Fifth Avenue #1

by Fifth Avenue 1 (retail) (azw3)

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” India said, giving the purse a sharp tug that surprised Vanity, who stumbled forward, losing her grip. Take that, bitch, India smirked.

  Before Vanity could regain her balance, India strode quickly away across the marble floor of Barneys, clutching the satchel protectively against her chest, like a football player headed for the end zone. She’d gotten there first, and she was going to leave here first, with the bag that was rightfully hers. Only ten yards separated her from the exit. Unable to help herself, she turned around to glare at Vanity victoriously. It was the Cartwright equivalent of a touchdown dance.

  The girl’s olive face was drained of its perfect tan and her green eyes looked more confused than angry. India grinned, feeling giddy. But all of a sudden, a hideous buzzing sound erupted around her. She looked around in annoyance but couldn’t see where the buzzing was coming from. Not daring to hesitate, she continued to walk, feeling a surge of victory.

  “Excuse me, miss?” A burly security guard appeared in front of her. His name tag read KNOWLEDGE. India looked up in confusion. She tried to sidestep him, but he moved his bulk in front of her with ease.

  She’s not the first girl to make a run for it in Barneys!

  “Give me the bag, baby girl, and it’ll all be over,” Knowledge said gently and quietly, holding on to India’s thin arm. She could feel his gold-ringed fingers make an indentation on her skin.

  “I was going to pay for it,” she insisted, trying not to sound desperate. Wordlessly, she handed him the bag as her eyes widened in shock. Could they really think she was trying to steal it?

  Natalie joined them, whisking the purse out of Knowledge’s hands. India felt a burning sensation begin to form on her chest and face, which always happened when she was upset, a precursor to tears.

  “I really think they should have an age limit for some floors, don’t you?” India overheard one white-haired lady say loudly to her female friend with overly teased red hair, wearing a leopard print dress. India suddenly felt like she was five years old.

  “I was going to pay for it,” she repeated loudly. “The checkout counter wasn’t clearly-marked.” Even as she said it, she cringed. Checkout counter? She sounded like she had taken a wrong turn at Target.

  She shook her head, trying to appear supremely irritated and reached into her own LV-monogrammed purse. She would pull her brand-new black AmEx out of her red and green striped Gucci wallet. Then everyone would see it was all an unfortunate mistake and apologize and give her loads of complimentary products for the inconvenience.

  “Luckily, the exit is well marked,” Natalie replied icily. She was enjoying this, India realized. She lowered her voice. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to call your parents.” And with that, Natalie whirled around on her black Prada pumps and walked back to Vanity, who was waiting with a steely smirk on her irritatingly gorgeous face.

  “I just had to have it for the first day of school,” Vanity cooed dramatically. She took the purse in her hands, examining it as if to make sure India hadn’t dirtied it with her sticky fingers.

  “Your shopping trip is over, honey.” Knowledge’s soft voice interrupted her awful trance, as two more security guards escorted her out a side entrance onto 61st Street.

  The door closed with a thud and India felt her face burn. She half expected an angry Barneys mob to follow her as she scurried away, but instead two thirty-something women pushed their black, tank-like strollers past her, chatting about nursery schools. White-gloved doormen stood outside rows of luxury apartment buildings. A red double-decker bus headed toward Central Park. India felt her heartbeat slow down. No one had a clue who she was or what had just happened.

  She readjusted her headscarf and crossed the street with her chin held high. This wasn’t Nantucket, where everything was broadcast until infinity. This was New York, a city of more than eight million people, where India could do whatever she wanted to do—be whoever she wanted to be. So what if she hadn’t gotten the Givenchy satchel? She still had the new patent leather Louboutin slingbacks she’d bought yesterday and her lucky pearls from Grandmother India. She could probably go back to Barneys tomorrow and no one would recognize her.

  As she crossed Fifth, a cute guy in a gray Riverside Prep T-shirt and a Yankees cap jogged by, smiling at her. She smiled broadly back, batting her carefully mascaraed eyelashes. Tomorrow, India Cartwright would begin her brand-new life at her brand-new school and Vanity Laurent would be a distant memory—some bitchy diva who had stolen her purse, never to be heard from again.

