“How’re you doing in there?” asked the bubbly salesgirl through the fitting room curtain.
“Great!” Carina yelled, unzipping the top and whipping it over her head. She held it and her platinum Amex card through the side of the curtain. “I’m gonna take it.”
“Nice!” chirped the salesgirl as she grabbed the goods. “I’ll go ring you up!”
Carina pulled her turtleneck over her head and winced. Diana, her personal trainer, had put her through a killer series of push-ups and planks earlier to make up for the two days she’d spent sitting on her dad’s plane, and now she could barely lift her arms. She couldn’t wait to get home and take a hot bath, except there was a good chance she’d run into her dad. She’d managed to avoid him ever since they’d come back from California, and she was in no hurry to end her winning streak. She checked her watch. Six thirty. Hopefully he was out at some cocktail party or another highly publicized, paparazzi-infested waste of time.
Carina pushed aside the curtain and walked to the register, where the salesgirl was wrapping the top in delicate pink tissue paper. She looked like all the other salesgirls at Intermix: tall, so skinny that her chest was practically concave, and with her copper-colored hair in a messy knot that said “I don’t even have to try to look beautiful.”
“This is soooo cute,” she cooed, lovingly putting a sticker on the paper to hold it together. “What’s it for?”
“A date,” Carina said matter-of-factly as she fingered a pair of gold drop earrings.
“Oooh, he’s gonna love it,” the salesgirl assured her with one of those conspiratorial grins that always bugged her. She looked down at Carina’s Amex card. “Are you related to Karl Jurgensen?”
“Yeah. He’s my dad.”
The salesgirl blinked with surprise. “Then you should give us your e-mail,” she said. “So you know when we get in new stuff, have sales, that kind of thing. We do that for all our preferred customers.”
Cha-ching, Carina thought. “Um, okay,” she said.
The salesgirl swiped her credit card. There was an annoying beep.
“Huh,” she said, frowning at the machine. “It’s saying this card’s canceled.”
“What?” Carina looked at the silver card in the girl’s hand. “Are you sure? Is it past the expiration date?”
The salesgirl looked back down at the card. “No. It expires next year.” She swiped it again. The register gave the same small but decisive beep. “Huh. It still won’t go through.”
“That’s weird,” Carina said, opening her wallet. “This should work, try this,” she said, handing her Visa debit card to the salesgirl.
The salesgirl swiped again. This time, the beep sounded more like an irritated squawk.
“This one’s saying you don’t have adequate funds,” the salesgirl said. She grimaced at Carina in a friendly, we’re-in-this-together way. “You want to try another one?”
“Um, sure.” Carina felt her cheeks start to get hot. She pulled out her emergencies-only MasterCard, the one with the fifty-thousand-dollar credit limit. “Try this one.”
The salesgirl took it without a smile and swiped again. The machine beeped again.
“Hmmm,” the salesgirl said, pretending to be completely mystified. “This one’s not working either. If you want, I can hold the top for you till you get things figured out.”
“No, that’s okay,” Carina said.
The salesgirl handed back the MasterCard. “You sure?” she asked nicely.
“Yep, it’s cool,” Carina said, dropping the card right into the pocket of her book bag. “Something must be screwy with my account.”
“I’m sure,” said the salesgirl hopefully.
She broke the seal on the tissue paper and pulled the top out. Carina stared at it longingly.
“Sure you don’t want me to hold it for you?” the girl asked.
“Yep,” Carina said, aware that her cheeks were fully ablaze. She needed to get out of here. “Thanks for everything.” She hoisted her gym bag up on her shoulder, whirled around, and booked to the exit.
Out on Madison Avenue, Carina could still feel the salesgirl looking at her as she hailed a cab. Luckily, one pulled up right away.
“Fifty-seventh and Lex,” she told the driver, and she slammed the car door.
