Later—after we’d left the house and gone out for cupcakes and more tears and hugs—we came back and looked up the colleges on George’s list. One was less than two hours from where I’d be in Connecticut, and we both got stoked for that, but I was careful this time not to push her or act like I knew what I was talking about. I’d learned my lesson.
“I’m over Elton anyway,” Heather said, leaning back against her headboard—we had curled up on her bed with the laptop. “If all the kids are like you, they’d be smarter than me and I’d just feel stupid for four more years. Anyway . . . it was always more your choice than mine.”
I couldn’t argue with any of that. And didn’t.
thirty-eight
Over the next few weeks, Aaron and Michael moved out of the hotel and into a huge and beautiful penthouse apartment in Santa Monica with a view of the ocean. Crystal kept the house. She and Michael were working out some kind of joint custody agreement, which for now mostly involved Megan’s carting the baby back and forth and having to take care of her in two different places. Crystal was going back to acting, Aaron said. He never saw her alone: one of the conditions of his getting to stay with his dad in LA was that he wouldn’t. He admitted to me that it was sort of a relief. He was over her.
Whatever Crystal felt about the whole thing remained a mystery: she was completely out of our lives. Mom and I did spend time with Mia when she was at Michael’s, though. She was still the world’s cutest baby, as far as I was concerned.
Arianna continued to tell everyone at school that I was stuck-up, and Riley continued to come rushing to report it to me no matter how much I made it clear I didn’t want her to, but none of this affected my life much. The kids who fawned over me because I was Luke’s stepdaughter still did; the ones who I’d always hung out with stayed loyal; the ones I didn’t know well may have believed Arianna but it didn’t matter: we had only one more semester together and I could survive a few dark looks and mutters for that long.
Right before Christmas, we finished collecting donations for the Holiday-Giving Program and handed out the presents at the annual party at the shelter. To my relief, Ben was civil—almost pleasant—to me when we were working together. I didn’t know whether he had softened because he knew he had been unfair to me or because Arianna was losing a little of her luster as a girlfriend, but I was glad either way. It made the whole thing more pleasant.
Luke wasn’t able to come to the party, but even if some people came hoping to see him (thanks to Arianna), they didn’t leave too disappointed. Once they got busy entertaining the little kids and handing out presents, most of the students had fun, and I knew a lot of them would sign up again next year—with or without a celebrity tease.
As we were cleaning up at the end, Ben told me, a little uncomfortably, that he thought we should make Arianna the president of the program for the following year, since she was the only junior who had run any part of it. I instantly agreed. He looked surprised, but I figured she had worked hard and earned her place at the top.
And I’d be at college. She couldn’t bug me there.
Aaron got accepted early to the USC film school, which was his first choice, so he was as relaxed as I was as second semester got under way. We got together a lot in the evenings when neither of us had any other plans, going out for frozen yogurt, drinking boba tea, trying new restaurants (Aaron got his father’s assistant to book us some of the hardest-to-get reservations in town, using Michael’s name), and being generally hedonistic and sugared-up.
George was never thrilled to hear I had plans with Aaron, but he wasn’t the kind of boyfriend who was going to tell me what I could or couldn’t do. (Not that I would have gone out with anyone who was.)
“It would be easier if he were just a little less cool and handsome,” he said once when I came over to his apartment after having dinner with Aaron. “Or if I were a little more cool and handsome.”
“Cool and handsome is overrated,” I said.
His smile was pained. “So you agree I’m neither?”
“You’re everything good and smart and funny and kind and wonderful and exciting and wonderful,” I said.
“But not cool or handsome.”
“And cool and handsome. And wonderful.”
“You said wonderful three times,” he pointed out, and then caught me against his chest and covered my mouth so I couldn’t say anything else for a while.
Spring came. Heather got into five of the seven colleges she’d applied to and freaked out over having so many choices. I pointed out that that was a good thing, but she still spent days agonizing and calling me constantly to discuss their different merits.
In the end, she didn’t pick the one in Connecticut, near where I’d be. She kept apologizing to me, explaining over and over again that her dad really wanted her to go to Steventon and it actually looked perfect and she felt less guilty making him pay for a college he was enthusiastic about, and repeatedly assuring me that it had been a tough decision, because she wanted to be near me. I told her it was totally fine. At this point I was just relieved and happy that she seemed excited about going off to school in the fall.
I had already met a bunch of my future classmates online and had found a few I really liked, including two who wanted to room together. They only knew me as Ellie Withers and had no idea Luke Weston was my stepfather, so their enthusiasm and interest seemed genuine, and I was feeling pretty optimistic about having a more normal social life in college than I’d had in high school.
Mom kept tweaking Jacob’s therapies, increasing his time with the ones she liked and pulling away from the ones she didn’t, and he was doing great, saying a ton more words and getting frustrated much less.
