Звёздный принц и Ангельское яблочко. Михаил Чирков

months of that mindless crap. She liked me. She said I was sharp. I think what it was really all about was that she liked the way I dressed. When I first started with her, she sat me down and said, “You and me, from now on, are a team. We need to look like a team, think like a team, take care of each other like team members. So far you’ve got the first part down.”

      There are some perks. I get to go to premieres and their after parties. I get to talk to famous names on the phone. I get to go to the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. But since I’m not really into all that shit, sometimes it’s really just like a whole lot of unpaid overtime.

      There are also some quirks. Such as the long, endless days of trying to keep myself sane. Luckily you learn pretty early on that to keep yourself sane in the life as somebody’s assistant, the trick is to waste as much time as possible when the boss isn’t looking. So I wandered out into the hallway to see if anyone was doing anything. The head-honcho meeting was in full swing in the conference room. Lots of free time until they got out.

      There was a deep discussion going on among my fellow minions about how everyone had lost their virginity. I joined in.

      It happened when I was fifteen with the neighbor boy Charlie Porter. He was cute in an ugly sort of way, with coarse dark hair like a rottweiler and knowing eyes the color of desert sand. He was popular because he acted like a jerk and he didn’t care, and kids respected that quality. He was the kind of boy who talked back to teachers and wasn’t afraid of the consequences. When his parents were gone he had parties and people had sex in his parents’ bed and no one washed the sheets afterward. He was forever sucking on an orange Tootsie Pop so his breath always smelled like oranges. He wore Drakkar Noir cologne and forest-green Vans and listened to Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Total dream.

      Charlie lived up the street from me, at the top of the hill, and the water from the hose when he washed his dad’s car would run down in the gutter past my house with soap bubbles and leaves. We played together when were little kids. But somewhere around the start of middle school, boys become boys and girls become girls. That’s when Charlie started calling me fatty and porky and piggy and his friends did the same and laughed while they rode their skateboards past my house and I hid beneath the front window and watched, ashamed. Then I would go upstairs and watch Stayin’ Alive and wish I were some sexy dancing queen on the Manhattan show scene instead of a fleshy preteen eating Oreos and dreading the fact that my P.E. class had access to a swimming pool.

      On the first day of school sophomore year he passed by me at my locker and stuck a little pink flower in my hair. They grew in clumps of orange and purple and fuchsia by the front entrance of the school, where all the most popular kids hung out before the bell rang. I was wearing black pants with suspenders. I was skinny from dieting all summer. I was starving. When I turned around he kept walking, his back to me, his arm out as he slapped hands with Pete Keller. I glanced in my locker mirror. No way. I knew that Charlie and Aurelia Sparks had broken up over the summer, but still. They’d been together since seventh grade.

      In geometry the teacher asked us to pick homework partners. He passed me a note that said to pick him because my last name came before his in the alphabet and she was going to call on me first. When she got to me and I said Charlie Porter, the whole class turned around to look at me. Aurelia had a pinched-up expression on her face. She had worn her hair in the same glossy golden ringlet curls since we were little girls. I could feel my face burning. Charlie said, “Okay,” like it was no big deal, like thirty pens weren’t suddenly flying across thirty pieces of loose-leaf paper, penning notes to be distributed via the hallways of Ventura High as soon as nutrition break was under way.

      I went up the street to his house after school and banged on the door. He answered it, eating a piece of toast with lots of peanut butter slathered on top. I could hear the TV in the background, the characters from Charles in Charge trapped inside of a rerun. I asked him what the hell was going on and felt my face burning again. He told me to relax about it, then threw his toast over my shoulder and pulled me up against him. We kissed and I could taste peanut butter and the faint sweetness of orange candy rolling around on his tongue. He said I could come in after that and I said I had to go home. I almost fell walking back down the hill. My mother made my favorite dinner that night, chicken and pasta with mushrooms in cream sauce, and I couldn’t even eat it. She laughed and said the first day at school will do that to you. Later that night I wrote Charlie’s name next to First Kiss in my diary.

      He held my hand the next day walking into geometry. I thought Aurelia’s eyes were going to pop out of her head. When I had tried out for cheerleading she had been one of the judges. I knew she had voted against me even though I had practiced my routines for weeks and was definitely the best choice. I heard her talking about me in the bathroom after class, as she and Liz Major stood in front of the mirror in their cheerleading get-ups, putting more and more drugstore makeup on and spritzing themselves with Le Jardin. She said, “He’s only into her now because her boobs have gotten so fucking huge.” Liz said, “No kidding. Remember how fucking fat she used to be?”

      I knew I wasn’t “fucking fat” anymore. But even when you’re not fucking fat anymore, you sometimes think and act like you still are. You see the same person in the mirror. You’re surprised that the most popular guy in school suddenly likes you. A real dream come true.

      “Fuck those stupid bitches,” my best friend Lily Lovejoy told me at lunch. We shared a bag of carrot sticks and a half pint of chocolate milk. “Aurelia’s a piece of trash and Liz is just debris. You know you’re not fat anymore. And you weren’t even fat, you were just a little chubby. There’s a difference. So fuck those cheap whores.”

      Lily always had her own way of putting it all into perspective. She taught me a lot about life. She taught me almost everything. This is Lily Lorraine Lovejoy and you goddamn better believe it. Her motto then, her motto now.

      “Lily is totally right,” Daisy Kiplinger agreed. My other best friend, she was eating frosted Hostess treats and outfitted in various forms of surfer-girl wear. I knew she was ditching fifth and sixth period to go to the beach even though it was only the second day of school. “I’d like to see that bitch choke on her pom-poms and for Liz to O.D.”

      Everyone started saying Charlie and I were “going out.” Everyone acted like I had never been forgotten, like those dumpy in-between years had never happened, like I had been important forever. Now I joined Lily and Daisy talking shit about all the bitches who were always hanging around our boys. I still remembered how our boys had called me names, but now they referred to me as one of their “girls” with pride. I still remembered how the bitches had looked at me in the shower in P.E. as if I was a gruesome creature from a Tobe Hooper movie, but now they couldn’t stop talking about how cute my clothes were and how we should all ditch and go to the Busy Bee Café and how I just had to go to this party and that party. At football games, Aurelia bounced around with the other cheerleaders, her hair bouncing with her, throwing hard looks my way. Everybody said she was jealous because she still liked Charlie. Liz Major came up during a break once and gave me half her Coke and asked if I had any cigarettes. We smoked together up behind the snack bar, her in her cheerleading get-up and me in my Guess jeans and an oversize Stussy sweatshirt that belonged to Charlie. She said now that I was with Charlie, everything was cool. She said now that I was with Charlie, I was cool. I told her that was very gracious of her, but that I had always been cool. I said it was only stupid people like her that had made everybody else think otherwise.

      Charlie waited a grand total of six weeks before asking, “Can we do it?” one afternoon when we were in his room fooling around and listening to The Cure. “C’mon, Peaches,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” I thought about it. Lily’s virginity was long gone. I wasn’t sure that Daisy had ever been a virgin.

      “I guess,” I told him. “I mean, you love me, right?”

      “Yeah. I totally do.”

      “Okay, then. We can.”

      His naked skin was clammy and his pillowcase smelled like greasy hair. He was insistent and bold and I was surprised when it touched me. I closed my eyes as he dug his chin into my chest, making a bruise. My head kept hitting