Pretty Things

Pretty Things

DUTTON BOOKS

Chapter One

Charlie

I think I've spent roughly one third of my entire life in Brie's bedroom. I've seen her walls covered in Paddington Bear wallpaper. I've seen the walls covered in pictures of Westlife (which, quite frankly, I still have nightmares about), and I helped paint the walls the current fetching shade of Pink Sequin Editions Indian Summer Flat Matte, which isn't as garish as it sounds. It was also my idea to paint the ceiling midnight blue with lots of little stars sprinkled all over it. I spend a lot of time lying in, on, or around Brie's bed, so I like having something pretty to look at.

I like sleeping with Brie; she never hogs the covers and she keeps her elbows to herself. I even have a drawer here full of T-shirts and clean pants and a spare jar of moisturizer, which simples things up so much.

Brie was snoring very gently and delicately when I woke up this morning. And when I got back from the bathroom, she was still asleep. Which wasn't a huge surprise. Loves her sleep, does Brie. I pulled on my Belle and Sebastian T-shirt, walked across the room, and looked out of the window.

The pavement was already glistening; bumblebees, fat and stupid from too much pollen, buzzed lazily around the lavender bush in her front garden. It was going to be another of those hot summer days when the air seems to shimmer with possibilities. So I didn't know why Brie was wrapped around her flowery duvet like it was the dead of winter.

I tugged gently on the chocolate-brown hair that was all that was visible of her.

"Hey! Sleepy girl! You need to get your arse out of bed," I whispered, leaning down to uncover her ear. "If we're late for the first day, I'm going to claim ownership of the iPod for the whole week."

She gave a tiny, delicate moan and burrowed deeper under the duvet.

It was time for Plan B. "Okay, I'm going to rifle through your underwear drawer, find your grungiest knickers, and sell them on eBay."

The covers were sloughed off with an indignant squeak. "Ewww, that's gross," she mumbled. "And I don't have any grungy knickers."

Brie emerging from sleep is like watching a flower slowly unfurl its petals. She stretched slowly, pink tongue poking out of her mouth as she yawned, her hands curled into fists as she batted the air like a playful kitten.

"What color am I?" she asked eagerly, kicking back her duvet and kneeling to investigate.

I looked at the pale thighs emerging from her boxer shorts.

"Well," I said consolingly. "You're a sort of clotted cream color, and yesterday you were more of a semi-skimmed milk. The sheets, on the other hand, are seriously bronzed."

Brie looked up from dismayed contemplation of her legs and stared at the fake-tan stains on the sheets as if she wasn't quite sure how they got there.

"Well, I'm not going to that drama club thingy," she announced simply, lying back down and pulling the duvet back over her head. "I'm meant to have a tan! I can't act if I'm not looking good." The last two sentences were muffled, and then the Brie-shaped hump started shaking slightly, and I knew she was crying.

Sometimes I worry about how Brie will cope when something genuinely catastrophic happens instead of the usual crap that she deems weep-worthy. If Timberlake, her cat, died, or she found out she had six weeks to live, or her hair fell out, she'd probably have to have a Prozac drip installed.

It really wasn't the right time for Brie to be having one of her regularly scheduled weepathons. I'd begged and cajoled and pleaded to get her to sign up for the summer drama workshop that was starting today. Getting her through the auditions, getting her to pass her audition, had taken years off my tender, young life. Because no way, no how, was I going to spend another summer watching daytime TV and eating crisps while Brie watched me eating crisps and occasionally snuck one into her mouth when she thought I wasn't looking.

Getting Brie out of bed and in the mood to kick some drama-workshop butt wasn't just a matter of necessity. It was a matter of life and death. Like that bit in a movie when there's a bomb with a ticking clock attached to it, and it's counting down sixty seconds, and the guy who knows whether the red or the blue wire should be cut isn't going to talk. Down-and-dirty tactics was all that I had left.

"Okay, don't come," I said, like I didn't care in the slightest, while bouncing up and down on her bed in a manner that I knew was going to piss her off. "It's not my problem if you have nothing else in life and you fail )'our certificate in Beauty Therapy Sciences and have to end up pretending that you're between jobs when really you're working in a call center or worse! Yeah! You're working in Burger King, and the grease is clogging up your pores, and you can't afford proper products anymore, so all the shine has gone from your hair because you're using supermarket own-brand shampoo."

It worked. There was an anguished moan from the bedclothes, and then Brie was falling out of bed to shoot me a baleful glare before disappearing into the bathroom.

It would be at least three-quarters of an hour before she was ready, so I turned on her ceramic hair straighteners and headed down to the kitchen.

Brie's house smells of furniture polish and Glade PlugIns with an overpowering topnote of Dunhill International cigarettes and Gucci flush, courtesy of her mum. The smell is only temporarily relieved when you're in Brie's room, which stinks of fake tan and Anna Sui Sweet Dreams.

