Boutique. The design and décor were an unapologetic celebration of eighties excess, all onyx and gold leaf, marble and crystal, velvet and jungle prints. It were the only store at the mall operating on a whole different system of measurement—the Dynasty Scale—where it would always and forever reign at the Alexis Carrington apex of fabulousness. By twelve years old, Drea carried herself with the confidence of a nighttime soap opera diva, a junior-high Joan Collins catwalking around the halls of Pineville Middle School in double-wide shoulder pads and starter heels.
It’s no coincidence that our friendship ended right around that same time.
“Drea!” Gia brayed as we walked into the store. “Quit getting paid to do nothing and come over here!”
Drea very slowly lifted her head from the Cosmopolitan magazine spread out on the counter. She was the very picture of glamorous nonchalance.
Until she saw me.
“Cassie Worthy!” Drea gasped. “I thought you were dead.”
It was so like Drea to take the rumors about my ill health to a more dramatic and morbid level.
“No, I’m alive,” I said.
Barely, I thought.
Drea jumped up and click-clacked her way over to us. With meticulously applied makeup and dark hair sprayed to exhilarating, ozone-poking heights, Drea looked older than she was, Gia younger. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve assumed they were roughly the same age—meeting somewhere in the middle around thirty. Neither mother nor daughter would ever correct such a mistake.
“Cassie here has fallen on hard times,” Gia said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “She needs a job and we’re hiring.”
“We’re hiring?” Drea asked.
“You’re hiring?” I asked.
“We need someone on the books,” Gia answered. “You know, keeping track of inventory, making sure vendors get paid—”
“What about Crystal?” Drea interrupted.
Gia frowned.
“I’m loyal to family, but enough is enough,” Gia said decisively. “I’m done with my no-good brother’s no-good wife’s no-good brother’s no-good daughter.”
So that made No-Good Crystal Gia’s … niece-in-law? Untangling the branches of this family tree was like an Odyssey of the Mind brainteaser.
Drea barely tilted her head in my general direction.
“But you haven’t seen Cassie in years!”
“I know! I was all worried about finding someone to replace No-Good Crystal, and there she was! It’s fate!”
The Greeks cared so much about the concept of fate that they put not one, not two, but three sister bosses in charge of carrying it out for all humankind. I disagreed with the Greeks. I didn’t believe in destiny. And Drea didn’t either.
“You don’t even know her!” she pointed out.
Gia took hold of my chin and squeezed my cheeks. My own mother was never this hands-on with me.
“She was always a good kid. And she can’t be worse than your cousin.”
“Ma, look at her. She obviously doesn’t care about fashion.” Drea fluttered her thickly coated lashes at my Barnard T-shirt and cutoffs. “No offense.”
I took, like, half offense.
“Drea’s right,” I conceded. “I’m probably unqualified for this position.”
“I saw your name listed in the graduation program,” Gia said. “Didn’t you get the math award?”
I nodded.
“Congrats!” Gia applauded. “You’re qualified! And I don’t have any more time for discussion because here comes the white whale.”
Gia gestured toward a fiftyish woman in tennis whites making her way toward the store’s entrance. She carried a quilted Chanel handbag in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
“A whale?”
This woman was all sinew, gristle, and bone.
“It has nothing to do with her weight,” Gia said. “It means, she’s a big fish…”
“Whales aren’t fish,” I corrected. “Whales are mammals.”
“Fish, mammal, whatever!” Drea threw up her hands in exasperation. “I forgot how annoying you are!”
Gia smacked her daughter in the back of the head.
“Manners, Drea!”
Then she turned to me.
“Mona Troccola is a big spender,” Gia explained patiently.
Mona paused at the entrance to take a last, long drag on her cigarette before depositing the butt into the child-size metal ashtray.
“I have to pull some looks for Mona,” Gia said. “Drea, you take Cassie to the back office. Show her around.”
“But, Ma…”
“Do not give me any lip!”
Drea pouted in literal defiance to her mother’s orders. Gia rushed over to greet Mona with a nicotine-tinged air kiss.
“Mona! Darling! Mwah!”
“Gia! Darling! Mwah!”
I followed Drea through a mirrored door into Bellarosa’s back office. A multitiered chandelier hung over a gold-trimmed desk, behind which sat a zebra-print upholstered piece of furniture that more closely resembled a throne than any chair I’d ever seen.
I was alone with my former best friend for the first time since seventh grade. I didn’t know much about what she’d been up to all these years; I mean, other