Be Strong & Curvaceous Read online

  I heard a hitch in her breath. “What’s gotten into you, poquita? You never used to be so unkind.”

  I ignored the prickle in my conscience that told me the fruit of the Spirit—namely, love, joy, and peace—were withering on the vine here. But this hurt. I wanted to hit back at the thing that hurt me, like a little kid. “You and Papa never got divorced before. You never picked a guy in a turquoise shirt and a leather tie before.”

  The line clicked loudly in my ear. I threw my cell phone at the laundry basket.

  How could she do this? How could she plow ahead, giggling and tossing her glossy long hair and pushing her ring into people’s faces, while leaving the rest of the family miserable? Had my mother always been this self-centered? Was that what had made her leave us, not something we kids or my dad had done?

  At that point I noticed Mac, leaning on one elbow and watching me. “That sounded interesting,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.” I yanked my blankets over my head and burrowed deep under them, hoping they’d muffle the sounds of my misery as it rose up in a flash flood, sweeping away everything good I’d ever known.

  * * *

  To:[email protected]

  From:[email protected]

  Date:April 21, 2009

  Re:Mama

  The future Mrs. Vigil called this morning to tell me the happy news. Are you going to be a bridesmaid? I’m not. This is horrible. I don’t know how I’m going to face Papa.

  I don’t have anyone but you to talk to. Antony is too little. I’d never bring it up with Papa—it would wreck him. And I can’t tell my friends—it wouldn’t be right to blab family business to them, even if they’re the best friends in the world.

  Richard Vigil. I can’t stand it. That hair! What does he do—watch his Duran Duran music videos in his spare time? How can our mother be this desperate?

  Call me asap. I’m not available during class or between 4 and 8 pm but any other time is good.

  Love, Carly

  * * *

  I hit Send and looked up as Mac came in. She dumped her backpack, which was army-surplus khaki and almost as beat-up as Gillian’s, on the bed and pulled her laptop over without a word to me.

  Which was fine. I was so not in the mood to make small talk when my family was being sucked into a black hole.

  The way our room was set up, each of us could see the other while we were on our computers. Now, normally I’m all about keeping my head down and giving a person her privacy, but for some reason, while I was skimming my e-mail and trying to ignore her and all my other problems, I looked up.

  Mac was checking e-mail too, but wow. Being a recent expert in bad news, I could tell when someone else was getting some. Her face was flushed, and she had that fragile look around the eyes that meant she was holding back tears.

  She’d sworn at me this morning.

  I’d shut her down.

  Both of us were hurting, and I could do one of two things. I could leave her to it, and kiss good-bye any chance of finding a friend in her. Or I could swallow my pride and my fear of being flattened and reach out.

  As Professor Dumbledore would say, sometimes you have to decide between what’s right and what’s easy.

  “Is—is everything okay?”

  She jumped and stared at me. “What’s it to you?”

  That was probably my cue to leave her to it, but that would have been too easy. “You look like you got e-mail as crappy as the phone call I got this morning.”

  Whatever blistering reply she’d been about to make about me minding my own business dissipated on a long breath. “Yeah, you could say so. Look, about this morning. I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  “I’m sorry about that. My mother can never get the time difference right between here and Veracruz.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a resort town on the Caribbean side of Mexico. She got engaged on the weekend.”

  “And you think it’s pants?”

  “If that’s Scottish for garbage, then yeah. The guy is a relic from the eighties, and it’s way too soon.”

  “For her or for you?”

  I blinked. That was a weird way of putting it. “For her, of course.” But that was dumb. Obviously it wasn’t, or she wouldn’t have sounded so bubbly and excited. And deluded, but that was just my opinion. “For me.” With a sigh, I added, “Even though they’re divorced, I guess I was hoping that someday she’d get back together with my father.”

  “Take it from me,” Mac said. “The only person who hopes that is you. And you’re the only person it hurts, too.”

  “Is this the voice of experience?”

  She nodded. “My parents split up a couple of years ago. Mummy got the townhouse on Eaton Square, and Dad kept the ancestral pile in Scotland, of course. So I live with her and go to school in London and spend the hols with him at Strathcairn.”

  “Do you like it?”

  With a lift of one shoulder, she said, “I live with it. She lunches with the ladies who still introduce her as the Countess, and Dad lets tour groups come through and gawk while he hides in the cellar, experimenting with terrible batches of whiskey. The only reason he could pay the taxes last year was because of your friend Lissa’s dad. They gave him a small fortune to use the place as a location for that movie.”

  “I thought you were rolling in it.” I glanced at her closet. “You wear Chanel.”

  “Mummy is rolling in it,” Mac said dryly. “It’s the classic setup—he’s got the title, she’s got the dosh. The perfect marriage. Only . . .” Her voice trailed away for a moment. “I think they really were happy. You know. Before. I just can’t get either of them to tell me what happened.”

