Beach Lane Collection

by Melissa de la Cruz

  They were the self-styled kings of Manhattan nightlife, and while their press clippings might reach to the ceiling, neither was taller than five-five, and Eliza towered over both of them in her four-inch Louboutin platforms. Alan Whitman was balding and dough-faced, but he’d been legendary since ninth grade at Riverdale, when he’d begun his career selling pot at the Limelight. He’d oozed his way up a string of downtown hot spots until he’d raised enough money to open his trio of celebrity playgrounds—Vice, Circus, and Lowdown. He liked to say that before he’d gotten his hands on Paris Hilton, she was just a cute little Dwight sophomore in a rolled-up uniform skirt. He’d been the one who’d waived Paris past the ID check and had personally alerted gossip columnists when she was dancing on the tables—or falling off them—on any given night. His partner, Kartik (one name only), a Miami transplant, had been friends with Madonna back when he was still a teenager and she was still a dog-collar-wearing pop icon, not a dowdy children’s book author who answered to the name Esther.

  “What do you mean the liquor license is delayed? Are you serious?” Alan whined into his receiver.

  “Babycakes, of course we’ve got the permits in hand,” Kartik smoothly promised on his cell. “We’re ready to roll. We’re all set for the after-party, no problem!”

  Eliza stood aside patiently, watching the guys tell two different stories on their phones. It was inspirational, really: If Alan Whitman could transform himself from some geeky kid who sold oregano dime bags out of his Eastman backpack into New York’s most sought-after nightclub promoter, then surely she, Eliza Thompson, could find a way to reinvent herself from fallen Manhattan It Girl into Hamptons royalty. After all, Eliza had always wanted to be a princess.

  mara goes from zero to somebody in sixty seconds

  THE STRETCH LIMOUSINE IN HER DRIVEWAY WAS THE FIRST sign that for Mara Waters, life was going to start getting interesting again. During prom season in Sturbridge, it wasn’t unusual to find rented limos parked in front of the tidy ranch-style houses, but this one didn’t sport a CALL 1-800 DISCO LIMO! sticker on its bumper. Instead, it had a uniformed chauffeur who held a golf umbrella above Mara’s head and took her bags from her stupefied father.

  Anna Perry had told Mara she would send a car, but Mara hadn’t been expecting one quite so large and luxurious. Then again, everything that Anna Perry, the very young, very demanding second wife of Kevin Perry, one of New York’s most successful and feared litigators in New York City, did was patently over-the-top. Anna had wanted Mara in East Hampton immediately, and whatever Anna wanted, Anna usually got. She’d convinced their new neighbors, the Reynolds family, who were leaving Cape Cod for the Hamptons in their private plane, to give Mara a ride.

  Heading back to the Hamptons on a private jet was the complete opposite of last August, when Mara had returned to Sturbridge on a battered Greyhound. It had been the summer of her life, and she’d made the best friends in the world—Eliza, an uptight Upper East Side golden girl, and Jacqui, a Brazilian bombshell so beautiful men routinely threw themselves at her feet. They’d all signed on for a summer of babysitting the Perry kids—to the tune of ten thousand dollars for the summer—but the friendship they formed was even more valuable. The three of them were as different as could be, but somewhere between the social climbing, the party crashing, and keeping all the kids in line, the three of them had formed a tight-knit bond.

  There was another reason that last summer had been amazing: Ryan Perry. She’d fallen completely in love with Ryan, the older brother of the kids she was babysitting, and they’d finally gotten together the last week of the summer. When they said good-bye, Mara had told him that she would love to bring him home so he could meet her family and see where she lived. But when she got off the Greyhound at the grimy Sturbridge bus stop several hours later, it no longer seemed like a good idea.

  Her stomach had sunk when Megan picked her up in their dented ’88 Ford Taurus. Mara was still wearing her Hamptons uniform: a lace-trimmed silk camisole, pre-faded cargo pants and high-heeled jewel-encrusted mules from Miss Trish of Capri. Her hair still smelled of Eliza’s French lavender shampoo, but the sight of the car and her sister brought reality home to her. Mara had never been ashamed or embarrassed of where she came from, but after a summer in the Hamptons, she suddenly thought, This isn’t good enough. He came from a family that hired a personal chef, and she came from a family with a fifteen-year-old microwave.

