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"Leo! It's me, Jacqui. I really need your help."
"Jacqui?" Leo asked. He was still awake, having played fifty- four straight games of John Madden Football on his PlayStation. "The girl who said I was just a mercy screw?"
"Leo--please."
But he had already hung up.
Jacqui was in tears. In a few minutes Ru
pert would storm out looking for her and God knows what she would do then. She dialed the last number she could remember.
The phone rang and rang, and Jacqui had almost resigned herself to walking down the four miles of the Montauk Highway when Maras voice answered.
"Hello?"
"Mara. It's Jacqui. I really need your help. Can you guys come and pick me up?"
Mara sat up in bed and looked at the clock. "What the hell? Just because you blow everything off, doesn't mean we can just up and get--"
"Mara, please," Jacqui said, starting to cry.
"What's going on?" Mara asked, suddenly realizing something was wrong here.
"I'm at this party--Sting isn't here--it's just--I need to get away." "Where are you?"
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Jacqui told her. "I'm really scared, Mara."
"We'll be there in a few minutes. I have to get Eliza up, I don't know how to get there, but I'm sure she will. Hang in there."
Jacqui put down the phone and tiptoed out the front gate. It was getting cold outside from the ocean breeze, but she would rather freeze than walk into that house again.
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sometimes people actually forget that thelunky red hamptons is long island
A flash of headlights and a familiar clunky red Volvo pulled up to the front door. Mara threw open the car door.
Jacquie
Eliza lit herself another cigarette. God, talk about drama.
Mara had hastily explained why they had to get up and go get their lost roommate, but Eliza still wasn't sure exactly why she had to leave her comfortable bed at four-thirty in the morning.
They found Jacqui huddled by the steps. When she spotted them, she burst into tears.
"Oh my God! What happened!" Mara said, fearing the worst. "Nothing--nothing. I just didn't know if you were actually going to show up," Jacqui whimpered.
She was shaking and so upset, a totally different person than the confident, glacial, sophisticated South American who was so jaded about everything. In the moonlight she looked all of her sixteen years.
"I was stupid," she said. "I should have known something like
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this would happen." She told them all about Rupert, the bait and switch, the sketchy party, the leering guys, the video cameras.
"You're under the age of consent," Eliza said. "We could put them in jail."
