Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads

"Gimme summa dose porgies. Two ninety-five a pound? Dat's a bargain, right? Gimme a pounda dose and some crab claws. Make it a dozen."

Vanessa scooped up the dead fish bodies with her latex-gloved hand and slapped them down on a fresh piece of waxed paper. There was something supremely satisfying about working at her local Williamsburg fish shop. The shop was called Brok, which wasn't even a word, at least not in English. It stank of raw fish. She had fish blood in the black laces of her Doc Martens. People looked at her funny when she waited on them, as if to say, What's a shaven-headed all-black-wearing sixteen-year-old girl like you doing in a place like this? She didn't know a cod from a sturgeon, but the shop was super-duper air-conditioned, she worked nine-hour shifts, and she loved the gritty intensity of chopping up raw fish bodies with a cleaver. She even got to wear a hairnet over her shaved head. She'd bought a black one, so her head kind of looked like a giant big toe in a black fishnet stocking.

How lovely.

Vanessa was the only employee who actually spoke English. Her boss was Russian and all her coworkers were old Chinese men. They would joke around with her and point at her head like it was the funniest thing in the world, but she'd just point at their heads and laugh back. Fish was the universal language. When she needed help discerning the difference between Chilean sea bass and red snapper, Vanessa would point to the waxy labeled place mats with pictures of live fish on them decorating the walls, and her Chinese friends would point out the steaks and filets she was looking for inside the glass case. They taught her how to scale and slice a Dover sole. She got to cut heads off and squeeze out guts. It was awesome.

"Hey stinky." Ruby came into the shop as the porgy-and-crab-claw guy was leaving. "I told my drummer I'd bring him some scallops. You'll give them to me free, right?" Ruby was wearing her favorite pair of purple leather pants and a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off that read C__T! across the front. She always got a lot of stares when she wore that shirt.

Which was exactly the point.

Vanessa glanced behind her at Hon, her white-haired Chinese fish shop friend. Then she pointed at her sister's pants and covered her mouth, pretending to giggle, like they were the most ridiculous pants she'd ever seen. Ruby glared at her. "At least I don't stink of raw tuna vaginas."

Good one.

Vanessa stuffed a handful of scallops into a clear plastic bag and tied a knot in the top of the bag. They looked like waterlogged earlobes. She handed the bag to Ruby. "No charge."

"Nice presentation." Ruby dangled the bag in front of her. "Could you at least give me a brown paper bag so I don't get arrested for chopping up my children or something?" She squinted her glassy dark brown eyes at her sister. "You have the demeanor of someone who's broken up with her boyfriend and has decided to get all stinky in case he comes calling. Like you're trying to make yourself as repulsive as possible." She cocked her head, the shiny ends of her black chin-length bob just brushed her shoulder. "Only problem is, there was no boyfriend to break up with."

"I just like it here," Vanessa explained tersely and handed her sister a white waxed paper sack. Something about the bag of scallops reminded her of Dan. She hadn't seen him since he came to her school to apologize more than a month ago. Of course she still thought about him all the time, but she wasn't about to waste her time on somebody who was in love with Serena van der fucking Woodsen. Part of the reason she'd gotten the Brok job in the first place was because it was a job Serena would never take in a million years. The other reason she'd taken the job was that if for any totally random reason Dan turned up in Williamsburg looking for her, he'd run screaming once he caught a whiff of her. Then she'd have the last laugh.

At least, that's the stinking lie she's telling herself.

She watched her sister squeeze the clear plastic bag full of raw scallops into the white paper sack. The thing about Dan was, he really did have cute earlobes, and his poems were really good.

And the thing about fish shops is, they're really quite poetic.