by Zoey Dean
SUCCESS
(a)failure
(b)devastation
(c)loserly
(d)loserly devastating failure
(e)all of the above
Chapter Thirty-five
Rose took in the sand in my hair, the sand in Will’s hair, the La Perla thong sticking out of my jean jacket pocket, and made the obvious leap. “You two were doing it on the beach.”
Will and I stood there. The visual clues were kind of hard to deny.
“Would you like to know who you just fucked?” Sage asked Will savagely. “Or should I say, who you’re getting fucked by?”
That was when I saw what was dangling on a cord from Sage’s left hand.
My flash drive. Oh God. My flash drive. How could I have been so stupid? I had erased all my Palm Beach notes on my computer after we’d watched the sunrise on New Year’s morning. I’d even wiped out my computer’s trash bin. But I hadn’t thought about the backup on my flash drive. They must have read every damning note I’d taken over six weeks here in Palm Beach.
“What’s she talking about?” Will asked me.
Sage smiled coldly and twirled the flash drive. “Do you want to tell him, Megan? Or should we?”
I wanted to barf, or run away, or fall to my knees and plead for mercy. But of course, I couldn’t do any of that. Instead, I stood there while the twins launched into the story of how they’d found me out.
After I’d left to walk on the beach, they’d been too nervous to sleep, they explained. So they’d come to my room to talk. Since I wasn’t there, they’d decided to review a few practice SAT problems for the hell of it.
“We booted up your iBook to look for some examples,” Rose told me. “We couldn’t find any files, and then we saw this.”
Sage held up my flash drive. “So we plugged it in, and what do you think we saw, Will?” she asked him. “Files. With our names on them.”
“Your name, too, Will,” Rose added.
I looked at him for the first time. His face was torn by emotions, and I could read them all. Suspicion. Doubt. Hope that this wasn’t true. Fear that it was.
“Ask her what’s in those files,” Sage urged him.
“You don’t have to ask, Will. I’ll tell you.” My knees were weak, but on I went. “They’re notes. For an article I was going to write about Palm Beach. But I changed my mind and decided not to write it. I deleted them from my hard drive. I guess I forgot to get rid of the backup.”
I saw Will’s expression change from confusion to anger. “You really expect us to believe that, Megan? A girl as smart as you are ‘forgot’ to erase her backup?”
“It’s the truth,” I insisted.
“Truth? Jesus, Megan.” Sage laughed bitterly. “You pretended to tutor us, pretended to be our friend, when all the time it was a big act to fuck us in print.”
“And do you want to know what she said about you, Will?” Rose asked with cold fury. “That you’re a pathetic former frat boy who hangs out with high school girls. That what others would call statutory rape, you call getting lucky.”
“You wrote that?” he asked me.
“I can explain,” I said in the timeworn fashion of those caught in the act. “I made those notes before I really knew you—I was being flip because I was angry, like I told you on the beach.” I turned back to the twins. “When I first came here, I really did come as a tutor. I didn’t have any other agenda.”
“Oh, please,” Sage scoffed. “Who the hell are you? What’s your name? And don’t tell us it’s fucking Megan Smith.”
“But it is Megan Smith,” I said miserably.
“Yuh,” Sage scoffed. “I bet. So where are you from, Megan Smith?”
I gulped hard. “I was raised in Concord, New Hampshire. I went to public school. My dad’s a professor at the University of New Hampshire. My mom’s a nurse-practitioner.”
“So you’re not from Philadelphia,” Will stated. Then he swore under his breath. “I knew there was something off.”
“I never said that I was from Philadelphia, actually,” I pointed out in a lame attempt to explain myself. I turned to the twins. “You guys did a Google search and decided some rich girl from there was me. And okay, I let you think it. But if I hadn’t, you never would have studied with me.”
“But once we were studying, you didn’t correct the record, did you?” Sage challenged.
“No,” I said miserably. “I didn’t.”
“Not even after you allegedly wiped out your notes?”
