Be Strong & Curvaceous Read online

  Brett LoyolaKidding! How about those chem notes?

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  “And what’s the event?”

  “We’re going to a”—don’t say party, he’ll freak—“walking over to his friend Callum’s house. My roommate is going, too, and the girls who are on the Design Your Dreams committee with me.”

  “Will there be adults there?”

  “Callum’s mom and grandmother.” I hoped. I didn’t actually know. “Papa, it’s not like I’m thirteen and we’ll be playing Spin the Bottle. It’s just an evening at Callum’s house to listen to music and talk.”

  “If they start drinking, you’re to go back to school right away.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Papa.”

  “That kind of thing is all too likely. I want you to take a picture of the mother and grandmother with your phone and send it to me, so I know there are adults there.”

  “Papa!”

  “Don’t use that tone of voice with me, young lady. If that offends you, then I want you to have one of them call me.”

  “You might as well put my hair in pigtails and give me a lollipop.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I took a long breath and tried to sound mature and reasonable. “I’m not a baby, Papa. I’m nearly seventeen and it’s just a group of friends getting together. If I go around taking pictures of people’s parents, I’ll never live it down.”

  “Then you’re not going.”

  There’s only so much a girl can take. I’d been dealing with a lot of stress, with classes, with Mac and Drifter and Brett. But even leaving all that out, I’d been practically on my own for nine months. I was running my life just fine without parental supervision, thank you very much. I was trustworthy, practical, and responsible—everything he wanted me to be. And this was how he treated me? “No? You’re sixty miles away.”

  “Carolina Isabella!”

  I choked. I’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, Papa. I didn’t mean that.”

  “I should hope not. If this disrespect and rebellion are the result of going to that fancy school, I’m pulling you out of there.”

  “Please don’t. I like it here. I earned it.”

  “Then I want you to remember where you came from. Your mother and I brought you up better than this.”

  “I know, Papa.”

  “So, I’ll see you Saturday morning, then. I’ll tell Enrique to pick you up at, what, ten o’clock? Will you be recovered from your party by then?”

  Uh-oh. “Don’t bother Enrique. I’ll just catch the train. I’ll let you know which one, and you can pick me up in Fremont.” That was just half an hour from the condo.

  “What’s the matter with Enrique?”

  “Nothing, except the poor guy might want a life. He doesn’t have to give up a Saturday to cart me around when I can take the train practically from the doorstep.”

  My father mulled this over, and I tried not to tap my fingers on my desk, in case he could hear me. “Fine,” he said at last. “You can take the train this once, and I’ll meet you at the Fremont station at noon.”

  “Um . . .”

  “Now what?” My father had already come within inches of losing it, and I couldn’t afford to have him go over the edge. At the same time, I couldn’t afford to skip a full Saturday of work, either.

  “It might be a little later than noon.”

  “Do you plan to sleep the entire day away? Is that more important than seeing your family?”

  “Of course not. I just have some things to do.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Calm. Reasonable. Responsible. “Papa, I’ll be done at four. I’ll take the train and be there in time to make supper.”

  “What will you be done with at four? What are you hiding from me?”

  “I’m not hiding anything! I have a job, that’s all, and I work until four on Saturdays.”

  “You . . . what?”

  I ran my free hand through my bangs in exasperation. You’d think I’d just confessed to a drive-by shooting. Calm. Reasonable. “I work in a photography store in the afternoons, and all day Saturday. So I may as well tell you, this will be a regular thing.”

  “Reg—work—you work? In a store? Carolina, what are you thinking?”

  “You don’t have to shout. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “You are in school. You are to be focused on that. What in heaven’s name do you need to work for?”

  “I need the money.”

  “I will give you money!”

  “You can’t give me enough to buy fabric from London and a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes, Papa. That’s what I need to walk down the runway at the Design Your Dreams show.”

  “No one needs such garbage.”

