The queens of new york, p.22
The Queens of New York, page 22
The most beautiful blackwood colored pencils lie before me. When I flip back the paper lid, the pencils glide into my hands, chalky and smooth as I roll them between my fingers.
“Wow, thank you.”
Ariel wraps her arm around my back. “So you can draw the hottest anime men in all the land.”
“I won’t disappoint you.”
“As hot as Akil though?” Everett winks.
“Oh, shush.”
At that, Everett grabs my phone and shows Ariel more pictures of Akil, as if she hasn’t flipped through two dozen already. There’s the selfie of us at Flushing Meadows, perched on the ledge of the Unisphere, a pigeon flapping between us. There’s Akil in Manga Palace, takeout chow fun dangling between his lips. There’s a video-chat screenshot of his thumbs-up when I showed him my detailed college spreadsheet last night.
“This one’s my favorite.” Ariel smirks, pointing to a photo of my boyfriend mid-sneeze.
Everett snorts. “Him at his most attractive.”
The kitchen door swings open and Lizzie appears with egg tarts, a secret treat, still warm and flaky. On the count of three, we bite into sweet, sugary egg and hot butter. Ariel finishes first and grabs a napkin from the dispenser, wringing it between her hands.
“So,” she says, “I have to tell you guys something.”
“You’re not, like, moving to France, are you?” Everett groans.
“No. Although from what your parents have said, Paris sounds pretty nice.”
“Not worth it. Trust me.”
I pull at my bangs. “What is it?”
Ariel looks at Everett, cheeks ballooning with tart, and then at me, wide-eyed and frozen in place. “I’m going back to Busan. In September. I’m going to stay for the year.”
“The entire year?” I hear myself ask.“But what about Briston?”
“I’m deferring enrollment. I’ll go next fall. My parents and I had a long, long talk about it. I don’t think we slept at all last night.” She laughs nervously. “They have some stipulations, like I need to take a couple of online courses, and call them all the time, and come home during the holidays, but mostly . . . they’re on board.”
Everett’s jaw hangs open, egg still dissolving on her tongue.
“I’m not just going to hang out at the beach. Although that’s definitely a perk.”
Ariel slips a bracelet off her wrist. I hadn’t noticed it before, entangled with a zigzag embroidery floss bracelet. She lays it on the table—an aquamarine sea-glass rock resting on a shiny, silver chain.
“Wow,” I say, “Bea made these? They’re even more beautiful in person.”
Ariel smiles. I can imagine the pastel cottages that inspired her sister’s art, their grandfather’s ships on the cerulean sea. It’s like Bea’s here with us, even though she’s not.
“I’m going to finish what she started,” Ariel says, sliding the bracelet back onto her wrist.
“You’re going to open a jewelry store?”
“Not just by myself. Bee’s friends are going to help, and actual professionals who she was in contact with in Busan. I’m going to get it up and going with a website and a storefront, and then Haejin and Carl said they’d take over. And who knows, maybe then, we’ll have already expanded to New York.”
Everett gasps. “Oh my God, you’re, like, a real-life business woman. We should buy you a suit.”
“Definitely no suits,” Ariel laughs. “We’re going for a bohemian vibe.”
We stare at her in awe. I know we are thinking of so many things: Ariel taking Korea by storm, photoshoots and models, her toes in the sand. And how Bea will be in every bead, every charm, every bracelet. I can almost hear her now, floating through us, full and bright.
“I couldn’t have made this decision without you,” Ariel says. “You’ve been here for me all summer. And I know that I wasn’t always the easiest to reach.” She bites her lip. “This time, it will be better, I promise. We’ll video-chat all the time. Even more now, since I’ll be up at all hours of the night taking virtual classes.”
I nod, egg splattered on my chin. Everett blinks back tears. Just months ago, Ariel sat in this same vinyl booth, here but not here, always slipping from our grasp. Now, she is practically an adult. Tears start to prick my bottom lashes too.
“Wait, not both of you crying.” Ariel dabs her crumpled napkin on my eyes.
“Sorry,” I say, “I’m just happy for you. I think that Bea would be really proud.”
