they were fighting over a pink Juicy Couture miniskirt. Since they couldn't settle their differences on their own, they turned to our mother for guidance. Not that she was any help.
"But Mo-ther!" Gabby screamed, pointing accusingly at Kat. "Look at her thighs! She shouldn't be wearing miniskirts at all!"
"Oh, that is so not true!" Kat shouted back. "Besides, you've already got plenty of designer clothes. You have no right to take my skirt, you fat cow!"
"GIRLS," our mother screeched, "SHUT UP!" Gabby and Kat immediately froze, and the skirt dropped to the floor. "Now, what's the problem?"
They immediately started screaming simultaneously, trying to tell two different stories. They were so loud that mom looked like she was about to cry. Jackie and I struggled to stifle our giggles, while Sharon wore her usual bored/pained expression.
"Jackie, Lizzy, help me!" mom yelped.
Just as Jackie was about to open her mouth, our dad burst in through the front door.
"Good evening, ladies!" he bellowed, as all five of us girls rushed to him (Kat and Gabby reaching him first, where they immediately began "explaining" the miniskirt debacle.) Sharon waved at him halfheartedly, while Jackie and I stood nonchalantly, waiting for our dear old dad to shrug off the two loonies clinging to his arms. It took about thirty seconds, and ended with Kat asking, "So, who gets to wear the skirt?" to which dad replied, "It doesn't matter; you'll both end up looking like whores anyway," kissed Jackie and I on the cheeks, and hung his jacket up in the closet.
"Daddy, that was slightly uncalled for," Jackie scolded, taking his briefcase and placing it on its respective table in the hallway.
"Oh, I know," he replied, "but at least it gives them something to think about." I chuckled and returned to my spot on the couch, where I had been reading Anna Karenina. I was interrupted, however, by my father turning on the television, which was permanently stuck on CNN. Anderson Cooper was blabbing on about some foot-in-mouth comment some senator made, which bored the crap out of me.
"What do you think of this, Lizzy?" my dad asked, taking off his shoes.
"I think I'd rather watch The Simpsons. Can you change the channel?"
"Elizabeth!" my mother called from the kitchen, "You should really take interest! You're never going to land a job—or a man—if you don't become informed on current affairs!"
"Actually my dear," my dad announced, "I think I'd rather watch The Simpsons too." We didn't look behind us, but I was sure if I did I would see smoke coming out of my mother's ears.
I absolutely hated when my mother brought up the 'M' word: men. She was incredibly old-fashioned in that she believed that if I wasn't at least beginning the hunt for a man to settle down with at my ripe old age of twenty-one, I would be destined to end up a lonely, obese secretary and an embarrassment to the family. She was even harder on twenty-three-year old Jackie; even though our father loved us for who we were, our mother was convinced that there was something fundamentally wrong with Jackie and me. Personally (or not so personally, as I was certainly not the only one who thought this), I thought my mother was a total wacko, and often toyed with the idea that she was really a time traveler from the 19th century, come to implant ideas of social climbing and corsets into the minds of the youth of New Jersey. Luckily, we hadn't reached the corset subject…yet.
"I heard someone finally bought that house on Netherfield Grove," my mother announced over the Chinese take-out boxes that served as our usual Wednesday night meal. "Some nutso rich kid from New York wants to make it a summer home."
Netherfield Grove was the most expensive strip of real estate in the entire Meryton area (much more so than our family's painfully bourgeois neighborhood of Longbourn). All of the houses on it were super humongous and cost upwards of a million dollars. The house in question had been vacant for several months since its owner was arrested for tax fraud. The fact that someone was considering it as a summer home was altogether hilarious; obviously whoever this was needed to be told that suburban residences were generally full-time affairs, no matter how expensive they were. But…I had to give props to eccentricity.
I let out a laugh so hard that I nearly choked on my sweet and sour chicken. My family ignored my coughing spell and continued with the conversation.
"Ooh," Gabby squealed, "I hope he's hot! And not too old, so then he would date me and buy me lots of bling and designer clothes!"
Sharon rolled her eyes. "Gabby," she said, picking at her tofu stir-fry, "internal monologue means keep it inside your head because nobody else wants to hear it."
"Shut up!" Gabby shouted, throwing Sharon a death glare. "At least I have some imagination!"
"Ooh, I'm so jealous," Sharon replied sarcastically. "Besides, I highly doubt that you have any imagination at all, let alone some."
"Shut it, you two," mom announced, whereupon Sharon and Gabby immediately stared down at their boxes of food. "Anyway, his name is Charles Bingley, and he's bringing quite a bunch of people with him for the summer."
"I hope he brings lots of guys," Kat mused. "Then we can all have boyfriends."
"Christ," I interjected, resting my napkin on the table, "you and Gabby really do have one-track minds."
"We're not one-track," Gabby replied indignantly. "We think about plenty of other things. Like clothes, and One Tree Hill, and getting our driver's licenses."
"Ooh, what a fabulous life you lead," Sharon grumbled.
"Girls," my mother screeched (she was really good at that.) "Just—stop it! Can't we have a single meal together as a family without you girls yelling and fighting!"
"No," Sharon answered for us. Gabrielle squinted her eyes at her and stood up in a huff. She let out an angry, eardrum-bursting scream and stormed off to her room. Kat immediately followed, calling out, "Gabby, wait! Talk to me!"
