Great

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  Once we all sat on the deck drinking mojitos and trading sex stories. Obviously, I didn’t have much to contribute, even though I was gaining more experience with Jeff on that particular front. And Jacinta kept herself busy freshening everyone’s drinks, so she didn’t speak up much, either. When Ainsley mischievously asked Delilah how it was with Teddy, Delilah rolled her eyes.

  “Ugh,” she said. “We hardly ever do it anymore.” The Fitz-williams sisters exchanged a look, and Ainsley Devereaux wore a pert smile. I remembered how she’d treated Misti at Jacinta’s party. Then I remembered how Jeff said everybody knew about Teddy and Misti. I wondered if Delilah knew.

  Jacinta smiled gently and poured Delilah another mojito.

  The girls were all perfectly nice to me, warmer with each subsequent visit. There were group beach excursions where Ainsley exclaimed over the flatness of my stomach (“You mean you don’t even have a trainer? God, I am so jealous!”) and the Fitzwilliams sisters asked me which clubs in Chicago checked IDs. (I had no idea.)

  And something funny started to happen, something that had never happened before during all the summers I’d spent in the Hamptons. I started to feel like I almost belonged. I didn’t come from the kind of pedigree these girls had, and I didn’t get all their references to private schools and Swiss ski resorts and high-end designer this-or-thats, but for the first time, I was one of them. I began to realize that they weren’t so bad, at least not all the time. You just had to ask them questions about things they were interested in: shopping, parties, horses, guys. Sometimes I would bake surprises for our afternoon get-togethers, and the girls would squeal with delight over my creations (when they weren’t moaning that I was going to make everybody fat by the end of the summer).

  The most fun, though, happened after the other girls left, drifting home to parentally-mandated dinners. That was when Jacinta and Delilah and I floated lazily on mini-rafts in the river pool, letting the current take us, talking about everything and nothing. But at times I’d catch them staring at each other with what I could only describe as longing. Something was developing between them that went beyond friendship. It was like they got high off each other, and every mutual encounter was another chance to feel some sort of pleasure that was very specific to their union. There was me, and then there was the Delilah-Jacinta combo, a two-headed blond creature. It was almost like watching two people fall in love. I didn’t feel left out, but there always came a certain moment when I knew it was time for me to leave them alone. I’d excuse myself to go to the bathroom or just to walk outside for a moment, and when I returned, I always felt as if I were interrupting something. But they took pains to make me feel welcome, so I stayed. I could tell they both genuinely liked me. It felt good to be genuinely liked, especially in a place where I usually felt genuinely ignored. Even with Skags, I was always the beta friend. I knew a lot of people at school saw me as her sidekick. But when Delilah Fairweather trained those big blue eyes on you and told you she was glad to hang out with you and you alone, you believed it. I believed it, anyway.

  Since they knew I was invariably going to see Jeff in the evening, they assured me I needed to look super-hot each time. It was like I was their pet project. I protested that I was giving him an unrealistic impression of my own grooming habits—left to my own devices, I’d go bare-faced, with my hair in a ponytail. But Jacinta and Delilah seemed horrified by the prospect of my leaving the house in anything but a full face of makeup.

  “It’s not that you aren’t naturally beautiful, love,” Jacinta said one day as she carefully applied lipstick to my mouth with a lip brush. “It’s just that—well—what would you say, Delilah?”

  “A guy likes to see that a girl has made an effort for him,” Delilah said helpfully.

  “I think you’re both nuts,” I said, laughing. “You’re like the fussy older sisters I never had.” Skags would’ve probably said that they were forcing me to embody conventional, narrow-minded notions of femininity—and that I was woefully complicit with my own subjugation—but Skags wasn’t there. And we weren’t talking all that much these days, so it’s not like I gave her the details. She wouldn’t have understood. She would have said I was turning into a Beast (one of the evil ones, not her newly beloved Jenny Carpenter), and I couldn’t take her judgment when I was this happy.

  After I was all done up, Delilah would leave for dinner with Teddy, either at the Barringtons’ place or at her parents’ place. She and Jacinta seemed to have an unspoken understanding that while her days belonged to Jacinta, her nights belonged to Teddy. And because Jacinta always seemed a little sad to see Delilah go, I’d stay awhile, sipping tea with her on the back deck. Eventually it would be time for me to meet Jeff, and I’d give Jacinta a hug goodbye. When I left, I always paused for a moment on the lawn and looked back at her house. It gave me a tiny pang to leave her there all alone, though I couldn’t have told you why.

  One day, after everyone else had gone home, Jacinta shut the door behind Delilah and walked into the kitchen looking particularly forlorn.

  “I hope you don’t get this sad when I leave,” I joked, trying to coax a smile from her.

  She looked at me quite seriously and said, “Well, it’s a completely different thing with you and me than it is with me and Delilah.”

  “Ah,” I said, trying not to feel insulted.

