Privileged (29 page)

“Megan, slow it down!”

“I’m fine!” I insisted.

“But you’re not in shape!” she protested.

That pretty much guaranteed I wouldn’t slow down. I soldiered on like an insane woman.

Suddenly, a guy with biceps the size of Suzanne de Grouchy’s breasts was in front of my machine, bellowing at me through cupped hands. “Miss! You are outside your fitness range!” He wore an official Power Play trainer’s muscle shirt and a little name tag that introduced him as GERALD. Without waiting for my approval, he leaned over my machine and jabbed his finger at the emergency stop button. The button did what it was supposed to. The treadmill stopped.

“If you’d like to make an appointment with one of our trainers, you can do so at the front desk,” Gerald suggested. “I’d recommend it.”

“I need some water,” I muttered to Lily. Red-faced from both exertion and embarrassment, I made a beeline back to the locker room.

“Megan!” Lily was at my heels.

“I don’t want to hear it.” I pushed through the locker room door to the drinking fountain right inside and guzzled thirstily.

It was all too much: leaving Palm Beach, being poor, breaking up with James, working as a waitress, having sex on the beach with the guy I was crazy about—a guy Lily had kissed on New Year’s Eve—only to have him reject me afterward. More proof, obviously, that I could never, ever compete with my sister. Even as I drank, I felt my eyes fill with tears.

Then my sister’s hand was on my shoulder. “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything.” I stood up and wiped the tears from my cheeks with the bottom of my T-shirt.

She put her arm around me. “Come on.”

We went to the very back of the locker room, where there were a few modern-looking sofas along with a table of complimentary refreshments—juices, bottled water, baked goods. Lily poured us glasses of caffeine-free iced mint tea, but we took a pass on the sugar-free vegan cookies.

“Okay, tell me,” Lily commanded as we took over one of the couches.

Keeping it all bottled up inside was too much work. So the truth came spilling out—partially, anyway. I told her about the exposé I’d planned to write and how the twins had found out about it. And how the twins had come to think I was someone I wasn’t. When I was done, I almost smiled. I sipped the mint tea, which I’d have preferred surrounded by some really good dark chocolate.

“You know what’s funny, as in ironic, not ha-ha?” I asked, bringing the conversation back to what had happened in the gym. “In some weird way, living with the twins made me feel like I was the plainer, plumper little sister all over again.”

“Is that how you see yourself?”

“No, I’m downplaying my perfection in the hopes that it won’t bruise your ego too badly,” I said sarcastically, since the truth was too obvious. “You can’t imagine how much it sucked to grow up in the shadow of beautiful, sweet, talented you.”

Lily looked uncomfortable and pushed some hair behind her ear. “I hid behind that, you know.”

“Behind what?”

“Being the pretty one,” she said, her voice low. “You were the brainy one. I was the pretty one.”

Oh, no, I was
not
letting her get away with that.

“Lily, you went to Brown—”

“And I worked my ass off for it, too, because just once I wanted Mom and Dad to talk about my brain the way they talked about yours.”

“In other words, being prettier, nicer, and more talented than me wasn’t enough for you,” I translated. “You had to beat me at
everything
?”

“Right back atcha, sis,” Lily said.

God, was that true? It was. Brains were the only category I’d won. “Well, aren’t we the walking cliché?” I mused.

“Sitting clichés,” she corrected. “But Megan, have you looked in the mirror lately? I mean really looked?” She set her iced-tea glass on an end table next to fanned copies of
Fitness
magazine. “When I walked in today and saw you in the snack bar, it hit me how gorgeous you are.”

I cocked a brow. “Are we playing nice Lily now?”

“No, we are playing honest Lily now. Something happened while you were in Palm Beach. In addition to the bad stuff, I mean. You’re beautiful, Megan. You’ve always been, you just never noticed. And I’m not saying it to be nice. You are the whole package—smart, talented,
and
gorgeous
.”

I nearly laughed. “Do you know how many times I wished you were a bitch so I could hate you?”

“That’s funny. I forgot to add funny. Smart, talented, gorgeous, and funny.”

