The Birthday Girl

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “Hey,” said Todd. “Is that a speaker?”

  “Yeah.” The DJ shook his head. One of the six-foot-tall speakers was lying sideways on the floor, broken, with bits of metal and plastic on the rug.

  “They were fighting over the mic and pulled too hard,” the DJ explained. “Your person tried to get them to stop.”

  Citlali kept shaking her head and muttering to herself.

  Todd sighed. “How much?” A price was named. All in all, it wasn’t too bad. “Add it to the bill,” he said. “Will you still be able to play?”

  “Nah, man.”

  Todd would have to remember to apologize to Ellie for yelling at her for booking two DJs, since it was fortunate they still had the other guy. The fancy DJ from the Las Vegas club was playing music in the main part of the house. Then again, it wasn’t the fancy DJ’s speaker that was busted. But it could have been, knowing the boys.

  Todd brushed his hair back from his forehead. “Where are the twins?” he asked Citlali, who was sweeping the rug as the DJ began to pack up his equipment.

  “They ran away.”

  * * *

  —

  Todd went to find them. They were probably outside on the golf course, taunting golfers. Another hobby of theirs, he thought with a grin. Those terrors. He couldn’t stay mad. In truth, he wasn’t even mad in the first place.

  The twins were a hurricane; they left havoc in their wake. The family once went to dinner at a popular Mexican restaurant in Rancho Mirage, and Otis had climbed on the table to try to get a tortilla chip from the basket but fell on his butt, his sneaker landing in the salsa, which flew everywhere. He and Ellie had been so embarrassed, hurriedly gathering all the kids and getting out of there, but they also couldn’t stop laughing when they got home.

  He had four children. Sam was his eldest, his joy, his baby, but he had left her mother and he would never be able to make it up to her; she would forever feel the sting of that abandonment. Even if Sam liked Ellie, loved her even, she would always know that her father had chosen Ellie over his own family. Then there was Giggy, who loved him from the beginning, then hated him when she found out he wasn’t her “bio-dad.” That had cost a lot of therapy and he still resented the fact that Ellie hadn’t let him adopt Giggy when they had the chance.

  But the twins. Oh, the twins.

  Elijah Samuel and Otis Benedict.

  They were angels. Identical white-blond angels with their tanned little bodies. They ran rampant throughout every resort they’d ever stayed in. Ellie liked to keep their hair long; she never took them for haircuts. They looked like wild, feral, beautiful children. The boys could do no wrong. The girls liked to complain that Eli and Otis got away with everything, that their parents loved the boys more.

  They weren’t wrong. But they weren’t quite right either. It wasn’t that they loved the boys more—it was just that they were easier to love. Was that a fair thing to say or think? Todd was pretty sure he loved all his children equally, even as they came to him under different circumstances.

  The thing was, each girl was living with only one of her parents, a product of broken promises and broken homes. The girls knew that fairy tales sometimes didn’t have happy endings. They knew and saw that their parents were flawed and sometimes made bad decisions. But to the twins—their parents had always been in love and they were the loves of their lives.

  Besides, the two girls spoiled their brothers to death. The twins were everyone’s favorites.

  “Boys!” called Todd as he walked through a hole in the hedges in the backyard and continued on to the golf course.

  Eli was chucking golf balls into the air while Otis was trying to get the golf cart to start. Thank god it was late in the day so there were no golfers around to complain. Not that anyone ever did. The boys lived in a bubble—every naughty prank they pulled only made them more endearing. Everyone at the golf club adored the twins, no surprise there.

  Todd shook his finger at them. “Behave yourselves, okay? No more fighting. You broke the DJ’s machine. Not good.”

  “Sorry, Daddy,” said Eli, who was the sweeter one.

  Otis looked petulant. “It was Eli’s fault.”

  “It’s both your faults,” said Todd automatically. “You hear me?”

  Otis pouted. “Yes, Daddy.”

  Todd looked down at them sternly. “What’s today?”

  “Mama’s birthday party,” whispered Eli.