  Maybe. The thing is, New York is a big city, but Manhattan is a very small island...

  3

  Trey Cartwright stood in front of an imposing redbrick townhouse between Park and Madison and hesitantly rang the doorbell marked STERLING. He’d gotten an e-mail last week that he was supposed to pick up his swim team uniform from Reese Sterling, the St. Jude’s team captain, but he was still kind of embarrassed to stop by unannounced. It sort of felt like he was trick-or-treating.

  Like anyone wouldn’t give him a treat at any time of year.

  He rang the doorbell again. Pretty blue flowers sprang from orderly white window boxes flanking the entrance. Idly he leaned down to smell one, thinking of a certain someone he wanted to give flowers to. As he inhaled the sweet scent, the door swung open, revealing a woman in a navy blue linen dress with striking, perfectly white hair, even though her face was completely unlined.

  “Good day,” she announced in a prim British accent, opening the door partway and glancing down her nose at Trey quizzically. “May I help you?”

  “Hi. I’m, uh, Trey Cartwright? I’m here to see Reese. I’m new to the swim team and wanted to pick up my stuff?” he began awkwardly. He really hoped he had the right house.

  The woman’s face broke into a warm smile. “Trey Cartwright! Of course, I knew your grandmother quite well. What a wonderfully unique woman.” She ushered Trey into the expansive foyer. Trey awkwardly toyed with the blue flower he had snapped from outside. “You know she was on the show a few times?”

  Trey furrowed his brow in confusion. In front of him was a grand, sweeping red-carpeted staircase like the one in Sunset Boulevard, one of India’s favorite old films. He had no idea what it was about, but India had probably watched it four hundred times.

  “Tea with Lady Sterling,” the woman said sternly, as if she was correcting him. “Tea with me,” she clarified.

  Trey still didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. He seldom watched TV, and when he did, he made a point of not watching shows with the word tea in the title.

  “Nice to meet you.” Trey stuck out his hand awkwardly. The foyer walls were painted a soothing taupe color and were bordered by ancient-looking paintings. Suddenly, a preppy-looking guy wearing pressed chinos and a pristine short-sleeve button-down shirt bounded down the red-carpeted staircase. He looked like he was headed out to play golf. Trey tucked his hands into the pockets of his ratty Adidas shorts and hunched his shoulders inside his thin gray T-shirt.

  “Reese! You have a guest.” Lady Sterling smiled fondly at the two boys. “This is Trey Cartwright. Trey, darling, please do tell your mother I would love to see her. We’ve only met once, at a charity function, and you know how those things are,” Lady Sterling trilled as she clicked down the hall.

  “Nice to meet you, man!” Reese gave Trey a firm handshake. He was just a little bit shorter than Trey’s six feet, two inches, and had chestnut skin and gold-flecked brown eyes. His hair was styled in a parted box fade—very fashion forward since it was a modern take on the popular looks from the late 80s and early 90s. He opened a closet door and pulled out a maroon Speedo swim bag. “This is for you.”

  “Thanks, man.” Trey pawed through it to find six Gatorades, a maroon towel with ST. JUDE’S embroidered on it, and three tiny black Speedos. He held one up to his hips awkwardly. It was about five sizes too small. “Well, good meeting you.” Trey stuffed the swimsuit ba
ck into the bag and turned to go.

  “Wait up,” Reese called behind him. “You busy this afternoon? Wanna go to brunch? Fred’s is pretty good. It’s on the top floor of Barneys.”

  “No!” Trey said quickly, one foot already outside. The last thing he wanted to do was run into India in the midst of some sort of fashion emergency.

  Reese looked crestfallen. “Oh, that’s cool.”

  Trey shook his head. “I mean, can we just grab bagels instead? Go to the park?” he asked awkwardly. Despite the crowd of girls following him at all times, Trey had never really had close guy friends. In fact, it was because of the crowd of girls following him at all times. The guys at NHS had always been jealous of Trey’s good looks and easy confidence, and knew they didn’t stand a shot at scoring when he was around. Trey tried not to care, and he wasn’t lonely or anything. But come on. It wasn’t his fault he was a chick magnet.