Everything in Brie's house is white and gold to match Linda, who vacuums three times a day. You have the audacity to eat a bag of crisps while you're waiting for Brie to get off the telephone, and there she is trying to trip you up with her Dyson.

Linda looked up when I walked into the kitchen and waved the coffeepot at me enticingly. "Morning, sweetie. You're looking particularly handsome today. Pity you couldn't find a hairbrush, though." I could tell that Linda had only had one cup of coffee. Usually she's not quite so laid-back.

I kissed her on the cheek, grabbed a mug from the cupboard, and sat down at the kitchen table, where Henry, Brie's angelic-looking younger brother, was shoveling cornflakes into his gaping maw. This prevented him from sticking his tongue out or giving me the finger, which is what I usually get from him by way of a greeting. Little shit.

Mr. Brie, or Dave as I never call him, was cowering behind the Daily Mail as usual and giving the appearance of a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

"It's Charlie," Linda announced unnecessarily. Mr. Brie moved his paper aside to give me a nod, but Henry didn't even bother to look up from spraying milk and cereal all over the table. He did manage to reach under the table and kick me extra hard on the shin, though.

At least Linda gave me a cup of extra-strong coffee before we embarked on our usual conversation.

"So, how are you, Charlie?" (She has this really annoying habit of saying my name at the end of every sentence like she has to remind herself who she's talking to.)

"I'm fine, Linda. How are you?"

"Well, I wish I could say I was fine, but I'm not, Charlie. How's your mum?"

"She's okay."

"So you and Brie were home very late last night, Charlie. I hope you gave her a chance to meet other boys, because she'll meet someone else, you know, and then you'll be wishing that you'd been more thrusting and dynamic and grabbed her when you had the chance," Linda said brightly, tapping her cigarette into the ashtray, which was nestled next to the milk jug on the kitchen table. Even a hardened smoker like myself winced at Linda's relaxed attitude to smoking near fresh dairy.

Mr. Brie snorted a couple of times at this damning indictment of my girl-getting skills, because his gaydar is far more evolved than his wife's, which is actually quite disturbing when you think about it.

"I'm not really into girls, Linda." Which she knew damn well. "But if I was, then I'm sure me and Brie would be picking out china patterns and saving for our honeymoon. And anyway you must be secretly relieved that I don't have dishonorable intentions toward your daughter."

"Hmm, you say that, Charlie, but I'm sure if the right girl were to come along, you'd stop all this nonsense. It's just a shame that Brie isn't pretty enough to change your mind."

Which of course was Brie's cue to trip into the kitchen just in time to hear her mother's judgment on her looks.

For a second her face collapsed. Her perfect little smudge of a nose wrinkled up, and her green eyes went cloudy. There was even a slight lip tremble until her features righted themselves into their eternal loveliness. I didn't know what Linda was on because, really, Brie is ridiculously gorgeous.

Brie shook her newly straightened hair out of her eyes, blinked a couple of times, and then sidled nearer so she could give me a good-morning kiss.

"I don't suppose you woke me up too early 'cause I haven't had breakfast yet, you know?" She was already moving past me to investigate the contents of the fridge.

"No, I'm on time, and you're late. Again. Can we go?"

But was Brie concerned with being hideously late for our first day of drama group? Yeah, right! In the Brie-verse, there were far more important things to worry about.

"There's no bacon or eggs or sausages," she whined at Linda with a wounded look on her face. "I have to have a fry-up for breakfast. You know I'm not doing carbs."

Linda tapped out another cigarette from the packet and knocked the filter tip against her frosted pink talons. "You shouldn't eat all that fatty food, you'll get porky. I'm sure you've put on weight since last week."

And then Brie looked down in horror at her thin little legs in their Diesel jeans, and Linda's work here was done.

I got up-careful not to scrape back my chair on the newly waxed kitchen floor-then grabbed my bag and Brie.

"Get something to eat now, and then we're going," I said in my most "don't mess with me, bitch" voice, the one I use exclusively to chivvy Brie along.

There was a sorrowful sigh, which would have made a lesser being break down in tears. I just gave her a flinty-eyed look and waved my watch in her face until she grabbed a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps from the cupboard and a can of Diet Coke from the fridge.

"Well, bye bye, sweetie," Linda said, and I wasn't entirely sure which one of us she was speaking to. "Break a leg or something."

Brie muttered something that may or may not have been "bitch" under her breath and picked up her Louis Vuitton Murakami Cherry Blossom bag from the stairs as I followed her out.

We stepped out into the blinding sunlight and simultaneously reached for our sunglasses. Brie was studying the nutritional information on the back of the crisps packet, her lips moving as she sounded out the words. "Seventeen point three grams of carbs," I heard her mutter. "I should be able to digest them by seven tonight."

I reached around to give her waist a comforting squeeze. "Linda has issues on her issues, right? And she only says mean stuff about you because she can't handle that you're cute and hot and she's thundering toward menopause."