  “And what did we say you had to do today?” asked Todd.

  “Be good,” chorused the boys.

  Todd ruffled both of their heads. They were like baby chicks, their hair as soft as feathers and as bright as the sun. “All right, let’s go inside the house, and don’t run away again; you guys can have dessert early.”

  Okay, so the girls were right, he did love them more. Shoot him.

  EIGHT

  Food Fights

  October 19

  Twenty-Four Years Ago

  7:00 P.M.

  Leo followed Mish and Brooks as they led the way to the food court. Mish and Brooks each had a hand in the other’s back pocket, so they were cupping each other’s butts as they walked. Why was that even allowed in public? Leo cringed to see it but she was jealous too, of course.

  David Griffin was leaning against the wall near the hot dog and lemonade stand when they got there. Leo recognized him now. He was not the cute Dave. He was a little on the short side, with cropped dark hair and a wide grin. He was the guy who was forever walking down hallways and flipping up cheerleaders’ skirts.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, when he saw them. “Birthday girl, huh?” he said, turning to Leo.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks,” she added, even though, technically, he hadn’t wished her a happy birthday, just stated the fact. It would be something she would remember later, that he’d been a creep from the start.

  “Let’s get a picture!” said Mish, who appeared to be determined to record every awkward moment of this day.

  Leo grimaced as Dave put his arm around her.

  “Sweet sixteen. Tell me, how sweet is it?” he said, wagging his eyebrows as if he were funny or clever.

  Leo glanced at Mish, who rolled her eyes. “Dave, don’t be gross,” said Mish. Leo extracted herself from his embrace. Mish put away her camera.

  “You guys hungry?” asked Brooks hopefully.

  “Not yet,” said Mish, even though Leo could have used a little snack.

  She spoke up then, and internally chastised herself for being so quiet. Leo did that sometimes, let Mish run everything. “Actually, I could eat something.”

  “Oh,” said Mish. “Okay, what do you want?”

  “Anything,” said Leo. “Whatever.” Her boldness went only so far; she was back to being agreeable.

  Dave made it clear he found this indecision boring and turned to talk to Brooks about an upcoming lacrosse game, which he kept calling “lax” to be cool.

  “Pretzels?” asked Brooks, who had been paying attention to the girls’ conversation after all.

  “Sure,” said Leo, determined to be amiable even as she did the food math of pretzels = carbs = fat. The modeling scout had ordered her to lose weight, but she could start next week maybe.

  They went and got pretzels from one of the concessions, and sat down at a table to eat. Dave didn’t seem that interested in her, and the feeling was mutual. Brooks appeared a little tense, not relaxed like he usually was around them. Like he was trying to be more of a guy’s guy because Dave was there. Usually he gossiped with them about everything that was happening in school.

  Mish wasn’t having it either. This birthday was turning out to be a bit of a dud. I’m sorry, she mouthed.

  It’s okay, Leo mouthed back. She took a bite of her pretzel because she was hungry, but it tasted leaden in her mouth.

  “Br
ooks, can I talk to you?” asked Mish, pulling him away from the table.

  “Sure, babe.”

  They left Dave and Leo alone at the table. Leo had no idea what to say to him, not that she didn’t know how to talk to boys. She talked to Arnold a lot. Except she didn’t really consider Arnold a boy, per se, he was just Arnold. Mostly, Arnold listened. Leo thought most people would choose David Griffin over Arnold Dylan any day. Dave had that clean-cut all-American look, while Arnold looked, well, dirty. Like a little filthy, like he lived on the streets, which he had to sometimes.

  Dave continued to eat his pretzel in big, wolfy bites and ignored her. She took a little bite of hers. “Have you always played lacrosse?” she asked politely, to break the silence.

  He shrugged. “I guess. I play soccer too. And baseball. But I had to choose a spring sport, so I chose lax.”

  “What position do you play?” asked Leo, who had no idea what kind of positions there were.

  “Lead attack,” he said smugly, although it meant nothing to Leo.

  “Cool,” she said.

  “Damn straight it is,” he said.