I shook my head. The facts were the facts. I sneaked a glance at the twins. Rose looked like she was ready to cry. Sage, on the other hand, was obviously prepared for first-degree homicide.
“Megan, there’s one thing I don’t understand,” Rose murmured.
“Yes?”
“If you’re not the girl from Philadelphia, and you’re not rich—where’d you get all the clothes?”
“Marco. He helped me.”
“We’ll be talking to Grandma.” Sage sniffed, her eyes narrowed.
There was no sense in telling her that Grandma already knew. She’d find out soon enough.
“Why’d you do it?” Will asked, bewildered. “Why did you lie about everything?”
“I tried to tell you before . . . on the beach. That’s what I was trying to say before we—you know.” I shook my head, trying to remove my momentary mental lapse into beach ecstasy from my brain. “When I first came here, I didn’t even know why I was here. But then that first night, when they played that trick on me and—”
“Hold on,” Will ordered. “You’re blaming this on the twins?”
“No,” I said. “I mean . . . Yes, I did the research. Yes, I took notes. But—”
“You changed your mind about writing it,” Rose finished the sentence for me in a jeering singsong.
“I’m telling you the truth, Rose,” I insisted, hearing my voice shake. “And I just wish . . . I wish you could find it in your heart to believe me.”
Sage made a face. “Why should we? You lied about everything.”
“Because if you look at my iBook, the files are gone. And I haven’t taken a single note in two weeks!”
“She fucking used us, Rose,” Sage concluded. “And she wanted to make money for doing it.”
“But look at all the work I did with you,” I pointed out. “That was real!”
“Anyone could have done that,” Rose said, her voice flat. She took the flash drive from her sister and tossed it at me. “I trusted you.”
What could I possibly say? “I’m so, so sorry.” I reached for her hand, but she jerked it away from me.
“Tell it to someone who cares,” she spat.
“Megan?” Will asked, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “That guy James? Was he in on this, too?” He saw the answer in my eyes. “Holy shit,” he muttered, as much to himself as to me. “ He was.”
“Who’s James?” Sage demanded.
“Ask your tutor,” Will told her.
There was nothing I could say or do, no explanation I could give, that would make the three of them understand. It was a lost cause. But I didn’t want the girls to hurt themselves any more than I’d hurt them.
“I’m so, so sorry for any pain I caused you,” I told the twins. “Don’t let hating me screw up your test tomorrow.”
“Like you give a shit.” Rose snorted. “We’ll be reading about ourselves in fucking Scoop.”
For a second I wondered how much more they knew about me. Had they made the Scoop connection, too? “I know you don’t believe me, Rose, but I do care about you. So much. And Will—”
He shook his head. “Megan—if that really is your name—don’t. Whatever you were going to say, just . . . don’t.”
He turned and headed down the stairs. I didn’t even think about following him.
“We’re going to our rooms now,” Rose said. “When we get up in the morning, I strongly suggest that you be gone.”
That was it
. I went into my suite and shut the door behind me. Numbly, I called a cab to the airport, rinsed myself off in the shower, changed into ugly Century 21 outfit number two, and packed my stuff. It didn’t take long, since I was taking back to New York only what I’d brought from New York. Everything else—the clothes from Marco and the girls, the makeup, the gear, the bling, even the flatiron—I piled neatly on the bed. On top of it all, I put the check from Laurel, the ATM card to the bank account Laurel had opened for me, and my flash drive.
I wrote a note to Marco, too. He’d befriended me when I’d needed a friend the most. What had I done? I had used him. I’m sorry felt grossly inadequate, but I said it anyway.
Then, dressed exactly as I’d arrived at Les Anges, with the same backpack over my shoulder, I headed for the front gate to meet my cab, stopping only to slip my note under the door of Marco’s cottage. I was leaving behind everything I’d gotten in Palm Beach—everything, including my heart.
Identify which part, if any, of the following sentence is incorrect:
(a) Serendipity is a concept that seems (b) vague and theoretical, but (c) which actually plays a role in most (d) peoples lives. (e) No error
Chapter Thirty-six
Ijammed my hands in my pockets against the biting cold as I trudged up the steps at the Astor Place subway stop on the downtown number 6.