As the cab turned onto Park Avenue, Carina unzipped the front pocket of her book bag, took out her wallet, and dumped all of her cards into her lap. They lay there, useless and flimsy-looking. Something was terribly wrong. Ever since her dad had given her a MasterCard for her twelfth birthday, she’d never been declined, not even when she’d checked herself into the swanky St. Julien hotel in Boulder when she was done with Outward Bound or bought the Helmut Lang jumpsuit that was totally overpriced. Even more unsettling was that her debit card hadn’t worked either. She wasn’t quite sure who took care of her actual checking account, but now it looked like she’d have to have a conversation with her dad whether she wanted to or not.
At the corner of Fifty-seventh and Lex she pressed a ten into the driver’s hand without asking for change and got out of the cab. She waved a quick hello to the three doormen behind the concierge stand, sidestepped the elderly woman walking three pugs, and skipped down the hall to the elevator. The Jurgensens had their own elevator, which went straight up to the penthouse on the sixty-second floor.
Inside the elevator, she leaned back against the wall and let her book bag and gym bag drop to her feet. Her stomach grumbled as she wondered what Nikita had made for dinner. And she still needed that bath, she thought, as the doors began to close…
BANG!
A hand reached in between the doors to push them aside, and suddenly her father stepped into the tiny space, elegant and slightly menacing in his single-breasted midnight blue suit and tie. The doors rumbled shut. She was trapped. For the next sixty-two stories.
“Hello, Carina,” he said smoothly, pushing the PH button even though she’d already pushed it. “Good to see you.”
“Hi,” she said coldly.
The elevator thrummed as they rose up, up, up. Carina stared at the diamond-patterned carpet, wanting to cringe. The awkwardness was so thick she could taste it.
“I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what you said to me yesterday morning,” the Jurg said in an eerily calm voice.
“What I said?” she asked. She was dying to ask him about her bank account and credit cards but sensed that this might not be a good time.
“How you said that giving you things was my idea of being a father,” he said. She looked up to see him staring at her, right in the eyes, and she thought that she could see the faint beginnings of a smile on his stern, handsome face. “I decided that you were right. So I’m going to stop.”
“Stop what?” Her stomach grumbled louder. She hoped that Nikita had made gnocchi in pink sauce.
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into a small vestibule.
Karl stopped at the titanium-enhanced front door, pressed the ten-digit security code—gamechange—and the door clicked open. They walked into the softly lit entry hall lined with paintings. At his bank of security cameras, Otto gave her father a curt nod.
Her dad still hadn’t answered her, which she took as a cue to follow him down the hall. They walked past the Basquiat and the Campbell’s Soup can and the canvas of broken plates and turned into his office. Through the window behind his desk, the northern half of Manhattan glittered like a collection of diamonds.
“So, stop what?” she asked again.
The Jurg flicked on his desk lamp, throwing shadows on his chiseled face. “The money I give you,” he said simply. “No more credit cards, no bank account. No unlimited funds. Because you’re right. I’ve been much, much too generous with you.”
“Wait—you’re cutting me off?” she asked, tightening her grip on her gym bag.
“No shopping, no hair appointments, no trainer,” he went on, sitting down and touching his laptop gently awake. “No gym
membership. No fancy trips. No iPhone.”
“You’re taking away my phone?” she cried.
“Not exactly. I’ve gotten you something a little more affordable.” He opened his desk and took out something so ancient-looking that it might have been made before the turn of the century. “This should be more than adequate,” he said coldly as he handed it to her.
She stared at the squat, thick, silver device in her palm. “Are you kidding me?” she asked.
“And Max will no longer be taking you to school. You can use this.” He picked up a thin yellow card from his desk. The Metropolitan Transit Authority logo was clearly marked on the front. “This should get you everywhere you need to go. If it’s late, I can call you a car.”
He put the MetroCard on top of the phone in her hand. “Is this a joke?” she asked.
“Oh, and I almost forgot,” he said, frowning as he took out his wallet from his jacket pocket. “Your allowance.”