  “Maybe not in your world, but in my world, they do. So I got a job to pay for it. I’m being a responsible adult. And I like it.”

  “I don’t care whether you like it or not. You call your boss immediately and tell him you quit. I will meet your train tomorrow at noon and we will discuss this.”

  I would not be told what to do when this was so important. “What you mean is, you will discuss it. You taught us to be independent and to work for the things we want. Well, I’m doing just what you taught me. I’m old enough to make my own decisions, and there’s nothing wrong with what I’ve decided.”

  “Carolina, you listen to—”

  But I never heard what I was to listen to. I snapped my phone shut and turned it off, and unplugged the room extension, too, for good measure.

  My father had nothing to complain about. I didn’t do drugs; I didn’t drink; I didn’t do anything but win scholarships and get good grades and make him proud. All I wanted was this one little thing, and he treated it like I was making extra cash by selling crack on the street corner.

  Well, I was going to keep my job, and I was going to go to that party, and he could just get used to it. Maybe I’d be on that evening train to Fremont and maybe I wouldn’t. Either way, I made the decisions, not him. I was old enough to take control of my life, and that was that.

  Something moved behind me, and I whirled around in my chair. Mac stood there, leaning on the door.

  I gasped, half in surprise, half in sudden fear of what she might have heard. “When did you come in? How long have you been there?”

  “Long enough,” she drawled. “Having growing pains? Carly Aragon’s secret life. Who knew that her deep, dark secret was . . . a job in a photo shop?”

  “That’s none of your business!” I snapped. Then I looked at her more closely. “Weren’t you wearing that yesterday?”

  “Give the girl a gold star.” She stripped off a denim mini that didn’t even come close to meeting the finger test, and unbuttoned her school blouse, which looked as if she’d slept in it.

  “Mac, are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m just peachy.”

  “You didn’t sleep here last night.”

  She snorted. “Just figuring that out, are you?”

  My own needle dropped abruptly back into the red zone. “Look, I just got off the phone with my father. I don’t need you giving me attitude, too. I’m trying to be your friend, you idiot, not preach at you. Now, are you okay or not?”

  Half into her skinny jeans, she stared at me. And before my eyes, all the snot and vinegar went out of her, and her face wavered. She looked about twelve years old, afraid and vulnerable. “No, I’m not,” she said in a high, unsteady voice, and two big tears rolled down her cheeks as she pulled her jeans on the rest of the way and yanked on a T-shirt.

  All my own attitude vanished like fog under the sun. “Oh, girlfriend, come here.” I put my arms around her and sat beside her on the bed. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  In answer, she retrieved her laptop from her bag and flipped it open. “Read that.”

  * * *

  To:[email protected]

  From:[email protected]r />
  Date:May 1, 2009

  Re:Kiss the girls

  It’s such a shame that Hello! and the Sun don’t do you justice. I could—and have—done a better job of shooting you. Ha! I mean, photographing you. Those aristocratic genes can overcome even a school uniform. Wish I’d gotten some of them.

  I’m looking forward to the day we meet. I’ve known about you for a couple of years, but if I hadn’t reached out, you’d never have heard of me. Might want to ask His Lordship what he was up to twenty years ago. That’ll give you a clue about a lot of things. Including the Big Divorce.

  In the meantime, enjoy your classes and your friends. Boyfriend, too, huh? You didn’t waste any time. But maybe that’s a good thing. I’m very unhappy that you don’t talk to me. I’m the one person in the world you need to talk to. Maybe I’m not important to you. Yet. Your days are numbered, you see.

  Every

  last

  one.

  Drifter

  * * *

  I couldn’t draw enough breath into my lungs. “I’m going to say this one more time. You have to tell someone.”

  Mac didn’t meet my eyes. “Want to know where I spent the night?”

  If she said “At Brett’s,” I didn’t know what I’d do. “Where?”