“Ugh,” Everett sobs, “group hug!”
She throws her arms around us, and we collide—our plates knocking against each other, tarts threatening to spill all over the floor.
Ariel scrunches her nose. “I love you guys, but you are so cheesy.”
“Cheesy is what makes us great.” Everett kisses her cheek and then mine. “My fabulous friends, all together again.”
“A reason to celebrate,” Ariel says. “We should do something special.” She scoots forward and I nod, the taste of sugar and aquamarine dreams still on my lips.
Everett leaps up, hands clasped. “I have just the thing.”
40
Ariel
Everett has packed the most elaborate brunch I’ve ever seen. Jam and brie, a baguette, frosted sugar cookies, and things I’ve never even eaten before like figs and truffle butter.
After we left the restaurant, we rode our bikes to the Trader Joe’s on Metropolitan. Jia and I wanted to go inside, but Everett insisted that we wait for her in the parking lot. She said we would ruin her vision. So she gallivanted around the store by herself while Jia and I went to Petco. We cooed at kittens and rescue dogs, and talked about Akil and Haejin, art and Busan. Forty-five minutes later, Everett emerged with four vinyl grocery bags, and miraculously, a picnic blanket.
Now she is buzzing. She lays out the gingham quilt on a patch of grass in Flushing Meadows and arranges the spread of goodies in the middle with the cheese unwrapped and the jam unscrewed so they look Instagram-able. Jia takes pictures so that the sunlight hits the scones at just the right angle. We joke that we should become influencers. Jia the photographer, Everett the visionary, and me, the statistician. I think I will stick with Bee’s jewelry project.
I wasn’t expecting to ask Umma and Appa about Korea last night. I was going to bring it up after we had slept away our tears. But Appa was still sitting at the coffee table, clutching Bea’s necklace. Umma’s face was curled into something like a smile—real and strange and almost happy. So at six in the morning, I recited the second part of my airplane napkin speech. I said I wanted to defer enrollment and go back to Busan for the year. I laid out a plan. I gave them my word that I would return. And after a lengthy discussion, somehow they believed me. They trusted me.
I breathe in sunburnt grass and creamy brie. I love Busan, but it will never compare to a New York summer. The chubby Asian babies and their bucket hat–clad mothers are back in droves. The skateboarders are dangerously close to running us over. The Unisphere looms above our heads. Everything in this moment is right. Except for Everett, who is aggressively cutting the baguette with a plastic knife.
Jia drapes her dress over her thighs and leans forward so that the chiffon brushes against my arm. “Is she okay?”
We eye Everett from across the gingham like we are the audience and she, the knife-wielding carnival act. Crumbs spew in every direction.
“Ev,” I say, reaching out to touch her sleeve, “you good?”
“Maybe I can grab a real knife from somewhere,” Jia adds. “There’s probably a corner store that will lend me one.”
Everett stops cutting. My hand stills on her shirt. She wilts, like all the energy from her Trader Joe’s trip and picnic arrangements has seeped out of her.
“I guess I thought that if I just distracted myself, I’d get over it,” she confesses.
Jia catches on before I do. “The letter,” she says. “They haven’t responded, have they?”
“Nope.”
The knife falls onto the blanket as Everett abandons the baguette and inches toward us. I pretzel my legs and she falls into them, her braids folded over my shorts.
“What were you hoping they’d say?”
Everett sniffs. “I don’t know. I mean, they weren’t . . . going to, like, admit all their wrongdoings or whatever. But some acknowledgment would have been nice. A step in the right direction, you know?”
“Yeah,” Jia empathizes, “they wanted you to answer their messages so badly but when you finally did, they didn’t want anything to do with you.”
“They’re cowards,” I declare.
They really are. What they did to Everett this summer was horrible. And probably something that happens everywhere. I sit forward, my stomach bumping the back of Everett’s head. It definitely happens everywhere.
“Ow,” Everett yelps.
“Shush,” I say. “I have an idea.”
Everett gathers her braids in her hands and bobs up so she’s facing Jia and me. “It’s too late for a PowerPoint presentation.”
