Privileged Page 4

  Laurel Limoges. That’s who the captain—

  This was her plane?

  Pay dirt. This was what Debra wanted me to read. I rewarded my brain synapses with a long swallow of some of the best burgundy I’d ever tasted and kept reading.

  They lost their parents in a private-plane crash nine years ago, when they were in the fourth grade. Looks plus youth plus money plus pedigree plus tragedy plus unbridled lust and not just for fame equals what? Pop-culture platinum has been earned on much less.

  Ever since their parents’ death, the twins have lived with their grandmother on her vast Palm Beach, Florida, estate, called Les Anges. They share their own private eight-thousand-foot pink stucco mansion. Palm Beach, just south of Jupiter and north of Boynton Beach, is a sixteen-mile stretch of subtropical barrier island separated from the mainland by Lake Worth. Its ten thousand residents have more combined wealth than the inhabitants of Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Santa Barbara, and the United Arab Emirates collectively. Its estates are the most magnificent in the world.

  J. Paul Getty once made this pithy remark: “If you can actually count your money, then you are not really a rich man.” By this standard, when the twins’ trust funds come due on their eighteenth birthday, less than two months after this issue of Vanity Fair is published, they will be truly rich.

  Like the rest of young Palm Beach royalty, they attend Palm Beach Country Day. Both are candid about their dislike for, and boredom with, all things academic. When pressed, Rose murmurs that she “kind of likes music”; Sage bats her sooty lashes and says, “School is repungent [sic].” I don’t correct her.

  With care for the language of Shakespeare eliminated, what do the twins like? Rose shrugs and looks to her sister for the answer—she seems to do this a lot. Sage tosses the strawberry lioness curls from her perfectly made-up face. “Shopping, parasailing, driving fast, surfing, and sex, not necessarily in that order and sometimes all at once.” She leans forward to look at what I’m jotting down in my little notebook. “I love sex. Be sure to write that down.”

  The hair artist sets Sage’s hair in a tumble of flaming curls. Rose’s locks are slicked back off her face. The makeup artist comes at them with loose powder on a makeup brush, and Sage shoos her away, complaining about the heat and the waiting around. “Why the fuck aren’t we starting the shoot?” A worker ant explains that there’s a problem with the light and hands her a frosted flute of Cristal and honeydew juice, her current favorite drink.

  But Sage won’t be placated; clearly, she’s had enough. She stands, slides both slender hands into the bodice of her priceless gown, and rips it down to her navel. Time seems to stop. Even her sister gasps.

  Sage smiles, obviously pleased to have all eyes on her. She takes five steps to the saltwater pool and jumps in. The curls and makeup are destroyed in an instant. As she floats on her back, her pierced nipples become visible beneath the soaked, ripped gown. She crooks a beckoning finger toward her twin.

  Rose hesitates, but only for a moment. Then she jumps in, too.

  “Shoot this!” Sage laughs and gives the photographer the finger.

  For the Fabulous Baker Twins, being fabulous means never having to say you’re sorry.

  Maybe they weren’t sorry, but suddenly, I was. Oh God. What on earth was I in for?

  The wealthy and fabulous, having suffered as children, deserve all of the privilege and prestige that society affords them. They should be able to do what they want, when they want to, with no consequences. After all, they’re worth it.

  Discuss how well-reasoned you find this argument. Write your answer in the book labeled “Analytical Writing: Argument.”

  Chapter Six

  Megan Smith, I presume.”

  Those words found me gazing at the glorious view of the Atlantic through the picture window in Laurel Limoges’s home office at Les Anges, an estate that Vanity Fair had not oversold. Thick raindrops hit the surface of the infinity-edged pool outside. It was hard to tell where the pool ended and the ocean began.

  I whirled around and found myself face-to-face with a woman of a certain age. “Laurel Limoges.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” That was your basic nicety. I had no idea if it was going to be a pleasure to meet her, or whether in fifteen minutes I’d be asking her driver to bring me back to the Palm Beach airport.

