The Daughters Break the Rules

by Joanna Philbin

  “And you know this DJ you keep telling me about?” Ava said, starting to play with her diamond necklace. “Alex Suarez? I called the Chateau Marmont and they’ve never heard of him.”

  Carina’s stomach dropped. She’d forgotten all about that little white lie. “Huh, that’s weird. I mean, he told me that’s where he was.”

  Ava’s expression turned stony. “Right,” she said thickly. “Are you just making all this stuff up?”

  “Of course not,” Carina said. “That’s crazy.”

  “Then what exactly have you done for this party?” Ava demanded. “Anything?”

  “Of course,” she stammered. “I’ve done tons of stuff.”

  “Yeah, like what? I don’t have names, I don’t have phone numbers. All I’ve seen are a couple of mini quesadillas, and God only knows where those came from,” she said. “You want to know what I think? I think you’ve done nothing. I think you’ve been lying this entire time.”

  Carina felt a flicker of rage in her gut. Ava could accuse her of lying, but she couldn’t accuse her of not doing anything for her stupid event.

  “Okay, I’ve had to deviate a little from the plan,” she admitted. “Because—news flash: nobody likes to work for free. Not even for the Silver Snowflake Ball.”

  Ava narrowed her eyes. “You said they were all your friends.”

  “They weren’t my friends. They’re people my dad has hired. And they don’t work for free.”

  “Not even when he asks them to?” Ava asked, folding her arms.

  “He didn’t ask them to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t tell him about it.”

  Ava shook her head. “Well, that was stupid,” she sneered. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I wanted to do this myself,” Carina answered.

  Ava snorted. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re Karl Jurgensen’s daughter.”

  “So what? Does that mean that I’m rolling in money and that I have Matty Banks on speed dial? That I can just snap my fingers and get Filippo Mucci to cater my party for free? That I can ask for someone to donate five hundred orchids just because it’s a good cause?” Carina almost shouted. “I don’t have a gazillion dollars. I’ve got nothing, okay? Nothing.”

  Ava took a step back from her in the hall.

  “You want to see my phone?” Carina went on. “Here.” She pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open. “My dad cut me off and now I have zilch—no money, no pull, nothing. No help. Not even for your stupid dance.”

  Ava’s shiny mouth opened a little in shock.

  “And I did plan everything,” she went on. “I have food, I have decorations, I have a DJ. It was still gonna be a great party. I just couldn’t get the people you wanted me to. I thought I could, but I couldn’t.”

  “Look, I don’t need to know the gory details of your personal life,” Ava said, holding up her hand. “I have a party to throw in two weeks. So where did you get that food?”

  Carina looked past her at a row of lockers. “Trader Joe’s,” she said quietly.

  Ava recoiled. “What? And the DJ?”

  “He’s this guy who goes to Stuyvesant,” she answered.

  Ava’s nostrils flared. “And the florist?”

  “That was his sister. But she’s this amazing artist—”

  “And the cupcakes?” Ava asked, her voice starting to get wavery.

  Carina paused. “Those I was probably going to do myself,” she confessed. “But this event was going to be incredible. Really, if you’d just trust me—”

  “Trust you? I didn’t hire Carina Jurgensen to slum it, okay? You’re a total fake. And a liar.”

  “I didn’t lie to you. You assumed stuff about me,” Carina argued.

  “Uh, no, you wanted me to think all those things,” Ava said, pointing a finger at her. “That day in the coffee shop, you totally bragged about how good you were at this, and how connected you were. So don’t try to pin this on me. You’ve always worked your dad around here. To get guys, to get invitations to things… So please. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t let people think something and then be upset when they do.”

  Someone behind them slammed a locker. The hallway was empty now. They needed to get to class, but Carina couldn’t move.

  Ava gripped the strap of her Kooba bag. “You’re fired. And I want that two hundred dollars back ASAP.”

  “What?” Carina sputtered. “But… but I don’t have it.”

  Ava glared at her. “That’s so not my problem.”

