by Eden Beck
I have the concierge hire a DJ for us, and one of the restaurants nearby cater, and by the time we get back to the hotel from our day out exploring Nice, I am excited to see that our temporary home has been transformed into an amazing party.
Excited and a little surprised, given that I most forgot about it right after instructing everyone to set it up.
We aren’t alone together for very long before people start showing up to party with us. We remember some of them, and some of them are friends of theirs, and some of the people are complete strangers, but we’ve all had enough to drink that we really don’t care.
Dana pulls me aside when the party really starts to get full, and she talks to me in her serious tone.
“Teddy, I think you should cap the party. Like, put someone outside of the door as a bouncer and don’t let anyone else in. It’s already getting pretty crowded in here. We probably want to use some kind of good judgment here.”
I blink at her, my head buzzing with champagne, and laugh. “Oh Dana, it’s going to be fine! People will go, and more people will come. It will be a revolving door. We’ll be just fine.”
She sighs and looks at me worriedly. “I just wonder if maybe you’re getting in over your head a little bit. You’ve gone a little wild on this trip and I haven’t said anything about it, but I kind of feel like maybe it’s time to slow down a little.”
I frown, her words buzzing in my already buzzed mind. “Aren’t you having a good time?” I ask, feeling slightly insulted. “I mean, I’m pretty sure you’ve been having a great time. We’ve done things I never would have dreamed.”
“Yes,” she sighs and crosses her arms over her chest, “I’ve had a great time, I just think maybe you’re going a little overboard, that’s all. Let’s reel it back in a bit, okay? Please?”
I lift my chin in defiance. “I don’t want to slow down! I have had such a crappy life up until now, and now I have money … god, I have so much money, and it just keeps pouring in.”
I shake my head. My uncle Dane keeps sending me weekly reports, and the numbers are staggering. “We don’t need to pull back. I don’t have to pull back! This is my new life, and this is the new me!”
I’m adamant about it. I feel a surge of my newfound power flooding through me, and I don’t want it to stop.
Dana shakes her head. I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s the only sober person here. Even the DJ has been taking shots.
“No, Teddy,” she says. “You‘re still the same person that you always have been, and that’s who we all love and want to be around. Not this crazy, carousing girl you’re acting like right now.”
My voice gets louder, and I hold my hands up between us. “No. I’m a new woman, Dana. I’m a super power now!” I reach into my pocket and pull out a thick wad of cash; all hundred-euro bills. “You see this? Watch this. You want to see serious power? This is serious power. People will do anything for money.”
I should know. I’ve been one of those people my whole life.
I turn and face the crowd around us. “Who wants some money?” I wave the wad of cash in my hand, and people all around us start yelling and coming toward me. “You want some money?” I ask the nearest guy to us. He yells and nods.
Maybe the power has gotten to my head, but that doesn’t stop me.
“I’ll give you a hundred right now if you strip down to your underwear and dance on that table.” I point to a solid stone table not far away, and I hold the hundred up in front of the guy’s face.
He laughs and yanks his clothes off, right down to his boxers, then he grabs the hundred from me and heads straight for the table, dancing on top of it like he’s Tina Turner. Dana stares at him and then at me.
“It’s not just him, Dana. It’s all of them. Watch this.” I wave the wad of cash in my hand again. “Anyone else?” I yell. “Anyone else want some cash?”
“I do!” calls out another guy a few feet from us. “You want me to dance in my underwear?”
I shake my head. “No, I want you go downstairs to the lobby of the hotel, and then run out to the front of the hotel. I’ll go out on the balcony, and wave at you. I want you to wave back to me.”
“In my underwear?” The guys asks incredulously.
I pretend to think about it for a minute.
“Yeah,” I answer.
“Not for a hundred!” He laughs.
“Three hundred,” I say back to him seriously, holding it up in front of his face.
His eyes grow wide and his mouth falls open. “Yeah, you bet. I’ll do that!”
The next moment he’s peeling his clothes off and racing out of the door of the penthouse. I walk through the crowd over to the balcony with Dana in tow, and a couple of minutes later, the crazy boy is standing outside of the hotel in his boxers, waving both arms wildly up at me.
I wave the wad of cash back at him and yell at him to come up, though I’m pretty sure he can’t hear me from this height. He runs back into the hotel, and a few minutes later, he’s standing in front of Dana and I, panting and out of breath.
Dana scowls and shakes her head. “Okay, you know what, you made your point. You’re powerful. I get it. Just … please reign it back in, okay?”
I laugh and a girl next to me grabs my arm. “Give me something to do! I want to do something too!”
“Yeah? Shave your head bald and I’ll give you five hundred euros,” I tell her, and she squeals and runs to the bathroom.
Oh shit, I didn’t think she’d actually do it.
Dana grabs my arm. “What are you doing? What are you trying to prove?”
The girl comes back from the bathroom with shaving cream on the side of her face, a bald head, and a hand full of her newly shaved long blonde hair. Her eyes are glazed in a way that tells me she’s going to regret that decision in the morning. Even drunk me knows that.