  As we shook hands, I was struck by her beauty. Anyone would be. Her alabaster skin was taut and flawless, stretched over high cheekbones. She wore a gray suit with a fitted jacket and a straight skirt that fell just below her knees. Her pearl-gray open-toe pumps matched the buttons on the suit. She wore a silver bracelet on her left wrist but no rings on her fingers.

  “Please.” She nodded toward a carved mahogany-framed couch and took a seat opposite me on a paisley chair. “Your flight was satisfactory? You did not get too—how do you say—drenched?” She had a slight French accent.

  “Your driver had a parapluie très bon et très grand.” Translation: a very big and good umbrella. Thank you, four years of French at Yale.

  The sky had opened up as soon as the Gulfstream landed in Palm Beach. During the limousine ride from the airport I could barely see out the windows. I’d flicked on the limo’s mini TV and watched a Miami weatherman warning people in Palm Beach County to beware of hail as said hailstones pinged off the limo’s roof.

  The hail had abated by the time we pulled in to a circular gravel driveway in front of an enormous mansion the color of cotton candy. The car door swung open, and a very bald, cadaverous man in a black suit held an umbrella over me as I stepped out into thick, fetid air. “Miss Smith? This way, please.”

  He guided me toward an enormous mahogany front door and then into a foyer larger than my entire East Village apartment. It had a white tile floor, intricately carved woodwork, and a round marble pedestal in the center. On that pedestal rested a three-foot-high white onyx vase and dozens of enormous orange and purple bird-of-paradise.

  “Welcome to Les Anges, Miss Smith. I am Mr. Anderson, Madame’s butler,” he intoned, touching the Secret Service–style earpiece in his left ear. “Your rucksack, please, Miss Smith?”

  The butler—I immediately dubbed him the Skull—took my backpack and pushed a recessed metal button. A well-disguised elevator door swung open.

  “Take this to the second floor,” the Skull instructed. “Madame Limoges’s office. She’ll be with you shortly.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I stepped into the elevator.

  “And Miss Smith? Madame doesn’t like her things to be touched.”

  The elevator closed automatically. The last thing I saw was the Skull two-fingering my backpack like week-old roadkill.

  And now here I was, face-to-face with the woman to whom all this wealth and power belonged. I didn’t have to be a Yale grad to figure out that she’d flown me eleven hundred miles to offer some kind of position involving her granddaughters, the Fabulous Baker Twins. But the what, where, why, and most of all, how much, were still a mystery.

  “The flight was great,” I told her now. “I mean, it was fine. Your plane is very nice.”

  Your plane is very nice? I sounded like an idiot.

  “Thank you. Perhaps you’d like some tea or some other refreshment?” Laurel motioned to a silver tea set in the corner. I’d assumed it was for decoration only.

  “No, I’m fine. I would like to hear about the position, though. If you don’t mind.”

  “Ah. Normally, it is the employer who asks the questions in an interview, no?”

  “Yes, normally,” I agreed, feeling a little bold from the carafe of red wine on the plane. “But nothing today has been normal.”

  She laughed, and I liked her for it. “Actually, there is very little I want to ask, Miss Smith.”

  “Please, call me Megan.” I leaned back a little on the settee, trying to look comfortable.

  “Megan, then. Debra Wurtzel is a dear friend. We have known each other a long time. We spoke at some length abou
t you. She recommended you very highly. You read the article about my granddaughters in Vanity Fair, yes?”

  “Yes. On the plane. They’re beautiful.” I glanced behind her at the dozens of framed photographs lining the shelves. There were pictures of Laurel with heads of state and Hollywood elite, but not one of her with her granddaughters.

  She offered a Gallic shrug and smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle in her skirt. “The good fortune of a gene pool. How much do you know about me, Megan?”

  “Honestly? Only what I read this afternoon,” I answered, and resisted the urge to put my fingernails in my mouth.

  “Everyone, it seems, has written about me. Tom, Harry, Dick. No one gets it right.”

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing at the Harry-Dick thing.

