Privileged (7 page)
Sage put her knees up, circling her long legs with her arms. “To tell you the truth, we’re kind of wild.”
Rose’s head bobbed. “
Very
wild.”
“I can be wild,” I said confidently, recalling my oh-so-recent East Village beavering.
Sage rose to her knees and put her head close to mine. “Tell us the wildest thing you ever did.”
Hmmm. Save the unintentional beavering, my wildometer was a total flatline.
Sage grinned. “Sex in public?”
Whether I had or I hadn’t—okay, I hadn’t—it didn’t seem like bonding over my sex life with my two students-to-be was a really professional way to go. But I wanted to prove that I wasn’t afraid to meet them halfway.
“Let’s save that for another night,” I dodged.
“Fair enough,” Sage agreed, though I could see her shoulders sag with disappointment. I feared I was losing my audience, but Sage’s next words belied that impression.
“You know, you’re not really what we thought,” Sage told me. She tilted her head as if looking at me anew. “You seem almost . . . cool.”
Rose nodded emphatically. “Yeah.”
“So . . .” Sage perked up again. “Maybe this could work after all. Let’s try studying tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I said. “Yeah, let’s.” Laurel had been right. These girls might be dumb, but they weren’t stupid enough to turn their back on the family fortune. “How about nine o’clock?”
“Ten,” Sage said.
“Ten it is.”
Sage grinned the biggest, whitest grin in the history of big, white grins. “You’re on—if you’ll do something for us first.”
“Yeah,” Rose agreed.
Fine. They wanted to prove to me that they had some power by making it an exchange. I understood. It was Sociology 101, only they couldn’t spell the “sociology” part. I was willing.
“We’re going to give you a chance to prove that you’re wild,” Sage declared.
“Okay, fine. As long as it isn’t illegal. Or sexual,” I added hastily.
Sage nibbled contemplatively on a manicured forefinger. Then she waggled her eyebrows at her sister. “How about . . . skinny-dipping? In our saltwater pool? There’s a freshwater pool over at Grandma’s house, but I
know
you aren’t wild enough do it there.”
Skinny-dipping?
Skinny-dipping
was the best they could come up with? Honestly, I was mildly disappointed in the Fabulous Baker Twins. I’d gone to hippie New Hampshire sleepaway camp. Skinny-dipping was nothing—or rather, it had been nothing when I was twelve and still had wonderfully prepubescent hips and perky almost-breasts. Sage’s fat-ass jab still stung a little.
“And where would you guys be?” I asked.
“We aren’t going to stand around watching, if that’s what you think.” Sage sounded insulted that I’d even consider such a thing. “We’ll get the champagne for when you get out. To celebrate our new start together and our eventual entry into the shallowed halls of Duke University.”
Shallowed?
Oy. I definitely had my work cut out for me.
Identify which part of the following sentence is incorrect:
Swimming nude in the (a)
presents
of one’s students (b)
is a remarkable
way to make (c) a big
splash
(d) in a
new job
. (e) No error
I
n the half hour between my “okay, I’ll do it” and the actuality of the act, there was more than enough time for second thoughts.
It didn’t take a Yale grad to balance the equation. Maturity was not the twins’ strong suit. Plus, it was only
after
I’d dodged their query about my wildest sexual escapade that Sage had decided on my saltwater plunge in the buff. I added the elements together and came up with the obvious answer: photographs. Sage and Rose would be waiting, camera in hand, when I climbed out of the pool. They’d probably post the pix at
www.ratemytits.com
and cast a thousand “1” votes against me.
It couldn’t be too difficult to outsmart two not-so-smart teen girls.
I found the deck on the east side of the twins’ manse. Bright gaslight torches illuminated the perimeter. The deck was dotted with cerulean chaise longues and a cabana with a fully stocked bar. A stone seawall separated the deck from the beach and, beyond that, the ocean. As I’d anticipated, the twins were waiting for me. I didn’t see any cameras, but that didn’t mean they weren’t stashed behind the bar.
“Right on time,” Sage called cheerfully. Too cheerfully. Fine, I would play along.
“Hey. I’m on time tonight. You be on time tomorrow.” I dragged a chaise to the edge of the pool and turned my back to them as I began unbuttoning my white shirt. The salty ocean air felt thick and warm on my bare skin. It was hard to believe I’d been in nearly freezing New York City just that morning.
“Are you shy?” Sage asked.
