Big Girl: A Novel

By Danielle SteelSOUTHERN LIGHTS • MATTERS OF THE HEART ONE DAY AT A TIME • A GOOD WOMAN • ROGUE HONOR THYSELF • AMAZING GRACE • BUNGALOW 2 • SISTERS H.R.H. • COMING OUT • THE HOUSE • TOXIC BACHELORS MIRACLE • IMPOSSIBLE • ECHOES • SECOND CHANCE • RANSOM SAFE HARBOUR • JOHNNY ANGEL • DATING GAME ANSWERED PRAYERS • SUNSET IN ST. TROPEZ • THE COTTAGE THE KISS • LEAP OF FAITH • LONE EAGLE • JOURNEY THE HOUSE ON HOPE STREET • THE WEDDING IRRESISTIBLE FORCES • GRANNY DAN • BITTERSWEET MIRROR IMAGE • HIS BRIGHT LIGHT: The Story of Nick Traina • THE KLONE AND I • THE LONG ROAD HOME • THE GHOST SPECIAL DELIVERY • THE RANCH • SILENT HONOR • MALICE FIVE DAYS IN PARIS • LIGHTNING • WINGS • THE GIFT • ACCIDENT VANISHED • MIXED BLESSINGS • JEWELS • NO GREATER LOVE HEARTBEAT • MESSAGE FROM NAM • DADDY • STAR • ZOYA KALEIDOSCOPE • FINE THINGS • WANDERLUST • SECRETS FAMILY ALBUM • FULL CIRCLE • CHANGES • THURSTON HOUSE CROSSINGS • ONCE IN A LIFETIME • A PERFECT STRANGER REMEMBRANCE • PALOMINO • LOVE: POEMS • THE RING LOVING • TO LOVE AGAIN • SUMMER’S END SEASON OF PASSION • THE PROMISE • NOW AND FOREVER PASSION’S PROMISE • GOING HOME

As always, to my very wonderful

children, Trevor, Todd, Beatie,

Nick, Sam, Victoria, Vanessa,

Maxx, and Zara,

who are always there for me,

and give me so much joy,

caring, love, support, kindness,

and just plain old terrific times.

In good times and bad, we are

there for each other.

Thank you for being such

huge blessings in my life.With all my love,

Mommy/d.s.

a cognizant original v5 release october 17 2010

Contents

Other Books by this AuthorTitle PageDedicationChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26About the AuthorCopyright

Chapter 1

Jim Dawson was handsome from the day he was born. He was an only child, tall for his age, had a perfect physique, and was an exceptional athlete as he grew older, and the hub of his parents’ world. They were both in their forties when he was born, and he was a blessing and surprise, after years of trying to have a child. They had given up hope, and then their perfect baby boy appeared. His mother looked at him adoringly as she held him in her arms. His father loved to play ball with him. He was the star of his Little League team, and as he grew older, the girls swooned over him in school. He had dark hair and velvety brown eyes and a pronounced cleft in his chin, like a movie star. He was captain of the football team in college, and no one was surprised when he dated the homecoming queen, a pretty girl whose family had moved to southern California from Atlanta in freshman year. She was petite and slim with hair and eyes as dark as his, and skin like Snow White. She was gentle and soft-spoken and in awe of him. They got engaged the night of graduation and married on Christmas the same year.

Jim had a job in an ad agency by then, and Christine spent the six months after graduation preparing for their wedding. She had gotten her bachelor’s degree, but her only real interest during her four years in college was finding a husband and getting married. And they were a dazzling pair with their flawless all-American good looks. They were a perfect complement to each other and reminded all who saw them of a couple on the cover of a magazine.

Christine had wanted to model after they were married, but Jim wouldn’t hear of it. He had a good job, and made a good salary, and he didn’t want his wife to work. What would people think of him if she did? That he wasn’t able to provide for her? He wanted her at home and waiting for him every night, which was what she did. And people who knew them said they were the best-looking couple they had ever seen.

There was never any question about who wore the pants in the family. Jim made the rules, and Christine was comfortable that way. Her own mother had died when she was very young. And Jim’s mother, whom Christine called Mother Dawson, sang her son’s praises constantly. And Christine readily revered him just as his parents had. He was a good provider, a loving husband, fun to be with, a perfect athlete, and he rose steadily in importance in the ad agency. He was friendly and charming with people, as long as they admired him and didn’t criticize him. But most people had no reason to. Jim was a personable young man, he made friends easily, and he put his wife on a pedestal and took good care of her. All he expected of her was to do as he said, worship and adore him, and let him run the show. Her father had had similar ideas, and she’d been perfectly brought up to be the devoted wife of a man like him. Their life was everything she had hoped for, and more. There were no unpleasant surprises with Jim, no strange behavior, no disappointments. He protected her and took care of her, and provided handsomely. And their relationship worked perfectly for both of them. Each knew their role in the relationship and played by the rules. He was the Adored, and she the Adorer.

They were in no hurry to have children for the first few years, and might have waited longer if people hadn’t begun to comment about why they didn’t have them. It felt like criticism to Jim, or like the suggestion that maybe they couldn’t have them, although they both enjoyed their independence without children to tie them down. Jim took her on weekend trips frequently, they went on fun vacations, and he took her out to dinner once or twice a week, although Christine was a good cook and had learned to make his favorite meals. Neither of them was suffering from the lack of children, although they agreed that they wanted them eventually. But five years after they got married, even Jim’s parents were beginning to worry that they might be having the same difficulties that had delayed them from having a family for nearly twenty years. Jim assured them that there were no problems, they were just having fun and were in no hurry to have children. They were twenty-seven years old, and enjoying feeling free and unencumbered.

But the constant inquiries finally got to him, and he told Christine that it was time to start a family. And as she always did, Christine agreed. Whatever Jim thought best seemed right to her too. Christine got pregnant immediately, which was faster than they expected. It was easier than they both had planned, they had assumed it might take six months or a year. And despite her mother-in-law’s concerns, the pregnancy was easy for Christine.

When she went into labor, Jim drove her to the hospital and opted not to be in the delivery room when the baby came, which seemed like the right plan to Christine too. She didn’t want him to do anything that would make him ill at ease. He was hoping for a boy, which was her fondest wish too, in order to please him. It didn’t even occur to either of them that the baby might be a girl, and they had confidently opted not to find out the baby’s sex. As virile as he was, Jim expected his firstborn to be a son, and Christine decorated the nursery in blue. Both of them were absolutely sure it was a boy.

The baby was in a breech position and had to be delivered by cesarean section, so Christine was still asleep from the anesthetic in the recovery room, when Jim heard the news. And when he saw the baby the nurse presented to him at the nursery window, for a minute, or longer, he thought the baby he was seeing had been switched. The baby had a perfectly round face with chubby cheeks that bore no resemblance to either of them, with a halo of white blond hair. And more shocking than her features or coloring, it was a girl. This was not the baby they had expected, and as she stared at him through the nursery window, all he could think of was that the infant looked like the elderly British monarch Queen Victoria. He said as much to one of the nurses, and she scolded him and said that his daughter was beautiful. Being unfamiliar with the grimaces of newborns, he disagreed. She looked like someone else’s child to him, and surely nothing like him or Christine, and he was filled with disappointment as he sat glumly in the waiting room, until they summoned him to Christine. And as soon as she saw the look on his face, she knew that it was a girl and that, in her husband’s eyes, she had failed.

“It’s a girl?” she whispered, still woozy from the anesthetic, as he nodded speechlessly. How was he going to tell his friends that his son had turned out to be a girl? It was a major blow to his ego and image and something he could not control, which never sat well with him. Jim liked to orchestrate everything, and Christine was always willing to play along.

“Yes, it’s a girl,” he finally mustered as a tear squeezed out the corner of Christine’s eye. “She looks like Queen Victoria.” And then he teased Christine a little. “I don’t know who the father is, but she looks like she has blue eyes, and she’s blond.” No one on either side of their families was fair, except his own grandmother, which seemed like a stretch to him. But he didn’t doubt Christine. This child was obviously some kind of throwback, in their combined gene pool, but she certainly didn’t look like she was theirs. The nurses had been saying that she was very cute, but Jim wasn’t convinced. And it was several hours before they brought her to Christine, who gazed at her in wonder as she held her and touched her little hands. She was tightly swaddled in a pink blanket. Christine had just been given a shot to keep her milk from coming in, since she had decided not to nurse. Jim didn’t want her to, and she had no desire to either. She wanted to get her figure back as quickly as possible, since Jim had always liked her petite, lithe shape and didn’t find her attractive while she was pregnant. She had been careful with her weight during the pregnancy. Like Jim, she found it hard to believe that this chubby white blond baby was theirs. She had long, straight sturdy legs like Jim’s. But her features didn’t look even remotely familiar to either of them. And Mother Dawson was quick to agree with Jim when she saw her, and said she looked like Jim’s paternal grandmother, and said she hoped she didn’t look like her later. She had been a round, heavyset woman for her entire life, who had been best known for her cooking and sewing skills and not her looks.

By the day after her birth, the shock of her being a female had worn off a little, although Jim’s friends at the office had teased him that he would have to try again for a son. And Christine was worried that he was angry at her about it, but he very sweetly reassured her that he was glad that she and the baby were healthy, and they’d make the best of it. The way he said it made Christine feel as though she had come in second best, and Mother Dawson endorsed that idea. It was no secret that Jim had wanted a son and not a daughter, almost as confirmation of his manhood and ability to father a son. And since it had never dawned on either of them that they might produce a daughter, they had no girls’ names ready for the chubby blond baby that lay in Christine’s arms.

He had been joking about her looking like Queen Victoria, but they both agreed that they liked the name, and Jim took it one step further, and suggested Regina as a middle name. Victoria Regina Dawson, for Queen Victoria. Victoria the Queen. The name seemed strangely apt as they looked at her, and Christine agreed. She wanted her husband to be happy with the choice of name at least, if not the sex. She still felt as though she had failed him by having a girl. But by the time they left the hospital five days later, he seemed to have forgiven her.

Victoria was an easy, happy baby who was good-natured and undemanding. She walked and talked early, and people always commented on what a sweet little girl she was. She remained very fair, and the white blond fuzz she’d had when she was born turned into a crown of blond ringlets. She had big blue eyes, and pale blond hair, and the creamy white complexion that went with it. Some people commented that she looked very English, and then Jim always commented that she’d been named for Queen Victoria, whom she looked like, and then laughed heartily. It became his own favorite joke about the baby, which he was more than willing to share, while Christine tittered demurely. She loved her daughter, but the love of her life had always been her husband, and that hadn’t changed. Unlike some women who became totally focused on their children, the central focus of her world was first Jim, and then the baby. Christine was the perfect companion for a narcissist of Jim’s proportions. She only had eyes for him. And although he still wanted a son to complete him, and toss a ball with, they were in no hurry to have a second child. Victoria fit easily into their life and caused few disruptions, and they were both afraid that two children, particularly if close together, would be hard to manage, so they were content to have only Victoria for now. Mother Dawson rubbed salt in Jim’s wounds by saying it was too bad they hadn’t had a son, because then they wouldn’t have had to consider having a second child, since only children were always brighter. And of course her son was an only child.

Victoria appeared to be extremely intelligent as she got older. She was chatty and amiable, and had nearly adult conversations with them by the time she was three. She said funny things, and was alert and interested in everything around her. Christine taught her to read when she was four. And when she was five, her father told her she had been named after a queen. Victoria would smile with delight every time he said it. She knew what queens looked like. They were beautiful and wore pretty dresses in all the fairy tales she read. And sometimes they even had magic powers. She knew she had been named after Queen Victoria, but she had no idea what the queen looked like. Her father always told her that she’d been named after the queen because she looked like her. She knew that she was supposed to look like her father’s grandmother, but she had never seen a picture of her either, and she wondered if she had been a queen too.

Victoria was still round and chubby when she was six. She had sturdy little legs, and she was often told that she was big for her age. She was in first grade by then, and taller than many of the children. And she was heavier than some of them too. People called her a “big girl,” which she always took as a compliment. And she was still in first grade when she was looking at a book with her mother one day, and saw the queen she had been named after. Her name was written clearly under her picture. Victoria Regina, just like Victoria’s own name.

The queen was holding a pug dog, who looked astonishingly like the monarch herself, and the photograph had been taken late in her life. Victoria sat staring at the page for a long time and didn’t say a word.

“Is that her?” she finally asked her mother, turning her huge blue eyes up to her face. Christine nodded with a smile. After all, it was just a joke. She looked like Jim’s grandmother and no one else.

“She was a very important queen in England a long time ago,” Christine explained.

“She’s not even wearing a pretty dress, she doesn’t have a crown, and her dog is ugly too.” Victoria looked devastated as she said it.

“She was very old by then,” Victoria’s mother said, trying to soften the moment. She could see that her daughter was upset, and it tugged at her heart. She knew he meant no harm, but Jim’s little joke had momentarily backfired, and Victoria looked stricken. She stared at the picture for ages, and two tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. Christine didn’t say a word as they turned the page, and she hoped that Victoria would forget the image she had seen. She never did. And her sense of how her father viewed her, like a queen, was never the same again.

Chapter 2

A year after Victoria saw the photograph of Queen Victoria, which forever changed her image of herself, her parents informed her that she had a baby brother or sister on the way. And Victoria was thrilled. Several of her friends at school had had siblings by then, she was one of the few who didn’t, and she loved the idea of a baby to play with, like a real live doll. She was in second grade when they told her the news. And when she heard her parents talking about it late one night, when they thought she was asleep, she heard the frightening words that the new baby was an accident, and she wasn’t sure what that meant. She was afraid that it had been injured somehow, and feared it might even be born without arms or legs, or maybe it would never walk when it got older. She didn’t know how bad the accident had been, and she didn’t want to ask. Her mother had cried about it, and her father sounded worried too. They both said that things were fine the way they were now, with just Victoria. She was an easy child who never bothered them and did as she was told. At seven years old, she gave them no problems, and her father said during the entire pregnancy that he hoped it would be a boy. Her mother seemed to want that too, but this time she decorated the nursery in neutral white instead of blue. She had learned that lesson once before, when Victoria took them by surprise and turned out to be a girl. Mother Dawson predicted that it would be a girl again this time, and Victoria hoped so too. Her parents had once again opted not to find out the sex for sure. Victoria’s mother was afraid of a bad surprise, clinging to the hope, for as long as she could, that it might be a boy this time.

Victoria wasn’t sure why, but her parents didn’t seem as excited about the baby as she was. Her mother complained a lot about how big she was, and her father teased Victoria and said he hoped it wouldn’t look like her. He never failed to remind her that she looked like his grandmother. There were few pictures of her, but those that Victoria had finally seen showed a large woman wearing an apron, with seemingly no waist, enormous hips, and a bulbous nose. She wasn’t sure which was worse, looking like her paternal great-grandmother, or like the ugly queen whose photograph she had seen posing with her dog. And after seeing the photographs of her great-grandmother, she had become obsessed with the size of her own nose. It was small and round, and she thought it looked like an onion planted in the middle of her face. She hoped for its sake that the new baby hadn’t inherited the same nose. But since the baby was an “accident,” there seemed to be far more serious things to worry about than its nose. Her parents had never explained the accident to her, but she hadn’t forgotten the conversation she’d overheard. It made Victoria all the more determined to dedicate herself to the new baby, and do whatever was needed to help with it. She hoped the damage from the accident it had experienced wasn’t too great. Maybe it was just a broken arm, or a bump on the head.

Christine’s C-section was planned this time, and Victoria’s parents had explained to her that her mother would be in the hospital for a week, and she wouldn’t be able to see her mother or the baby until they came home from the hospital. They said those were the rules, and she wondered if it was to give them time to fix whatever damage the baby had sustained in the mysterious event that no one seemed to want to discuss or explain.

