Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [30]
And all this reminiscing has made me long for a cab to speed down Sixth Avenue blaring:
It’s a miracle! (Miracle!)
A true-blue spectacle, a miracle come true!
Barry Manilow would give this all-out extravaganza of nostalgia an added layer of depth and meaning. His overwrought ballads have served as the cheesy leitmotif to our relationship, going all the way back to when I was sixteen and you were seventeen, and you put his Greatest Hits into your ancient Cadillac’s eight-track for our first drive to Helga’s Diner. That same night, after we bonded over French fries and our mutual disappreciation for fake Xmas trees spray-painted with aerosol snow, you suddenly pulled over on a deserted side street and taunted, tempted, teased me with your teeth, gently biting my bottom lip instead of giving in to the predictability of a first kiss…. I know Barry Manilow’s synchronistic impact has not been lost on you, Marcus, otherwise you would not have chosen to show up last Christmas Eve with a toilet-seat cover decoupaged with his polyester jumpsuited likeness—an apologetic peace offering for your two-year absence.
No taxi has obliged me with Barry; there’s only the omnipresent hip-hop, competing beats that bump and fade with the stop and go of the traffic light. And, alas, the Barry Manilow toilet-seat cover was not among the memorabilia recovered safe and sound in the MOM AND DAD box today. Herewith is a catalog of artifacts stored inside:
JESSIE’S JUNK
(Cataloged in the order in which the items were removed.)
• One (ruined) mosaic by Hope Weaver
• Rubber-banded bundle of forty-four handwritten letters sent by Hope Weaver between January 2000 and August 2002, postmarked Wellgoode, TN, to Pineville, NJ
• Rubber-banded bundle of twenty-six handwritten letters sent by Hope Weaver between August 2002 and June 2006, postmarked RISD, Providence, RI, to Columbia University, New York, NY
• Purple Post-it from Professor Samuel MacDougal originally attached to the envelope containing his letter recommending me for Columbia University: “Be great in act, as you have been in thought.”—William Shakespeare
• Copy of 2004 National Book Award nominee, Acting Out, autographed by Professor Mac; inscription reads: “To my best student, I’ve quoted this before, but it bears repeating: ‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.’—Kurt Vonnegut”
• Nine-by-twelve envelope containing sixty-seven photos all dating between 1996 and 1998; includes one snapshot taken at Pineville Middle School’s Halloween Dance 1996, in which four out of five seventh-grade girls are posing as four out of five Spice Girls in PVC platform boots and totally age-inappropriate Girl Power! gear: Hope Weaver as Ginger Spice, gamely rocking the iconic Union Jack minidress; Manda Powers as Posh Spice, spilling provocatively out of a black pleather bustier; Sara D’Abruzzi as Scary Spice, pre-rexy and still chubby, bursting obscenely from a chartreuse spandex tube top; Bridget Milhokovich as Baby Spice, relatively demure in a pink thigh-skimming baby-doll dress; and yours truly, caught on camera sulking stubbornly in the background, wearing all black, having refused to dress up as Sporty Spice because I thought the group costume concept was “lame”
• Clipping of New York Times article from September 3, 2000, “Will Cinthia Wallace Be Gen-Y’s Literary ‘It’ Girl?” annotated by Bridget Milhokovich in pink Magic Marker; commentary includes: “OMG! A billionaire’s daughter? Part of the Park Avenue Posse? HOW COME I’VE NEVER HEARD OF HER?” And: “SHE LIED TO US TO SPY ON US!! TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT US AND GET INTO HARVARD!!” And: “BUBBLEGUM BIMBOS AND ASSEMBLY LINE