The Cinderella Pact (2 page)

Chapter One

We are all Cinderellas, no matter what our size. This is what I, Nola Devlin, fervently believe.

I believe that within every one of us is a woman of undiscovered beauty, a woman who is charming and talented and light of heart. I believe that all we need is a fairy godmother to dust us off and bring out our potential and, while she's at it, turn the rats in our lives into coachmen.

I don't know about the glass slipper, though. That seems to me to be a design flaw.

Perhaps it was my fascination with Cinderella that brought me to a town named Princeton. Princeton is, in fact, a magical kingdom with shady, tree-lined streets and, at its center, a big castle of a university complete with Tudor turrets and court-yards of lush green lawns.

There are even a few genuine princes who have come to study here, honing diplomatic skills they will later use to seduce buxom snow bunnies on the Italian Alps. Unfortunately, these princes tend to wear leather jeans and snap their fingers at the local waitstaff before racing off in their $100,000 Maserati Spyders. Honestly, they're enough to put you off princes entirely.

That's the annoying thing about Princeton—everyone's rich, everyone's perfect. Well, most people are, especially the students. Walk down Nassau Street on a sunny Saturday in spring and you're surrounded by lithe, taut, vigorous youth. Bronzed men in bicycle shorts whose biceps bulge as they carry their front wheels. Blond women with flawless skin and zilch upper-arm flab, their flat stomachs bared above skintight jeans.

This is why Nancy, Deb, and I are best friends—because we're far from perfect. Well, that's not entirely true. Nancy, who's a passionate lawyer and smarter than Perry Mason, has the perfect career, and Deb, who married her childhood sweetheart and has two lively kids, has the perfect family.

Me? I've got the perfect imagination, I suppose. Then again, my imagination tends to get me in a lot of trouble, so maybe it's not so perfect after all.

What we don't have are perfect bodies.

In Princeton, where appearance is 99.9 percent of success, not having a perfect body is a definite handicap. Wait, you say. No one has the perfect body. We all have flaws. Too big on the bottom or too thin on top. Frankly, we would give anything to be too thin anywhere.

Thin.
A word so unattainable, so revered and denied to us, that we never speak it. Thin makes us cry. Thin makes us angry. Thin conjures up memories of years of starvation on high protein, cabbage soup, hot-dog-and-banana, two-day fasting, and all-liquid diets only to see our weight drop and then—
poof
—rise again, more determined to stick around than before.

Thin is why guests at our tenth birthdays got cake and we got frozen yogurt. Thin is what we weren't in high school. Thin is what
other
people are. Not us.

This morning I don't have time to worry about thin. Something big is brewing at
Sass!,
the magazine where I am a far too undervalued editor. Something bad. Lawyers at our parent company in Manhattan are driving down to Princeton to meet with our ailing eighty-five-year-old publisher, David Stanton, who has ordered up additional nurses and oxygen for the occasion. That's how we know it's really serious, when the nurses and oxygen are called in.

The truth is we don't know exactly what's going on, though I'm sure we'll find out during the sure-to-be-a-thrill-a-minute “Reemphasis of Ethical Standards Mandatory Staff Meeting” this afternoon. If we don't show, don't bother coming to work, the memo from our managing editor (aka, prison camp overseer), Lori DiGrigio, threatened. She'll be happy to put our severance check in the mail.

My fellow editor Joel and I are discussing what the big scandal might be and whether it has to do with rumors of fashion writer Donatella Mark embezzling Christian Louboutins in her coat, when Lori pops up in Features, Palm Pilot in hand.

Joel turns to his desk and pretends to edit, though really he's reading the local newspaper's sports scores, while I quickly call up a copy of Belinda Apple's latest column and stare at my computer screen intently, tapping on the keyboard every now and then to add authenticity. Seeing Belinda Apple's byline, Lori sneers, makes a tic on her Palm Pilot, and cruises past me to Fashion. In
Sass!
land, Lori's evil has no power over the good witch that is Belinda Apple.

Belinda Apple is
Sass!
's most cherished columnist, partially because she is British and chic, along with being
très
au courant and other cheap French adjectives. Everyone praises her as being a wonderful writer with wry wit and sharp observations, though I think the real reason she's famous is because of her footwear—pink cowboy boots with silver studs.

That's what she's wearing in her column photo, along with a mauve gossamer shirt open to reveal the rack of ribs that passes for a chest, her red hair falling over half her face and her long legs in skinny jeans tucked into those boots. All across the country, women are wearing pink leather cowboy boots, thanks to Belinda Apple. She is fast becoming the Sally Starr of our generation.

As if being thin, gorgeous, witty, British, and the owner of hand-stenciled pink cowboy boots wasn't enough, it is also rumored that Belinda is dating
Sass!
's other high-profile columnist, Nigel Barnes.

Like Belinda, Nigel's British and hot, with a twist. He's intellectual enough to be a pop-culture professor (with tenure) at Princeton and groovy enough to appear regularly on CNN's
90-Second Pop
as the slightly irreverent Popper. He's also written scripts for several movies featuring Hugh Grant and is supposedly the genius behind Hugh's famous stutter—or so Nigel claims.

Vanity Fair
has been dying to do a cover story on
Sass!
's dream couple, only they haven't been able to get a hold of Belinda. Belinda's very reclusive. Some say mysterious, despite tabloid accounts of her partying in SoHo with her fabulous model friends and zipping off in limousines stocked with champagne.

But of course these stories of her wild behavior aren't true. They couldn't be. Belinda's too hardworking and dedicated to be out socializing at all hours.

Plus, Belinda Apple doesn't really exist.