The day the baby was born, her father came home at six o’clock when Victoria’s grandmother was preparing dinner for her. They looked at him expectantly, and his disappointment was evident when he told them it was a girl. And then he smiled and said the baby was beautiful and looked just like him and Christine this time. He seemed enormously relieved, even though it hadn’t been a boy. And he said they were calling her Grace, because she was so pretty. Grandmother Dawson smiled too then, proud of her ability to guess the baby’s sex. She had been sure it was a girl. Jim said she had dark hair, big brown eyes like both of them, the same white skin as her mother, and perfectly formed tiny pink lips. He said she was so pretty they could have used her for an ad for babies. Her beauty made up for her not being a boy. He made no mention of any injury to the baby, from the accident that Victoria had been worried about for the past eight months, and she was relieved too. She hoped the baby was okay, and she sounded very cute.

They called her mother at the hospital the next day, and she sounded very tired. It made Victoria even more determined to do everything she could to help when they got home.

Grace was even prettier than they’d said when Victoria saw her for the first time. She was absolutely exquisite and perfectly formed. She looked like a baby in a picture book, or an ad, as her father had said. Grandmother Dawson clucked over her immediately, and took the bundle from Christine’s arms as Jim helped her into a chair, and Victoria tried to get an even better look. She was aching to hold the baby, kiss her cheeks, coo over her, and touch her tiny toes. She wasn’t jealous of her for an instant, only happy and proud.

“She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?” Jim said proudly to his mother, who instantly agreed. There was no mention made of his paternal grandmother this time, and no need to. Baby Grace looked like a porcelain doll, and they all agreed that she was the prettiest baby they had ever seen. She looked nothing like her older sister who had big blue eyes and wheat-colored hair. It was hard to imagine that the two were even sisters, or that Victoria actually belonged in this family, with all of them so dark while she was so fair. And her pudgy body looked nothing like them either. No one compared this baby to Queen Victoria, or mentioned her round nose. She had the nose of a pixie or a cameo, just like Christine’s. It was clear from the moment she was born that Grace was one of them, while Victoria appeared to have been dropped on their doorstep by someone else. Grace was perfect, and all Victoria felt was love as she looked at her with adoration in her grandmother’s arms. She couldn’t wait for them to set her down so she could pick her up herself. This long-awaited baby sister was hers. She had begun to love her long before she was born. And now she was here at last.

Jim couldn’t resist teasing his older daughter, as he always did. He was that kind of guy, and loved making jokes at the expense of someone else. His friends thought he was very funny, and he had no qualms about who he made the butt of his jokes. He turned to Victoria with a wry grin, as she gazed lovingly at the baby.

“I guess you were our little tester cake,” he said, ruffling her hair affectionately. “This time we got the recipe just right,” he commented happily, as Grandmother Dawson explained that a tester cake was what you made to check the combination of ingredients and the heat of the oven. It never came out right the first time, she said, so you threw the tester cake away and tried again. It made Victoria suddenly terrified that because Grace had come out so perfectly, maybe they would throw her away. But no one said anything about it, as her mother, grandmother, and new baby sister went upstairs. Victoria followed them with a look of awe. She stood at a discreet distance and watched everything they did. She wanted to learn how to do it all herself. She was sure her mother would let her, once her grandmother went home. She had asked before Grace came, and her mother said she would.

They changed the baby into a tiny pink nightgown, wrapped her in a blanket, and Christine gave her the bottle of formula they’d given her at the hospital. And then she burped her and laid her down in the bassinet. It was the first chance Victoria had gotten to take a good long look at the new arrival. She really was the most beautiful baby Victoria had ever seen, but even if she hadn’t been, even if she had had their great-grandmother’s nose, or looked like Queen Victoria too, she would have loved her anyway. She already did. Her beauty didn’t matter to Victoria at all, only to her family.

While her mother and grandmother were talking, Victoria cautiously stuck her finger into the bassinet right into the baby’s hand, and the baby looked up at her, and curled her tiny fingers around Victoria’s finger. It was the most exciting moment of Victoria’s life so far, and she instantly felt the bond between the two of them, and knew it would only get stronger and last forever. She made a silent vow to take care of her all her life and never let anyone hurt her or make her cry. She wanted baby Grace’s life to be perfect, and was willing to do whatever she had to to ensure that. Grace closed her eyes then and went to sleep, as Victoria stood and watched her. She was so glad there had been no damage from the accident, and Grace was here at last.

She thought of what her father had said then about her being the tester cake, and wondered if it was true. Maybe they had only had her to make sure they got it right with Grace. And if that was true, they certainly had. She was the sweetest thing Victoria had ever seen, and her parents and grandmother said so too. For one tiny instant, Victoria wished that someone else had been the tester cake, and they had felt about her the way they obviously did about Grace. She wished that she was a victory and not a failure of the recipe or the oven temperature. And whatever their intentions had been in having her first, she just hoped they never decided to throw her away. All she wanted now was to share the rest of her life with Grace, and be the best big sister in the world. And she was glad for the baby that she hadn’t gotten their great-grandmother’s nose too.

She went downstairs to have lunch with her parents and grandmother then, while the baby slept peacefully upstairs, having just been fed and changed. Her mother had told her that she would sleep a lot for the first few weeks. At lunch, her mother talked about getting her figure back as quickly as she could, and Jim poured champagne for the adults, and smiled at Victoria. There was always something faintly ironic about the way he looked at her, as though they shared a joke, or as though she was the joke. Victoria was never quite sure which it was, but she liked it when he smiled at her. And now she was happy to have Grace. She was the baby sister she had dreamed of all her life, someone to love, and who would love her just as much as she loved her.

Chapter 3

Victoria’s mother taught her to do everything for the baby. By the time Grace was three months old, Victoria could change a diaper, bathe her, dress her, play with her for hours, and feed her. The two were inseparable. And it gave Christine a much-needed break on busy days. Victoria helping her mother with the baby gave Christine time to play bridge with her friends, take golf lessons, and see her trainer four times a week. She had forgotten how much work babies were. And Victoria loved to help her. The moment she came home from school, she washed her hands, picked her sister up, and took care of whatever she needed. It was Victoria who won Grace’s first smile, and it was obvious that the baby adored her, just as Victoria was crazy about Grace.

Grace remained a picture-perfect baby. By the time she was a year old, whenever Christine took the girls to the supermarket with her, someone stopped her. Living in Los Angeles, there were often movie scouts in ordinary places. They solicited Christine for movies, TV shows, commercials, print ads, and working in advertising; Jim had been offered his share of those opportunities too, whenever he showed her picture. Victoria would watch in fascination as people approached them and tried to get her mother to let them use Grace in every kind of ad, TV show, or movie, and Christine always graciously said no. She and Jim had no desire to exploit their baby, but they were always flattered by the offers and told friends about them later. Watching the exchanges, and hearing about them afterward always made Victoria feel invisible. It was as though she didn’t exist when the scouts talked to her mother. The only child they saw was Grace. Victoria didn’t mind it, but sometimes she wondered what it would be like to be on TV or in a movie. It was fun that Grace was so pretty, and Victoria loved dressing her up, like a doll, with ribbons in her curly dark hair. She was a beautiful baby and turned into an equally lovely looking toddler. And Victoria nearly melted the first time her baby sister said her name. Grace chortled happily whenever she saw her, and was fiercely attached to her older sister.

When Grace was two and Victoria was nine, their grandmother Dawson died, after a brief illness, which left Christine with no help with the baby except for what Victoria did to assist her. The only babysitter they had ever used was Jim’s mother, so after her mother-in-law’s passing, Christine had to find a babysitter they could rely on when they went out in the evenings. Thereafter there was a parade of teenage girls who came to use the phone, watch TV, and let Victoria take care of the baby, which both sisters preferred anyway. Victoria got more and more responsible as she got older, and Grace got more beautiful with each passing year. She had a sunny disposition and laughed and smiled constantly, mostly at the urging of her older sister, who was the only person in the family who could make her laugh through her tears or stop a tantrum. Christine was far less adept with her than her older daughter. Christine was only too happy to let her take care of Grace. And by then, her father still regularly teased her about being their “tester cake.” Victoria knew exactly what that meant, that Grace was beautiful and she wasn’t, and they had gotten it right the second time around. She had explained that to a friend once, who had looked horrified by the explanation, much more so than Victoria, who was used to the term by now. Her father didn’t hesitate to use it. Christine had objected to it once or twice, and Jim assured her that Victoria knew he was just teasing. But in fact Victoria believed him. She was convinced by then that she was the mistake, and Grace their ultimate achievement. That impression was reinforced by each person who admired Grace. Victoria’s sense of being invisible became deeply entrenched. Once people had commented on how adorable and beautiful Gracie was, they had no idea what to say about Victoria, so they said nothing and ignored her.

Victoria wasn’t ugly, but she was plain. She had sweet, natural fair looks, and straight blond hair that her mother put in braids, as compared to Grace’s halo of dark ringlets. Victoria’s hair had gotten straight as she got older. She had big innocent blue eyes the color of a summer sky, but Grace and her parents’ dark ones always seemed more exotic and more striking to her. And their eye color was all the same, as was their hair. Hers was different. And both her parents and Grace had thin frames, her father was tall, and her mother and the baby were delicate and fine-boned and had small frames. Grace and her parents were a reflection of each other. Victoria was different. She had a square look to her, a bigger frame, and broad shoulders for a child. She looked healthy, with rosy cheeks and prominent cheekbones. The one remarkable feature about her was that she had long legs, like a young colt. Her legs always seemed too long and thin for her squat body, as her grandmother had put it. She had a short torso that made her legs seem even longer. Despite her wider frame, she was nonetheless quick and graceful. And even as a child, she was big for her age, not enough to be called fat, but there was nothing slight about her. Her father always made an issue that she was too heavy for him to pick her up, while he tossed Grace in the air like a feather. Christine had a tendency to be underweight even after her babies, and in great shape thanks to her trainer and exercise classes. And Jim was tall and lean, and Grace was never a really chubby baby.

What Victoria was more than anything was different from the rest of them. Enough so for everyone to notice. And more than once, people had asked her parents within her hearing if she was adopted. She felt like one of those picture cards they held up at school that showed an apple, an orange, a banana, and a pair of galoshes, while the teacher asked which one was different. In her family, Victoria was always the galoshes. It was a strange feeling she’d had all her life, of being different, and not fitting in. At least if one of her parents had looked like her, she would have felt as though she belonged. But as it was, she didn’t, she was the one person out of sync, and no one had ever called her a beauty, as they did Gracie. Gracie was picture perfect and Victoria was the unattractive older sister, who didn’t match the rest of them.

And Victoria had a healthy appetite, which kept her body broader than it might have been otherwise. She ate big portions at every meal, and always cleaned her plate. She liked cakes and candy and ice cream and bread, particularly when it was fresh out of the oven. She ate a big lunch at school. She could never resist a dish of french fries, or a hot dog bun, or a hot fudge sundae. Jim liked to eat well too, but he was a big man, and never gained weight. Christine existed mostly on broiled fish, steamed vegetables, and salads, all of which Victoria hated. She preferred cheeseburgers, spaghetti and meatballs, and, even as a child, often helped herself to seconds, despite her father frowning at her, or even laughing about it and making fun of her. No one in her family ever seemed to gain weight except her. And she never skipped a meal. Feeling full gave her a sense of comfort.

“You’re going to regret that appetite one day, young lady,” her father always warned her. “You don’t want to be overweight by the time you go to college.” College seemed like a lifetime away, and the mashed potatoes were sitting right in front of her, next to the platter of fried chicken. But Christine was always careful what she fed the baby. She explained that Grace had a different frame and was built like her, although Victoria sneaked her lollipops and candy, and Grace loved it. She would scream with delight when she saw a Tootsie Roll Pop emerge for her from Victoria’s pocket. And even when Victoria only had one, she gave it to her sister.

Victoria had never been popular in school, and her parents very seldom let her have friends over, so her social life was limited. Her mother said that two children making a mess of the house was enough for her to deal with. And she never liked any of Victoria’s friends when she met them. She always found fault with them for one reason or another, so Victoria stopped asking to invite them. As a result, no one invited Victoria over after school, since she never reciprocated. And she wanted to get home to help with the baby. She had friends at school, but her friendships didn’t extend past school hours. The drama of her early school years was being the only child in fourth grade who didn’t get a valentine. She had come home in tears, and her mother told her not to be silly. Gracie had been her valentine, and the next year Victoria told herself she didn’t care, and braced herself for disappointment. She actually got one that year from a girl who was as tall as she was. All the boys were shorter. The other girl was a beanpole, and actually much taller than Victoria, who was wider.

And the next drama she faced was growing breasts when she was eleven. She did everything she could to hide them, and wore baggy sweatshirts over everything she owned, lumberjack shirts eventually, and everything two sizes larger. But they continued growing, much to Victoria’s chagrin. And by seventh grade she had the body of a woman. She thought of her great-grandmother often, with her wide hips and thick waist, large breasts and full figure. Victoria was praying she never got as big as her great-grandmother had been. The only thing different about her were the long thin legs that never seemed to stop growing longer. Victoria didn’t know it, but they were her best feature. Her parents’ friends always referred to her as a “big girl,” and she was never sure what part of her they were referring to, her long legs, big breasts, or ever-widening body. And before she could figure out which part of her they were looking at, they turned their attention to the elflike Gracie. Victoria felt like a monster beside her, or a giant. And with her height, and her womanly body, she looked much older than her years. Her art teacher in eighth grade called her Rubenesque, and she didn’t dare ask him what it meant, and didn’t want to know. She was sure it was just a more artistic way of calling her big, which was a term she had come to hate. She didn’t want to be big. She wanted to be small, like her mother and sister. She was five feet seven when she stopped growing in eighth grade, which wasn’t enormous, but it was taller than most of her female classmates, and all of the boys at that age. She felt like a freak.

She was in seventh grade when Gracie started kindergarten, and she took her to her classroom. Her mother had dropped them both off at school, and Victoria had the pleasure of taking Grace to meet her teacher and watched her walk into the room with caution and turn to blow a kiss to her big sister. She watched over her all year at recreation, and took her home after afternoon day care. And the same was true in eighth grade, when Gracie was in first grade. But in the fall Victoria would be entering high school, at a different school, in another location, and she would no longer be there for Gracie, or see her if she walked past her classroom during the day. And she was going to miss her. And so was Gracie, who relied on her older sister and loved seeing her peek into her classroom throughout the day. Both girls cried on Victoria’s last day in eighth grade, and Gracie said she didn’t want to come back to school without Victoria in the fall. But Victoria said she had to. Eighth grade was the end of an era for Victoria, and one she had cherished. It always made her happy knowing Gracie was nearby.

The summer before Victoria entered high school she went on her first diet. She had seen an ad for an herbal tea in the back of a magazine, and sent away for it with her allowance. The ad said that it was guaranteed to make her lose ten pounds, and she wanted to enter high school looking thinner and more sophisticated than she had in middle school. With puberty and a richer figure, she had put on roughly ten pounds over what she was supposed to weigh, according to their doctor. The herbal tea worked better than expected and made her desperately ill for several weeks. Grace said she was green and looked really sick, and asked why she was drinking tea that smelled so bad. Her parents had no idea what was wrong with her, since she didn’t tell them what she’d done. The evil brew had given her severe dysentery, and she didn’t leave the house for several weeks, and said she had the flu. Her mother told her father that it was typical pre–high school nerves. But in the end, just by making her so ill, the herbal tea caused her to lose eight pounds, and Victoria liked the way she looked as a result.

