52 Reasons to Hate My Father (7 page)

When I was little, I used to love to play out here. I made Horatio play countless rounds of hide-and-seek and freeze tag and any other game I could think of. That’s when I was short enough to be concealed by the sheer height of the hedges and Horatio would have to squat down and crawl on hands and knees to avoid being spotted. After about five minutes of breathless pursuit, his head would inevitably pop up over a shrub somewhere and I would giggle in delight and run to capture him. He would fall prey to my attack and then convincingly complain that he was simply too tall for this game and that it was unfair because I had the clear advantage. I remember how special that made me feel. How
lucky
I was to be little.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized Horatio would reveal himself on purpose. The moment he grew weary or had other business inside the house to attend to, he would stand up and surrender and the game would be over. And ever since that realization, I’ve always wondered if a real parent—not a paid replacement—would have given up so easily.

The waist-high walls of the garden hedges don’t conceal me now. Nor do they do anything to appease me. I’ve been pacing along them for nearly an hour and I still feel sick to my stomach. Holly got tired and gave up trying to follow me half an hour ago. She’s curled up on a lounge chair by the pool, waiting for me to finish whatever it is I’m doing so we can go back inside.

As I walk, navigating the various twists and turns of the complicated network of sculpted shrubs, gurgling fountains, and heart-shaped flower beds, I mentally work through my options. Trying desperately to find one that doesn’t result in a dead end.

But even though I’ve been walking this garden for nearly fifteen years, even though I know this green maze like the back of my hand, I still feel trapped at every turn. There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. No matter which direction I choose, my father always wins.

I’m not sure why I ever thought I could go up against Richard Larrabee and succeed. No one else ever has. Why should I be any different? In this game, my father is the one who holds the advantage. In
every
game he plays, actually. It’s simply the way it is. The way it’s always been. And it’s pretty clear to me now—with a wallet full of canceled credit cards and a bank account as frozen as the arctic circle—that he isn’t going to just change his mind. He isn’t going to reconsider.

This time, I’m the one who’s going to have to surrender.

So with a hollow feeling in my chest and a bitter taste in my mouth, I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and call Bruce.

THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR

I lie on my bed, staring out through the small slit in the curtain canopy that I’ve drawn closed around me like a cocoon. I wish I could stay in here forever. Hidden away from this cruel world that I inhabit. But my life is like a ticking clock now. Like a bomb waiting to explode. Because in less than twenty-four hours, everything will change. Nothing will be the same.

Bruce said on the phone that he was proud of me for making the decision to go along with my father’s plan. I snorted in response. For one, his choice of words annoyed me. He’s
proud
of me? Please. How many times do I have to remind this man that he is
not
my father? And second, since when was there
ever
a “decision” to be made here? When was I
ever
given a choice in this matter? The answer is … never.

My father doesn’t give choices. He doesn’t leave options.

Bruce told me to come into his office first thing tomorrow morning so we could get started. I mumbled some kind of agreement and hung up the phone, anxious to end that particular call as quickly as possible.

Now all I can do is wait. And imagine how horrible my life is going to be for the next … wait for it …
year
. This is by far the worst birthday in the history of the world.

The second phone call I’ve been dreading comes at eight p.m., an hour after I’m supposed to have arrived at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I don’t really want to answer. I don’t want to have to tell my friends about everything I’ve been through today. It’s too humiliating. Too heartbreaking. Too horrific. But I know I have to answer. I can’t just not show up to my eighteenth birthday party without an explanation.

“Hey Ji,” I say into the phone. My voice sounds far away and defeated.

“Hey sweetness,” Jia drawls. “What’s taking you so long? Is there traffic? You’re going to
die
when you see what we’ve done with this club. You won’t even recognize it! T had this awesome idea to—”

“Jia,” I interrupt her before she has a chance to tell me about all the other fabulous things that I’ll never be able to see because my idiot father decided to schedule a tornado to strike on my eighteenth birthday. “I’m not coming.”