We were hanging out in the family room one day when he called out, “Mom. Look!” and we both jumped to our feet—it was the first time he’d ever said her name just to get her attention.
He pointed to the floor, where he’d been busily arranging some plastic letters. Most of them were in a long row.
“What’s a jacobellie?” Mom said, studying it. Then, with a delighted laugh: “Oh, it’s his name and yours put together!”
“Did you know he could spell?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“I had no idea.”
“He’s a total genius!”
“There’s definitely a lot more going on in that little head than we realize.” She called Luke to tell him and I could hear him shouting with excitement at the other end of the line.
Thanks to Luke and Michael, in May, George finally landed a job—as the assistant to the vice president of development at a TV studio. It wasn’t the writing job he’d hoped for, but he had reached a point where he was just happy to have full-time work. His hours were long, and he always had scripts to read on the weekends. I complained that he wasn’t paying me enough attention, and he came up with a solution: that I stop complaining.
We’ll Make You a Star had gone on hiatus in April, so Luke was desperately trying to write and record a new batch of songs for the album he wanted to release the following fall. It kept him busy, but the Luke who was being creative was always happier than the one who was the TV star. He didn’t love that job, but it paid the bills and—he would have been the first to admit—gave him the leverage and power to put out the kind of music he wanted to.
My grandmother started dating some senior citizen and informed me soon after that their relationship had become “physically intimate.” I jokingly reminded her to use condoms, and she said seriously, “Well, of course pregnancy isn’t an issue for me, but STDs are. You know what those are, right? STDs?” I told her I did and got off the phone quickly, before she could give me more information about that than I wanted, which was really any information at all.
I didn’t want George to go with me to my prom. “You’re too old,” I explained. “It would be incredibly awkward for you to be around all those high school kids, and I’d feel guilty dragging you around, making you meet people who just want to see
who Luke Weston’s stepdaughter is dating. You’d hate it. Aaron’s up for it and he’s used to all the fame-whore weirdness.”
“I’m all in favor of not going,” he said, “but couldn’t you not go, too? Especially not with him?”
“It’s the only high school prom I’ll ever have. And who would you rather I went with? You know you don’t have to worry about Aaron.”
“Can’t you go with a gay friend?”
“The gay guys in my grade all have dates,” I said. “All the girls who don’t have boyfriends were fighting over them. Anyway, I’ve already asked Aaron and he’s already said yes.”
“Fine,” he said. “Just come over to my place after. No flying around all night on Aladdin’s magic carpet.”
I promised. Mom knew I was planning to be out all night anyway—everyone stayed up on prom night.
She and Luke took a ridiculous number of photos of us when Aaron came to pick me up for prom. As we posed, his arm around my shoulder, he reminded me that he was going to put me through all of this again in a week, at his school’s prom.
He clutched me a little too tightly during the last dance of the night, so I pulled away and said, “Let’s sit this one out.”
The limousine dropped us off at my house and I walked him to his car. He leaned against it and said, “Sometimes I think I made a mistake, missing my chance with you.”
And I said cheerfully, “You never had one.”
I don’t think he believed me, but I didn’t care. I quickly pecked him on the cheek and ran inside to get my stuff.
It was past midnight by the time I got to George’s apartment.
“Wow,” he said when he opened the door to me. I was still wearing my ivory-colored prom dress, which was very tight in the bodice with a long, flowing skirt. It had, as Mom pointed out, cost more than a month’s rent at our old apartment. I’d brought a change of clothes in a bag, but wanted George to see me all done up. “Your mother sent me a photo but it didn’t do you justice.”
“Do you like my hair?” Mom had hired Roger to style me, and he’d straightened my hair with a flat iron, then pinned half of it up, and let the rest of it fall to my waist, which it did when it was completely straight.
“It’s pretty,” George said, and touched it lightly with his fingertips. “But I wouldn’t want you to straighten it all the time. I’d miss your curls.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It took three hours to get it like this. I may never do it again.”
We went inside and he said, “Will you hate me if I do a tiny bit of work? I just finished reading a script and I need to write down a few notes before I forget.”
I pouted. “If you’d rather work than be with me . . .”
“Not fair,” he said. “I’d rather work and be with you. Come sit next to me.” He led me over to the tiny table where he worked and ate. And did everything else that could be done on a table. His apartment was small, narrow, and dark. It was my favorite place in the world.
I sat down with him. “How was it? The script?”
“I kind of loved it,” he said. “I mean, it’s a mess and needs a ton of work, but it’s got this incredible idea and these moments of pure genius.”
“So you’ll help the writer make it much better.”
“That’s the goal.”
“It’s what you do,” I said. “Take something that’s a little rough and messy and make it much better.”
“Is that what I do?” he said, amused.
“It’s what you did with me, wasn’t it?”
“The raw material was very good,” he said. “Moments of pure genius.”
“I was always a great idea,” I agreed. “You know what else is a great idea?”
“What?”
