Privileged

by Zoey Dean

  I did some quick mental calculations. Fifteen hundred times eight weeks was twelve grand. Zero expenses. I’d go back to New York in January at prime magazine hiring season with a nice financial cushion. And all I had to do was live here in cushy splendor, endure the twins for two months, and try to teach them to spell their own names?

  “I cannot fucking believe this,” Sage muttered, reminding me of the reality of enduring these girls, even if only for two months. Not so easy.

  “Megan, when we were talking earlier, you informed me that you have accumulated a significant amount of debt,” Laurel said to me.

  “Yes, that’s true,” I acknowledged.

  Laurel nodded. “I am a fan of performance-based compensation, as you’ve likely concluded already.”

  “Yes, and your offer is very generous—”

  “Kiss-ass,” Sage cut in. “And what are you wearing, anyway?” she asked me, apropos of nothing at all. Rose giggled.

  I turned back to Laurel, smiling tightly. “But I’m not sure your granddaughters are very receptive to the idea, so I’m afraid—”

  “If my granddaughters are admitted to Duke,” Laurel interrupted, “you shall earn a bonus that will allow you to eliminate that debt. In its entirety.”

  Holy.

  Fucking.

  Shit.

  “Now. As you were saying?” Laurel set her hands on her lap once again.

  “I . . . I . . .” I stammered. Then I looked at the twins, who looked as shocked by this proposition as I was.

  “You’re bribing someone to tutor us?” Rose asked.

  “Paying, actually,” Laurel corrected her. “So, Megan?”

  My initial inclination was to do a happy dance around her office—I’d scored nearly perfectly on the SAT and graduated magna cum laude—but a brief moment later, reality set in. The issue here was not my academic abilities, but the twins’. Studying isn’t a skill that can be developed overnight. Could I take two spoiled brats, who’d thus far majored in ennui and partying, and transform them into scholars? It was like asking a Neanderthal whose idea of seduction involved a club and a cave to discover the merits of dinner, a movie, and aromatherapy massage. But still. It was a hell of a carrot for me, to go along with the stick Laurel had just smacked against her granddaughters’ Cosabella-thonged behinds. No wonder Angel Cosmetics was so successful.

  “I trust that meets with your approval?” Laurel’s eyes met mine.

  I made a quick decision, heavily influenced by dollar signs both certain and chimerical. “Okay. I mean, um, yes. I’ll do it.”

  Laurel smiled. She even looked relieved. “Excellent. I will be leaving in the morning on a business trip to Paris, but I shall check in on a regular basis.” She rose gracefully. “Megan, a bookstore in Miami sent me everything you’ll need—Kaplan, Barron’s, and Peterson’s SAT prep materials, SparkNotes, Cliff’s Notes. If there’s anything else, just tell Mr. Anderson. Why don’t the three of you get to know one another and then get to work? Please excuse me.”

  She crossed her office and summoned the elevator. A moment later, I was alone with the Baker twins. Sage regarded me coolly.

  “Listen, Molly, Mandy, or whatever your name is—”

  “Megan.”

  “Whatever.” Sage flipped her hair. Again, again. “You understand we’re not studying, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure I just accepted a job.” I attempted a laugh.

  “Okay, there’s a little problem, Frizzy. You don’t mind if we call you Frizzy, do you? It describes your hair so well.”

  “I prefer Megan,” I answered her, feeling very thirsty and more than a little panicky.

  “Uh-huh. So listen, Frizzy.” Sage did the hair-tossing thing again. “I puke cuter than the outfit you’re wearing.”

  Rose snorted a giggle. Sage turned to her sister. “Rosie, you know who Frizzy looks like?”

  “Who’s that, Sagie?”

  I felt like I was being set up for some particularly cruel knock-knock joke.

  Sage turned back to me. “Actually, it’s not really a who but a what: baboon ass. Bright red and fat all over.”

  I was right. Except it wasn’t a knock-knock joke, and it didn’t entirely make sense. Still, I felt my cheeks turning a deeper shade of baboon-ass red. Fifteen hundred a week, I told myself. Fifteen hundred a week.