The Dawsons lived on the border of Beverly Hills in a nice residential neighborhood. They had the house they’d lived in since before Victoria was born, and Jim was the head of the ad agency by then. He had a satisfying career, and Christine kept busy with her two girls. It seemed like the perfect family to them, and they didn’t want more children. They were forty-two years old, had been married for twenty years, and had a manageable life. They were happy they hadn’t had more kids, and were pleased with the two they had. Jim liked to say that Grace was their beauty, and Victoria had the brains. There was room for both in the world. He wanted Victoria to go to a good college and have a meaningful career. “You’ll need to rely on your brains,” he assured her, as though she had nothing else to offer the world.

“You’ll need more than that,” Christine had said. It worried her sometimes that Victoria was so smart. “Men don’t always like smart girls,” she said, looking worried. “You have to look attractive too.” She had been nagging her about her weight in the past year, and was pleased about the eight pounds she’d lost, with no idea of what Victoria had done to herself for the past month to shed the weight. She wanted Victoria to be thin too, not just smart. They were much less worried about Gracie, who with her charm and beauty, even at seven, looked as though she could conquer the world. Jim was her willing slave.

The family went to Santa Barbara for two weeks at the end of summer, before Victoria started high school, and they all had a good time. Jim had rented a house in Montecito, as he had before, and they went to the beach every day. He commented on Victoria’s figure, and after that she wore a shirt over her bathing suit and refused to take it off. He had observed how big her bust was, and had then mitigated it by saying she had killer legs. He referred far more often to her body than he did to her excellent grades. He expected that of her, but always made it clear that he was disappointed by her looks, as though she had failed somehow, and it was a reflection on him. She had heard it all before, many times. He and her mother went for long walks on the beach every day, while she helped Gracie build sand castles with flowers and rocks and Popsicle sticks on them. Gracie loved doing it with her, which made Victoria happy. Her father’s comments about her looks always made her sad. And her mother pretended not to hear, never reassured her, and never came to her defense. Victoria knew instinctively that her mother was disappointed by her looks too.

There was a boy Victoria liked in Montecito that summer, in a house across the street. Jake was the same age she was, and he was going to Cait in southern California in the fall. He asked if he could write to her from boarding school, and she said he could, and gave him her address in L.A. They talked late into the night about how nervous they were about high school. Victoria admitted to him in the darkness, as they shared a stolen bottle of beer, from his parents’ bar, and a cigarette, that she had never been popular before. He couldn’t see why. He thought she was a really smart, fun girl. He liked talking to her and thought she was a nice person. She’d never had beer before, nor smoked, and she threw up when she went home. But no one noticed. Her parents were in bed, and Gracie was fast asleep in the next room. And Jake left the next day. They were going to visit his grandparents in Lake Tahoe before he started school. Victoria had no grandparents anymore, which she thought was a blessing sometimes, since she only had her parents to comment on her looks. Her mother thought she should cut her hair and start an exercise program in the fall. She wanted her to do gymnastics or ballet, without realizing how uncomfortable Victoria was about appearing in front of other girls in a leotard. Victoria would have died first. She’d rather keep the figure she had than lose it that way. It had been easier just making herself sick with the nasty herbal tea.

It was boring for her in Montecito when Jake left. She wondered if she’d hear from him once he started school. For the rest of the time in Montecito, she played with Grace. Victoria didn’t mind that her sister was seven years younger, she always had fun with her. And her parents always told their friends that the seven-year age difference between them really worked. Victoria had never been jealous of her baby sister for a minute, and was a totally reliable babysitter now that she was fourteen. They left Gracie with her older sister whenever they went out, which they did with increasing frequency as the girls got older.

They had one big scare during the trip, when Grace ventured too far out at the water’s edge one afternoon, at low tide. Victoria had been with her and went back to their towel for a minute to get more sunscreen to put on her sister. And then the tide came in, and the current in the water got strong. A wave knocked Gracie over, and within an instant she disappeared as she was sucked out into the ocean and tossed under a wave. Victoria saw it happen and screamed as she raced to the water, dove into the wave, and came up spluttering with a grip on Grace’s arm as another wave hit them both. By then, their parents had seen it too, and Jim was running toward the water, with Christine right behind him. He rushed into the surf, and grabbed both girls with his powerful arms and pulled them out, as Christine stood watching in silent horror, frozen to the spot. Jim turned to Gracie first.

“Don’t ever do that again! Don’t play in the water alone!”

And then he turned to Victoria with a fierce look in his eye. “How could you leave her alone like that?” Victoria was crying, shaken by what had happened, with her wet shirt glued to her body over her bathing suit.

“I went to get sunscreen for her, so she didn’t burn,” she said between sobs. Christine said nothing and put a towel around Grace, whose lips were blue. She had been in the water for too long before the tide began to turn.

“She almost drowned!” her father shouted at her, shaking with fear and fury. He rarely got angry at his children, but he was shaken by the close call, as they all were. He never said a word about Victoria rushing in to get her, and pulling her out of the surf right before he arrived. He was too upset by what had almost happened, and Victoria was too. Grace had taken refuge in her mother’s arms, who was holding her tight in the towel. Her dark ringlets were wet and plastered to her head.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Victoria said softly.

He turned his back and walked away as her mother comforted her younger sister, and Victoria wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said softly, and Christine nodded and handed her a towel to cover herself up. The message in her gesture was clear.

High school was easier than Victoria had expected in some ways. The classes were well organized, she liked most of the teachers, and the subjects were more interesting than they’d been in middle school. Academically, she loved the school, and was excited by the work. Socially, she felt like a fish out of water, and was shocked by the other girls when she saw them on the first day. They looked a lot racier than anyone she’d gone to school with so far. Some wore provocative clothes and looked older than their years. All the girls wore makeup, and many of them looked much too thin. Anorexia and bulemia had clearly entered their lives. Victoria felt like a moose on the first day, and all she wanted was to look “cool” like everyone else. She carefully observed the outfits that they favored, many of which would have looked terrible on her, although the miniskirts they wore would have looked great. Victoria had opted for jeans and a loose shirt to hide her shape. Her long blond hair was hanging down her back, her face looked freshly scrubbed, and she wore high-top sneakers she and her mother had bought the day before. Once again she was out of step. She had worn the wrong thing, and looked different from the other girls. The ones she saw congregating outside school when she arrived looked like they were entering a fashion contest of some kind. They appeared to be eighteen years old, and some of them obviously were. But even the girls her own age seemed much older than their years. And all she could see at first was a flock of thin, sexy girls. She wanted to cry.

“Good luck,” her mother said when she dropped her off, smiling at her. “Have a great first day.” Victoria wanted to hide in the car. She had her schedule clutched in her trembling hand and a map of the school. She hoped she could find her way without asking directions. She was afraid she might burst into tears as raw terror clutched her heart. “You’ll be fine,” Christine said as Victoria slipped out of the car, and tried to look casual as she hurried up the stairs past the other girls, without meeting their eyes or stopping to say hello. They looked like an army of “cool” girls, and she felt anything but “cool.”

She saw some of them in the cafeteria at lunch that day, and steered a wide berth around them. She helped herself to a bag of potato chips, a hero sandwich, yogurt, and a package of chocolate chip cookies for later, and sat at a table by herself, until another girl sat down. She was taller than Victoria, and rail thin. She looked as though she could have played basketball against most of the guys, and asked Victoria permission to sit down.

“Mind if I sit here?”

“No, that’s fine,” Victoria said, opening the potato chips. The other girl had two sandwiches on her tray, but she looked like nothing she ate would show. Other than her long brown hair, she almost looked like a boy. She wasn’t wearing makeup either, and she was wearing jeans and Converse too.

“Freshman?” the other girl asked as she unwrapped her first sandwich, and Victoria nodded, feeling paralyzed by shyness. “I’m Connie. I’m captain of the girls’ basketball team, as you may have guessed. I’m six-two. I’m a junior. Welcome to high school. How’s it been so far?”

“Okay,” Victoria said, trying to look unimpressed. She didn’t want to tell her that she was scared out of her mind and felt like a freak. She wondered if Connie had too at fourteen. She looked extremely relaxed and comfortable with who she was now, but she was also sitting with a freshman, which made Victoria wonder if she had any friends. And if she did, where were they? She looked taller than almost every boy in the room.

“I reached my full height at twelve,” she said conversationally. “My brother is six-six and plays for UCLA on a basketball scholarship. Do you play any sports?”

“Some volleyball, not much.” She had always been more academic than athletic.

“We have some great teams here. Maybe you want to try out for basketball too. We have a lot of girls your height,” she added, and Victoria almost said, “But not my weight.” She was fiercely aware of how everyone looked, and looking at them on the way in, she felt twice their size. She felt less out of place with this girl, who at least did not look anorexic or dress as though she were going on a date. She seemed friendly and nice. “It takes a while to get the hang of high school,” Connie reassured her. “I felt really strange the first day I got here. All the boys I saw were half my size. And the girls were a lot prettier than I was. But there’s something for everyone here, jocks, fashionistas, beauty queens, there’s a gay/lesbian club, you’ll figure it all out after a while and make friends.” Victoria was suddenly glad that Connie had sat down with her. She felt like she at least had one new friend. Connie had finished both her sandwiches by then, and Victoria was embarrassed to realize that she was so nervous, all she had eaten were the chips and the cookies. She decided to eat the yogurt and save the rest. “Where do you live?” Connie asked with interest.

“L.A.”

“I drive in from Orange County every day. I live with my dad. My mom died last year.”

“I’m sorry,” Victoria said, immediately sympathetic. Connie stood to her full height, and Victoria felt like a dwarf next to her. She handed Victoria a piece of paper with her phone number on it, and Victoria thanked her and slipped it into her pocket.

“Call me if I can help with anything. The first few days are always tough. It’ll get better after that. And don’t forget to try out for the team.” Victoria couldn’t see herself doing it, but she was grateful for the friendly reception from this girl, who had gone out of her way to make her feel at ease. Victoria no longer believed that it was an accident that she had sat down at her table. As they chatted, a good-looking boy walked by and smiled at Connie.

“Hey, Connie,” he said, whizzing by with his books in his hand, “signing up recruits for the team?”

“You bet.” She laughed at him. “He’s captain of the swimming team,” she said when he was gone. “You might like that too. Check it out.”

“I’d probably drown,” Victoria said, looking sheepish. “I’m not a great swimmer.”

“You don’t have to be at first. You learn. That’s what coaches are for. I swam for the team freshman year, but I don’t like to get up that early. Practice is at six A.M., sometimes five before a meet.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Victoria said with a grin, but she liked knowing she had options. This was a whole new world. And everyone looked like they liked it here, and had found their own niche. She just hoped that she’d find hers, whatever it was. Connie told her that there were sign-up sheets on the main bulletin board outside the cafeteria, for all the clubs. She pointed it out on their way out, and Victoria stopped to look. A chess club, a poker club, a film club, foreign language clubs, a Gothic club, a horror movie club, a literary club, a Latin club, a romance-novel book club, an archaeology club, a ski club, a tennis club, a travel club. There were dozens of clubs listed. The two that interested Victoria most were film and Latin. But she was too shy to put her name on either list. She had taken Latin in middle school the year before and liked it. And she thought the film club might be fun. And neither of them required taking her clothes off or wearing a uniform that would make her look gross. She wouldn’t have joined the swim club for that reason, although she was actually a decent swimmer, better than she had admitted to Connie, and she didn’t relish the idea of basketball shorts either. She thought the ski club might be fun too. She went skiing every year with her parents. Her father had been a champion skier in his youth, and her mother was pretty good too. And Gracie had been in ski school since she was three, and so had Victoria before her.

“See you around,” Connie said as she sauntered off on her giraffelike legs.

“Thank you!” Victoria called after her, and then hurried to her next class.

She was in good spirits when her mother picked her up outside at three.

“How was it?” her mother asked pleasantly, relieved to see that Victoria looked happy. It obviously hadn’t been as scary as she’d feared.

“Pretty good,” Victoria said, looking pleased. “I like my classes. It’s sooooo much better than middle school. I had biology and chem this morning, English lit and Spanish this afternoon. The Spanish teacher is a little weird, he won’t let you speak English in his class, but the others were all pretty nice. And I checked out the clubs, I might do ski and film, and maybe Latin.”

“Sounds like a reasonable first day,” Christine said as they drove toward her old school to pick Grace up after day care. As they parked in front of the school, Victoria suddenly felt as though she had matured a thousand years since June. She felt so grown up now being in high school, and it wasn’t bad at all. Gracie was in tears when Victoria ran inside to pick her up.

“What happened?” Victoria asked her as she scooped her up into her arms. She was so small at seven that Victoria could carry her easily.

“I had a horrible day. David threw a lizard at me, Lizzie took my peanut butter sandwich, and Janie hit me!” she said with a look of outrage. “I cried all day,” she added for good measure.

“So would I if all those things happened to me,” Victoria assured her as she walked her to the car.

“I want you to come back,” she said, pouting at her older sister. “It’s no fun here without you.”

“I wish I could,” Victoria said, but suddenly not so sure. High school had looked okay to her that day, better than she’d thought it would. It had definite possibilities, and she wanted to explore them now. Maybe there was hope that she’d fit in after all. “I miss you too.” It was sad to realize that they’d never be in the same school again. The age difference between them was too great.

Victoria put her in the backseat, and Grace reported her miseries to her mother, who was instantly sympathetic. Victoria couldn’t help noticing, as she always did, that their mother had never been as tender with her as she was with Grace. Their relationship was different and simpler for her mother. The fact that Gracie looked like them made it easier for their parents to relate to her. Gracie was one of “them,” and Victoria was always the stranger in their midst. Victoria wondered if Christine also hadn’t known how to be a mother yet when she was born and had learned with Gracie, or maybe she just felt more in common with her. It was impossible to know, but whatever it was, Christine had always been more matter of fact with her, more critical and distant, and demanded more of her, just as her father did. And in his eyes, Gracie could do no wrong. Maybe they had both just softened with age. But her being a reflection of them seemed to be part of it. They’d been in their twenties when Victoria was born, and were in their forties now. Maybe that made a difference, or maybe they just didn’t like her as much. Grace hadn’t been named after an ugly queen, even as a joke.

Her father asked her about school that night, and she reported on her classes, and mentioned the clubs again. He thought her choices were all good, particularly Latin, although he thought the ski club would be fun and a good way to meet boys. Her mother thought Latin sounded too brainy and she should join something more sociable, in order to make friends. They were both aware that Victoria had had very few friends in middle school. But in high school she could meet people, and by junior year she’d be driving and wouldn’t need them to chauffeur her at all. They could hardly wait, and Victoria liked the idea too. She didn’t want her father making sarcastic remarks about her to her friends, as he did whenever he gave them a ride somewhere, even if he thought his comments were funny. She never did.

She signed up for the three clubs that interested her the next day, but none of the sports teams. She decided to fulfill her athletic requirement with just Phys Ed, although she could have taken ballet too, which would have been her worst nightmare come true, leaping across the gym in a leotard and a tutu. She shuddered at the thought when the assistant PE teacher suggested it to her.

It took her a while, but in time Victoria made friends. She dropped out of the film club eventually because she didn’t like the movies they picked to watch. She went on one of the ski club trips to Bear Valley, but the kids that went were stuck-up and never talked to her. She signed up for the travel club instead. And she loved the Latin club, although it was all girls, and she took Latin all of freshman year. She met people, but it wasn’t easy making friends in high school either. A lot of the girls seemed to be in airtight little groups and looked like beauty queens, and that wasn’t her style. The academic girls were as shy as she was and hard to meet. Connie proved to be a good friend for two years until she got a scholarship to Duke, and left when she graduated. But by then, Victoria was comfortable at the school. She heard from Jake at Cait once in a while too, but they never got together again. They always said they would and never did.

She had her first date during sophomore year when a boy from her Spanish class invited her to the junior prom, which was a big deal. Connie said he was a great guy, and he was until he got drunk in the bathroom with some other boys and got kicked out of the prom, and she had to call her father for a ride home.