  “I started with nothing, Megan. I like to work hard, and I like this quality in others. Everything I have, I have earned.” She entwined her fingers. “I have succeeded at many things. Anything worth doing is worth doing with excellence, don’t you agree?”

  I nodded. I did agree. But even if I didn’t, what was I going to say?

  “There is one thing—one important thing—at which I have failed. Raising my granddaughters.”

  For the briefest moment, I thought I saw a flash of genuine sorrow in her eyes. Then it was gone.

  “Perhaps, over the years, I would not allow myself to see the truth,” she continued. “But now the entire world is aware that my granddaughters do not use their brains for anything more complex than choosing a shade of nail polish. I blame myself for this.”

  As she looked toward the ocean, I thought I saw another flash of pain in her clear gray eyes. “I’d like to change that. I shall provide the motivation, which we shall get to in a moment. Unfortunately, I cannot be the one to help them put their minds to better use. For one thing, I travel far too much on business. You’ll see me here at Les Anges only rarely. That is why the person to help them, dear, will be you.”

  So she wanted me to teach her granddaughters. But why? The twins were about to come into an eight-figure trust. Maybe they weren’t bright, but they were filthy rich. I’d met enough legacies at Yale to know that filthy rich could get you a long way in this world even without a functional IQ.

  Laurel waited for my eyes to meet hers. “You are wondering why this matters so much to me, no?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Megan, the twins’ late parents went to Duke University, in North Carolina,” Laurel explained. “As did my late husband. I have always expected that the girls would go there also. To Duke.”

  I knew Duke. It wasn’t Yale, but it was a really good school and hard to get into. But the twins were legacies, legacies whose grandmother could surely donate a building or ten to the school. The rules for mere mortals—grade point average, SAT score, killer application essay—simply didn’t apply to legacies like that.

  That’s what I told Laurel, albeit a bit more diplomatically.

  “In ordinary cases, you may be right,” Laurel agreed. “But I received a phone call from Aaron Reynolds yesterday. He is the president of Duke. I’ve known him for years—my late husband and I donated the performing arts center.”

  See?

  Laurel went on, “Yet he informed me that after Vanity Fair, he could not admit the girls. There would be—I believe he called it ‘an alumni uproar.’” She held her palms up at the impossibility of it all. “Sage and Rose shall have to earn a place in next fall’s freshman class, like anyone else. Or at the very least, demonstrate the ability to do so. I believe he will be willing to overlook some of their indiscretions if they can meet some specific standards.”

  From what I had read, the chances of these two earning legitimate spots at Duke was about as likely as the Gap using me instead of my sister in next season’s ads.

  “How are their grades at school?” I managed to ask with a straight face.

  “Appalling.” Laurel knitted her finely arched brows together. “Here is the thing, Megan. I know something about my granddaughters that they do not know. They are not stupid. Nor are you, evidently.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  “Yale is an excellent university, no? But frightfully expensive. Debra tells me that you incurred a significant expense to attend there. How much are your outstanding college loans?”

  “Seventy-five thousand dollars,” I reported, despite it being clear that she already knew. I remember discussing that very number, in fact, during my initial interview with my former boss.

  “Seventy-five thousand dollars.” She sighed. “So expensive in this country to attend a fine school. Not like in France.”

  Expensive for someone like me, I wanted to tell her. Not someone like you.

  But she’d already pressed a button on a discreet box on the coffee table. “Please send the girls up.”

  “Right away, Madame,” the voice through the intercom replied immediately. How was that possible? Then I remembered the Skull’s earpiece.

  “I should like to detail the rest of this arrangement with the twins in the room,” Laurel explained.

  Before I could protest that I’d agreed to no arrangement as yet, the elevator door opened again, and the two teenagers I’d seen in Vanity Fair stepped into the room. Both wore jeans and very high heels. One wore a white silk camisole. Her complexion was enviably translucent. Her flaming red hair hung in loose curls nearly to her waist—Sage, I figured. The other one, Rose, had a perfect golden tan with freckles dotting her nose and arms. Her streaky red hair fell stick-straight down her back.