  She’d made a bunch of excuses to put off Ryan’s visit to Sturbridge, telling him she had to study for a test or had to write a paper. Finally, in November, she’d taken the train to Groton to visit him at his fancy private school. But she’d been awkward and out of place among his friends, and she’d broken up with him the next week, telling him what she’d been telling herself ever since she got back to Sturbridge: Last summer was fun and all, but it wasn’t real life. They weren’t meant to be.

  But breaking up with Ryan Perry and forgetting about Ryan Perry were two different things altogether. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, and a secret part of her wished that he’d tried harder to change her mind. He’d been totally understanding about their breakup, but that was the problem: Ryan was almost too nice. If only he’d yelled, or cried, or fought for their relationship more. Maybe that was all she’d wanted—to hear that he really missed her, really needed her. But he hadn’t said anything, only, “If this is what you really want,” and she’d told him it was. So it was over, and she hadn’t heard from Ryan since.

  She’d excused herself from babysitting for the Perrys in Palm Beach over winter break, fearing it would be too weird to see Ryan. But as winter turned to spring, Mara still couldn’t get Ryan out of her head, and she realized what a mistake breaking up with him had been. She was still in love with him, and when Anna Perry had called to offer Mara her old job (along with a raise—twelve thousand dollars for the summer!), Mara had started planning the outfit she’d wear when she first saw Ryan and how they’d fall into each other’s arms and pretend the year apart had never happened. She’d played the scene in her head so many times, she’d really started to believe it would happen.

  It rained all the way on the drive to Barnstable, a private airfield in Hyannis, and the car drove right up to the tarmac, where a white tent and a red carpet led to a sleek silver plane emblazoned with a gleaming R logo on the wing. A flight attendant in a crisp navy blue uniform took Mara’s bags—last year’s treasured LL Bean totes—and Mara was momentarily flustered to realize that the rest of the luggage cart held sleek nylon-and-canvas rollaway suitcases. Would she ever get it right?

  A tall lady in an embroidered caftan and raffia slippers wearing the biggest diamond Mara had ever seen cheerfully waved her up the ramp. “Pity about the rain, isn’t it? They said it would shower—but this is almost a hurricane! I’m Chelsea Reynolds, welcome, welcome. There you go, watch the puddle on the last step. Anna told me we were picking up a friend, but she didn’t say it was you!”

  Her? Mara didn’t know what she meant by that, and was about to ask, but the minute she set foot inside the plane, she was enveloped in a bear hug.

  “If it isn’t Miss Waters! The diva! Girlfriend, where’ve you been all year?” Lucky Yap demanded, readjusting his own leopard-print dashiki. Lucky was one of the most important paparazzi working the society circuit. He was the unofficial arbiter of Hamptons fabulosity—if you were in, Lucky took your photo; if you were out, you might as well move to the Jersey shore.

  “Lucky, hi!” Mara smiled, surrendering to his flurry of air-kisses.

  Lucky handed her a glass of champagne and quickly introduced her to the rest of the passengers—a typical hoity-toity Hamptons crowd wearing similar variations on ethnic African tribal wear. Apparently, the Serengeti had relocated to the East End this year. There was a smattering of boldfaced names and their assorted hangers-on, from brand-name heiresses to well-preserved society swans to pretty public-relations assistants and the E! style experts they represented.

/>   “Everyone knows Mara, right? My muse?” Lucky brayed. Last summer, Mara had helped Lucky out on a tricky assignment, and the popular photographer had made her a perennial presence in the society pages to show his appreciation.

  “Of course!” a sweet-faced girl replied. “Didn’t we meet at the Polo last year?”

  “Love that shirt. Is it Proenza?” one of the style experts asked, fingering the material on her pink polka-dot blouse. She’d matched it with a pair of slim white Bermuda shorts and cork-wedge espadrilles. After spending last summer with two fashion mavens—Jacqui and Eliza—Mara had picked up a few tips. She was flattered by the compliment and didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a knockoff she’d bought at Forever 21 for fifteen bucks.

  Lucky took a few shots of her, then leaned over to whisper conspiratorially with his seatmate. Mara couldn’t help but overhear buzzing as her name was linked to Ryan Perry’s.