  “We just. . .” She hesitated a moment and peered at me closely, as if she were searching for something. I guess she found it, because she continued, “We’ve actually known each other a bit longer than we let on. We knew each other when we were kids. Briefly. So this has all been a bit of a reunion for us.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That makes sense, actually. It sometimes seems like you are speaking your own language. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Jacinta smiled a little. “I guess we wanted to keep it to ourselves a little while longer. We used to play together every day as kids. Her housekeeper used to call everything ‘scrumptious,’” she recalled fondly. “Like, literally everything. And she always baked us snickerdoodles. And we had matching mini-Birkins when we were kids. Hers was red; mine was white.”

  I thought about this new revelation on my way across the lawn to my house, where Jeff was going to pick me up for dinner. I didn’t begrudge the girls their friendship, or their semi-secret past. It just seemed a little. . . intense for just a regular friendship, actually. And I still didn’t understand why they hadn’t just been open with me about the fact that they used to hang out when they were little, but I didn’t know them that well, after all.

  I tried to call Skags a couple of times, but either she couldn’t talk more than a few minutes or she didn’t pick up the phone. I guess I could’ve tried harder to call Skags, or at least to text back and forth, but it seemed like something else was always coming up—a clambake, or a day at the village spa with Jacinta and Delilah, or a long bike ride with Jeff. Usually I spent all summer wishing I were back in Chicago, but at some point that summer I stopped thinking about home.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I was so involved in my newly busy summer, in fact, that I didn’t even remember to call my dad to check in. He had to call me.

  We were at the beach when my cell lit up with an incoming call from Dad.

  “Hey, Dad!” I chirped with an amount of excitement that astonished even me. I’m not exactly what you’d call perky, but suddenly I sounded like a cheerleader hopped up on cotton candy and Pixy Stix.

  “Hey there, kiddo,” he said. With his Chicago accent, it sounded more like “Ey dere, kiddo.”

  “Whatcha up to?” he asked.

  I looked around. Jeff lay on his back on our huge beach towel, napping. I traced the lines of his body with my eyes, admiring the muscles I was growing to know so well. He had that thing some super-buff guys get (I don’t know what
it’s called, I haven’t taken anatomy yet) when a couple of their lower abdominal muscles make this sort of V shape that points directly to—

  Well.

  Anyway.

  That’s not the sort of thing you tell your dad.

  “I’m not up to much,” I said, turning my attention to my toes, which had been painted pale pink a few days before during a spontaneous mother-daughter pedicure downtown. I’d been wandering around killing time, waiting to meet Jeff after his golf game, and I ran into my own mom outside a salon. She suggested we get our toes done, so we did. It was kind of nice and she only annoyed me, like, twice in thirty minutes. That’s got to be a record for her.

  “No time to call your dad, though,” Dad said a little gruffly. “I’m used to hearing from you at least once a week when you’re over there.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I have been kinda busy. Hanging out with friends and stuff.”

  “Friends?” He sounded surprised. “Since when do you have friends at the beach?”

  “Since, I don’t know. This year. It’s not as lonely.”

  “You still reading that SAT book?”

  “When I have time,” I lied. The truth was that other than our late-night study session that so surprised my mother, I’d largely been ignoring my SAT book. It was just that there were always other things to do, like hang out with the girls or go night-swimming at the beach with Jeff or go biking around the neighborhood with Jeff or go hiking on some of the old horse trails with Jeff. There was also frequently dinner at Jeff’s house with his post-divorce-depressed mom, who always seemed to perk up when I was around. And at night—especially at night—there were other things to do with Jeff.

  I talked to my dad for a few more minutes about the summer basketball camp he was running, the classes I had signed up for the first semester of senior year, what was happening in the neighborhood back home—stuff like that. Then he asked the question he always asks on these phone calls, maybe to be polite, or maybe because he actually still cares about her in some way.

  “How’s your mother?” he asked, clearing his throat.

  Usually, I respond with “She sucks” or something similarly hostile, and then he gives me a mini-talk about how I’ve got to be nice, or at least patient, and that the summer will be over soon and I won’t have to see her again until Thanksgiving. But this summer was kind of different, and so was my answer.

  “She’s okay,” I said. “She’s all into her company going public, so she’s in the city a lot. Mostly she stays out of my way, but I see her sometimes, and it’s not too bad.”

  “Wow,” my dad said, sounding surprised. “I think that’s the best report I’ve ever gotten from you, kiddo.”

  “Well, it’s not like I like hanging out with her,” I said defensively. He laughed.

  “It’s okay to not hate your mother,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I said, a little irritated. I’m not used to feeling irritated with my dad, so I figured I’d get off the phone before I said something crappy.

  We exchanged a few more words, and I told him I loved him, and then the call was over.

  “No mention of your hot summer lover?” Jeff said without opening his eyes.

  “Ewwww,” I said. “‘Lover’ is such a gross word.”

  “Lover,” he said, sitting up and grinning at me. “Lovaaaah lovaaah lovaaah.”

  “Oh, nasty,” I said, punching him lightly in the arm. He grabbed me and started tickling me, shouting “lover lover lover” over and over again while I cracked up. I had just started fighting back and was tickling him in slightly inappropriate places when I heard someone walk up. I looked up, and there was Jacinta Trimalchio, carrying a vintage-looking robin’s-egg blue parasol with pretty white ruffles.

