“Okay, go,” Lennox said.
“I met him at the gas station,” I said.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“You met Charlie Copeland? At the gas station? Yesterday?”
“Are you going to repeat everything I say in question form?”
“It’s just . . . I’m just . . .”
“I can’t believe I’ve rendered Lennox Sackler-Kandell speechless.”
“I can’t believe the first I’m hearing about this is right now.”
“I’ve been wrapped up in family stuff, so, honestly, I hadn’t really thought of it since.”
Which wasn’t true. I had thought about it. I’d thought about it a lot—and about Charlie’s strong jaw and square shoulders. Everything about him was square, even his hands. I’d noticed that when he held out his wallet and offered to buy my gas and soda. Gas and soda that, pathetically, I couldn’t afford to buy myself.
“And I figured I wouldn’t go to the party anyway,” I said.
“Hold up. You were invited to this party?”
“Charlie invited me.”
“What? Why have you been holding out on me?”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
“You have a complicated relationship with Charlie Copeland that I don’t know about?”
“Okay, ‘complicated’ is the wrong word. It’s just embarrassing.”
“Lorrie, this is me you’re talking to. Your best friend. You can tell me anything. So spill the Copeland deets, please, or we’ll be sitting in front of this graveyard all day.”
“I needed gas and I barely had any cash on me. Charlie offered to fill my tank. But I felt weird letting him, so he said it could be a loan, and I could pay him back at this party. Except Gigi moved our trust to some secret location and locked herself in her room. I can’t get any money out of the ATM, but I can’t show up to his party and not pay him back, right?”
“His father is a billionaire.”
“So? Doesn’t mean he owes any of it to me.”
“Ah, Lorrie, is this what you’ve been processing?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” I told her.
“Well, don’t worry,” she said. “This isn’t a problem.”
“But—” I began.
“No ‘buts,’” Lennox said. “It’s a money problem, and Ma says problems don’t count when you can spend money to fix them. That’s what money is for. It’s the other problems you should really be worried about.”
I knew what she was saying—it wasn’t an illness or a death or anything. But still, it was an easy thing for Allyson Sackler-Kandell to say: She’d always had money. Up till now, so had I.
“I think you should go to this party,” Lennox said. “And I think I should come with you. I’ll give you the money for Charlie.”
“You’re not my personal bank.”
“Just think of it as my admission fee to the best party of the year. You don’t even have to pay me back.”
“Charlie probably doesn’t even remember he invited me.”
“So what? He’ll remember when he sees you.”
“If he notices me at all. He probably invited every girl he’s spoken to this week to this thing.”
“It’s still a holy-shit-big-deal thing to go to the Copelands’ house. I wonder if his parents will be there.”
“He said it was his parents’ party,” I told her.
“Oh my God,” she said. “My knees are shaking. Look at them. They’re actually shaking.” I looked; they were. “I’ve never met a president-to-be before.”
“You don’t know that he’ll ever be president,” I reminded her.
“The senator has been keeping a low profile lately,” Lennox said, speaking as if she were reporting to a crowd at large. “But my suspicion is, he’s gearing up for the big announcement. Even his wife is working the campaign trail these days, giving lots of speeches. You know the First Lady is one of the most visible people in the world, and she doesn’t even get to be on the payroll. But the voters have to like her, too. People vote for the family, not just for the president.”
“You know, Len, I adore you. I really do. I love how you’re passionate about stuff like this—like what’s going on in the world. I love how completely unapologetic you are about what a nerd it makes you.”
“It’d be a landmark thing,” she insisted. “The first time we’d have a third-generation president in the White House. Do you think he’ll announce tonight?”
I shrugged. “Charlie didn’t say.”
“Charlie,” she said incredulously. “You keep calling him Charlie.”
“What else am I supposed to call him?”
“Did he pump his own gas?”
I nodded. “The stars, they’re just like us,” I said. Lennox made a face. She hated those tabloid newspapers. She wanted to be a serious journalist. “I’ve never seen you so starstruck before.”
“Are you kidding? You just lived my dream. Did he say you could bring a friend to the party?”
“He didn’t say I couldn’t.”
“Good. Because I’m definitely coming with you.”
“It’s just . . . what if someone says something? You know, about my family.”
“They wouldn’t at something like this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If anyone does, I’ll take a page from the Charlie Copeland Behavior Handbook and punch them out. Then we’ll make a run for it.”
I waited a few seconds before responding, just to torture her a bit more. “All right,” I said finally.
“‘All right’ we can go?”
“Yeah.”
Lennox grinned and put her non-manicured hands back on the wheel. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“What?”
“You and Charlie Copeland—you’d make a cute couple.”
I waved her off. “Oh, please.”
“Come on, it’s Charlie Copeland,” she pressed. “Don’t tell me he’s not boyfriend material.”
“He’s not.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You are,” I told her. “Copeland crazy.”
“Don’t pretend you’re not, too. Every time I say his name, your cheeks get redder.”
“They do not.”
“Charlie Copeland, Charlie Copeland,” she said. “Ha! You’re scarlet!”