  Before Carina could say anything, Ava pushed past her, around the corner and out of sight, as the heels of her ankle boots clip-clopped down the hall.

  “Ava!” Carina yelled.

  Just then the tall, bony frame of Mr. Barlow appeared in the doorway of his office. “Don’t you have class, Carina?” he asked in his Marine-style baritone. “Or are you just visiting today?”

  “Sorry,” she said, hitching her bag up her shoulder and taking off in a run toward world history.

  Once she got to class, she found Lizzie and Hudson sitting close to the door. She claimed the empty seat next to them just as the bell rang.

  “What was all that about?” Hudson whispered. “We wanted to go over to you guys but it looked a little intense.”

  Carina pulled out her textbook and her binder, trying to figure out the best way to spin this. She was still shaking. And she still hadn’t spoken to Lizzie since their mini fight in the diner the day before.

  “I had to tell her the truth,” she said. “That I couldn’t get the people she wanted.”

  “And she flipped out,” Lizzie guessed.

  “Well, yeah,” Carina said. “She fired me.”

  Up at the front of the room, Mr. Weatherly started writing on the board about ancient Sumer and the room got quieter.

  Hudson put her hand on Carina’s wrist. “Does this mean I still have to sing?” she asked.

  Carina gave Hudson a look. “Yes. And I need to get back that two hundred dollars,” she said. “You know, what I paid for Carter’s lift ticket.”

  “How are you gonna do that?” asked Lizzie.

  “I don’t know.” A headache pulsed behind her forehead, and she remembered that she’d left the house without breakfast. “It’s completely unfair, though. I worked really hard. I did stuff. And this party was gonna be incredible. And she says I lied to her. Can you believe that? That I lied?”

  “You kind of did,” Lizzie said, turning to the board.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You weren’t honest with her,” Lizzie pointed out. “Same thing.”

  “Don’t talk to me about honesty,” Carina muttered.

  “If you’re talking about the Todd thing, I apologized,” said Lizzie. “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

  “So what?” Carina asked. “You still did it.”

  “You guys, chill,” Hudson said, waving her hand in between them.

  “What are you so mad about?” Lizzie asked. “I feel like you’ve had something against him since the start.”

  “And I feel like you’ve been totally unsupportive of me this whole time,” Carina shot back. “It’s like I’m always being judged or something. Do you even remember how I was about your modeling stuff with Andrea? I never judged you. Not ever.”

  “You guys, stop it,” Hudson whispered.

  Mr. Weatherly looked over at them from the board. “Ladies? Would one of you like to come up here and explain the difference between the Ubaid and the Uruk period?”

  They all looked down at their desks, mute.

  Carina dug her pen into her notebook, furious. She hadn’t had a fight with either Lizzie or Hudson since sixth grade, and that had been over which one of them she’d accompany to the Chadwick Mother-Daughter Tea. Now the disapproval in Lizzie’s voice threatened to send her into a tailspin. There had to be someone out there who wouldn’t judge her for this.

  As soo
n as class was over, she pulled out her phone and typed out a text.

  Need to c u. U free after school?

  Alex wrote her right back.

  Kim’s Video. After 4. See you soon.

  She flipped her phone closed. Alex would help her figure out what to do. True, she’d have to tell him that his DJ job was no longer happening, but he’d understand. She knew he would.

  Carina searched the hallway for her friends. They’d walked up ahead, leaving her by herself. She couldn’t remember a time they’d done that, or a time when she’d felt so alone.

  She started up the hall by herself. All she had to do was make it to four o’clock.

  chapter 27

  A thick snow was falling when Carina walked up from the Astor Place subway station into the East Village. The few other times she’d been here it had been late summer and early fall, when the rank smell of garbage mingled with the smell of incense from street vendors, and the sidewalks were jammed with shoppers and tourists. Now it seemed quiet and almost romantic, as people hurried past the tattoo parlors and coffee shops under the gently blowing snow.