She got her first car the summer before junior year, and had taken driver’s ed the year before, and had her learner’s permit so she was all set. From then on, she drove herself to school. It was an old Honda her father had bought for her, and she was excited about it.

It wasn’t something she talked about to anyone, but by junior year her body had gotten bigger than it was before. She had gained ten pounds over the summer. She had a summer job at an ice cream store, and ate ice cream on all her breaks. Her mother was upset about it and said it was the wrong job for her. It was too much temptation for Victoria, as proved by the weight she gained.

“You look more like your great-grandmother every day” was all her father said, but it made the point. She brought home ice cream cakes shaped like clowns for Gracie every day. She loved them and no matter how many she ate, she never gained a pound. She was nine by then, and Victoria was sixteen.

But the main benefit of her summer job was that she earned enough money for a trip to New York with the travel club during Christmas break, and it changed her life. She had never been to such an exciting city and liked it much better than L.A. They stayed at a Marriott hotel near Times Square, and they walked for miles. They went to the theater, opera, and ballet, rode the subway, went to the top of the Empire State Building, visited the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the United Nations, and Victoria had never had so much fun in her life. They even had a snowstorm while she was there, and when she got back to L.A., she was dazed. New York was the best place she’d ever been, and she wanted to live there one day. She said she might even go to college there if she could get into New York University or Barnard, which might be a stretch despite her grades. But she floated on the experience for months.

She met her first serious high school boyfriend right after New Year’s. Mike was in the travel club too, but had missed the trip. He was planning to go to London, Athens, and Rome with the club during the summer. Her parents wouldn’t let her go—they said she was too young, although she’d be turning seventeen. Mike was a senior, and his parents were divorced, so his father had signed the permission slip. Victoria thought he was very grown up and worldly and fell madly in love. For the first time in her life, he made her feel pretty. He said he loved her looks. He was going to Southern Methodist University in the fall, and they spent a lot of time together, although her parents didn’t approve. They thought he wasn’t smart enough for her. Victoria didn’t care. He liked her, and he made her happy. They spent a lot of time making out in his car, but she wouldn’t go all the way. She was too scared to take that leap. She said she wasn’t ready. And in April he dropped her for a girl who would. He took the new girl to senior prom, and Victoria sat home nursing a broken heart. He was the only boy who’d asked her out all year.

She never had many dates or a lot of friends. And she spent the summer on the South Beach Diet. She was diligent about it and lost seven pounds. But as soon as she got off the diet, she gained it back plus three more pounds. She wanted to lose the weight for senior year, and her PE teacher had told her she was fifteen pounds overweight. She lost five pounds at the beginning of senior year, by eating smaller portions and fewer calories, and promised herself she’d lose more before graduation. And she would have if she hadn’t gotten mono in November, had to stay home for three weeks, and ate ice cream because it made her throat feel better. The fates had conspired against her. She was the only girl in her class who gained eight pounds while she had mono. Her size was a battle she couldn’t seem to win. But she was determined to beat it this time, and swam every day during Christmas vacation and for a month after. And she jogged around the track every morning before school. Her mother was proud of her when she lost ten pounds.

She was determined to lose the other eight pounds, until her father looked at her one morning and asked her when she was going to start working out to lose some weight. He hadn’t even noticed the ten pounds she had lost. And after that she gave up swimming and jogging and went back to eating ice cream after school and potato chips at lunch, and bigger portions, which satisfied her. What difference did it make? No one noticed it, and no one asked her out. Her father offered to take her to his gym, and she said she had too much work at school, which was true.

She was working hard to keep up her grades, and had applied to seven schools: New York University, Barnard, Boston University, Northwestern, George Washington in Washington, D.C., the University of New Hampshire, and Trinity. Everything she had applied to was either in the Midwest or the East. She had applied to no schools in California, and her parents were upset about it. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew she had to leave. She had felt different for too long, and although she knew she would miss them, and especially Gracie, she wanted a new life. This was her chance, and she was going to grab it while she could. She was tired of competing and going to school with girls who looked like starlets and models and hoped to be that one day. Her father had wanted her to apply to USC and UCLA, and she refused. She knew it would just be more of the same. She wanted to go to school with real people, who weren’t obsessed with how they looked. She wanted to go to college with people who cared about what they thought, like her.

She didn’t get into either of her first-choice schools in New York, nor Boston University, which she would have liked, nor GW. Her choices in the end were Northwestern, New Hampshire, or Trinity. She liked Trinity a lot but wanted a bigger school, and there was good skiing in New Hampshire, but she chose Northwestern, which felt right to her. The greatest thing it had going for it was that it was far away, and it was a great school. Her parents said they were proud of her, although they were distressed that she was leaving California and couldn’t understand why she would. They had no concept of how out of place and unwelcome they had made her feel for so long. Gracie was like their only child, and she felt like the family stray dog. She didn’t even look like them, and she couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe she’d come back to Los Angeles after school, but for now she knew she had to get away.

She was one of the top three students in her class, and had been asked to give a speech after the valedictorian, which stunned the audience with the seriousness and value of what she said. She talked about how different she had felt all her life, how out of step, and how hard she had tried to conform. She said she had never been an athlete, nor wanted to be. She wasn’t “cool,” she wasn’t popular, she didn’t wear the same clothes as all the other girls during freshman year. She didn’t wear makeup till sophomore year, and still didn’t wear it every day. She had loved Latin class even though it made everyone think she was a geek. She went down the list of all the things that had made her different, without saying that she felt even more out of place in her own home.

And then she thanked the school for helping her to be who she was, and find her way. She said that now they were all going out into a world where they would all be different, where no one would fit in, where they had to be themselves to succeed, and follow their own paths. She wished her classmates luck on their journey to find themselves, and herself as well, and she said that once they all found themselves, discovered who they were, and became who they were meant to be, she hoped they’d meet again one day. “And until then, my friends,” she said, as tears rolled down her classmates’ and their parents’ cheeks, “Godspeed.” It made a lot of her fellow students wish they had known her better. The speech impressed her parents too with its eloquence. And it brought home the realization that she was leaving soon, and it softened both of them as they congratulated her on the speech. Christine realized that she was losing her, and she might never live at home again. Her father was suddenly very quiet too when they met up with her after the ceremony and they had all tossed their caps into the air, after saving the tassels to put away with their diplomas. Her father clapped Victoria lightly on the back.

“Great speech,” he complimented her. “It’ll make all the weirdos in your class feel good,” he added sincerely as she looked at him with wide-open eyes. Sometimes she wondered if he was just stupid, or maybe mean. He never failed to miss the point. She could see that now.

“Yeah, like me, Dad,” she said quietly. “I’m one of them. The weirdos and the freaks. My point was that it’s okay to be different, and from now on we’d better be, if we’re going to make something of ourselves. It’s the one thing I learned in school. Different is okay.”

“Not too different, I hope,” he said, looking nervous. Jim Dawson had conformed all his life, and he cared a lot about what people thought of him. He had never had an original thought in his life. He was a company man through and through. And he didn’t agree with Victoria’s philosophy, although he admired the speech and how well she had delivered it. He could see in her ability when she did it that she had inherited something from him. He was known for his excellent speeches too. But Jim never liked to stand out or be different. That had never been okay with him. Victoria was well aware of it, which was why she had never in her entire life felt at ease with them, and she felt even less so now, because she was different from her parents in so many ways. And it was why she was starting the most important adventure of her life, and leaving home to do it. She was willing to push herself out of her comfort zone if it meant finding herself at last, and the place where she belonged. All she knew now was that it wasn’t here, with them. No matter how hard she had tried, she just wasn’t like them.

She realized too that Gracie was growing up as one of them, and she did fit in. Perfectly. She and her parents were like clones. Victoria hoped that one day her younger sister would spread her wings and fly. And for now, Victoria had to do it. She could hardly wait, even if it terrified her at times. She was scared to death of leaving home, but excited too. The girl they had said looked like Queen Victoria all her life was taking off. She smiled as she left her school for the last time, and whispered to herself, “Watch out, world! Here I come!”

Chapter 4

Victoria’s summer at home before she started college was bittersweet in many ways. Her parents were nicer to her than they had been in years, although her father introduced her to a business associate as his tester cake. But he also said he was proud of her, more than once, which surprised Victoria, since she never really thought he was. And her mother seemed sad to see her go, although she never openly said it to Victoria. It made Victoria feel as though they had all missed the boat. Her childhood and high school years were over, and she wondered why they had wasted so much time and concentrated on all the wrong things: her looks, her friends or lack of them, her weight was their main focus, along with her resemblance to her great-grandmother, whom no one knew or cared about, just because their noses were the same. Why did they care so much about the wrong things? Why hadn’t they been closer to her, more loving, given her more support? And now there was no time left to build the bridge between them that should have existed all along and never had. They were strangers to each other, and she couldn’t imagine it being any different later on. She was leaving home, and might never live with them again.

She still wanted to move to New York after college, it was her dream. She would come home for holidays, see them on Christmas and Thanksgiving and when they visited her, if they did, and there was no time left to put in the bank the love they should have been saving all along. She thought they loved her, they were her parents, and she had lived with them for eighteen years, but her father had made fun of her all her life, and her mother had been disappointed that she wasn’t prettier, complained that she was too smart, and told her men didn’t like smart women. Her whole childhood with them had been a curse. And now that she was leaving, they said they were going to miss her. But when they said it, she couldn’t help wondering why they hadn’t paid more attention to her while she was there. It was already too late. Did they really love her? She was never sure. They loved Gracie. But what about her?

And the one she hated most to leave was Gracie, the little angel in her life, who had dropped from the skies when she was seven and loved her unconditionally ever since, just as Victoria loved her. She couldn’t bear to leave her and not see her every day, but she knew she had no choice. Gracie was eleven now, and had already come to understand how different Victoria was from the rest of them, and how mean their father was at times. She hated it when he said things to Victoria that hurt, or made fun of her, or pointed out how much she didn’t look like them. In Gracie’s eyes, Victoria was beautiful, and she didn’t care how fat or thin she was. Gracie thought she was the prettiest girl in the world and she loved her more than anyone.

Victoria dreaded leaving her, and cherished every day they spent together. She took her out for lunch, to the beach, had picnics with her, took her to Disneyland, and spent as much time with her as she could. They were lying on the beach one afternoon in Malibu, next to each other, looking up at the sun, when Gracie turned to her and asked a question that Victoria had asked herself as a child too.

“Do you think maybe you were adopted and they never told you?” Gracie asked her with an innocent look as her older sister smiled. She was wearing a loose T-shirt over her bathing suit, as she always did, to conceal what was beneath it.

“I used to think I was when I was a kid,” Victoria admitted, “because I look so different from them. But I don’t think I am. I guess I’m just some weird throwback to another generation, like Dad’s grandmother or whoever. I think I’m their kid, even though we don’t have much in common.” She didn’t look like Gracie either, but they were soul mates and had been for all of Grace’s short life, and they both knew it. Victoria just hoped Gracie didn’t grow up to be like them. She didn’t see how she could, but they had a powerful influence on her, and once Victoria was gone, they would hold on to her even more tightly, and mold her to their own images.

“I’m glad you’re my sister,” Gracie said sadly. “I wish you weren’t going away to college, and that you had stayed here.”

“I do too, when I think about leaving you. But I’ll come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you can come to visit me.”

“It won’t be the same,” Gracie said as a tear sneaked down her cheek, and they both knew it was true.

The whole family looked like they were in mourning when Victoria packed her bags for college. And the night before she left, her father took them all out to dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and they had a good time together. There were no jokes that night at anyone’s expense. And the next day, all three of them took her to the airport, and the moment they got out of the car, Gracie burst into tears and threw her arms around Victoria’s waist.

Her father checked in her luggage, while the two girls stood crying on the sidewalk, and Christine looked at her daughter unhappily.

“I wish you wouldn’t go,” she said softly. She would have liked to try again if she had the chance. She could feel Victoria slipping through her fingers forever. She had never really thought about what this day would feel like. The pain of it took her by surprise now.

“I’ll be home soon,” Victoria said, and hugged her, still crying, and then she hugged her little sister again. “I’ll call you tonight,” she promised her, “as soon as I get to my room.” Gracie nodded and couldn’t stop crying, and even her father’s eyes were damp when he said goodbye to her in a choked voice.

“Take care of yourself. Call if you need anything. And if you hate it, you can always transfer to a school out here.” He hoped she would. It was as though her leaving California for college were a rejection of him. They had wanted her to stay in L.A., or close to it, which wasn’t what Victoria wanted or needed.

After kissing them all again, Victoria went through security, and waved for as long as she could see them. They didn’t leave the airport until she had disappeared from sight. The last she saw of her family was Gracie leaving the airport, walking between her parents. They all looked the same, with their dark hair and slim bodies. Her mother was holding Gracie’s hand, and Victoria could see that her sister was still crying.

She boarded the flight to Chicago, thinking about all of them, and as the plane took off, she looked out the window at the city she was fleeing, to find the tools she needed for a new life somewhere else. She didn’t know where that would be, but the one thing she did know was that it couldn’t be here, or with them.

Victoria’s years in college were exactly what she hoped they would be. The school was even better than she had dreamed or expected. It was big and sprawling, and the classes she took and did well at were her ticket to freedom. She wanted to acquire the skills she needed to have a job and a life someplace other than L.A. She missed Gracie, and sometimes even her parents, but when she thought of living with her parents, every fiber of her being told her that she could never live with them again. And she loved her frequent visits to Chicago and discovering everything she could about the city. It was lively and sophisticated, and she thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the brutally cold weather.

She went home for Thanksgiving freshman year, and saw instantly that Grace had grown taller, and prettier, if that was even possible. Her mother had finally relented and let her do a commercial for Gap Kids. Grace’s photograph was suddenly everywhere, and she could have had a career as a model, but her father wanted a better life for her. And he swore that he’d never let a child of his go to college so far from home again. He told Grace that she’d have to go to UCLA, Pepperdine, Pomona, Scripps, Pitzer, or USC. He was not going to let her leave L.A. In his own way, he genuinely missed Victoria. He didn’t have much to say when she called, except that he hoped she’d come home soon, and then he passed the phone to her mother, who asked what she was doing and if she’d lost any weight. It was the question Victoria hated most because she hadn’t. And then she dieted frantically for two weeks before she went home.

And when she got back to L.A. for Christmas vacation, her mother noticed that she had lost a little weight. She had been working out at the gym at school, but she admitted that she hadn’t had any dates. She was working too hard at school to even care. She told them she had decided to get a teaching degree, and her father instantly disapproved. It gave them a new topic to disagree on, and distracted them from her weight and lack of dates.

“You’ll never make decent money as a teacher. You should major in communications, and work in advertising or PR. I can get you a job.” She knew he meant well, but it wasn’t what she wanted to do. She liked the idea of teaching, and working with kids. She changed the subject and they talked about how cold it was in the Midwest—she hadn’t even been able to imagine it until she was there. It had been well below zero for the whole week before she came home. And she was enjoying going to hockey games. She wasn’t crazy about her roommate, but she was determined to make the best of it. And she had met some people in her dorm. But mostly, she was trying to get accustomed to the school, and to being away from home. She said she missed decent food, and this time no one commented when she took three helpings of pot roast. And she was happy taking time off from going to the gym while she was home. She appreciated the weather in L.A. as she never had before.

Her father gave her a new computer for Christmas, and her mother gave her a down coat. Gracie had made her a montage of photographs of them, starting when she was born, on a bulletin board to hang up in her dorm room. And when she left after Christmas, Victoria wasn’t sure if she was coming home for spring break. She said she might travel somewhere with friends. In fact, she wanted to go to New York and try to line up a summer job, but she didn’t mention it to them. Her father said that if she didn’t come home in March, they would come to see her after that, and take her to Chicago for the weekend. And it was even harder leaving Gracie that time. The two sisters genuinely missed each other, and her parents said they missed her too.