  The conversation went like that: one-sided; he never asked her any questions about herself. Not even if she’d ever seen a lacrosse game, which she had. Mish dragged her to watch Brooks sometimes.

  There were twenty players on the Arlington lacrosse team and any one of them would have been preferable to David Griffin. Noah Limerick, for instance, had a sweet smile, or Josh Pierce, who had a goofy sense of humor, or even Kurt Evans, Ryan Jones, or Patrick Ortega, who were all catalog-handsome.

  Leo hoped Mish and Brooks would come back to the table soon. When they finally did, Leo tried not to look too relieved.

  Dave got up. “Dude, I’m going to jam.”

  “Yeah?” asked Brooks.

  “Yeah, I gotta meet everyone at Stacey’s,” he told them. “You’ll be there, right?”

  Brooks looked to Mish.

  Mish shook her head.

  “Okay, man, your loss,” said Dave. He slapped Brooks’s back and nodded to Mish. He didn’t even say goodbye to Leo.

  Mish took a deep breath. “You know what we need?” she said, her eyes sparkling.

  “What?” asked Leo.

  “Drinks. Come on. It’s time we got this party started for real.”

  NINE

  Cocktail Hour and the Billionaire Problem

  October 19

  The Present

  7:00 P.M.

  While Todd was handling some sort of mess in the game room, Ellie had her own problems. Her billionaires were starting to arrive, and billionaires always ruined it for everybody. Ellie wasn’t sure she would have gone to all this trouble, flown so many people out, insisted on out-of-season flowers and fruit, hired the Parisian interior decorator, and booked two different DJs, if Blake, Celine, and Sanjay weren’t coming tonight. If it was de rigueur to have at least one billionaire in one’s social circle, Ellie of course had three. Billionaires were the new show ponies. Who didn’t have a close personal friend who was a billionaire these days? In 1982, there were only twelve billionaires in the United States, but by 2012, there were exactly four hundred twenty-five superrich souls. They infected society like overfed beasts, brimming with the indifference and disdain that a billion dollars conferred on a person, living, as they were, in a shellacked billion-dollar bubble.

  One of Ellie’s LA girlfriends, Diana, a writer, had gone to high school with MacKenzie Bezos even. But Diana wasn’t jealous that her old friend had ended up with a billionaire; instead, Diana was incensed that MacKenzie got better reviews for her first novel than she did, just because she was a Bezos. It was all Diana talked about when MacKenzie’s book came out, how unfair it was that The New York Times had raved about it while they’d completely ignored her own book.

  Ellie was amused but, unlike Diana, she was definitely jealous of the billions, especially since, with the divorce, MacKenzie would be the richest woman in the world. Numbers mattered to her. Ellie didn’t know Jeff and MacKenzie or the mistress, but she knew people who knew them, which was enough.

  Blake Burberry was the worst but the most famous, with a last name that was practically synonymous with Britain, a name that came with its own plaid pattern. In fact, Blake never signed his notes, since his personal stationery already carried the Burberry logo. Maybe he wasn’t titled or royal (Blake spent his childhood playing tennis at Buckingham Palace with Prince William—okay, only twice, but an anecdote he let slip at every occasion), but his money wasn’t brand spanking new and combustible like those Silicon Valley paper billionaires either. (What on earth was a paper billionaire? Was it like a straw man? Something not quite real?) Blake liked to think of himself as a contrarian, down-to-earth, frugal, and so in London he lived in Soho rather than Mayfair; in New York he hunkered down in Brooklyn Heights rather than the Upper East Side, drove a Mini rather than a Tesla, and was currently staying at the Ace Hotel rather than the Parker, which he deemed too extravagant. And yet Blake was also building a fifty-million-dollar Malibu house and flew his beloved Goldendoodle private for vet checkups back in New York. Blake was an ass.

