by Lacy Camey
The Last Name Banks
By
LACY CAMEY
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE LAST NAME BANKS
Copyright © 2012 Lacy Camey
All rights reserved.
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Chloe Banks has always been known for her political, powerful billionaire last name and of course, naturally, for her money. Now she’s ready to show to the world there is more to her than what meets the eye. She’s more than the prim debutante from a privileged background. Yes, her father may be running for President and her mother may be the socialite of the year, never lifting a finger unless it’s to sip a flute of champagne, but Chloe is just like any other normal twenty-three year old, wanting to love and be loved, wanting to make her own mark in this world.
So Chloe moves temporarily with her two friends to Venezuela to serve in an orphanage as a nurse. But it is there she faces the same prejudices she is running away from, including the judgment from the incredibly good-looking orphanage facilitator and a few grumpy doctors. Chloe has to learn to let go of others’ assumptions of who she is so she can finally live her life free. But will she?
Dedication
I dedicate this book to the precious baby, Trek Atlas Ingram, whose loving mommy was the best college roommate. May Trek’s story “trek” all over the world.
May more awareness be brought to finding a cure for Neimann Pick Type A disorder. Please visit the following websites for more information about his story.
http://oursonnylife.com/
http://babytrekatlas.com/
Prologue
Have you ever heard the phrase, "She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth?” Well, I was born with a silver platter crammed down my throat.
Oh, you sit and groan mockingly, "How horrible. She was born rich. What a drag.”
But allow me to explain. Have you seen the recent rendition of the movie Arthur, starring the brit Russell Brand, acclaimed pop star, Katy Perry's now ex-husband? Yes? No, maybe so?
If you haven't, here's the rundown. Arthur is born into a billionaire family. His father is deceased and he is raised by his nanny while his mom runs their billion dollar empire.
Story of my life. For my entire twenty-three years of existence, I’ve been raised by my nanny Nia because my own mother was always far too busy to raise me herself. What was she busy doing, you ask? Was she busy running her billion-dollar empire? Because after all, I said our story was similar. Not quite. She was busy being a billionaire. Yes—busy being a Banks. Busy running her elite social calendar. Dusk to Dawn. Appearance after appearance. Brunch to lunch to dinner. I came in perfect use for portraits, debutante balls and invitations and conversations. But running an empire? No. She was busy always running her mouth, lunching with the ladies, gossiping like there was no tomorrow. I’m quite sure she had me just so she could have more to talk about with her society ladies. She needed me like some women need a handbag—except I’m not disposable. And she can’t upgrade according to the season.
Pathetic, I know it. Being equated to a handbag. I sound cold, don’t I? But I exaggerate not. Such behavior often made me wonder if perhaps I wasn’t really her daughter and maybe I was adopted. But we looked so much alike with our striking resemblance. We both have thick, cascading auburn hair and green eyes. So my next guess was maybe there was a secret sister who still lives in the forest and she birthed me and my mother adopted me. But no. DNA tests show otherwise. I had even hired a private PI years ago to help ease my mind. There was nothing to be found.
When I say I hardly know my own mother who lives under the same roof, I mean it. I am closer to her personal shopper than her. Granted, our home is a 32,000 square foot estate, but still. It’s under one roof.
I know the aching feeling so well. Of just wanting my mother to smile at me. Something. Anything! But I receive nothing but ice cold stares, constant judgment and disapproving nods.
My father tries to reason with me. “That’s just how your mother is. I’m sorry. I’ll handle her.”
Anytime my mother and I do have a conversation it is always about who I’ll marry. And this is practically every conversation I could ever remember having with her.
“You must marry up, darling,” she’d say to me.
“How is that possible, Mother? We’re billionaires.”
“Why, you must marry a prince. You must marry a prince. And you will. It will be perfect.”
“And end up like Grace Kelly, Mother? Unhappy, driving off a cliff?”
“That was speculative,” she’d say as if she were defending her childhood best friend.
Yes. Her heart’s ambition was to set me up with a real life prince to marry. I’ve had my fair share, trust me. In my weak moments, when I am all alone in my bedroom, I wonder if maybe I do marry in the way she wants me to, just then—maybe she’d love me. I would secretly dream of us doing lunch together, laughing, she inviting me to tea. Would she love me then when I had that title of princess? I had no clue. It was useless considering it.
But like I said, those are my weak moments. I learned early on to not care what she thought of me.
Beneath our grand modern day castle estate lives a normal girl, me; Chloe Banks.