Second semester of freshman year was hard for Victoria too. The midwestern winter was dreary and cold, she was lonely, she hadn’t met many people, she had no close friends yet, and she caught a bad case of flu in January. When she did, she lost the thread of going to the gym again and started living on fast food. By the end of second semester, she had gained the dreaded freshman fifteen, and none of the clothes she had brought with her fit anymore. She felt huge, and was twenty-five pounds overweight. She had no choice but to start working out again, and she swam every day. She managed to lose ten pounds of the extra weight fairly quickly, with a purging diet, and some pills one of her dorm mates had given her that made her desperately sick. But she could get into her clothes again, and she was thinking about going to Weight Watchers to lose the other fifteen, but she always had an excuse not to. She was busy, it was cold, she had a paper due. It was a constant battle with her weight. And even without her mother hounding her, and her father making fun of her, she was unhappy about her size, and she didn’t have a date all year.

She went to New York as she hoped to over spring break, and managed to get a job as a receptionist at a law firm for the summer. The pay was decent, and she could hardly wait. She didn’t tell her family about it till May, and Gracie called her sobbing on the phone. She had just turned twelve, and Victoria nineteen.

“I want you to come home! I don’t want you to go to New York.”

“I’m coming home in August before I go back to school,” she promised, but Gracie was sad that she wasn’t coming home till then. She had just done another ad, for a national campaign. Her parents were putting the money away in trust for her, and she liked the modeling and thought it was fun. But she missed her sister. Life at home wasn’t nearly as much fun without her.

They had also met Victoria in Chicago, as they’d promised, for a long weekend in April, and it had snowed. It had been a seemingly endless winter, and when Victoria finally finished her exams, she was excited to fly out of Chicago on Memorial Day weekend. She was starting work in New York the day after Memorial Day.

She had bought some skirts and blouses and summer dresses that were appropriate for her job at the law firm. And she had gotten her weight back in control again by not eating any desserts or bread or pasta. It was a low-carb diet that seemed to be working. It was heading in the right direction at least, and she hadn’t eaten ice cream in a month. Her mother would have been proud of her. It had also occurred to her that while her mother complained about what she ate, she had always kept a hefty supply of ice cream in the freezer. And she had served all the fattening things Victoria liked to eat. She had always put temptation in Victoria’s way. At least now she could only blame herself for what she ate, Victoria told herself. And she was trying to be diligent and sensible about it, without going on any crazy diets, or borrowing someone else’s pills. She hadn’t had time to go to Weight Watchers yet, but she had promised herself that she would walk to work every day in New York. She was going to be working on Park Avenue and East 53rd Street, and staying at a small residential hotel in Gramercy Park, which was a thirty-block hike to work, a mile and a half. Three miles if she walked both ways.

Victoria liked her summer job. The people at the law firm were nice to her. She was competent, responsible, and efficient. Mostly, she answered the phones, handed envelopes to messengers, or accepted them for the lawyers in the firm. She directed clients to attorneys’ offices, took messages, and greeted people at the front desk. It was an easy but busy job, and most days she wound up staying late. And by the time she left, in the torrid summer heat, she was too tired to walk home, so she took the subway back to Gramercy Park. But she managed to walk to work on the days she wasn’t late, at least some of the time. When it took longer than she’d planned to get dressed or do her hair, she’d have to take the subway to work, so she wouldn’t be late.

Victoria was considerably younger than most of the secretaries at the law firm, so she didn’t make any friends. People were busy and didn’t have time to socialize and chat. She spoke to a few people in the employee dining room at lunchtime, but they were always in a hurry and had things to do. And she didn’t know a soul in New York. She didn’t mind. On weekends she went for long walks in Central Park, or listened to concerts, lying on a blanket on the grass. She went to all the museums, walked around the Cloisters, explored SoHo, Chelsea, and the Village, and wandered around the campus of NYU. She still would have liked to transfer there, but she thought she would lose credits and didn’t know if she had the grades. She was planning to stick it out at Northwestern for the next three years, or finish sooner if she could by going to summer school, and then move to New York and find a job. She knew after living in the city for a month that this was where she wanted to work, without any doubt. Sometimes during her lunch hours she looked up lists of New York schools. She was determined to teach at one of the private schools. And nothing was going to sway her from her plan.

When she finished her job at the law firm, she flew to L.A. for the last three weeks of her summer vacation, and Gracie threw herself into her sister’s arms the minute she walked through the door. Victoria was surprised to see that the house looked smaller, her parents older, and Gracie suddenly looked more grown up than she had four months before. But she looked nothing like Victoria had looked at the same age, with her rapidly maturing body, full figure, and big breasts. Gracie was tiny like their mother, with the same lithe figure and narrow heart-shaped face. But despite her skinny body, she still looked more mature. And on Victoria’s first night back, Grace admitted that she had a crush on a boy. She had met him at the swim and tennis club that their mother took her to every day. He was fourteen. And Victoria was too embarrassed to admit to her or her parents that she hadn’t had a date in over a year. When they pressed her about it repeatedly, thinking she was being coy, she finally invented a mythical boy she had gone out with at Northwestern. She said he was a hockey player and was studying to be an engineer. Her father informed her immediately that all engineers were bores. But at least they thought she had a date. She said he had spent the summer with his family in Maine. They seemed relieved to hear that she had gone out with someone, and she said she hadn’t gone out with anyone in New York. But dating someone at school made her sound more normal than the reality of the nights she had spent studying alone in the dorm.

Her mother pulled her aside and told her she might have gained a little weight in New York, and when they went to the club so Gracie could see her “boyfriend,” Victoria stayed in her shirt and shorts, instead of putting on a swimsuit, which was what she always did when she gained weight. And she and Grace had an ice cream nearly every day on the way home. But she never touched the Häagen-Dazs her mother had stocked in the fridge. She didn’t want them to see her eat it.

The weeks in California flew by, and they were sad again to see her leave. Gracie was more composed this time, but it was hard knowing they wouldn’t see Victoria again for three months until Thanksgiving. But she would be busy with a heavy workload at school, and Gracie was going into seventh grade. It was difficult for Victoria to believe that Gracie would be in high school in two years.

Victoria’s roommate sophomore year was a nervous-looking girl from New York. She had an obvious eating disorder and was frighteningly thin. She admitted after a few days that she had been in a hospital all summer, and Victoria watched her get thinner every day. Her parents called her constantly to check on her, and she said she had a boyfriend in New York. She looked miserable at school, and Victoria tried to ignore the atmosphere of stress she created. She was a crisis in full bloom. Just looking at her made Victoria want to eat more. And by the time Victoria went back to L.A. for Thanksgiving, her roommate had decided to leave school and go back to New York. It was a relief to know that she wouldn’t be there when Victoria got back. It was hard to live with the tension she exuded in the room.

It was between Thanksgiving and Christmas that Victoria met the first boy who had interested her since she’d been there. He was in prelaw, in his junior year, and he was in an English lit class with her. He was a tall, good-looking boy with freckles and red hair, from Louisville, Kentucky, and she loved to listen to his drawl when he talked. They were in a study group together, and he invited her out to coffee afterward. His father owned several race horses, and his mother lived in Paris. He was planning to spend Christmas with her there. He was fluent in French, and had lived in London and Hong Kong. Everything about him seemed exotic to Victoria, and he was a kind, gentle person.

They talked about their families, and he said his life had been pretty upside down since his parents’ divorce, and his mother constantly moved from one place to another around the world. She had married someone after his father and was divorced again. He thought Victoria’s life sounded a lot more stable than his own, and it was, but she didn’t consider her childhood a happy one either. She had been an outsider in her own home all her life. And he had been a newcomer wherever he was. He had gone to five schools after eighth grade. And his father had just married a twenty-three-year-old girl. He was twenty-one. He admitted to Victoria that his stepmother had come on to him, and he had almost slept with her. They had both been drunk, and by some miracle of good judgment, he had managed not to give in to temptation, but he was nervous about seeing her again. He had decided to spend Christmas with his mother in Paris instead, although she had a new French boyfriend he wasn’t crazy about either.

He was very funny about his stories, but there was something almost tragic about the tales he told about a lost boy caught between crazy, irresponsible parents. He said he was living proof that people with too much money screwed up their kids. He had been seeing a shrink since he was twelve. His name was Beau, and despite some romantic moments and a little heavy petting on the night before she left, they hadn’t slept with each other when she went to L.A. for Christmas. He promised to call her from Paris. And he seemed wonderfully romantic and exotic to her. She was fascinated by him. And this time when her parents asked who she was dating, she could say a junior in pre-law. It would sound respectable to them, although she couldn’t imagine her father or mother liking him. He was much too offbeat for them.

Beau called her over the holidays and had gone to Gstaad with his mother and her friend. He sounded bored and a little lost. And he texted her constantly with things that made her laugh. Gracie wanted to know if he was handsome but said she didn’t like red hair. And this time Victoria watched her diet. She passed on desserts even though her father expressed surprise when his “big girl” said no. It was impossible to shake his view of her as someone who ate all the wrong things and was always overweight.

Victoria lost five pounds during her ten days in L.A. And she and Beau got back to Northwestern within hours of each other on the same day. She had thought of nothing but him over the holiday, and she wondered how long it would take for them to wind up in bed. She was glad that she had saved herself for him. Beau would be her first, and she could easily imagine him being gentle and sensual in bed. They were kissing and laughing and cuddling when he came to her dorm room, and he said he was so jet-lagged that nothing happened that night. Nor for the next many weeks. They were with each other constantly, they studied in the library together, and since she no longer had a roommate, sometimes he fell asleep on the other bed. They spent a lot of time kissing and fondling, and he loved her breasts, but it never went past that point. He told her she should wear miniskirts because she had the best legs he had ever seen. He appeared to be totally enthralled with her, and for the first time in her life, Victoria was seriously losing weight. She wanted to look great for him. And she was feeling good about herself.

They had snowball fights and went ice skating, they went to hockey games, restaurants, and bars. He introduced her to his friends. They went everywhere together and always had a terrific time. But no matter how close they got to it, they never made love. She wasn’t sure why, and she was afraid to ask. She wondered if he thought she was too fat, or if he respected her too much, or if maybe he was afraid, or if his near miss with his twenty-three-year-old stepmother had traumatized him, or his parents’ divorce. Something was holding him back, and Victoria had no idea what it was. He obviously wanted her, and their makeout sessions grew more and more passionate, but their hunger for each other was never consummated, and it was driving Victoria insane. They were down to their underwear one night in her dorm room, and then he held her in his arms and lay there silently without moving for a long time, and then he got out of bed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him quietly, sure that it was something about her. Something wrong with her. Maybe her weight. All her feelings of not being good enough came back to her in a rush as he sat down on the edge of her bed.

“I’m falling in love with you,” he said miserably, as he dropped his head into his hands.

“So am I with you. What’s wrong with that?” She was smiling at him.

“I can’t do this to you,” he said softly, and she touched his red hair falling over his eyes. He looked like Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. He was a boy.

“Yes, you can. It’s okay.” She tried to reassure him, as they sat there in their underwear.

“No, it’s not. I can’t … you don’t understand. This is the first time this has ever happened to me … with a woman … I’m gay … and no matter how much I think I love you now, sooner or later I’m going to end up with a man again. I don’t want to do that to you, no matter how much I want you now. It won’t last with us.”

For a long moment, she didn’t know what to say. This was way beyond her realm of experience, and more complicated than any relationship she had imagined with him. And he was being fair. He knew that sooner or later he’d want a man again. He always had.

“I never should have started it, but I fell in love with you the day we met.”

“Then why can’t this work?” she asked softly, grateful for his honesty, but it hurt nonetheless.

“Because it won’t. This isn’t who I am. This is some kind of wild, delicious fantasy. But it’s not real for me. It could never be. I was wrong to think it could. You’ll get hurt. I don’t want to do that to you. We have to stop,” he said, looking at her with his big green eyes. “Let’s at least be friends.” But she didn’t want to be his friend. She was falling for him, and her body was crying out for him, and had been for a month. He looked painfully confused and guilty for what he’d almost done, and the charade he’d played out for a month. “I thought it could work, but it can’t. The first time I see a guy I want, I’ll be gone. That’s not good enough for you, Victoria. You deserve so much more.”

“Why does it have to be so complicated? If you’re falling in love with me, then why wouldn’t it work?” She was near tears, of disappointment and frustration.

“Because you’re not a man. I think you’re some kind of ultimate female fantasy for me, with your luscious body and big breasts. You’re what I think I should want, but in reality I don’t. I want a man.” He was being as honest with her as he could be, and his referring to her “luscious” body was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. But no matter how luscious her body or how big her breasts, he didn’t want her after all. It was rejection exquisitely packaged, but rejection nonetheless. “I’d better go,” he said, slipping back into his clothes as she watched. He was dressed again in a flash and stood looking at her lying on her bed. She hadn’t moved, or said another word. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said, and she wondered if he would, and if he did, what would he say? He had said it all tonight. She didn’t want to only be friends. She thought they had more than that together. For a while he had seemed totally infatuated with her.

“I guess I should have told you in the beginning. But I wanted it to work, and I didn’t want to scare you off.”

She nodded, unable to find the right words, and she didn’t want to cry. It would have been so humiliating now, as she lay on her bed in her bra and thong. He looked at her for a moment from the doorway, and then he was gone, and she climbed under the covers and cried. It was frustrating and depressing all at once, but she also knew he was right. It would have been even worse if she’d slept with him, and wanted something she couldn’t have. It was better this way. But she felt horrible and rejected nonetheless.

She was awake for hours, thinking about the time they’d spent together and the confidences they’d shared, the endless makeout sessions that went nowhere but titillated them both, as they were wrapped in each other’s arms, aroused. It all seemed so pointless now. She turned off the light and finally went to sleep. He didn’t call her in the morning, but Gracie did instead. Victoria’s heart felt like a brick in her chest when she thought of the night before.

“How’s Beau?” Gracie asked in her cheerful twelve-year-old voice.

“We broke up,” Victoria said, sounding almost as bad as she felt.

“Oh … that’s too bad … he sounded nice.”

“He was. He is.”

“Did you have a fight? Maybe he’ll come back.” She wanted to sound hopeful for her older sister. She hated it when Victoria was sad.

“No, he won’t. It’s okay. So how are things with you?” Victoria said, steering her off the subject, and Gracie gave her the full report on the boys in seventh grade, and then they finally hung up, and Victoria could mourn the loss in peace. Beau didn’t call her that day, or for the next several days, and then she realized she would have to see him in class. She was panicked over it, and then screwed up her courage and went to class, where the teacher casually mentioned that Beau had dropped out of English lit. And Victoria felt her heart sink again. She barely knew him, but it was a loss anyway. And as she left the classroom afterward, she wondered if she’d ever see him again. Maybe not. And when she looked up, she saw him standing farther down the hallway, watching her, and slowly he approached as she stood still and waited. He touched her face gently with one hand and looked like he wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and looked as though he meant it. “I’m sorry I was so stupid and selfish. I thought it would be easier for both of us if I dropped the class. If it’s any consolation, this isn’t easy for me either. I just didn’t want to make a bigger mess later on.”

“It’s okay,” she said softly, and smiled at him. “It’s okay. I love you, for whatever that means to you now.”

“A lot,” he said, and brushed her cheek with his lips, and then he was gone. And Victoria walked back to the dorm alone. It was snowing and bitter cold, as she walked along the frozen road, thinking about Beau, and hoping their paths wouldn’t cross again. It was so cold, she didn’t even feel the tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. All she could do now was put him out of her mind, and try to overcome her own feelings of failure. Whatever his reasons, he hadn’t wanted her. And the feeling of not being wanted or loved was all too familiar to her. The experience with Beau was a confirmation of everything she had feared all her life.

