Beach Lane Collection

by Melissa de la Cruz

  He lifted his hand from her knee and put it around her shoulders, drawing her close so that she was pressed against his chest. His fingers lightly caressed her arm, sending electric currents up her spine. “C’mon, stay. I want to show you my new apartment. I cleaned up just for you,” he said huskily.

  Eliza melted a little at that. She should just go with him—who cared about Paige? But then the memory of Jeremy kissing Paige on the cheek soured the moment and strengthened her decision.

  “I can’t. I wish I could. Next time, okay?” she said, kissing him quickly on the lips. “I’ll call you.”

  She waved at him from the front steps, watching as the truck disappeared beyond the hedges to the private easement on the property. She walked into the house and found her parents in the kitchen, waiting for her. Her dad was holding a stack of credit card bills in his hands.

  “Hi, Mom, hi, Dad,” she said, giving them quick pecks on the cheek.

  “I thought you were spending the night at Taylor’s,” her mother said.

  “Change o’ plans,” Eliza said breezily. “What are you guys still doing up?”

  “We received a phone call today from American Express.”

  Eliza nodded as she opened the stainless steel freezer drawer and poked around for the cartons of ice cream she knew were inside. She found a pint of Phish Food and began digging into it with a spoon, straight from the carton.

  “Did you buy a Marquis Jet Card?” her mother asked. “And please, use a bowl. Were you brought up in a barn?”

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded, shoving a heaping spoonful into her mouth.

  “The barn or the jet card?”

  “Jet,” Eliza said, her voice muffled by the ice cream.

  “And you chartered a helicopter from New York to East Hampton today?”

  “Uh-huh,” she repeated, licking the spoon.

  “Who told you to be so extravagant? That card is for emergencies,” her mother emphasized.

  But it was an emergency . . . at least, it had seemed like one that morning. “You and Daddy have NetJets, and I thought . . .” Eliza said in her defense, reminding her parents that they were subscribers to a private jet service as well.

  “Eliza, we already bought you a car for the summer. This is outrageous. Eighteen-year-old girls do not charter private helicopter flights. We’ve canceled the account,” her mother told her, her tone dropping low and cold. “And Daddy and I found out that all of your other credit cards are already maxed out. Those cards were your allowance for the summer.”

  Uh-oh.

  “You really need to learn the value of things. You can’t spend money like water. This kind of behavior is what got us into trouble in the first place. I’ll need the cards back,” her mother said sternly.

  “Every one?” Eliza asked, stricken. She looked plaintively at her father. Her dad always let her do whatever she wanted, and money was never an object when it came to his little girl. But this time he merely shook his head and didn’t look her in the eye. This totally blew. Usually her mother was the strict one, but if her father was also upset, then she was definitely in the doghouse. Make that the poorhouse. How was she supposed to get by without the help of her friends Visa and MasterCard?

  “Every one,” her mother repeated, holding out her palm.

  “But what am I going to do for cash?” Eliza asked, reaching into her purse and relinquishing her treasured cards.

  “You have your internship stipend,” her mother reminded.

  “I don’t anymore,” Eliza confessed, her stomach twisting in disappointment and frustration. She stabbed the ice cream hard with the spoon, and a huge chunk of it flew out of the pint and on the terrazzo floor. “Shit,” she cursed.

  “What happened?” her mother asked, looking genuinely concerned. “I thought you said that it was going so well and that you were really enjoying yourself.”

  “I’d rather not talk about it right now,” Eliza said quietly. “It’s complicated.” She returned to ferociously shoveling in the ice cream.

  “Well, dear, you are going to have to find a new job if you want money for the summer,” her mother said. Her tone of voice indicated that the parental court had made its decision, and no further appeal would be heard by the two justices.

  anna is the wife who cried wolf!

  SHORTLY AFTER HALF-PAST FOUR o’clock the next afternoon, Jacqui, Shannon, and the children had just returned from Main Beach when Laurie walked into the kitchen, looking nervous. “There’s someone at the door,” she said.

  Jacqui was helping Cody remove a scuba mask and Shannon was collecting wet towels. They both looked up at the sound of Laurie’s voice. The kids dispersed into their rooms, leaving trails of wet sand on the zebrawood floors.