All I want in life is to sincerely make a difference. I want people to see past the name Banks and really see just me, a normal person, with normal problems, with normal dreams and desires. I want to love and I want to be loved. Trouble is, I haven’t found it yet.
Why? Because I am a Banks.
You just say the name and the average American who owns a television will start salivating dollar signs.
Oh, you roll your eyes, thinking, "Okay, how is this possibly a tragedy? Having everything you ever want in life at your disposal, at the snap of a finger." That is true, anything I need or want, I can have.
But money can’t replace being raised by a nanny and the aching ghost of loneliness and judgment. But I already covered that with the comparison of Arthur.
What I really want is to be me. Who am I? I have absolutely no idea because for my whole life, I have been told what to do, how to act, how to behave, where to go, what to dress, coached on what to say, and now I'm finally taking my life into my own hands.
“Oh, go to Africa. See real pain.” You tell me. Well, hold on. I am. I’m on my way to Venezuela to help relieve a nurse and other doctors that serve at an orphanage.
One thing’s for sure—it's time for a change.
I have to have change.
I already sought change months earlier thanks to my best friend Norah's public meltdown, a breakup that tabloids had a field day with. Being in The Hamptons helping her heal, reinvent herself, and find love again gave me the courage to make that final step and apply to help an orphanage in Venezuela, which I thankfully convinced Norah and her sister, Maycee, to come with me.
Of course, I didn't go through my mother for the okaying of the trip. I went through Nia who informed my mother. Dad was busy with his campaign for United States
President and I preferred to be as much of a pleasant daughter as possible, not distracting him.
What did she tell her ladies-who-lunch friends when she found out I was going as a nurse to work? That I was being courted by “Elite” society in Southern America. Like they would ever believe that? But in our circles, the craziest things do happen and why not believe them? I think she was secretly trying to convince herself that I was going to meet a prince.
"I'm going to work in an orphanage. I don't know what other way to break this to you,” I told her slowly as if she couldn’t understand the English language.
Her British accent came out full throttle, "Why would you work, dear? You don't need to. You have all the money in the world,” she said to me as she held a champagne glass in her hand.
Maybe because I prefer to think clearly at two in the afternoon and not already be on my third glass of champagne and blab about everything under the sun, I thought to myself.
Clearly, I am my father's daughter. The Banks were a line of hard working men which led to their fortune-striking oil, manufacturing oil, and owning monopolies. It is in our blood to work. Which is why it makes my father the perfect politician; and unfortunately an absentee father. But the times we do spend together are special. We click. I am more of him than my mother's daughter.
It is in my mother's blood to be a socialite. It is in my father’s blood to work for something.
"Mother, I know it's hard for you to understand this, but I want to make a difference,” I said again to her as slow as molasses.
"Well, make a difference by being the director of the Junior League,” she'd say in dead seriousness, as she’d crack herself up into a giggle and semi snort. “Oh, I just have to tell the ladies about that one.” She’d continue to laugh as she left me standing while I tried to have a conversation with her.
It's a miracle I had my way and went to the University of Texas, which is where I met my best friend, Norah, instead of Yale where mother met my father, a member of the elite Skull and Bones’ society, which sent my mother into a spell of utter infatuation. She practically hunted him like a lioness does, determined to be his wife.
Another time I tried to talk with her about going to Venezuela, she gasped and said, "Chloe, you just donate the money to these causes. You don't actually go.”
“You'll get sick and infected by the commoners,” she warned me another time at another attempt with another champagne glass in her hand.
The commoners. A phrase she didn't lose coming to America. Which if her family was so powerful and influential, why didn't she just stay in Europe? A question I gained enough courage to ask her one day.
"So why did you come to America, then, Mother? If your family is so grand.”
I was never allowed to call her Mom; it was too suburban for her.
"Because dear, your father.”
Which, knowing what I know now, it seems their marriage was practically arranged by her family. She didn't go to Yale to get a degree. She went to Yale to catch his eye, and reel him in with a hook. And that she did.
So why wouldn't she let me make my own choices?
Trust me, I wanted to do therapy, Dr. Drew, Dr. Phil—anything, something!
But her pride would never allow it. That's when I stopped caring. I began to see myself as a Monopoly figure; we were both game pieces on her personal board game of life. She always advanced to go, always collected her money, and went off shopping on the Boardwalk and lunching at Park Place while I sat miserably waiting for my “Get out of jail free card.” Instead, I sit behind her bars, as she tries to mold into what she so desperately wants me to fit and “be.”