“It’s just that he’s . . . he’s . . .” I searched for the word. “There was something familiar about him.”
“Familiar is a start.”
“Oh, come on, Len. We’ve all seen his face on a thousand magazines. Everyone thinks he’s familiar.”
“But everyone didn’t have a conversation with him and get a personal invitation to his parents’ party.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’d never be interested in me.”
“Why not? You’re beautiful.”
“You’re biased.”
“And smart,” she went on, ignoring me, “and funny, and kind.”
“And I have too weird of a family for someone with Charlie Copeland’s pedigree. Besides, he’s dating Shelby Rhodes.”
“They’re doomed,” Lennox said. “Everyone knows they’re doomed. His parents don’t want him around such a train wreck.”
“So they’ll want him around Edgewater with me and my thousand cats?” I asked.
“Maybe he’s a cat lover,” Lennox said. “You don’t know.”
“And the raccoons,” I went on. “And the mice. And there are a few groundhogs making their home in the basement. It’s our own personal Groundhog Day when they come up from hibernation.”
“That boy is no better than you are,” Lennox said, firm in her conviction, even though mere minutes prior her knees had been knocking at the thought of being in the same vicinity as his parents. “I just think you’re screwed up about guys because of your parents.”
I thought of that picture of my parents that I’d found in the kitchen drawer. Who would’ve ever
predicted the future of that smiling, earnest-looking couple: that the man would go on a bender and walk out when he found out his wife was pregnant with her second baby, because he realized he didn’t want one kid, let alone two; and that the woman would leave a few years later, when she decided her new boyfriend was more important than her kids? “I certainly won the parental lottery, didn’t I?” I asked Lennox.
“Yeah, but . . .” she said, and I could tell she was trying to be careful now, as if each word was being measured before it left her mouth. “Susannah didn’t let it stop her, and you shouldn’t let it stop you, either.”
She’d hit on something right there, something that I hated thinking about, because it made me feel too awful. As wretched as Brian was, he seemed to be committed to my sister, and she was to him. He brought her presents. She gave him a place to live. They called each other “babe.” My younger sister had managed to make a relationship work. She was ahead of me that way.
But at least I was tapped into reality, I told myself. Susannah lived in the same house I did, overrun with dirt and mold and critters, and she didn’t see anything wrong with it. That couldn’t count as well-adjusted.
“There’s always an excuse why you’re not interested in a guy,” Lennox said. “He kisses too sloppily, or he littered in the movie theater, or smacks his gum too loudly.”
“So you’re saying I should go out with guys I’m not interested in?”
“I’m saying I don’t want you to keep hiding behind your past or your house as a reason not to.”
A silence settled over us. I sat there stewing over the truth of it: Susannah was happy. And I was not.
“It’s not a reason not to go for it,” Lennox said softly. “Especially when we’re talking about Charlie Copeland.”
It was easy for Lennox to think that’s how simple it was—that I’d charm Charlie, and none of the rest of it would matter. All the same, it was fun to pretend I had a shot with Charlie Copeland.
“Who has two thumbs and is going to a party at the friggin’ Copeland Compound tonight?” I asked her.
She made two thumbs-up and pointed to herself. “These girls! I just have to hit the ATM before we go.”
“I still feel bad,” I said. Lennox made a face. “I can’t help it. I really hate turning to you for this sort of stuff.”
“That’s what best friends are for.”
“I highly doubt most best friends have had to shell out as much money as you have for me in the last week, and I’m really sorry about it.”
“Listen,” Lennox said, “if you hurt my feelings, or you skip out on something important to me, or screw up in some way—then you can apologize. But don’t apologize to me over something that’s easy for me to do and in my self-interest.”
“But I can’t pay you back for any of it, at least not for a while.” I paused, and for a moment I felt very, very sorry for myself. Lennox reached out a hand and squeezed my knee. I offered her a small smile. “Can I at least say thank you?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s entirely allowed.”
“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Yeah, well, ditto. I can’t believe we’re going tonight! You’ll stay over after, right?”
I hesitated, because I didn’t want to go to Lennox’s house and face the moms while I owed them money; but after the conversation we’d just had, I didn’t even want to try explaining that to her.
“Come on,” she said. “The moms will be happier to know I’m not on my own anyway. They’re in Kiawah till Monday.”
“Sure, I could use some time away from home.”
“Should I drive you by Edgewater now so you can pick up what you need?”
“I don’t need anything from there,” I told her. “As long as you have something I can borrow tonight.”
“Of course, straight back to Dream Hollow then,” she said. Dream Hollow was the name of the gated community Lennox’s family lived in, on the bay side of Idlewild. “It’s a plan.”
9
WELCOME TO OUR HUMBLE HOME
OF COURSE, YOU COULDN’T SIMPLY DRIVE UP TO the Copelands’ house to go to a party. Lennox followed signs to beach parking, where guests were loaded onto shuttle buses for the ride up to the Compound.
But first you had to get name-checked against the list that a woman in a headset was holding. “And you are?” she asked when Lennox and I approached.
“Lorrie,” I told her.
“And your last name?”
“Charlie invited me,” I told her. “He doesn’t know my last name.”
She shook her head, not even trying to hide her disdain. “Lorrie, Lorrie,” she said, running her finger down a few hundred names. “There’s no Lorrie on the list.”
“It was a last-minute thing. Probably after the formal list was printed.”
I put a hand on my hip as I spoke. A power pose, Gigi called it. She’d taken a class in body language several years earlier—not an actual class in a physical school but one she’d signed up for online and paid for with money from our trust, no doubt. For weeks afterward she’d talked about the importance of positioning your body to look powerful. Then, she said, you were more likely to feel so. If I felt powerful, then I’d act powerful. And if I acted powerful, Headset Woman might just think I belonged.
“And she’s with me,” I said, putting my other hand on Lennox’s shoulder.
Headset Woman looked utterly exasperated, but she pressed a button on the side of her headset. “Brittany, there are a couple of kids down here who say they’re on Charlie’s personal list.” There was pause. “Yeah, if you can find him, ask him. One of them says her name is Lorrie.” Another pause. “All right, I will.” Back to us, she said, “You two will need to wait right here.”
We stepped aside while other guests gave their names and were ushered onto a bus. Most of them looked vaguely familiar, and a few of them looked very familiar. There went Miranda Landis, Idlewild’s resident Academy Award winner. Though no one seemed to care who she was. In this crowd, everyone was important. Everyone except Lennox and me. I kept my hands on my hips; even so, with each passing second my confidence waned. Headset Woman was throwing irritated looks our way, and I felt my imposter status on total display. We should turn around and get back into the car. That was the plan that made the most sense. I’d give it two more minutes.
Okay, two more minutes.
“Lorrie,” I heard Headset Woman say. I turned to her. “Apparently Charlie just vouched for you. But you’ll have to wait for the next bus.”
A few minutes later the shuttle bus was back, and Lennox and I climbed in. We had seats near the front, and I watched out the windshield as we drove through the sculpted iron gates of the Compound, up a long, private road flanked by trees forming a canopy above us.
“They’re Norway spruce trees,” Lennox whispered to me. “The Copelands had them imported.”
Minutes passed, and finally the road opened up into a driveway as big as a parking lot. Boxwoods formed an intricate pattern in the center, and an American flag flapped in the breeze in the middle of it all. Beyond it was the Main, an opulent limestone mansion with huge Corinthian columns that stretched up all three stories. You know when you’re a kid, and things seem so big, but when you go back to them, it’s like they’ve shrunk just as you’ve grown? This was the opposite of that. The house was even more impressive to me now than it had been twelve years before.
I was five years old, and the Copelands were hosting a party. Gigi had somehow managed to wangle an invitation for herself, along with invites for Mom and Nigel. Since it also happened to be Gigi’s thirtieth birthday, she’d made her own three-tiered buttercream cake. I was enlisted to drive over with her earlier in the day, so I could hold it oh-so-carefully in my lap. We drove up to the front of the house, and a woman in a maid’s uniform came running out to the car. Gigi came around to my side, opened the passenger door, and lifted the cake gingerly from my lap. Her dog, Katie, alon
g for the ride, jumped to the front and onto me.
“You’re from the catering company?” the woman asked.
“No, I’m Gigi Hollander,” she said, her voice full of superiority. “I’m an invited guest.” I climbed out of the car, Katie in my arms. Gigi prattled on her instructions of how to handle the cake with care but stopped in midsentence as the front door opened again and the tallest man I’d ever seen walked out. He had silver hair slicked back, not a strand out of place, and he looked old enough to be someone’s grandfather, but the little boy trailing him was calling, “Dad? Dad?”
“Not now, Charlie,” the man said, and he got into his car.
On the drive home Gigi told me what a lucky girl I was, that I’d gotten to see the legendary Senator Franklin Copeland.
Now I looked toward the Main, half expecting the senator to walk out again, but all I saw was a line of guests headed up the steps. Everyone looked coiffed and beautiful and in the middle of their own happy lives, and I looked that way, too. Lennox had called the concierge service on her moms’ black Amex card and scored spa appointments for us both to get blowouts and manicure-pedicures. (“I don’t know why I didn’t think to go to the spa in the first place. It’s so much better. I’ll never go to the nail salon again.”) Back at her house, I’d raided Harper’s closet—Lennox was too tall to be an ideal clothes-sharer, but her sister and I were the same height—and found a black and gold Diane von Fürstenberg wrap dress, never worn, tags still on. I’d asked Lennox if we should call Harper for permission, but Lennox said she’d bet money that Harper had forgotten she owned it. The neckline had a deep V, and along with one of Lennox’s push-up bras, it gave the illusion that there was more to my chest than there actually was. Lennox herself was in an elegant sundress the color of a blueberry. It stopped just at her knees in the front but sloped longer in the back, skimming the ground as she walked. “I’m so excited, I feel like my head is about to fly off!” she said.
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