  “At the St. Francis Hotel. I was so frightened that I called a cab and told him to take me anywhere—just as long as it was far away from here. I walked and walked through crowds of tourists and finally wound up there. No luggage.” She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “They thought I looked a bit dodgy, but my Platinum Visa convinced them otherwise.”

  I could buy those shoes I needed for the price of a night at the St. Francis. “But, Mac, why? Why don’t you just tell Ms. Curzon and let campus security take care of it?”

  “What could they do? I don’t have any idea who Drifter is or what he looks like. And all you remember is that he had on a hoodie. What am I supposed to tell them?”

  “That he’s threatening you. ‘Your days are numbered.’ At least they could have someone assigned to protect you.”

  “What, like a bodyguard? I’m not royalty. And nobody’s going to take a nutter like this seriously. I’m sure lots of people at this school get the same annoyances.”

  “He’s not an annoyance. He’s watching you. He knows what you’re wearing, Mac. He’s close enough to take pictures. That’s just scary. You have to be sensible and tell someone. If you don’t, I will.”

  She gripped my wrist, hard. “Don’t do that, Carly.”

  “Please don’t tell me you don’t want the papers to find out.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t care about the rags. It’s my dad.”

  “You don’t want your dad to find out?” If he were like mine, he’d be on the next plane over, ready to hunt Drifter down.

  “No. Didn’t you see what he said? My dad did something wrong twenty years ago. Who knows what—some business deal, some lawsuit, I don’t know. If I go to the police or tell anyone, it will rake all that up. He’s been through the most awful time, Carly. With the divorce and maybe losing Strathcairn and everything. I just don’t have the heart to make it worse for him.”

  “But . . .” My voice trailed away.

  “Thank you for being such a good friend.” Now it was Mac hugging me. “But we just have to hope that if I ignore him, Drifter will go away.”

  “I’d say he was doing the opposite of that.”

  “I just need to keep my head down and make sure I don’t go anywhere alone. Right?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  “So. About this party tonight. Do you mind if I tag along?”

  The girl had just gotten a death threat. What could I say? “Of course not. You can come with Brett and me.”

  ON THE FIRST two floors, Callum McCloud’s house looked like something out of a movie. You know how some people seem to hit their high point, say, in high school, and the rest of their life is just a rehash of the good old days? His house was like that. It seemed to me it had hit its high point in the twenties or thirties, and everything after that was second rate.

  But on the third floor . . . that was Callum’s space, and you could tell it had been remodeled with parties in mind. Bright and open, with maple floors made for dancing, it had the biggest flat-screen plasma TV I’d ever seen mounted on one wall. Squashy couches were scattered in front of it, and a low, square glass table held munchies in glass bowls. If you wanted to play games on the Wii, you could do that on a second TV on the other end, where the exercise machines were. His music system took up another wall, and kids took turns plugging the party mixes on their iPods into it and voting on who had the best one.

  For a guy who kept a low profile, Callum was surprisingly well set up to entertain. To my relief, I did get a brief glimpse of a woman I assumed was his mother, tucked away in a study watching the news, but she neither spoke to us nor looked up when a Hispanic woman led us to the stairs.

  “Gracias, señora,” I said as Brett, Mac, and I started up. The woman looked surprised. Maybe she wasn’t used to being thanked. Or maybe I’d made a bad assumption and she didn’t speak Spanish.

  Would you think I was totally lame if I admitted this was the first real party I’d ever been to? I mean, the first that wasn’t mostly family?

  Although it did have something in common with a family party—if I’d walked into our old house with Brett Loyola, a silence like this would have fallen with a crash as people stared and the music thumped. But in this case, no parents, aunts, and uncles came rushing over to meet my date and give him the third degree about his family, his education, his prospects, and his intentions.

  In about three seconds, people resumed their conversations and watched out of the corners of their eyes as Brett crossed the room to get us drinks. I took courage from the flawlessly cut Thakoon silk dress I’d begged from Gillian at the last minute. I had to live up to it—to wear it like an old T-shirt I’d known and loved for a long time. Mac had done my makeup, so I knew I looked good. No one would guess that Brett’s date was a scholarship student who worked in a photo shop, would they?