Carina took a breath as he reached into his wallet. So her dad hadn’t completely lost his mind. Thank God.
He pulled out a crisp bill and laid it on top of the other two items. “You’ll get that every week.”
She looked down and sucked in her breath. It was a twenty.
She stood there, blinking, unable to move. Twenty dollars a week—in New York City? Was he insane? He might as well have given her nothing.
“Twenty dollars?” she burst out. “How am I supposed to live on that?”
He shrugged in an exaggerated way. “You’re not living on it, it’s your allowance, to spend on things you want—not that you need,” he said calmly. “You have clothes to wear, food to eat, and your school is paid for. What else do you need, Carina?”
Her mouth moved but no sound came out. “Wha—what?” she sputtered. “Why are you doing this? Do you think I’m just some trust fund kid who wants to go shopping all the time?”
“I get your bills, Carina,” the Jurg said coolly, leaning back in his swivel chair and steepling his hands. “I think I know who you are better than you do.”
Anger rose up in her throat, bitter and hot. “So of course this is what you do to punish me,” she said thickly. “Just because you’re obsessed with money, you think that everyone else is.”
“This was your idea, Carina,” he said. “You’re the one who said that I gave you too many things. Remember?”
She wanted to keep yelling but she knew it was pointless. The only thing she could do, the only thing that could possibly save her dignity right now, was to leave.
“Whatever,” she spat, and then turned and ran out of the room. She took the stairs two at a time, even though her legs were already sore, and slammed the door to her room so hard that she hoped one of his precious paintings crashed right to the floor.
“Aghh!” she yelled, pounding the door behind her with her fist. The twenty, the MetroCard, and the phone all fell out of her hand and onto the carpet with a soft thud.
She needed to talk to her mom. It was only twelve thirty in the afternoon. Her mom would be furious at him. She’d hopefully be around. She picked up the vintage cell phone, flipped it open, and pressed the red power button. There was an earsplitting chime, and then a digital panda started crawling across the black-and-white screen. A panda? Nobody—nobody—could ever see her with this.
She dialed her mom’s number and listened to it ring. Finally the voice mail clicked on.
“Hi, you’ve reached Mimi—”
She flipped the phone closed and tossed it across the room. What could her mom say or do anyway? How could she help her this time? Depriving their daughter of her credit cards wasn’t really against their custody agreement.
She hated her dad, hated him, she thought, flinging herself onto her bed. This was all so unfair—she didn’t even care about clothes and hair and makeup. Of course she liked to buy nice things once in a while—who didn’t? But that wasn’t the real her. The real her could go for six weeks on the side of a mountain with just a shovel and a toilet paper roll. But of course he didn’t know that. How could he? And could he last on top of a mountain? If he had to go a day without using his Kiehl’s Silk Groom it would be a national emergency.
She grabbed the purple stress ball from her bedside table and kneaded it in her hands, until a sudden thought made her sit right up. He thought she was a spoiled brat? Then she was going to prove him wrong—starting now. If he wanted her to live on twenty dollars a week—which in New York was basically impossible—then that’s exactly what she was going to do. And hopefully, after a couple of weeks, he’d see that she’d learned whatever lesson he wanted her to and he’d drop this ridiculous exercise.
Maybe it won’t be so hard, she thought, glancing at the crumpled-up bill on her floor. It was just money. And it wasn’t like she was Ava Elting, who’d probably go into withdrawal if she couldn’t buy an eight-thousand-dollar bag.
He’d see that she was just fine, that he hadn’t done anything at all to change her life. That he could never change her life. That he had no control over her—no matter how much he thought he did. She was still Carina, after all. And no matter how much money she had, that was never going to change.
chapter 6
“So your dad did it just like that?” Hudson asked, snapping her fingers with a jingle of her mom’s vintage enamel bangles from Fiorucci. “He just canceled everything without even telling you first?”
