Page 10 of Privilege
Mother advances. “It’s so lovely to have you here, Cara…?”
“Jones,” Cara says, extending her hand.
Mother blinks, clearly thrown off by Cara’s genuine, easygoing energy.
“It’s lovely to meet you Mrs. van der Beer. Thank you so much for having me.”
“Yes. Well. Richie didn’t give us much of a choice, did he?”
Cara takes it in stride. “I’m grateful for the last-minute accommodation. It’s very kind of you.”
Tension roils in my torso, the kind I used to feel during a good water polo match when I’d been put up against an opponent who had a brain instead of one who simply had a superior cardiovascular system. If I weren’t mildly nauseous about this confrontation, I’d want to laugh at my mother’s shaky footing.
She’s not a socialite, Ma. She’s just… a nice person.
“You go to SoCal, Cara?”
She beams. “I do! Advanced robotics.”
“Richie was supposed to go to Harvard, you know.”
Cara takes my hand and squeezes it. “I know. He’s really smart.” She turns to me and smiles. “It was a nice surprise. You look like a dumb jock.”
I want to laugh, but the image of a cement paving truck comes to mind as my body crumples in on itself from stress. My mother’s eyes narrow on Cara’s hand in mine.
Mother takes my free hand and turns it palm-up, dropping a small white pill in my palm.
“Here you go dear,” she says.
It’s Ativan.
Chapter Six
Cara
The party was tense.
Dinner was worse.
I spent the rest of the afternoon being toted around and introduced to a thousand people who all knew each other, none of whom seemed particularly kind.
Rich was distant. Not at all himself. He didn’t say much after Dane disappeared, let his friends do most of the talking. I’m usually pretty good in a group, and have never had much trouble making friends. But Christ Almighty this crowd felt like the advancedlevel of Mario Kart. On cocaine.Banana peels and bomb shells flying at me from everywhere.
His mother spent the entirety of supper talking animatedly to Jamie and studiously ignoring me. His step-father’s chair at the head of the table remained empty. Dane never resurfaced.
“Tell me Jamie, how are your studies going?”
“I’m killin’ it, Mrs. van der Beer. The Alpha Pi’s made me pledge which I didn’t love, but they told me it was a formality and all that.”
“You’re a legacy dear,” Mrs. van der Beer said. She took a sip of her wine. “There are always formalities. Can’t look like there arefavourites.But…”
Her voice trailed off and Jamie laughed. It was a high-pitched, tinny-sounding laugh that screamedfakeandbitch.
I feel sorry for these women. Are they so unhappy that this is all they can do to make themselves feel better?
I picture Sasha in our dorm room, with her fiery red hair and never-ending parade of costumes for her Only Fanstheme nights. Of combing through thrift shops, and spending hours learning how to sew, and of laughing ourselves silly while I emergencyglue-gun rogue sequins to her heart-shaped nipple covers.
I think about my science elective in the robotics lab, everyone crowded around a robot boxing match, like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots but cooler. Professor Young scolding us for wasting our time and school resources building toys, but then spending the rest of the afternoon analyzing why Jeff’s robot lost the fight, the two of them bent over the robot corpse with mini screwdrivers and a box of miscellaneous parts like surgeons doing a heart transplant.