The night before had been the worst of my life. Beavering half of New York and getting burned out of my apartment paled in comparison. I’d huddled in the Palm Beach airport until 6:10 A.M., when I was finally able to get on a flight to La Guardia, and then I’d been shoved into coach purgatory between a crying baby and a hygienically challenged guy. It reminded me of one of my earlier vocab lessons with the girls—a thought that made me smile before I found my chin trembling.
There was DIRECTV on my seat back, but I couldn’t watch. All I could do was think of how I’d made a mess not just of my life but of a lot of other lives, too. I willed Rose and Sage to be at the SAT testing center in West Palm. I hoped with everything I had that they would put aside last night and do their best.
The weather in New York was gray and fifty degrees colder than in Palm Beach. I was surrounded by the pasty faces of an urban workforce who didn’t get much sun. When I reached the top step of the Astor Place station, the winter storm that had been in the offing since I landed smacked me like a slap of reproach. Icy wind bit my face; slanting snow gathered on my eyelashes. I had no gloves, boots, scarf, hat, or jacket. When I’d departed in such a hurry from New York two months ago, I hadn’t given a thought to the fact that I’d be returning in the middle of winter.
A middle-aged man in a long coat racing for the subway steps jostled me; I slipped on the icy sidewalk. Out went my feet. I fell heavily to the ground, my ass landing in one of those snow/slush/dog pee puddles that just scream winter in New York.
Welcome home.
Thoroughly soaked, teeth chattering, I slogged east past the cheap-chic shops and restaurants of St. Mark’s Place. When I got to East Seventh Street, the bells of St. Stanislaus began to chime as I let myself into my old building. It no longer smelled of smoke, but of the ethnic dishes cooked by its residents: stuffed cabbage from the Polish lady on the ground level, kimchi from the Korean couple on two, homemade borscht from the Russian family on three, serious cheeba from the Rasta on four.
And then, finally, I was at my door. It was a good thing, too. My ass had frozen into an ice sculpture.
I’d called Charma from La Guardia to warn her that I’d be home a little bit early. There’d been no answer, which had led me to think that she was out doing one of her children’s theater tours. But when I unlocked the three locks and opened the door, I found Charma oh so naked and oh so entwined with the guy in the Wolfmother T-shirt from the park that Sunday from so long ago, when I’d first lost my backpack.
I stumbled back into the hallway and slammed the door shut. “Ohmigod. I am so sorry!” I yelled through the door. “I’ll be back!”
“No, wait, don’t go! We’ll get dressed!” Charma yelled back.
I was frozen and miserable enough to wait. A few moments later, Charma opened the door, wearing a green bathrobe. I saw Wolfmother behind her, zipping up his jeans with difficulty. Apparently, my surprise entrance hadn’t yet deflated his enthusiasm.
“I am so sorry!” I repeated as I stepped back into the apartment.
Charma laughed. “Why don’t you have a coat? Change clothes, and I’ll make tea.” I went into the bathroom and dug out my other Century 21 outfit from my backpack, thankful it was dry, but depressed as hell to be putting it on. I laid my clothes over the shower-curtain pole.
“Much better,” Charma approved when I came back out. She gave me a big hug. “Welcome home! Megan, this is Gary Carner. Gary, this is my roommate, Megan.”
He grinned and pointed at me. “You’re the one who calls me Wolfmother, right? Because of the T-shirt I was wearing the day I met Charma.”
“Guilty,” I admitted. “I called and said I’d be early,” I told Charma. “I guess I should have—”
“No big deal,” Wolfmother cut in. “Just doin’ what comes naturally.”
Charma smiled lovingly at Wolfmother and put on a teakettle in the kitchen. I wandered through an apartment whose four walls were familiar but whose contents were entirely new to me. Gone was the ruined found-on-the-street gear, replaced by the sixties Levittown-chic furniture that had once belonged to Charma’s grandmother. There was one other surprise—what had been Charma’s bedroom before the fire was now subdivided into two smaller spaces by a removable dividing wall. There was a single platform bed in each little room. It was clear which of these was mine—the one that wasn’t strewn with clothing and massage oil.