  “Who’s here?” Jacqui asked.

  “A man. He wants to see Anna.”

  Jacqui shrugged. “Did you tell her someone wants to see her?”

  “She’s having her facial,” Laurie explained. Anna had recently gotten into the habit of having costly at-home spa treatments. Once a week, a facialist, a masseuse, and a manicurist visited the house to pamper her with their services. “I told him to come back in an hour, but he won’t go away.” Laurie nervously twisted the ends of her plain cotton blouse. “He said it’s important.”

  “You want me to tell her?” Jacqui asked, finally understanding what Laurie was asking her to do.

  Laurie nodded in relief. “Would you? She told me no visitors, and I’m worried if I say anything, she’ll . . .”

  Jacqui stood up and shrugged. “All right. No skin off my back.”

  “Nose.” Shannon giggled. “No skin off your nose.”

  Jacqui tapped on Anna’s bedroom door softly. The sound of tinkling water, wind chimes, and whale songs drifted from behind the door. “Anna—there’s someone at the door who needs to see you.”

  There was no answer.

  “Anna? Anna?”

  With a start, the door banged open, and Anna stood in the doorway in a white terry-cloth bathrobe, her face covered in a chunky green avocado mask. “What is it? I told Laurie I was not to be disturbed!” she hissed.

  “There’s a man . . . a man at the door . . . says he has to see you. . . . We told him to come back, but he won’t go,” Jacqui explained, suddenly feeling as nervous as Laurie.

  “Who does he think he is?” Anna whispered viciously, stomping down the stairs to the foyer. She opened the door, where a man in a dark suit and sunglasses stood patiently.

  “Yes?”

  “Anna Perry?” he asked.

  “That’s me,” she replied haughtily.

  “You’ve just been served,” he said, handing her a thick yellow envelope. “Good afternoon.” He tipped her a salute and walked away.

  “What?” Anna asked, whatever color was left in her face draining. She ripped open the envelope and pulled out several pages of a thick document. “THAT BASTARD!” she yelled. Anna threw the papers in the air and stormed through her own ticker-tape parade back to her spa treatment room. “I can’t believe he took me seriously!”

  Jacqui winced.

  Shannon, huddled in the kitchen doorway, looked at Jacqui with questioning eyes. “What just happened?”

  “I think Kevin just asked Anna for a divorce,” Jacqui said, collecting the scattered papers. “Go outside and watch the kids. Don’t you say a word!”

  She skimmed a page. Contract for the predetermined division of assets, arrangement of alimony or other support, and/or allocation of attorney’s fees associated with the termination of marriage, she read.

  She flipped through the second bundle of papers, and only when she found the signatures on the last page did it slowly dawn on her what she was reading. Anna and Kevin Perry’s prenuptial agreement!

  Her eyes scanned down, and Jacqui found a section circled and marked with an arrow, with notations from a lawyer. Until August 26th, the lawyer had scribbled in the margin.

  The circled clause stipulated that if Kevin an
d Anna were married for less than five years, Anna wouldn’t receive a penny in the event of a divorce. In New York, it was called the “Trump clause”—after Donald Trump, who’d famously ditched Marla Maples a month before their five-year anniversary so that he wouldn’t be required to give her a bigger settlement. If Anna was able to stick it out beyond five years, she got half of everything, but if the marriage ended before they made it to the five-year mark, she got nothing.

  Jacqui felt her stomach clench. Anna was about to get Trumped!

  Kevin had actually done it! She read the first paragraph—under cause for dissolution, the lawyer had checked physical abuse and cited Anna’s use of excessive force (um, an ear flick) that had led to massive trauma (i.e., broken cartilage) and physical endangerment (but it was just a little infection!).

  Then the reality hit her: if the Perrys got divorced, Kevin would take the children (most of them were his), and if Anna was left broke, Jacqui would be out of a job. She wouldn’t be able to complete a fifth year of high school and would have to move back to Brazil instead. No more New York, and certainly no more NYU. So much for a stress-free, careless summer. A divorce would totally suck. Not only would it render Jacqui homeless in the fall, the kids would never get over it—they’d already gone through so much when Kevin split up with his first wife.

