Privileged (6 page)

Chapter Seven

O
nce the twins were seated on the other mahogany sofa, Laurel described the predicament with Duke.

Sage shook the hair out of her eyes. Again. “Okay. So what’s-her-name is here to help us get in. That’s it?”

“Megan. Her name is Megan,” Laurel repeated. “If she accepts, she will be guiding you in two main areas—your regular studies at Palm Beach Country Day and the SAT examination that you will take on the fifteenth of January.”

Sage rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Once more, I caught a flash of sadness in Laurel’s eyes, but the girls’ faces remained impassive. Either they didn’t notice, or they didn’t care.

“I am not kidding. In fact, I would think that after that magazine profile, you would want to prove to the world—perhaps even to yourselves—that you are not
imbeciles
.”

I noticed Rose’s right foot jiggle nervously inside a pink suede high-heeled sandal. Her sister threw her arms across the back of the couch. Not a care in the world.

“What do we care?” Sage asked, although she clearly wasn’t looking for an answer. “We’re already rich, and we’re almost famous. Come on, Rose.” She got to her feet. “We’re out of here.”

Laurel shrugged again. “Depart if you want. But understand this, Sage: You are not rich.”

Sage sighed wearily. “Yet. We aren’t rich
yet
. But we will be next month, on our eighteenth birthday. Eighty-four million dollars rich. That’s what the trust says.”

“No, that’s what the trust
used
to say,” Laurel corrected. “It was revised this morning.”

Sage’s pale face drained of what color it had. I watched her reflection in the silver tea set across the room. “What are you talking about?” she managed.

Laurel cleared her throat. “If you and your sister both earn places in the entering class at Duke—I have been told an SAT score and course average you must maintain by the president of the school himself—you will become recipients of the trust the moment the admissions office informs me of your acceptance. If one of you fails, you both do. You will be on your own.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Sage challenged.

“I already did,” Lauren answered, and I thought I saw a little satisfied gleam in her eyes. She touched one of her enormous diamond earrings.

“But that’s . . . that’s so mean!” Rose looked like a little kid whose sand castle had been kicked over by a bully.

“It’s for your own good, Rose.” Laurel’s voice was kinder now. “And I am giving you the tools you need to succeed. I suggest you—and your sister—take advantage of them.”

I waited for Sage to fire back. She didn’t. The look on her face, however, spoke volumes, all of which were filled with expletives.

Laurel turned to me. “Megan, you have been very patient. Let me explain the terms of your employment. You will be with us until the Scholastic Aptitude Test in January. Eight weeks. Your pay is fifteen hundred dollars a week. It will be deposited into an account I’ve opened for you. You will have your own suite in the twins’ mansion, all your meals, and use of any vehicle you’d like. We have a dozen or so in the garage.”

I did some quick mental calculations. Fifteen hundred times eight weeks was twelve grand. Zero expenses. I’d go back to New York in January at prime magazine hiring season with a nice financial cushion. And all I had to do was live here in cushy splendor, endure the twins for two months, and try to teach them to spell their own names?

“I cannot fucking believe this,” Sage muttered, reminding me of the reality of enduring these girls, even if only for two months. Not so easy.

“Megan, when we were talking earlier, you informed me that you have accumulated a significant amount of debt,” Laurel said to me.

“Yes, that’s true,” I acknowledged.

Laurel nodded. “I am a fan of performance-based compensation, as you’ve likely concluded already.”

“Yes, and your offer is very generous—”

“Kiss-ass,” Sage cut in. “And what are you wearing, anyway?” she asked me, apropos of nothing at all. Rose giggled.

I turned back to Laurel, smiling tightly. “But I’m not sure your granddaughters are very receptive to the idea, so I’m afraid—”

“If my granddaughters are admitted to Duke,” Laurel interrupted, “you shall earn a bonus that will allow you to eliminate that debt. In its entirety.”

Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.

“Now. As you were saying?” Laurel set her hands on her lap once again.

“I . . . I . . .” I stammered. Then I looked at the twins, who looked as shocked by this proposition as I was.

“You’re
bribing
someone to tutor us?” Rose asked.

“Paying, actually,” Laurel corrected her. “So, Megan?”