“A better idea,” I clarify. “Okay, hear me out. We’ll make a TikTok. Ev, you already have an account, so it’s perfect. You’ll talk about what happened at Lucius Brown, we’ll show your letter, and then, I don’t know, we’ll create some kind of call to action. We can make it snappy but pointed, and more about theater than just Lucius Brown. That way, you can illustrate the real systemic problems.”
Everett scrunches her nose. “A TikTok?”
“Come on, it’s brilliant, Ev,” Jia says. “You’d be fighting the system.” She looks off at the looming Unisphere, her eyes glittery and faraway. “We’ll post, wait a couple hours, and then boom. You’ll go viral.”
“Have any of us ever gone viral?” Everett says doubtfully.
“Well, no,” I admit.
Jia presses her hands against her knees. “It’ll be fun. It’ll be cathartic.”
Our favorite theater girl stares at us for a moment, picking at the grass. “Okay, fine,” she says.
Jia claps and more crumbs go flying. We get to work. Everett and I tackle the script while Jia runs through video logistics. I give up on the plastic knife and tear off a piece of baguette. Paired with a dollop of truffle butter, it melts in my mouth—cool and light. When we’ve eaten our way through the bread and stuffed ourselves with sugar cookies, we admire our work. Everett does one beautifully acted run-through before we start rolling. Jia smooths out the gingham blanket and sits on her knees, the phone steady between her fingers. I count down: three, two, one. When Everett finishes talking, I add her letter and splice together each section. And then, as the sky turns fiery orange and the moon drifts beneath the clouds, I hover over the Post button.
“Ready?” I ask.
“I don’t want to see it after,” Everett moans. “Just press the button and log me out.”
“But what if you get comments?” Jia protests. “Or a bunch of likes?”
“I don’t care.”
“But—”
“Send it out into the universe!” she shouts.
A couple of skateboarders in beanie hats and baggy jeans glance at us in amusement. I press Post. Everett screeches and buries her head in the blanket. Jia covers her eyes. I click out of TikTok and place the phone facedown on the blanket.
“Well, if we’re not going to check, we need a distraction.” I lift up Everett’s head from the blanket. “What’s next?”
41
Everett
Dizzy Cat is packed because it’s the last cabaret of the season. Swanky older ladies from Manhattan pull their husbands onto the dance floor while college students gossip about their summers in the corner booths. We arrive fashionably late after demolishing even more food at my house. Jia orders a Shirley Temple and pulls down the sleeves of that showstopping lilac dress she unearthed from the back of her closet.
“There you go, girl,” I cheer, clinking the glass of my club soda with her Shirley Temple. “To reuniting.”
“And to business deals,” Jia says.
“And to taking down the man,” Ariel adds, tipping her cup of lemonade.
The cabaret starts at ten, but the dancing’s already begun. Misty Coolidge (my favorite of the Dizzy Cat performers) croons “Big Spender” in a flapper dress and maroon lipstick, her fingers grasping the silver microphone. The Jones brothers make waves with their trumpet and saxophone riffs. Even though the only people dancing are the divorcées swaying with mojitos in hand, I drag my friends to the center of the wooden platform. We twirl and twirl until we’re tripping over each other. Jia mimes an excellent trombone solo and Ariel and I link arms for a campy Charleston. I am sweaty and mushy and delighted, and I don’t even care about TikTok, or theater, or my armpits, which are 100 percent leaking right now.
The pianist takes the mic at five minutes to ten and unveils a clipboard and a jar of ballpoint pens. “For you brave souls and Broadway wannabes, your time is now.” He rests the clipboard on the stage in front of the microphone and boogies back to the piano.
I walk over to the pool table and am downing a cup of water (turns out you really can get a workout from doing a box step fifty times in a row) when Ariel pokes my ribs with a cue stick.
“Um,” I say, “I’m pretty sure that’s not what that’s for.”
She waves the pool stick like it’s a wand and not an extremely dangerous object that might very well take my eye out.
“What are you waiting for? Put your name on the list.”
