Rosebush

  “And we’ve chosen you,” Kate finished for her, grinning.

  “Besides,” Langley added in an undertone, “with the number of voices Elsa has in her head, she doesn’t need any more friends.”

  We touched pinkies and looking at our three arms, all with matching leather studded bracelets on them, I was too happy—and afraid of jinxing it—to ask how I got so lucky.

  Once I’d been adopted by Kate and Langley, the move to Livingston had been great. At least until Joe Garcetti, proprietor of Garcetti Construction, showed up at one of the town hall meetings my mother was running, asked a question that stumped her candidate, thereby giving her the impression he was insightful, and took her out for dinner.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like him, although I didn’t. It was that I didn’t trust him. If there was shady business, he would be in it.

  “What kind of construction-company owner gets calls at midnight?” I’d demanded of my mother.

  She hadn’t even paused in touching up her lipstick. “The kind with projects in Dubai.”

  Nothing I said stopped them from getting engaged or moving into the ten-thousand-square-foot brand-new house—with stone floors “flown in direct from Italy” and moldings as wide as my head— that Joe called the “Chateau” (or, the way he pronounced it, the Chatoo). He’d rubbed his hands together as he showed us around the first time, and the image of my mother as some kind of goddess sacrifice got burned into my mind.

  But it was her choice and she seemed hell-bent on going through with it.

  In fact, during breakfast this morning, in the massive stone “Provençal-farmhouse-style” kitchen, my mother had said, “I thought this weekend you and Annie and I could go out for lunch after you get fitted for your bridesmaids’ dresses.”

  “You’re not serious, are you?”

  She’d sighed and tried not to look upset, but I saw the anger in her eyes. “Why can’t you find a way to like Joe? Annie adores him.”

  “Annie’s only seven and her best friend is a Barbie she’s decided is transsexual, so I’m not sure about her taste. And I don’t care that you’re getting married, I just think you might want to do it with dignity, not in a way where you make a fool of yourself. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you’ll look having a formal wedding?”

  “If you can’t improve your attitude about this, I won’t include you in the ceremony.”

  “Great. Don’t include me. Don’t include me in anything.”

  I’d stomped out of the kitchen and almost tripped over Annie, who was playing some kind of game tucked just behind the dining room door. She had her hands over her ears, humming. I stopped and said her name, but she just kept humming and rocking back and forth.

  Damn. Seeing her there made my anger start to evaporate, and by the time I was heading back downstairs, I was ready to apologize. If my mother wanted to make a fool of herself by having some big formal wedding, she could do that and I could blame her for it for years to come in therapy. Joe might not be my ideal choice, but if he made my mother happy, then that should be enough.

  I’d nearly reached the kitchen when I overheard my mother and Joe talking. Their voices carried easily across the stone kitchen.

  He was saying, “I wish there was something I could do. I just hate to see you so miserable, Rosie.”

  “Let it be, Joe. It’s a tough time for her. And grounding her will just keep her here with us, throwing a fit. I’m letting her go with her friends.”

  Kate’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts and back into the reality of the butter-leather cocoon of Langley’s backseat. Kate had wrapped her mane of silky honey-gold hair in one hand and swiveled so she could look at me. The sun caught at the curled tendrils playing around her face, making it look like she had a gold halo. As though she’d been reading my mind, she said, “Did you have any trouble with your mom about tonight?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I didn’t even have to give her any of the excuses we’d made up to stay out all night. She doesn’t care enough about me to ground me, let alone care where I’m going.”

  I swallowed hard, swallowing back a lump that had unaccountably materialized in my throat. When we’d lived in Illinois, my mother had been a tyrant, wanting to know where I was all the time, with whom, until when. Before—

  It didn’t matter, I reminded myself. That was past history. Now she didn’t want to know anything about my life. Anything about me. We lived in rough silences and occasional outbursts that did nothing but make the silence more appealing.