  It’s not easy being beautiful.

  “Fine by me.” Reese nodded in agreement and pulled down a pair of Ray-Bans as they made their way out of the townhouse and toward the park. On the way, they stopped at a deli for bagels and beers.

  Breakfast of champions!

  They crossed Madison and then Fifth, and when they entered the park Reese guided them through several winding paths, heading farther and farther west. Finally they stopped at some castlelike stone structure sitting regally behind a small pond. It was about three stories high and looked like a medieval fortress.

  “This is one of my favorite places in the city,” Reese said. “Belvedere Castle. When I was younger, I thought the castle was real and wanted to live in it. My mom has her own TV show, Tea with Lady Sterling?” He looked at Trey questioningly.

  “Yeah, she mentioned that.” Trey kicked at a pebble on the pathway. Girls in bikinis were sunbathing themselves in some big field, pretending they were in the Hamptons, and stoner guys were playing Hacky Sack or Frisbee. It was kind of sad: New Yorkers were so fucking starved for nature, they had to pretend a patch of grass was the beach.

  “Since she’s English, I figured we should have our own castle.” Reese shrugged sheepishly.

  Trey laughed, settling onto the rock as Reese cracked open a can of Olde English, careful to keep it concealed inside a paper bag. He passed the brown bag over to Trey.

  Trey took a sip and surveyed their surroundings. The pond’s surface was covered with old leaves and greenish scum, but an endless array of girls with perfect late-summer tans were picnicking on the grass beside the imposing stone castle. Despite the flock of fine girls in loosely tied bikini tops, Trey found himself searching for a flash of caramel-colored hair. He sighed in frustration.

  For the past few months, no matter where he was, all he’d been able to think about was Kat, the girl he’d hooked up with at a bonfire on Surfside Beach at the beginning of summer. He’d spotted the curvy girl with dancing brown eyes and hair the color of their golden retriever, Chance, and hadn’t been able to tear his gaze from her. By the time she wandered up to him and asked for help opening her Corona Light, Trey was practically in love. And when she asked if he’d show her the lighthouse a few minutes later, they both knew what they wanted to do. There, in the sand in the dark, they’d lost their virginity to each other. It had been the wildest, most irresponsible and amazing thing Trey had ever done.

  “What’s your name?” he had asked afterward, tracing his fingers down the curve of her shoulder. He’d felt like an asshole then. Sure, he was a player, but losing it to a girl without exchanging names was too much, even for him.

  “Here’s a clue.” She’d pulled out a delicate silver bracelet that spelled KAT in loopy, careful letters.

  They’d spent the rest of the night fooling around on the beach and running into the water whenever they got too sweaty. She was from New York, only visiting Nantucket for the day, she said, and knowing she’d be gone tomorrow somehow made it even more special, like it was his last night on earth. The next morning, he had woken up alone on the beach. It might have been a dream, except he had the silver bracelet as proof.

  Trey pulled the bracelet out of his cargo shorts now and ran his thumb over the uneven scratches on its surface. He held it up to his nose to see if he could somehow smell her.

  “What is that?” Reese asked curiously, snapping Trey out of his romantic trance.

  “Just...a good luck charm,” Trey lied, slipping the bracelet quickly back into the pocket of his Adidas shorts. He wanted to ask Reese if he knew Kat, but there were millions of people in the city and he didn’t want to seem like some lovesick freak.

  Too late.

  “Oh,” Reese said, losing interest. “So, Nantucket, huh? What was that like?” he asked.

  “It was cool,” Trey said. “Small.” There was no way he was going to tell the first person he’d met in Manhattan that all of the guys at Nantucket High sort of ostracized him for being a player. He took another sip of beer. The carbonation tickled his throat and the sun made him feel sleepy.

  “It’s pretty small here, too,” Reese told him. “I’ve been in the same school with the same guys since kindergarten.”

  Trey watched as two girls walked past them, their shopping bags swinging in unison. He couldn’t believe he was about to spend the rest of his school days surrounded by guys. What would he look at? “So, what’s it like not having any girls around?”