“And broke. Don’t forget broke. And a waitress. A broke waitress.”

“You never want to take anything from me, Megan, I know that,” Lily began. “But I’m your sister. Please let me loan you some money? I’ve got it, I’ll never miss it, and you need it.”

She was right. Taking a loan from her would mean I was beholden in some way. But wasn’t it about time for me to grow up and admit that love carried with it certain responsibilities? Like accepting help when you needed it, the same way you would give it if it were needed from you? Like being completely honest?

God. Maturity sucks.

I cleared my throat. “There’s something else I didn’t tell you about Palm Beach.”

“What?”

This was the hardest thing of all. “That guy I introduced you to on New Year’s Eve? Will Phillips, who lives next door to the twins? We kind of . . . sort of almost had a thing.”

The equivocation queen strikes again. Oh, fuck it.

“I fell for him so hard,” I blurted out. “And then at New Year’s, I saw him kissing you, but he didn’t know you were my sister, and you didn’t know I cared about him because I was lying to everyone about everything. Will and I hooked up that last night I was in Palm Beach. He was with me when the twins confronted me, so now he hates me as much as they do.” I drained the last of my iced tea. “And that is that end of my sordid little confessional.”

“Relax. It was one kiss at midnight,” Lily assured me. “Besides, he’s all wrong for me.”

“Yeah, gorgeous and rich—there’s a romantic deal-breaker,” I quipped.

“The truth is, I kind of wanted more to happen, but then . . .” She smiled. “He said he was still kind of holding out for someone else.”

Me?
He’d been holding out for me all that time? I rubbed my chest as if touching the place that was breaking inside of me would somehow help.

The pain would fade with time, I knew that. But I also knew a scar would remain, a ragged place inside of me, yearning for what might have been.

Choose the definition that most accurately describes the following word:

HIPSTER

(a) a trendy individual

(b) someone who spends the grocery money on navel piercings

(c) hygienically challenged

(d) indie-rock poseur

(e) too cool for school

Chapter Thirty-nine

A
n intern stuck in her multiple-face-piercings-means-I’m-so-hip phase ushered me into
Rockit
’s conference room and told me to wait. I pulled off Charma’s puffy jacket and took a seat. It was eerie being there, an exact replica of
Scoop’
s conference room seven floors below: same standard-issue black table, same Office Depot leatherette chairs. The only difference was that here, someone in charge had a whiteboard fetish. There were three of them on the walls, and one had somehow been attached to the picture window, destroying a perfectly lovely view of the Metropolitan Life clock tower across the street.

So many times at
Scoop,
when I’d been creating photo captions about the stars and their diets, the stars and their boyfriends, and the stars and their anorexia, I’d dreamed of seeing my byline in
Rockit
. Now, at long last, I was just an editor’s okay away from having my dream come true. I’d uploaded my article to Gary—now that we were on professional terms, I willed myself not to think of him as Wolfmother—on Wednesday and asked for a meeting on Friday to discuss it with him. I knew I was being pushy, but this was my chance.

“Morning, Megan.” Gary loped into the room. He wore a blue shirt with frayed cuffs and jeans with the baggy butt that comes from too much wearing and not enough washing.

“Hi, Gary,” I greeted him hopefully.

He tossed my manuscript on the conference table and dropped into a seat. “I don’t get it, Megan. You know what we publish here at
Rockit
. We talked about what I wanted, so you must know that this isn’t it.”

I’d known that what I’d turned in wasn’t the story he’d wanted. But I’d hoped that what I’d written was so good, so compelling, that he’d publish it anyway. That was why I’d asked for the meeting.

It was the story of a recent Yale graduate up to her eyeballs in debt who goes to Florida to transform two filthy-rich girls into people who could pass for scholars, but in the process gets transformed herself in ways that she never could have imagined. Turns out the filthy-rich girls have brains and heart; they were just waiting for someone to come along and nurture it. The tutor, who spent so many years resenting her sister for being the beautiful one, has something to learn, too. The twins and the people around them, especially the estate cook and his lover, show the tutor how beautiful she really is.

