Chapter 1
Arrivals
The first time I saw Mark Knightly, my
world changed forever.
That morning began almost like any other.
Eyes closed, under a cloud of dark hair, I tried to avoid waking up. I had
trained myself to sleep through almost any noise, including the sound of the
builders constructing a new house, across the road from my own. But when the jackhammer rang out for the
third time, my best friend, Mouche (pronounced Moosh), screamed. She was curled
up in a cashmere blanket on the faux chaise lounge in the corner of my bedroom catching
up on her beauty sleep.
‘Enough already...’ she said theatrically,
throwing her pillow at me as a sliver of light streamed through the open
curtains. ‘Another bright and shiny Los Angeles day,’ Mouche added as she
flipped off the couch and flicked her blonde highlights off her face. Mouche
rubbed her eyes and glanced at the framed photograph of the Statue of Liberty.
She gave it to me for luck, for my birthday and because Mouche and I have
wanted to live in New York City for as long as I could remember.
‘Never give up on the dream,’ Mouche said
when she presented the picture to me, ‘New York is a great place to be a triple
threat whereas Los Angeles is all about the movies, darling.’
I glanced at the shifting sky and
wondered how Mouche managed to look like a movie star at 8am. I threw the
pillow right back at her.
‘You have glitter face, Mouche.’ I said as
I stretched my legs, ‘and I’m running late. My mom’s plane arrives at the
airport in...exactly eight minutes...I promised we’d pick her up. C’mon, we’ve
got to be ready...you need to get dressed.’
‘Touché,’ Mouche said (she’d been listening
to French phrases on her iPOD all summer). ‘By the way, you have mascara under
your eyes, Phoebe. Better wipe it off before we leave.’
‘Okay, but I don’t have time to put on
make-up...’
‘That could be a mistake.’
I looked at her incredulously.
‘You never know how many casting agents
could be at LAX,’ Mouche added as she dragged a brush through her tangles.
Because we both trained as ballet
dancers, we were familiar with the art of stage make-up but I only liked to
wear it on special occasions. I grabbed some gloss from the top drawer. I read
in a helpful guide to dating called Mrs
Robinson’s Advice, that, ‘a girl who
can’t be bothered with lipstick can’t be bothered with life,’ and I’d never
want to be accused of that.
Mouche has always been good with make-up
tips. You could see the results of our make-up experiments in every far flung
corner of my bedroom. The place looked like a local beauty salon. It was
obvious my bedroom hadn’t been tidied the whole time my mother was away in
London. Oh, that’s something else you should know about me. I was born in
England and sometimes I use British-isms like ‘tidy’ and ‘lolly’ and ‘shop’
instead of store.
‘We’re practically adults,’ Mouche said,
‘your mom’s going to expect better housekeeping skills...’
‘It’s true, this place is a mess, but at
least I remembered to stack the cupboards with fresh food from the market,’ I
said, as Mouche and I grabbed our sweaters and pulled on our Uggs in differing
shades of caramel and pink.
‘Unusual combination - boots and pyjama
pants,’ Mouche noted, assessing her feet in the mirror. The only part of the
glass not covered in used dancing shoes and feather boas from all the school
plays we’d performed in, was the bottom right hand corner. Mouche flexed her
ankles in the light.
‘We should go. Better to be unfashionable
than late,’ I said using words destined to return to haunt me.
‘Uh huh, I’m not so sure,’ Mouche said.
I gathered my car keys and locked the
front door. Mouche gave the builders across the road a V for Victory sign as we
drove out of our little gated community. Sunrise is a tiny suburb, not far from
Bel Air, but not nearly as posh. Mouche turned the volume of my car stereo up
high. Music blared out of the windows as we drove past urban scenery. Suddenly
we felt like we were in a classic road film as Mouche and I sang along with the
words.
We
were driving along the Los Angeles freeway for the first time, feeling very
grown up, and this was a cause to celebrate.
The fact that we were running extremely late by the time we arrived at
LAX, ensured that I was in the right spot at the right time to view the arrival
of ‘the hot ones.’
It’s just a pity that I wasn’t looking my
best when I saw Mark Knightly. I was looking, as Mouche said, ‘like a
‘slept-in’ blanket’. But as Teegan, one of the meanest Princesses in school,
duly noted later, ‘he never would have noticed you anyway...’
Mouche had dropped me off at the
international lounge at LAX and was looking for a car space. I was searching
the arrivals board when people started to walk from the customs area to greet
whoever waited for them.
I saw Mark Knightly first, but he was too
busy to see me.
Teegan, who ran with a clique of besties
known as ‘The Princesses,’ was also at the airport that day with her family.