This I alone know, and it is a secret that must never, ever be revealed. Because if it gets out that frumpy Nola Devlin from Manville, New Jersey, is the real Belinda Apple, my readers will hate me, my publisher will fire me, and my mother—who has openly proclaimed Belinda a “smart-mouthed slut who is single-handedly destroying the morals of our society”—will never speak to me again.

Then again, the markdown on pink studded cowboy boots will be phenomenal.

Shortly before noon I skip out to meet Nancy and Deb for our standing first-Friday-of-the-month lunch date. You might think, with the “Reemphasis of Ethical Standards Mandatory Staff Meeting” hanging over my head, not to mention possible immediate employment termination if I miss it, that I might reconsider the crab salad croissant with homemade sweet potato chips at the Willoughby Café. But it's the Willoughby Café. Princeton's best restaurant, smack on Nassau Street. Are you kidding?

Also, Deb's having a crisis of her own. She is refusing to go to her son's sixth-grade graduation tomorrow supposedly because she doesn't want to publicly embarrass him with her fatness. Therefore, this is not so much a meal as a therapy session. And Rule #1 is that a friend's mental health takes precedence over a regular paycheck, especially if her mental health requires the consumption of crab salad on a fresh, flaky, buttery croissant at the Willoughby Café.

But something's off at the Willoughby. Nancy and Deb are not sitting at our usual table by the plate glass window overlooking the street. They appear to have been relegated to the back near the swinging kitchen door, and they look none too happy.

“New management,” Nancy says as I squeeze into a tight booth. “They claim they didn't know we wanted the table by the window. If you ask me, it's discrimination.”

“Fat discrimination,” Deb whispers, taking a furtive sip of her ice water. “Nancy says they don't want to turn off potential clientele by having us displayed at the window. She's asked to speak with the manager.”

I try to be balanced about this. You have to watch out for Nancy. Great kid. Big heart. Card-carrying member of the ASPCA and all that. But as a razor-sharp litigator, instinctively on the hunt for a possible federal lawsuit.

“They probably didn't know our routine. Just an innocent mistake.” I scan the menu for something new, now that there's new management.

“Is there a problem?” The manager is a bony man with a mustache and a name tag that reads CHESTER. He shifts his feet impatiently and eyes the table one over, as though dealing with us one more minute will be sheer torture.

“I wonder if we could move to the table by the window. That's our favorite spot,” Nancy says, pointing to “our” table, which sits empty and set, ready for patrons.

“I'm sorry,” Chester says. “But that table is reserved.”

“Really? I didn't know you could reserve tables.”

“Oh, yes,” says Chester. “You can now.”

Nancy is undaunted. “Well, oddly enough, I've been here twenty minutes and no one's sat there the entire time.”

“I suppose they're late. Or maybe they've had a change of plans.”

“Then we'll be happy to take it.”

Chester frowns. “I'm afraid not. It's still reserved, even if the reservers aren't coming.”

There's no doubt about it, we've been dissed.

Deb, who is a mass of blond curls and has the backbone of mashed potatoes, blushes as pink as the shirt under her flowered jumper. I just wish Nancy would drop it. I have to get back to that meeting and I don't have time to debate the nuances of civil rights with a restaurant manager.

But Nancy won't drop it. Her eyes flash and her expertly polished red lips twitch like leaves before a storm. I brace myself against the table for the oncoming torrent. When you've known Nancy as long as I have, you know it's risky to confront her without comprehensive insurance coverage.

“You wouldn't, by any chance, not be giving us that table because we're . . . on the heavy side, would you?” She keeps her gaze on Chester, level and determined.

I tense up, riveted by this interchange between my friend, who, though, yes,
on the heavy side
, is rather glorious in a subdued fawn silk duster adorned with Russian amber, and Chester, who is definitely a reincarnated squirrel. What I can't get over is how Nancy has the guts to call herself “on the heavy side” in public. I mean, I don't even use those kinds of words with my own doctor.

“I have no idea what you mean,” he says, lifting his pencil. “Shall I take your order?”

“Yes,” Nancy says, “we'd like the window table.”

Chester blanches and then recovers. “If you're unhappy with our service, ma'am, there are other restaurants in the neighborhood. This isn't the only place to eat. Hoagie Haven is right up the block.”

“Yesss,” Deb murmurs under her breath. “Let's get out of here. Please.”

“I don't think so,” Nancy counters. “That's exactly what he wants. Chester is trying to appeal to the upscale lunch crowd and he fears three fat broads in the window is bad for business.”

Interestingly, Chester doesn't dispute this.

Nancy flips open the menu. “We will have one side salad and three waters. Oh, and three forks. We'll split it.” It is the cheapest order possible.

Chester snatches our menus and storms off. The rubber-necking patrons in the restaurant sheepishly turn away from us, the car wreck of feminine destruction in their midst.

I don't dislike many people, but I think I dislike Chester. And so, being the mature, stable woman I am, I immediately imagine a way to get revenge.

“I wish I had a magic wand that could make us instantly thin,” I say. “And then we could walk in the door and he would rush to seat us at the table by the window and we could bust him and his fat-phobic ways on the spot.”

“Like Cinderella,” Deb says, “only instead of new clothes we get new bodies.”

“Maybe it's time,” Nancy says.

“Sorry, Nancy,” I say. “My magic wand's at the shop under repair.”

“I'm not talking about magic. I'm talking about finally taking off the weight once and for all.”

Deb groans. “Not this again. I hate when you get on your we-need-to-lose-weight soapbox.”

Me too. “Besides,” I say, “we are who we are. Isn't that our mantra?”

Nancy begins rummaging around in her purse. “Lookit. I've been carrying around this clip for a month, waiting for the perfect opportunity.” She spreads out a copy of Belinda Apple's April column. I flinch upon spying the headline:

 
I move on to the answer that I can recite by heart: