Indie Girl (17 page)

I was uneasy the rest of the day. Brooke Carlyle was not a girl to be trifled with. She had clout among the “in” crowd at school, and brains, money, and looks—a lethal combination in anyone and never more so than in a sixteen-year-old girl who thrived on competition. What if she
was
trying to convince Aaralyn to take her instead of me? I would be devastated. I had never looked forward to anything this much in my whole life. And, based on the promise I had made to my father, this was going to be my last hurrah—my final exposure to the world of fashion and everything I loved about it, before giving it all up,
buckling down to my studies and focusing on something much more sensible for the rest of high school. When the fall semester started, it would be time for me to start bonding with my slide rule and stop spending hours a day reading GossipAddict.com, which, as it turned out, I had become addicted to.

When I got home that afternoon, there was a message from Aaralyn. I felt sick to my stomach. Brooke had probably gotten to her and had somehow convinced her to take her instead of me. I burst into tears, while my mother looked at me in dismay.

“Just call Aaralyn back,” my mother said. “You don’t know what she wanted. And really, Indie, she doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who would ask you to commit to something and then change her mind suddenly.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But you don’t know Brooke. That girl has a way of getting everything she wants.”

When I got Aaralyn on the phone, which wasn’t until late that evening at home, she sounded like she had almost forgotten why she had called.

“Oh yes, right,” she said, her mind obviously someplace else. “I just wanted to remind you to travel light. I plan on shopping there and will need some of your luggage allowance.”

I let out a huge sigh of relief. But I still wanted to ask Aaralyn about Brooke. We had never talked about her
niece before, but after what had happened today, there was a part of me that wanted to know where I stood.

“Aaralyn, just one other thing,” I said. “Brooke came up to me at school today and told me that you had originally asked her to come with you and babysit, and that I was your second choice. That’s okay if it’s true. But she seemed really upset about the whole thing and was not very pleasant to me.”

There was a momentary silence on the other end of the line.

“I really don’t have the time to get involved in your silly schoolgirl squabbles,” said Aaralyn tersely. “Just be ready by five p.m.,” she said. “I’ll send Aldo for you.”

In the few days leading up to my departure, I must have tried on every single piece of clothing in my closet, in almost every possible permutation. I had checked on weather.com and found out that it was sunny and warm, which meant that I could choose from my lightest and prettiest LA clothes.

But I was going to Milan, a city known for its incredibly stylish women, and all of a sudden my floaty skirts with their beaded borders and jersey halter tops and capri pants and embroidered flip-flops looked dated. But given that my parents refused to buy me any extra clothes, I had no choice but to take whatever I had.

The night before we were scheduled to leave, I was up packing until two a.m. I planned for between two and three outfits a day—didn’t people in Europe change for dinner?—as well as a couple of jackets in case the weather changed. I pulled out my favorite cosmetics—my Juicy Tubes lip glosses and Wet ’n’ Wild eye pencils—and packed each one in little sandwich bags, so nothing would spill. I took my Maybelline body shimmer and three Mary Kay nail polishes that my mother had bought from our next-door neighbor, and wrapped them carefully in a small toiletries pouch. I packed a pair of espadrilles, some Skechers, some wedges. Because I knew I needed both hands free for Kyle, I packed a slouchy metallic leather knapsack that would carry all his snacks and toys.

Then I closed and locked the suitcase, left my carry-on bag open for my last-minute toiletries and magazines, and prepared myself for a night during which I knew I’d be far too excited to sleep.

Aldo was waiting for me early. Even though I was already packed, there had still been a mountain of things to take care of today, and I still wasn’t ready when he got here. I had spent a couple of hours getting my hair and nails done, had gone to get my arms and legs waxed and my eyebrows threaded, and had made a quick stop at the dry cleaners to pick up a silk cami that I couldn’t imagine
not
having during my first-ever trip to Italy.

Just as I was lugging my bag downstairs, my mother summoned me. I left my suitcase by the door and went to find her. She was seated on the carpeted floor of a spare linen closet that she had converted into a miniature temple.

