Chapter 10
Laine
I had a black Audi that I kept spotless. If I wanted to park outside fancy clubs and restaurants, if I wanted to stop in some of the best neighborhoods in the city to shoot out the window, my car needed to fit in to the point of invisibility. A Mercedes would have been even more inconspicuous, but sometimes a girl has to make a concession to her own taste.
I pulled up to the Breakfront guard and told him my name. He looked on his little clipboard. He was a nice-looking kid with light brown hair finger-spiked at the top, which had been the style two years before. Clean-shaven with a sweet mouth and a rock-hard body under his generic blue shirt, he smiled at me with caps, and I knew he was an actor biding his time. I smiled back.
“Hang on for a second, ma’am.”
I tapped the wheel, looking inside the grounds. I’d always gone in through the student entrance, and this entrance, for parents and benefactors, was older, more elaborate, and verdant within an inch of its life. It had been designed to provide a feeling of peace and safety. During my first visit through this entrance, during the interview with my new, and quite temporary, parents, I’d felt safe, as if I was returning home.
I didn’t have the same feeling as the blond guard tapped my name and creds into the computer, but I remembered it. I remembered how real it felt and how fake it had been.
“Miss Cartwright?” he said, leaning down.
“Am I not on the guest list?” I flicked my eyes at the clock. Could I still make it to Sequoia?
“You are, but I hate to say this—maybe I should get a supervisor?”
“Just tell me.”
“Well, you’re on the guest list, but our system pulled you up on the ‘no entry’ list. It’s kind of like a ‘no fly’ list that the TSA keeps but—”
“Did it say why? Did I commit an armed robbery?”
“It just says you’re a photographer-slash-journalist. This list carries over year after year, so maybe someone with the same name had a problem with a benefactor or board member years ago?”
I didn’t say anything. I was too stunned.
“I’m happy to get you a supervisor. I’m sure it’s a mistake, but he has to sign off on it.”
“It’s fine.” I rolled up my window.
He raised the gate behind me, and I backed out. I felt nothing, not even disappointment. No, I didn’t care at all. I was going to get my head-to-toe of Britt getting out of the hospital and—damnit, if I cried, I would totally mess up my mascara, and that was not cool. This was not cool.
I’d gone to the Breakfront School, same as anyone. Michael was on the board at twenty-eight, as was Lucy Betencourt. But me? I’d gone there, and it was mine, board or no. As much as Los Angeles. As much as Balonna Creek or the Arroyos. Mine, mine, mine. I would not ask permission to be a citizen of my own damn city.
I turned off San Vicente and parked on a side street, trying to breathe normally without gulping for air. The tennis courts were across the street, behind fences and hedges, like the camera I didn’t care about, and Michael, who strangely, I did care about. I wanted to show him what kind of woman I’d become, what kind of woman he’d left behind. I wanted to show him my heels and my long legs and everything he’d missed. I wanted to see him up close again, to dissect how he’d changed, how his soft skin had become rougher, his jaw more defined, his jade eyes more mature with concerns and thoughtfulness. His hair had gotten darker and a little wavier, and I wanted to inspect it for change, to ask what had happened in the years past. And now, poof. Never.
A text came in.
—Fiona Drazen’s at Tinkerbell’s with a new guy—
Nothing in my life had changed. I just had to continue as always. I couldn’t make it to Tinkerbell’s, not with my spare rig across town, but it was Thursday night. My phone would light up like a Christmas tree in an hour.
I checked my passenger-side mirror so I could pull out. I could see down the block and across San Vicente. The green-tarped gates of the tennis courts were centered in the oval of the mirror, objects closer than they appeared.
I’d studied in the tennis bleachers partly because they were relatively quiet and unpopulated in winter, but also because I could exit the school from there without being seen by anyone who would hand me a professionally printed Future Prostitutes of America application. I could slip out unseen and unscathed through a patch of trees and a little-known gate meant for emergency crews. It set off an alarm for half a second until the gate shut behind me. From there, I just cut across the golf course and onto San Vicente.
I still felt the gnaw of something going wrong. With it, excitement flowed through my veins like a drug.
I shut the car and got out. Breakfront was mine.