"What about you, Natalie?" she asked, steering the conversation back toward more appropriate ground. "Are you on the Court for Princess, too?"
Before I could open my mouth, Diana snapped, "Don't change the subject, Isabelle."
I used my toe to nudge Mike's groin. When his head shot up and his eyes met mine, I raised my eyebrows in the most seductively threatening way I could manage at the dinner table. Prime time to step up to the plate, love.
"No one's changing the subject," Mike piped in obediently. "If I win anything, it'll be because of Nat."
Diana was banging the prongs of her fork on her dinner plate without realizing the entire table was trembling to the beat of her nerves. I popped another bite of filet mignon in my mouth, enjoying every delicious moment.
I had never seen Diana King so unglued. There was something gorgeously transparent about her poker face:
Had she been slacking in her duties as a high society mother?
Was there someone she needed to talk to?
Was it . . . gasp . . . too late?
"Really, Mr. and Mrs. King," I said sweetly, laying a hand on Diana's arm to silence the fork. "Don't worry about a thing." I wedged my toe further between Mike's legs, wondering briefly what accolades I could get for working open his fly using only my toes.
"Slightly easier said than done, dear," Diana said to me.
"I promise," I said, giving weight to each word. "I think your son and I have found a surefire way in." I glanced at Mike, unbuttoning him right there in front of his very buttoned-up family. "Pretty soon . . . we'll have this thing nailed."
Mike bit his lip. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether he was flushed from being turned on or whether he was embarrassed by a little innocent bon mot in front of his family. Everyone but me seemed relieved for the interruption when Binky brought out the palate cleanser.
"Thank you, Binky," Diana said, settling back into her role as Queen. "I think we'll ask you to serve dessert aboard P.J.'s sailboat. Of course, it will just be the four of us." She motioned to everyone but Mike and me.
Mike looked at me. "You're sure you don't want to--" "Your mother and I already discussed it, remember? She was kind enough to consider my feelings after what happened to Daddy."
"Of course," Mike nodded, looking uncomfortable that he hadn't remembered instantly. Not that I blamed him--it wasn't exactly like I went around bragging about my dad's disappearance all the time. The tragic sailing accident was just a convenient story--clean enough for company and tragic enough that no one, including Mike, had ever really asked for particulars. "We'll just take the cigarette boat out then, Mother, if that's okay with you."
"Do as you wish," Diana said, standing up to excuse us from the table. "Just remember that when it comes to Prince next week, we're talking about more than just your wishes." She looked at me. "This is a family affair."
As Mike and I walked down the path toward the marina, he motioned me behind the pine tree where we'd once carved our initials. We stood pressed together in between the thick patches of green-mouthed Venus flytraps that grew like sun-spots on the King's backyard. The plants' carnivorous jaws were open, waiting for their evening meal.
"You and my mom are sure in cahoots over my Palmetto Prince campaign," he teased. "Hey, I'm sorry about the sailboat thing. I should have realized."
"Over and done with," I said quickly. "And if being in cahoots with your mother gets you the crown, I guess I can suffer it for a week."
But I didn't feel in cahoots with Diana at all. In fact, my pride was still stinging from her little "family affair" quip. Why didn't Mike seem to think anything of it? He was already busy untethering the boat. As I watched his arms flex while he worked, my whole body started buzzing. Really buzzing. Oh, wait--that was my phone buzzing in my purse.
I grimaced, thinking it was probably my mom, wanting me to pick up another bottle of wine for her on my way home. No mother has ever been so excited when her kid got her first fake ID.
But this text was no standard liquor-run call from Mom:
Guess who's back from the proverbial dead? I'm a free man again and want to celebrate with my favorite daughter. Could we meet for a drink?
The cool facade I'd managed all through dinner suddenly disappeared into the night. A thick black water moccasin slithered by my feet, and I gripped the wooden buttress of the marina for support.
"Nat?" Mike called from the boat. "The boat motor's running. Get down here so I can work on yours."
"Be right there," I said hoarsely.
Back from the dead indeed.
Dad.
