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Unforgettable
Caroline B. Cooney
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney
Chapter 1
BACK HOME, PEOPLE SAID she was breathtakingly beautiful. A work of art. A real show stopper.
Here in the first major city she’d ever visited, however, traffic had failed to stop for her. As far as she could tell, the trucks and buses, taxis and limousines, beat-up old sedans and fine imported cars, never even saw her. People drove like maniacs, each bumper only inches away from the next, fast as race cars, jumping lights long before they went green, and going through lights long after they’d turned red.
She didn’t mind.
How wonderful to be anonymous for a change. No small town knowledge swarming around. Nobody in this entire metropolis knew her. She might never even have had a name.
I’m here! she thought, falling in love with the noise and the chaos. I’m urban. I’m city. I’m street. No more country. No more farm. No more ordering from catalogs just because there aren’t any stores. From now on, my life will be crowds and taxis, skyscrapers and subways, fabulous boutiques and rich-people department stores.
And secrets, of course. She loved a good secret. Just being here was a secret. Everybody thought she was somewhere else.
Well, I’m not! she said to herself. She wanted to laugh out loud and maybe hug a stranger.
But she was trying to be intelligent. This was her first day in her first city and she didn’t want to be too much of a tourist. Hugging strangers was out. Although a very cute stranger stood across the street from her. He was selling T-shirts from a wooden wagon. The boy was his own perfect ad. Clearly into bodybuilding, and not wanting to hide his great muscles, he was wearing a T-shirt that was one size too small, instead of the fashionable two sizes too large. Definitely a candidate for romance, especially since his T seemed to sport a Harvard University logo.
How she wanted a worthy boyfriend! All life would interest him, not just trucks and stereo systems. He’d be relaxed about world travel and city subways. He’d have credit cards. With a big limit.
The boys back home—oh, come on. They’d never left town, never mind the state. They didn’t want to conquer the world. They didn’t even want to pump gas.
Yes, she was willing to have a world-class romance with a Harvard boy. Not that romance meant just boys. Adventure was part of romance. Intrigue and wild crazy behavior. Furthermore, romance had to happen in a great place. Romance wasn’t McDonald’s. Romance wasn’t the high school cafeteria. Romance was yachts and nightclubs and first-class travel on jets.
Actually, at this moment, she was lost. It didn’t matter, because there were so many people waiting on the sidewalk for the WALK light that she was just a piece of crowd. Nobody would suspect she had no idea what she was doing. At least, she hoped nobody suspected. How humiliating if everybody took one look and said—Beginner. Novice. Pathetic. Knows nothing about cities or anything else on earth.
She wanted to turn sophisticated in a fingersnap. No embarrassment. No fumbling. Certainly not in public.
She knew how she looked in public right now.
She looked terrific.
Taupe linen shorts, rather long, pleated and belted. Tailored white shirt, starched and ironed. It was a nice combination of dressy and casual. Her slim athletic legs were deeply tanned. Her hair, too heavy to swing, rested on her shoulders. Bleached by hours in the sun, its dark brown was burnished like new copper or old gold.
Traffic might not stop, but the people around certainly noticed her. Little girls knew they wanted to look just like that when they grew up, and older women remembered wistfully when they had looked just like that.
I’ve got the looks, she thought, giggling. All I need now is sophistication. I have none. I grew up in the wrong place.
Hiding the giggle was probably the first step. Sophisticated young women, when walking alone, kept their features under control. They didn’t giggle and they certainly didn’t gape in touristy awe. Although, as she crossed this half of the street and waited on the traffic island to cross the next, she was tempted.
A magnificent hotel, its facade a glittering profile of hot red brick and slanted glass, was between her and a stretch of water so blue it looked like new jeans. THE JAYQUITH, said the sign. Guests passed in and out a thick glass door held by a doorman who seemed to be a member of some ancient army, he was so covered in scarlet and gold and striping and medals.
Oh, to stay in such a hotel! Presidents probably stayed there, and diplomats and divorcing movie stars.
She fingered the linen drawstring bag she carried, a perfect match to her shorts, but wrong, wrong, wrong, for the city. First, she didn’t have enough money in it to stay at The Jayquith. Second, city women were carrying handbags of leather. Their purses closed tight as security doors over their possessions, whereas hers hung open.
Office buildings flanked the hotel. Business people strode in and out. The men wore fine suits, somehow remaining elegant and dashing in the July heat, while the tourists who stumbled around were sweaty and tired.
And the women—how wonderfully city businesswomen dressed! Mostly in black, but not plain old, drab old black, like back home. Dramatic urban black. This year’s black, not last year’s. The women wore high heels, and vivid jewelry, and their hair had been done. They had a way of looking at nobody. Stalking forward as if there were not hundreds of other people around. As if the sidewalks and the city were their own private property.
She wanted a city for her own private property.
The jewelry was remarkably heavy. Each emerald and ruby was larger than Kaytha’s thumb. Kaytha stroked the necklace. She loved taking it out and staring at it.