“Come here,” she said, pulling me by the hand. I squeezed on the floor next to her. I so rarely came in here.
I looked around at all the photographs on the wall and lined up on tiny shelves; Durga and Krishna, Ganesh and Laxmi, their beatific faces and brightly colored clothes, all of them holding conches or tridents, eyes half closed, palms facing outward in blessing. My parents came in here every morning after they had bathed, and last thing at night before going to bed. I, however, only entered right before we were all going on our trips to India, in what I had always perceived as a last-minute bid to make sure we wouldn’t all perish in some horrific airline crash.

“Cover your head,” my mother instructed me. I reached into a small lacquered box that was filled with scarves, pulled one out, and placed it on top of my head.

My mother closed her eyes and folded her hands together, whispering strange Sanskrit words under her breath. I knew she was praying for me—that not only would I come home safely from my first-ever trip away from home without my parents, but that I would be shielded from anything unfavorable or dangerous while I was in a strange land. She separated her hands and placed them both over a small flame that she had lit before starting her prayers, and then placed her hands on my head in a show of blessings.

“There. Now you are protected,” she said.

It was hard for me not to cry.

The doorbell rang and I told my mother that I had to go. I had already said good-bye to my father that morning;
he had a scheduled surgery in the afternoon, so he wouldn’t make it home in time to see me off. Dinesh came bounding downstairs, threw one arm around my waist, lightly pressed his head to my stomach, and said, “Bye, sis, have a good time,” before turning around and running back up to his room.

My mother turned to me, pulled me close toward her, and started crying. “Bye, my
beti,
stay safe, God be with you,” she said, crying into my shoulder.

“Mom, come on. I’m not being deployed to Iraq,” I said, trying to steady my own voice. “I’ll be home before you know it. I’ll call when we land, I promise.”

We were going to pick up Aaralyn next.

When we got there, she was already waiting outside, Juno holding Kyle. I saw another figure next to them; it was Cayman. It had been weeks since I’d last seen him, which had been that day when I had given Aaralyn the Trixie Van Alden scoop. But the fact that I hadn’t seen him recently, combined with the fact that that whole day was unpleasant in how I was treated, had made Cayman fade into the back of my mind.

But seeing him now, standing next to the Taylor family, the sun brightening his ash-blond hair, a slight breeze blousing up his salmon-colored shirt—he looked so appealing that the sight of him now thrilled me a little.

We pulled to a stop. Juno lifted up the car seat that was
on the sidewalk next to him and clicked it into place in the limo, buckling Kyle in and kissing him good-bye.

Aaralyn got in without addressing Aldo and just glared at him for being eight minutes late. She waited as Aldo loaded her two Louis Vuitton cases into the trunk, saying nothing to me except a curt “hi.”

“Crap, I forgot my phone,” she said, rummaging through her bag.

“I’ll run in and get it,” I offered, Aaralyn yelling out that she’d left it charging in her office.

“I’ll come with,” Cayman said, following me inside the house.

“You must be really excited,” Cayman said as we walked in through the front door, which had been left ajar. “Milan on someone else’s dime. Can’t beat that.”

“I’m just the babysitter,” I said, suddenly more aware of the reason I was going.

We were in Aaralyn’s darkened office. I saw her cell on a table in the corner and yanked the cord out of the wall socket with the phone still attached. I turned around to head back out, and Cayman was standing right in front of me.

“I was hoping I’d see you before you left,” he said, his voice now low.

My heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to faint. He smelled faintly of leather polish and ginger. When I had first met him, I had dreamed about a
moment like this. But now that I was here, and it was real, I didn’t have a clue what to do.

“I won’t be here when you get back,” he said. “I’m going to spend a couple of months as a counselor at an outdoor adventure kids’ camp in Santa Cruz. Rock-climbing, surfing, wilderness survival—all the stuff I love.”

“Sounds great,” I said, feeling self-conscious and disappointed at the same time.

Aldo honked the horn.

“I’d better get going,” I said, trying to step around him, feeling curiously nervous.

“Wait,” he said gently. “I’ve been thinking of you these past weeks.” He came closer to me. I was suddenly conscious of what I must smell like; in retrospect, that cheese and onion on a toasted baguette that my mother had stuffed down my throat for lunch was a bad idea. I inhaled deeply, figuring that if I held my breath surely he wouldn’t be able to detect it?

