I picked at the scab that had dried on my kneecap from the night when I’d fallen on the gravel. I had worn shorts every day since it had happened, but no one had asked me how I’d scraped my knees or cut up the palms of my hands. No one noticed. I shouldn’t have been surprised; no one ever really looked at me, I was realizing.
“It is a big whoop,” Kristijan said. “I like this person a lot.”
“Yawn,” I told him, teasing, wishing that our last night together on the beach wasn’t so gloomy. I fought the urge to laugh at the way he pronounced whoop. Under other circumstances, I would have laughed pretty hard at that. “Spill some details, or get over it.”
He shrugged. “There are no details yet. I don’t think this person likes me back.”
“Then you should make a move,” I instructed him. Bijoux had told me that she didn’t believe in wasting time. If she liked a guy, she just told him so. I didn’t have that kind of nerve, really. The handful of times I’d try to emulate her, it had backfired and I’d found out just how willing boys were to kiss and take my number… and then never call.
“Can’t,” Kristijan said, finishing his cone. “It’s too complicated.”
He pulled his gold Sharpie marker out of the back pocket of his shorts and leaned forward to brush the sand off the tops of my shoes. I didn’t flinch when he carefully wrote his name in his well-practiced signature in gold on both of my canvas sneakers. Pleased with the results, he snapped the cap back onto the marker and leaned back in the sand again. The strong odor of the marker lingered between us for a few minutes before the sea breeze carried it away.
The sun was setting, and it was odd how on the Adriatic Sea, time sped as if someone had their finger pressed on a fast forward button at sunset. From the moment that the sky began to turn pink, nature’s process of lowering the last rays of sun down to the horizon would be completed in fewer than ten minutes. I wondered who the lucky person was who’d caught Kristijan’s eye. I’d never devoted much thought before to whether Kristijan was straight or gay, but it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be surprised at his orientation either way. Whoever he was fancying was pretty lucky. If I had a choice of hand-picking a brother out of anyone in the world, I would have picked him, no question.
“I don’t want you guys to go,” I told him suddenly, without thinking through what I was saying.
“We can still talk online,” he said.
“I know,” I said, trying to cover my tracks. “I just don’t want summer to ever end.”
That was a huge lie. I wanted nothing more than for summer to end so that I could put my big escape into effect. But what I really meant was that I didn’t want our quiet night together, hidden away beneath the kayaks, to end.
Kristijan reached over and took my hand, sticky from ice cream, in his own and we sat there in silence watching our last sunset of the summer together like that. I kind of wished he could just read my mind, and know everything that had happened to me, without my having to say the words.
Viktor, Maria, Kristijan and Magda left the next morning, packing up their SUV and driving away. I watched from my window in the yellow bedroom with the door locked behind me after saying awkward, unemotional goodbyes and offering stiff hugs. Magda had been a little weepy and had told me that I was like her big sister. I already kind of was someone’s big sister. Technically my dad’s little boy with Phoebe was my half-brother, but I saw Drew so rarely that it barely counted. I didn’t really think of myself as big sister material.
The house was quieter than ever after their departure. I had thought about asking Maria if I could come with them to their house in Zagreb, but ruled it out. I had known Kristijan and Magda since I was eight years old, but they were still, in a strange way, kind of like strangers. They weren’t really my blood relatives, not like my real cousins on my dad’s side of the family in New Jersey. Those cousins were all husky, gray-eyed Norfleets like me and Bijoux. I could eat anything out of their fridges, borrow any of their clothes, pet any of their cats or dogs, and it wouldn’t have felt like I was imposing. We didn’t see them often, but my Aunts Jenny and Barbara were like real family. Not like the Andordevics, who were Danko’s family.
And yet still, as Viktor’s SUV pulled through the gates surrounding our property, I regretted not asking Maria if I could have accompanied them back to Zagreb until the start of my school year. I had kind of wanted to see that big brown dog of theirs.
I had two weeks left to go in Croatia, with the bedroom door that didn’t lock properly.
The night that Viktor and his family left, my mother was accompanying Danko to a dinner at a fancy hotel nearby, where one of his investment banking clients was staying on holiday. Mom kissed me goodbye on the cheek, smelling like Peony Bouquet. When she wore high heels like she did that night, she was the same height as Danko. They made an impressive couple when they were dressed up, strikingly good-looking. It made me nauseous to see them like that, with Danko in one of his tailored black suits and Mom in a silky gray sheath dress. I remembered all of the idiots Mom had dated when Bijoux and I were little, and how they’d strung her along, cheated on her, been jealous of her wealth and prestige. She had been really miserable before she got remarried.
Which made me feel even worse, keeping my dark secret about what a terrible man Danko was. If I were to tell Mom what had happened, there would be the added complication of her possibly being mad at me for ruining her marriage. I mean, I hadn’t done anything that I could recall to encourage him, but she may not have seen it that way.
“Be good tonight,” she cautioned me.
“Come on, Nadine,” Danko urged her gently. “We don’t want to be late.”
