Page 28 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

Ani detangles her arms from Ivan’s neck and pats the seat next to her, away from Thalia. “Sit down, Koko. I’ve ordered a bottle of wine to celebrate your arrival.”

“Come on, let’s get a table instead. I don’t much feel like sitting at the bar.” He doesn’t wait for Ani to agree before heading for one of the tables next to the picture windows that look out onto the Ashmolean. Thalia follows, her face glowing in a way that makes my insides churn. I catch Ani’s eye—the irony! How have the tables flipped so fast? Only moments ago I was exchanging glances with Thalia, and now... well. She breaks the connection first, her upper lip curling like she can’t believe she’s at such a low point that she’s having to exchange looks with me. Not Jane the help! She’d rather suffer alone.

I follow like the faithful dog I’ve become. If only Mom could see me now. How she’d laugh.Are you one of them yet, Jane?

Ani recovers quickly. It’s a trick the rich have, I’ve noticed. They do everything with a certain confidence that the world is a clam that’ll pry itself open for them. And it does. Doors are always swept open; people step aside to let them through. A constant assumption that everything they do is right. That they belong. Ani slinks away from the bar and struts to the table her brother has picked out for us and sits down like she meant to relocate to a table all along.

Thalia and Ivan are already deep in conversation when we get there, Thalia laughing, Ivan mock-grimacing.

He glances at us with a rueful smile. “I was just telling Thaliahow I fell asleep on the way over here and one of the stewardesses placed a pillow behind my back while I was sleeping. I stayed in the same position for about five hours and now my back is killing me.”

“She placed a pillow behind your back? How would that even work? The seats don’t even go far enough back for you to lie down on,” I say without thinking. In my mind I’m recalling my flight from SFO to Heathrow, me squeezed into a seat so narrow I couldn’t bend my arms without touching my neighbors, recoiling every time we accidentally touched one another.

There’s a pause as they all look at me. A flash of pity in Thalia’s eyes, right before Ani bursts out laughing.

“Oh my god, Jane,” Ani says. “This is why I love you. You’re so simple and sweet.” Stupid, she means. I’m so stupid and poor. “In first class, your seat turns into a bed. It lies down flat and then they come and put an actual mattress on top of it.”

An airplane seat that turns into an actual bed. I can’t even imagine it.Do you belong now, Jane?Mom croons.

Ani is still giggling when the wine arrives. We’re quiet while the server pours it into four glasses. Ani’s shoulders are shaking, Thalia is shooting me pitiful glances, and Ivan is studying me in a half-amused way. I pretend to be very interested in the pouring of the wine, watching the pale yellow liquid splash into the glasses, wondering how much this is going to cost me. Mom’s right, I realize with a twist of my stomach.

I can’t look anyone in the eye as the waiter places a glass in front of each of us.

“Well,” Thalia says, her attention refocused on Ivan, “let’s drink to Ivan’s arrival.” She picks up a glass and smiles at him, flashing that naughty little dimple. A full-on assault, the kind ofsmile that makes even our teachers forget what they’re saying mid-sentence.

But Ivan’s still studying me, and it takes a full second before he realizes that Thalia is speaking. The spell catches him again; I see his mouth parting as Thalia’s smile captures him, and I know he is hers. He picks up his glass and raises it. “Cheers,” he murmurs, like he and Thalia are the only two people in the bar, like his sister isn’t sitting across from him, glowering.

Ani and I pick up our glasses but don’t bother to say “Cheers” before we each take a swig. I can practically sense everyone else’s mind whirring, thoughts scuttling around like little insects looking for a weakness before they bite, and I think, for the first time,I’m not the most dangerous person at this table.

Ani tells us she can’t bear to be around Ivan on her own, so we’ll have to spend the whole weekend with them. Thalia agrees too readily, and in the morning, she knocks on my door bright and early. Too bright and too early for how much we all had to drink last night (two bottles of Chablis, followed by cognac). But that’s Thalia. Nothing touches her, not even alcohol. She’s looking even more beautiful today, if that’s possible, and if I didn’t love her so much, I would hate her, this real-life Barbie who’s dimpling her cheek at me, smiling like she can’t smell my rank morning breath.

“Go shower,” she says, striding into my room. “I’ll get an outfit ready for you.”

I’m too hungover to argue, not that I would argue at any other time, so I shuffle off to the bathroom, yawning and scratching the back of my neck. The shower does me good, and by the time I get back to my room, Thalia has carried out her threat andhas picked out an outfit. A gray sweater (everything I own is black or gray) with my dark blue jeans, fine. What’s not fine is that she’s also added a bright orange silk scarf with a big “Hermès” emblazoned across it. I looked up Hermès after that first day, and if I remember right, their scarves start at $500. This one’s probably above two grand. She sees me staring at it and says, “It’ll look nice, don’t you think? The color works well with your sweater.”

I don’t answer, watching her through the mirror as I towel dry my hair. She’s up to something, but I don’t know what. Then it hits me that she’s just trying to be nice, to save me after my faux pas yesterday about the plane ride.

As though reading my mind (again! Maybe she is a mind reader after all), Thalia steps toward me and puts her arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to her. My heart stutters, forgets how to pump blood.

“I’m not like them either, you know,” she says softly.

I can’t manage more than a single, “What?”

“I’m not rich like they are.” She gives a small, rueful laugh. “Well, I doubt any of us here at Pemberton are as rich as Ani and Ivan, but I’m not even, like, middle-class rich.”

“But you—but the scarf, your dresses—”

“They’re all gifts. I thought you might have guessed by now, I’m good with people. And...” She takes a deep breath. “I’m not above using it to get little gifts like these.” She catches my gaze with those incredible eyes of hers. They’re wide, so wide and so impossibly expressive. And in them, I see a sense of fear and vulnerability that makes me want to hug her. This is the first time that Thalia has admitted something like this to me, something that should make her less than perfect, but somehow ends up making her even more precious. She bites her lower lip,the movement distracting me. “Do you think I’m pathetic? Pretending to be someone I’m not?”

It takes a second to realize this is not a rhetorical question, then I jerk my head side to side. “No, of course not.”

She smiles with obvious relief. “Good, because it’s been killing me, keeping this to myself. I’ve just been so embarrassed. I guess I thought that coming here would be my chance to live like they do, you know? My parents—we’ve always been uh. Really poor,” she says with a bitter laugh.

“My mom’s a nanny,” I blurt out. I don’t know why I reveal that now, and why it feels like such a huge burden has come off my shoulders. So what if my mom’s a nanny?

“My mom’s a dog walker,” Thalia says.

We look at each other for a beat, then we both burst out laughing.

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