Great

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  I got off the phone and stared out the window for the rest of the ride to the heliport. I was just clambering out of the huge SUV while the driver got my suitcases when I heard an unmistakable sweet voice (the kind of high-pitched but whispery girly tone Skags calls Marilyn Voice) call, “Naoooooomi Ry-yyyyyyye!”

  I looked up, and there was Delilah Fairweather, slowly walking off the tarmac to where I stood. She seemed to float above the ground like Glinda the Good Witch when she makes her appearance in Oz. I guess that would make me Dorothy, but I usually feel more like a Munchkin when I’m standing near Delilah Fairweather. For one thing, Delilah’s around five foot ten in flats. She’s also gorgeous, with perfect tanned skin and abnormally huge blue eyes. She has one of those cutesy Cupid’s-bow mouths, and when she smiles, her teeth gleam bright enough to blind passersby. For real, she should hand out those Beast-approved giant sunglasses as a precautionary measure before she grins. And of course she’s got long blond hair. Of course. And somehow—and I’m not saying they’re fake—she ended up with a pair of D cups on that super-slim body. She is a walking, talking, living, sexy Barbie doll, if Barbie enjoyed skiing in Aspen, shopping in Paris, and smoking copious amounts of marijuana.

  “Naoooooomi Rye,” Delilah said again in her breathy little-girl way, stretching out the syllables as if it were a novel experience for her tongue. She delicately stepped over to me on those impossibly long legs and bent down to give me the world’s best-smelling hug, which immediately sent tingles up and down my spine as if Delilah were actually electric. Delilah always smelled like some combination of movie popcorn and cotton candy and caramel and other foods she never allowed past her full, bee-stung lips. I’d known her since we were kids, and I’d never seen her eat more than a teensy portion of anything. Still, I found it impossible to hate her—she treated me kindly, for one thing, and for another, she had this way of training her eyes on you and making you feel like you were the only important person in her entire life. She always seemed to have one foot in this world and one foot in some other, rarified realm where magical elves twirl inside sparkling soap bubbles that float on the surface of an enchanted sea.

  She lifted a handful of my hair and breathed into my ear, “Your hair looks stunning this summer.” Her eyes met mine, and she shook her head in wonder. The compliment briefly made me feel as if I had won the lottery.

  I have to give Delilah credit for never being mean to me, through all the years my mother tried to force me on her—and, what’s more, for making a real effort to be welcoming and kind, in her own flighty way. When the adults had clambakes at Baxley’s and the kids ran down to the ocean to play, Delilah complimented me on my bathing suit or made sure I had a pail in which to collect shells. When we got older (like, seventh grade) and my mother finagled invitations to various house parties, Delilah invited me to hang out with the other kids at the far edge of the property. I always followed her and her friends at a safe, respectful distance down to the lake or past the pool house or whatever, and she oversaw the passing of the joint or flask. On the frequent occasion that the kids tried to skip me over, she scolded them sweetly and made sure I got my chance. If I took a drag, it was always quick—I don’t like pot, and anyway, I don’t know how to inhale. I do better with booze, because it’s hard to mess up an action as simple as swallowing liquid. Pot smoking, though—there’s some kind of weird art I haven’t figured out. Probably I never will.

  Delilah introduced me to her companions as if I were her real friend and not just the daughter of her mother’s ex-caterer. But she was much in demand and couldn’t sit around and babysit me the entire night, of course. Consequently, it was up to me to fend for myself at these outings, which inevitably ended the same way. I’m not much of a conversationalist, which makes a handful of people back home (the Beasts included) think I’m a snob. I’d much prefer that reputation to the one most people ascribe to me: “Naomi Rye? Oh, she’s such a good listener.” That was what always ended up happening at these Hamptons parties: everyone else would get wasted while I’d stay sober, and before you knew it, one girl or another would corner me and start pouring out a sob story about how her boyfriend was off in the bushes, having sex with another girl, or how her parents didn’t really love each other and everyone knew, or how her brother had tried to commit suicide but failed because the chauffeur had found him in the garage before he could finish hanging himself, or any one of the usual awful things that happen to very rich people. I didn’t want to know this stuff, because proud people who confide in you in their weakest moments inevitably end up resenting you, but I managed to collect an arsenal of wealthy teenagers’ tales. When those kids become governors and CEOs, which they will, I could make a fortune selling their darkest secrets off to gossip columnists. Of course, I would never actually do that (even though Skags says I should).