She noted the arrival of the hot ones (as Mark and Jet became known) in her
childish but addictive blog, ‘Fresh off
the boat and new in town,’ she wrote. Then she proceeded to dissect every
item of clothing both the boys and the girl who travelled with them wore.
‘Even the sister could be a mini model if
she just wore some make-up,’ Teegan sniped in her blog, ‘but the boys...’
They lit up the scenery as they spoke and
I should know. After they entered the public arrivals area, they stood slightly
in front of me. The boys paused and looked around them, speaking as they waited
for the girl who trailed slightly behind. I was waiting for my mother, trying
to hide my out of date boots and messy hair, behind a pole. So, although we
never spoke, I think fate played a part when I saw Mark and overheard him
talking first...
‘Seems like the locals are pretty tame
after the recklessness of Ibiza,’ Mark said languidly.
‘I can’t believe your uncle is such a
tightwad he made us fly commercial.’ Jet replied.
‘He’s trying to teach us how to rough it,’ Mark mused sarcastically,
using an expression he’d picked up on his travels.
‘Never mind, the food was great and the
flight attendants were hot...’ Jet said, focusing on the upside of any given
situation.
As the boys walked through the arrivals
lounge, Mark Knightly looked at his surroundings with disdain. The thought of
what he imagined his new home to be, an expanse of satellite suburbs beyond the
hustle and smog of Los Angeles, seemed to fill him with distaste.
Suddenly Mouche appeared alongside me, breathless
from the carpark.
‘Hey Phoebe, I managed to find a parking
space...whoa...who are they?’ Mouche whispered.
‘The new boys in town...I guess,’ I replied.
Mouche acted swiftly. She whipped out her
cell and took a few photographs of the hot ones.
‘Quick, you take some from another angle,’
she added. ‘Why can’t guys that hot ever go to our school?’
The new arrivals were dressed like stylish
English hippies in dark sunglasses as they met with the girl, collected her
luggage and strode towards a fancy car.
‘Nobody even came to greet us,’ we heard
the girl say sweetly.
‘She sounds a bit...’
‘Lost?’ I added.
‘I was going to say, vacant,’ Mouche
whispered.
The dark haired, slightly taller boy took
her arm in a brotherly gesture of solidarity and gave the younger girl a ‘make
the best of it,’ smile.
Yes, they were soon to be Sunrise High’s
newest and most talked about ‘poor little rich kids.’
‘But so fashionable,’ Teegan remarked in
her blog.
It’s true that Mark and Jet wore cool,
faux leather jackets (‘friends of the wildlife,’ Teegan told Tory who told
Freya who told Brooke who told Mouche, who told me).
That was all I saw that day because my mom
arrived about three seconds later and scooped me up in a mom hug.
‘Hey girls, I hope you were good while I
was in Europe!’
‘Of course, Trish,’ Mouche replied like the
worldly-wise best friend she was. Mrs Mouche sells houses for a living and for
exceeding their half-yearly targets, her entire sales team had been gifted a
whirlwind summer vacation culminating in Florence, Italy.
‘How exotic,’ Mouche had remarked when we
both received photos the previous week, via email, of Mrs Mouche standing
outside the Uffizi Gallery. ‘I love exotic places,’ Mouche remarked.
Later that day Mouche and I were lounging
in Mouche’s pool before classes started on Monday. We flicked through the cell
phone images of the boys’ arrival at LAX, deleting all but the best ones.
‘It’s ridiculous to be fans of guys we
didn’t know,’ I said.
‘...who aren’t even famous.’ Mouche
agreed, but she couldn’t resist the standard comment, ‘mmm...yummy...’ and I
totally agreed.
‘His friend’s hot too. Sometimes blondes
have to stick together,’ Mouche replied.
Mouche and I had always been in
competition. We had opposing hair colour. As you may have gathered, mine’s
dark, Mouche’s is light, but our major contrasts were not just cosmetic. We had
different but complimentary personalities.
‘Phoebe?’
‘Mmm...I said as I applied Spf30...’
‘We’ve been friends since we were six and
I want you to know there is something truly comforting about this.’
‘Uh huh,’ I said. ‘What’s with the deep
and meaningful conversation?’
‘Well, you know the sweater I borrowed
and haven’t returned yet?’
‘My cashmere?’ I asked.
‘...yeah. It got caught in the dryer
and...shrank.’
I scowled.
‘How could you? It was never supposed to
go in the dryer in the first place!’
Mouche looked mortified.
‘I know. I’m so sorry. I’ve been trying
to think of a way to tell you.’
‘I wanted to wear it tomorrow...’
‘I know...’
After a few seconds, I smiled.
‘I suppose I could wear something
else...’
‘I promise I’ll get you another one when
I can afford it.’
‘That’s okay...’
Money had been tight since our fathers
absconded.
‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way
we could just snap our fingers and get anything we wanted....’
‘You mean...conjure up a treasure chest or
something? Yeah, that’d be great.’
Like sisters, Mouche and I have shared
the spoils of our wars all through grade school and now high school. It’s bound
to happen in our first year of college. We even worked part-time at the local store
all summer in order to save money for the ultimate dream – New York. One day, I aim to be a triple threat on
Broadway; Mouche wants to be a lawyer. I have no idea why. Mouche loves legal
dramas on television.
Both of our mothers are bachelorettes and
quite young and wild and get along famously since they are the only ‘single’
Moms in our tiny street. You can see
them now, sitting on the porch together ‘catching up’ on life in Sunrise over
the past month, looking like they invented that famous phrase ‘mommies who drink.’
I jumped out of the pool and grabbed a
towel. Mouche dived under the water and emerged with a piece of gold – a ring
had been left in the water – with a tiny dolphin on it. It probably belonged to
someone at last night’s party – we’d walked over to Mouche’s house (next door
to mine) to go for a swim.
‘Finders keepers,’ Mouche said with a
glimmer in her eye, but I knew she’d hand it in to lost property at school the
next day. That’s just the type of person Mouche is – loyal and trustworthy.
If it weren’t for the amazing competition
Mouche and I feel at times, our friendship would be truly perfect.
I mean, we really are there for each other.
We both studied fashion and theatre design
at the private school we attended in Bel Air until tenth grade (before our
deadbeat dads had financial collapses) and we went loco (meaning local – to the
performing arts school in Sunrise). Our daddies also turned gay for each other
around that time and that’s when our sisterly friendship became - how do they
say it in those old English films? Very handy. Yes, that’s right, handy. We might have needed some major
therapy when Daddy Mouche and Daddy Phoebe ran off together, if it hadn’t been
for the strength of our friendship. We leaned on our sisterly bond in our
darkest hours and focused on the pastimes we enjoyed, swimming, dancing and
talking about boys.
Fate played a part in our simultaneous
transfers to Sunrise High, after our parents split up. Even
at grade school Mouche had saved me from the evil, fashion-challenged bullies
who tried to steal my lunch, my purse and our collective sanity. Those nasty
girls morphed into a select group known locally as The Princesses and they
inhabited Sunrise High, as luck would have it, around the same time as us.
But before I tell you more about the
people, I should describe the place.
Near Los Angeles you can locate the gated
community of Bel Air (where Mark Knightly would later reside) and at the foot
of the hill, our world – a tiny little satellite suburb known brightly and only
as Sunrise, population three thousand and nineteen people, exists.
Amongst these people there were the usual
small town individuals: the local dentists, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers,
diner and shop owners, as well as a fair array of eccentric teenage characters,
many of whom attended Sunrise High. The school was known for its ‘Centre of
Performing Arts Excellence,’ the program in which Mouche and I and twenty-eight
other students were enrolled.
Six of these so-called ‘creatively gifted’
students were boys. I’d kissed all six of them but only because we’d
participated in ‘scene studies’ for different plays we’d workshopped in theatre
class over the past year.
‘We’ve never kissed anyone as hot as Mark
and Jet,’ Mouche said, taking another glance at the image of Jet on her cell
(she’d sent me the one of Mark). Mouche had at least six photos of the boys
from LAX taken from as many different angles.
‘That’s bordering on obsessive,’ I joked
to Mouche, knowing we’d both faint if anyone found out we’d taken pictures of
boys we’d never even met.
‘Touché,’ I replied using Mouche’s newly
acquired French, ‘I’ve never really kissed anyone I was totally into.’
‘It’s all about the kiss,’ Mouche said,
‘the kiss has to live up to your expectations or it’s just never going to
happen. I’ve been doing some private research. Some of the boys didn’t want to
be used for practice, if you know what I mean. Some were shy, some were
confused or just bored or uncertain of the right way to go about it....I’ve
been thinking there should be a manual...’
‘You mean, like Teegan’s blog?’
‘Not really, I mean, Teegan’s blog is just
gossip. I think we need more actual research less filler...’
‘You mean, like a dating manual for teenage
girls?’
‘Something like that, but more Sunrise
specific...’
‘You mean, like a date and rate?’
‘Or maybe like a date and run. Remember
when your mom went on her first date after the divorce? And the guy was such a sleaze
she excused herself to go to the ladies room and crawled out of the bathroom
window?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘Well, since we haven’t had that much
dating experience we should be open to research – our own and other
people’s...’
‘True.’
That was the first time we discussed the
idea of a dating manual for teenage girls. But we never expected, in the course
of our ‘research,’ that we’d actually fall in love with Mark Knightly and Jet
Campbell.