  They’d met in London, when she was still married to Archer. She could blame her ex-husband for the number of billionaires in her life, she supposed. Blake had been younger then, and cuter, and could get away with saying all those flippantly rude things in that posh accent of his. All she knew was she’d grown up dying to wear one of those iconic checkered scarves that she could never afford. When she met Blake, almost twenty years ago now, he’d been sweet even, but after coming into his trust fund and giving up his musical career due to an obvious-to-everyone-except-him lack of talent, he had hardened into a bored, listless dilettante. Bisexual and perennially single, because not even a billion dollars could make anyone put up with Blake (which was really saying something).

  She had no idea why they were friends or if they even liked each other. But then, she could probably say that about half the people at the party. At least he’d dressed up for her, was wearing a slim Tom Ford navy suit and a crisp white shirt, tan and handsome. Ellie liked her friends to be decorative, to look good in a room. She approved. Apparently, so did he.

  “Darling, you’ve finally impressed me,” he smirked as he entered the house.

  “Thanks, I think?” she said sharply. “What does that mean?”

  “Oh, Elle,” he said, “I’m just joking.” Her never called her by her preferred name; she suspected he thought it was too gauche.

  He disappeared into the party, zooming in on the friends they had in common, for he never had any interest in meeting anyone new since, as a billionaire, he figured he’d already met everyone worth knowing; everyone else wasn’t worth his time. The party bus from the Parker had arrived a few minutes before, and by now the house was packed with out-of-town friends as well as a few locals they’d met through the museum. The London contingent seemed to be getting along with the New York people. The LA people hung together, cliquey as usual, but overall, there was a happy buzz over the sound of the piano and the cocktail shakers, which was the real music to her ears.

  Of course, billionaires were the least of her problems. The moment she was alone, she snuck out the front door, pulled out her phone, and began texting Harry Kim to find out what was going on. She’d rung him the minute Nathaniel told her about the message, but he hadn’t picked up, so she’d texted a barrage of questions right after. But so far, there was no answer, not even the dot-dot-dot that meant he was typing a reply. Nothing. This could not be good.

  She could feel nervous perspiration forming on her brow and under her arms and she willed it away. The last thing she needed was to ruin her artfully made-up face and soak through the thin silk fabric of her dress.

  With relief, she noticed a boxy Honda with an Uber sticker pulling up to the curb, which meant Sanjay was here.

  E
llie had assumed that all the billionaires in her life would want to know one another, but while Sanjay was curious about Blake, Blake had absolutely no interest in Sanjay. Unlike Blake, who’d inherited his wealth, Sanjay had made his own money, had earned it in his lifetime. Sanjay Kumar was another of Archer’s friends—although friends wasn’t quite the word—more like Sanjay was one of the rich people in London whom Archer invited to his parties. Like Blake, Sanjay was a certified bachelor, but he preferred to date sexy MIT professors rather than Archer’s host of jailbait models or Blake’s pretty, young rent boys. Sanjay had helped Ellie out of a bad situation back when she and Archer were living in Dubai for a spell, and for that she was forever grateful; even after the divorce, they had remained friends, actually closer than ever. She liked to tell people she’d won the friends in the divorce; okay, correction, she liked to tell Todd, as a warning. But it seemed he already knew. (“Your friends.”)

  Sanjay was wearing his hedge fund uniform, a polo shirt and shorts, and he arrived at the party with his current girlfriend, who ran a tech company and boasted impressive Michelle Obama arms.

  “What’s wrong?” said Sanjay as a greeting.

  “Is it that obvious?” She laughed weakly.

  “Only because I know you,” he said with a smile. “You remember Monica.”

  She did and kissed and hugged her graciously. “Bar’s outside; try not to die in the heat.”

  “Go ahead,” said Sanjay. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “You didn’t have to get rid of her,” said Ellie when Monica disappeared inside the house. She sighed. She couldn’t hide much from her old friend. “What’s wrong with me? Nothing, everything.”

  “Is it Todd?” asked Sanjay. “You guys fighting again?”

  “Yeah, but that’s old news. When aren’t we fighting? No, it’s money. It’s always money.” It felt so much better to say it aloud. She grasped her phone and took a surreptitious look to see if Harry Kim had texted back. Nope.