Jia absentmindedly wrestles with a pair of billiard balls while some mildly irritated college guys cross their arms and mutter behind her.
“Oh,” she says sheepishly, “sorry.” She drops them onto the table. “Everett? Aren’t you going to go up and sing?”
It’s a valid question. I’ve never not sung at a Dizzy Cat cabaret. There was the time I even whipped out some gloves and an old Elizabeth Bennett costume and rapped “Satisfied” for an audience of tipsy thirty-year-olds. It was truly an iconic moment. But I haven’t peeped a single note since the Lucius Brown debacle.
I gulp down the last of my club soda and attempt to slink away. Ariel whips me around anyway, her clammy hands grasping my shoulders.
“Hey,” she says, “what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I answer quickly, but Ariel, as per usual, doesn’t buy it.
She squints and taps the edge of the pool stick. “You’re not going to let those Lucius Brown douchebags get the best of you, are you?”
“Of course not,” I say, and then, recognizing that my best friend is a walking lie detector: “Well . . . I don’t know.”
I shouldn’t let Abel Pearce, and Cheney, and the hair-whip girls, and the drone of the musty Ohio bugs stop from me singing, or doing anything. I’ve done my part. I wrote the letter, we made the TikTok, I’m back with my best friends dancing just the way I wanted to all summer. But it all feels like it amounts to nothing. I mean, my email is likely lost in the abyss, and God knows who saw my TikTok. Probably some eleven-year-old who’s left a nasty comment. There’s always an eleven-year-old to drag you down.
I play with the hem of my skirt. The thought still gnaws at me: There’s no place for you here. This is what it will be like, always. Abel Pearce is one of the most well-regarded directors I know. If he doesn’t see the problem, if he doesn’t see me, who will?
Ariel releases my shoulders and opens her mouth to give some very intense debate response that will likely take years to finish when Jia hesitantly steps forward, her phone pressed between her palms.
“Hey,” she whispers, “you’re a star. In fact, so much of a star that . . .”
She shares a knowing look with Ariel.
I fight the urge to grab Ariel’s pool stick and jam it into Jia’s arm. “You weren’t supposed to check!” I screech.
“You said you didn’t want to check,” Jia screams, darting around the pool table as I chase her. “There were no rules about me looking.”
The college bros scowl at us like we are the worst things to happen to New York City. Jia stumbles into the corner, hands on her hips as she catches her breath, Ariel close behind.
“I’m not a runner,” she pants. “You win.”
I weave my fingers through my post-braid waves, cascading down my shirt like a lion’s mane. “Show me,” I blurt. “Wait, don’t show me. Well, actually—”
“Everett,” Ariel interrupts, shoving the TikTok in my face, “just look.”
There are 30,000 views and 10,000 likes, which isn’t exactly viral, but is still a respectable number. But most breathtaking are the comments. The hundreds of comments. I scroll through them, the cabaret walls around me fading into night.
I had this exact experience at a different theater!! Message me
GIRL the stories I have to tell. Thanks for speaking out
I’m so sorry this happened
Funny enough, I was just looking at Lucius Brown for next summer and I’ve never clicked out of a website so fast—
Thank you for talking about this, no one does 💔
There are more and more, flooding every inch of the screen.
“Oh my God,” I say.
“You’re literally getting more comments every second,” Ariel says.
She’s right. We refresh the page and a handful pop up. I can’t believe it. I keep reading each one again and again, trying to remember that these are real people. Aspiring actors and actresses who have been through this exact same thing. The entire summer, Abel Pearce made me feel young and foolish. My ideas were bad, my outburst uncalled for. Cheney and my so-called theater friends mocked me or ignored me. I was completely and utterly alone. But now, as more comments appear and hearts scatter the screen, I realize I’m not. I’m actually, really not.
Later, when Ariel and Jia have passed out and it’s only me and the moon and the cul-de-sac where little Everett used to ride her bike and have big dreams, I’ll write back to each commenter on TikTok. Maybe I’ll even start a virtual support group or something. Better yet, a committee. A union. Do they have those for teenagers? Whatever I do, the possibilities seem endless.