  “Just out of curiosity, Sage?” I asked. “Does it give you pleasure to insult someone you just met?”

  Sage put a slender finger to her lips as if pretending to ponder this, then she stood up. “Actually . . . yes. When it’s someone who looks like you.” She beckoned to her sister. “We don’t need our grandmother, and we definitely don’t need you, Frizzy. So I suggest you head back to whatever godforsaken place you came from.”

  She strode to the elevator with Rose in her red-haired wake. I sat there, my eyebrows frozen in shock, until the elevator door had closed.

  I slid down on the couch and stared up at the domed ceiling overhead. Then I let out one dramatic sigh and pulled myself upright.

  Outside, the sky was clearing. The late-afternoon sun glittered on the water. I watched it, reviewing my exchange with the twins in my head. They were horrible. Awful. Nasty and wretched.

  But their grandmother might be right. Maybe, just maybe, they were not stupid.

  Choose the most correct definition for the following word:

  HEIRESS

  (a) female destined to inherit millions without working a day in her life

  (b)50 percent physical perfection, 50 percent emotional cruelty

  (c)vacuous, without possession of reason or, apparently, a soul

  (d)entitled, prissy bitch

  (e)all of the above

  Chapter Eight

  Where are you again? Palm Springs?” Charma asked me. “Like, in California?”

  “Palm Beach. Like, in Florida.”

  “Never been there.”

  “Me, neither, but evidently, this is where the beautiful people congregate and tell each other how beautiful they are.” I leaned back on the plush magenta-and-white-polka-dotted divan in the den of my suite at the twins’ mansion. It was a few light-years nicer than the found-it-on-the-street futon that used to pass for a couch in my apartment.

  A half hour before, charm-free Mr. Anderson had led me silently through the muggy evening along a long white gravel walkway from the main mansion to the twins’ mini-mansion. Tall French-style hedgerows guarded the sides of the path, which meant I couldn’t see the rest of the estate. When we arrived at the front of the twins’ manse, though, there was no missing it. Done in a pink one shade lighter than Laurel’s house, it was a dead ringer for Tara from Gone with the Wind, right down to the columns, and minus the color scheme.

  “Addison Mizner,” the Skull intoned.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The architect,” he clarified, which clarified nothing for me. He opened the door and led the way through a foyer only slightly less spectacular than Laurel’s to an enormous winding staircase. Upstairs were two corridors leading in opposite directions. “The twins,” he uttered, casting his eyes to the left. “You,” casting his eyes to the right.

  Down the corridor we went, until he stopped at a large white door. “Your quarters. Good night.”

  He headed back the same way we’d come, and I opened the door to what would be home for the night—maybe longer if I could stomach ever coming face-to-face with the twins again. The wallpaper was muted pink and white, and a velvet divan had been placed directly under a picture window overlooking the Atlantic. It was too dark to see the water, but a few sparkling lights twinkled in the distance. There was a white antique desk where I could set up my iBook, along with a high-backed pink leather chair and several hassocks. On the far wall was what I guessed to be a sixty-inch flat-screen TV. An archway opened into a massive bedroom with a canopied king-size bed and a walk-in closet that—like Les Anges’s foyer—was roughly the size of my entire East Village apartment.


  I went back into the den and called James, but I hit his voice mail. My second call was to Charma, who took the news of my rapid deployment to South Florida with her usual deadpan aplomb. I tried to describe Sage and Rose, suggesting she picture the biggest bitch from when she’d been a senior in high school, multiply her times infinity, and then split her in two. That was the Baker twins.

  I told her I loathed them. I also told her how much I would make in a week.

  “Hire a Cuban dominatrix from Miami to lash them to a bed if you have to, Megan,” Charma droned as I opened the mini-fridge in the closet. It was empty, but inside was a note: Summon Marco for provisions. Who the hell was Marco? “Stay there and bring Mama home something nice,” she told me sternly.

  “Seriously, Charma. I don’t know how I can possibly—”

  I stopped midsentence. Was someone knocking on my suite door? I listened. Yes. There it was again.

  “Someone’s here,” I told Charma. “Call you later.”

