Sun-Kissed

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “Sure.” Jacqui nodded, climbing out. She waved to the two of them from the sidewalk and watched as the car disappeared down the street. When they were definitely out of sight, Jacqui lost her ebullient facade, and her hand fell limp at her side.

  Why couldn’t she tell the truth? It wasn’t like they would judge her or anything. They were her friends. But admitting to Mara and Eliza that she had failed would be like admitting to herself that she had fallen far short of her goal. And she just wasn’t ready to do that.

  A cute freckled boy wearing an NYU T-shirt found Jacqui walking furtively past the fringes of the event.

  “Hey! Welcome to NYU. Will we be seeing you in the fall?” he asked, handing Jacqui an NYU button.

  Jacqui colored. “Oh, oh no—no, you won’t!” she said, before running past the arch and bursting into tears.

  She furiously wiped her face with the back of her hand. This was no way to act. She was in New York, and there was absolutely no reason to cry. Okay, so she might have to go back to Brazil at the end of the summer, and maybe she’d have to be some kind of salesgirl all her life, but she didn’t have to think about it right then. As she walked down Bleecker Street, she passed by the Marc Jacobs store.

  The mannequin in the front window was wearing a cute pink bikini with purple hearts.

  Jacqui stopped sniffing and walked inside, pushing open the glass door, which tinkled to announce her arrival.

  “Hi, can I help you?” a cheerful salesgirl asked.

  Jacqui nodded. Okay, so every time she was depressed, she bought another bikini. But somehow, handing over the plastic made her feel better. That’s why they call it retail therapy.

  mara visits the ivy in the apple

  THE COLUMBIA CAMPUS WAS LOCATED FAR UPTOWN, ON the other side of the city. Eliza dropped Mara off right on 116th and Broadway, in front of College Walk—a pretty brick-lined street bordered by a row of trees on each side. Unlike NYU, Columbia had a proper campus. There were two green lawns in the middle of a square bordered by Low Library, a domed Palladian building on the north side, and on the south by Butler Library, which housed the university’s book collection (one of the largest in the world, next to the Library of Congress). Etched in the pediments of both Low and Butler libraries were the names of Greek writers and philosophers in a majestic array: SOPHOCLES, SOCRATES, HERODOTUS, HOMER.

  Mara walked around, impressed by the scale and feeling of scholarship the architecture inspired. She hadn’t expected Columbia to be so beautiful. She had visited Dartmouth and had immediately fallen in love with its leafy, colonial New England atmosphere, but Columbia had a different feel—it was an urban campus; New York was just outside the gates. It felt like a genteel sanctuary in a vibrant metropolis, offering the best of both worlds.

  Not that it mattered. Columbia might have classical architecture and a New York address, but it didn’t have Ryan. She checked into a modern glass-and-steel building with crisscrossing entrance ramps. The admissions office had told her to meet her student guide in front of Ferris Booth Hall. Mara noticed how modern the café inside the building was and how chic the students looked—unlike at Dartmouth, where a slouchy preppy homogeneity prevailed, with everyone wearing J. Crew sweaters or dressed down in slouchy sweatpants. The Columbia kids were a lot more dressed up, in fashionable jeans and hipster shades of black.

  She approached a girl in low-rise jeans wearing a worn, vintage Skid Row band T-shirt and Puma sneakers. “Hi, are you Danielle?” she asked.

  “I surely am. And that makes you Mara?”

  Mara nodded. “Thanks so much for giving me the tour.”

  “Not a problem at all; I’m happy to show you around.” Danielle smiled. She wore her hair in a ponytail, and Mara noticed she didn’t wear a speck of makeup. None of the clothes she wore were trendy or expensive, but there was something fresh-faced, practical, and undeniably cool about her. Mara liked her on sight.

  Danielle explained that she was a sophomore and from California. She was working in the dorms that summer and was a film and gender studies major. She chattered happily about her classes, Columbia’s core curriculum, and the advantages and disadvantages of several first-year dorms.

  “So, Carmen is the most popular. Its, like, the classic Columbia freshman experience. You get a suite, four roommates sharing two rooms, and a bathroom. It’s nice, like a little apartment, so you don’t have to share a bathroom with boys. The other buildings can be a little scary. A lot of the dorms have coed bathrooms, and my friend who was in one last year said she was constipated for a year!”