My initial inclination was to do a happy dance around her office—I’d scored nearly perfectly on the SAT and graduated magna cum laude—but a brief moment later, reality set in. The issue here was not
my
academic abilities, but the twins’. Studying isn’t a skill that can be developed overnight. Could I take two spoiled brats, who’d thus far majored in ennui and partying, and transform them into scholars? It was like asking a Neanderthal whose idea of seduction involved a club and a cave to discover the merits of dinner, a movie, and aromatherapy massage. But still. It was a hell of a carrot for me, to go along with the stick Laurel had just smacked against her granddaughters’ Cosabella-thonged behinds. No wonder Angel Cosmetics was so successful.

“I trust that meets with your approval?” Laurel’s eyes met mine.

I made a quick decision, heavily influenced by dollar signs both certain and chimerical. “Okay. I mean, um, yes. I’ll do it.”

Laurel smiled. She even looked relieved. “Excellent. I will be leaving in the morning on a business trip to Paris, but I shall check in on a regular basis.” She rose gracefully. “Megan, a bookstore in Miami sent me everything you’ll need—Kaplan, Barron’s, and Peterson’s SAT prep materials, SparkNotes, Cliff’s Notes. If there’s anything else, just tell Mr. Anderson. Why don’t the three of you get to know one another and then get to work? Please excuse me.”

She crossed her office and summoned the elevator. A moment later, I was alone with the Baker twins. Sage regarded me coolly.

“Listen, Molly, Mandy, or whatever your name is—”

“Megan.”

“Whatever.” Sage flipped her hair. Again, again. “You understand we’re not studying, right?”

“I’m pretty sure I just accepted a job.” I attempted a laugh.

“Okay, there’s a little problem, Frizzy. You don’t mind if we call you Frizzy, do you? It describes your hair so well.”

“I prefer Megan,” I answered her, feeling very thirsty and more than a little panicky.

“Uh-huh. So listen, Frizzy.” Sage did the hair-tossing thing again. “I
puke
cuter than the outfit you’re wearing.”

Rose snorted a giggle. Sage turned to her sister. “Rosie, you know who Frizzy looks like?”

“Who’s that, Sagie?”

I felt like I was being set up for some particularly cruel knock-knock joke.

Sage turned back to me. “Actually, it’s not really a who but a what: baboon ass. Bright red and fat all over.”

I was right. Except it wasn’t a knock-knock joke, and it didn’t entirely make sense. Still, I felt my cheeks turning a deeper shade of baboon-ass red.
Fifteen hundred a week
, I told myself.
Fifteen hundred a week
.

“Just out of curiosity, Sage?” I asked. “Does it give you pleasure to insult someone you just met?”

Sage put a slender finger to her lips as if pretending to ponder this, then she stood up. “Actually . . . yes. When it’s someone who looks like you.” She beckoned to her sister. “We don’t need our grandmother, and we definitely don’t need you, Frizzy. So I suggest you head back to whatever godforsaken place you came from.”

She strode to the elevator with Rose in her red-haired wake. I sat there, my eyebrows frozen in shock, until the elevator door had closed.

I slid down on the couch and stared up at the domed ceiling overhead. Then I let out one dramatic sigh and pulled myself upright.

Outside, the sky was clearing. The late-afternoon sun glittered on the water. I watched it, reviewing my exchange with the twins in my head. They were horrible. Awful. Nasty and wretched.

But their grandmother might be right. Maybe, just
maybe
, they were not stupid.

Choose the most correct definition for the following word:

HEIRESS

(a) female destined to inherit millions without working a day in her life

(b) 50 percent physical perfection, 50 percent emotional cruelty

(c) vacuous, without possession of reason or, apparently, a soul

(d) entitled, prissy bitch

(e) all of the above

Chapter Eight

W
here are you again? Palm Springs?” Charma asked me. “Like, in California?”

“Palm Beach. Like, in Florida.”

“Never been there.”

“Me, neither, but evidently, this is where the beautiful people congregate and tell each other how beautiful they are.” I leaned back on the plush magenta-and-white-polka-dotted divan in the den of my suite at the twins’ mansion. It was a few light-years nicer than the found-it-on-the-street futon that used to pass for a couch in my apartment.

