“I’m bad at secrets. If they’re good news, I want to share ASAP. If they’re bad news, the person usually needs to know. So. Not good with secrets.”
He laughed. “Okay, well, try to hang onto this one, will you? Kaz wants to come up there one of these weekends. So of course I’d ride shotgun.”
“That’d be great. We’d love to see you.”
“He’s so happy about the Hearst medal, you’d think he was the finalist.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s totally just an excuse to see her.”
“And it’s totally just an excuse for me to see you. So, see? It’d work out for everyone.”
I laughed while my stomach did a nosedive into my Miu Miu flats. “You’re not thinking this weekend, are you?”
He didn’t seem to hear the edge in my tone. Thank goodness for the missing bar on my cell phone’s reception. “That would mean we actually had a plan. I don’t know. Kaz told Gillian sometime soon, though. I mean, he’d better do something before they announce the winner, right?”
“Right.” Breathe. Whew. “But wait. Kaz told Gillian? Isn’t he talking to Lissa, like, on a daily basis?”
“I think he called to say congrats when the list came out, but he doesn’t want to smother her.” He paused. “So, who’s Rashid?”
“Guhhh, what?”
“Did you just walk under a power line? I said, who’s Rashid? Gillian said he was the new face in town. I figure he has to be one of your trust fund types.”
“Yeah, he’s a real prince.”
Danyel laughed. “And you’re still hanging out with him?”
“I wouldn’t say we were hanging out.” Making out, maybe. I pressed a hand to my hot face. I had to end this conversation. “But he’s nice enough. Listen, Danyel, I have to go. Everyone’s waiting for me.”
“No problem. See you soon, I hope.”
“Me, too.”
I hung up and sucked in a big breath of air. Calm. Breathe. Think.
First order of business: Impress upon Gillian that there were certain subjects that needed to stay off-limits. And my connection with Rashid was one of them.
Second order: Make up my inconsistent, treacherous, two-timing mind and decide which guy I was going out with.
Before Danyel turned up when I least expected it.
GChang Zao, surfing tiger.
KazG Hey, jumping loon. Wassup?
GChang Got plans for this weekend?
KazG Are you kidding? Me and Danyel have a wild weekend ahead of doing exactly what we do every weekend. Missing y’all and surfing.
GChang There’s a new place opening on Saturday. Check out fordue.com. We’re all going in a limo. Would be totally fun if you guys came.
KazG Lissa’s going?
GChang Duh. Her, me, Jeremy, Shani, Mac, Brett, Rashid. And his bodyguards, but they’re kind of invisible.
KazG Hm. Could make it by 9 if we left right after school.
GChang Don’t tell. It’ll be a surprise for Lissa.
KazG Got it. See you there.
GChang Dress code’s glam.
KazG Danyel does glam. I do glum.
GChang No glums allowed. We’re celebrating. At least wear clean jeans.
IT TOOK RASHID a couple of days to get over my lack of obedience training. On Thursday afternoon after classes were over he found me on the front lawn in the sun, my World Lit books scattered around me.
“There you are.” As if he hadn’t been ignoring me for half the week, he folded himself onto the grass, pulling a fat old tome of literary theory out from under his hip. I appeared to have been forgiven. “What are you working on?”
“Midterm paper.” Where was that paragraph I’d marked in Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads? What insanity had made me decide that a paper on the connection between love and immortality in Caribbean myth was a good idea? And most important of all, how was I going to get this done before class on Monday? Friday afternoon was devoted to manicures and massages, Saturday was hair and makeup, and Sunday was recovery. Nobody could expect anything out of me until at least two o’clock—especially homework.
“Stop now and—” Rashid checked himself. “Please take a break from your work. I would like to talk to you.”
I had to give the guy credit. He was willing to swallow his royal habits and relate to me like an ordinary person. The least I could do was talk to him. “Okay. But only for a minute. I seriously have to get some of this written today. I don’t want it bugging me while I’m trying to have fun getting ready for the party Saturday.”
“It is the party I want to talk about.”
“Oh. Well, then. Why didn’t you say so?” I grinned at him, sat back on my hands, and then a thought struck me. “You didn’t change your mind and decide to go to Cream, did you?” That would mean that underneath, he was really mad at me and I’d have to do some serious kissing up to get back in his good books.
Not because I was shallow and liked hanging out with royalty. But because he was my friend, and it left me feeling hollow inside when my friends were mad at me. If I was going to go to Due with him, I wanted everything to be cool between us.
He shook his head. “But I realized I did not actually ask you to go with me. It is all very well to do these things as a group of friends, but that is no longer enough for me.”
“Of course I’ll go with you.” I’d figure out how to explain it to Danyel later. Or…hey. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe Danyel needed to know I’d been with someone else to light a fire under his fine behind. Maybe that would make him unload this fixation on me having to be someone I wasn’t yet—and goose him past “just friends” to “boyfriend.”
“I had hoped you might say that.” Rashid smiled, a slow, intimate smile that, okay, made my temperature rise a couple of degrees. Was I conflicted or what? I wanted Danyel because of who he was, and I wanted Rashid because of how he made me feel. And how he might make Danyel feel. As in, jealous.