  Langley shook her platinum head with wonder. “My grandparents demand such a precise record from me of everywhere I’m going that I’m thinking of hiring a private detective to follow me around and prepare a report. You’re lucky.”

  “Totally,” I agreed.

  So why did I feel anything but?

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and with the touch of a chipped purple nail I quickly bounced the caller to voice mail once again.

  But not fast enough. “Someone’s popular today,” Langley said, her light-blue eyes catching my gaze in the rearview. “Who is it?”

  “Unknown number,” I lied. I felt a warm blush creeping up my neck.

  “I think Jane has a secret,” Langley said in a singsong voice to Kate.

  “No, really, it’s probably just a telemarketer.” I wasn’t even sure why I was lying. I mean, Langley didn’t like Scott because she thought his intentions toward me were “impure,” but she wouldn’t care if he called. I think the truth was, I felt a little guilty about the way I was avoiding him. But there had been something uncomfortable in our last few communications I couldn’t define and didn’t feel like dealing with.

  I was spared having to think about it anymore because at that moment, Langley reached out to turn down the music and we pulled into the long driveway that led to the Winterman house.

  Chapter 3

  If the monstrosity that Joe had built was a Chatoo, then the house Langley lived in with her grandparents was a palace, but a real one.

  Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Arthur Winterman were leading lights in New Jersey social and philanthropic circles and they somewhat terrified me, so I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live in the sprawling house with the gray-and-white-uniformed staff. But Langley had Maman and Popo, as she called her grandmother and grandfather, wrapped around her finger and they doted on her.

  Mrs. Winterman was in the oak-paneled foyer when we came in, her lean straight pantsuit-clad back to the door, watching one of the uniformed housemaids adjusting a vase of flowers. Her pant-suits bore no resemblance to the blue polyester ones with the permacreases that my grandma and her friends wore down in Boca Raton.

  “No, Ivanka, I said to the left.” She gestured impatiently with a hand that held a massive emerald ring. “I can still see the camera. I want it hidden.”

  Langley announced, “I’m home, Maman,” and moved to give her grandmother a cheek to kiss. “We’re just going to my room to get my pajamas. We’re having a girls’ sleepover at Kate’s house tonight. I put it on the calendar last week.”

  “That’s right, dear, very good,” Mrs. Winterman said. She rested the hand with the emerald on Langley’s arm. “Before you go, will you check on your grandfather? And watch the new nurse especially? I think she’s stealing his medication.”

  “Of course, Grandmother.”

  Recently Mrs. Winterman had developed a penchant for security, which, coupled with her overprotectiveness, was starting to make living in their house “more prison than palace,” as Langley put it. “Where the guards wear Oscar de la Renta suits and specially blended Creed perfume,” she had added.

  “See?” Langley whispered now as we followed her red-suede ankle boots up the stairs to her room. “Crazy.”

  Langley’s room was as neat and impersonal as a hotel and yet somehow suited her. The walls were cream, the furniture was either cream or blue, and the only personal items were riding trophies and ribbons and photos of her fr
iends on the dresser. There was one of the three of us dressed up as sexy astronauts for Halloween, another of us dressed as sexy Girl Scouts to sell cookies, us dressed as sexy ninjas for—I didn’t even remember now. Langley loved costumes and dressing up and since she did most of the planning, Kate and I nearly always acquiesced.

  “Is this a new picture of Alex?” I asked, reaching for one of the frames to get a better look. Alex was the superhot Austrian prince or count or something she’d been dating since they hooked up at a riding event during the posh summer school she’d gone to in Scotland the previous summer. In this picture he was shirtless, wearing only a knitted ski cap and long johns and boots, apparently in the middle of a snowball fight. It looked a little cold for the absence of a shirt, but there was no denying he was superhot. We hadn’t met him yet—he was flying in for her eighteenth birthday party next month—but Langley really seemed to like him.

  “Don’t touch it!” she screeched, poking her red beret out from around the corner of her closet. “It’s—” She blushed.

  I put it down and stepped away. “What?”

