The Elite

by Jennifer Banash

  “What’s going on?” Sophie asked nervously, noticing the worried look on her mother’s face.

  “We’ve got something big to discuss with you, Sophie honey,” her mother said, and Sophie noticed that her mother looked almost pale underneath her olive complexion and the deep tan she cultivated year round. Oh crap, Sophie thought, exhaling. They got the last American Express bill. She didn’t mean to go so over the top, really she didn’t. Okay, so she did go shopping almost every other day for the past month—but, then again, she couldn’t be expected to wear the same four bikinis every week at the rooftop pool at the Soho House, now could she? And that went double for her family’s house on Martha’s Vineyard, where she’d spent most of June and July mooning over Will, the cute townie who clipped their vast rows of hedges. Having a thing for the gardener was so Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Sophie had given a report on D. H. Lawrence last year in English class, where she’d argued that in the twenty-first century Lady Chatterley would’ve been known as a “playa,” and that anyone who disliked the book was an anti-feminist who liked to “playa hate.” Needless to say, it didn’t go over too well with her English teacher, Mrs. Williams, who looked like she could benefit from a lusty romp with the gardener herself…

  “Sophie,” her mother began in the World Peace Now! voice she liked to use when giving elaborate speeches, “you’re turning sixteen soon, and there’s something rather serious we need to discuss.”

  At the mention of her impending birthday, Sophie felt herself relax. So that’s what this was all about—they probably wanted to talk to her about the party. Trouble was, the plans for that party were a done deal: They’d already hired one of the Upper East Side’s premiere event planners to take care of every last detail, and reserved space at Marquee. So, what else was there to talk about? Phoebe and Madison had already turned sixteen months ago, and Sophie thought she’d die waiting for the chance to upstage them. Ever since her sixth-grade English teacher had discovered Sophie plowing through the complete works of Jane Austen and recommended to her parents that she skip a grade, she’d felt out of step with the rest of her classmates in more ways than one. Watching Phoebe and Mad turn sixteen last year while she had to wait for a whole new school year to arrive had been completely unbearable. If she had known that falling for Mr. Darcy would cause this much trouble, she would’ve been sure to have kept Jane a secret and made sure her teachers saw her reading nothing but Stephen King—that way they might’ve even left her back a year, so she could turn sixteen before everyone else. Sophie wrapped her arms around her torso, hugging herself happily. Maybe they were going to spill the details of her present early! The corners of Sophie’s bow-shaped lips turned up in a smile as she pictured a silver Ferrari, a bright pink ribbon wound around its shining metallic hood parked out in front of The Bram—and the look of envy clouding Madison’s face as Sophie slid into the driver’s seat…

  “…that’s why we waited to tell you…adoption…biological mother.”

  Sophie’s head came up like a hunting dog, and she stared at her mother uncomprehendingly. Phyllis smoothed down her Carolina Herrera beige linen pants, the thick gold Chanel cuffs on both wrists sparkling in the late-afternoon sunlight. Sophie noticed that all of a sudden it felt like she was breathing way too fast, and she put one hand on her heart to make sure it was still there, knocking around wildly in her chest.

  “Tell me what?” Sophie said, feeling the tight muscle of her heart racing beneath her palm. “Adoption? What are you guys talking about?”

  “Sophie,” her father said, his three-button silk suit looking just as crisp as when he’d put it on at five that morning, his dark beard neatly trimmed. “We adopted you when you were just six months old. Your mother and I didn’t think…” Alistair broke off, looking helplessly at her mother, his mouth opening and closing. Phyllis immediately rushed to fill in the gap, her voice hurried and nervous.

  “What your father’s trying to say, Sophie, honey, is that we didn’t think I could get pregnant again—after Jared we tried and tried and…nothing.” Her mother looked at the floor, and cleared her throat delicately. “So we adopted you. There was a woman in my acting class—we became friends and then she got pregnant…” Her mother’s voice trailed off and she stared down at the carpet, a pensive expression darkening her features.

  “Since when were you an actress, Mom?” Sophie wondered aloud, feeling like her entire world had just messily imploded all over the living room rug.

