Mom’s eyes were already getting heavy. “Did the phone ring while I was in the bath?”
“No.”
Slowly, Mom looked at her. “How come no one loves me, Lauren?”
The question, asked softly and with such utter despair, hurt Lauren so deeply that she gasped. I love you, she thought. Why didn’t that count?
Mom turned her head into the pillow and closed her eyes.
Slowly, Lauren got to her feet and backed away from the bed. All she could think about as she made her way through the apartment and down the stairs and across town was: David.
David.
He would fill this emptiness in her heart.
The staid, ultrarich enclave called Mountainaire inhabited only a few city blocks on the easternmost edge of West End, but there, behind the guarded gates and ironwork fences, another world existed. This oasis of wealth dominated a hillside overlooking the ocean. Here in David’s world, the driveways were made of stone or patterned brick; the cars pulled up beneath fancy porticoes and parked in cavernous garages; dinners were eaten off china as thin and translucent as a baby’s skin. On an evening like this one, streetlamps lit every corner and turned the falling rain into tiny diamonds.
Lauren felt acutely out of place as she walked up to the guardhouse at the entrance gate, a girl who didn’t belong. She imagined that a notation was made on some chart that would be presented to Mr. and Mrs. Haynes on their return: Bad Element Visits Home.
“I’m here to see David Haynes,” she said, forcing her hands to her side.
The guard smiled knowingly.
The gate buzzed, then swung open. She followed the winding black asphalt road past dozens of homes that looked like magazine covers. Georgian mansions, French villas, Bel-Air-style haciendas.
It was so quiet here. No honking horns, no fighting neighbors or blaring television noise.
As always, Lauren tried to imagine how it felt to belong in a place like this. No one in Mountainaire worried about back rent or how to pay the light bill. She knew that if a person started here, there was no destination that was out of reach.
She walked up the path to the front door. Fragrant, saucer-sized pink roses hemmed her in on either side, made her feel a little bit like a princess in a fairy tale. Dozens of hidden lights illuminated the landscaped yard.
She knocked on the big mahogany front door.
It was only a moment before David answered. So quickly, in fact, she thought perhaps he’d been waiting at the window.
“You’re late,” he said, smiling slowly. He pulled her into his arms, right there in the open doorway where all the neighbors could see. She wanted to tell him to wait, to close the door, but once he kissed her, she forgot everything else. He’d always had that effect on her. At night, when she was in bed, alone and thinking about him, missing him, she wondered about her odd amnesia. Her only explanation for it was love; what else could make a perfectly sane girl think that without her boyfriend’s touch, the sun might slip out of the sky and leave the world cold and dark?
She looped her arms around his neck and smiled up at him. Their night hadn’t even really begun and already her chest felt tight with anticipation.
“It’s so cool that you can just be here. I’d have to tell my mom a dozen lies to get a night with you if they were in town.”
Lauren tried to imagine a life like that, one where someone—a mom—was waiting for you, worrying about you.
No lies were needed in the Ribido apartment. Mom had spoken to Lauren about sex when she turned twelve. You’ll get talked into it, she’d said, lighting up a cigarette. It’ll seem like a good idea at the time. Still smoking, she’d tossed a box of condoms on the coffee table.
After that, Mom had let Lauren make her own decisions, as if handing out condoms were a mother’s only responsibility. Lauren had been setting her own curfews since childhood; if she didn’t come home at all, that was all right, too.
Lauren knew that if she told her friends this, they’d ooh and aah and tell her how lucky she was, but she would have traded all that freedom for a single bedtime kiss.
He stepped back, smiling, and took hold of her hand. “I have a surprise for you.”
She followed him down the wide hallway. Her heels clicked on the creamy marble tiles. If his parents had been home, she would have tiptoed in silence; with only the two of them here she could be herself.
He turned, walked through the creamy stone archway that separated the hallway from the formal dining room.
It looked like a movie set. A long, brilliant wooden table flanked by sixteen ornately carved wooden chairs. In the center of the table was a huge arrangement of white roses, white lilies, and greenery.
On one end there were two place settings. Beautiful, translucent bone china rimmed in gold sat on ivory silk placemats. Gold flatware glinted in the light of a single candle.