So here I sit, with Norah and Maycee, on the smallest plane I’ve ever been on praying to God that my life won't be ended short.
Venezuela bound.
Out of the US. Off the radar practically. What I hope will be the most perfect place for me.
Yet, as I sit in the airplane and reflect upon it all, the turbulence quickly dissipates all reflection. Never had I experienced such abrupt movement in the sky and I was afraid for my life—especially as I gasped in horror as my sparkling water flew to the ceiling splattering everywhere.
I pictured, “Governor Banks’ daughter, dead, terrorist attack,” in the press if the plane went down. Something off the wall like that—when really, all along—it was a plane crash. Drama sells in the news. I was an innocent bystander of this very gospel truth all my life and saw it first hand with my family. I could write a hilarious blog about what really happens and what the news reports. But then I would go to jail for revealing information that so often is classified.
Now, I was the biggest ABC’s Lost fan that there ever was, even though the show is over, which, yes—I shamelessly admit I did use my last name to attend a premier or two and see those hotties Sawyer and Jack up close in personal. I pictured the plane crashing into a deserted island with the hot Sawyer and intelligent Jack to choose from; I would never have to go back to Texas. I could just send my father post cards occasionally. I’d be free. And my best friend would be there. Perfect, right?
But I always do that when my nerves are shot. Imagine being anywhere but where I actually am. I hadn’t felt this nervous since coming out in Paris at the debutante ball. I hadn’t wanted to go. So what did I do? I imagined that I was undercover for the CIA and that at any minute, a gorgeous agent in an Armani suit would pick me up and we would walk barefoot on the beach. My active imagination kept me entertained most of my life. As an only child, I had no other choice—be bored, or make life fun.
My original exciting plan of going undercover in Venezuela—being a brand new person, no one knowing who I was—went completely bust thanks to my best friend’s writer sister Maycee, who blogged about her excitement of traveling to Venezuela with her sister and sister’s best friend who’s a nurse. She said quote, “OMG, so excited to travel to Venezuela to work at an orphanage with Nor and her nurse BFF!”
Everyone immediately put the two and two together and knew I was the BFF. My father wouldn’t allow me to travel alone.
That spilling of details led me in the custody of two ever-present bodyguards who had taken oaths to save my life and were here to accompany me in Venezuela. So not only was the plane hitting intense chaoticness, I couldn’t help but wonder if part of the plane’s crashing weight was due to the hundreds of pounds of pure muscle these men possessed. WFF wrestling anyone? I guessed that is what they had to do to unwind from being around such craziness in the Banks household. Pump iron until they exploded into giants. Maybe they were paid according to their muscle per pound? Maybe if I had caught on, I could have escaped the iron walls built around the truth of who I knew I always was.
Steve and Vinny.
They both sat cross armed in the tightest fitted shirts imaginable, leaving no hint of the imagination of how many packs they had on their abs. Steve, six. Vinny, eight. However annoyed I was with their presence, deep down inside, I felt comforted by their gigantic muscles and stone cold faces–especially with where we were going, the pure jungle. Finally free of responsibility and societal pressure, but yet not free or far of danger.
Civil war had broken out in Peru and the drug lords takeover and kidnapping had really escalated in Colombia. Danger lurked at every border it seemed. It actually was dangerous that we were going, but since the orphanage was in a remote village and hadn’t had any trouble in years, we should be fine. We would be fine. I would be fine, right?
Chapter One
After we landed on to the smallest dirt runway imaginable, a van picked us up and we rode an hour or so on another dirt road. Maycee and Norah religiously checked their phones for the first few minutes of the drive. No signal. Then they knocked out from fatigue.
I was thankful to be shut off from the outside world. Especially tonight. It was my father’s Republican debate that would be broadcasted live. His charming looks and eloquent southern charm made him the center of the spotlight at these debates and for
once, I was glad to not hear all the jabs, remarks, criticism and praise. I silently said a prayer for him for the right words to come out and for him to speak the best he ever had.
Then I repetitively hoped the majority of the ride that rebels would not hijack our van and hold us hostage. Yes, that was going on in Columbia, but deep down inside, it irked me. Columbia was right next door.
As if reading my thoughts, Maycee woke up after the van drove over a massive bump saying, “Thank God you have Vinny and Steve with us here!” in total fear as we drove through a thicker—as if you could even imagine the jungle to get any thicker–portion of the jungle. Not only were we in the thickest jungle I’d ever seen, but it was Halloween eerie. No lie–I was terrified.