We sat in silence for five whole minutes, before my dad finally restarted conversation. "So, Lizzy," he said, tapping his chopsticks together, "I don't think I've gotten a chance to ask you yet: how's school? Anything much changed since the last time we saw you?"
"They're building a new wing to one of the dorms; a professor got fired for hitting on a student…the usual."
"Well that's good," he said. "And how about you, Jacqueline? Glad to have the summer off? One of the few perks of being a teacher, I suppose."
"Yes," she answered simply. "It gives me more time to spend with my sisters. And teaching kindergarten, it's not like I have to spend the whole summer mapping out a curriculum, so that's good."
"Oh, my babies!" our mom cried dramatically. "You've been here three days already and it seems like we haven't seen you at all! This summer is just going to fly by!"
My mother, Drama Queen Extraordinaire.
From that point, the rest of the conversation went downhill. Sharon tried to sound intelligent by quoting Fight Club, Jackie noticed that some of her pork was undercooked, and mom mentioned buying new clothes for Gabrielle. I offered to clear the table, mostly for the sake of my own sanity.
When I was done throwing take-out boxes in the trash, I found myself completely bored. For me, boredom was the most painful feeling in the world. I was one of those people who, if left with nothing to do, would sink into a deep, spiraling hole of depression. Extreme? Yes, but true.
In times like these, the only thing that could calm my mind was television. I honestly didn't know why the tube had such an effect on me, but ever since I was young it was one of the only things that could placate me. Maybe it was the radiation, slowly frying my brain and eventually turning me into a mindless boob.
I flicked on the TV in my room: it was set on MTV, where some anorexic girls in bikinis were running around for no apparent reason. I wondered if maybe they were going to do anything interesting, like eat sushi off a naked fat man, but all they did was scamper around some more. I could have sworn that Pimp My Ride was supposed to be on right now.
Click. Click. Click. I was also a compulsive channel-changer. I spoke to myself as I quickly went through all 99 channels. "Lost? No. Televangelists? No. Emeril? No." I sighed loudly and plopped on my bed. "Grrrr, when will it be tomorrow already so I can watch my O.C. reruns?"
It was turning out to be a terribly dull summer. After another year of college that I had just ended, I didn't know what to do with my life; it was like I was just driving around the Parkway without knowing where I wanted to go, and if I wasn't careful I was going to end up shit-faced and broke in Hoboken…or at the very least, stuck in the world of only-slightly-higher-than-minimum-wage jobs like my best friend Charlotte Wong. At the moment, she was an assistant manager at a local Whole Foods, where I had spent a good amount of time in the past two weeks eating vegan muffins and waiting for my best friend in the universe to get off work so we could go to the $1.50 movie theater.
"Knock knock," a voice called from the other side of the door.
"Go away!" I yelled back, figuring I was talking to my mother or Gabby.
"Well, Duckie, that's a nice way to treat the person you share a room with. Are you watching TV?" I smiled weakly at her nickname for me. She had been calling me Duckie ever since she was twelve and saw Pretty in Pink for the first time, and had decided that I was going to be a female version of the boy Andi should have ended up with. Maybe it was true; I hadn't seen Pretty in Pink in several years, so I didn't remember.
"Okay, okay," I huffed, "come on in, Jackie." I hurriedly clicked the "power" button on the remote control, turning the television off. I lay back on my bed and stared up at the small picture on the wall, clipped from an article in Alternative Press, of my favorite band Mêlée.
"Are you alright?" Jackie asked, mildly interested.
"Yeah, don't worry about me. I'm just really freaking bored."
"Well that's not good." Jackie sat down on her bed and picked up the knitting that had been lying on her pillow. "So, do something. Get a job, or a boyfriend, or take some classes at the community college."
"No good," I breathed, scratching an itch on my arm. "Too late to register."
"So, what about a job?"
"I put in applications for the library and Jo-Ann Fabrics, but neither of them have called me back yet."
"God, Lizzy," Jackie laughed, "you've got an excuse for everything, don't you?"
"Probably. But what about you, Jackie? Why don't you practice what you preach?"
She smiled at me with one of those slightly-superior-but-not-snobby Jackie-type smiles that always alerted me that I had just asked a really stupid question. "Well, I'm not bored. I'm taking it easy. And I thought you were too."
"I am, but you know how things get. Three years at the University of Baltimore have completely fried my brain, and now, being here…" I sighed. "I'm a restless soul; I can't stand being stuck somewhere, even if that somewhere is home."
"You didn't have to come back here," Jackie responded. "You know that."
"If it weren't for you and dad, I wouldn't have come back. I'm still not used to not seeing my sister for six months. And our poor father: if it weren't for us, you know, he would probably go crazy. I would too, if I were the only man in the house." Jackie giggled and held up her knit scarf.
"It's not very good, is it?" she asked.
"Ugh, don't be so modest," I said. "It'll be perfect for winter. Or…you could sell it to a lame-brained scenester and make a lot of money."
"Now there's an idea." She fell back on her bed with a contented sigh. "So, changing the subject…you say you want to do something. What did you have in mind?"
I laughed. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Review because it's nice! Constructive criticism is appreciated, but not arbitrary "This is the worst story I've ever read!" comments. Those are just bad and don't help me in the least as a writer.