  I think I’ve conveyed how effortlessly beautiful my sister is, right? Well, these girls made her look merely average. If the theory of the bell curve applied to looks, somewhere on the planet, two severely butt-ugly girls were paying the price so that the twins could look this amazing. Let me say that I had a very superficial reaction to all this gorgeousness: I disliked them immediately.

  Laurel stood, so I did, too. The girls towered over both of us. Sage—the pale one—shook her curls out of her eyes in what seemed to be a practiced gesture. “You summoned?” she asked Laurel, sounding incredibly bored.

  “I did. There is someone I want you to meet. This is Megan Smith. Megan, my granddaughters, Sage and Rose.”

  Sage’s eyes flicked to me for a bare millisecond. “And?”

  “She will be your academic tutor for the next two months.”

  The twins exchanged a look, and then Sage put one hand on a prominent hip bone. “No, thanks.” She turned to go, taking her sister’s hand.

  “Thanks anyway,” Rose called over her shoulder.

  I could third that. No, thank you.

  Laurel sensed my hesitation. “Megan—you must hear me out. Girls, sit. I’m going to make each of you an offer you cannot refuse.”

  Any sacrifice—even the sacrifice of one’s values and personal beliefs—is justified when the result of said sacrifice is financial independence.

  Describe your perspective on this statement, using relevant examples to support your view.

  Chapter Seven

  Once the twins were seated on the other mahogany sofa, Laurel described the predicament with Duke.

  Sage shook the hair out of her eyes. Again. “Okay. So what’s-her-name is here to help us get in. That’s it?”

  “Megan. Her name is Megan,” Laurel repeated. “If she accepts, she will be guiding you in two main areas—your regular studies at Palm Beach Country Day and the SAT examination that you will take on the fifteenth of January.”

  Sage rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Once more, I caught a flash of sadness in Laurel’s eyes, but the girls’ faces remained impassive. Either they didn’t notice, or they didn’t care.

  “I am not kidding. In fact, I would think that after that magazine profile, you would want to prove to the world—perhaps even to yourselves—that you are not imbeciles.”

  I noticed Rose’s right foot jiggle nervously inside a pink suede high
-heeled sandal. Her sister threw her arms across the back of the couch. Not a care in the world.

  “What do we care?” Sage asked, although she clearly wasn’t looking for an answer. “We’re already rich, and we’re almost famous. Come on, Rose.” She got to her feet. “We’re out of here.”

  Laurel shrugged again. “Depart if you want. But understand this, Sage: You are not rich.”

  Sage sighed wearily. “Yet. We aren’t rich yet. But we will be next month, on our eighteenth birthday. Eighty-four million dollars rich. That’s what the trust says.”

  “No, that’s what the trust used to say,” Laurel corrected. “It was revised this morning.”

  Sage’s pale face drained of what color it had. I watched her reflection in the silver tea set across the room. “What are you talking about?” she managed.

  Laurel cleared her throat. “If you and your sister both earn places in the entering class at Duke—I have been told an SAT score and course average you must maintain by the president of the school himself—you will become recipients of the trust the moment the admissions office informs me of your acceptance. If one of you fails, you both do. You will be on your own.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” Sage challenged.

  “I already did,” Lauren answered, and I thought I saw a little satisfied gleam in her eyes. She touched one of her enormous diamond earrings.

  “But that’s . . . that’s so mean!” Rose looked like a little kid whose sand castle had been kicked over by a bully.

  “It’s for your own good, Rose.” Laurel’s voice was kinder now. “And I am giving you the tools you need to succeed. I suggest you—and your sister—take advantage of them.”

  I waited for Sage to fire back. She didn’t. The look on her face, however, spoke volumes, all of which were filled with expletives.

  Laurel turned to me. “Megan, you have been very patient. Let me explain the terms of your employment. You will be with us until the Scholastic Aptitude Test in January. Eight weeks. Your pay is fifteen hundred dollars a week. It will be deposited into an account I’ve opened for you. You will have your own suite in the twins’ mansion, all your meals, and use of any vehicle you’d like. We have a dozen or so in the garage.”