Her mom took a step into the room. “What about Victoria?” she asked, before Natalya had a chance to dial her dad’s number.
Natalya turned her head sharply and gave her mother a long look. Had her mom seen the Mirror? Her father usually read the Russian papers, and her mother listened to NPR. They both thought the Mirror was complete trash, but that didn’t mean they never checked out a headline or a photo. Could her mom have seen the picture of Victoria, read the article, put two and two together, and realized that the party had been thrown by a girl from Gainsford, which meant Natalya must have been there also?
But her mother’s face was perfectly composed, and she returned Natalya’s stare with her own calm gaze. For a second, instead of relief, Natalya felt scared. Her life was literally on the front page of the paper and her parents had no idea. It wasn’t as if she normally told them everything—she and her mom weren’t like Jane and her mom, who talked about crushes and parties and stuff. But it seemed to Natalya that until just a few weeks ago her mother had had at least some idea of what was happening in her life.
“What about Victoria?” asked Natalya carefully.
Her mother shrugged and took another step forward. “Won’t she be disappointed if you leave her to go on her own?”
Natalya rolled onto her back. Her mom didn’t know anything.
“She’s not going.” At the thought of why Victoria wasn’t going to the party, Natalya felt the lump grow in her throat.
“That’s too bad.” Her mom came to sit cautiously on the edge of the bed. “What about your other friends? Aren’t they expecting you?”
Jane’s words rang in Natalya’s ears.
Don’t you mean what Victoria’s wearing?
Is she even going to want you there now that Victoria’s not going?
Natalya stared up at the ceiling. “They won’t care.” Her voice was completely without inflection, but there was nothing she could do about the fact that as soon as she’d spoken, she started to cry.
Her mom nodded. “I understand,” she whispered quietly, looking down at her hands.
Natalya shot to a sitting position and shook her head violently. “You don’t understand, Mom. I really messed up.” She was sobbing now.
“Shhh. Shhh,” whispered her mother. “I know. I know.” Sliding her arm around her daughter, she rocked her gently back and forth, as if Natalya were a little baby again. Natalya sobbed into her mother’s neck for what seemed like hours. She was crying about everything—about Victoria and Jane, about Morgan and George, about Colin. She was crying for herself because she’d never been to Troy or seen the pyramids or gone to a patron’s cocktail party with famous actors, and she was crying because she even cared about doing any of those things.
Finally, she took a deep, shuddering breath.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Her mother smoothed Natalya’s matted hair off her hot, damp forehead.
Natalya tilted her head so she could look at her mother. There was a small, sad smile on her lips that made Natalya think maybe she understood a little of what Natalya was crying about.
Natalya’s mom sighed. “You know, when you got that scholarship, your father and I weren’t one hundred percent sure it was such a good idea for you to go to Gainsford.”
Amazement stopped Natalya’s tears. “What?” She swiped at her dripping nose with the back of her hand. “But you were so excited. You said you were so proud of me.” She remembered sitting with her family at dinner the night her acceptance letter had arrived, her father raising his glass and saying, To Natalya! and then her mother and brother repeating, To Natalya! like she was the most amazing, brilliant person they’d ever met.
“We were proud of you,” her mother said. “We are proud of you. Such a big scholarship. Such an impressive school.” She shook her head slowly and bit her lip. “Remember that first day when I said you were going so far away?”
Natalya did remember, actually. “And I said I wasn’t.”
Her mother took a neatly folded tissue out of her pocket and handed it to Natalya. “Well, this was what I was talking about.” She didn’t explain what she meant by “this,” but she didn’t have to.
Natalya blew her nose. “These girls don’t really want to be my friends. They just want to be friends with me because I’m friends with Victoria.”
“Oh.” Her mother considered Natalya’s words, then asked, “They told you that?”
“More like Jane told me that.” Natalya dabbed at her eyes with the tissue and gave a half laugh.
Her mother took Natalya’s damp tissue and exchanged it for a clean one. “And Jane is friends with them also?”