  “Wait, wait. Laurel Limoges has a wine cellar, right?”

  My finger hovered over the “end” button. “I haven’t had the grand tour yet, but probably.”

  “If you do blow out of there, grab me a couple bottles. She’ll never miss ’em.”

  I hung up and padded down the corridor to the door. There stood Sage and Rose.

  “Could we . . . speak with you a minute?” Sage asked tentatively.

  Where was the sneer? Where was the attitude? Why hadn’t she called me Frizzy?

  “Sure,” I told them cautiously. “Come in.”

  They trailed behind me back to the pink-polka-dotted sitting area. “So, what’s up?” I asked as they settled onto two of the hassocks.

  They shared a hesitant look. “We came to apologize. Earlier . . . we weren’t so nice.” Sage twisted the bottom of her camisole nervously between her fingers. “It was just such a shock, you know. What our grandmother did.”

  Rose nodded. “Eighty-four million dollars is a lot of money. You don’t get that taken away from you every day.”

  “And that stuff about college?” Sage went on, her green eyes watery and earnest. “That was news to us. She never said anything about Duke before. How were we supposed to know?”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I told them, surprising myself. It would be shocking to hear you couldn’t go on being the spoiled princess you’d always been. It might even have ruptured their one shared brain cell. “Let’s start over. I’m Megan,” I said lamely, holding out my hand.

  “Sage.” She giggled, extending her hand, too.

  “Rose. How do you do?” She stood up, then curtsied. Okay, that was kind of cute.

  All I knew about the Baker twins was what I’d read in Vanity Fair and seen in Laurel’s office. Maybe there was more to them than that.

  “As long as we’re starting over . . .” I took a seat on the carpet and motioned for them to join me, which they did. “How about if we get to know each other a little? What do you guys do for fun?” I nearly rolled my eyes at myself to save them the trouble.

  Sage put her knees up, circling her long legs with her arms. “To tell you the truth, we’re kind of wild.”

  Rose’s head bobbed. “Very wild.”

  “I can be wild,” I said confidently, recalling my oh-so-recent East Village beavering.

  Sage rose to her knees and put her head close to mine. “Tell us the wildest thing you ever did.”

  Hmmm. Save the unintentional beavering, my wildometer was a total flatline.

  Sage grinned. “Sex in public?”

  Whether I had or I hadn’t—okay, I hadn’t—it didn’t seem like bonding over my sex life with my two students-to-be was a really professional way to go. But I wanted to prove that I wasn’t afraid to meet them halfway.

  “Let’s save that for another night,” I dodged.

  “Fair enough,” Sage agreed, though I could see her shoulders sag with disappointment. I feared I was losing my audience, but Sage’s next words belied that impression.

  “You know, you’re not really what we thought,” Sage told me. She tilted her head as if looking at me anew. “You seem almost . . . cool.”

  Rose nodded emphatically. “Yeah.”

  “So . . .” Sage perked up again. “Maybe this could work after all. Let’s try studying tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Yeah, let’s.” Laurel had been right. These girls might be dumb, but they weren’t stupid enough to turn their back on the family fortune. “How about nine o’clock?”

  “Ten,” Sage said.

  “Ten it is.”

  Sage grinned the biggest, whitest grin in the history of big, white grins. “You’re on—if you’ll do something for us first.”

  “Yeah,” Rose agreed.

  Fine. They wanted to prove to me that they had some power by making it an exchange. I understood. It was Sociology 101, only they couldn’t spell the “sociology” part. I was willing.

  “We’re going to give you a chance to prove that you’re wild,” Sage declared.

  “Okay, fine. As long as it isn’t illegal. Or sexual,” I added hastily.

  Sage nibbled contemplatively on a manicured forefinger. Then she waggled her eyebrows at her sister. “How about . . . skinny-dipping? In our saltwater pool? There’s a freshwater pool over at Grandma’s house, but I know you aren’t wild enough do it there.”

  Skinny-dipping? Skinny-dipping was the best they could come up with? Honestly, I was mildly disappointed in the Fabulous Baker Twins. I’d gone to hippie New Hampshire sleepaway camp. Skinny-dipping was nothing—or rather, it had been nothing when I was twelve and still had wonderfully prepubescent hips and perky almost-breasts. Sage’s fat-ass jab still stung a little.