Dana rolls her eyes and folds her arms across her chest again, looking extremely irritated. I don’t care. All I can feel is the power I have to do whatever I want, and it’s intoxicating.
This must be how Victoria feels. Or felt, before I ruined her.
I give the bald girl five hundred euros. Dana shakes her head at me, and another girl pushes her way through other people to get to me. “Me too! Give me something to do! I’ll do it!”
Dana holds her hand up. “No! Enough already!”
The girl pushes herself between Dana and me. “Come on! Pay me! I’ll do anything!”
I lift a brow. “Anything huh?”
The girl nods excitedly. “Yeah, the wilder and crazier, the better! That’s how I am! Bring it! What’s the craziest thing you can come up with?”
I tilt my head thoughtfully and then look over the side of the balcony. There’s a big swimming pool just underneath us, several floors down. “Five hundred bucks if you jump off of this balcony into the swimming pool.”
Dana freaks out. “No, Teddy no. That’s like … five or six floors! She can’t do that. Just stop this already. Okay? Stop it!”
“It’s not a fair dare, she won’t do it,” I lean closer to Dana and yell to her over the music and the noise of the party. “Stop worrying so much. I’m only kidding!”
“Well you might be kidding, but I’m not. Give me that five hundred and I’ll do it,” the girl tells me. I shake my head. She reaches for the wad of cash in my hand. “Come on! Pay me! I’ll do it!”
This must be what I looked like to Astor before I got my inheritance. Desperate. It’s not a good look.
Dana grabs the girl’s wrist. “No. Now stop this. That’s much too dangerous.”
I look at the girl and I can see that she wants to do it. I laugh and peel off five hundred euros.
“You want the money? Here’s the money. You don’t have to jump off of the balcony. Just take the money.”
The girl takes it and clenches it in her fist. “Oh no, it’s a dare. I’m doing it!”
Before Dana or I can grab her, she launches herself off of the balcony and scr
eams all the way down. I blanch and rush to push myself up against the edge of the balcony, Dana horrified by my side.
The girl plummets down several stories and then lands in the water, and it’s a long moment before Dana and I realize that she’s not coming back up to the surface of the water.
“Oh god. Something happened to her!” Dana cries out. She turns and runs for the door, and I’m right on her heels. Wills yells at Blair, and both of them run out after us with Laura on their heels.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
All of a sudden, I’m sober, if only for a moment.
We all get down to the pool in record time. The girl’s come to the surface of the water, but she is screaming loudly and flailing her arms. Wills dives straight in and brings her to the edge, pulling her out. Both the girl’s ankles are twisted at unnatural angles, and Dana is already telling the hotel staff to get an ambulance here immediately.
The girl is in so much pain that she passes out in Wills’ arms. It’s one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. It’s all made so much worse by the fact that I have enough alcohol in my system to put down a small tiger.
I should know better.
I shouldn’t drink. Every bad thing that’s happened to me has happened because of my inability to stop once I’ve started.
Just like my mother.
The thought is there for just a moment, and then just as quickly, it’s gone in the rush all around us.
The ambulance comes and I insist on going with her. Blair, Wills, Laura, and Dana follow in a hired car, and a short while later we’re all in the waiting room at the hospital. The girl has been taken in for emergency surgery.
After several long hours of sobering up, we get the news. She broke several bones in her feet and damaged her tailbone. The doctor isn’t sure if she’ll walk again.
All because of a stupid dare.
The nurse tells us they’ll know more after the surgery, but she looks gravely worried as she turns and leaves us. I just drop my head into my hands as guilt and shame punch a hole through my soul.
The hangover already has a grip on my stomach and head.
None of us talks. None of us knows what to say. The booze we’ve all had to drink begins to fade from our systems, leaving the full weight of what just happened sitting on my shoulders like a ton of bricks.
Wills brings me a cup of coffee, and Blair rubs my shoulders as the clock on the wall ticks by slower than any clock in the history of, well, history.
It seems like an eternity has passed when the doctor finally comes out to talk with us. We all stand up and stare at him as he speaks.
“Your friend has made it through the surgery well. We didn’t know how it would go, but it was a success.” He looks tired and relieved.
“Will she walk again?” I ask, knowing that I can’t live with myself if the girl ends up crippled.
The doctor nods. “Yes, she will. Her family’s been notified and they are on their way. Thank you for staying here with her. I’m sure she’ll appreciate good friends like you when she wakes up.”
I glance at the boys. No one knows it was my fault yet. All of this is my fault.
I bury my face in my hands again. If things had gone any other way, my life would be ruined.
On my way out, I leave my name and contact info with the clerk at the front desk. I’ll handle everything—her medical bills, her rehab, all of it—even if it takes every penny from my trust to do it.
We don’t stay to meet her family. I couldn’t stand that.
That night, I go to bed alone. Though it’s one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever been in, I can’t sleep. Around dawn, I go out to the balcony with a cup of coffee and watch the ocean. I hoped it would help clear my mind, but the sight of the waves just keeps bringing the girl and the pool back to mind.
I really almost threw it all away.
I’m basically the poster child for rich kids gone wrong.
Dana comes out and sits beside me with a cup of coffee in her hands. “How are you doing?” she asks me with a quiet voice.