Natalya snorted. “Hardly.”
“Well,” said her mom. And then, “Well,” again.
“Well what?” asked Natalya, blowing her nose.
“Well…” Her mother hesitated, then said, “Maybe you should let the girls speak for themselves about whether they want to be friends with you.” She stared Natalya in the eye to make sure she got the point.
“I don’t know,” said Natalya doubtfully, but she thought about what her mother was getting at. It wasn’t like Morgan and Sloane and Katrina kept asking her about Victoria all the time. In fact, they hadn’t mentioned her once since that first lunch.
Still, even if they did want to be friends with her—with her—there was one enormous hurdle standing between her and the party tonight.
“It’s a costume party, Mom. A really fancy costume party. And I don’t have any costume, much less a fancy one.”
Her mother laughed and squeezed her shoulders. “It would be nice if Gainsford gave its students Halloween uniforms too, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Natalya sighed. “I could definitely use a uniform right about now.”
“Well, that’s good news.” Her mom’s voice was full of enthusiasm, and Natalya gave her a puzzled look in return.
“Why is that good?”
Her mom stood up. “Because,” she answered, “we have one.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was as decked out as the throngs of people filling its cavernous lobby. Dramatic orange-and-black banners draped the archways and ceiling, and millions of votive candles and tiny Christmas lights twinkled everywhere. Waiters in black, wearing harlequin masks, slid their way through a swirling crowd of knights, popes, robots, and Elvises. Spanish dancers chatted with Superman.
Despite the swelling she could still feel around her eyes from all the crying she’d done earlier, Natalya couldn’t help feeling a little tingly about being at such a glamorous party. Making her way through the crowd and up the wide central steps to the balcony, where Morgan had said they’d be meeting, she passed people speaking French and German, elegant men and women dressed as kings and queens and presidents, some of them wearing clothes and jewelry that might actually have belonged to the royalty they were impersonating.
For a minute when Natalya got to the top of the stairs, the huge oil portraits in the gallery made her think of the paintings she and Victoria and Jane had been so amazed by at Morgan’s house. Here it was, less than a month later, and she was going to another of Morgan’s parties, only she was all by herself. It didn’t seem possible.
She took a deep breath and turned along the walkway toward the balcony. Despite how crowded it was, she had no problem spotting Morgan, who was dressed as Cleopatra, in a long gold gown and a thick jewel-encrusted necklace and headdress. She was talking to Sloane, who, in a blue dress and dazzling tiara, looked exactly like Lady Diana. Katrina had her back to Natalya, but from her white tail, black satin top, and tall pink ears, Natalya could tell she’d decided to go with her Playboy Bunny plan.
Even in this crowd of glamorous, beautiful people, Morgan and her friends sparkled.
Natalya wished she sparkled too, but she knew she didn’t. Wearing her mother’s white jacket over a black turtleneck and a black skirt, and peering through a pair of glasses, she was afraid she didn’t really look like a sexy scientist. She ba
rely even looked like a regular scientist. She had the feeling she looked just like what she was—a scholarship girl trying to run with the beautiful people.
Sloane turned slightly and spotted Natalya. Her jaw dropped, and she whispered something in Morgan’s ear. Morgan must have said something to Katrina, who whipped around to face the direction Natalya was coming from.
“Oh my god.” Morgan mouthed.
Oh my god? Natalya knew her costume was bad, but she hadn’t thought it was Oh my god! bad.
And then, just as she was about to turn and run down the steps and out the front door of the museum, Morgan started to clap. A second later, so did Sloane and Katrina. As if in a trance, Natalya made her way forward, and by the time Natalya was within shouting distance of them, Sloane had let loose with an ear-piercing whistle of appreciation.
“How did you think of that?” Morgan demanded.
“You’re way too hot to be her, though,” said Sloane. “You know that, right?”
“What?” asked Natalya, smiling nervously. There were so many people around; between that and the jazz combo playing nearby, it was hard to hear.
