“That works,” Nick said. “I’ll put the word out.” He pocketed the money. As he took out his phone and began to text, over Elisabeth’s body rolled a sickly wave, as if she were boarding a puke-inducing roller coaster advertised as fun.
A clatter of metal turned Elisabeth’s head—a small crowd was pushing through the doors, tumbling into the sun. They were Bo-Stin beach kids: Alessandra Ryding, Jess Steinberg, Kai Alder-Judge, and Cally Broderick. They had hair that waved to their waists or shaggy mops or dreads, cutoff shorts or ripped flared jeans and thrift-store tank tops or thin-strapped cotton dresses without bras. They went sockless in men’s oxfords or flip-flops or no shoes at all.
Elisabeth could not help staring at Cally Broderick, who danced into the sun in a gauzy white sundress and bare feet. Her caramel hair tangled and waved to her waist and she squinted and laughed on the sun-bleached stones and she carried no bookbag, no books, just a small woven purse that could not have held more than a pencil. Cally—or Calista, as she called herself now—wasn’t a real beach kid. She lived in a Mill Valley condo, as boring as the rest of them. In fact, she used to be joined at the hip with Abigail Cress. But after eighth grade, Cally had made a miracle happen. To Elisabeth it was almost unbelievable. She had wanted to become a different person, and then she did.
Before Elisabeth could talk herself out of it, she turned back to Nick Brickston and agreed to go along with whatever scheme he wanted, poured her faith into his hands.
—
Elisabeth lived in the hundred-year-old house her mom had won in the divorce.
Her parents’ serious fighting began when she was eight. They fought and broke up and made up and broke up and made up until Elisabeth turned fifteen and her mom told her dad it was finally over. He moved to San Francisco. She said it would be easier for everyone. Elisabeth didn’t get a say; she was only a kid. In the fifteen months since, he’d been traveling around or staying at their Hamptons house; she’d seen him only a handful of times. He’d sent her weekly emails and monthly checks addressed in this oddly formal way—To Miss Elisabeth Madison Avarine. On her sixteenth birthday, a new white Audi appeared in the driveway with keys in the console and a card on the dashboard. Happy Birthday to My Special Girl, the card said, but her dad wasn’t there. Now he was like a ghost, haunting the big house in the canyon where their family used to live.
The house was gorgeous and huge, perched on an acre of steep, wooded hillside in the canyon behind Old Mill Park. It was worth at least three million dollars. But lately it had begun to reveal its frailties: hairline leaks in the sloped and shingled roof, strange clogs and clangings in the pipes, wood rot at the edges of the deck. Slowly but steadily, Elisabeth believed, the house was crumbling to pieces. Eventually it would surrender, retract its claws from the hillside, and slide into the dark.
Elisabeth’s mom didn’t fix things; she redecorated. After Elisabeth’s dad moved out, each room was given a makeover, a color, and a name. Elisabeth’s was the Purple Room: lilac walls, amethyst curtains, a lavender bedspread with heliotrope pillows. Her mom had the Blue Room, periwinkle with accents of cerulean and steel. There was the Red Room, where, when it was still white, her dad once retreated to manage the money—now it was a guest suite with rose-petal walls and ruby pillows, although no one ever came to stay.
The kitchen was her mom’s studio, a blank slate. It was vast and bright and a skylight stretched across its ceiling, spilling pale light over birch cabinets and bamboo floors. Redwood branches swept across the skylight, shedding needles at the edges of the glass. Jars of paints and brushes and her mom’s easel and canvases filled the room where normal people might cook food. Her mom had started painting right after the divorce. Landscapes, still lifes, twisted self-portraits. In real life, Heather Avarine was a true brunette with highlights of henna in her hair, smooth olive skin, neatly arched eyebrows, wide green eyes; in the paintings, her skin was cornflower blue, hair twists of indigo, eyes violet gleams. Though these paintings embarrassed Elisabeth, they were also her favorites. She liked to stare into the violet eyes and imagine what the shadow-mother on the wall was really thinking.