I shake my head and tears fall hard and fast down my cheeks. “I’m horrible.”
Dana wraps an arm around my shoulders. “No, you’re not. This wasn’t really your fault, you know. I mean, you did dare her, but it was her choice to jump off of the balcony.”
I nod slowly. “I know, and what you’re saying is true, to a point.”
Dana frowns at me. “What do you mean, to a point?”
I sigh and look down into my mug. “If I hadn’t been so hell bent to show you how different I am now, how rich and all-powerful, then it never would have happened. She wouldn’t have jumped if I hadn’t already been paying everyone to do crazy things.”
“I know, but that was her choice. You and I both told her not to, and she did it anyway. She did this to herself.”
Dana reaches over and squeezes my hand. “You aren’t any different now, Teddy. You’re still the same sweet, sassy, smart, big-hearted girl you’ve always been. You just have a lot of money now. It’s still you, though.”
I nod slowly as her words sift through the chaotic thoughts jumbled all through my mind. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess so? You should know so,” she tells me seriously.
“I know so,” I say after a long moment. Then I look at her. “You’re right. I’m still Teddy Price from the foster care system in New York, and the new name and the mountain of money doesn’t make me a new person.”
“That’s my girl,” Dana tells me encouragingly.
“Thank you, Dana. I am so lucky that you are my best friend.” I hug her back, and we watch in silence as the sun comes up over the Mediterranean Sea.
It’s an odd silence.
I try not to think too much about the girl, but I can’t help it.
This, this is what they warn you about.
I glance back through the window towards the sleeping figures of Blair and Wills on the other side. Everything I’ve gone through to be with them, to be near them, I nearly threw it all away.
It makes me wonder what else I’ve thrown away that I should have fought to keep.
Or fought to forgive.
Chapter 17
I return from break with a shadow hanging over me.
Both Wills and Blair notice, but I can’t bring myself to tell them what it is. I don’t even know for sure myself.
I just know that I’ve made a horrible mistake, and I don’t know if there’s any way to make it right.
I’m sitting in the dorm room working on a paper about a week after we get back when Dana comes in looking more excited than I’ve seen her in a long time.
“What is it?” I ask. “What’s got you glowing like that?”
She hands me a big envelope. “This is for you, and if it’s what I think it is, we’re both going to lose our minds!”
I look at her curiously and take the big envelope from her. I turn it over in my hands while she bounces on her tip toes, and I see that the return address is New York University.
My heart starts to pound in my chest, and I shake my head.
“I can’t open it. You open it,” I push it back toward her, but she refuses.
“No. Go on! Do it!” She clasps her hands tightly under her chin and I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“Okay. I’ll do it.” Opening my eyes again, I rip the flap up on the envelope and reach inside. I feel like I might pass out as I pull out the contents, but before I can do that, my eyes fall on the letter paper clipped to the top.
“Dear Ms. White, we are pleased to notify you that you have been accepted at New York University!” I scream and start jumping up and down, as does Dana, and we grab each other in a huge hug as tears stream down my cheeks.
“Oh my god, I got in! I did it. I can’t believe it,” I gush, and then look at the letter again just to make sure that I read it right. I sent my application in ages ago, but just assumed I didn’t get in when the rest of the early acc
eptance letters came in and I never got one.
Wills and Blair. I have to tell them.
The inside of my chest expands. We won’t be separated. Not now, not ever.
“Well, with all those amazing letters of recommendation that you sent in, it would have been a mortal sin not to allow you to go there. I bet no one came with higher recommendations than you,” Dana tells me, thrilled.
I stop bouncing all over and stare at Dana, realizing something very important. “Oh my god. You’re right. I never would have made it in there without my aunt and uncle getting all those letters and helping me. Or at least, I’m not sure if I’d have made it in. I have to call them!”
She agrees and hands my cell phone to me as I put the stack of papers down on my desk. I call my uncle and he answers right away, as he always does.
“Hello, Teddy. How are you doing?” he asks, sounding slightly concerned. The last time I spoke to him, I was admitting to the accident that happened in Nice. I thought it was only fair game to warn him that we might get a lawsuit, but it turned out to be a false alarm. I got lucky, I know, very lucky.
It feels good to be calling with better news.
“I just got a package from New York University,” I start, “and I wanted to let you know that I got in.”
I can hear the pride and pleasure in his voice. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations!” he tells me earnestly.
“I never would have been able to do it without you,” I say, and I mean it. For a moment, I feel guilty that I haven’t been up to see them in a while. Both Dane and I agreed it would be best if I stay away, mostly, at least until my aunt seems able to come to terms with the fact that I am not, and will never be, Sadie.
He congratulates me again, then, a little more awkwardly adds, “We’re proud of you, you know. After everything. Your father would be, too.”
I feel a pang in my stomach, and hope what he says is true. If they knew everything, if my father knew everything, would they really be so proud of me?
My worries don’t stop me from telling Wills and Blair the good news. I’ve seen them happy before, but never quite like this. Blair gets so excited, he rakes his fingers through his hair until every silver strand stands on end. Wills almost throws a couch.