won’t have to hear my mother’s shrill disappointment or her fucking threats, and I won’t have to hear Daddy’s silence. The wet underneath me is making me cold and I’d roll away if I could. If Milan or Christy was here, they would keep me warm. We always used to spoon, the three of us, when we were sad or cold. Milan first, me in the middle because they said I was their little bear - their care bear - and Christy’s long form pressed against my back, with her face in my hair.
We spent hours laying curled up together like that on Milan’s big hotel bed in the Plaza, watching the snow fall outside the windows. Two impossibly beautiful, impossibly long real-life Eloises and me, the third one, smaller and more anxious - less real maybe.
Squished in between them, I disappeared from sight. They’ll both forgive me now and I think they will miss me, like I have missed them. If they knew, they would come and save me for old times’ sake if nothing else. They have been doing it so long, why not once more?
It’s getting dark again and I’m afraid of what comes in the dark. Back then, though, we used to turn off all the lights in Milan’s room and tell each other stories. Some were even true. The October I was fifteen, the three of us were sprawled shoulder-to-shoulder on Milan’s pink silk bed. Petal, my baby, was on my chest. We were holding hands and arguing about where to run away to. I had on a cast that fall, and I remember the girls were in disagreement because Milan wanted to go to Aspen for early skiing and Christy said that was stupid because I couldn’t ski, so St. Bart’s was more fair.
Milan laughed and told her that if she were in a cast, she would much rather be chilling back at the lodge, making with some hottie, than stuck on a beach trying to get sand fleas out of her cast.
Even though the argument was about me, I didn’t join in. I was content to lie between them and let their voices drift around me. Knowing that they wouldn’t leave me behind was all that mattered to me. I didn’t care where we went.
I closed my eyes and stroked Petal, thinking that if it weren’t for the girls and Petal, I probably wouldn’t have been alive to run anywhere. My leg still throbbed and the cuts on my wrists itched, but it was okay because I was here with them.
The preceding six months had been rough. My father had moved to his club and was letting himself be photographed publicly with his mistress, a six foot tall Italian former Miss World. My mother was losing her shit over it, understanding from his carelessness that a divorce might soon follow. To forestall her worst case scenario, she had thrown me under Daddy’s love bus as a speed bump. I don’t think she was out to get me personally - any one of her daughters would have worked - but I was Daddy’s favorite and I was the stupid one who landed on her radar.
I had met my two best friends for ever, the amazing looking Marin sisters, when I had started at Dwight three years before. Dwight is another uber-chic Manhattan private school for financially gifted children. It’s known in the city for the miraculous work they do. Ninety percent of Dwight’s graduates get into the college of their choice. Other kids from other schools refer to Dwight attendees as dumb white idiots getting high together but you can’t argue with success. I never really hated reading or studying, I just pretended to so I could fit in, but, sure, even if I had been in a coma during my time there, I would have received early acceptance to the Kelleher alma mater, Brown University.
Dwight had a very active endowment program. I think the office of Gifts and Alumni Pledges had more staff than we had teachers, and so Dwight parents could rest easy about their kids' futures. If that peace of mind cost a few million over the course of their child’s time there, no one was complaining. I’m not saying Dwight was so crass as to demand cash for our places there, or for our eventual
We spent hours laying curled up together like that on Milan’s big hotel bed in the Plaza, watching the snow fall outside the windows. Two impossibly beautiful, impossibly long real-life Eloises and me, the third one, smaller and more anxious - less real maybe.
Squished in between them, I disappeared from sight. They’ll both forgive me now and I think they will miss me, like I have missed them. If they knew, they would come and save me for old times’ sake if nothing else. They have been doing it so long, why not once more?
It’s getting dark again and I’m afraid of what comes in the dark. Back then, though, we used to turn off all the lights in Milan’s room and tell each other stories. Some were even true. The October I was fifteen, the three of us were sprawled shoulder-to-shoulder on Milan’s pink silk bed. Petal, my baby, was on my chest. We were holding hands and arguing about where to run away to. I had on a cast that fall, and I remember the girls were in disagreement because Milan wanted to go to Aspen for early skiing and Christy said that was stupid because I couldn’t ski, so St. Bart’s was more fair.
Milan laughed and told her that if she were in a cast, she would much rather be chilling back at the lodge, making with some hottie, than stuck on a beach trying to get sand fleas out of her cast.
Even though the argument was about me, I didn’t join in. I was content to lie between them and let their voices drift around me. Knowing that they wouldn’t leave me behind was all that mattered to me. I didn’t care where we went.
I closed my eyes and stroked Petal, thinking that if it weren’t for the girls and Petal, I probably wouldn’t have been alive to run anywhere. My leg still throbbed and the cuts on my wrists itched, but it was okay because I was here with them.
The preceding six months had been rough. My father had moved to his club and was letting himself be photographed publicly with his mistress, a six foot tall Italian former Miss World. My mother was losing her shit over it, understanding from his carelessness that a divorce might soon follow. To forestall her worst case scenario, she had thrown me under Daddy’s love bus as a speed bump. I don’t think she was out to get me personally - any one of her daughters would have worked - but I was Daddy’s favorite and I was the stupid one who landed on her radar.
I had met my two best friends for ever, the amazing looking Marin sisters, when I had started at Dwight three years before. Dwight is another uber-chic Manhattan private school for financially gifted children. It’s known in the city for the miraculous work they do. Ninety percent of Dwight’s graduates get into the college of their choice. Other kids from other schools refer to Dwight attendees as dumb white idiots getting high together but you can’t argue with success. I never really hated reading or studying, I just pretended to so I could fit in, but, sure, even if I had been in a coma during my time there, I would have received early acceptance to the Kelleher alma mater, Brown University.
Dwight had a very active endowment program. I think the office of Gifts and Alumni Pledges had more staff than we had teachers, and so Dwight parents could rest easy about their kids' futures. If that peace of mind cost a few million over the course of their child’s time there, no one was complaining. I’m not saying Dwight was so crass as to demand cash for our places there, or for our eventual
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