Chapter 5

Victoria’s last two years in college raced by. She took a summer job in New York again at the end of sophomore year. She was a receptionist in a modeling agency this time, and it was as wild as her previous job at the law firm had been sedate. And she had a great time. She befriended some of the models, who were the same age as she, and the people who did the bookings were fun to be with too. All of them thought she was crazy when she said she wanted to teach school, and she had to admit that working at a modeling agency was a lot more exciting.

Two of the models invited her to live with them, and she gave up her dreary room at the hotel. And despite the parties they went to, the hours they kept, the clothes they wore, and the men they went out with, she was impressed by how hard they worked. The girls who were successful worked like dogs, and were diligent about the modeling jobs they did. They went crazy after hours, but the good ones were on time for every shoot, and worked tirelessly until the work was done, sometimes on twelve- or fourteen-hour shoots. It wasn’t as much fun as it looked.

And Victoria was always stunned by how thin they were. The two girls she lived with in Tribeca almost never ate. It made her feel guilty for all that she did, and she tried to follow their example, but she was starving by dinnertime. Her roommates either didn’t eat at all or ate aggressively dietetic food, and very little of it. They seemed to exist on next to nothing, and had tried every kind of purge and colonic to keep their weight down. Victoria had a different constitution than they did. She couldn’t survive on the tiny amounts they consumed. But she followed their more reasonable diet tips as best she could, avoiding carbs and eating much smaller portions, and she looked good when she went back to L.A. for a month before she went back to school. She had hated to leave New York, and had had a ball. The head of the agency had told her that if she ever wanted a job with them, they would hire her anytime. And Gracie loved hearing the stories she told when she got home. She was going into eighth grade that year, and Victoria her junior year. She was halfway through college and still had her sights set on a teaching job in New York. More than ever, it was where she knew she wanted to be. Her parents had lost hope of ever getting her to move back home. And Gracie knew it too.

The two sisters spent a wonderful month together until Victoria went back to school. Gracie had gotten prettier than ever that year, and she had none of the awkwardness of most girls her age. She was lean and graceful, was taking ballet, and had flawless skin. And her parents still let her do a modeling job every now and then. Gracie readily admitted she hated school. She had a booming social life, a horde of friends, and half a dozen boys calling her all the time on the cell phone her parents had finally given her. It was a far cry from Victoria’s monastic life at school, although things got slightly better for her during junior year.

She dated two boys one after the other, although neither seriously, but she got to go out on most weekends, which was a vast improvement over the first two years. She finally lost her virginity to one of the boys she dated, although she didn’t love him. And she never ran into Beau again. She wasn’t even sure if he was still at school. She saw some of his friends once in a while, from the distance, but she never spoke to them. It had been an odd experience and still upset her when she thought about it. He had been like a beautiful dream. The boys she went out with after that were much more real. One was a hockey player, like the boy she had invented in freshman year. And he liked Victoria more than she liked him. He had grown up in Boston, and he was a little rough around the edges, and had a tendency to drink too much and get belligerent, so she stopped seeing him. And the one she went out with after him, and ultimately slept with, was pleasant but boring. He was studying biochemistry and nuclear physics, and she didn’t have much to say to him. The only thing they liked about each other was having sex. So she concentrated on her studies, and eventually stopped seeing the physicist, after a few months.

Victoria stayed at Northwestern for summer school at the end of junior year. She wanted to lighten her load for senior year and focus on student teaching. It was hard to believe how fast the time had gone. She only had one year left before she graduated, and she wanted to concentrate on getting a job in New York for the following year. She started sending out letters in the fall. She had a list of private schools where she was hoping to teach once she got her credentials. She knew the pay wasn’t as good as it was in the public schools, but she thought it would be right for her. By Christmas she had sent out letters to nine schools. She was even willing to do substitute teaching at several schools, if she had to wait for a full-time position to open up.

The answers came back like gumballs out of a machine in January. She was turned down by eight schools. Only one school hadn’t answered, and she wasn’t optimistic when she hadn’t heard from them by spring break. She was thinking about calling the modeling agency where she’d worked to see if she could work for them for a year, until a position opened up in one of the schools. It would be better pay anyway than teaching school, and maybe she could room with some of the models again.

And then the last answer came. She sat staring at the envelope the way she had when her college acceptances came. She had opened them gingerly one by one, trying to guess what was in the envelope. And she thought it more than unlikely that she would be offered a job by this school. It was one of the more elite private schools in New York, and she couldn’t imagine them hiring a teacher fresh out of college. She helped herself to a candy bar she had stashed in her desk, and came back to tear open the envelope. She unfolded the single page, and braced herself to be rejected again. Dear Miss Dawson, thank you for your inquiry, but we regret that at this time … she formulated their answer in her head, and then stared at the letter in disbelief. They hadn’t offered her a job, but they were inviting her to come to New York for an interview. They explained that one of their English teachers would be taking an extended maternity leave in the fall, so while they didn’t have a long-term position to offer her, it was possible that they might be able to hire her for a year, if the interview went well. She couldn’t believe her eyes, as she let out a whoop and danced around the room, still holding the candy bar. They had asked her to advise them if she would be able to come to New York for a meeting with them in the next two weeks.

She rushed to her computer and formulated a letter, telling them that she’d be delighted to come to New York. She printed out the letter, signed it, stuck it in an envelope, and put on her coat to run to the mailbox. She had given them her cell phone number and e-mail address as well. She could hardly wait to go to New York. If she got this job, it was her dream come true. This was what she wanted. New York, not L.A. She had spent four years at Northwestern dreaming of going to New York. She was thankful for the teacher who was going on maternity leave and hoped she’d get the job. Just hearing from them was cause for celebration, and she went out and got a pizza after she dropped the letter in the mailbox, and then wondered if she should have called instead. But they had her phone number now, so they could set up the meeting, and she could be on a plane to New York the next day. She took the pizza back to her dorm room, and sat smiling at their letter. Just having a shot at a teaching position in a private school in New York was the happiest day of her life.

They called her back three days later on her cell phone, and gave her an appointment for the following Monday. She promised to be there, and then decided to spend the weekend before in New York. It occurred to her that the appointment she had just made with them was on Valentine’s Day, an ignominious day for her ever since fourth grade. But if she got the job, it would change her opinion of Valentine’s Day forever. She hoped it was an omen of some kind. She booked the reservation as soon as she hung up, and then lay on her bed in her dorm room, smiling, trying to figure out what she’d wear to the interview. Maybe a skirt and sweater with high heels, or slacks and a sweater and flats. She didn’t know how fancy she should look for a job at a private school in New York, and she had no one to ask. She’d have to wing it and just guess. It was all she could do to keep from running up and down the hall screaming with excitement. Instead, she just lay on her bed, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Chapter 6

The Madison School on East 76th Street, near the East River, was one of the most exclusive private schools in New York. It went from ninth through twelfth grades, and was a preparatory school for college. The school was expensive, had an excellent reputation, was coed, and its students were from among the elite in New York, with a handful of scholarship students who were lucky enough to qualify. Once accepted, the students had every possible academic and extracurricular opportunity. They got into the best colleges in the country, and it was considered one of the finest private high schools in New York. It was heavily endowed so their science and computer labs had state-of-the-art equipment that competed with any college. Its language department was exceptional, offering Mandarin, Russian, and Japanese as well as all the European languages, and its English department was outstanding. Several of their students had become successful writers later on. And their teaching staff was exceptional as well, with degrees from important universities. And typical of most private schools, the teachers were severely underpaid. But the opportunity to work there was considered a real prize. Just getting an interview was a major coup for Victoria, and getting the job, even temporarily for a year, was beyond her wildest dreams. If she had to choose one school she would have given anything to teach at, this was it.

She took a flight after her last class before the weekend, and arrived in New York late Friday night. It was snowing, all the flights had been delayed by several hours, and they closed the airport right after she landed; she was grateful they hadn’t been rerouted somewhere else. And people outside the airport were fighting for cabs. She had booked a room at the hotel where she’d stayed before, in Gramercy Park. It was two A.M. when she finally got there, and they had saved a small ugly room for her, but the price was one she could afford. She rapidly got into her nightgown, without bothering to unpack, brushed her teeth, got into bed, and slept until noon the next day.

When she woke up, the sun was shining brightly on two feet of snow, which had continued to fall throughout the night. The city looked like a postcard. And children outside her window were being pulled on sleds by their mothers; others were having snowball fights, ducking for cover behind cars buried in snow that would take their owners hours or days to dig out of. Snowplows were attempting to clear the streets and spreading salt on the ground. Victoria thought it was a perfect winter day in New York, and fortunately had brought a pair of the snow boots she wore almost every day at Northwestern, so she was prepared. And at one o’clock she set off on foot toward the subway, which she had taken every day to work when she lived there. She got off at East 77th Street and walked east toward the river. She wanted to look at the school before she did anything else.

It was a large, beautifully maintained building with several entrances, and could have been an embassy, or an important home of some kind. It had been recently remodeled and was in pristine condition. A discreet bronze plaque over the entrance said only “The Madison School.” She knew that just under four hundred students were enrolled. A rooftop garden provided open-air space during lunch and recreation. And they had recently built a state-of-the-art gym for all sports activities in what had once been a parking lot across the street. The school offered every possible amenity and opportunity. It stood solid and silent on the snowy sunny afternoon, while a lone janitor cleared a path through the snow outside the school. Victoria smiled at him as she stood looking up at the school, and he returned the smile. She couldn’t even imagine being lucky enough to work there in her favorite city in the world. As she stood looking at it, she was wearing the thick white down coat her mother had given her, and felt like a snowman herself. The coat was unflattering but warm. She felt like the Michelin Man or the Pillsbury Doughboy when she wore it, but it had served her well, and was the warmest coat she owned for the arctic temperatures at school. And she was wearing a white wool hat pulled down to her eyes as a wisp of her blond hair peeked out over her brow.

Victoria stood for ages looking up at the school, and then she turned and walked away and went back to the subway to go to Midtown. She wanted to go shopping for something to wear on Monday. She wasn’t happy with the outfits she had brought with her, and one of them was too tight. She wanted to look perfect when she interviewed for the job, and she knew how unlikely it was that they would hire her fresh out of school, and they must have had many other applicants, but her grades and recommendations were good, and she had all the excitement and enthusiasm of youth for her first teaching job. She hadn’t told her parents that she had come, because her father still wanted her to look for something in another field, with better pay and more possibilities for advancement in the future. Her dream of a teaching career didn’t meet their standards as something they could brag about or that would enhance their image. “My daughter is a teacher” did nothing for them, but working at the Madison School in New York meant everything to Victoria. It had been her first choice when she sent out inquiries to the best private schools in New York, and met all her criteria for dream job, no matter how low the pay. She would manage to live on it somehow if she even got the chance.

Victoria walked back through the snow to the subway, got off at East 59th Street, took the escalator upstairs to Bloomingdale’s, and began looking for something she could wear. The clothes she liked frequently didn’t come in her size. She was wearing a size fourteen at the moment, although they were a little tight. She sometimes let herself get heavier, without meaning to, in the winter, and then had to wear her size sixteens. The pressure of wearing fewer clothes, showing her body in bathing suits and shorts, and not being able to hide everything under a coat usually helped her bring her size down in summer. She wished she had been more disciplined about it recently. She had already promised herself to lose weight by graduation, and particularly now if she got this job in New York. She didn’t want to be at her biggest when she started her first teaching job.

After endless discouraging searching and some truly upsetting tryons, she found a pair of gray slacks and a long dark blue blazer to wear with a pale blue turtleneck sweater the same color as her eyes. She bought a pair of high-heeled boots that added a younger look to the outfit. It looked dignified, respectable, not too dressy, and just elegant enough to make her look serious about the job. It was the look she assumed would be worn by teachers at that school. And she was happy with the outfit, when she got back on the subway with her shopping bags and rode back downtown to her hotel. The streets were still snarled by snowplows, buried cars, and tall mounds of shoveled snow everywhere. The city was a mess. But Victoria was in great spirits with her purchases. She was going to wear a pair of small pearl earrings her mother had given her. And the well-cut navy blazer hid a multitude of sins. The outfit looked young, professional, and trim.

The morning of the interview Victoria woke up with a knot in her stomach. She washed and blow-dried her hair, then brushed it into a sleek ponytail and tied it with a black satin ribbon. She dressed carefully, put on the big down coat, and went out into the February sunshine. The weather had warmed up and was turning the snow to slush with ice rivers in the gutters. She had to be careful not to get splashed with it by passing cars as she made her way to the subway. She thought of taking a cab, but she knew the subway was faster. And she reached the school ten minutes before her nine o’clock interview, in time to see hundreds of young people filtering into the school. Almost all were wearing jeans, and a few of the girls wore miniskirts and boots despite the cold weather. They were talking and laughing, with a wild assortment of hairdos and hair colors, carrying their books. They looked like kids in any other high school, not the offspring of the elite. And the two teachers standing at the main entrance as they filtered in were dressed the same way the kids were, in jeans and down jackets, running shoes or boots. There was a nice informal feeling to the group, and wholesome too. The two monitors were a man and a woman. The female teacher wore her long hair in a braid; the male teacher’s head was shaved. Victoria noticed that he had a small bird tattooed on the back of his head. They were chatting animatedly as they followed the last stragglers inside, and Victoria walked in right behind them, wearing her new outfit and hoping she would make a good impression. Her appointment was with Eric Walker, the headmaster, and they had mentioned that they would want her to meet with the dean of students too. She gave the receptionist her name, and waited on a chair in the lobby. Five minutes later a man in his mid forties came out to greet her, in jeans, a black sweater, a tweed jacket, and hiking boots. He smiled warmly at Victoria and invited her into his office, and waved at a battered leather chair on the other side of his desk.

“Thank you for coming in from Northwestern,” he said, as she took off her bulky coat so he could see her new blazer. She hoped he wouldn’t decide she was too uptight for the school, which turned out to be much more casual than she had expected. “I was afraid you might not be able to get in, with the snowstorm,” he said pleasantly. “Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way. We were having a dance on Saturday, but we had to cancel. The kids from the suburbs and Connecticut couldn’t have gotten in. About a fifth of our students commute to school. We had to reschedule for next weekend.” He had her CV on his desk, Victoria noticed, and was fully prepared for the meeting. She saw that he had the transcript of her grades that she had sent him too. She had Googled him and knew that he had gone to Yale, and had a master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard. He was Dr. Walker, although he didn’t use the title on his correspondence to her. His credentials were impressive. And he had published two books on secondary education for laymen, and a guide for parents and students on the college application process. She felt insignificant in his presence, but he had a warm friendly demeanor, and turned his full attention to her.

“So, Victoria,” he said, leaning back in his own ancient leather chair, behind a handsome English partner’s desk he said had been his father’s. The things in his office looked expensive and well worn to the point of battered. And there were bookcases crammed full of books. “What makes you think you want to be a teacher? And why here? Wouldn’t you rather be back in L.A., where you won’t have to shovel snow to get to school?” He smiled as he said it, and so did she. She liked him, and wanted to impress him, and she wasn’t sure how to do it. All she had brought with her were enthusiasm and truth.

“I love kids. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher ‘when I grew up.’ I just knew it was right for me. I’m not interested in business, or getting up the corporate ladder, although that’s what my parents think I should do, and what they respect. I think that if I make a difference in a young person’s life, it would be much better and more meaningful than anything else I could do.” She could see in his eyes that it was the right answer, and she was pleased. And she meant it.

“Even if it means you’re miserably paid, and make less money than everyone else you know?”