Once she had tried it on, but it was no pleasure to wear. She felt like an ox with a yoke of solid gold on her neck.
Only a head of state would ever have worn such a thing. It was a Weight. A Treasure. In fact, the necklace had been Queen Isabella’s. The Queen had expected Christopher Columbus to bring back armloads of such necklaces, but he of course screwed up and found nothing but the New World.
There was no jewelry like this on the face of the earth.
Kaytha smiled and touched her crystal, a slender rose pink that gleamed softly in the hollow of Kaytha’s throat. A crystal on a silk cord would have been more fun for Queen Izzy.
Kaytha said, “Are we all set, Cousin Edie?” She was thinking of the gala party on the yacht, the moment for which they had been planning for so long.
“No, we are not!” said her cousin. Edie was trembling and wild-eyed.
Kaytha stared at Edie. Of course they were all set. They had been set for months. It was just a matter of waiting till Tuesday. Kaytha didn’t even know why she’d asked the question, except to fill time.
Cousin Edie, lips pressed together with emotion, was staring at the surface of the coffee table. The table was a thick sla
b of marble, green as sea foam, and polished to a mirror shine. The necklace was doubled by its reflection. Edie’s thin, pale face reflected up like an old plate.
“It’s wrong!” cried Edie, and she actually wrung her hands and clutched her heart.
Edie was a mess.
Torn jeans, sagging sweatshirt. Platinum-dyed hair in need of a touch-up. Glasses far too large for a small face. What had turned Edie into such a hag? They’d better not have Edie around during the Party. What might Edie say?
Cousin Edie had been brought into the picture as Kaytha’s tutor. Sometimes Kaytha went to school, depending on where they were, and how long they would be staying. She’d gone to school in London and in Buenos Aires, but in Hong Kong she wasn’t in the mood, and here in the States, she had no interest at all. If you felt like reading, you could buy a book in any airport shop, Kaytha reasoned. So why attend some institution in order to be handed the books they chose? Except for making friends, Kaytha could see no point in school. At her last two schools, Kaytha had failed to make friends anyway.
She certainly hadn’t made friends with Cousin Edie.
Kaytha stared out the window and wondered what to do about Cousin Edie. It was crunch time, and Edie was collapsing. Not good.
Their suite on the seventh floor of The Jayquith looked down on tourists who were dumped by the busload: dozens and dozens of buses. Kaytha could not imagine what would bring people to Boston. It was not a city that compared, say, to Paris or San Francisco. But out they poured, from Kaytha’s height nothing but hair, bald spots, and the bills of baseball caps.
Kaytha loved looking down on people. That was where people belonged. Below Kaytha.
She feasted her eyes on the T-shirt god, a college boy with a sort of Conestoga wagon filled with stacks of Boston icons: Tea Party, Paul Revere, Harvard University. Kaytha didn’t think much of his brains—selling T-shirts for a living—but on the other hand, when you looked like that, who needed brains?
Yesterday, when Kaytha purchased her eleventh T-shirt from him, he had bought her a Coke. She knew his name now. Mitch. How American. She wanted Mitch to fall in love with her. She wanted this fine, broad-faced, broad-shouldered, blond, American boy to be her property.
How fascinated Mitch must be by her … this unusual girl who materialized every day. If he knew how unusual Kaytha really was … !
She gloated, afloat in the mauve and silver decor of the suite. She had more secrets than any of those fools in the street. And they would never know. They would struggle along in their pitiful little facsimiles of life, and she, Kaytha, would always be above them.
Susan, although every time she needed money she promised herself that this time she would not waitress, was waitressing. The thing about waiting tables was, it was so hard. And it was rarely fun. Susan liked stuff that was fun and easy. Acquiring money never seemed to fall into those categories.
Susan was a quarter inch under five feet. She usually counted the fluff of her hair and pretended to be five one. She was not teeny small; she did not wear size three. She was curvy, solid small. She was eighteen, looked twelve, and people invariably said to her, You’re so cute. What college girl wanted to be cute when the competition was striking, elegant, or stunning?
She had spent her entire life staring up at people. Mitch, who was six two, required extra tilt. Susan felt she should get points for putting her neck at so much risk, but Mitch didn’t notice these things.
Mitch, thought Susan longingly. He actually made her heart ache, as if she could take a medicine for him, something to absorb the crush molecules and let her sleep without fantasizing about him.
She had to go and have a crush on a guy who looked like he sold those T-shirts of his between river-rafting expeditions. He looked like a man who owned oil derricks and experimented with cold fusion when he was not riding his Harley. Almost every day, some girl or young woman asked Mitch to pose with her. Mitch thought it was funny and always cooperated. Susan didn’t think it was so funny. She knew what those girls were going to pretend when they got home—and here’s the boy I hung out with, we had the best time.
Susan’s restaurant was right on the wharf, and if she were to go out the front door, and jump up on one of the stone ledges that kept tourists from falling into the harbor, she would see Mitch. Probably see him with some beautiful girl.