I’d even put in the romantic angle—me still with J. but pretending to be single. Falling for W., the Palm Beach version of the boy next door. I’d assumed he was a shallow player because he was so rich and handsome, and then it turned out the only one playing was me.

I told Gary all that.

He listened intently. “Go on,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I’m with you.”

“Of course there’s wretched excess,” I explained. “And I wrote about it—you saw that. But there are also hundreds of women in Africa who have started businesses because of Laurel’s foundation, kids in hospitals who got Christmas presents, tens of millions raised by those wretchedly excessive balls. People should know that, too.”

I knew I hadn’t submitted a typical
Rockit
story about the seamy underbelly of life in these United States. But I was confident his readers would eat it up. They’d be inside the soul of a girl from small-town New Hampshire who had taken advantage of the assumptions of the people around her to fool one of the country’s most exclusive societies into believing she was one of them. While she was doing it, she’d possibly— maybe—preserved the fortune of two Palm Beach party girls.

“They’ll see it how I saw it,” I told Gary. “They’ll have their assumptions rocked and their prejudices exploded, just like I did. We can add a sidebar in a couple of weeks, depending on whether the twins get in to Duke or not.”

I’ll say this for Charma’s squeeze. He really listened. Now I took a deep breath, and awaited his verdict.

“Strong pitch,” he told me.

Please-please-please . . .

“You’re a really good writer, Megan. But it’s just not for us.”

No. I’d given it my best, most impassioned shot, and he’d said no.

“Good luck placing it.” Gary stood and offered his hand. I stood and shook it, then slid my rejected article into a folder and put on that fucking puffy down jacket.

He walked me to the elevator, then said goodbye. And that, as they say, was that.

I pressed the down button and let my forehead rest against the cool wall. I’d been close.
So
close.

The door opened. I got in and pressed the “L” button, realizing I had no idea what to do with the rest of the day. Since I’d come back from Palm Beach, I’d been tooling and retooling this article. Never had twelve thousand words been so carefully rewritten and self-edited. My shift at Tver didn’t start until four. It was far too cold to go for a walk. I didn’t want to spend the money on a movie.

The elevator stopped on eight—one of the two floors occupied by
Scoop
.

The door opened. Debra Wurtzel, the last person on the planet I wanted to see at that particular moment, stepped on.

And the fun kept on coming.

She eyed me coldly. “Nice makeover, Megan. Maybe you should also consider a new set of ethics.”

Fuck. She knew. Well, that made sense. Laurel Limoges was her friend.

“You heard.” My voice was hollow.

“Of
course
I heard. It took me an hour to convince Laurel that I had nothing to do with your ‘research.’”

We rode in silence the rest of the way down.

“I wasn’t going to write it, ” I told her as we got out of the elevator. I knew it sounded as empty as it had that last night at Les Anges.

“Uh-huh.” It was obvious she didn’t believe me. “What brings you to the building?” she asked as she pulled on a pair of leather gloves.

“I had a meeting at
Rockit
.”

That
got her attention.

“They’re interviewing you?”

“No, I . . . I wrote a story. Freelance.”

“About Palm Beach?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re a disgrace, Megan.”

Everyone reaches her limit. Even me. “Think whatever you want, Debra,” I said wearily. “I killed the Palm Beach exposé because while it
was
completely true, it wasn’t a completely honest picture. What I gave to
Rockit
was a story about me and how being in Palm Beach changed me. It’s a hundred percent true
and
a hundred percent honest. But you’ll be happy to know
Rockit
had about as much interest in it as you have in me.”

I was on my way to the door when Debra called to me. “Hold on, Megan.”

I turned back to her cautiously. “What?”

“You have that story with you?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to read it.” She held out a hand.

I shook my head. “I don’t think—”

“Megan.” Debra deadeyed me. “I would say that after all of this, you owe me.”

What the hell. It wasn’t like I needed it anymore. I pulled out my story and slapped it into her palm. She curled it into the same oversize moss-green Fendi bag I’d seen Sage carry once. Then we stepped through the revolving door and into the biting wind of late January.

Debra tightened her ivory-colored cashmere scarf around her neck and started toward her waiting black Town Car.