  “It was something I tried out before you were born,” her mother said. “I was never very serious—nor very good.” Phyllis looked up at Sophie pleadingly, her pain contorting her expression. “But your…Melissa—well, she was very good—I think she knew even then that she was going to have a big career.”

  “So she just…gave me to you?” Sophie asked slowly, “like a fucking sweater?”

  “Watch your language, young lady,” her father snapped, crossing his arms over his chest, clearly uncomfortable with the trajectory of the conversation. “Yes,” he continued, “she allowed us to adopt you—but there were…conditions.”

  “What conditions?” Sophie demanded. She felt like the whole world had suddenly been tilted on its side, and everything in her once-normal life was now flipped completely upside down. Things were moving way too fast and her stomach turned over like a Russian gymnast on crank. She felt scarily nauseated.

  “We promised your birth mother that, when you turned sixteen, we’d tell you that you were adopted—and that we’d allow her to meet you, if you wanted to,” Phyllis added nervously, twisting the Fred Leighton diamond-and-emerald white-gold eternity ring Sophie’s father had surprised her with as a fortieth birthday present last month so relentlessly that her finger would probably come popping off at any minute, blood spurting out all over the carpet, which was worth more than most people’s New York apartments. “You certainly don’t have to meet her,” she added, smiling hopefully.

  “Why didn’t she want to keep in touch with me—or you?” Sophie demanded, trying desperately to make sense of the thoughts flooding her brain like a monsoon. Her body felt at once both tingly and numb, and she had that pukey, sweaty feeling—like she’d drank one too many cappuccinos at lunch. She stared uncomprehendingly at the TV as Jay-Z moved around a preening Beyoncé, throwing his hands in the air.

  “She got busy with her career,” her mother said quietly. “And we all agreed it would be best for you to have a…fresh start.”

  “You agreed,” Sophie said woodenly, “without even asking me.” It was a statement, not a question, and as she sat there trying desperately to focus on what her parents were telling her, despite her obvious confusion, Sophie was aware of the fact that suddenly, all her past feelings of incompleteness made perfect sense. Her life was exactly like one of those stupid optical illusion paintings they sold in mall in the suburbs—not that Sophie had ever been to the suburbs, much less walked the hideous confines of a mall—where a series of squiggly lines suddenly became a glowing silver dolphin if you looked at it the right way. And once you knew the hidden image was there, it was impossible to view the picture the same way ever again.

  Sophie stood up, her body shaking with rage, her fists clenched at her sides. Her whole life up until now had been nothing more than one enormous lie.

  With his usual impeccable timing, Jared sauntered into the room bare-chested, shoving the last of her personal stash of chocolate-chocolate chip Häagen-Dazs she’d hidden in the back of the freezer last week into his open mouth.

  “What’s going on?” Jared scraped the bottom of the carton with a spoon, and flopped down on the couch, grabbing the remote.

  “We’re talking to Sophie, dear,” Phyllis said, standing up and running a hand through her dark, chin-length bob. “And shouldn’t you be working on your college applications?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Jared said, his mouth full. “That’s a great idea, Mom. You know—considering I just got kicked out of Exeter and everything. I’m sur
e Ivy League schools will be lining up to admit me.”

  “Jared,” her father began, his voice like steel, “you have got to get serious. You can’t go surfing through life as if there aren’t any consequences. When I was your age…”

  From somewhere far away, Sophie could hear her father droning on about “responsibility” and “choices,” as she watched her brother put his dirty feet up on the couch and lean back, scraping the last dregs of chocolate ice cream from the now-empty carton while she just stood there, being totally ignored. Couldn’t this moment be about her for once? She’d just received the most potentially life-changing information in all of her almost-sixteen years—and now all anyone wanted to talk about was Jared’s dumbass college applications, as if any university in its right mind would ever accept him anyway.

  Sophie tightened her fists, digging her nails into her palms and wondered how long she could stand there, feeling invisible. If she didn’t say something soon, smoke would start pouring out of her ears like in the cartoons she still watched on random Saturday mornings.