He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder in a move that felt a little awkward. I wasn’t sure if he was going to hug me or wrestle me to the ground. He let his hand slide down my arm, where it rested on my hand, gently playing with my fingers.

“You’re so different from all the other girls I meet,” he said. “You’re, well, really authentic. What you see is what you get. You’re not that typical LA clone—you know, all
skinny and pretentious. You have such a happy warmth to you.”

My palms had started to sweat and the butterflies were flitting about wildly in my stomach. For a millisecond, my mind flashed to a scene from one of the first Hollywood films I’d ever watched, where the hero scooped up the heroine on their wedding night, carried her onto their rose petal-strewn nuptial bed, and came in for the big kiss. The camera had faded to black, leaving me to imagine what might have happened.

Cayman was suddenly so close to me that I could smell the vetiver coming off his freshly shaved skin. He was slightly bowed over me, so much so that at one point, the top of my head was right up against his chin. There, in the darkness of the room, as three impatient people and a baby waited outside, Cayman put his lips over mine. It felt so soft that I thought for a minute that a butterfly had escaped from my stomach and had landed on my mouth.

In the car, as Aaralyn got on the phone, I gave Kyle a packet of Wikki Stix to play with so he could be happily occupied. I wanted to replay what had just happened with Cayman, as if doing so would make it more real, because it felt like a dream.

I closed my eyes and remembered how his lips traveled from my mouth to my cheek, and how he lifted up my hand and kissed that too.

Now, I stared down at that hand, covering it protectively with the other one.

We had both left the house together and he had helped me into the car without saying much. He simply smiled at me, wished me a happy and safe trip, kissed me again chastely on the cheek, and waved us off with a casual, “See ya!” I wasn’t sure what any of it meant, had had absolutely no experience in that area. But I didn’t want to think about it. I just wanted to savor the moment.

“Meghan, I can’t believe it’s happened again,” said Aaralyn, yelling so loudly that I was forced to stop daydreaming. “
Going For Broke
was
my
exclusive! How the hell did those idiots at GossipAddict get it?”

Her face was stony as Meghan said something, obviously to no effect.

Just that afternoon, I had seen the GossipAddict story on
Going For Broke.
It was supposed to be a romantic comedy that was going to open in a few weeks, and that everybody had been talking about because the producers were spending more money on costumes for this film than had been spent on any movie in decades.

Interestingly, it wasn’t even a period piece; it wasn’t as if they needed to hire someone to research eighteenth-century kimonos or Victorian English ball gowns. This was a contemporary movie, set in modern times, about a gorgeous but poor girl who has to decide if she will marry for love or money. The actress was Savannah Princeton,
who regularly made Mr. Blackwell’s Best Dressed List and was known as much for her sense of style as her Oscar-winning abilities.

The movie had been in the news because, instead of relying on borrowed props or loaned designer dresses, the executives behind
Going For Broke
had decided to buy extravagant couture gowns from Balenciaga and Chanel.

But what most people didn’t know—and which GossipAddict.com had revealed for the first time—was that Savannah Princeton was behind that decision and had every intention of keeping everything she would wear in the film.

According to GossipAddict, there would be chinchilla coats and python-skin boots, French hand-beaded organdy gowns and Persian lamb jackets, Chopard dancing diamonds and Franck Mueller watches. She wanted an all-designer, all-original wardrobe, and had ignored the studio executives who told her that nobody in the audience would notice if a ring was an authentic Neil Lane or not. Gossipaddict had quoted a source close to the actress as saying she didn’t want to be “obligated” to any fashion label, which is why she wanted everything she was to wear in the film to be purchased. The studio executives had sputtered, the gossip vultures were swirling, but Savannah Princeton was in an ironclad contract and the producers had to give in. She was the worst kind of Hollywood diva, the antithesis of someone like Trixie Van Alden, who had wanted the less
fortunate to benefit from the excesses of the playground these people frolicked in. But Savannah Princeton—she was the kind of woman who was only in it for herself.