Brie tucked her arm into mine and pulled her Von Dutch baseball cap down so she wouldn't freckle. "But, Charlie, you would tell me if I was fat, wouldn't you?"

Brie was wearing tight, low-rider jeans, which showed off her practically concave stomach to its best advantage. Then there was the floaty, gauzy top, which may have been a pocket handkerchief in another life. "Brie, you are not fat. You are as far from fat as it's possible to be. Now shut the luck up because this conversation is getting really boring." And there was a God because she shut up and actually started walking, giving us an outside chance of catching the bus and getting to Camden before ten.

"We haven't had the postmortem about last night," I reminded her as we got to the bus stop, and she squinted up at the indicator board to see how long it would be before the bus chugged into view.

Brie didn't answer for a while because she was digging around in her bag. But eventually she pulled out her Lancome Juicy Tube in Marshmallow, slicked it over her lips, and answered me. "There wasn't a single guy in there who knew how to dress." Pause, while she gave me a Significant Look from under her lashes. "Not like you."

"That's because I'm gay, sweetie. Being a style icon is all part of my genetic coding."

"I wish you weren't gay."

"I wish that you didn't wish that I wasn't gay."

Brie and I have this conversation at least five times every day. I love her, she's my best friend, but even if I was straight or she was a boy, I'm not entirely sure that we'd go out or ever have one frenzied night of passion on her Calvin Klein bed linen.

I'm an indie/emo hybrid. All my T-shirts have faded in the wash, and I cut my hair with nail scissors and bleach the ends when I get bored. I own three pairs of Converse All Star low-tops, each one more battered than the last, and I bite my nails. Though I do have an incredibly chiseled jawline, if you happened to be comparing me to, say, someone who didn't have a jawline at all. And if I was straight, which I'm not, the kind of girl I'd want to fall wildly and passionately and madly in love with would be Brody from the Distillers.

Brie, meanwhile, is a pastel-colored princess who'd love to get me into Gucci anything and has offered many times to actually pay for me to get my hair properly highlighted. She also has a disturbing tendency to dress like a Desperate Housewife.

Which is not to say she doesn't appreciate my not-so-inconsiderable charms. I'm very; pretty, in a manly kind of way.

"Ooooh, Charlie, you have the longest, fluffiest boylashes I've ever seen," she's fond of saying, before getting huffy because she has to apply two coats of Eyelure Kiss Me Mascara to get the same effect.

As we got on the bus and I gave the driver two tickets because Brie never manages to get it together to buy the prepaid books, she turned to me, mouthed an apology, and smiled.

"I don't know.' what I'd do without you," she murmured, before heading for the stairs, and I realized that even though she annoyed the hell out of me and there was no reason for our friendship whatsoever, I couldn't think of another person in this world that I'd want to be my best friend.

The ride into Camden was pretty uneventful. Mostly we hoped that the fat goth boy who'd stunk of patchouli oil and glommed on to us when we'd auditioned, hadn't made the final cut.

"It took me forever to get the stink out of my hair," Brie remembered with a shudder. "I hope everyone's nice. And cute. I need cute boys this summer. Lots of them."

"I hear you," I said feelingly. "One cute boy for you and one for me. We could double-date." I rubbed her shoulder. "So, honey, you ready for your close-up?"

Brie suddenly squinched up her face as if she was in great pain. "Shit!" she exclaimed. "I forgot about the whole acting thing. That weird woman in charge, she's going to expect us to act, isn't she?"

I nodded gravely. "'Fraid so. I think it's pretty much a prerequisite of a drama group."

"Don't use long words, they give me a headache." Brie looked at her half-eaten bag of crisps and then violently threw them down the bus, earning her glares from a couple of grannies who didn't appreciate getting crisp crumbs in their blue rinses. "Oh God, I feel sick. I don't want everyone staring at me. Why did I let you talk me into this?"

Knowing very well that she's the biggest drama queen this side of wherever Paris Hilton lives, I didn't really waste much time consoling Brie. Instead I clasped her hand in mine and gave it a little shake.

"Listen, Brie," I said urgently. "We're going to make a pact."

"What kind of pact? I'm not spitting on your hand or nothing 'cause that's really unhygienic."

I swear to God, I have the patience of a saint. "We are going to swear on our iPod that we will do everything in our power, short of illegal acts, to score the lead roles in whatever lame play we end up spending our entire summer working on. Okay?"

"But what if-"

"Brie! Do Beyonce or Christina or whichever lame MTV diva you're mostly admiring this week waste their time with what-ifs? No, they spend all their energy on looking fabulous and cutting down any bitch that dares get in their way. So, swear on the freakin' iPod."

"You are so gay."

"Finally you're on message about that, great. Have we got a pact or not?"

She pouted for precisely five seconds and then solemnly shook my hand. "Okay, we'll do this pact thing, then."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Pretty Things by Sarra Manning Copyright © 2005 by Sarra Manning. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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