  Her stomach ached with hunger and her legs felt filled with sand as she trudged down St. Marks Place. It had been one of the longest days of her life. After their whispered argument in history, she and Lizzie hadn’t spoken for the rest of the day. Hudson had done her best to stay in the middle, trying to talk to both of them, but it was way too awkward. Finally, at lunch, Hudson and Lizzie had gone to get pizza, and Carina, terrified of running into Ava, had gone back to the janitor’s closet, where she’d eaten her tuna sandwich standing straight up next to a collection of mops.

  But now Alex was going to cheer her up. She knew that Kim’s Video was supposed to be the coolest place to find underground art movies and bootleg albums, but she’d never set foot in the place. As she turned onto First Avenue, butterflies swam up from her stomach. She couldn’t wait to see Alex again.

  She pushed open the door and stepped into an overheated store crammed with shelves of videos and DVDs.

  “I’m sorry,” somebody said. “But I don’t think we have anything with Matthew McConaughey here.”

  She turned to see Alex leaning against the graffiti-scarred counter. He had earbuds in his ears and an open comic book in his hand.

  “Hey,” she said, striding up to the counter. “Nice store. Don’t you think you could spend some time organizing?” she said, looking around at the millions of movies.

  “Nah, we have a secret system,” he said. “You tell me what you’re looking for, and then I hunt around for it for hours,” he said, smiling at her with his soft brown eyes. “Actually, I’ve already picked something out for you. One of my favorites.” He walked out from behind the counter in his Stan Smiths and pulled a box off the shelf and gave it to her. “You’re hereby ordered to love it.”

  “What is this?” she asked, looking at the Chinese writing on the box.

  “In the Mood for Love,” he said. “By Wong Kar-Wai. He’s a genius.”

  “Is it in English?”

  “Cantonese. With English subtitles,” he said, pressing it on her. “It’s beautiful. It reminds me of you.”

  The memory of his lips on hers flooded back to her as she looked at him. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s really good to see you.”

  “You, too,” he said. He walked back to the counter and leaned toward her on his elbows. “Oh, hey, I found this incredible remix by Mastercraft the other day. I’m totally playing it at the dance. Here. Listen.” He reached for the record turntable and CD player on the shelf above him.

  She watched, slightly cringing as he placed a record on the turntable and dropped the needle. Driving technobeats filled the store. “Isn’t that cool?” he yelled over the sound. “I think I’ll put this on first.”

  “Alex?” She still didn’t know how to tell him, but she knew she had to as soon as possible. “I need to tell you something.”

  He turned the volume down just a little. “Yeah, what?” he asked, his head bobbing. “Isn’t that great?”

  She swallowed past the lump in her throat as she stepped closer to the counter. “The DJ job isn’t happening anymore.”

  Alex turned to her. “What?” he asked. “Did they cancel the dance?”

  “No. I had kind of a fight with that girl today. The one in charge. The one who wanted me to get all those fancy people for her.”

  Alex reached up and turned the knob to lower the volume even more. “Fight about what?” he asked seriously.

  “Well, I never really told her that I was going to do things differently. And then when I told her what I’d done she got a little mad.”

  Alex shook his head. “So she thought Matty Banks was still DJing?”

  “No, she knew it was you, but…” She wondered if there was a space under the counter for her to hide. “I told her you were in your twenties and you played Mary-Kate Olsen’s birthday party.”

  Alex blinked. “What?”

  “I knew she wouldn’t go for someone who was our age and went to Stuyvesant, so I had to fib a little,” she said. “I didn’t think it’d be that big a deal.”

  “What else didn’t you tell her?” he asked, perfectly still.

  “That the food was from Trader Joe’s. And that your sister was gonna do the decorations. And that I was gonna bake three hundred Duncan Hines cupcakes.” Her face burned as she looked down at her feet. “But she totally flipped out on me. She said that she wouldn’t have hired me if she knew that we were going to have to ‘slum it.’ That I lied to her. And then she fired me.”

  Alex leaned against the wall. His eyes looked dark. “So I was included in her idea of ‘slumming it’?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that,” she said desperately. “She’s just a snob anyway.”