  “And where would you guys be?” I asked.

  “We aren’t going to stand around watching, if that’s what you think.” Sage sounded insulted that I’d even consider such a thing. “We’ll get the champagne for when you get out. To celebrate our new start together and our eventual entry into the shallowed halls of Duke University.”

  Shallowed? Oy. I definitely had my work cut out for me.

  Identify which part of the following sentence is incorrect:

  Swimming nude in the (a) presents of one’s students (b) is a remarkable way to make (c) a big splash (d) in a new job. (e) No error

  Chapter Nine

  In the half hour between my “okay, I’ll do it” and the actuality of the act, there was more than enough time for second thoughts.

  It didn’t take a Yale grad to balance the equation. Maturity was not the twins’ strong suit. Plus, it was only after I’d dodged their query about my wildest sexual escapade that Sage had decided on my saltwater plunge in the buff. I added the elements together and came up with the obvious answer: photographs. Sage and Rose would be waiting, camera in hand, when I climbed out of the pool. They’d probably post the pix at www.ratemytits.com and cast a thousand “1” votes against me.

  It couldn’t be too difficult to outsmart two not-so-smart teen girls.

  I found the deck on the east side of the twins’ manse. Bright gaslight torches illuminated the perimeter. The deck was dotted with cerulean chaise longues and a cabana with a fully stocked bar. A stone seawall separated the deck from the beach and, beyond that, the ocean. As I’d anticipated, the twins were waiting for me. I didn’t see any cameras, but that didn’t mean they weren’t stashed behind the bar.

  “Right on time,” Sage called cheerfully. Too cheerfully. Fine, I would play along.

  “Hey. I’m on time tonight. You be on time tomorrow.” I dragged a chaise to the edge of the pool and turned my back to them as I began unbuttoning my white shirt. The salty ocean air felt thick and warm on my bare skin. It was hard to believe I’d been in nearly freezing New York City just that morning.

  “Are you shy?” Sage asked.

  “Sometimes,” I called over my shoulder as nonchalantly as possible. I draped my shirt over the chair, careful to leave one of th
e sleeves within grabbing distance of the water. I figured if I saw candid photography in the offing, I could pull the shirt into the pool and put it on. It would get soaked, but it was long enough to hide what needed to be hidden.

  Rose nudged her sister. “It’s kind of sweet, really.”

  “Yeah, sweet.”

  I stepped out of my skirt and draped it across the chair, too. The girls recoiled in horror.

  “Have you no pride?” Sage was aghast.

  I figured she was insulting my body again, and the words Screw you, you brain-dead twit came to mind. However, that wouldn’t have been entirely conducive to building a productive teacher-student relationship. Before I could decide whether immediate satisfaction outweighed temperate maturity, Sage clarified herself. “Your underwear. How could you?”

  Remember that I’d been under severe duress, both financial and psychological, only yesterday at Century 21. I had found the yellow semi-granny panties in a two-pairs-for-six-bucks bin, which allowed me to buy—you guessed it—two pairs. As for the bra, I had to cope with the lingerie buyer’s Hello Kitty fetish, because that was all I found in the other bargain bin.

  “It’s ironic,” I explained, not in the mood for a heart-to-heart about either the fire in my apartment or the pitiful state of my balance sheet. They looked at me blankly, and I realized they had no clue what ironic meant. All righty, then. I started to unclasp Hello Kitty, then stopped. “You two planning to take notes?”

  “We said we wouldn’t watch,” Rose reminded her sister, then offered me a pair of swim goggles. “You might want these. It’s salt water.”

  That was kind of thoughtful. “Thanks.”

  “Okay. So, twenty laps?” Sage suggested.

  “Sounds good.” To prove how chill I was with everything, I shrugged out of Hello Kitty and twirled one strap from a forefinger.

  “Woo-hoo!” Sage cheered. “That’s the spirit. Enjoy. We’ll be back with champagne and chocolate. Or maybe just champagne. And remember, no wet underwear!”