I knocked the script off the table. It fell on the floor.
George didn’t get around to picking it up until the morning.
Excerpt from Epic Fail
Read the first chapter of
The front office wasn’t as crazy as you’d expect on the first day of school, which seemed to confirm Coral Tree Prep’s reputation as “a well-oiled machine.”
That was a direct quote from the Private School Confidential website I had stumbled across when I first Googled Coral Tree—right after my parents told me and my three sisters we’d be transferring there in the fall. Since it was on the other side of the country from where we’d been living—from where I’d lived my entire life—I couldn’t exactly check it myself, and I was desperate for more information.
True to the school’s reputation, the administrator in the office was brisk and efficient and had quickly printed up and handed me and Juliana each a class list and a map of the school.
“You okay?” I asked Juliana, as she stared at the map like it was written in some foreign language. She started and looked up at me, slightly panicked. Juliana’s a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger—mostly because she’s the opposite of cynical and I’m the opposite of the opposite of cynical.
Because we’re so close in age, people frequently ask if the two of us are twins. It’s lucky for me we’re not, because if we were, Juliana would be The Pretty One. She and I do look a lot alike, but there are infinitesimal differences—her eyes are just a touch wider apart, her hair a bit silkier, her lips fuller—and all these little changes add up to her being truly beautiful and my being reasonably cute. On a good day. When the light hits me right.
“It’ll all be fine,” Juliana said faintly.
“Yeah,” I said, with no more conviction. “Anyway, I’d better run. My first class is on the other side of the building.” I squinted at the map. “I think.”
She squeezed my arm. “Good luck.”
“Find me at lunch, okay? I’ll be the one sitting by herself.”
“You’ll make friends, Elise,” she said. “I know you will.”
“Just find me.” I took a deep breath and plunged out of the office and into the hallway—and instantly hit someone with the door. “Sorry!” I said, cringing.
The girl I’d hit turned, rubbing her hip. She wore an incredibly short miniskirt, tight black boots that came up almost to her knees, and a spaghetti-strap tank top. It was an outfit more suited for a nightclub than a day of classes, but I had to admit she had the right body for it. Her blond hair was beautifully cut, highlighted, and styled, and the makeup she wore really played up her pretty blue eyes and perfect little nose. Which was scrunched up now in disdain as she surveyed me and bleated out a loud and annoyed “FAIL!”
The girl standing with her said, “Oh my God, are you okay?” in pretty much the tone you’d use if someone you cared about had just been hit by a speeding pickup truck right in front of you.
It hadn’t been that hard a bump, but I held my hands up apologetically. “Epic fail. I know. Sorry.”
The girl I’d hit raised an eyebrow. “At least you’re honest.”
“At least,” I agreed. “Hey, do you happen to know where room twenty-three is? I have English there in, like, two minutes and I don’t know my way around. I’m new here.”
The other girl said, “I’m in that class, too.” Her hair was brown instead of blond and her eyes hazel instead of blue, but the two girls’ long, choppy manes and skinny bodies had been cast from the same basic mold. “You can follow me. See you later, Chels.”
“Yeah—wait, hold on a sec.” Chels—or whatever her name was—pulled her friend toward her and whispered something in her ear. Her friend’s eyes darted toward me briefly, but long enough to make me glance down at my old straight-leg jeans and my THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE T-shirt and feel like I shouldn’t have worn either.
The two girls giggled and broke apart.
“I know, right?” the friend said. “See you,” she said to Chels and immediately headed down the hallway, calling brusquely over her shoulder, “Hurry up. It’s on the other side of the building and you don’t want to be late for Ms. Phillips’s class.”
“She scary???
? I asked, scuttling to keep up.
“She just gets off on handing out EMDs.”
“EMDs?” I repeated.
“Early morning detentions. You have to come in at, like, seven in the morning and help clean up and stuff like that. Sucks.”
“What’s your name?” I asked, dodging a group of girls in cheerleader outfits.
“Gifford.” Really? Gifford? “And that was Chelsea you hit with the door. You really should be more careful.”
“I’m Elise,” I said, even though she hadn’t asked. “You guys in eleventh grade, too?”
“Yeah. So you’re new, huh? Where’re you from?”
“Amherst, Mass.”
She actually showed some interest. “That near Harvard?”
“No. But Amherst College is there. And UMass.”
She dismissed that with an uninterested wave. “You get snow there?”
“It’s Massachusetts,” I said. “Of course we do. Did.”
“So do you ski?”
“Not much.” My parents didn’t, and the one time they tried to take us it was so expensive that they never repeated the experiment.
“We go to Park City every Christmas break,” Gifford said. “But this year my mother thought maybe we should try Vail. Or maybe Austria. Just for a change, you know?”
I didn’t know. But I nodded like I did.
“You see the same people at Park City every year,” she said. “I get sick of it. It’s like Maui at Christmas, you know?”