“Sometimes,” I called over my shoulder as nonchalantly as possible. I draped my shirt over the chair, careful to leave one of the sleeves within grabbing distance of the water. I figured if I saw candid photography in the offing, I could pull the shirt into the pool and put it on. It would get soaked, but it was long enough to hide what needed to be hidden.
Rose nudged her sister. “It’s kind of sweet, really.”
“Yeah, sweet.”
I stepped out of my skirt and draped it across the chair, too. The girls recoiled in horror.
“Have you no pride?” Sage was aghast.
I figured she was insulting my body again, and the words
Screw you, you brain-dead twit
came to mind
.
However, that wouldn’t have been entirely conducive to building a productive teacher-student relationship. Before I could decide whether immediate satisfaction outweighed temperate maturity, Sage clarified herself. “Your
underwear.
How could you?”
Remember that I’d been under severe duress, both financial and psychological, only yesterday at Century 21. I had found the yellow semi-granny panties in a two-pairs-for-six-bucks bin, which allowed me to buy—you guessed it—two pairs. As for the bra, I had to cope with the lingerie buyer’s Hello Kitty fetish, because that was all I found in the other bargain bin.
“It’s
ironic
,” I explained, not in the mood for a heart-to-heart about either the fire in my apartment or the pitiful state of my balance sheet. They looked at me blankly, and I realized they had no clue what
ironic
meant. All righty, then. I started to unclasp Hello Kitty, then stopped. “You two planning to take notes?”
“We said we wouldn’t watch,” Rose reminded her sister, then offered me a pair of swim goggles. “You might want these. It’s salt water.”
That was kind of thoughtful. “Thanks.”
“Okay. So, twenty laps?” Sage suggested.
“Sounds good.” To prove how chill I was with everything, I shrugged out of Hello Kitty and twirled one strap from a forefinger.
“Woo-hoo!” Sage cheered. “That’s the spirit. Enjoy. We’ll be back with champagne and chocolate. Or maybe just champagne. And remember, no wet underwear!”
“Wet means you cheated,” Rose explained.
“No cheating,” I promised.
As they headed back toward the manse, I stepped out of my three-buck panties and jumped in. The water was heated, the salt gave me extra buoyancy, and my shirt was within easy reach. I could feel the tension oozing out of my muscles as I floated on my back, listening to make sure the twins weren’t returning. They weren’t. Was it possible that I was wrong? Not likely, but still—this was
nice
.
I used to swim in a lake near our house in New Hampshire. I’d dive down and run my hands along the mucky bottom, wondering what it was like for the frogs that my sister had explained slept down there all winter. I did a surface dive now, swimming down, down, down until I touched the rough bottom of the pool. From there, I swam underwater, pulling with my arms, kicking with my legs, wholly enjoying the exercise. Maybe I’d start swimming every day, might as well take advantage of having a pool to—
Pop
. Suddenly, bright lights blinded me. I touched my goggles, my eyes adjusting to the light.
Oh, God. There were people. Lots of them. Behind a Plexiglas window in some sort of underground party room. Sage, Rose, and half-dozen others, pointing and laughing. Standing in the front row was a boy in faded jeans and a baby-blue linen shirt, just
staring
. And that was when I saw my own reflection: bubble-eyed, magnified by the water’s refraction, naked little ol’not-so-little me.
Allow me a moment here. When I was twelve and starting to get a figure, I had the same nightmare as a lot of girls: Running late for school, I’d dash into my seventh-grade homeroom only to realize I’d forgotten my clothes. I couldn’t move my feet; all I could do was stand there while everyone chortled and pointed.
Who knew that ten years later, I’d live out a version of that terror?
I shot to the surface and powered toward the shallow end, intent on only one thing—getting to my clothes before the twins and their friends got to me. Because sure as I was that Sage and Rose Baker didn’t know the meaning of irony, I was fully confident that they knew the meaning of cruelty.
I wasn’t fast enough.
“It’s the little mermaid!” Sage mocked. She held a champagne bottle in her right hand.
A chubby guy chugging a Stella inadvertently flashed a couple inches of belly between his red Polo and the top of his khakis. “Killer breaststroke.” He smiled.
Ew.
If the twins wanted to humiliate me, they’d succeeded. I wanted to get out of there—
there
being the pool, Palm Beach, and Florida in general—as fast as humanly possible, with as much dignity intact as possible. I hoisted my naked self up the rungs of the ladder. The cool night air on my wet skin turned on my anatomical headlights, so to speak.