As soon Niko drove her and Danko off toward the hotel, I called Dad on the land line in the house. My mobile phone didn’t have an international plan, so I had been waiting for the perfect private opportunity to call him. I hadn’t even heard the sound of his voice since he and Phoebe had dropped me and Bijoux off at the airport. When he answered his cell phone signifying that he wasn’t either on stage or doing some stupid errand for Phoebe, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Pound wasn’t on tour anymore. There had been some kind of drama at their show in Detroit, and the lead singer of my dad’s band had voluntarily checked himself into a rehab program. Dad and Phoebe were in Los Angeles three weeks earlier than they had expected to be back. I couldn’t quickly do the math to figure out what time it was at their house in California.
“Dad,” I interrupted him just as he was telling me all about how the paparazzi were having a field day with Chase Atwood’s public battle with alcoholism. “What’s the name of the school where Taylor goes?”
“Aw, I don’t know, honey,” my dad grumbled on the other end of the line. “I’d have to ask Chase. Somethin’ like the Little Miss Spoiled Pants School for Rich Girls.”
“Dad, come on.”
I heard him lean over his shoulder and ask Phoebe, who was presumably swanning around their big swimming pool behind the house. She was very good about remembering things like school names. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she already had Drew’s private high school picked out even though he was still wearing diapers.
“It’s the Treadwell School,” he told me. “Phoebe says it’s in Massachusetts. Why? You got big plans to go off to boarding school?”
I hesitated. I hadn’t been planning on flat-out asking him to send me there on that call, so I was taken a bit off-guard at his sudden suggestion.
“Your mother would never go for that,” Dad said, whistling. “No sir-ee. And neither would her fancy husband. They like you close to home, where they can keep an eye on you.”
I cringed. Dad had no idea how right he was.
“Guess what?” he continued, immediately changing the topic. “We’re nominated for a couple of awards at the Jam Television Video Awards in LA in two weeks. Guess who’s going to be there? All or Nothing!”
My heart skipped a beat. Of course my d
ad would torture me with information like that.
“They’re going to be doing a cover of Always Yours,” he continued. “Phoebe suggested that I ask if you might want to meet us for the show. Those kids are supposed to be all the rage.”
“Uh, yeah,” I informed my dad, temporarily forgetting all about Danko and my mission to be accepted at Treadwell. “They’re like, the cutest boys ever.”
We agreed that I would ask Mom about flying to Los Angeles to meet Dad for the awards show. There were butterflies in my stomach even just thinking about the possibility of meeting Nigel O’Hallihan. I imagined being back stage at the Jam Awards, and him standing with his band mates, celebrating after their cover of Pound’s song. He’d turn and our eyes would meet, and he’d offer a shy smile. Despite everything else that had happened to me in the last few weeks, the possibility of seeing him with my own eyes and possibly touching his hand gave me the tiniest glimmer of hope that not everything in my life sucked. Dad’s comment about Mom never wanting me to be far from home was true, though. Luckily, I already had an idea of how I was going to get into the Treadwell Academy that didn’t require my having to convince her to send me.
I barricaded my door that night with my heavy bureau, a little bit terrified that Danko’s statement about a potential fire in the house had some truth to it. Surely he could have pushed the door inward and the bureau along with it, but not without making enough noise to wake up the entire household. Looking up at the ceiling of my bedroom all night, restless, I thought through my boarding school admission plan once more. It was going to involve reverse psychology, the same trick my mother had been using on me for years to get me to do things that I didn’t want to do.
“Mom,” I asked the next morning, lingering in the doorway to the room that she used as her private office when we were in Croatia. She was looking at some hideous spreadsheet full of numbers. “Dad asked me if I want to meet him on the twenty-eighth for the Jam TV Music Awards. Can I go? I really want to. All or Nothing is going to be there.”
Mom barely looked away from the screen of her laptop. “School starts on September first. I think it’s a very bad idea for you to be flying back to New York from LA right before the start of the school year. That’s a seven-hour flight, Betsey. You know how you dehydrate.”
I did an epic eye roll, which of course she did not witness because she wasn’t looking at me. “Mom, come on. They’re my favorite band in the whole world and you’re worried about me dehydrating on the plane? I’ll drink water. I’ll walk around with an intravenous drip, if you want. Whatever. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Mom sighed and finally turned to face me. “Betsey, where are you at with your book reports? I can’t recall seeing any emails between you and Ms. Kumar. You need to clean up your act at school this year, no ifs, ands, or buts. No quick trip to Los Angeles, and I could just shoot Wade for even making you that offer. No. Final answer.”
I stormed off to my room, sulking, but of course I couldn’t argue further. The only book report I’d emailed to Ms. Kumar at the Pershing School had been a very sloppy review of Death of a Salesman. I’d left my airport-bought copy of The Alchemist at the beach one afternoon when I had been alone, lost in thought. The other books waited patiently on my Kindle, unopened. I wasn’t looking forward to the first day of school, or to meeting Ms. Kumar, who had unknowingly been the architect of my life’s downward spiral that summer. Without having ever shaken her hand, I already hated her profoundly. She had instigated the chain of events leading up to Danko’s attack on me, and now she was cheating me out of meeting the love of my life, Nigel O’Hallihan.