Sloane reached out her hand and pulled Natalya into the group. “I said,” she yelled, “that you’re way too hot to be Clover.”
Dr. Clover?! They thought she was Dr. Clover?!
“No, I…”
But Morgan cut her off. “Where’s Victoria?” She was looking in the direction from which Natalya had come.
Natalya felt her heart start to beat faster. Okay, her lame costume had miraculously been mistaken for something clever.
But there was no way out of this one.
“She couldn’t come,” confessed Natalya.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She should have said Victoria would come later. Or at least that she might come. Now that Morgan knew Victoria definitely wasn’t going to show, would she tell Natalya to leave? Had Jane been right along?
It seemed to Natalya that a year passed before Morgan lazily shrugged one shoulder. “Oh,” she said simply, “that’s too bad. When you see her, tell her I’m sorry about those pictures in the Mirror, okay? I don’t know what idiot posted them, but it wasn’t me.” The undercurrent of disgust in Morgan’s voice at whichever guest had broken her unstated rule of hospitality made Natalya positive she was telling the truth.
“Um, sure,” said Natalya, and to her embarrassment, she felt tears of relief welling up in her eyes. She blinked them back frantically before they could fall. Morgan hadn’t posted those pictures of Victoria. Jane’s theory that Natalya’s new friend was diabolical was as crazy as Natalya had told her it was.
Morgan took a sip of champagne and gestured with her elbow. “If you want a drink, there’s a bar over there.” She said it as casually as if she’d been talking about grabbing a piece of candy or a handful of chips. Have some candy corn. Take a pretzel. Oh, and would you care for a glass of champagne?
“Then we’ll meet the guys at the American Wing,” said Morgan. “There’s dancing.”
“Oh. Okay.” Still amazed that she’d been allowed to stay,
Natalya went around the corner to the bar, which was swarmed with people. As she waited in the massive crowd, she started to worry that she was taking too long, that by the time she got back to where she’d left everyone, they’d be gone. Maybe they liked her enough to hang out with her without Victoria, but that didn’t mean they liked her enough to wait for hours while she got a drink.
The truth was, she didn’t even want a drink. If her parents smelled alcohol on her breath, they’d murder her. But it wasn’t like she could just say, I don’t want to drink anything. She wished she didn’t feel so…on probation with Morgan and her friends; that being with them was more like being with Jane and Victoria.
Really? You wish you were calling each other names and storming away from them at restaurants?
She didn’t want to think about her fight with Jane and Victoria. She wanted to think about this amazing party, about what she could drink that wouldn’t get her grounded for the rest of high school, about—
An arm slipped around her waist, and a voice whispered in her ear, “Don’t panic, but I need you to come with me for five minutes.”
And just like that, Colin whisked her away from the bar and down the stairs.
VICTORIA SPENT SATURDAY afternoon campaigning with her parents at the Riverdale Nursing Home. It was, she was pretty sure, the most depressing place on earth, though that wasn’t just because of how old everyone was and how bad everything smelled. The depressing nature of the facility was only background noise to the depressing way everyone treated her, as if she had cancer or a brain tumor or something.
“Aren’t you a poor dear?” said an old woman with little fluffs of white hair, taking Victoria’s hand in her papery one. “It’s just terrible how that newspaper tried to embarrass you. Those people are sick.”
Her mother put her arm around Victoria’s shoulders. “Well,
Victoria paid a high price for an important lesson, didn’t you, honey?” Victoria nodded, and her mom gave her a little squeeze.
The old lady smiled sadly. As they walked away, her mother whispered, “No one thinks this is your fault, honey, okay? Julie just texted Steven. She’s been monitoring the blogs all morning and people are up in arms about the press.”
Victoria nodded but didn’t say anything. As bad as it had been when her parents were yelling at her, she felt a little weird about how gentle everyone was being around her today. In the car on the way up to the nursing home, Tim, the Times reporter, had said, “I hate to dignify the Mirror with a question about that cover, but people are going to want to know how it all happened. I’d like to give you a chance to explain.”