  “How could you lie to me?” she screamed at her parents, tears falling from her green eyes and streaming down her face, smearing the Urban Decay bronzer she’d applied that morning into ugly brown streaks.

  “Oh, Sophie,” her mother said, her face falling. “It’s more complicated than that, honey. We just—”

  “You just what?” Sophie screamed, tears running down her face. “You just decided that it would be more convenient to lie to me for my entire life until now? Is that it?” Her parents just stood there silently—even Jared stopped licking the ice-cream carton and just sat there, mouth open. Sophie could feel her nose snotting all over her upper lip, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand, not caring how gross it was as she ran out of the room and down the long hallway, slamming her bedroom door behind her and sinking to her knees on the plush carpet.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw her pink razor lying on the counter of her white-and-turquoise tiled bathroom. She wanted more than anything to pop the blade from the casing and draw it roughly across her skin until she couldn’t feel much of anything at all. But she knew that it wouldn’t solve any of her problems. She’d feel better for the moment, sure, but tomorrow morning she’d feel just as bad and the cycle would start all over again. And maybe she was looking at this all the wrong way. Okay, so her biological mother may have given her up, and her parents may have lied to her, but now, at least, she knew the truth—and that meant she had options.

  Sophie stood up and then sat at her desk in front of her titanium MacBook. She pulled up Google and plugged in her own name, but all she got was a passing mention in an online society rag, and some weird girl’s blog talking about how hot Jared was. Gross.

  Jared had always teased her about being adopted, but it had never seriously crossed her mind that it really might be true. Sophie sat back in her chair and crossed her bare legs beneath her, Indian style, her eyes drawn to the framed photograph on her desk of her family at Jared’s lacrosse game last year, her blond hair shining brightly out of the picture like a beacon—or a signal to pay attention. Why had she never really considered it? And would having a brand-new family be so bad? It’s not like she got along so well with her own anyway. And her real mom could be anyone. Hadn’t Phyllis said that her mother had been an actress? Maybe her real mom was someone truly fabulous—even though she obviously needed her head examined for giving up a daughter as amazing as Sophie. What ever the reason, Sophie knew that she wanted to find out. And maybe, just maybe, for the first time ever she just might end up somewhere she really belonged…

  back

  to

  basics

  Drew sat in his room, staring at the blank white screen of his laptop and nursing an imported Dutch beer. Why were girls so weird? He thought that he and Casey were getting along pretty well before she’d practically attacked him in French class. By the time lunch had rolled around, he could barely look at her, and he’d prayed that she’d get the hint and stay on the other end of the Dining Hall with Mad, Phoebe, and Sophie—where she belonged. Still, each time he’d looked up and caught her staring at him with that sad, mournful look, he’d felt kind of bad. Tomorrow, he was definitely going out for some Ray’s sausage and mushroom pizza—his favorite—and avoiding all the potential drama.

  Drew exhaled heavily and took another swallow of beer. It kind of sucked—he’d had this whole Woody Allen–type fantasy of showing Casey around the city, maybe taking her at sunset to that spot where Woody and Diane Keaton had their first almost-date, sitting on the bench overlooking the Manhattan Bridge, watching the sunrise. As they’d stood there in the Dining Hall talking so effortlessly, he could almost see her curly hair resting lightly on his shoulder as they looked into the changing sky, the lights coming on across the bridge like a strand of Christmas lights…

  Too bad it was never going to happen—girls who hung all over him were always a turnoff. No matter how pretty she was, or how into her he might be, when girls started throwing themselves at him it always just seemed kind of desperate. And, to be honest, it made him kind of nervous, too. What was he supposed to do when some girl ran her hand up and down his arm in front of the whole class? Kiss her? Throw her to the floor and rip off her clothes? Actually, that wasn’t sounding like such a bad idea all of a sudden…

  Drew drained the last dregs of beer from the amber bottle and tossed it in the trash as a Gchat message flashed across the blank screen.

  socialiez666: What up?