“It’s not like he’s going to okay it with her,” Lizzie said, stretching out her long, pale legs under the tiny homeroom desk. “It’s all about the element of surprise. Like what they talk about in The Art of War,” she said, dropping her book bag onto the empty desk next to her. “You know, that book all businessmen are required to read.”
“He wasn’t taking over a rival cable station, he was just supposed to be grounding me,” Carina grumbled. “And by the way, did he ever even hear of grounding?” She unwrapped her scarf and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. At first taking the subway had been fun, but then they’d been stopped on the tracks for what seemed like hours and she’d had to run from the station to school.
“Well, you did publicly humiliate him in front of thousands, if not millions, of people,” Lizzie pointed out. “I’m just saying.”
“Let me get you the Catherine Malandrino top,” Hudson said, placing a hand on Carina’s wrist. “You can pay me back later.”
“That’s sweet but no, thanks,” Carina said, taking out a piece of paper from her book bag. “This really isn’t the end of the world, you guys. It’s not like I’m a shopaholic or anything.”
She glanced up to see Hudson and Lizzie looking at her skeptically.
“You guys. I’m not.”
“Really, C?” Hudson gave Carina the hardest look she could. “Have you ever had to live on just twenty dollars a week?”
“No, but you’re missing the point,” Carina said. “I’m not obsessed with money. And the fact that my dad thinks I am is kind of offensive.”
“You might not be obsessed with it, but you do like to spend it,” Lizzie clarified, pulling a red curl straight between her fingers.
“So what? Everybody does. And I can stop,” Carina said. “It’s not a big deal.”
“But what about the Carter trip?” Hudson asked, chewing her pouty bottom lip.
“I’m sure my dad will have stopped the madness by then,” she muttered. But maybe he won’t, a little voice said inside of her. Like something out of a sci-fi movie, those visions of her and Carter carving their way down an Alpine mountain were starting to get fainter and fainter. “And even if he hasn’t, I’m sure I can find a cheap flight to Switzerland.”
“For twenty bucks?” Lizzie asked.
“I’ll figure it out,” Carina said, kicking her backpack on the ground. “This is so not a big deal. Okay?”
She looked down at the page she’d taken out from her bag. It was a another song that she’d printed out as soon as she’d gotten to school.
My firs
t love, you’re every breath that I take
You’re every step I take
Underneath it she scrawled in red pen:
ED, YOU ARE MY ENDLESS LOVE.
She folded it up again and stowed it in her earth science notebook. At least these love letters were still making her laugh.
“Todd just texted that he’s going to be running late,” said Lizzie, checking her phone. “He wants us to save him a seat.”
“Is he gonna sit with us every morning?” Carina asked, realizing too late that she’d actually spoken this out loud.
“Yeah,” Lizzie said, sounding hurt. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, fine,” Carina said, pretending to doodle.
When Todd arrived a few minutes later and headed straight toward Lizzie’s saved seat, Carina made sure to give him a broad smile and a wave. Even though her question seemed to hang in the air between her and Lizzie like a storm cloud.
For the rest of the morning, Carina sat in class, thinking about her twenty dollars. She’d always been good at disciplining herself to reach a goal, whether it was running a six-minute mile or doing fifty boy push-ups in a row. Now the goal was to keep that bill in her wallet for as long as possible. Starting now, she would only spend that money when and if she absolutely needed it. The Jurg was right, as much as she hated to admit it. She had clothes. She had transportation. She had food. What else could she need?
“Who wants to go to the diner?” she asked Lizzie and Hudson at their lockers at the beginning of lunch, as another wave of hunger pangs clenched her stomach.
“Um… can you afford that?” Hudson asked warily.
Carina rolled her eyes. “I’m not penniless. And I kind of forgot to pack myself something.”
“Maybe you should just get a toasted bagel from the deli,” Lizzie suggested. “The diner can get pricey.”