CHAPTER Four
THRIFTLESS AMBITION
"Explain to me how it is that you're so calm," Kate asked me at brunch the next morning. We were seated along the palmetto-lined boardwalk of Catfish Row, finishing up our second round of cappuccinos on the patio of the famous MacLeer's Biscuit Cafe.
Anyone from Palmetto would tell you MacB's was the only place to brunch--not just for their buttermilk biscuits and homemade peach preserves, but also for the chance to scope out who showed up with whom. Since the rain clouds had finally given way to sun, the weather was in the high 60s, and it seemed like our entire school was trolling the historic wooden boardwalk outside MacB's.
At the round eight-top table closest to the cobblestone street, the student council kids--who never took a break-- struggled to make room for their bagels amid all their bulging Ball-planning binders. Near the water, Tracy Lampert and her junior-class coterie formed an amorphous cluster, swinging their bare feet over the boardwalk and tying dogwood blossoms in one another's hair. And at my usual table in the back corner of the patio, a crew of senior girls sat side by side in one long row, looking out at the ocean as they finished their egg-white quiches.
"Facials at five, Nat?" Jenny Inman asked as the girls filed past me toward the parking lot.
"I'll call you," I smiled, trying to assuage the hint of confusion as to why I hadn't filled in my usual MacB's seat next to her this morning.
The girls knew Kate was one of my favorite pet projects. This morning, I'd agreed to offer her a second opinion picking out a Mardi Gras costume from the thrift store down the street. But as I watched her simultaneously slurp up her cappuccino, check the tail of her long ponytail for split ends, and try to flag down our slip of a waitress for the bill, I wondered whether Kate needed help with more than just her costume. So much unnecessary multitasking--and Kate was usually really composed. When I realized she was still waiting for an answer to her question, I decided not to mention the fact that frantic people had a strangely mellowing effect on my mood.
"I'm calm," I suggested instead, "because I've already got a costume for tonight. You're panicking," I said, taking in the throngs of Mardi Gras-crazed Palmetto kids all around us, "because you're just giving into the vibe."
Just then, a table of Bambies brushed past our table, wailing over the limited stock of size-one fishnets at the costume store around the corner.
"You're right," Kate met my eyes and laughed. She flipped her amber hair over her shoulder. "Screw the vibe!"
I offered her a stick of gum and cocked my head at the sea of departing Bambies. "I take it you're opting out of the sophomore-class costume this year?" I asked. "I heard something about . . . brothel-chic?"
Kate snorted, signing the credit-card slip the waitress had finally brought over. We stood up and pushed in our wicker chairs.
"Please," Kate said, "and become another Bambi blend-in?" She shuddered, making her long hair shimmer in the sun. "I'd rather join the church choir."
I grinned at the image of Kate on the pulpit with a bunch of youth-group kids and threw down a couple of extra dollars on the table before we left. Though my mother would never willingly admit it these days, she'd been a waitress the first fourteen years of my life, so I was well-versed in the injustices of under-tipping.
Kate looked around and lowered her voice to a husky whisper. "Tonight is my night to seal the dea
l with Baxter--who still hasn't asked me to the Ball."
"That's why you're freaking out," I teased. Baxter Quinn was Palmetto's most legendary drunk and the dealer for most of our school's after parties. He was tall and light-haired and sexy in a lanky deadbeat sort of way. Even though he often couldn't hold himself upright, somehow he was never at a loss for girls.
"And that's why you're so calm," Kate said, tugging me over a series of puddles on the clapboard promenade--and out of the earshot of the rest of Palmetto. "You have the state's greatest built-in date. I bet you can't even remember what it's like to stress over a guy."
For just a second, my feet dragged on the boardwalk. Stressing over one guy in particular was exactly what I'd been trying not to do--ever since that unsettling text from my dad last night. Suffice it to say, Dad being "a free man again" was not exactly the good news he claimed it was.
Already, I could feel myself overexerting my jaw on the stick of gum I'd just unwrapped. Whenever the Juicy Fruit lost its flavor in less than five minutes, I knew I needed to find another way to chill out.