  “Neither can I. We had such a great life. Everyone always laughing, lots of family around. Tons of food, women yakking in the kitchen, telling stories about the men behind their backs. I learned more about life in Mama’s kitchen than in any sex ed class. And then it all just”—I waved my hands, abracadabra— “disappeared.” Mac nodded as if she could relate. “So when she called to say she was engaged and would I be her bridesmaid, all that played into it. I guess I was mean to her, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “Understandable. She needs to give you a little time.”

  “Knowing my mother, both of them will turn up here tomorrow to smooth things over.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Me, too.” I looked up. “So. Enough about me. What lovely piece of news did you get?”

  She looked at her screen as if she’d managed to forget about it for five minutes. I was almost sorry I’d asked. “No news. Just . . . it’s odd.”

  “What is?”

  She turned the laptop in my direction. “What do you make of this?”

  * * *

  To:[email protected]

  From:[email protected]

  Date:April 20, 2009

  Re:Found you

  The beauty of the Net is that people are so easy to find. How come you didn’t tell me you were going to the States, Linds? If my friend hadn’t told me, I’d never have known you’d jetted off to San Francisco.

  I wasn’t expecting the heat. And it’s not exactly England’s green and pleasant land, is it? I thought this place would be more glamorous, like in The O.C. Instead it just looks dry. How come you came here for your exchange term? I called and they told me you were doing that. Something else I had to find out from a stranger. I wish you’d write to me. I love you.

  Anyway, I thought you’d like this for a souvenir. Or maybe the press will.

  You know. After.

  Drifter

  * * *

  Attached was an image file. When I clicked on it, the image filled the screen and I sucked in a breath. It was a picture of the two of us, half-turned away from the camera, an orange cab in the background. I wore a blue silk jacket and Mac wore her Prada dress. I looked up into Mac’s face. Her lips were pressed together, as if she was t
rying to keep them from trembling.

  “This is from the night we went to TouTou’s,” I said. I wasn’t about to forget that dress, or how I’d felt coming second to her in it. “How did he get this? Who is this Drifter guy?” I studied the picture again. “Your boyfriend? Or, um, ex?”

  “No!” She snatched the laptop away and closed it, as if something bad might jump out of the screen. “I don’t even know the silly nit. I delete his messages, but he just keeps on.”

  I’d seen her deleting things, stabbing at them angrily, as if that would make them go away faster—or more permanently. “He seems to think he knows you, though. He must be one of the photographers that hang around here.” I tried to remember, but the events later had blanked out trivial things, like people taking pictures.

  “He’s been sending me mail for months. I hate it. I wish he would stop. Or better yet, step in front of a train.” She looked close to tears.

  She didn’t even know this person, and yet he’d said he loved her. That was weird. And scary. And there was a name for it.

  “Along with Chanel Couture and the Balenciagas,” I said slowly, “it looks like you’ve got a stalker.”

  Chapter 9

  YOU MUSTN’T TELL ANYONE.”

  Why do people say stuff like this? Why does the girl in the horror movie always go down to the basement after she hears the window break? Or wait to call the police until after the bad guy is in the house?

  “Mac, you can’t just let him do this to you. You have to report it. At least tell Ms. Curzon.”

  “What’s she going to do?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s a no-harassment rule here. The first thing they’d probably do is change your e-mail addy.”

  “I never gave him the first one.” She stared at the sleeping laptop. “I’ve never even answered any of his messages.”

  “But Curzon will tell the cops to go after his provider. They’ll give out his address and he’ll be arrested. End of stalk.”

  “I doubt that. He hasn’t actually done anything to be arrested for.”

  “How’d he get this picture? He’s hanging around here. There must be something they can pick him up for.”

  Even though it was a warm afternoon in late April, Mac got up and shut the window. Maybe it made her feel safer. “It’s weird. But I mean what I say, Carly. This is off the grid.”

  “Why? I don’t get you.”

  “There will be a huge noise about it. And the tabs will print it, and whoever this guy is will know he’s freaked me out. He’ll probably get off on it, the sniveling numpty.”

  Part of me admired her vocab while the rest of me just felt exasperated. “Or,” I said reasonably, “Ms. Curzon will do a confidential investigation, they’ll pull the guy’s plug, and off he’ll go to court or whatever, with no one the wiser.”

  “Carly, it doesn’t work that way. I can’t even color my hair without some British tab shrieking about how awful it looks.”

  “We’re not in Britain. All the tabs here care about is who Vanessa is wearing this week.”

  “Yes, but all the paparazzi know each other. There are stringers for the British papers out front right now. How else does Vanessa get into Hello!?”

  “Uh, she pays someone?”

  Mac slanted a look at me. “Very funny. But you hear what I’m saying. He could be out front pretending to be one of them right now.”

  “I don’t think ignoring him is the right thing to do.”

  “And I think it is.”

  From the set of her mouth and the expression in her eyes, which was going from miserable to combative, I caved. “At the very least, print every message you get from him before you delete them, okay? And keep them somewhere. At least then we’ll have hard evidence if we need it.”

  I sounded like Gillian, who owns possibly every CSI episode ever aired, plus bonus footage. But maybe sounding like her wasn’t a bad thing.