“Yes, even if I’m miserably paid. I don’t care. I don’t need a lot to live on.” He didn’t ask her if her parents were going to help her—that wasn’t his problem.

“You’d make a lot more money working for the public school system,” he said honestly, and she knew that too.

“I don’t want to do that. And I don’t want to go back to L.A. I’ve wanted to live in New York since high school. I would have gone to college here if I’d been accepted at NYU or Barnard. I know this is right for me. And Madison was my first-choice school.”

“Why? Rich kids are no easier to teach than others. They’re smart kids, and they’re exposed to a lot of things. No matter what their grades are, and we have our weak students too, they’re savvy, and you can’t bullshit them. They know it if you don’t know your stuff, and they’ll call you on it. They’re more confident and bolder than kids with fewer advantages, and that can be tough for a teacher. And the parents can be tough here. They’re very demanding, and they want the best that we can give them. And we’re fully committed to doing just that. Does it bother you that you’d only be four or five years older than some of your students? The opening we have will involve juniors and seniors, and we might have you cover an English class for sophomores as well. They can be a handful, especially in this school where some of them are mature for their age. These kids have a lot of exposure to a very sophisticated lifestyle with all that that entails. Do you think you’re up to it?” he asked her candidly, and Victoria nodded at him with a serious look in her big blue eyes.

“I think I am, Dr. Walker. I think I could handle it. I’m certain of it, if you give me the chance.”

“The teacher you’ll be replacing will only be out for a year. I can’t promise you anything after that, no matter how well you perform here. So this isn’t a long-term commitment on our part, but only for a year. After that, we’d have to see what would come up, if anyone else is leaving or going out on leave. So if you want a long-term commitment, you should probably look somewhere else.” She couldn’t say that all her other options had turned her down.

“I’d be thrilled with a year,” she said honestly. She didn’t know it, but they had already checked her references with the modeling agency and the law firm, and were impressed by how good they were, in terms of her reliability, her conscientiousness, her professionalism and honesty. She had also completed her student teaching assignments, and the references on them had been excellent too. All Eric Walker needed to decide now was if she was the right teacher for their school. She seemed like a bright, sweet girl. And he was touched by how much she wanted the job.

After he spent forty-five minutes with her, Eric Walker passed her on to his assistant, and she gave Victoria a tour of the school. It was an impressive building with well-kept classrooms, full of alert students using brand-new, very expensive equipment. It was an atmosphere that any teacher would have given anything to teach in, and they all looked like bright, alert, interested, good kids to her. And then she met with the dean of students, who told her something about their student body, and the type of situations she’d face. They were the same as high school students anywhere, except with more money and opportunities, and in some cases very complicated family situations. But difficult home lives were not exclusive to the very rich, nor the poor.

At the end of the second interview, they thanked her for coming, told her they were seeing several other candidates, and would let her know. And after thanking them too, Victoria then found herself out on the street, looking up at the school, praying she would get the job. She had no idea if she would, and they had been so pleasant to her that it was hard to tell if they were just very polite or enthused about her. She didn’t know. She walked west all the way to Fifth Avenue, and then north five blocks, to the Metropolitan Museum, where she saw a new wing of the Egyptian exhibit, and then had lunch in the cafeteria alone, before treating herself to a cab back to her hotel.

She sat in the backseat watching New York slide by and people swarm around like ants in the streets. All she could hope was that she would be part of it one day. She expected to hear back from Madison in a few weeks. And she realized that if she didn’t get the job, she would have to start interviewing at other schools, in Chicago, and maybe even L.A., although the last thing she wanted to do was go home. But if nothing else turned up, she might not have any other choice. She dreaded the thought of living in L.A. again, and even worse, the possibility of living at home, and facing all the same problems she’d always had there. Living with her parents would be too depressing.

She packed her bag and took a cab to the airport. She had an hour to spare before her flight, and she was so anxious after the interview, wondering whether she had done well or not, that she went to the restaurant nearest her gate and ordered a cheeseburger and a hot fudge sundae, and devoured both. She felt stupid once she had. She hadn’t needed it, or the french fries that came with it. But she had been starving and nervous, and the meal she’d eaten offered some comfort and relief from her terrors. What if she didn’t get the job? She told herself that if she didn’t, she’d find something else. But the Madison School was the one she wanted most, if they would just give her a chance. She knew how unlikely that was, fresh out of school.

When they called her flight, she got up, picked up her hand luggage, and headed for the gate. All she could do now was wait and go back to Northwestern. All things considered, for once it hadn’t been a bad Valentine’s Day. And it would be the best one of all if she actually got the job in the end. She was still nervous about it, when she got on the plane, even after the cheeseburger and hot fudge sundae. They hadn’t helped. And she reminded herself as she put on her seat-belt that she would have to be serious about her diet again, and start jogging. Graduation was only three months away. But when she was offered a bag of nuts and another of pretzels, she couldn’t refuse. She ate them absentmindedly as she thought about her interview, hoping she hadn’t blown it in some way, and praying she’d get the job.

Chapter 7

Eric Walker, the head of the Madison School, made the call to Victoria himself in the first week of March. He said it had been a tough choice between her and several other teachers, but he was happy to tell her that she had the job, and she was thrilled. He said a contract had been sent to her by mail.

She was going to be the youngest member of the English department, and she would teach four classes, to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. She had to report for teachers’ meetings on September 1st, and school would start the following week. In exactly six months, she was going to be teaching at the Madison School in New York. She could hardly believe it. And unable to keep the good news to herself, she called her parents that night.

“I was afraid you’d do something like that,” her father said with a disapproving tone. He actually sounded disappointed in her, as though she’d been arrested for taking her clothes off in a supermarket and was in jail. As in why did you go and do a dumb thing like that? “You’re never going to make a penny as a teacher, Victoria. You need to get a real job, in advertising or PR, or something in the communications field. There are lots of things you can do. You can work in the PR office of any major company. You can go to work at McDonald’s and make more than you will as a teacher. It’s a total waste of time. And why New York? Why not here?” He didn’t even ask what kind of school it was, and gave her no credit for landing her first job, in a first-rate school, against stiff competition. All he had to say was that it was the wrong job in the wrong city, and she’d always be poor. But teaching was her chosen career, and it was one of the country’s best private schools.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, apologizing for it, as though she had done something wrong. “It’s a really great school.”

“Really? How much are they paying you?” he asked bluntly. She didn’t want to lie to him, so she told him the truth. And she knew too that it was going to be hard to live on, but it was worth the sacrifices to her, and she wasn’t planning to take anything from him. “That’s pathetic,” he said, sounding disgusted, and handed the phone to her mother, who sounded worried the minute she got on the phone.

“What happened, dear?” her mother asked.

“Nothing. I just got a terrific job, teaching at a wonderful school in New York. Dad just thinks they’re not paying me enough, that’s all. But it’s a real coup that they hired me at all.”

“It’s such a shame that you want to be a teacher,” her mother said, echoing the party line, and managing to convey to Victoria, just as she always had, that she had failed, and was a disappointment to them. They took the fun out of everything for her, and always had, and any sense of accomplishment over what she had achieved. “You could make so much money doing something else.”

“I think I’ll really like the job, Mom. I love the school,” she said, sounding young and hopeful, and trying to hold on to the excitement and enthusiasm and pride she had felt before she called.

“I suppose that’s nice, dear. But you can’t be a teacher forever. At some point you’ll have to get a real job.” When did teaching become not a “real” job? It was all about money to them, and how much you made. “Your sister just made fifty thousand dollars for a two-day shoot for a national campaign,” her mother said. It was more than Victoria was going to make in a year. And Grace just did it for fun, and the college fund their parents had set up for her. To Gracie, modeling was like a game, for which she was highly paid, and she only did it occasionally. Victoria was going to be working hard for the money she made. The discrepancy and dichotomy were shocking to her. But it was no secret that teaching was not a highly paid job, and she had known that when she chose it as a career. She didn’t have the modeling opportunities that Gracie did anyway. They were not an option for her. And teaching was her vocation, not just her work. She hoped that she’d be good at it. “Where are you going to live?” her mother asked her, sounding worried about that too. “Can you afford an apartment on a teacher’s salary? New York is a very expensive city.”

“I’ll get something with roommates. I’ll go back there in August and get settled before I start work.”

“When are you coming home?”

“Right after graduation. I want to spend this summer with you.” She wasn’t planning to get a summer job this year. She wanted to take some short trips with Gracie, and spend time with them, before she officially moved to New York. She might never live in L.A. again, or have as much time to spend with them, although she would have summers off if she continued to teach. But she might have to take summer jobs to supplement her income. This was her last summer to be home and not working, and her parents were fine with it.

Victoria didn’t go home for spring break—she took a job waiting on tables in a diner just off campus, to make some money to sock away. She was going to need every penny she could save for New York. But the meals they gave her for free at the diner got her off her diet again. She lived on meat loaf and mashed potatoes with gravy, and lemon meringue and apple pie à la mode for two weeks. It was tough to resist, especially the blueberry pancakes for breakfast at six A.M. when she started work. Her dream of losing weight by graduation was fading fast. And it was depressing always being on a diet, some new exercise program, and spending life on a treadmill to atone for her sins.

After killing herself at the gym all through April, and watching what she ate, she finally lost ten pounds. She was proud of herself. And she went to rent her cap and gown on the first of May. There was an endless line where they were handing them out, and when she finally got to the head of the line, the man assigning them looked at her to guess her correct size.

“Big girl, huh?” he said with a broad grin, and she had to fight back tears. She didn’t answer, and didn’t comment when he handed her an extra large that she didn’t need. But she was tall enough to wear it, so she didn’t complain. It was huge on her at least. She was planning to wear a short red skirt, high-heeled sandals, and a white blouse under it at graduation. The skirt was short, but no one would see it until she took the gown off. She loved the color, and her legs looked great.

She packed up all her things and sent them home two days before graduation, the day before her parents arrived. Gracie was coming with them, of course. And she was more beautiful than ever when Victoria saw her, wearing a white T-shirt and short shorts. She was fifteen now and, despite her diminutive size, looked eighteen. She could still do ads for children’s clothes and often did. Victoria felt like an elephant standing next to her and her mother, but she loved Gracie anyway. The two sisters almost squeezed the air out of each other when they hugged, after they met her at the dorm.

They took Victoria out for dinner at a really nice restaurant that night, where several of the other graduates were having dinner too. Victoria had asked about bringing a few of her friends along, but her father had said they’d rather have dinner alone with her. And he felt the same about their celebratory lunch the next day too. He said they wanted Victoria to themselves, but what he was really saying, as he always did, was that he was not interested in meeting her friends. It was nothing new to Victoria. But she was happy to be with them anyway. And Gracie was constantly cuddling up to her. The two sisters were always inseparable when they were together. And Grace was starting to think about college too. She wanted to go to USC. And their parents were pleased because it was close to home. Her father said she was a real southern California girl, which made Victoria sound like a traitor for going to college in the Midwest, instead of congratulating her for her sense of adventure and going to a hard school.

The graduation ceremony of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern the next day was fraught with pomp, ceremony, and emotion. Christine was already crying when the procession began, and Jim was looking unusually proud with a damp eye as his daughter walked by him in her cap and gown, and Gracie snapped a picture and Victoria grinned, while trying to look solemn.

Just over a thousand students got their diplomas that day from Weinberg, in alphabetical order. Victoria shook hands with the dean who handed it to her. And she screamed as loud as everyone two hours later, when they threw their caps in the air and embraced each other. She had been solitary for much of her time at Northwestern, but she had nonetheless made some friends, and they had exchanged e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers, and they promised to stay in touch, even if that seemed unlikely. And then suddenly they were out in the world, as graduates, ready to take their place in their chosen careers.

Victoria had dinner with her family again that night at Jilly’s Café, and it felt like a real celebration, as other graduates did the same at nearby tables. The next morning she and her family flew back to L.A. together. Victoria had spent the night at the Hotel Orrington with them, sharing a room with Gracie, as she had to give up her dorm room right after graduation. The two girls chatted late into the night, until they fell asleep next to each other. They were looking forward to spending the next three months together. Victoria hadn’t told anyone, but she was planning to spend the summer following a serious weight-loss program so she could look her best when she started teaching at Madison in September. Her father had commented, when she took her gown off after graduation to return it, that she looked bigger than ever. As usual, he had said it with a broad smile. And then he complimented her on her long legs as he always did, but the first comment was far more powerful than the second. She never heard the compliment once he hit her with the insult.

She sat between her father and Grace on the flight home, and her mother was across the aisle reading a magazine. The two girls had wanted to sit together. They didn’t even look related. And as she got older, Gracie was more and more the image of her mother. Victoria at every age was the image of no one.

Her father leaned over to speak to Victoria right after takeoff. She and Gracie had been talking softly, and were thinking of watching a movie.

“You know, you’ve got the time to look for a decent job when you get back to L.A. You can always tell that school in New York that you’ve changed your mind. Think about it,” he said in a conspiratorial tone.

“I like the job in New York, Dad,” Victoria insisted. “It’s a great school, and if I back out now, my name would be dirt forever in the teaching community. I want the job.”

“You don’t want to be poor for the rest of your life, do you?” he said with a look of contempt. “You can’t afford to be a teacher, and I’m not going to subsidize you forever,” he commented bluntly.

“I’m not expecting you to, or even now, Dad. Other people live on teachers’ salaries. So can I.”

“Why should you have to? I can line up some interviews for you next week.” He was dismissing her entire achievement in landing the job in New York. To him, it wasn’t even a job. He kept telling her to get a “real” job for decent money.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said politely, “but I want to stick with what I’ve got for now. I can always figure it out later if I really can’t live on it. But I can always take a summer job and save the money.”

“That’s pathetic. It may seem all right to you at twenty-two, but trust me, it won’t when you’re thirty or forty. You can interview at the ad agency if you want to.”

“I don’t want to work in advertising,” she said firmly. “I want to be a teacher.” It was the thousandth time she’d said it to him. He shrugged in answer and looked annoyed, and after that she and Gracie put their headphones on and watched the movie. She was relieved not to have to talk to him about it anymore. Her parents were only interested in two things about her, her weight and how much money she was going to make at her job. And the third topic they brought up from time to time was her absence of a love life, which in both their opinions was a result of the first subject, her weight and size. Her father said, whenever the subject came up, that if she’d lose some weight, she’d find a boyfriend. She knew that wasn’t necessarily the case, since plenty of girls who had perfect figures and were half her size couldn’t find a boyfriend. And other girls who were overweight were happily married, engaged, or had significant others. Romance, she knew, wasn’t directly tied to your weight, there were a lot of other factors. And her lack of self-esteem and their constantly picking on her and criticizing her didn’t help her with that problem. They were never proud of her or satisfied with what she was doing, although both of her parents had said they were proud when she graduated from Northwestern. They just wished it had been UCLA or USC, and that she had found a different job than the one in New York, preferably one in L.A. in a different line of work. Whatever she did was never right or enough for them. And they never seemed to realize how painful their constant criticism was for her, or that it was why she no longer wanted to live in L.A. She wanted to put a whole country between them. That way she only had to see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and maybe one day she wouldn’t go home for those either. But for now, she wanted to be with Gracie. Once Gracie left home, Victoria wasn’t sure when she’d go home or how often. They had succeeded in driving her away and didn’t even know it.

She and Gracie got in the back of the car on the way home from the airport. Their parents were talking in the front seat about what they were going to do for dinner. Jim offered to barbecue some steaks in the backyard, and he turned toward the backseat and winked at his older daughter. “I don’t need to ask you, I know you’re hungry. What about you, G, how do steaks sound for dinner?” he asked Gracie. Victoria stared out the window, looking like she’d been punched in the stomach. That was the reputation she had here, and the image they had of her, the one who was always hungry.