That’s pretty low. First of all, Rashid is your friend. How’s he going to feel when he finds out you want to use him like that?
Well, when you put it that way…I wished they’d flip. I wanted Rashid thinking in “just friends” mode and Danyel thinking in “boyfriend” mode. But they were just the opposite.
Having two guys on the hook was a lot harder and more complicated than I’d ever thought it would be.
Meanwhile, Rashid waited patiently for me to say something. “I have to confess, I kind of took it for granted we were going as a couple, even if I made you mad this week,” I said. “Guess I would have looked the fool, huh?”
“I am not, as you say, mad. And you will never look foolish on my account.” He sounded as if that was about to be written into parliamentary law, back there in Yasir. “In fact, if you will allow me, the opposite will be true.”
How intriguing. “What do you mean?”
“You have several big events coming up in the next weeks, yes?”
I counted off on my fingers. “Sure. Saturday night, for one. The movie premiere. The annual Christmas shindig the school holds to support the San Francisco Ballet School. And that doesn’t even count stuff like graduation.”
“And you will need things to wear to all of these.”
I laughed. “Like I need air to breathe. What are you getting at, Rashid?”
He reached into the inner pocket of his school blazer and pulled out a flat, narrow velvet box. On the top I glimpsed an H and a W, set in a cartouche.
Oh.
My.
G—
“I would be honored if you would accept this and wear it to these events.”
Harry Winston. That couldn’t be a Harry Winston box. No way. He was using it to hold something else, like a charm bracelet he’d gotten down at the wharf, with “I San Francisco” and little Golden Gate Bridges dangling from it.
He tilted back the lid, and it would have taken the threat of death for me not to look.
Nestled in black velvet was a diamond
necklace.
And not just any necklace. A diamond cluster necklace from the latest collection, with a big yellow stone dangling from the center. It had to have been custom-made, because that stone hadn’t been on any of the fashion Web sites. And none of the pieces in the new collection had appeared in any of the magazines yet—only customers like my mother had had advance previews.
I dragged my gaze off it, looked up at Rashid, and sat on my hands so they wouldn’t grab. At him or the necklace, I wasn’t sure.
“Who is this for?” I finally managed out of a throat that threatened to close up altogether.
“It is for you. Don’t you like it?”
“Anyone would be insane not to like it. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Then why are you not putting it on?” He tilted slightly to the left, lifting an amused eyebrow at my hands, flattened on the grass under my thighs.
“Because it can’t be for me.”
“I assure you it is. It was delivered into the hands of Farrouk on Monday in New York.”
“You sent the poor guy all the way to New York to get this?”
“It would have come from London, but the gentleman who prepares my mother’s pieces was on his way to Cabo San Lucas and agreed to meet halfway.”
Okay, I was seriously dreaming. I turned one hand over and pinched it.
Ow. Not dreaming.
Not accepting reality very well, either.
I gave the necklace’s pretty pear-shaped clusters one last hungry look and released my hands from prison long enough to close the box and push it toward Rashid. “Of course I can’t accept this.”
“Of course you can. I ordered it for you. You will look like the princess in the fairy tale.”
“No. I’m serious. Even if you weren’t richer than Bill Gates squared, I couldn’t take it. This isn’t a fairy tale. It’s serious—the kind of thing a guy gives his fiancée. And we aren’t even going out. I’m nothing to you except a little girl you played with on a beach. Our mothers are closer than we are.”
Slowly, his face changed from “Look what I did—aren’t you delighted?” to “Oh my gosh, she really means it.” I hoped the necklace was returnable to the gentleman in Cabo.
My hands still tingled with the urge to rip the box out of his hands and run away with it, but I stood my ground. Well, technically, I sat my ground.
Get up, Shani. Walk away from the pretty sparklies.
Rashid looked so disappointed that I reached out and touched his hand. His pride I had no problem stepping on. But a person’s feelings mattered, and it had taken him—and Farrouk—considerable time to do this. Not to mention expense. My brain couldn’t even go there. I spoke as gently as I could. “This necklace is what you give a girl at the end of the—the, um, courtship. When you decide to get married. Not at the beginning, when you’ve only had two dates.”
“You are special to me,” he said softly. “This is how I must express it. You are not just the little girl on the beach. You are the friend who has made my time away from home bearable. Even when you are angry, you have been a friend to me when others have been—how do you say it?—only suckups.” We grinned at a word like that coming out of his mouth. “This gift holds my thanks for your friendship, and my hopes that someday it might be more.”
Something in my hard little heart melted, just on the very edges, and the heat of it sent a blush into my face. “Rashid, I—I can’t promise you more.”
“I know it is very soon. But I wanted you to know of my hopes.”
I couldn’t speak. This was way more serious than a couple of dates and a kiss. This was that river, back in full force. I couldn’t walk into it and come out intact.
“May I make a suggestion?” he asked gently, when the silence filled with traffic noises and birdsong and me not talking.
I looked up. “Sure.”
“Will you wear the necklace on Saturday night, simply as a loan from a friend? It would please me very much.”
