Beach Lane - By Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,17

was funny.” He hugged his knees, remembering how the Porsche Cayenne careened through the streets of East Hampton and screeched to a halt at the Jitney stop and how his stepmother used bad, bad words as she threw their suitcases out of the window.

“Fired?” Mara asked, a chill in her heart. The possibility had never occurred to her. That would totally ruin her plans to earn enough money for her college tuition.

Fired? Eliza thought. Now, that would definitely complicate matters. She was supposed to spend the whole summer here—God help them if they tried to ship her back to Buffalo.

Jacqui didn’t much care about being fired. As long as they did it after she found Luca.

“I miss them,” Zoë said. “Tara was supposed to braid my hair today.”

But before they could ask them any more questions about this mystery, a particularly loud firecracker exploded and Cody started to bawl again.

“Oh my God, can you hold him? What should we do?” Eliza said, thrusting the toddler into Mara’s arms.

“Shh . . . shh . . .,” Mara said, rocking him on her lap and trying to hum a lullaby.

“Thees one says she’s a little hungry,” Jacqui said, pointing to Madison. “Maybe we give her something?” she asked when Mara had her back turned.

“What’s in the basket?” Eliza asked.

“Pringles.”

“Yeah, fine.” Eliza shrugged.

Mara looked up. “Hey, where’d William go? William! Stay here! On the blanket! Don’t move!” Mara said in her best sophomore class secretary voice. “Zoë, come on, honey, look at all the colors, aren’t they nice?”

“Cody, it’s okay, baby, it’s only fireworks. I know, they’re loud, but it’s okay,” she soothed.

A few minutes later the kids were crowded around Mara, who put an arm around all of them. “Look at that! The Stars and Stripes! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Mara asked the little girls, who were sitting raptly looking at the night sky. The boys were passed out on the blanket, William utterly spent from chasing dragonflies and Cody sleeping in his stroller with his thumb in his mouth.

Eliza looked at her cell phone. Uh-oh. Almost eleven. Time to motor.

“Hey, you know what, I’ve got to run. I’m meeting some friends . . .,” Eliza said, brushing grass stains off her knees and starting to walk away.

“Excuse me?” Mara asked.

“Where are you going?” Jacqui asked.

“Party. Wanna come?” Eliza said.

“Sí.” Jacqui nodded, standing up.

“Yeah, after all, you’ve got things under control here, right, Mary?” Eliza asked. But before Mara could answer, Eliza and Jacqui were running down the hill as fast as their stilettos would take them.

resort is the hottest party in the hamptons. at least until next week.

ELIZA TOOK A DEEP BREATH AS SHE SCANNED THE MOB scene outside Resort. Five hundred people were elbowing each other to get closer to the velvet-roped entrance, and there was a backup of twenty stretch limos parked on the driveway, waiting to discharge their famous (or merely showy) passengers. Skinny, toothpick-sized women with significant cleavage, lathered in layers of foundation, blush, and hair spray, wearing brightly colored tank tops and formfitting knee-length skirts, picked their way across the gravel in spindly sandals. Their dates, slick older men with equally artificial tans, jangled enormous gold bracelets on their hairy wrists.

Two spotlights directed up in the air lit the entire scene like a movie set. Several overwhelmed publicists tried to control the crowd while burly, three-hundred-pound bouncers glared at the overeager revelers.

Eliza fought her way to the front armed with the magic words: I’m on the list!

“Eliza Thompson!” she screamed at a beleaguered girl in a headset.

After rifling through her pages the door girl snapped, “You’re not on the list. You’ll have to wait in line.”

“Under Kit Ashleigh?!”

“You should have said that you were on Kit’s list in the first place,” she said sullenly. “What did you say your name was again?”

“ELIZA THOMPSON!”

“Oh, there you are.” The girl nodded at the gorilla in the three-piece suit. He lifted the rope reluctantly. Eliza tugged at Jacqui’s arm, and the two were swept inside the nightclub.

They found themselves in the middle of a chaotic scene, and Jacqui felt the familiar rush she felt whenever she was somewhere new, uncharted, and maybe even slightly dangerous. She licked her lips in anticipation. She was certain Luca was here somewhere. She could feel it.

“Hold up!” Eliza said, grabbing Jacqui’s arm. “I see my friends over there.”

Kit was sitting in the middle of the biggest banquette in the middle of the packed VIP room. His face lit up when