  Mac nodded and hit Print, and with relief I pulled it off the wireless printer we shared in its cubbyhole under my desk. “You deleted all the other ones?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t stand to look at them. He never says anything bad. They’re mostly kind of pathetic. But they made me angry and scared and it felt good to just wipe them out of existence.”

  “Well, don’t wipe any more, okay? We might need them.”

  “I’ve said I would, and I will. And what’s this we business?” I stared at her, confused. We? Wii? Oui? “This is not your problem. You are not involved.”

  I tried not to feel hurt. “I got involved when he took my picture with you. Try to think, Mac. It must be someone you know. How else would they know about you coming here?”

  “Carly, didn’t you hear me?”

  “I can’t hear you when you sound like my mother.”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I only meant that it could be dangerous. I don’t want any of this to hurt you.”

  “But it’s okay if something happens to you?”

  “It’s my problem. I’ll deal.”

  I thought of Lissa braving the Benefactors’ Day Ball and getting out there under that spotlight, despite the giggles and murmurs I could hear in the audience. And of Gillian, facing down her abusive ex-boyfriend in the school cafeteria and inciting a food fight.

  People didn’t have to solve everything alone. They could ask for help. And if they couldn’t or didn’t know they could ask God for it, there was always the second option.

  Us.

  “You don’t have to deal alone,” I said. “Fine, you can keep it to yourself if you want. But I’m here if you need me.”

  She looked down her aristocratic nose. Her gaze measured me from head to foot. I braced myself for another crushing put-down.

  And then her eyes filled with tears.

  But it was like she was frozen in her seat. As if getting up and taking one step toward me would make her crack and all her feelings would come oozing out.

  Before she could take a breath to say a word, I crossed the room and bent down to where she sat in front of her laptop. I gave her a hug.

  “You are the nicest person I’ve ever met,” she choked, and began to cry for real.

  * * *

  To:[email protected]

  From:[email protected]

  Date:April 23, 2009

  Re:Settling in?

  Hello darling. I hope everything is going well for you at this new school. I knew Natalie Curzon when we were children; it seems strange to think you and she are in the same place now, so far away. I’ve never been farther west than New York.

  All is much the same here. I saw Lily Allen at a movie premiere and she wanted me to remind you that you promised her a weekend in L.A. I’ve no idea what that’s about, but there you are. Saw Wills and Kate and Harry at the Goldsmiths’ Hall and they send their regards.

  Everyone misses you, darling, me most of all. Have you heard from your father recently?

  Love, Mummy

  * * *

  “DON’T FORGET—prayer circle tonight.” Gillian paused on the wide second-floor landing and let her fifty-pound backpack slide down to rest on her instep. If she ever got mugged, she could use the thing for a lethal weapon. “You’re coming, right?”

  I opened my mouth to say yes and then remembered. “I—I can’t. I have something else I need to do.”

  I tried not to squirm under that dark-eyed gaze. “But you always come. And fellowship is important. What have you got going? Extracurriculars? Or wait.” She held up a palm. “The committee’s having a meeting.”

  I shook my head. “Nothing like that.” I turned to go up the next flight of stairs. “See you tomorrow.” I’d already run up half a dozen when she said, totally confused, “But, Carly . . .”

  How to feel completely lame in one easy lesson.

  Gillian deserved a better reason than that. And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to go. I did. There was something about praying out loud with my friends that made me
feel . . . I don’t know. Safe. Deeper. More solid. It’s hard to explain.

  But I had to go to work, and I’d already missed the three-fifteen bus.

  I threw on a pair of cargo pants and a T-shirt, then popped on a Marc Jacobs linen jacket over it. I took a couple of extra minutes to dash down the first-floor corridor to the dining room and snag a sandwich and a bottle of Odwalla strawberry lemonade from the refrigerator case. It would be warm by the time I got my dinner break, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. Then, stuffing them into my tote bag, which already held my math homework, I pelted across the field and made the three-thirty bus with seconds to spare.

  Luckily, I was used to hiking up and down the steep streets around here. I was hardly even breathing fast as the bus pulled away from the curb and headed downtown. It dropped me on the opposite side of the street from Piccadilly Photo, and I was in the back of the shop pulling on my lab coat by five minutes to four.

  Philip finished writing up what looked like thirty rolls of someone’s vacation pictures and walked the lady to the front door.

  “Doesn’t she know about digital cameras?” I gathered all the rolls up in a wire tray and got them into the development queue. All my pictures were online so I could share them with my family.

  I’d already washed and waxed the floors over the course of a couple of days last week, so today’s task was to polish all the display cabinets—again—and find a way to jazz up the displays of Nikons and Canons and their lenses. After that, Philip had promised to teach me how the developer worked. It was kind of intimidating to me, but once I knew how to develop pictures myself, he could take a break once in a while and leave me to run the shop on my own.

  “I’m glad she doesn’t. The cameras may pay the rent, but I do like a bit of jam with my bread and butter.” By which, I gathered, he meant that he liked the income from the photo development, too. “Have you thought of any ways to make all this hardware more visually appealing?”