  As Danielle showed her around, Mara noticed that the curlyhaired girl said hello to a diverse group of people—from a tall guy in a basketball jersey, to a girl in a printed granny dress and hiking boots, to a boy in a tight white tank top with a rainbow flag pin, denim short-shorts, and black combat boots.

  “So what do you do for fun?” Mara asked.

  “Oh, there’s tons of things. I mostly go out downtown. I like to go clubbing. And, of course, the Angelika—the art cinema. The restaurants in New York are just amazing. Have you ever had Ethiopian food? There’s a really great Ethiopian restaurant on 115th. And what’s cool is you can use your dining card at a bunch of places on Broadway.”

  “Is it very social here?”

  “How do you mean?”

  Mara shrugged, feeling embarrassed. “Are there a lot of frat parties?”

  Danielle wrinkled her nose. They walked down 114th Street, past a row of brownstones, each door decorated with a letter of the Greek alphabet. “Yeah, we do have frats. But it’s not a big part of Columbia life. Our football team sucks. The typical notion of Greek life here is pretty atypical. Like the frat for poets. Every year, they host this really groovy party called Hot Jazz and Cool Champagne. Girls wear cocktail dresses and this great jazz band plays Billie Holiday. It’s really fun.”

  Mara thought that sounded really cool … and extremely different from everything she’d heard from Tinker about social life at Dartmouth.

  “So, what are you doing with your summer? Hanging out?”

  Mara told her about her column in Hamptons magazine.

  Danielle immediately lit up. “That is fantastic. Wow. Good for you. Columbia is the place to be for aspiring journalists, you know. Sam Davis—who used to edit all those big magazines? She’s an alum. So are a lot of people in publishing. We have an Art Suite, a Writers’ Suite, and a Nonfiction Writers’ Suite, and the Spectator is one of the country’s best college papers.”

  Mara’s head was swimming. Columbia sounded really, really great. And the writing program—along with its list of prestigious alumni—was very tempting. Plus, she’d already gotten in. The school actually wanted her—it didn’t still have to make up its mind, like Dartmouth.

  Maybe she didn’t even want to go to Dartmouth anymore. But that was crazy, wasn’t it? What about Ryan? She felt bad thinking like that, especially since they’d been fighting so much lately.

  After the tour, she said good-bye to Danielle and promised to look her up if she made it on campus in the fall. Then she hailed a cab to take her downtown to meet the girls in the Meatpacking District to check out the new boutiques. One advantage of moving to New York City—the shopping would certainly be a lot better than in New Hampshire.

  you always need to be armed in a food fight

  TAKING CARE OF THE KIDS WAS HARDER THAN SHANNON HAD thought. With Jacqui away, Shannon had assumed it would be a breeze. In fact, she had been looking forward to the weekend—how hard could it be?

  But Elizas Land Rover had barely turned the corner when it started. Zoë looked across the breakfast table at the new au pair with a skeptical eye.

  “I don’t eat pancakes,” she informed her.

  “You do when Jacqui makes them,” Shannon pointed out.

  “These are gross,” Zoë said, pushing her plate away.

  Seeing his sister resist, Cody did the same. “No eat,” he said. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate
you!”

  “C’mon, you guys, these are good, see?” Shannon said, forking up a piece and putting it in her mouth. “Yum.”

  “No, Zoë’s right, these are gross. They’re, like, the grossest pancakes in the world,” William agreed. An evil smile came onto his face. If Jacqui had been there, she would have recognized that smile. It meant that mayhem was about to erupt.

  William picked up a pancake and threw it across the table, hitting Zoë in the face.

  “Ow!” the little girl screamed. She picked up a handful of berries from a bowl and pelted them at her older brother.

  Chortling, Cody did the same, upturning the jug of maple syrup on the walnut table.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Shannon yelled.

  “Food fight!” William cheered.

  “Nooo!” Shannon yelled as Cody spilled his glass of milk on the floor.

  Madison walked in, sweaty and red-cheeked from an early tennis game. Since the other night, when she had walked in on Jacqui and Shannon laughing about something they hadn’t shared with her, things had been a little frosty between the two insta-friends. Shannon knew Madison thought she was keeping something from her, and since Madison was right about that, Shannon didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Uh—I just—they won’t stop,” Shannon said as a banana flew by, hitting the microwave.