  Looking past Delilah, I saw two handsome guys on the heliport, waiting for her. One I recognized as Delilah’s longtime boyfriend, the ex–child actor Teddy Barrington. I could lie and say I didn’t have a poster of him on my closet door when I was ten, but would you really believe me? Every girl I knew loved Teddy back then, when Oh, Those Masons! was the number one show on television. Even Skags was into him, before she realized she was way more into the girl who played his hot older sister. Not only had Teddy once fueled many a young girl’s tween fantasies, he was also an heir to the Barrington Oil fortune. I’d gone with my mother when she catered his tenth, eleventh, and twelfth birthday parties, and they were the most insanely lavish events, each one featuring a private performance by Cirque du Soleil as well as appearances by all his famous co-stars and a bunch of his favorite sports heroes.

  But Oh, Those Masons! was canceled when we were thirteen, and Teddy’s family announced that he was retiring from acting to focus on his education. (There were rumors that he couldn’t get hired for any other roles, but he was so adorable that you just knew those rumors were invented by jealous, mean people.) The over-the-top birthday parties continued each summer, but by then my mother was too busy taking over the world to cater, so I only saw him now and then at a clambake or a pool party—and he never remembered me. Now, six feet tall with light brown hair, broad shoulders, and one of those heroic square jaws, Teddy was the kind of thick-necked handsome that starts to get paunchy in college unless it is continually worked out by university-level athletic competition.

  Delilah offered, “You remember Teddy Barrington, my boyfriend. He’s a football hero and legend of the small screen.” Inexplicably, she broke into giggles, and Teddy rolled his eyes.

  “Nice to meet you,” he grunted, even though we’d been introduced at least once every summer for the previous several years. “Nellie, right?”

  Delilah let out an exasperated sigh. “Naomi, you jerk!” she corrected him, hitting him in his meaty upper arm with her delicate little fist. She tried to do it again, but he caught her wrist in his hand and smiled devilishly, bending her arm toward her face as she squealed in protest.

  “Why do you keep hitting yourself, Delilah?” he teased as he gently tapped her in the face with her own fist.

  “Stop it, you ass!” she protested, laughing.

  “No, seriously, why do you keep hitting yourself?” He pushed her fist into her face again, and she whacked his shoulder with her free hand. He caught that wrist, too, and soon he was making Delilah faux-punch herself with both arms.

  It was sort of charming and sort of horrifying, but it didn’t distract me from noticing that the handsome, dark-haired boy standing beside Teddy was studying me.

  “Jeff Byron,” he said, holding out a hand. I shook it, which seemed kind of weird and formal, but I liked the way his hand felt, warm and big.

  “Naomi Rye,” I said.

  Jeff cocked a thumb at Delilah and Teddy, who were still play fighting. “This will last another five minutes, until she admits he’s bigger and stronger than she is,” he explained in a low voice.

  “Never!” Delilah shrieked, trying to
kick Teddy with the pointy little sandals on the ends of her perfectly sculpted legs. “I never lose, Jeffrey!”

  Jeff sighed and shook his head. “We know, Delilah. We know.”

  “Jeffrey usually summers on the Vineyard,” Delilah said by way of explanation. “But he goes to school with us at Trumbo and—ouch, Teddy!” She whacked him with her tiny, shiny purse.

  “So you don’t usually summer in the Hamptons?” I said awkwardly as we watched the lovebirds fight. It was the first time I’d ever used summer as a verb. Only really rich people do that. My mother does it, and it drives me nuts.

  Jeff rolled his eyes, not in a mean way. “Usually,” he said. “My parents just got divorced, and my mom decided there was no way we were sharing the Vineyard house with my dad and his new girlfriend. So we’re renting a place on Georgica Pond.”