Kate stopped in front of a three-story southern-style bright-green row house with a wraparound purple-painted porch. A wooden sign swung on its hinges from the rafters overhead: Weird Sister's Closet.
Kate pulled open the stained-glass door and stepped inside. Like most of the mansion-turned-lingerie boutiques on Catfish Row, the Weird Sister's Closet was brimming with all things cleavage-enhancing. Posters of busty movie stars papered the walls, and strapless bras of all shapes and sizes filled the racks. But since it was on a cobblestone side street of the beaten path of the boardwalk strip, Kate had already assured me that the Weird Sister was the one place in Charleston's gentrified red-light district that would be Bambie-free today.
"What's with the puckered-up puss," Kate said, looking at me. "Where's your brink-of-royalty smile?"
Banishing thoughts of my father, at least for the time being, I conceded with a small, involuntary grin. Kate was right. Being on the brink of royalty was something to smile about, especially after all of our planning. In just a few days, fingers crossed, Mike and I would be happily crowned.
All the campaigning would be over, and the two of us could just bask in the success of our mutual hard work. We'd stay up late, editing our coronation speeches and practicing our waltz for the Ball. Yes, we had a waltz. And after the Ball, we'd pack a bottle of champagne, head straight for our spot at the secret waterfall near Mount Pleasant, and not come home until sunrise.
It'd be just the two of us, just like we'd always planned.
"That's what I'm talking about," Kate nodded, taking in the change in my demeanor. "Now, let's address my main issue, which is feathers on a spandex butt." She held up a red-sequined catsuit, flipping over the hanger to show off the tuft of red feathers right over the butt. "Do we love it or leave it?"
"Um, is that a tail?" I asked, half-appalled, half-intrigued.
"Just so you know," said the wild redheaded shop owner, clearing her throat behind the cash register, "we also have that in purple."
"Only certain women can wear purple." Kate grinned at me. "Like Nat." Then she clutched the red catsuit to her chest and gave me a devilish wink. "I think I'll take this baby for a test drive."
When she ducked into the dressing room, I laughed and shook my head. As the daughter of the wealthiest litigator in Charleston, Kate had a certain leg up on a lot of the other girls at Palmetto--the girls who just had "enough" money.
Kate's mother was certifiably insane (if those country club walls could talk), but because of her husband's untouchable bank balance, everyone called her "eccentric" instead of "crazy." Like there were just certain words that didn't apply to billionaires. So Kate, unlike most girls, could get away with piercing her tongue, adding a new tattoo to her arsenal every year . . . and wearing sequined, feathered spandex--all without ever risking being called a tramp. Maybe that was why I liked her: She lived like someone with no fear.
Having climbed up from the opposite end of the money spectrum, I ran my hand along a row of leather bustiers and felt renewed pride that my own costume was the opposite of everything in this store. I was just dipping into a fantasy of Mike and I, all dressed up and gliding through the party tonight, when someone stepped around the corner and held out the skanky catsuit in purple.
"Thought you might want to try this on," Justin Balmer purred.
The woodsy notes of his aftershave overtook me. And I thought nothing could out-stink the sensual jasmine aroma-therapy candle that the Weird Sister was burning by the cash register. Eau de J.B. wasn't an empirically bad smell; maybe it was the proximity to him that turned my stomach.
I was trying not to look at the catsuit--or the way his blond hair fell over his eyes--so I focused on his sweatshirt. It was the same Palmetto varsity football sweatshirt that Mike lent me for the games.
"What do you say?" J.B asked, fingering the feathers on the back of the catsuit. A surprising shivery feeling spread through my chest.
"But you saw it first," I said coolly. "I couldn't deprive you of the perfect Mardi Gras costume."
"Who's said anything about a costume?" he said. "I just think this might accentuate some of your best features."
"You mean my growing boredom with your advances?" I said, sidling past him in the lingerie-cramped aisle.
J.B. put his hands on my shoulders, masseur-style, and breathed into my neck. "So what does the Princess have up her sleeve for tonight's costume?" he whispered.