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Madison shrugged. “Zoë, Bill, quit it. Leave Shannon alone. Come on, now. Clean up this mess. You know you’re both being bad.”

  “You can’t do that,” Zoë said. “You can’t tell us what to do.”

  “Yeah, you’re not Jacqui,” William said.

  “So what? I’m older than all of you. You have to listen to me. You guys listen to Ryan, Sugar, and Poppy,” Madison pointed out.

  In answer, William kicked his chair and Zoë knocked her plate to the floor. Cody giggled and did the same, shattering the porcelain.

  “Stop it! Everyone stop or I’ll sell all your toys and give them to children who’ll appreciate them!” Madison demanded, letting them know she wasn’t fooling around.

  The kids shuddered, and one by one they ran off to their rooms to clean themselves up and do as they were told. They had no idea if Madison would carry out her threat, but they weren’t sticking around to find out.

  “Thanks,” Shannon said.

  Madison helped pick up the thrown fruit and handed Shannon a roll of paper towels so she could mop up the floor. “It’s nothing. You just need to show them who’s boss. I think they’re all a little antsy since we haven’t seen Dad in a while, and the last time that happened, he and Mom had split up.”

  Shannon was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing, and didn’t reply.

  “Do you know anything? Are Dad and Anna getting divorced?” Madison asked directly. “Anna’s been acting really strange lately, and Dad hasn’t been around all summer.”

  “I don’t know,” Shannon lied, wishing she could tell Madison the truth. “I think everything’s okay.”

  Anna walked in as Madison was walking out. “Oh, Shannon, I do hope this isn’t the way every breakfast is going to be,” she said, noticing the stains on the slate counter. She was uncharacteristically cheerful and wearing a tight halter dress. Anna checked her reflection in the beveled mirror by the entryway.

  “Are you meeting someone?” Shannon asked, smiling knowingly. According to the e-mail plan, Jacqui and Shannon, posing as Kevin and Anna, had sent e-mail invites from each of their mailboxes to set up a face-to-face appointment. Kevin thought Anna wanted to talk about making up, and Anna in turn was acting under the assumption that Kevin had asked her to lunch to discuss withdrawing the divorce petition.

  “Yes, an old friend.” Anna smiled mysteriously. “I haven’t heard from him in such a long time, but Ward Pershing was one of the cutest young associates in the office. I used to die every time he borrowed my stapler. He said he would love to meet me for lunch at Babette’s. How did he know it was my favorite place!”

  Who is Ward Pershing? Shannon wondered, panicked. Something wasn’t right. As soon as she could, Shannon stole away to Anna’s laptop. She called up the deleted mail, where her fake e-mails were stored. She scrolled to the one labeled Coffee, Tea or Moi? that read, You, me, Babettes, 1 p. m. Be there. Let’s make up for lost time. Alas, the address line didn’t read perry@perryassociates.com but pershing@perryassociates.com. Shannon had mistakenly let the automatic function on Anna’s mail system fill in Ward Pershing’s e-mail rather than Kevin Perry’s, and now Anna was going to meet an old crush rather than her husband. Worse, Kevin would be there to see the two of them together and think that Anna was playing a dirty trick and wanted nothing more to do with him!

  Shannon groaned. Jacqui was going to murder her. And she’d directly lied to Madison, who suspected something.

  It was going to be a long weekend.

  if the shoe fits …

  WHEN SHE’D BEEN LIVING IN EXILE IN BUFFALO, ELIZA HAD missed a lot of things about New York City. The food, her friends, their apartment, the way the light reflected off the Hudson River at night. But she hadn’t missed anything as much as she’d missed Todd Gillian, her shoe salesman at Jeffrey.

