Beach Lane - By Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,5
in the papers, but no one knew just how bad it had gotten. The gossip pages and business section had lost interest after her dad got off without an indictment, and before long the Thompsons had feigned exhaustion and disinterest over all the hubbub and left Manhattan for good.
“I didn’t know you guys were down in PB!” He smacked the steering wheel, looking relieved. “We gotta hook up winter break!”
“Of course!” She felt sick to her stomach having to lie to one of her best friends. Especially since he automatically assumed the Thompsons had retired to Palm Beach. God, she missed their place by Mar-a-Lago.
It was all her dad’s fault. She felt an all-too-familiar bitter resentment welling up inside her. It just wasn’t fair. Her parents could hide out in Buffalo and avoid all their old friends. But Eliza was sixteen—not sixty—she had her whole life ahead of her. She wasn’t about to waste her chance. She wanted back in, no matter what it took.
“So it’s just you this summer?” Kit asked.
“Yeah, thank God I bumped into you! I thought I’d have to take the Jitney. Ugh. You know I got kicked out last time because I wouldn’t turn off my cell.”
Kit grinned. “I remember. It made the Post.”
“Anyway, I’m staying at my uncle’s place on Georgica,” she said. It wasn’t such a stretch, really—Kevin Perry was one of her father’s lawyers and after the last year, well, they were practically family. Eliza decided she was really just “helping out,” and if she got paid doing it, what was the harm? Come to think of it, she was really more like an honored guest. After all, she had grown up with his oldest daughters, Sugar and Poppy, who were twins.
“Cool. That’s not too far from our new place. Got any plans for tonight?”
“No, what’s up?”
“A couple of the gang are hitting Resort, there’s a party in the VIP room around midnight, then afterward there’s P. Diddy’s Red, White, and Blue soiree at the PlayStation2 House.”
“Sounds cool.” Eliza nodded. She knew the guys who ran the PlayStation2 House. A couple of New York club promoters had convinced Sony it was a good idea to fund a weekend party house to “market” their new games. In the Hamptons it was unofficially known as a model landing pad. Kind of like the Playboy Mansion but with nubile flat-chested eighteen-year-olds who were more likely to be found marching down a runway than spread-eagle in a centerfold.
“I’ll put you on the list.”
“Hey, have you seen Charlie around, by the way?”
Kit gave her a furtive glance. “Last I heard, he was dating some hoochie he met in summer school.”
“Huh.”
“I’m sure it’s not serious.”
“Kit, you’re too sweet.”
She remembered Charlie’s face, crumpled in disbelief, when she told him over Christmas that it was probably not a good idea for them to see each other anymore. For weeks afterward he had left her voice mails wondering where she had gone. She wasn’t at school. She wasn’t at Jackson Hole after school. She wasn’t at Barneys on Saturday mornings or at Bungalow 8 on Thursday nights. Then she changed her cell number to a local Buffalo area code (some luxuries are just necessities), and she stopped getting the messages. Eliza had thought it would be easier if she just disappeared—she knew that she might break down and tell him everything if she saw him, and that was a risk she simply could not afford to take.
The convertible inched its way out of the city, and Kit paid the toll at the Triborough Bridge. Eliza savored the freeway signs as they sped east, Long Island towns with funny-sounding names like Hicksville, Ronkonkoma, and Yaphank bidding her on her way, taking her back to where she belonged.
She relaxed for the first time that day. So far, so good. Kit had bought her story about boarding school and her “uncle,” she was already invited to some pretty fabu soirees in the Hamptons, and even if her ex-boyfriend was currently unavailable, Eliza loved him and she was coming back to retrieve what was rightfully hers.
mara discovers the rules for hamptons travel
“AH, DE HAMPTONS, BERRY, BERRY RICH PEOPLE there,” the bearded cabdriver told Mara when she told him where she was headed.
“So I’ve heard,” she agreed. Her sister Megan, the US Weekly addict, had given her the full rundown before she left. “I hear Resort is hot this summer but stay away from the Star Room—it’s so over. And try to get a table at