  “I love that you’re renting,” Teddy piped in. “It makes me feel like you’re from New Jersey.”

  “Teddy!” Delilah said. “I love you, but you are a snob with a capital S.”

  “You’re damned right I am,” he said, grinning, and began tickling her.

  Jeff leaned down and whispered in my ear, “If you need to puke, I carry a bag for that purpose any time I’m with them. All you have to do is ask.” I stifled a giggle while I enjoyed the warmth of his breath on my ear. I wasn’t used to such a good-looking guy speaking to me at all, unless you counted Taylor Cryan (boyfriend of Queen Beast Jenny Carpenter) asking to cheat off me in science class.

  “Hey!” a man from the tarmac called. “Miss Fairweather! Your mother called my cell—she wants us to get a move on!”

  Teddy dropped Delilah’s wrists, and she landed one good kick to his shin. He yowled, and she said, “Oh, don’t be a wuss, Theodore.” This set her off into another fit of giggles, which sounded like wind chimes tinkling in the breeze. It was like they were acting out a play for us—this “I love you/I hate you” thing. “If your mother’s calling the pilot, we’d better get going,” Jeff said. “Come along, children.” He began walking slowly in the direction of the pilot, beckoning me to come with him. Uncertainly, I followed him, and Delilah and Teddy followed us.

  “Ever been in a helicopter before, Naomi?” Jeff asked. I guess he noticed how big my eyes got when he led me to the Fairweathers’ sleek helicopter. “N-no,” I said. “Never really wanted to be in one, either.”

  “So why are you here?” he asked curiously.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said, which was easier and more polite than saying, “Because my mother is a huge suck-up, and she’d rather risk my life in this airborne death trap than miss a chance to bond with Merilee Fairweather.”

  The pilot helped all of us inside, and I realized that while the helicopter looked big and impressive, its interior was not nearly large enough for my comfort. We were going to be whirling around the sky in a box, essentially. Like Charlie in the glass elevator with Willy Wonka.

  I was squished between Jeff and the happy couple, who commenced bickering over something as soon as the enormous door slammed shut. We buckled ourselves in, and the pilot passed out noise-canceling headphones.

  “Do I really need these?” I asked Jeff. I hate feeling like my ears are clamped in.

  “You’ll have a much better time with them than without them,” he said, chuckling. He reached over, and I flinched.

  “It’s okay,” he said, and for some reason his voice actually made me relax a little. He put the headphones on me and adjusted them as I tried to stop blushing. It felt like a weirdly intimate gesture.

  “Smooth, buddy,” Teddy said, winking at Jeff. “That’s your patented move—put on the lady’s headphones for her. It’s a panty-melter.”

  “Theodore,” Delilah said, “that is disgusting.” She took out a one-hitter and lit it, inhaling sharply. I wondered what her staunchly anti-drug father, the Republican senator, would have to say about his darling dearest getting high on his helicopter.

  “You know when I first heard that term, ‘panty-melter’?” Teddy asked us. He looked at us all expectantly, and I felt obligated to shake my head.

  “It was at a table read for Oh, Those Masons!,” he began.

  “Oh Lord,” Delilah said. “Here we go.” She pretended to fall asleep on Teddy’s shoulder.

  “Season two. I guess I was ten,” Teddy continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I interrupted Danielson”—this was a reference to Drake Danielson, who’d played his older brother and, unlike Teddy, had broken out of the child star mode and graduated to a successful film career—“after he read the line, ‘Playing guitar is a surefire panty-melter.’ I said, ‘Drake, that doesn’t make sense. Underpants can’t melt.’ And the whole table just busted up laughing.” He gazed into the distance and smiled wistfully.

  “Thank you, Teddy,” Delilah said. “We are all happier for having heard that story.”