“You like?” Charma asked, handing me a mug.
After my suite at the twins’ manse, these looked like jail cells. No, wait. Coffins.
“It’s great,” I replied, trying to hide my dismay.
“Charma’s really loud when we fuck,” Wolfmother told me. “I don’t think those dividers will do much. So maybe you can just crank your iPod.”
“Don’t you guys ever go to your place?” I asked him, sipping my tea and trying to sound casual.
“I used to be in a thing with my roommate,” Wolfmother explained. “So we mostly chill here.”
We went back to the kitchen and sat at the new—to me, anyway—pea-green Formica table.
“How come you’re home early?” Charma wondered. “I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow.”
“I thought I wasn’t coming until tomorrow, either,” I confessed.
“So?”
Maybe I would have filled Charma in if Wolfmother aka Gary aka Oversharing Guy hadn’t been scratching his crotch that I was already much too familiar with.
“There was a problem. I came home. That’s it.”
Charma looked closely at me. “What do you mean, ‘a problem’? Do you still get the money if the twins get in to Duke?”
“Like that’s gonna happen!” Wolfmother interjected, chuckling. “Charma told me all about your gig, and I saw their thing in Vanity Fair. Laughed my ass off.”
“Actually,” I said, warming my hands on the mug, “they might just get in.”
“I’m pretty sure an IQ is mandatory,” Wolfmother opined.
“Megs, you didn’t answer my question,” Charma said. “Will you still get the money or not?”
I shook my head.
“Wait, what?” Charma exclaimed. “They got all that work out of you, and then they fucked you?”
“No, babe, I fucked you.” Wolfmother leaned over to kiss Charma, then smiled at me. “Charma found her G-spot yesterday. Isn’t that a killer?”
Killer? I was going to have to kill him.
“Wow,” I ventured.
“Did you have any idea it was coming?” Charma asked. She pointed at Wolfmother. “And don’t say I’m coming!” She giggled.
“Not a clue. I mean . . .” I
sipped my tea. “It was terrible at first. All they did was insult me. I did this whole makeover thing just so I’d fit in. In Palm Beach, you’re either a hair-makeup-designer-clothes diva, or you’re the hired help. It’s a whole subculture I’d never seen before.”
“Gotta love that elitist shit!” Wolfmother crowed. “Tell us more.”
“You name a vice, Palm Beach kids have it,” I offered.
“You partied with those guys?” Wolfmother queried.
“I’ve been to three charity balls in the last six weeks, and I missed twice that many.” I shook my head at the insanity of it all.
“And you got to know a lot of those kids personally?” he asked.
“Better than I ever thought I would.”
Wolfmother scratched the stubble on his chin and looked at me intently. “Charma told me you worked for Scoop before you went to Florida.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ve done more serious writing than that?”
“When I was at Yale.” I yawned and realized how tired I was.
“Did Charma tell you what I do for a living?”
I drained my tea and rose to set the cup in the sink. “Nope.”
“I’m a magazine editor. At Rockit. Funny, I never saw you in the building.”
My exhaustion evaporated in an instant. Wolfmother was an editor at the magazine where I wanted to write? He and Charma could do it all night, every night, and I’d be their one-woman cheering section if he’d give me a chance to show him my clips.
I tried to remain cool. On the surface, at least. “That’s a great magazine.”
“I’d love to see what you have to say about your experience down there,” he suggested. “If you’re interested.”
Oh my God. Was I interested? I had enough material for five articles. “Definitely.”
“You know our editorial stance, right? Don’t hold back. Tell it all. The juicier the better—sex, drugs, rock and roll. If it’s good, I can make it a feature. Say, ten to twelve thousand words?”
Ten to twelve thousand words? That was major. Career-making major.
“Sounds interesting,” I mused, as if it were no big thing and I got offered to do a major feature for Rockit every day.