Rosebush (4 page)

I fished one out of my bag and handed it to her. She immediately stuck it into her black lace tights and started to rip through them.

I was shocked. “What are you doing?”

“One for all—” Langley said.

“—And all for one,” Kate finished, smiling not at me but at her friend. It was like a secret message passed between them.

A message I only understood a little later when, after having put a second run in her lace tights, Langley said, “Okay, I think we can debut this.” Kate and Langley each took one of my arms and together we left the bathroom.

“Watch what happens,” Langley said as we paraded down the hall. “We’re about to make your year.”

They introduced me to Elsa, the third member of what they called the Three Must-kateers because whatever they did, everyone else must follow. And it was true. By the end of the day, five other girls had runs in their tights. The next day most of the sophomores, three quarters of the juniors, and even a handful of seniors did too. And four girls had hacked their bangs off with nail scissors.

I’d arrived. Whatever the Mustkateers put their stamp of approval on—wearing sunglasses to class until the faculty banned it, wearing candy necklaces, wearing globs of red nail polish on the knees of your jeans because I was trying to paint Langley’s nails at lunch and made a complete mess—everyone else approved of too. And that included me. I would never be lonely again.

Within weeks I was hanging out with Langley and Kate and Elsa all the time. And then came the morning when Elsa was found by the school custodian on the roof wearing nothing but a pair of anklets, after which she disappeared for a month to “relax” at a special hospital in Aspen. When she got back, I’d taken her place as one of the official Three Mustkateers. “Because there can only be three,” Langley had explained.

“And we’ve chosen you,” Kate finished for her, grinning.

“Besides,” Langley added in an undertone, “with the number of voices Elsa has in her head, she doesn’t need any more friends.”

We touched pinkies and looking at our three arms, all with matching leather studded bracelets on them, I was too happy—and afraid of jinxing it—to ask how I got so lucky.

Once I’d been adopted by Kate and Langley, the move to Livingston had been great. At least until Joe Garcetti, proprietor of Garcetti Construction, showed up at one of the town hall meetings my mother was running, asked a question that stumped her candidate, thereby giving her the impression he was insightful, and took her out for dinner.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like him, although I didn’t. It was that I didn’t trust him. If there was shady business, he would be in it.

“What kind of construction-company owner gets calls at midnight?” I’d demanded of my mother.

She hadn’t even paused in touching up her lipstick. “The kind with projects in Dubai.”

Nothing I said stopped them from getting engaged or moving into the ten-thousand-square-foot brand-new house—with stone floors “flown in direct from Italy” and moldings as wide as my head— that Joe called the “Chateau” (or, the way he pronounced it, the Chatoo). He’d rubbed his hands together as he showed us around the first time, and the image of my mother as some kind of goddess sacrifice got burned into my mind.

But it was her choice and she seemed hell-bent on going through with it.

In fact, during breakfast this morning, in the massive stone “Provençal-farmhouse-style” kitchen, my mother had said, “I thought this weekend you and Annie and I could go out for lunch after you get fitted for your bridesmaids’ dresses.”

“You’re not serious, are you?”

She’d sighed and tried not to look upset, but I saw the anger in her eyes. “Why can’t you find a way to like Joe? Annie adores him.”

“Annie’s only seven and her best friend is a Barbie she’s decided is transsexual, so I’m not sure about her taste. And I don’t care that you’re getting married, I just think you might want to do it with dignity, not in a way where you make a fool of yourself. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you’ll look having a formal wedding?”

“If you can’t improve your attitude about this, I won’t include you in the ceremony.”

“Great. Don’t include me. Don’t include me in anything.”

I’d stomped out of the kitchen and almost tripped over Annie, who was playing some kind of game tucked just behind the dining room door. She had her hands over her ears, humming. I stopped and said her name, but she just kept humming and rocking back and forth.

Damn. Seeing her there made my anger start to evaporate, and by the time I was heading back downstairs, I was ready to apologize. If my mother wanted to make a fool of herself by having some big formal wedding, she could do that and I could blame her for it for years to come in therapy. Joe might not be my ideal choice, but if he made my mother happy, then that should be enough.

I’d nearly reached the kitchen when I overheard my mother and Joe talking. Their voices carried easily across the stone kitchen.

He was saying, “I wish there was something I could do. I just hate to see you so miserable, Rosie.”

“Let it be, Joe. It’s a tough time for her. And grounding her will just keep her here with us, throwing a fit. I’m letting her go with her friends.”

Kate’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts and back into the reality of the butter-leather cocoon of Langley’s backseat. Kate had wrapped her mane of silky honey-gold hair in one hand and swiveled so she could look at me. The sun caught at the curled tendrils playing around her face, making it look like she had a gold halo. As though she’d been reading my mind, she said, “Did you have any trouble with your mom about tonight?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I didn’t even have to give her any of the excuses we’d made up to stay out all night. She doesn’t care enough about me to ground me, let alone care where I’m going.”

I swallowed hard, swallowing back a lump that had unaccountably materialized in my throat. When we’d lived in Illinois, my mother had been a tyrant, wanting to know where I was all the time, with whom, until when. Before—

It didn’t matter, I reminded myself. That was past history. Now she didn’t want to know anything about my life. Anything about me. We lived in rough silences and occasional outbursts that did nothing but make the silence more appealing.

