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“Not tonight,” I said with a sigh, glancing at my watch. It was a little after eight. “Mom and Dad made me ride with them.” Crushed in the back seat between twin one and twin two.
“Ah, no giving Harry Hotpants the hungry eyes then, huh?”
With a gasp, I smacked her arm. “I donotgive him hungry eyes. I give him…normal-people eyes. For sure. And don’t call him that; it’s weird.”
“You know, I can’t really imagine you with a singer.”
“Hey,Idon’t even imagine myself with him. I just like the way his voice sounds.”
“And the way his face looks.”
I mean, she wasn’t wrong.
“Destelle.” I recognized Mom’s voice immediately, and found her stepping up to me, her pink coat-check tab in her grip. Instinctively, I braced myself, afraid she might’ve caught any of that conversation. “I need you to run out to my car. I think I left my checkbook in the glove box. The keys are in my coat pocket.”
Right. Checkbooks at a fundraiser were almost as important as the champagne flutes. I took the coat tab with my practiced expression. “I’ll be right back.”
Mom’s eyes flitted over Margot, and though they weren’t as fearful as Mrs. Holland’s gaze had been, it wasn’t a warm stare.
“Malstoni?” Mom asked her.
“Of course,” Margot replied, almost toneless. “I love Gilfman as much as the next woman, but Malstoni has a special place in my heart.”
That made the briskness seep from Mom’s gaze, at least a little. Talk designer brands with Mom and she backed down. “I’ll be right here, Destelle.”
There it was: a dismissal so clear that I almost felt my cheeks pink. Without another word, I turned on my heel and headed out of the dance hall, hearing my best friend’s footfalls behind me.
“Funny that she can’t get it herself,” Margot huffed, keeping pace with me.
“Why else have kids?”
“Touché.”
When we got out into the hallway, we stumbled upon the children who’d been forced to attend tonight too. No one really paid attention to them, least of all their parents. They let the kids play unsupervised in the hall, out of sight, out of mind.
There were three kids in the Brighton family: Destelle and the twins, Eleanor and James. Eleanor and James, though, were allowed to use nicknames, whereas I didn’t get that privilege. Destelle was my great-grandma’s name, and thus forbidden to be tampered with. Eleanor got to be “Nellie” and James got to be “Jamie” and Destelle was stuck being “Destelle.”
It wasn’t fair.
Maybe that was why when I chose a name for my alter ego, I choseStella.
I spotted Nellie immediately. Nellie always stood out because, even though she was ten, she had the height of a thirteen-year-old. Twin two, Jamie, who still waited on his growth spurt, stood a few inches shorter, but was missing.
“Destelle,” Nellie said once she saw me, smiling excitedly. “Where are you going?”
“To grab something for Mom,” I said, but glanced around. She and the other kids were playing some sort of card game. “Where’s Jamie?”
Nellie’s expression faltered a bit, looking sad for a moment before clearing into a blank mask. At ten, she already mastered that. “He’s sitting by the bathrooms.”
Margot didn’t even have to ask. Instead, she merely held her hand out. “Give me your tab, and I’ll grab your coat and the keys.”
I passed them over before heading down the direction where the bathrooms were, my heels clacking like little gunshots off the shiny marble floor. The golden lights created an almost ethereal glow in the hallway, the fixtures shimmering as if inset with crystals. Elaborate, oozing money. I, however, thought they shined too brightly.
It wasn’t hard to find Jamie. A small alcove near the bathrooms led to a storage room, and he always sat there, tucked out of sight. He stretched his legs in front of him as he leaned against the wall, holding a book. His dress pants were a little short on him, and he had undone the top button of his dress shirt, discarding his necktie by his hip.
“James.”
He didn’t startle at the sound of my voice. “Destelle.”