  “I’m doing love magic with it,” she said, emerging now with three bags and two shoe boxes. She stacked them carefully next to a chair. “It’s embarrassing. And stupid.” Her hand went to her forehead. “God, I can’t believe I’m admitting this.”

  Kate snickered. “You’re doing love magic? You? Miss Practical?”

  Langley punched her lightly on the arm. “Stop it. Ivanka told me about it and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and—”

  Kate nodded seriously. “Of course.”

  Langley addressed herself to me. “You just put a piece of his hair and some salt and you leave it there and it makes him think of you fondly. Not like you, Kate, with your voodoo.”

  Kate was lounging on the bed, one boot-clad leg tucked under her, the other resting on the floor. Her arms were wrapped around a stuffed dog. “It wasn’t voodoo; it was Wicca, and it worked? I got the part of Stella in the play? Is your love magic”—she made quotes in the air with her fingers—“working?”

  Langley glanced balefully in the direction of her phone. “Not today.” Her mood shifted and she held out a pair of blue-and-silver silk-brocade platform sandals. “Jelly bean, these will look perfect with your costume. You should wear them tonight.”

  They were spectacular and so sexy, the kind of shoes that actually make you think you might hear a choir of angels singing. Which was why there was no chance I could wear them. I shook my head. “Those are your new Pradas. No way.”

  “Yes, way.”

  “They cost like a zillion dollars,” I objected.

  Still holding the shoes, Langley put her hands on her hips. “Freals, you have to wear them. I want you to. It’s good luck to have a friend break your shoes in.”

  “Did Ivanka tell you that?” Kate asked, all innocence.

  “Shut up.” Langley returned to me, her blue eyes sparkling as she held the shoes out at arms’ length. “The only thing I ask is, just don’t wear them in the shower, no matter how much David begs. They’re not waterproof.”

  I considered protesting again about borrowing the shoes—they really did cost more than a new telephoto lens—but I knew it was futile. I said, “Promise.” In the end, everyone always did what Langley wanted.

  Langley was in charge of our outfits for the night and she hadn’t let us see them yet. She handed us each one of the bags with orders not to open it Or Else and we trooped back down the stairs.

  From there we went to Kate’s parents’ beach house, where my surprise for David was taking place. Kate’s father was the Reverend Joseph Carter “J. C.” Valenti, preacher, bestselling motivational speaker, and patriarch of his own reality show Living Valenti. Reverend Valenti was on tour promoting the new season of the show as well as his Give It a Valenti Try! series of self-help CDs and day planners somewhere in Eastern Europe. Mrs. Valenti had taken Kate’s two younger sisters to L.A. for a silent-meditation retreat and to meet with agents about a possible Valenti Girlz! spin-off show. Which meant we had the place to ourselves except for Zuna, the housekeeper. The idea was that David and I would have a picnic on the balcony outside, talk about the slight alteration to our summer plans I was going to propose and then…then there was Kate’s parents’ bedroom upstairs with the sixteen-head steam shower that, I’d been shocked to discover a few months earlier, was completely surrounded by mirrors.

  Assuming everything went well.

  When we got there, Langley unveiled our outfits. They were tube tops, puffy skirts, gloves that went to our elbows, and fairy wings. Mine was light blue to go with my dark hair, hers was lavender to contrast with her corn silk blonde hair, and Kate’s was pale yellow to pick up the golden flecks at the center of her eyes. When I saw mine, I literally squealed with delight.

  “You did good, kid,” Kate told Langley in her mafioso voice. “Real good.”

  We changed in Kate’s yellow-and-red-paisley bedroom at the beach house. Unlike her completely perfect exterior, Kate’s bedroom always looked like it had just that moment been hit by a tornado. Every surface was covered with books or clothes or makeup or jewelry or dried flowers. “I don’t understand how you ever find anything in here,” Langley said, neatening the edges on piles of books.

  Kate and I were at the mirror. I was sweeping on a final coat of mascara, and Kate was leaning forward to apply shimmer eye shadow.