Satan had already told her that the reporter wasn’t the Times political correspondent, the guy who usually traveled with the Harrison campaign. He was with the Styles section, and he was writing a sympathetic piece. That was the word Satan kept repeating, sympathetic. To Victoria, sympathetic sounded bad, like someone had died, but her parents and Satan seemed happy about his sympathy, so she didn’t complain.
Sitting next to this sympathetic reporter in the back of the limo, she tried to think of something she could say that would make her deserving of sympathy. But before she could find the words to explain what had happened, her mother said, “Victoria is a very innocent and trusting young woman. She loves to bake, to be with her family. Innocent people are easily misled, and that’s what happened here. I’m not excusing Victoria’s behavior,” she added quickly. “I’m just saying that when you trust your friends and they don’t look out for you, well, sad things can happen.”
Her mother’s talking about her friends like that made Victoria want to defend them. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it without anyone having seen. Wasn’t her mom just saying to Tim what Victoria had said to Natalya and Jane when they’d come to see her? Nobody cared about my getting into trouble. You guys just wanted what you wanted. “Let’s go to this awesome party! Let’s get funny T-shirts! Victoria, why are you being such a drag?”
Tim was so sympathetic that he even nodded sympathetically as he wrote down every word Victoria’s mother said. When he was done, he looked up at Victoria.
“Anything you’d like to add to that, Victoria?”
She thought of how she’d made out with Jack after cooking club. She remembered how exciting it had been to stand outside Morgan’s door with Natalya and Jane, feeling sexy and grown up in Emily’s dress. She felt the tingle in her hand after she and Jack had high-fived their successful condom work. Her mother had made her sound like some kind of innocent dupe, a girl who had never so much as had an impure impulse, much less acted on it.
Tim was waiting for her to speak, holding his pen over his notebook. Out of the corner of her eye, Natalya saw Satan glaring at her from under his thick eyebrows. When he caught her looking in his direction, he went back to typing something on his B
lackBerry.
“Do you want to say anything else?” Tim repeated gently.
Victoria shook her head. “I think my mom said it really well.”
“Thanks, honey,” said her mother, patting Victoria on her leg.
For the rest of the ride, Victoria didn’t say a word, just stared out the window. The sunny day had disappeared, and it had begun to rain. She watched the heavy drops hit the glass, then spread into long, thin streams that looked a lot like tears.
When they got home from Riverdale, Victoria went straight to her room, shut the door and the lights, climbed into bed, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. At some point during the afternoon she woke up to a buzzing sound. Drunk with sleep, she stumbled around her room until she located her phone, still in her bag. She took it out and checked the screen. Jack. She remembered their kiss, his smile as they parted.
She knew why he was calling now. Victoria, I didn’t exactly bargain for this when I made out with you yesterday. Um, can we forget it ever happened? She couldn’t deal with that. She couldn’t deal with anything. She opened the middle drawer of her dresser and buried her phone under a pile of T-shirts, then crawled back into bed and lost consciousness again.
She didn’t know if it was minutes, hours, or days later that she was awakened again, this time by Emily plopping herself down on the edge of her bed and flipping on her bedside lamp. “You totally got dirt all over the hem of my blue dress, you little tramp.”
What time was it? What day was it? “I what…?” Victoria opened her eyes and squinted against the bright light.
“You heard me.” Emily was shaking her head with amazement. “I can’t believe you had the balls to sneak out to a party. Little Miss Perfect.”
“I’m not—” Victoria shot upright, completely awake.
“Oh, please.” Emily waved away any defense Victoria was about to offer. “Spare me. You went to a party. You know how to put a condom on.” Emily looked thoughtful for a second. “It sucks that you got caught.” Then she shrugged. “But you’re finally doing something besides baking. That’s cool.”
The Darlings Are Forever Page 21