  Reese squinted his gold-flecked brown eyes, as if he’d never really thought about it. “It’s fine. My girlfriend goes to Seaton Arms, which is down the street, so it’s not like it’s all guys all the time.”

  Trey sighed in relief. He stretched out on the blanket, feeling the sun warm him through his thin gray T-shirt. A runner jogged by wearing skintight Day-Glo Lycra.

  “So, one of the things I’m supposed to do as captain is to give some informal, end-of-summertime splits to Coach,” Reese said, breaking the silence. “Since I don’t have any from you, let’s just race each other across the pond, and I’ll estimate your times off mine.”

  “Right here?” Trey asked skeptically, sitting up.

  “Why not?” Reese stood up on the rock, motioning for Trey to stand next to him. He took off his shirt and revealed a sculpted six-pack and broad swimmer’s shoulders. Trey shrugged and pulled his T-shirt off too. Two girls flipping through Vogue on a nearby bench looked up to stare over their magazine.

  Hello!

  “Ready? Go!”

  Trey dove into the muddy pond without a moment’s hesitation. He kicked through the seaweed and began to freestyle, startling the ducks in his path. He tore through the water with a smooth, strong stroke, his competitive instinct taking over.

  He reached the other end of the pond, breathing hard as he set his feet down on the squishy mud bottom. It felt like week-old oatmeal between his toes and green gunk clung to his arms. Across the pond, Reese stood on the rock, drinking out of his paper bag and laughing. Trey narrowed his eyes. What the fuck? The two girls on the bench giggled.

  “Hey, bro, you’re pretty fucking fast,” Reese yelled good-naturedly as he made his way around the pond toward Trey.

  A green-jumpsuited park ranger suddenly appeared from behind the castle, shouting and charging toward Trey. “You can’t swim there!”

  Forgetting about his shirt and shoes, Trey sprinted away and Reese caught up with him on one of the winding paths out of the park. As they reached the exit, they stopped and doubled over laughing. Trey grabbed the still-open forty out of Reese’s hand. Maybe living here in NYC wouldn’t be so bad. A cool guy friend, fine girls, and fierce swimming—what more could he want?

  Hey, this is Manhattan. There’s always more to want.

  4

  Vanity Laurent stuffed her pointe shoes in her pink School of American Ballet dance bag, ignoring the other dancers drinking Vitamin Waters and flirting with the Fordham freshmen gathered around the fountain outside Lincoln Center. This year, Vanity was in the prestigious internship program, in which she would take several classes
a day in hopes of being selected for performances with the company. She had been dancing for most of her life, and it came as naturally to her as breathing. But today, she’d been half a second behind the music. For the first time, ballet had seemed hard, and Mikhail Turney, the internship program director, had noticed every single one of her missteps.

  As she walked across the expansive marble plaza, Vanity noticed a spot of blood from a blister staining the powder-blue suede flats she’d bought at Barneys just this morning.

  “Fuck,” she murmured. Angrily, she pulled off her shoes and threw them in a trash can. Thud.

  One man’s trash is another’s treasure.

  She slid her feet into the faded blue flip-flops she kept in her bag for when she got a pedicure and sat on one of the low stone benches flanking the reflection pond opposite the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. She glanced at her iPhone and saw that her father had called three times while she was in class. She’d consented to bimonthly lunch dates with him at Le Cirque, where he would ask her about school and dance and pretend to care about the answers, but, as a rule, they never called each other just to chat. He wasn’t even aware she’d left the Paris Opera Ballet School of Dance early, and she did not feel like getting into it.

  Vanity was the unplanned offspring of Vivienne Restoin, the celebrated French prima ballerina, and Charles Laurent, the sixty-something former Nigerian ambassador to France. Vivienne had gotten pregnant when she was twenty-one, and, as she was so fond of reminding Vanity, sacrificed her dancer’s body—and her career—for her only daughter. They’d left Paris as a family when Vanity was only a year old, but her parents had divorced after a few years in New York together. Her dad had later remarried (a few times) and now lived in a townhouse with his new wife and the stepbrats in the West Village. Vanity pulled out her pack of cigarettes, lit one, and exhaled with a dramatic sigh.