  Because Jacinta Trimalchio could never wear anything runof-the-mill, she was sporting what looked like a 1920s bathing costume—a long black tank with little shorts attached, seemingly made of a jersey cotton instead of Lycra or Spandex or whatever is usually in bathing suits these days.

  “Do you ever say to yourself, hey, I think I’m just gonna go for a subtle look today?” Jeff asked, teasing her. I looked at his dimples and almost melted.

  “No,” Jacinta said seriously. “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff said. “To fit in?”

  “Fitting in is overrated,” Jacinta said simply. She turned her attention to me.

  “Delilah’s at a model agent’s in Manhattan today,” she announced, apropos of nothing. “Ford Models. They’ve launched the careers of so many of my favorites, I can’t even count.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That sounds nice. Yeah, I haven’t really seen you girls for a couple of days.”

  “A break in your busy tea party schedule,” Jeff said.

  “We’ve been. . . ,” Jacinta began, and then her porcelain face flushed. She was opening her mouth to say something else when another girl wandered up. This girl was short and curvy, with breasts so large that they almost appeared aggressive in their need for attention. She wore a white bikini and white sandals and carried a white straw beach bag that probably cost more money than one semester of tuition at Trumbo. There was something about the tilt of her chin and the way she pursed her lips that made me immediately dislike her.

  “What’s up, Olivia?” Jeff said lazily.

  Great. Another pretty robot from Trumbo. I restrained myself from rolling my eyes and tried to act friendly.

  “Not much,” Olivia said. She looked at me with slight interest.

  “You’re Anne Rye’s daughter, right?” Her expression was hard to read behind her giant sunglasses, but I could tell she was trying to be friendly.

  “Yeah, I’m Naomi,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” she said with a syrupy-sweet smile. “All I hear about at home these days is good things about your mom’s company.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised.

  “My parents are investors,” she said, as if that were a normal job to have.

  “And,” Olivia added, “they’ve been looking at your mom’s company.”

  “Oh, that’s—that’s really nice,” I said. “Yeah, she, um—she works really hard.”

  “Trust me, I know all about it,” she said with a friendly little laugh. “You should come over for dinner sometime. My parents would ask you about a zillion questions.”

  “Is it weird for you that your mom has fans?” Jeff asked.

  “Oh, they’re not fans, exactly,” Olivia said quickly, frowning at Jeff. “I mean they’re looking for a good investment.”

  “That’s genuinely fascinating, Olivia,” Jeff said, and I tried not to laugh. He could be such a nonchalant asshole sometimes, and it was hilarious.

  Olivia ignored him and turned back to me. “But really, you ought to come by sometime,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said without enthusiasm. I’m not an idiot. I can tell when people are being nice to me just because they know who my mom is. Then Olivia turned to Jacinta, acknowledging her for the first time, and her demeanor completely changed.

  “You’re Jacinta Trimalchio,” she said frostily, as if it were an accusation. Jacinta smiled warmly.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “And I know who you are, love. Olivia Bentley. Young Hamptons. I adore your blog.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Olivia said nastily. “I see you using my party photos all the time.”

  “Oh, I hope that’s all right,” Jacinta said apologetically. “I always give credit and link back to Young Hamptons.”

  “I noticed,” Olivia said. “I get more traffic from your blog than from anywhere else.” You could tell she wasn’t so much grateful as bitterly resentful.

  I looked at Jeff. He looked at me.

  Catfight! he mouthed, grinning. I widened my eyes and nodded in agreement.

  It was more like a cat-puppy fight than anything. Olivia had her claws out, but Jacinta clearly just wanted to make friends and play.

 
“We should collaborate sometime!” Jacinta suggested brightly. “Cross-posting features, or writing a post together, something like that. You have the best Hamptons coverage of anyone, year-round.”

  “I can tell you think so,” Olivia said. “I mean, based on how often you post about things that I’ve just posted about.”

  Jacinta looked at her in surprise. I think it was just beginning to occur to her that Olivia might not have the best intentions. Jacinta was kind of mysterious and possibly a liar or at least a major exaggerator, but she was not a bitch. I don’t think she had a mean bone in her entire long, skinny body.

  “So you’re European, right?” Olivia asked, popping her sunglasses up on her head.

  “Yes,” Jacinta said a little cautiously. “Well, partly. My mother’s family is from Montana. My father’s family is Spanish.”

  “That’s funny,” said Olivia. “Because ‘Trimalchio’ is an Italian name. Isn’t it.” She raised an eyebrow. She was acting like a cop who was just beginning to interrogate a perp on SVU or something.

  “Spanish by way of Italy,” Jacinta said without missing a beat.

  “I’m sure,” Olivia said. “And where did you go to school?”

  “Oh, all over,” Jacinta said. “Tutors, mostly. A bit of time in a Swiss boarding school.”

  “Which one?” Olivia asked, widening her eyes with the fakest curiosity you ever saw. “My sister teaches in Bern.”