I wait through the stunned silence before she finally replies, “What are you talking about? I thought you scheduled the jet for six?”

“My flight was canceled.”

At this she laughs. “That’s ridiculous. Private planes don’t get canceled unless there’s bad weather. And there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky.”

“Oh, there have been plenty of clouds here. Dark ones.”

More silence and then, “Lex, are you screwing with me? Are you going to like jump out of a closet somewhere and try to get me to scream?” I can hear the shuffle of movement and I assume that’s Jia glancing around her, pulling back curtains, and opening doors, looking for evidence of my practical joke.

I sigh gravely. “I wish this was a joke. I really do. All day, the only thing I’ve been able to do is wish that it’s one big, stupid, not-funny joke.”

Her voice softens. She knows I’m serious now. “Okay, talk to me. What happened?”

I tell her everything. I talk until my throat is sore and the tears are streaming down my face. She listens quietly and doesn’t say anything except for the occasional gasp and sigh when I get to a particularly atrocious part. When I finally finish, I expect her to get all lecture-y on me, ranting about the injustice of the whole thing and how my father should never be able to get away with this. But she doesn’t say that. Like a good friend, she bypasses all that unhelpful dribble that is certain to only rile me up again and gets right to the solution. “Stay where you are,” she instructs me. “I’m sending someone to pick you up.”

I’m a little surprised by her response, which is why it takes me a second to say, “Huh? Ji, what are you talking about?”

She makes a small
pfff
sound. “What do you think I’m talking about, Lex? If there were
ever
a night to party, it’s tonight. Before you’re forced to do God-knows-what tomorrow. Tonight may be the last chance you have to do anything fun. I don’t care what your stupid father says. He can empty your bank account and cancel your credit cards, but he can’t cancel mine. It’s your eighteenth birthday and I’m bringing you to Vegas.”

After I hang up the phone, I start sprinting around my room, throwing items into a bag. Jia told me not to worry about clothes. That she and T will take care of everything I need, but I’m packing a few essentials just in case.

God, I love my friends. I love them more than anything. How amazing are they? Seriously!

Holly gives me a strange look from the bed as she watches me scramble to get ready.

I run over to her and scoop her up under my arm. “I know you hate Vegas, baby,” I tell her. “So don’t worry. I’ll leave you with Horatio. He’ll take good care of you.”

Then, with Holly in one hand and my hastily packed overnight bag in the other, I scurry out my bedroom door.

I try not to think about where I have to be at nine tomorrow morning or what I’m going to have to endure for the next fifty-two weeks of my life. The only thing on my mind as the hired limo pulls out of my driveway is that Jia is absolutely right. If there were ever a night to party, it’s tonight. Tonight has to be
huge
. The
hugest
. I have to make it count. Every other night has to pale in comparison to the festivities that lie ahead. There will be no sleeping. No resting. I am prepared to go
all
night.

This may very well be the last night of fun I’m going to have for a long, long time. My last night of freedom before I’m forced to enter the Richard Larrabee Boot Camp for Ungrateful, Spoiled Daughters.

Tonight is my equivalent of the Last Supper.

As the plane takes off and I watch the ground get smaller and smaller beneath me, I can’t help but smile as I imagine the look on Bruce’s face when I walk into his office tomorrow morning, after having partied the entire night away. And then I think about the call he’ll make to my father, informing him of my incapacitated state. Complaining about my total lack of respect for the family name and everything it represents.

A blond and bubbly flight attendant arrives with a silver serving tray and offers me a glass of champagne. I bypass the glass and just take the bottle, guzzling it down like an athlete in a Gatorade commercial.

My father might be able to force me to do manual labor. But he definitely can’t force me to care.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING

I’m going to kill the sun. I swear to God, if it doesn’t stop shining, I’m going to hire a hit man and have it whacked. Who makes these sunglasses? Tom Ford? Well, they suck. They need to be like five hundred thousand times darker. I can’t believe they even have the nerve to call these sunglasses when they don’t do
anything
to block out the sun.