  “Can’t find equals don’t need,” she said, moving to sort through a bowl full of necklaces.

  Langley, already done with her makeup, went to peer into Kate’s closet. Her expression was one of horror mixed with fascination. She stepped in and started poking at things. From inside her muffled voice said, “Hey, I thought you decided not to get this when we were at the mall last week.”

  Kate found the necklace she was looking for and reached around to clasp it. I would have offered to help, but I’d learned the first day we met that Kate didn’t like to be touched unless she initiated it. “Get what?”

  “This.” Langley emerged from the closet wearing a purple fedora.

  Kate’s eyes got wide. “I—I changed my mind and I went back and got it?”

  “You went to the mall without me?” Langley pouted, taking off the hat. “That’s against the rules of friendship.”

  “It was just for a second?” Kate said quickly. She leaned forward to get a close-up of her mascara. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Kate—” I started to say.

  She whirled on me, demanding, “What? Honestly, I liked the color, okay? Why are you giving me the third degree?”

  Her eyes blazed at me. Her tone was so vehement I took a step back. “I was just going to tell you that your necklace isn’t clasped right,” I said.

  She dropped her gaze and let out a chuckle. “Oh. Thanks.”

  Langley had moved to the top of Kate’s dresser and was now flipping through a stack of photos she’d unearthed from inside a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. “Why don’t you frame any of these? Like this one.” She held out a photo of the three of us with David standing between Kate and me. We’re all looking at the camera and laughing except Kate, who’s gazing toward David with an unreadable expression.

  “Why would I want to look at pictures of myself?” Kate asked, pawing through a tray overflowing with necklaces.

  “It’s not of you, it’s of your friends,” Langley explained.

  “Um, I see you all the time?”

  Langley threw up her hands, tossing the photo back onto the dresser. “That’s not the point. But anyway, I like pictures. And I think we should get some film of the three of us. Because we are adorable. Ooh, let’s do it in your parents’ bathroom with the big mirror.”

  Kate looked at me for help. “Really? This is necessary?”

  “Absolutely.” I nodded solemnly.

  Kate did her best stage pout. “Fine,” she said, leading the way up the stairs to the master suite.

  We took the camer
a up and filmed ourselves there, then set out for the party.

  “Are you nervous?” Kate asked me.

  “A little.”

  “She doesn’t have to be. One look at her and David will melt,” Langley said. “Just remember, not the shower—”

  Kate said something under her breath.

  “What?” Langley asked.

  “Nothing,” Kate said, adding too fast: “Just that it looks like rain, so the shower might not be the only place Jane could run into danger. Come on.”

  Kate’s and Joss’s houses were in a development on the part of the Jersey shore where all the streets were named after birds and all the houses were supersized. Joss’s place was only three blocks away, but they were long and I had to concentrate to remember how to get back with David.

  Of course, as it turned out, that didn’t matter.

  Chapter 4

  When we got there, the party was a throbbing, gyrating mass of colorful bodies that parted like the ocean as we reached them with something like a collective exhaling of breath, as though everyone had been waiting for us. Kate, Langley, and I danced our way across the floor and they went with me in search of David.

  As we approached, a gathering of sophomore girls flew out the door of the music room like newly hatched moths from a cabinet. Inside we found David, Ollie, and Dom sitting side by side on a leather couch. On the table in front of them were cups and the tall yellow bong David called Big Bird. David was wearing sunglasses, Dom was staring vacantly into space nodding his head up and down, and as I watched, Ollie reached up and stifled a yawn. They looked like the three monkeys, see no hear no speak no evil.

  Dom gave an appreciative whistle when we came in and said, “Check out the fairy princesses.”

  Dom was like a golden retriever puppy, eager to please, sweet, and goofy. Or, as Langley put it, “More Play-Doh than Plato.” He’d been in love with Kate for years, but it was hard to take Dom seriously, so he basically just danced attendance on her. “Don’t you ladies look like a vision from a fairy tale.”