  Jeffrey was a candy-colored store on the far west side of lower Manhattan, in the Meatpacking District. Once an outpost of butcher shops and trannie bars, the Meatpacking District was now the trendiest neighborhood in town, filled with designer boutiques and Asian fusion restaurants. Like Barneys, Bergdorf’s, and Saks, Jeffrey was a designer emporium—it sold all the majors—Gucci suits, Yves Saint Laurent cocktail gowns, Marni sweaters, Balenciaga shearlings. But what really set Jeffrey apart was its shoe selection. The front tables were all given over to the latest five-inch cork-soled patent leather Christian Louboutin stilettos, mink-lined Manolo Blahnik boots, and spindly Jimmy Choo sandals. It was a temple to designer footwear, the Valhalla of the sole.

  Every time Eliza stepped inside its doors, she could hear angels singing. (Okay, so it was in the voice of Sarah Jessica Parker, but still.) After she’d dropped off Jacqui and Mara, Eliza had driven all the way down to 14th Street to Jeffrey, where Todd was waiting for her.

  She had known Todd ever since seventh grade, when he had fitted her with a pair of lime green Jimmy Choo mules for her friend Taylor’s bat mitzvah. Todd had seen Eliza through all the important events in her life: her first Gucci loafer, her first Manolo pump, her first Yves Saint Laurent wedge, her first snakeskin Roger Vivier.

  He welcomed her now with open arms. “Eliza! Princess!”

  “Todd! My love!” It was their usual greeting.

  “Wait till you see what I have for you,” Todd whispered, disappearing into the storage area. He came back bearing an armful of black shoe boxes.

  Eliza took a seat on the suede couch and removed her Clergerie sandals and clasped her hands in anticipation.

  She spent several blissful hours trying on every pair. There was a darling one from Marni with pom-poms on the tips, a gorgeous Dries Van Noten—gold, with silver flecks in the heel—a supersexy Rochas with a Lucite stiletto. She was in shoe heaven. Until a voice interrupted her reverie. Oh no, not again. Eliza turned around.

  Paige McGinley stood in front of the cashier, berating the salesclerk. She was holding an armful of the latest designer clothes.

  “Where is that leather McQueen dress? I specifically ordered it.”

  “Yes, miss. But you have to prepay and …”

  Todd saw where Eliza was staring. “It’s her again,” he whispered. “She’s here all the time. At the same time each season. She wants the new line before it’s ready to be sold. She wants to see the look books, the samples. You know she works for Sydney Minx? And all he does is copy everyone else’s collection. We stopped carrying his line years ago. He had a falling-out with Jeffrey.”

  Paige noticed Eliza sitting on the couch and walked over with her many white shopping bags. “So, back on the trust fund?” she sneered. “Mommy and Daddy bail you out again? Too hard
to work for a living, I know.”

  Eliza tried to keep a fake smile on her face. “It’s the weekend, Paige. I’m off.”

  Paige didn’t notice as her cell phone rang and she struggled to answer it, rooting through her bag. She removed tissues, stacks of business cards, and a vanity case before finding it. Several loose business cards fluttered to the floor. Eliza picked up the cards that fell by her side and saw one that caught her eye. The older girl shrugged her thanks as she flipped open her phone. Too late—she’d missed it.

  “Hey, how do you know Jeremy Stone?” she asked as she handed Paige her cards back, Jeremy’s brown cardboard one on top of the pile. Eliza couldn’t help herself; she had to know the story from Paige’s point of view as well. What if Jeremy wasn’t telling her something?

  Paige’s brow crinkled. “Jeremy who?” Then it relaxed. “Oh yeah. I went out with him,” she said in a bored voice.

  Eliza’s face paled, but she kept the smile plastered on her face. “You did?”

  “We went out for two years in high school and after college for a bit. He’s a sweet guy. He’s doing his own landscaping now; good for him. How do you know him?”

  Eliza didn’t answer. She was mentally calculating the dates—high school and college, which meant … Paige was Jeremy’s exgirlfriend. The one he never talked about. The one who’d supposedly broken his heart when they’d broken up. She felt cold suddenly, as if someone had poured a pitcher of margaritas down her back.

  Paige and Jeremy had been together. Paige—she was the girl Jeremy had lost his virginity to. It was almost too much to stomach. Jeremy had told her that he’d only fallen in love once before but that it hadn’t worked out. Eliza had gotten the impression that it had taken a long time for Jeremy to get over Paige. Maybe he still wasn’t over her. Maybe he still loved her. Maybe he thought of Eliza as some consolation prize when all he wanted, really, was Paige.