My head feels like it’s been hit by an asteroid hurtling to earth at seven thousand gazillion miles per hour. I’m not sure I’ve ever been this hungover in my life. In fact, I don’t think
anyone
has ever been this hungover in the history of the universe.

I would tell you about the party last night but I honestly don’t remember much of it. I remember arriving at the penthouse suite. I remember the pre-party cocktails we had while we were getting dressed. Then I remember walking into the club and my jaw dropping to the floor upon seeing the amazing 1920s-Hollywood theme that my friends came up with, complete with an actual car from 1925 parked right in the middle of the dance floor. I remember doing a round of shots and then dancing on the hood of that car. And the rest is pretty much a giant black hole.

Just as planned, I haven’t slept at all. Unless you count the thirty-minute catnap I took on the flight back to LA that I had to board at seven-thirty this morning in order to be at Bruce’s office by nine. Which I don’t. Actually, come to think of it, I’m probably still a little bit drunk.

Kingston picks me up at the airport and drives me to Century City. I rest my cheek against the soft, cool leather of the backseat and try to resist puking the entire way there. I’m saving that for the potted plant next to Bruce’s desk.

I’m still wearing the 1920s-inspired flapper dress (designed especially for the occasion by Karl Lagerfeld) and hot-pink feather boa that Jia and T surprised me with for my birthday party last night. My black fishnet stockings have about fifteen holes in them, and the chin-length black wig complete with feather headband is sitting crooked on my head, but I’m far too debilitated to bother trying to fix it. And I don’t even want to
think
about what my makeup must look like right now. I haven’t looked into a mirror since we left the penthouse suite at ten last night and I’m not about to start now. I literally went straight from the dance floor to the airport. But I remember Jia caking it on my face last night as we were getting ready. Layer after layer of dark shadow, black-as-night eyeliner, and bloodred lipstick. By now I probably look like a head-on collision between death and a clown car.

I stumble through the doors of Spiegelmann, Klein & Lipstein Law Offices, bypass the receptionist completely, and zigzag down the hallway to Bruce’s office. Then I collapse onto his couch, curling up into a ball.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes.

“I’m ready to work,” I slur, shutting my eyes against the harsh light of his office. “Bring it on.”

“You reek.”

I hug a throw pillow to my chest. “Oh good. I thought it was you.”

My eyes remain closed and I still have my sunglasses on for fear of permanent retina damage if I were to remove them, but I can tell he’s
not
amused. I can hear it in the way he breathes. Heavy and strenuous. Through his nose. It sounds like he’s trying to expel something that’s stuck up there.

I have to fight back the smile that’s inching its way across my lips. Mostly because it hurts to move my face.

I hear him start to pace. He’s muttering something incomprehensible and I don’t even bother trying to make sense of it. That would only require energy I don’t have.

“You know what,” he eventually says after a few more seconds of incomprehensible ranting (although technically it could have been longer—I think I dozed off there for a minute), “I don’t care what kind of shape you’re in.” He suddenly sounds all decisive and boastful, as though he’s been having a long, heated debate with himself and is pleased that he’s finally won. “Consequences are more effective than concepts and it’s about time you started learning some.”

“That’s the spirit, Brucey,” I mutter dazedly, managing to muster a weak fist pump.

He ignores my goading tone and continues with authority. “Your first job starts today. And you’re not getting out of it just because you’re an overindulged, spoiled brat who refuses to take responsibility for her actions. At least not anymore. Those days are over, Lexington. You’re still going to work today. And you’ll complete a full five days on the job. We’re not postponing.”

I blow on a feather from my headband that has fallen limply over my face. “No problem.”

I hear Bruce’s pacing slow to a stop. I open one eye to see what’s going on. He’s now seated behind his desk, jabbing at a button on his phone.

“Yes, Mr. Spiegelmann?” His assistant’s voice comes through the speaker.

“Is he here?” Bruce asks.

“Yes, he’s just arrived.”