Finally the summer came to a merciful end. Bijoux appeared at the house three days before our return flights to New York to announce that she was not accompanying us. She was instead going to Los Angeles with Tobin to attend the big premier of his cable television show. She left the day before we did, teetering on huge high heeled sandals as she and Niko carried all of her luggage down to the car.
“See you back in New York, piggy,” she said, hugging me goodbye out by the pool. When she embraced me, her glittery body lotion got all over the front of my blue t-shirt.
“If you go to the Jam TV Awards with Dad and meet All or Nothing, I’m going to hate you forever,” I warned her.
“Ugh, Betsey. Grow up. I have no interest in meeting a bunch of twelve-year-old, zit-faced dorks from Ireland. I have a real man in my life,” she mused. I could see Tobin, her real man, sitting in the back seat of Niko’s car waiting for her to wrap up her farewells. He was tinkering around with a video game on his mobile phone.
The next day on our flight, my mother made me take the middle seat in between her and Danko when we boarded our flight. We had the three-seat middle row in First Class.
“I want the aisle,” I stated emphatically. Sitting next to him for an eight-hour-flight to New York was out of the question. I had barely uttered a word to him since the end of July on that horrible night. Even just looking at his face turned my stomach. I avoided eye contact with him as much as possible.
“Betsey,” my mother sighed. “You know I need an aisle seat.”
My mother liked to drink obscene amounts of water on flights to prevent her own dehydration, resulting in little trots to the bathroom every forty-five minutes.
I buckled myself into the middle seat to appease her, and immediately turned my iPod on at top volume before Mom or Danko suggested that I spend the flight reading. My blood was boiling that I had to sit next to him… just five inches from him. Clicking through my extensive song collection, I landed on some classic Nine Inch Nails and turned the volume up as loudly as I could tolerate. I could still feel tiny grains of sand in my canvas shoes, and I stared intently at Kristijan’s golden signature on my feet. The sand was coming with me to New York. No matter how many times I had shaken my shoes outside by the pool trying to empty them completely, a few grains remained. Whether I liked it or not, the sand, just like the events of what had happened to me that summer, wouldn’t be left behind.
Halfway through the flight, when I got up to use the bathroom, I slipped through the blue curtains and out of First Class into the coach area where almost everyone was sleeping. I walked the long, dimly lit aisle to use the bathroom at the back of the plane, and noticed that a few rows in the back of the coach section were completely empty. After using the bathroom, I lifted the arm rests in one of those rows, stretched out across three seats and fell into a blissful sleep. I only awakened and returned to my rightful seat after the captain announced we were beginning our initial descent into the New York area.
We were home, and it was time for me to put my plan into action to get myself shipped off to boarding school. I wondered silently to myself as we waited for our luggage to appear on the rotating belt if I was going to have the nerve to pull this off.
CHAPTER 5
Christie was the absolute best.
I’d endured a number of girls I would have considered as my “best” friend throughout my academic career at all of Manhattan’s most prestigious schools, but Christie had been in the position of #1 Friend status since seventh grade at Hastings (where she had played a starring role in the regrettable events leading up to my expulsion). I considered her to be a bad ass of the first order, although since I was usually the one who suffered the ultimate price for all of our nefarious activities, her parents considered me to be the bad influence. Christie was Chinese and had been adopted from an orphanage in the Jiangsu province of China. Her parents had flown over there and hand-selected her from her crib and everything. Her dad was high up on the food chain at some huge investment management group on Wall Street, and her mom designed jewelry. I got the sense from what I had observed in her household that when your parents flew half-way around the world to pluck you out of an orphanage, there was really no limit on the amount of garbage you could manipulate.
In the two weeks since we had been back in New York and school had started, I had been
desperately looking for a perfect opportunity to get myself into boiling hot water. There were pretty strict criteria for an act resulting in punishment so severe as to inspire Mom and Danko to ship me off to boarding school. The troublesome event had to seem completely natural, just like all of the other times I had gotten in trouble. If I just did something irrational and inexplicable, like slap a teacher or something, too many questions would be raised. Plus, I was trying specifically to be sent off to Treadwell, and not to some kind of reform school. I had been scheming for circumstances under which I could get myself into certain trouble but still claim some degree of innocence to appeal to my dad’s sense of sympathy. If I could honestly claim something hadn’t been entirely my fault, I would be far more likely to get Dad to agree to send me to a school where my behavior would be modified and I would be out of everyone’s hair.
I also had to make sure that whatever act I committed was severe enough to merit boarding school instead of some other form of relocation, like being sent to Connecticut to live with my Grandmother Von Weurth. Spending the next three years listening to her blab all about exotic medical treatments she was interested in receiving in Europe was not at all what I had in mind for myself.
And the stakes were rising. Mom announced casually one evening after dinner that she was flying to Paris for most of the month of November to oversee scientific testing for the new anti-aging cream to replace Maximum Night Complex on the market. I said nothing in response to this announcement, but resolved that I had to find a way to get out of the apartment before Halloween.
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