A half hour before, charm-free Mr. Anderson had led me silently through the muggy evening along a long white gravel walkway from the main mansion to the twins’ mini-mansion. Tall French-style hedgerows guarded the sides of the path, which meant I couldn’t see the rest of the estate. When we arrived at the front of the twins’ manse, though, there was no missing it. Done in a pink one shade lighter than Laurel’s house, it was a dead ringer for Tara from
Gone with the Wind,
right down to the columns, and minus the color scheme.

“Addison Mizner,” the Skull intoned.

“Excuse me?”

“The architect,” he clarified, which clarified nothing for me. He opened the door and led the way through a foyer only slightly less spectacular than Laurel’s to an enormous winding staircase. Upstairs were two corridors leading in opposite directions. “The twins,” he uttered, casting his eyes to the left. “You,” casting his eyes to the right.

Down the corridor we went, until he stopped at a large white door. “Your quarters. Good night.”

He headed back the same way we’d come, and I opened the door to what would be home for the night—maybe longer if I could stomach ever coming face-to-face with the twins again. The wallpaper was muted pink and white, and a velvet divan had been placed directly under a picture window overlooking the Atlantic. It was too dark to see the water, but a few sparkling lights twinkled in the distance. There was a white antique desk where I could set up my iBook, along with a high-backed pink leather chair and several hassocks. On the far wall was what I guessed to be a sixty-inch flat-screen TV. An archway opened into a massive bedroom with a canopied king-size bed and a walk-in closet that—like Les Anges’s foyer—was roughly the size of my entire East Village apartment.

I went back into the den and called James, but I hit his voice mail. My second call was to Charma, who took the news of my rapid deployment to South Florida with her usual deadpan aplomb. I tried to describe Sage and Rose, suggesting she picture the biggest bitch from when she’d been a senior in high school, multiply her times infinity, and then split her in two.
That
was the Baker twins.

I told her I loathed them. I also told her how much I would make in a week.

“Hire a Cuban dominatrix from Miami to lash them to a bed if you have to, Megan,” Charma droned as I opened the mini-fridge in the closet. It was empty, but inside was a note:
Summon Marco for provisions
. Who the hell was Marco? “Stay there and bring Mama home something nice,” she told me sternly.

“Seriously, Charma. I don’t know how I can possibly—”

I stopped midsentence. Was someone knocking on my suite door? I listened. Yes. There it was again.

“Someone’s here,” I told Charma. “Call you later.”

“Wait, wait. Laurel Limoges has a wine cellar, right?”

My finger hovered over the “end” button. “I haven’t had the grand tour yet, but probably.”

“If you do blow out of there, grab me a couple bottles. She’ll never miss ’em.”

I hung up and padded down the corridor to the door. There stood Sage and Rose.

“Could we . . . speak with you a minute?” Sage asked tentatively.

Where was the sneer? Where was the attitude? Why hadn’t she called me Frizzy?

“Sure,” I told them cautiously. “Come in.”

They trailed behind me back to the pink-polka-dotted sitting area. “So, what’s up?” I asked as they settled onto two of the hassocks.

They shared a hesitant look. “We came to apologize. Earlier . . . we weren’t so nice.” Sage twisted the bottom of her camisole nervously between her fingers. “It was just such a shock, you know. What our grandmother did.”

Rose nodded. “Eighty-four million dollars is a lot of money. You don’t get that taken away from you every day.”

“And that stuff about college?” Sage went on, her green eyes watery and earnest. “That was news to us. She
never
said anything about Duke before. How were we supposed to know?”

“Don’t sweat it,” I told them, surprising myself. It would be shocking to hear you couldn’t go on being the spoiled princess you’d always been. It might even have ruptured their one shared brain cell. “Let’s start over. I’m Megan,” I said lamely, holding out my hand.

“Sage.” She giggled, extending her hand, too.

“Rose. How do you do?” She stood up, then curtsied. Okay, that was kind of cute.

All I knew about the Baker twins was what I’d read in
Vanity Fair
and seen in Laurel’s office. Maybe there was more to them than that.

“As long as we’re starting over . . .” I took a seat on the carpet and motioned for them to join me, which they did. “How about if we get to know each other a little? What do you guys do for fun?” I nearly rolled my eyes at myself to save them the trouble.