“Oooh-la-la!” Sage squealed. “Frizzy’s face isn’t all that blushes!”
“And the hair on her head isn’t all that frizzes!” Rose added.
I glanced downward and saw a red rash of embarrassment spreading upward. Bitches.
I wanted nothing more than to grab my clothes and run—all the way back to New York, if necessary. But I wasn’t about to give these assholes the satisfaction. Charma had told me once about an acting exercise in which you try to embody a person you know in order to act out a character. Charma had embodied her ex to play the part of a completely flaming but very closeted gay guy (don’t ask). I knew who I needed to be.
You don’t look like you
.
You look like Lily
. I slapped on a casual smile and stepped up to the guy who was taking his beer belly for a walk.
“I don’t think we’ve met. I’m the twins’ tutor, Megan.” I offered my hand. “You’re . . . ?”
“Pembroke Hutchison.” His gaze traveled back to my breasts, but he managed a sweaty-palmed handshake.
“Here.” The baby-blue-shirt, front-row-seat guy held out a towel. He was looking away from me, probably stifling his own giggles.
“Thank you,” I said, wrapping it above my chest sarong-style. “I’m Megan.”
“Will,” he told me, looking up. “Phillips.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Asshole
, I added silently. Incredibly hot asshole—his almost navy eyes were framed with thick strawberry-blond lashes—but asshole nonetheless.
I introduced myself to the rest of the crowd. The tiny blonde was Precious Baldridge. The athletic girl with the straight raven hair tied back in a ponytail was Dionne-not-Dianne Cresswell. The brunette with obvious implants was Suzanne de Grouchy. In addition to Pembroke and Will, there was a short guy with a soul patch—Ari Goldstein.
“Well, nice to meet all of you,” I declared. “I hope you enjoyed the entertainment portion of our evening.”
“You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.” Pembroke finished his beer and fired the empty can at a pink metal bin but missed. The can rolled into the pool. He didn’t bother to retrieve it.
I arched a brow. “If that’s what you saw, I’d lay off the Stella.”
Will let out a loud
ha
from behind a chaise. “Good one,” he murmured.
Um, thanks.
“Yeah,
hilarious
,” Sage spat, her eyes narrowing.
“Look, Sage,” I said. “I get it. It was a practical joke. I’m still good if you are.”
Sage did her patented head-shake thing. “You’re not even close to good, Frizzy.”
“Oh, this shit is rich,” Pembroke crowed, putting up his fists in an exaggerated boxer’s stance. “Catfight!”
“Shut up,” Rose told him.
“I love it when you talk dirty,” he mock-groaned. He held out his arms, edging backward toward the pool. “Come to Papa.”
Everyone laughed again. Abruptly, Rose gave him a two-handed push. He fell awkwardly into the pool with a massive splash.
“Thar she blows!” Ari bellowed as Pembroke came up sputtering.
I’d had more than enough and gathered up my clothes. “Enjoy your party, guys. Sage, Rose, I’ll see you in the morning.”
I pivoted to depart, but Sage’s voice stopped me. “Hold it, Frizzy.”
The smooth walkway pebbles felt cold on my feet. “Face it, Sage. You wanted to humiliate me. You failed. Good night.”
The twins’ friends oohed like a sitcom sound track.
“You
still
don’t get it,” Sage sneered. “We’ve got a really big agent, Zenith Himmelfarb. Maybe you’ve heard of her?”
“And I would care because?”
“Because we’re going to be stars,” Rose explained.
Sage smiled smugly. “Everyone in the business has seen
Vanity Fair
, and Zenith is fielding offers for us. Film, TV, modeling—”
“For really a lot of money,” Rose put in.
Sage folded her arms. “We’re not going to college, we don’t need Laurel’s money, and we
definitely
don’t need you. So why don’t you and your ugly clothes and your fat thighs waddle their way back to New York, fuck you very much?”
The only sound was the squishing of Pembroke’s clothes as he sloshed to the bar for another beer. Everyone else waited to see what I would say.
Let ’em wait. I had nothing to say to any of them. First they’d tried to be rude. When that failed, they’d come to my room to manipulate me into doing something humiliating. They’d succeeded. There hadn’t been a moment when they’d actually considered studying with me. I made sure my towel was wrapped tightly enough, put one foot in front of the other on the white pebble path, and wondered whether Laurel’s plane was still at the airport.