  She’d heard that Zoë had refused to speak for six months. Madison had retreated into overeating, and that was when William had begun to show symptoms of hyperactive disorder. They were finally settled in with Anna as their stepmother—what would they do when Kevin pushed her out of their lives? And poor Cody, who wouldn’t be able to see his half brothers and sisters. Jacqui felt a pit forming in her stomach. She didn’t know who she felt more sorry for—the kids or herself. Jacqui could see the kids playing happily outside through a large bay window, without a clue as to the impending destruction of their family unit.

  She slipped the papers back in their envelope and walked back toward the pool, her mind a whirl. Her problem was no longer just that she hadn’t gotten into college—now she would have to fight just to keep her life afloat. Jacqui took a deep breath. Thankfully, she’d always been a strong swimmer.

  mara is big green with envy

  A FEW WEEKS AFTER THE fashion show, Jacqui, Mara, and Eliza went out to dinner so that Jacqui could celebrate getting paid. Mara remembered those thick, cash-filled envelopes with affection. She’d traded them in for the skimpy direct-deposit payments due a cub reporter. Even though the perks made up for it, part of her did miss receiving those thick tax-free wads of cash every three weeks.

  The three girls were sitting in a booth at Lunch and had ordered the restaurant’s famous lobster rolls and a pitcher of beer to share. Jacqui did most of the talking, since Eliza was uncharacteristically quiet and wasn’t her usual boisterous self and Mara’s thoughts were preoccupied with her relationship with Ryan.

  They were still having some bad feeling over the other morning, when Mara had woken up and found that they were drifting from the dock. Ryan had forgotten to check on the knots that held them to the pier, and they had come loose in the middle of the night. They’d had to call the someone at the yacht club to give them a tug back to land, and Mara had come in late for work and had been yelled at by her boss.

  A formal politeness had descended on their relationship, with the two of them walking on eggshells around each other. The frosty atmosphere worried her. Being in a relationship was really hard work. It wasn’t the honeymoon she’d been expecting. Mara was stressed over the situation. Ryan was the best thing that had ever happened to her, but it bothered her that he couldn’t understand why she was so upset.

  She’d managed to work her way back into Sam Davis’s good graces by filing a great column on the Writers versus Actors softball championship, where she’d given the celebrities funny nicknames (portly Alec Baldwin was “Cake Batter”). Mara knew a thing or two about the game, and her trenchant observations on how a backyard activity had grown to have corporate sponsors and coverage on ESPN simply due to its participants were funny and wellput.

  Jacqui was telling them about how the web site guys had chartered a plane to write her name in the sky when Mara noticed a familiar figure stroll into the restaurant. Her neighbor wasn’t wearing her signature blue bikini this time, but Tinker was outfitted in a very tight halter top and cutoff Daisy Dukes.

  She walked by Mara’s table and said hello. “Mind if I join you guys?” she asked with a friendly smile. “I think my sis is running late.”

  “Sure,” Mara said tightly before taking a huge bite from her lobster roll. She wiped off the excess mayo on her lips with a gingham napkin. “Guys, this is Tinker. She’s living on the boat next to ours on Sag. Tinker, this is Jacqui and Eliza.”

  “Cool,” Tinker said. “How do you all know each other?”

  “We au-paired together a couple of years ago,” Eliza replied.

  “Oh, right,” Tinker said, turning to Mara. “Ryan told me he was dating his little brothers’ and sisters’ nanny.”

  Mara colored. The way Tinker said nanny sounded like Mara had only taken the job to seduce the rich kids’ hot older brother.

  “How do you know Ryan?” Jacqui asked curiously.

  “We’re in the same coed fraternity at Dartmouth,” Tinker explained, taking a handful of Mara’s fries. “It’s so fun. Ryan’s president.”

  “Which one?” Eliza wanted to know.

  Tinker told her.

  “Do you guys still have Naked Night?” asked Eliza, who knew a thing or two about Ivy League Greek culture.

  “Naked Night?” Mara asked, almost choking on her beer.

