Chapter 1 : Part 2

How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls
by Zoey Dean

(Page 2 of 2)

A couple with a baby stroller vacated a bench to our left. I sat down and motioned for Pete to join me. Meanwhile, I noticed Charma chatting with Wolfmother, who'd circled back to make actual contact. Who could blame him? Charma had the kind of natural curves women pay a small fortune for and even then have to settle for saline.

"You got it?" Pete asked, drumming his fingers on his jeans impatiently.

"Right here." My heart hammered as I unzipped my backpack, taking out the white T-shirt that had, until an hour before, hung inside a frame on the exposed brick wall of our living room (whose futon also doubled as my bed). The front of the shirt featured a bird sitting on the neck of a guitar and the inscription woodstock: three days of peace and music. Not only was it the real deal from the greatest rock concert of all time, it was also signed by Jimi Hendrix. Two Cornell students, who would later become my parents, had stuck it out until Hendrix's set on Monday morning. My father had managed to get the shirt signed by the guitar god himself and gave it to my mother as a sign of his love and devotion.

Now, as a sign of my love and devotion, I was passing it on. To what's-his-name. Right. Pete.

"Like I said on Craigslist, it's in mint condition," I told him.

He held out a callused hand. "Let's see."

I hesitated. "I'd like to see the tickets first."

Out came his wallet, and then there they were: two frontrow seats to the Strokes at Webster Hall for that very night. The show had sold out within minutes last month. I'd tried everything to get tickets, but nada. Until now.

I should tell you, to be perfectly candid, the Strokes are not my favorite band. But my boyfriend, James, worships them. James - of the dazzling intellect and shining prose, a guy who considers Doris Lessing light reading - would blast "Heart in a Cage" and dance naked in his dorm room playing air guitar like a twelve-year-old. How can you not love a guy like that?

We 'd met in a senior writing seminar where James quickly established himself as the most articulate student in the room, thinking nothing of arguing - and doing it well - with a professor who just happened to have written the preface to the latest edition of The Elements of Style.

I noticed James, of course. From my seat in the back, I was wowed both by his intellect and by his swagger as he walked to his rightful place in the front row. It was amazing what you could see when you weren't worrying about people watching you.

Take, for example, Cassie Crockett. She had a Maxim body and fabulous blond hair. But on the first day of class, I noticed two fingers sneak under what I quickly realized was a fantastic wig. Her fingers reemerged holding a few strands of dung-brown hair, which she covertly dropped to the ground. Then she did it again. And again. Trichotillomania - the obsessive-compulsive need to pull out your own hair. I spent whole seminars wondering what it was like for Cassie to go out with one of the guys constantly circling her. Maybe she had a No Above the Neck rule, instead of a Below the Waist one.

This is the kind of thing that goes around in my brain.

Anyway, back to James. A few weeks into the semester, I wrote a five-thousand-word piece for the Daily News about a New Haven intersection where businessmen pick up transvestite hookers. I'd spend an entire week blending in at a nearby coffee shop, observing the girls and their customers, memorizing every detail. Our writing professor read aloud a section of my article to illustrate the kind of specificity he sought from us. Then he nodded in my direction.

Every head craned around to look at me. I could see their reaction all over their faces: Her? Really?

James corralled me after class. I was too shocked to be nervous, and then I was too at ease to remember why I would have been nervous. We went for coffee and agreed on everything and everyone from Jonathan Safran Foer (loved Everything Is Illuminated ) to Donna Tartt (loathed The Secret History). Lily, oracle of all romantic wisdom, had cautioned me to never, ever. I suppose you could say that I took her advice, in that my first meeting with James wasn't really a date. I was in his loft bed within five hours of "Want to grab a cup of coffee?"

We'd come to New York together after graduation, though not so together that we shared an apartment. His parents owned an excruciatingly chic white-on-white pied-?-terre in a Donald Trump Upper West Side development, though their threemillion- dollar mansion in Tenafly, New Jersey, was actually home. Dr. and Mrs. Ladeen - he was an intensely anxious but gifted cardiologist, she was a senior editor at the New York Review of Books - offered James the condo rent-free while he began what would surely be his meteoric rise to literary fame. Their expectation was based not only on the fact that he was truly talented, but also on the fact that his mother had used her connections to snag James a junior editor job at East Coast. East Coast is kind of like The New Yorker, except with even more of a focus on fiction.

Alas, James's parents had never warmed up to me. I'd tried, I really had, but there was no question they harbored hope James would get back together with his former girlfriend, Heather van der Meer, the youngest daughter of their longtime family friends. And thus the offer of lodging did not extend to me.

That was okay. There was plenty of time. James and I were happy. And tonight was his twenty-third birthday. I wanted it to be memorable, which was why I'd cut my bank account in half: first, dinner and a fabulous bottle of wine at the restaurant Prune. During dessert, I would casually break out the concert tickets, which would cause him to whoop with delight and lavish upon me the kind of public display of affection to which he was normally allergic. After the concert, we 'd go back to his place for the best part of the evening. And morning.

To finalize my plan, all I had to do was trade my dad's Woodstock T-shirt for the tickets.

"We doing this or not?" Pete tapped his coffee-colored loafer against the sidewalk.

I bit my lower lip. My parents would understand. Of course they would. Or at least that was what I told myself. We made the swap. God, James was going to be so surprised.

I stuck the tickets in my backpack and then rose to wish Pete a pleasant life. A kid with a shaved head - he couldn't have been older than fourteen - wheeled toward us on one of those delivery-boy bicycles. He was swerving from side to side, taking pleasure in scaring the little old Polish ladies nearby.

"Thanks," I told Pete. "Take good care of my - Hey!"

The kid on the bicycle sped past me, snatching my backpack before I could sling it over my shoulder.

"Stop! Stop that kid!" I bellowed.

I gave chase, Pete gave chase, and a lot of other people did, too. But the kid cut off the path and through the trees, pumping for all he was worth. A few seconds later, he was speeding down Avenue A with my backpack swaying from a handlebar.

It was almost as if the concert tickets and my two hundred dollars were waving goodbye.

Copyright © 2007 by Zoey Dean

About the Author

Zoey Dean is the author of the New York Times bestselling A-LIST series. She grew up in Beverly Hills and now lives in Palm Beach, where she is working on her next novel and dreaming of a Pulitzer - Lilly Pulitzer, that is.