Susan touched the tiny gold locket caught between her shirt and her apron. It was empty. She wanted Mitch’s picture there, and she actually had quite a few snapshots of him, but unless he gave her his photograph, it didn’t count. Susan had never wanted anything in her life as much as she wanted to count with this boy.
I’m no different from the lonely, desperate tourists, she thought, remembering extra sour cream for table eleven. I’m just pretending Mitch is my boyfriend. He’s marking time with me, and the minute he finds perfection, which I’m not, he’ll move on.
She thought she could not bear it if Mitch McKenna found somebody else. She would kill him. Or the somebody else.
Kaytha never tired of hotels. The Jayquith met Kaytha’s standards. She had previously stayed in the New York Jayquith, and the Boston version, if anything, surpassed it.
Kaytha had rarely lived in a house and did not know how people could put up with the boredom of houses. A house was always in the same place. What kind of person could stand being in the same place every night?
Most of the world, evidently.
Furthermore, in houses you had to do things. There were kitchens, there were appliances, there were laundry rooms. Ugh. Kaytha did not approve of doing things. Things must be done for her. Hotels understood this.
Cousin Edie was drooping over the necklace. She had been quite tiresome about the necklace. Cousin Edie did not understand how much money it took to live in places like The Jayquith and was just beginning to understand where the money came from.
Kaytha wondered what to do about Edie. Should she tell how borderline Edie was getting?
The grown-ups didn’t consider her one of them. They were always reminding her of Last Year, and saying she had to Prove Herself. They told her to leave the room when things got interesting. They didn’t think Kaytha knew all the plans.
Kaytha always knew all the plans.
They had their secrets … and she had hers and theirs.
Kaytha laughed to herself, and did a little dance by the window, thinking of how she would have Mitch, and also the money, and …
… and when she completed her pirouette, Cousin Edie, and the necklace, were gone.
A stretch limousine, slate gray, with shadowed windows, crept out of the underground parking lot of The Jayquith. Slowly and relentlessly it moved through the traffic. It seemed to have more abilities than the other vehicles: a sort of reptile’s intelligence, which enabled it to snake through jams that halted ordinary cars.
She ran long slim fingers through her bronze hair, curling it under, while she watched the limousine approach.
Wouldn’t it be neat to have a limo? And gray seemed such a sophisticated choice. White was a little too Rented-Senior-Prom. Black was a little too Funeral. But gray was Substance and Wealth and Success.
She had, of course, missed the WALK light as she stared, and was now stranded on the long thin traffic island.
People sifted themselves on the big historic plaza like ingredients for a huge sheet cake. Exhausted families and shrieking summer campers on a field trip, cuddling honeymooners and confused foreign tourists studying maps. The campers, who looked about twelve, were finishing hot dogs and arguing with their counselor, who looked about thirteen.
When she got her next summer job, it would not be as a camp counselor. She was done with the outdoors. She was going inside. A stock brokerage, perhaps. That sounded city. Maybe a law firm. Nothing sticky. No waitressing. Nothing frantic or sweaty. She would wear black, too, perhaps with a crimson scarf, like the woman now leaving The Jayquith. She herself had better legs.
The limousine also waited for
the light to turn. She tried to see in the windows, but the glass had been designed to prevent that. What is it like inside a limo? she wondered.
A remarkably thin camper was hoisting her videocam, shrieking in a remarkably thin and high voice, “Everybody line up with your new T-shirts, I’m going to film you.”
When I’m filmed next, she told herself, it won’t be on a home video for parents’ night. I’m going to be on the news. People will be fascinated by me and always asking for interviews, and sometimes I’ll grant them, but mostly I’ll say no, because I’ll be far too busy with my social life.
A woman had darted out of The Jayquith and raced across the street without waiting for any WALK light. What courage!
She hoped nobody would hit the woman. Boston drivers looked as if hitting people was their hobby, and this extremely busy street was prime people-hitting territory.
The woman was not attractive. Half her face was covered by ridiculously large and ugly sunglasses and the other half by a messy mop of platinum hair in need of retouching. She wore torn jeans and a big old sweatshirt.
The beautiful girl was quite disappointed. Surely people who stayed at The Jayquith ought to dress better than that.
The woman zigzagged as she ran, as if trying to escape bullets. She cast terrified, or perhaps angry, glances over her shoulder.
The girl from the country watched as if seeing a television show. Her attention was caught again by the gray limousine, whose back passenger door was suddenly flung open—the traffic-side door, not the sidewalk side where bellboys were poised to assist. Odd. What was—?
When Torn Jeans hurled herself on top of the girl, she was completely unprepared. She wasn’t standing strong, she wasn’t holding onto anything, she wasn’t thinking in terms of protecting herself. Torn Jeans seized her limp linen drawstring bag.
She’s robbing me? But I have nothing.
Mouth contorted with emotion, Torn Jeans said something. Something desperate. Something terribly important. But there was too much traffic. Nothing could be heard.