I spun around. "That's for the Prince to know, and you to obsess over."
A frustrated grunt from Kate in the dressing room made both of us jump back. I'd completely forgotten she was still back there trying on the catsuit.
"How's it going?" I called into the curtain, praying she hadn't heard J.B.
"Bye-bye butt feathers," she called, sounding oblivious. "Anything else out there worth stuffing myself into for Baxter's benefit?"
J.B. raised an eyebrow at me. With a magician's flourish, he lifted the first thing in arm's reach off the rack and held it up for my approval. It was a gaudy hot-pink satin corset. If Kate wanted to catch Baxter's eye, this would probably do the trick.
J.B. flung the hanger over the door of the dressing room and, without thinking, I added, "Why don't you try this one ? "
J.B. raised his fist at me, in recognition of our teamwork. As if the two of us would actually fist bump over anything. I rejected him but still stood there, frozen to my spot.
After a pause, J.B. lowered his fist and sighed. A tuft of blond hair blew up from his forehead. The green lettering on the sweatshirt matched his eyes perfectly, so they stood out even more than usual, almost taunting me. I was torn between wanting to break his stare and not wanting to be the one to have to look away first.
"Stop looking at me like that," I whispered finally, hating that my voice sounded so small, that my breath felt so tight.
"It's just a smile, Nat," he said.
For a second, Justin Balmer sounded almost defensive. But then he licked his lips and bared his teeth at me. It sent a shiver down my spine.
"You know," he sneered, going back to being the animal I knew, "I find your doggedness to win this pageant a little, well, amusing." He leaned forward, dropped the purple cat suit in my arms. "And when I get amused," he continued, stepping past me, "it makes me want to play."
I squinted at J.B. standing in the doorframe, stroking his chin.
"Fine." I couldn't help grinning. "Game on."
"Who are you talking to?" Kate called from the dressing room just as J.B. stepped out onto the street.
"No one," I said quickly, turning around just in time to see Kate fling back the curtain. She shimmied out of the dressing room, wearing nothing but the pink silk getup, which fit her like a glove.
"You'd better be ready to throw down tonight," she sang, dancing up against me.
Catching a final glimpse of Justin walking toward the boardwalk, I crossed my arms an
d said, "Oh, I'm ready."
CHAPTER Five
CHARMED LIFE
"Welcome to Bourbon Street," Rex Freeman said, opening the door to his parents' Palmetto mansion Saturday night. He was topless, a jester hat covering his signature red buzz cut. He had on jean cutoffs and flip-flops. He was wearing so many strands of beads around his neck, you couldn't see his buff, freckle-covered upper body--which might have been a shame, but I knew that in his efforts to see the upper bodies of every ho in this room, Rex would have to give up most of those beads before the night was over.
He was grinning at the sea of Bambies separating Mike and me from the entrance to the party. "You ladies can hang your coats in the closet if I can hang these beads on your--"
"Excuse me," I said, pulling Mike's hand past the tittering crowd of girls. "But before things get too fleshy in the foyer, you don't mind if we just squeeze through, do you?"
Mike shook his head and smirked at me.
"Sorry, man," he said, fist-bumping Rex on his way through the door. "You know Nat doesn't have much tolerance for Bambi hide."
"Pas de problem," Rex shrugged. "More for me."
I reached around Rex's neck for a strand of particularly garish beads. They were hollow metallic plastic and shaped like peacock feathers.
"Fancy," I said. "And ooh, they light up. Mind if I?..."
Rex grinned at Mike, the freckles on one cheek scrunching together. "You know, most girls would do anything to earn such special beads. Either I'm already sloshed or you have a very powerful girlfriend."
"Not that those two things are mutually exclusive," Mike joked.
Rex motioned for us both to lean in and nodded at a banner overhead, which read: Lick'er in the front, pok'er in the rear.
"Ignore the signs," he said. "Though there is poker out back. But you'll find the high-end booze upstairs in my dad's library." His face got serious. "I tell you this on a need-to-know basis."
"Discreet is our middle name," I said. "Thanks, Rex."