  And then it was time for takeoff, which was way smoother than I anticipated. I guess being super-rich really does buy a better everything, because soon we were in the air, with a gorgeous view of the city below. Everything was closer and bigger and brighter. It was so exciting that I forgot to be scared. The sun was on the verge of starting to set when we took off, and as we flew, the sky changed colors. Long Island was below us, first ugly and sprawling, then lush and green, with wide swaths of lawn between homes that seemed to grow bigger and splashier as we went farther east. And to both the north and south, you could see the open water—the words “Long Island” took on new meaning. I felt a poke in my side, and turned to see Jeff grinning at me and giving me a thumbs-up. He pointed to my face, and I realized with a start that I’d unconsciously been wearing a huge smile. I blushed again and instinctively put my hand over my mouth, which made him laugh, which made me blush harder.

  I looked away and caught Delilah and Teddy exchanging a knowing glance, and then Delilah smiled right at me like she had a plan. I know it’s stupid, but it made me feel kind of glowy and special.

  And before I knew it, we were over the East Hampton Airport, which is basically a holding pen for famous people’s private jets and other sky vehicles. I guess there’s a private little airline that runs flights back and forth from different places, but it had never before occurred to me that some people never drive from the city to the sea, that they always arrive by air. As we gently swiveled west and descended and I caught a full view of the peachy-pink sunset, I finally understood why some people preferred to make their entrance from the sky.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER THREE

  As soon as we landed, I saw our mothers—mine and Delilah’s—waiting for us on the tarmac. They looked nearly identical, so it was anyone’s guess which comely, middle-aged blonde had birthed the comely, teenage blonde. No stranger would’ve ever guessed the flat-chested, skinny little string bean with the dull brown hair was a product of the lovely lady in lavender.

  My mother loves lavender. It’s a trademark for her. She never appears on television or at a public function without something lavender, even if it’s just a raw silk scarf draped around her perfectly toned, tanned shoulders, while the rest of her body luxuriates in a white silk shirtdress that shows off her beautiful ballerina legs. She danced professionally in Chicago for a few years but never broke out of the corps de ballet, so she quit. When my father met her, she was a cocktail waitress in a not-so-fancy restaurant. She still takes ballet classes (in a lavender leotard, natch), and my father says the reason Mom is so effortlessly elegant and graceful is “all those years of ballet. They taught her to sit up straight, walk like a princess, and never eat a goddamned thing, not even the stuff she bakes.” And while it’s true that my mother was unnaturally skinny by Chicago standards, where we eat a lot of bratwurst without shame, she fits right in with the rail-thin priestesses of New York high society.

  “Darling!” Mom c
ried out in a voice so embarrassingly sweet I thought everyone else had to know it was bullshit. “You look so thin! God, to be seventeen again.” She quickly looked at Merilee Fairweather for approval, and when Merilee laughed and nodded her agreement, my mother perked up even further. She rushed forward to envelop me in a Chanel No. 5–scented hug, and I patted her awkwardly on the back. My mom was wearing a silk scarf and silk dress, and she also had on these fancy, white open-toe high heels from Ferragamo (I only know this because she never shuts up about Ferragamo) and a string of pearls, and her fingernails and toenails were done in this kind of off-white champagney color.

  I was dressed in maybe a slightly dissimilar fashion. I’d made a dress out of this old long black T-shirt with the lead singer of the Cure on the front, and I wore a black camisole underneath (no bra, I don’t need one) because the T-shirt falls off one shoulder, and I cinched the whole thing around the waist with one of my dad’s old black belts. My hair was up in a ponytail, and I wore a jet-black pair of vintage Doc Martens with slouchy black socks.

  I realize from this description I sound like some weird Goth kid, but I’m not Goth in the least. I like the Cure, and the Docs are comfortable. But did I wear all that black because I was kind of hoping it’d freak my mother out a little? You’re damn right I did. And it worked, too. I could tell she was a little embarrassed when she said, “Darling, you remember Mrs. Fairweather, of course. Merilee, I’m afraid it looks as though Naomi is going through a bit of a phase.” I caught Jeff’s eye then, and he looked as if he were about to crack up. I tried hard not to laugh as I greeted Mrs. Fairweather.

  “I think you look lovely, Naomi,” she said, looking me up and down with the kind of blankly cheerful expression that meant she either liked my outfit or was on benzos. “Very creative. You and your mother should come with Delilah and me to some of the Fashion Week shows this September.”