Langley shook her platinum head with wonder. “My grandparents demand such a precise record from me of everywhere I’m going that I’m thinking of hiring a private detective to follow me around and prepare a report. You’re lucky.”

“Totally,” I agreed.

So why did I feel anything but?

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and with the touch of a chipped purple nail I quickly bounced the caller to voice mail once again.

But not fast enough. “Someone’s popular today,” Langley said, her light-blue eyes catching my gaze in the rearview. “Who is it?”

“Unknown number,” I lied. I felt a warm blush creeping up my neck.

“I think Jane has a secret,” Langley said in a singsong voice to Kate.

“No, really, it’s probably just a telemarketer.” I wasn’t even sure why I was lying. I mean, Langley didn’t like Scott because she thought his intentions toward me were “impure,” but she wouldn’t care if he called. I think the truth was, I felt a little guilty about the way I was avoiding him. But there had been something uncomfortable in our last few communications I couldn’t define and didn’t feel like dealing with.

I was spared having to think about it anymore because at that moment, Langley reached out to turn down the music and we pulled into the long driveway that led to the Winterman house.

Chapter 3

If the monstrosity
that Joe had built was a Chatoo, then the house Langley lived in with her grandparents was a palace, but a real one.

Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Arthur Winterman were leading lights in New Jersey social and philanthropic circles and they somewhat terrified me, so I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live in the sprawling house with the gray-and-white-uniformed staff. But Langley had Maman and Popo, as she called her grandmother and grandfather, wrapped around her finger and they doted on her.

Mrs. Winterman was in the oak-paneled foyer when we came in, her lean straight pantsuit-clad back to the door, watching one of the uniformed housemaids adjusting a vase of flowers. Her pant-suits bore no resemblance to the blue polyester ones with the permacreases that my grandma and her friends wore down in Boca Raton.

“No, Ivanka, I said to the left.” She gestured impatiently with a hand that held a massive emerald ring. “I can still see the camera. I want it hidden.”

Langley announced, “I’m home, Maman,” and moved to give her grandmother a cheek to kiss. “We’re just going to my room to get my pajamas. We’re having a girls’ sleepover at Kate’s house tonight. I put it on the calendar last week.”

“That’s right, dear, very good,” Mrs. Winterman said. She rested the hand with the emerald on Langley’s arm. “Before you go, will you check on your grandfather? And watch the new nurse especially? I think she’s stealing his medication.”

“Of course, Grandmother.”

Recently Mrs. Winterman had developed a penchant for security, which, coupled with her overprotectiveness, was starting to make living in their house “more prison than palace,” as Langley put it. “Where the guards wear Oscar de la Renta suits and specially blended Creed perfume,” she had added.

“See?” Langley whispered now as we followed her red-suede ankle boots up the stairs to her room. “Crazy.”

Langley’s room was as neat and impersonal as a hotel and yet somehow suited her. The walls were cream, the furniture was either cream or blue, and the only personal items were riding trophies and ribbons and photos of her friends on the dresser. There was one of the three of us dressed up as sexy astronauts for Halloween, another of us dressed as sexy Girl Scouts to sell cookies, us dressed as sexy ninjas for—I didn’t even remember now. Langley loved costumes and dressing up and since she did most of the planning, Kate and I nearly always acquiesced.

“Is this a new picture of Alex?” I asked, reaching for one of the frames to get a better look. Alex was the superhot Austrian prince or count or something she’d been dating since they hooked up at a riding event during the posh summer school she’d gone to in Scotland the previous summer. In this picture he was shirtless, wearing only a knitted ski cap and long johns and boots, apparently in the middle of a snowball fight. It looked a little cold for the absence of a shirt, but there was no denying he was superhot. We hadn’t met him yet—he was flying in for her eighteenth birthday party next month—but Langley really seemed to like him.

“Don’t touch it!” she screeched, poking her red beret out from around the corner of her closet. “It’s—” She blushed.

I put it down and stepped away. “What?”

“I’m doing love magic with it,” she said, emerging now with three bags and two shoe boxes. She stacked them carefully next to a chair. “It’s embarrassing. And stupid.” Her hand went to her forehead. “God, I can’t believe I’m admitting this.”

Kate snickered. “You’re doing love magic? You? Miss Practical?”

Langley punched her lightly on the arm. “Stop it. Ivanka told me about it and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and—”

Kate nodded seriously. “Of course.”

Langley addressed herself to me. “You just put a piece of his hair and some salt and you leave it there and it makes him think of you fondly. Not like you, Kate, with your voodoo.”

Kate was lounging on the bed, one boot-clad leg tucked under her, the other resting on the floor. Her arms were wrapped around a stuffed dog. “It wasn’t voodoo; it was Wicca, and it worked? I got the part of Stella in the play? Is your
love magic
”—she made quotes in the air with her fingers—“working?”

Langley glanced balefully in the direction of her phone. “Not today.” Her mood shifted and she held out a pair of blue-and-silver silk-brocade platform sandals. “Jelly bean, these will look perfect with your costume. You should wear them tonight.”