  “Yeah, it’s like one night of the year when all the members hang out in the nude all evening. It’s really trippy, I heard. Lindsay’s older brother went to Dartmouth. He told us about it,” Eliza explained, scooping up the chunks of lobster salad that had fallen onto her plastic plate.

  “Oh God, it’s so wild.” Tinker laughed, as if thinking about a very naughty secret.

  “Really,” Mara said icily. “Tell us more.”

  “Well, first we streak the campus, and then there’s a hot tub in the basement of the house and we all get sudsy in the bubbles. The pictures are absolutely hysterical.” Tinker giggled. “We get so drunk, it’s scary. It’s a miracle no one’s drowned in the Jacuzzi.”

  “I’m sure,” Mara said sarcastically. “So what else do you guys do in this frat?”

  “In the winter, there’s a big scavenger hunt in the woods. Every item we find is some kind of alcohol. By the end of it, everyone’s so drunk some of us write our addresses on our arms. If found, please return to Animal House. I woke up in a pasture once. I had no idea how I got there. Anyway, I’m organizing it with Ryan this year.” Tinker rolled her eyes. “Sadly, there’s not much to do in New Hampshire, so we basically have to make our own fun. Which means a lot of beer and planning road trips.”

  “Oh.”

  “Last winter, we all went to Stowe. A couple of us are on the ski team. We all snowboarded on the mountains together. Ryan’s really good. But you know that,” Tinker said. “Ryan’s good at everything.”

  Right, Mara thought. It was a trip he’d invited her to. But she’d bowed out of it since she couldn’t ski and hadn’t looked forward to making a fool of herself on the mountain.

  She looked at Tinker. She was one of the prettiest girls she’d ever seen—tall, long-limbed, with fine Scandinavian features—the high forehead, the silver blond hair and cornflower blue eyes. A hot girl who was in Ryan’s frat, who could ski and snowboard and liked to plan scavenger hunts in the woods. Beautiful . . . and athletic. It sounded like Tinker did a lot of things that Ryan always wanted Mara to do. Mara couldn’t share in any of Ryan’s sports activities, since she had the coordination of a lobster.

  What exactly had happened in Vermont on the ski trip? Not to mention Naked Night? In the hot tub?

  She wondered if she should be worried. But you’re th
e one spending the summer with him on the boat, she reminded herself. Not Tinker. And even if she and Ryan weren’t getting along right then, they would make up. They always did.

  Tinker’s sister finally arrived, and Tinker waved her good-byes to the three girls and made Mara promise that she and Ryan would visit their boat that weekend.

  “She seems nice,” Jacqui hedged.

  Mara made a face.

  “C’mon,” Eliza assured. “You’re so much prettier than she is. And I bet her chest isn’t real. Silicone City.”

  There were times when Mara was glad Eliza was so sharp-tongued, and this was one of them.

  “You know, there really is nothing to worry about. She doesn’t seem like Ryan’s type at all,” Jacqui observed.

  “Really, why not?” Mara asked, skeptical.

  “Well, for one, she’s nothing like you,” Jacqui said wisely.

  The check came, and Mara plunked down her plastic. Eliza rummaged in her purse, and she looked up at them, empty-handed, her face red. “Guys, can you spot me this one?”

  “Of course.” Mara nodded. “Why, did you lose your credit card?”

  “No need, I’ve got it,” Jacqui said, handing Mara her card back. She pulled out a hundred-dollar bill from the fat envelope. “Chicas, this is my treat.”

  When the waitress had taken their bill, Eliza told them her sad story.

  “They fired you?” Jacqui asked, aghast.

  “But you were on the cover of Dan’s Papers!” Mara argued.

  “They fired you?” Jacqui repeated again, still shocked.

  Eliza nodded. “And after they found out about the chopper rental, my parents took away the plastic. I’m officially broke.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Eliza held up an application form. She had picked one up from the reception desk when they had walked inside the restaurant.

  “You’re going to work here? At Lunch?” Mara gasped. Eliza Thompson, the girl who was a waitress’s nightmare with her picky salad instructions, was going to be serving customers herself? Or, even more unlikely, working in a hot kitchen?