I opened my mouth to say no, and stalled as a visual filled the screen of my mind. Dancing at Due, sparkling in the single most expensive object I or any of my friends had ever worn. Well, okay, with the possible exception of the eighteenth-century tiara that Mac had tucked away in her mom’s bank vault. Maybe we’d even drop in at Cream so Vanessa could get an eyeful of it. Call me shallow, but I wanted to step out of my self-imposed shell and show those people I was someone, that I had friends to whom I mattered. That I wasn’t an island anymore.
I blinked and focused on Rashid. “Just Saturday night. And then I give it back to you and you give it back to the, er, gentleman in Cabo.”
“Agreed.”
“Rashid, for a prince, you make a really nice guy.”
He laughed and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. As he did, he slipped the narrow velvet box into the pocket of my jacket. “Keep this safe.”
“I will.” Duh. I wondered if Ms. Curzon had an underground bunker I could keep it in.
“And now I must go beat Tate DeLeon, who has been foolish enough to challenge me to a game of squash.” He got up, nodded at Bashir and Farrouk, who were pretending to be garden statues, and walked across the lawn in the direction of the field house.
Leaving me with a couple of million in diamonds in my school jacket.
I waited until he was safely out of sight, then scooped up all my books and threw them into my bag. The velvet box bumped gently against my hip as I ran into the building, up three flights of stairs, and down the corridor into my room.
Carly and Mac jumped about a foot as the door bounced off the wall and slammed itself shut behind me.
“Shani!” Carly squeaked. “What happened to you?”
I tossed my bag on the floor so that it skidded across the parquet and fetched up against my bed. “You will not believe—” I managed to gasp, and ran for the bathroom with its four-foot mirror.
With shaking hands, I twisted my corkscrew spirals up—gotta get rid of these first thing and lay on the relaxers—into an approximation of a roll and clipped it in place. Then I stripped off my jacket and uniform blouse. Carly and Mac crowded into the bathroom behind me, concern times two crowding in along with them.
“Are you all right?” Mac demanded. “Have you gone utterly mad?”
Standing in only my plaid skirt and lace cami, I pulled the box out of my jacket pocket and opened it. Carly leaned in and gasped.
Mac squawked a Scottish expletive about some saint on a tricycle in frilly pantaloons.
The necklace slid over my shaking fingers in a cool, sparkling caress as I held it up to my throat. “Somebody do it up,” I whispered.
Mac fastened the clasp, her own fingers ice-cold against the back of my neck.
“Where…how…?” Carly couldn’t get a sentence started. Her eyes had widened to perfect circles as she gawked at me.
I didn’t try to answer. Every cell in my body was focused on the image in the mirror.
I lifted my chin and dropped my shoulders.
Long, smooth neck.
Cream lace against coffee skin, and lying on it, the frozen fire of all those diamonds. The big yellow one lay dead center, looking as though it were gaining warmth from my body with every second.
Rashid was right. I looked like a princess.
She has one husband in the 18th century.
Another in the 21st.
And they have more in common than
she knows.
The Middle Window
Lucasfilm and Blade Productions request the honor of your presence at the premiere of their film, The Middle Window, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California, on November 21, 2009.
6:00 p.m. Social hour. Red carpet opens.
8:00 p.m. Film premiere.
11:00 p.m. Afterparty hosted by stars Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor, poolside at the Chateau Marmont.
Dress: Black tie.
RSVP: [email protected] or 310-555-2750
We look
forward to sharing our first collaboration with you.
George and Gabriel
Chapter 13
THE INVITATIONS to the premiere came by messenger on Friday, just in time for half the school to be passing through the reception hall on their way to the dining room. So naturally everyone heard us squeeing and waving them around and generally giving everyone something to talk about for the rest of the evening.
Heh.
We didn’t bribe the messenger, I promise.
I hadn’t realized just how far the news had gone until I was hangin’ in the common room the next day, flipping through the latest issue of WWD and waiting for the rest of the girls to get themselves together for our mani/pedi afternoon. I was quite happy with nothing in my head but the latest designs from Alexander McQueen when Rory Stapleton plunked his sorry self down on the couch next to me.
What, had The Bad Place frozen over and all the little demons gone skating?
“Hey.” He grinned at me like all I’d ever wanted was this precious moment between us. “I want to talk to you.”
I slapped the magazine shut and rolled it up, just in case. “What?”
“Would you relax? I don’t bite.”
“Yeah. You do. You totally bite.”
He laughed as if I’d said something hilarious. “So. Howzigoin’”
“Fine. Whatsitoya?”
Again with the laugh. He sounded like Eeyore on a good day. “You’re such a funny chick.”
“Dude. I have to go. What do you want?”
“How’s the prince?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him since yesterday, when we were all in American Diplomacy. That’s, like, a class. Do you go to those, or do you just buy a grade off the Net?”
He waited until I was done. I don’t think he even heard me. “So you guys aren’t, like, official?”
“How is that any of your business?”
He shrugged, still grinning. “I wouldn’t want to get a rep as a poacher, that’s all. A man has his pride.”
I stared at him. What did that have to do with me? “Bottom line, Rory.” Ugh. I’d never voluntarily said his name. It felt like oil in my mouth.
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