  The stewardess led her to the nearest available seat and Mara sipped happily from her champagne flute, soaking in the atmosphere, listening in on the gossip from the Cape Cod beach wedding they were all returning from. After a year in Sturbridge, where the most glamorous thing in town was the hokey piano bar attached to the Hyatt, she’d forgotten how well the other half lived.

  “Oh! There’s Garrett!” a girl next to Mara whispered excitedly.

  “Mr. Reynolds!” Lucky greeted. “Can we get a shot?”

  Mara looked up to see a tall, shaggy-haired boy emerge from the cockpit. Immediately, all the girls in the group stood up a little straighter, trying to catch his eye. He was holding a champagne bottle aloft and grinning. He was rakishly, devilishly handsome, with a Jude Law-style flop of dark hair falling over his forehead. His button-down white Thomas Pink shirt lay rumpled and untucked from his black wool pants.

  “You,” he said, walking down the aisle and heading straight for Mara.

  He had deep, dark eyes, as dark as his hair, framed by the thickest set of lashes Mara had ever seen. “Come with me,” he said, taking her by the hand before she could protest. As Garrett led her away, the group parted silently to let them through, and Mara received glances of barely contained jealousy from the girls, as well as an approving nod from Lucky. Mara felt singled out, special, and she couldn’t help but think, Hamptons, here I come.

  jacqui gets serious . . . about shopping

  THE GUY AT BOOKHAMPTON WAVED AWAY HER CHARGE card with a smile, even though Jacqui Velasco insisted on paying for her books herself. Just once she wished she could meet a guy who saw past her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition body. It was getting on her nerves a little—the abject, puppy-dog treatment from men who were always more than willing to pick up the check, the tab, the bill. Not too long ago, Jacqui was more than happy to let them pay, and she had a wardrobe full of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada to prove it. But things were different now. Last summer, Jacqui’s heart had been broken by slimy Luke van Varick, and now she was determined to become a more serious person, someone whom people took seriously.

  “Por favor, I insist,” Jacqui repeated, trying to change his mind.

  “Sorry, your money’s no good here,” the pimply cashier repeated, even though Jacqui knew he’d hear it from his boss later when the receipts came up short. But that was the impact Jacqui had on guys—something about her slightly almond-shaped eyes and bee-stung lips (not to mention that impressive set of 36Cs) turned even a ninety-pound bookstore nerd into a protective, macho, chest-puffing buffoon who would do anything to impress her. “Consider it a gift,” he added.

  Jacqui sighed and accepted the plastic bag reluctantly, tossing it into her patent leather carryall. She walked into the bright early-summer afternoon and crossed the street to sit on a park bench to wait for Eliza. It was another glorious day in East Hampton. The early-morning rainfall had given way to sparkling sunshine, and the tiny, jewel-box boutiques on Main Street trilled with the chatter of what to wear to another season of beachfront barbecues and white-tent benefits. Jacqui was oblivious to the stares from the preening slicksters in their 911 Carreras or the head-to-toe scrutiny from the Botox brigade. She sat and immediately immersed herself in her book, The U.S. News & World Report’s guide to America’s best colleges.

  It was amazing what a little studying could do for her grades and how gratifying it was to bring home a decent report card for a change. Her grandmother couldn’t believe it—during the past year, Jacqui had spent more time at the library than the mall and was even talking about going to college. In the past, the only thing Jacqui had been passionate about was whether or not she’d be able to score the latest fox-fur Prada shrug before anyone else. Before, she’d had only a vague idea of what she wanted for the future. She’d always assumed she’d end up marrying some rich guy twice her age and spend the rest of her life flitting between spa treatments and couture fittings while ignoring her husband’s infidelities. It was the life that Jacqui had been groomed for.

  Her mother, a former beauty queen who had won third runner-up in a Miss Universe pageant, once had her pick of suitors—from the son of the owner of the largest electric company in the country, to the son of a landed cattle rancher. Instead, she’d settled on a handsome civil engineer with beautiful black eyes and no family money whatsoever. Roberto Velasco was resolutely middle-class in a country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty. The Velascos lived happily enough in Campinas, and her mother contented herself with ruling over the small provincial society, but she wanted more for her daughter, which was why she’d sent Jacqui to live with her grandmother in São Paulo to attend a private school in the city where Jacqui would rub shoulders with the daughters of the ruling branco class.