  “Thanks.” I smiled up at him as I took the soda he offered me. There was probably alcohol circulating around the room, but I didn’t want to know about it. All I wanted was for more people to get up and dance so Brett would ask me, too.

  “Want some munchies?” Brett asked. “Carmela makes the best salsa and dips you ever had.”

  “Who’s Carmela?”

  “The woman who answered the door. Their housekeeper.”

  “Oh. No, thanks.” I was too keyed up to eat, and besides, I’d split a submarine sandwich with Phillip earlier, during our supper break.

  “My man.” Callum McCloud clapped Brett on the back and grinned at Mac and me. “Trust you to arrive with the two hottest ladies in school.”

  I knew he was just saying that, but at the same time, I felt a blush rising in my face. Mac just gave him a lazy look. She probably heard that kind of thing all the time.

  Off to my left, I heard someone go “Shhh!” and then a husky voice said, “Brett! What a surprise.”

  I turned to see Vanessa Talbot, looking amazing in the exact same Narcisco Rodriguez dress that Natalie Portman had worn to the premiere of her new movie the week before. Only Vanessa’s was made in dark purple chiffon instead of green silk.

  “Hey, Vanessa,” he greeted her, a little coldly, I thought. “No surprise.”

  “Oh, not to see you,” she said. “Just who else you let in.” From her expression, we were a couple of trolls he’d picked up in the Tenderloin on the way over. “Were you invited?” she asked me.

  “A couple of times.” Wow, was that really me? I sounded as cool and bored as Mac. “But I only decided to come when Brett asked me.”

  Someone behind me sucked in a breath.

  “Really.” Vanessa looked me up and down, but thanks to Mac and Gillian’s work, she couldn’t find anything to criticize. She lifted he
r gaze to his. “I didn’t know you specialized in minority cases.”

  “Oooooh,” someone in the back said, just under the level of the music.

  “Get over it, Van,” Brett said. “Carly and Mac are doing me a favor. Otherwise I might be stuck with, you know, whoever turned up.” Like you just did, his tone said.

  “You’re stuck, I’ll give you that.” A little on the lame side, and she knew it, because she turned her back on the three of us and flounced away.

  “Exes,” Brett muttered, but he didn’t say any more, because at that moment Los Lonely Boys began to sing. The salsa beat infected a bunch of people, who flooded into the space that had been cleared. Seconds later, I realized I was beating out the pattern with my high heels, the hem of my minidress brushing my thighs just the way it was designed to do.

  This was my kind of stuff. The music I’d grown up with—the rhythms that had filled our house and that had moved me to dance when I’d been barely old enough to walk.

  “Want to dance?” Brett asked, and I turned, my lips parting to say yes, my feet moving, my hips already swinging to the beat.

  “Sure,” Mac said, smiling up into his eyes.

  I watched, my mouth still open on that yes, as my date led my roommate out onto the floor and she shimmied into his arms.

  Chapter 14

  HOW ABOUT IT?”

  I dragged my gaze off the two of them and found Callum McCloud at my shoulder. “What?”

  “Dance with me?” It was a good thing he didn’t wait for an answer, because I wasn’t capable of one. Instead, he grabbed my hand as though he expected a yes, and the music and my body took over. And you know what?

  We were totally hot.

  Callum McCloud, say what you will about his lack of a moral center, is a terrific dancer—and the salsa is my favorite. Between the two of us, we burned up that floor, and soon people were standing out of the way to give us room. She may have a wardrobe to die for and a Platinum Visa, but when it comes to Latin dancing and hip-hop, well, Mac probably does a really good Sir Roger de Coverley, you know?

  Because even Brett was staring at me over her shoulder like he’d never seen me before.