  Drew paused before answering, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, a smile creeping across his face. It was so totally predictable—why fight it? He and Madison couldn’t seem to stay away from one another, no matter how much they pissed each other off. Come to think of it, they’d never really given things a serious shot—they’d always just hooked up and pretended it didn’t really happen the day after. Maybe he should really try and see what happened. The only problem was, when he looked at Mad, as gorgeous as she was, he didn’t really get that feeling, those crazy butterflies everyone talked about in the movies. Sure, he wanted to tear off her dress and eat it for breakfast, but it wasn’t like he spent his nights thinking about holding her hand and watching the sunset. But maybe that was because, except for that disastrous night before he left for Amsterdam, he’d never really tried.

  dva1990: Not much. Wanna hang tomorrow night?

  The Gchat window stayed motionless, the icon blinking for what felt like forever. Drew realized that he was holding his breath waiting for her response. All of a sudden he was completely terrified that she might say no. Madison was as much of a constant in his life as his parents—or that chair in the corner. He couldn’t even for a minute imagine his life without her in it. And if that wasn’t love, than what was? Probably something best described by Jerry Springer…

  socialiez666: K Talk later.

  Drew logged off, breathing a sigh of relief and stood up, stretching his long arms above his head and stretching his muscles until he heard his back crack, unlocking the tension in his spine he’d been carrying around all day. Maybe, despite what his dad or anyone else said, it was just easier to continue playing it safe—and for Drew Van Allen, Madison Macallister was about as safe as it got. In a way, it was effortless—Mad was the girl everyone expected him to be with, the most beautiful girl in school from the most notorious family on the entire Upper East Side. But that was exactly the problem—Drew had never been the kind of guy who did what was expected of him—in fact, once he knew that he was supposed to do something—or someone—he usually did the polar opposite, and ran as fast as his feet could carry him in the other direction.

  If he was totally honest with himself, Drew knew that he’d never really taken Mad seriously as actual girlfriend material—when they weren’t making out frantically, they were more like an old married couple who argued and bickered all the time than anything resembling the kind of great love stories he sometimes caught on late-night
TV—if he was Bogie, Madison was definitely not Bacall. The problem was that they were so set in this ridiculous pattern of fighting, then making up—or out—that the whole thing had gotten pretty old. Maybe they needed to bust out of their comfort zone and do something that would take their relationship to a different level—one where they couldn’t argue all the time—or tear each other’s clothes off either.

  Not that total nakedness with Madison was necessarily a bad idea…

  owner

  of a

  lonely

  heart

  Casey sat cross-legged on her bed, surveying the open textbooks that surrounded her like an ocean of slick, glossy paper. She’d never really experienced the pressure of having to exceed academically before. Back in Normal, no one really paid much attention to her test scores or eventual report card except for her mother, who would usually use Casey’s grades as an excuse to start waxing ecstatic about the merits of “applying oneself in an academic setting.” It was hard not to yawn when Barbara really got going, but Casey had learned to plaster an engaged expression on her face, nodding periodically as though she were actually listening, when in reality she was usually entertaining a series of completely random thoughts—like what the probability would be of getting her hair to grow back in magically straight if she buzzed it all off with a pair of clippers like Britney Spears in the throes of her nineteenth nervous breakdown…

  It’s not that she didn’t care about doing well—it’s just that, before now, she’d never had to particularly try very hard. No offense to her former Illinois classmates, but the kids back home were more interested in planning the next kegger and cruising Main Street on Saturday nights than they were in studying for the dreaded SATs. Class was for passing notes and daydreaming—not for raising your hand or, God forbid, actually paying attention. But at Meadowlark, she had to fight just to get a word in during class discussions, which could only be described as intense. To add a little more pressure, keeping her grades up was one of the conditions of her continued enrollment. If she wanted to stay at Meadowlark, good grades weren’t a choice—they were a necessity. The thing that unnerved her the most about her new school was the feeling that she wasn’t allowed to screw up, even if she wanted to. As she sat in class after class, listening to her fellow students give intricate, detailed explanations of the Crimean war and global warming, Casey started to wonder if too much perfection was really a good thing. It wasn’t the pressure to excel that was really bothering her—it was the fact that being a Meadlowlark student meant that she flat-out wasn’t allowed to make mistakes. And that made her nervous indeed.