  “Who you still wanted to impress,” Alex said. “Why couldn’t you just tell her the truth?”

  Carina kicked at the counter with her toe. Because I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t the person she thought, she wanted to say. “I told you what my situation was. How this girl just assumed stuff about me because of my dad. And then expected me to follow through. I had to lie.”

  “Right,” he said. “Don’t give me that, Carina.”

  “You don’t know how my school operates, okay? Or what people are like there. What they think. What they think of me. Do you think I can tell them that I can barely take a cab right now?”

  Alex shook his head. “Sounds like you were just afraid this girl wasn’t gonna like you or something.”

  “No, there’s a little more to it than that.” She turned the DVD over and over in her hand. “She was paying me.”

  “You were getting paid for this?” he exclaimed. “And the rest of us had to do stuff for free?”

  “Alex.” Of course she shouldn’t have told him that she was getting paid. Now she looked like a coward and a hypocrite.

  “Okay, I’m done feeling sorry for you,” he said. “I assume my sister can’t go to the dance, either, right? Were you ever gonna get her a ticket? Or did you just want to make sure she gave you her artwork to use?”

  Carina realized that she’d completely forgotten about Marisol. “Alex, I’ll make it up to you both, I promise—”

  “Do you have any idea how excited she was to go to that stupid dance?” he asked. “She’s made three outfits for it already. And now I have to tell her that she never had a ticket in the first place?”

  “Alex, please,” she pleaded. “Don’t be so mad at me, okay?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” Alex said. “I really like you.”

  “You do?” she said. “I haven’t heard from you since the Killers concert. That was practically five days ago. What’s up with that?”

  Now it was time for him to avoid her eyes as he fiddled with his iPod. “Every time I thought about that night, I’d remember who your dad is,” he said softly. “And how I’ll never, ever be the kind of guy he’d want you to be with.” He looked away, curl
ing and uncurling his fist. “But then I realized that I’m the one with the problem. That all of that stuff shouldn’t matter to me. Because it doesn’t matter to you.” As he looked back at her, the hurt and disappointment beamed out from his eyes. “Except obviously it does.”

  “Alex.” She moved toward him but he stepped back behind the counter. “Please. You’re the coolest, most interesting person I’ve ever met. I can’t handle it if you’re mad at me.”

  He just looked at the door. Through the dirty glass the snow blew in thick white sheets down the street. “I think you should probably go,” he said quietly.

  He looked down at his comic book and paged through it. It was obvious that he didn’t even want to look at her anymore. There had to be something she could say or do. But from the way he was studying his comic, she knew that she’d missed her chance.

  She laid the DVD down on the counter. “You can keep this,” she muttered, and then she blew through the door.

  chapter 28

  Snow drifted into her face as she walked uptown. It wet her eyelashes and the tips of her ears and melted instantly on her cheeks. It was the first serious snowstorm of the year, and already a thick layer of white covered the sidewalks and the tops of mailboxes and the pointy spires of Grace Church. Normally she loved the first snow in the city, when traffic slowed down and sirens got quieter, and the whole city seemed to go on mute. But tonight she didn’t notice. As she trudged up a deserted Broadway, Alex’s hurt, angry voice rang in her head like a car alarm.

  In one day, she’d lost everything. The job. Alex. Her reputation. The money. And maybe even Lizzie.

  Lizzie. She stopped at the corner, where snow was silently filling up a metal garbage can. Only Lizzie could bring her back to herself right now. Only Lizzie could assure her that her life wasn’t completely over. She had to talk to her. Now.

  She dialed Lizzie’s number. The phone was freezing against her ear. Pick up, she thought. Please pick up.

  It rang twice, three times, four times, and then went to voice mail. She hung up. If Lizzie couldn’t get to her phone, she usually sent calls right to voice mail so that it didn’t even ring. The fact that she’d let it ring four times meant that she didn’t want to speak to her. That she wasn’t picking up on purpose. Carina had never felt this alone. Not ever.