  But Jacqui’s beautiful face and Coke-bottle curves had only made the rich girls envious, and Jacqui had made few friends there. For a while, she’d dutifully dated the arrogant scions of landowners and the sugarcane gentry, but that soon bored her, and she’d found that true adventure lay in the arms of their married, older fathers.

  Then Luke van Varick—her Luca—had come into her life. A cool American boy with a lazy grin and a huge backpack, she’d met him while he was traveling over spring break and had fallen hard for him. After their two-week spring fling, he’d told her he loved her and then disappeared. She’d tracked him down all the way to the Hamptons, but it turned out her Luca had actually belonged to someone else the whole time.

  So now Jacqui had a better plan: She would do a great job for the Perrys this summer so they would recommend her as a live-in nanny for one of their rich friends. That way she could move to New York City for her senior year of high school and go to Stuyvesant, an elite public school in the city, through their foreign-exchange program. If she did well there, she’d have a chance to attend NYU and make something of her life. She had Eliza’s friend Kit to thank for putting the idea in her head when they’d hung out together in Palm Beach over winter break. He’d told her about his older sister, who hadn’t done a lick of work at school until senior year and was now a freshman at NYU.

  In order to make her dreams happen, Jacqui had made a bunch of new rules for herself, the most important being No More Boys. They were just distractions, and if Jacqui had been able to resist the temptations of the cutest guys in Brazil, she could definitely do the same in the Hamptons. She was going to keep her head down, take care of those kids, and attend an SAT prep class on her nights off. God help her, she was going to show the world she was more than just an empty-headed Gisele clone.

  She perused the pages of the guidebook: There were photographs of sweater-wearing coeds sitting on green lawns, and an endless array of statistics concerning minority enrollment, merit scholarships, and alumni testimonials. Okay, so it was just a teensy bit boring. Surely there was something else she could do while waiting. She slammed the book shut and looked at her watch. Eliza was due to pick her up in a half hour, and Scoop looked awfully inviting across the street. Just because she was getting serious about school didn’t mean she couldn’t indulge in her f
avorite extracurricular activity, did it?

  A girl’s got to have a new bikini, after all.

  eliza learns that hell is made for famous people

  “YOU GOT ANY EXPERIENCE WITH NIGHTCLUBS?” ALAN Whitman asked, once the three of them were seated on plastic-wrapped leather club chairs in the back of the room. He had barely glanced at the resume Eliza had handed him. To Eliza’s chagrin, her chair made a squishy, sticky sound like an embarrassing bodily function whenever she moved. Thankfully, neither of the guys seemed to notice.

  “Not specifically,” she replied. “But I’m really eager to learn. I read in the Times that you guys are looking to expand into publicity, marketing, and upscale lifestyle branding, and that’s really where I see myself making a—”

  “Do you know any celebrities? High-profile people?” Kartik interrupted with an intense look on his face as he put the tops of his fingers together in an upside-down V-shape without his palms touching.

  “Uh . . .” Eliza said warily.

  “Like Jessica and Ashlee? Or the Perry twins?”

  “Of course, we went—I mean, we go to school together,” she said, relieved.

  “Who doesn’t? But that’s good. Because we really need that kind of crowd here,” Kartik said, frowning. “There are five new nightclubs opening this summer, and we need to have the hottest people here. I don’t want to see has-beens, nobodies, fuglies. I want to see Mary-Kate Olsen puking in the bathroom, if you know what I mean.”

  Eliza nodded.

  Alan hooted. “Damn, Kartik, don’t be so hard on her just because she blew you off!”

  His partner ignored him, boring his eyes into Eliza. “I can’t tell you how important it is to get someone in here who recognizes everyone from Tara Reid to Page Six reporters. You’ve got to know the scene.” He paused meaningfully. “We had a kid at Vice who didn’t let JC Chasez in! I mean, I know it’s hard to recognize those ’N Sync guys without Justin, but man, did I hear about it then. You know, when it’s kicking, this place is going to be like Beverly Hills, SoHo, and Saint-Tropez combined, but on the beach to boot!”