“Steaks sound fine, Dad,” Gracie said vaguely. “We can order Chinese if you don’t feel like making barbecue, or Victoria and I can go out for dinner if you and Mom are tired.” They both would have preferred it but didn’t want to insult their parents. And Jim insisted that he was happy to barbecue, as long as he and Victoria wouldn’t be the only ones eating. It was the second shot he had taken at her in five minutes. It was going to be a long summer if this was how it started. It was a reminder to her that nothing had changed. Four years away at college, and a diploma, and they still treated her like the resident uncontrollable eater.

They sat in the backyard that night and ate dinner. Christine decided to skip the steak and just ate salad. She said she’d eaten too much on the plane, and Grace and Victoria ate the steaks their father had made. Grace helped herself to a baked potato, but Victoria didn’t, and just put salad on her plate with the steak.

“Are you sick?” her father said with a straight face. “I’ve never seen you turn down a potato.”

“I’m fine, Dad,” Victoria said quietly. She didn’t enjoy the comment, and she had decided to start her latest diet the moment she got home. She stuck to it, even though they offered her ice cream for dessert, and would have commented on that too if she’d said yes.

After dinner the two girls sat in Gracie’s room, listening to music. Although Gracie’s taste was younger and wilder, they shared lots of things in common. Victoria was happy to be at home with her.

They spent a lot of time together that summer, once Grace got out of school, a few weeks after Victoria’s graduation. The family went to Santa Barbara for the long weekend of Memorial Day. And after they got back, Victoria drove Gracie everywhere. She became her personal chauffeur and companion, and the girls were inseparable for two months. Victoria saw some of her old school friends who had come back to L.A. after graduation, or stayed to go to school there. She didn’t have a lot of close friends, but it was nice to see familiar faces, particularly before she moved away. Two were going on to graduate school, and she thought she’d like to do that one day herself, but at NYU or Columbia. She saw several of the boys she’d known at school, who’d never paid particular attention to her. One of them asked her out for dinner and a movie, but they didn’t have much to say to each other. He had gone into real estate and was obsessed with money. He wasn’t impressed with her choice of a teaching career either. The only one who seemed to admire it was her younger sister, who thought it was noble. Everyone else thought she was foolish and reminded her that she’d be poor forever.

For Victoria, being at home for the summer was a chance to stock up on memories she would cherish forever. She and Gracie shared their dreams and fears and hopes, and their private peeves about their parents. Gracie thought they babied her too much, and she hated the way they bragged about her. Victoria’s main regret was that they didn’t. Their experiences in the same family were diametrically different. It was hard to believe they had the same parents. And although Gracie was the person responsible for making Victoria invisible to them and redundant, Victoria never held it against her, and she loved Grace for the little girl she was and had been, the baby who had come to her like an angel when she was seven.

And for Grace the summer they shared after Victoria’s graduation was a last chance to hang on to her big sister. They had breakfast together every morning. They laughed a lot. Victoria took Gracie out with her friends to the swim club. She played tennis with them, and they beat her every time, because they moved faster than she did. She helped Gracie shop for new clothes for school, and they decided what was hip and what wasn’t. They read fashion magazines together and commented on the new styles. They went to Malibu and other beaches, and sometimes they just lay in the backyard and said nothing, knowing that they were close and loving every minute of it.

It was an easy summer for Christine, since Victoria did everything for Gracie, which gave her all the free time she wanted—not to be with her daughters, but to play bridge with her friends, which was still her favorite pastime. And in spite of her protests, her father set up several interviews for Victoria to find a “better” job than the one she had waiting for her in New York. Victoria thanked him and discreetly canceled them all. She didn’t want to waste anyone’s time, nor her own. Her father was angry about it, and told her again that she was making all the wrong decisions about her future and would never amount to anything as a teacher. She was used to hearing things like that from him, and it didn’t sway her. She was the child they had never been proud of and had either ignored or made fun of.

She confessed to Gracie one day that summer that if she had the money, she would love to have a nose job, and maybe she would sometime. She said that she liked Gracie’s nose, and wanted one like it, or a “cute” nose of her own. Gracie was touched when she said it, and she told Victoria that she was beautiful anyway, even with her own nose. She didn’t need a new one. Gracie thought she was perfect just the way she was. It was the unconditional love that they had given each other all their lives and that Victoria thrived on, and so did Gracie. Their parents’ love was always conditional, depending on how they looked and if their achievements were valid according to their parents’ standards, and if they made their parents look good in the process. Gracie had basked in their praise all her life, because she was an accessory that enhanced them. And because Victoria was different and didn’t fit in, she had been emotionally starved by them, but not by Gracie. Grace had always lavished love on her and worshipped Victoria in every way. And Victoria adored her, wanted to protect her sister, and didn’t want her to turn out like her parents. She wished she could take Gracie with her. They both dreaded the day she would leave for New York.

Grace helped Victoria pick new items for her wardrobe that would look appropriate to her students when she taught high school. She had stuck to her guns and her diet this time, and could just get into a size twelve by the beginning of August. It was tight, but it fit. She had dropped several pounds over the summer, although her father asked her regularly if she didn’t want to lose some weight before she left for New York. He didn’t notice a single pound she lost; nor did her mother, who was always distressed about her daughter’s size, no matter what it was. The label they had put on her as a child was stuck there forever, like a tattoo. She was a “big girl,” which was their way of calling her a fat girl. She knew that if she weighed a hundred pounds and were disappearing, they would still see her as a “big girl.” They were the mirror of her inadequacies and her failings, and never of her victories. The only victories they saw were Grace’s. That was just the way they were.

The family went to Lake Tahoe together for a week before Victoria had to leave. They had a good time. The house their father had rented for them was very pretty. And both girls water-skied in the freezing lake, while their father steered the boat. The best part about her taking a teaching job, Gracie said, was that they would still be able to go on summer vacations together, and Victoria promised to have her come and visit in New York. She could even visit the school where she’d be teaching, and maybe sit in on one of her classes if they let her. She hoped they would.

And finally the day arrived for Victoria to leave. It was a day that she and Grace had dreaded, for all the goodbyes they didn’t want to say. They were both strangely silent on the way to the airport. They had stayed awake all the night before, and lay in one bed so they could talk. Victoria told Gracie she could move into her room, because she liked it better, but Gracie didn’t want to take her room away. She wanted her to have a place to come home to. They stood hugging each other for a long time at the airport, as tears streamed down their cheeks. Despite their many assurances to each other over the summer, they both knew that it would never be the same again. Victoria was going to a grown-up life in another city, and they had agreed that it was better for her. The one thing they both were certain would never change was how much they loved each other. The rest would be different from now on. It had to be. From the moment Victoria set foot on the plane, she would be a grown-up. And when she came home, it would only be to visit. There was nothing left for her here except painful memories and her sister Grace. Her parents had abandoned her emotionally the day she was born, when she didn’t look the way they’d planned, or anything like them. It had been unacceptable to them, and a crime they could never quite forgive her, and didn’t even try. Instead they made fun of her and diminished and dismissed her. They always made her feel unwanted and not really good enough for them.

“Take care of yourself, dear, and let us know how you are,” her mother said, hugging her loosely, as she always did, as though Victoria were too big for her to get her arms around, or as though her proportions might be contagious. There was too little of Christine internally for her to give much to anyone else, except Jim. She gave him all she had, and always shortchanged her girls, even Grace. She was only too happy to let Victoria stand in for her with Grace.

“I’ll find you a job when you give up teaching,” her father said as he hugged her. “It won’t take long,” he confirmed with a grin. “You’ll get tired of starving.” Despite the words, he pressed a check into her hand. It was for a thousand dollars. It was a generous gift, and she was glad to have it. It would help with her rent or the deposit for an apartment that she had yet to find.

She and Grace hugged one last time, and then she had to wrench herself away and go through the security line. When she turned back to wave, she and Gracie were both crying, and her father had his arm around their mother’s shoulders. Gracie was standing alone, and the look that passed between the two girls from the distance said it all. Victoria knew that they would be allies forever. She touched her heart, blew Grace a kiss, and then she was gone, to her new life. She knew that her life in L.A. was only her history now.

Chapter 8

It took Victoria two weeks to find an apartment once she got to New York, and by the end of the first week, she was beginning to panic. She couldn’t stay at a hotel forever, although the check from her father helped. She had saved the money from her past summer jobs, and the one she’d had at spring break, and she would have her salary to live on. She called the school to see if any of the teachers was looking for a roommate, but they told her no one was. She called the modeling agency where she had worked, and one of the booking agents told her that he had a friend who was looking for a roommate, and by sheer luck it was in the East 80s, which was close enough to the school to work for her. He gave her the friend’s number, and she called immediately. There were already three people living in the apartment, and they were looking for a fourth. They told her that the room they were looking to fill was small, and two of them were men and one was a woman, and the price was within her budget. She made an appointment to go over that evening when they got home from work. Miraculously, it was six blocks from the school where she was going to teach. But she didn’t want to get too excited until she saw it. It sounded too good to be true.

When she got there, it was an old prewar building in decent condition, although it looked like it had seen better days. It was on East 82nd Street, near the river. The front door was locked, and she had to be buzzed in, and then she rode the elevator upstairs. The hallway was dark but clean, and a young woman let her into the apartment. She was wearing workout clothes and said she was leaving for the gym. She was in good shape and looked to be about thirty. She said her name was Bunny, for Bernice, which she hated, and she worked in an art gallery uptown. Both men had come home to meet her too. Bill had gone to college with Bunny at Tulane and was an analyst on Wall Street. He said he was recently engaged and would be moving out in the next year. He said he usually stayed at his girlfriend’s apartment, especially on weekends. The other man, Harlan, was gay and recently out of school, and worked for the Metropolitan Museum in the Costume Institute. All of them seemed serious, all were pleasant and well spoken, and she told them she would be teaching at the Madison School. Bill offered Victoria a glass of wine, and a few minutes later Bunny left for the gym. She had an incredible figure, and the two men were nice looking. Harlan had a great sense of humor and a southern drawl and reminded her of Beau, whom she had never seen again after their aborted near-affair. Harlan was born in Mississippi. She told them she came from L.A., and was desperate to find a place to live before she started work the following week.

The apartment was big and sunny, with a double living room, a small den, a dining room, a kitchen that had seen better days, and four modest-size bedrooms, and it was under rent control. The bedroom they showed her was small, as they had warned her, but the other rooms were pleasant and spacious, and they said they had no problem with it if she wanted to entertain, although most of them didn’t, and they said they went out a lot. None of them were from New York, and the room they showed her had no furniture in it. Harlan suggested she go to IKEA, which was what he had done. He’d been living there for a year. And because the apartment was under rent control, the rent they had suggested to her was one Victoria could easily afford, even on her salary, and it was a safe neighborhood, with shops and restaurants nearby. It was an ideal young people’s apartment, and they said that everyone in the building was either very young or very old and had been there forever. It was perfect for Victoria, and when she asked if she could rent it, both men approved. Bunny had already given them her okay before she left for the gym. And the booking agent at the modeling agency who had recommended her had told them what a great girl she was and what a nice person. She was in, and smiled broadly as she shook hands with the two men. They required no security deposit, and told her she could move in immediately. As soon as she bought a bed, she could stay there. Harlan told her about a firm you could call, give them your credit card number, and they would deliver a mattress the same afternoon. Welcome to New York!

Victoria gave them a check for the first month’s rent, they gave her a set of keys, and when she left to go back to her hotel, her head was spinning. She had a job, an apartment, and a new life. All she had to do now was buy furniture for her bedroom, and she could move in. She called her parents that night to tell them, and Gracie was delighted for her. Her father questioned her intently about where it was, and what sort of people her roommates were. Her mother wasn’t thrilled to hear that two of them were men. Victoria reassured her by saying that one was engaged and the other one wasn’t interested in women, and all three of her new roommates seemed like terrific people. Her parents sounded cautious about it. They would have much preferred her living alone than among strangers, but they knew she couldn’t afford it, and her father didn’t want to pay rent for her in New York. It was time for her to make her way in the world.

The next day she rented a van and went to IKEA. She bought all the basics she needed for her bedroom, and was amazed by how little it cost her. She bought two lamps, a rug, curtains, two wall mirrors, bedding, a comfortable chair, two night tables, a nice-looking chest of drawers, and a small mirrored armoire, since the room only had one closet, and she hoped her things would all fit. The bad news was that all the furniture had to be assembled, but Harlan had told her that the handyman in the building would do it if she gave him a decent tip.

They helped her load it into the van at IKEA, and an hour later she was at the apartment and unloading her furniture with the help of the superintendent. It took another hour to get it all upstairs, and just as Harlan had said, the handyman came up with his tool box and started assembling the pieces that needed it. She called the company that delivered mattresses and box springs, and they arrived even before the handyman had finished. And by six o’clock when Bunny came home from work, Victoria was sitting in the middle of her new room, admiring how it looked. She had chosen white furniture and white lace curtains, with a blue and white rug, and it all had an airy California feeling to it. She had even bought a blue-and-white-striped bedspread and matching cushions. And there was a comfortable blue armchair in the corner of the room, where she could read if she didn’t want to sit in the living room. And earlier she had bought a small TV that she could watch from her bed. Her father’s check had gone a long way to helping her with her purchases. She looked ecstatic as she sat on the bed and grinned when Bunny walked in.

“Well, don’t you look like a happy camper,” Bunny said, smiling at her. “I like your stuff.”

“Yeah, me too,” Victoria said happily. This was her first real apartment. All she’d had till then were dorm rooms, and this was considerably bigger, although it wasn’t huge by any means. And she shared a bathroom with Bunny. The two men shared the other bathroom, and she had already noticed that Bunny’s bathroom was immaculate and she was meticulously neat. The setup was ideal.

“Are you staying here tonight?” Bunny asked with interest. “I’m home if you want help unpacking.” Victoria had spent all afternoon putting things together, and she had sheets to sleep there that night, and a stack of brand-new towels that she wanted to run through the washing machine in the basement laundry room.

“I’ve got to pick up my stuff at the hotel.” She had checked out that morning so she could save the money and had stored her bags with the porter. “I’ll go get it in a little while and come back later.” The men came home then and admired her new room. It looked fresh and clean and modern, and Harlan said it looked like a Malibu beach house. She had even bought a framed photograph of a long sandy beach and blue water that looked peaceful to her and hung it on one wall. There was a smell of new furniture in the room, which had recently been painted. She could see the street from her windows, and the neighboring rooftops. The building was on the north side of the street and faced south, so she knew it would be sunny.

Her new roommates all told her they would be home that night and were planning to cook dinner if she wanted to join them, so she left shortly afterward to pick her things up at the hotel, return the van, and be back in time for dinner.

The apartment was full of good cooking smells when she got back, and all three of them were apparently great cooks. Bill’s fiancée, Julie, had joined them by then, and the four of them were in the kitchen, laughing and drinking wine, when Victoria walked in with four suitcases. She had brought her entire winter wardrobe with her, in case she needed it before she went home again at Thanksgiving. Bunny said that was a good thing since it could get cold in October.

Victoria had stopped to buy a bottle of wine for them and set it on the kitchen table. It was Spanish wine, and they all said they liked it, and opened it immediately. They had already killed the first bottle, which was easily done when shared by four people. Victoria had been tempted to buy ice cream on her way home, but she didn’t. Moving was a little stressful, but so far everything had gone well.

The five of them sat down to dinner at ten o’clock, when everyone was hungry. They came and went in and out of the kitchen until then. Bunny was doing most of the cooking that night, and both men went to the gym before dinner. They all were diligent about their workouts, and Bill’s fiancée Julie had a gorgeous body. She worked for a cosmetics company, and all of them thought it was great that Victoria was teaching school, and very brave since her students would be almost as old as she was.

“Kids terrify me,” Bunny confessed. “Whenever they come into the gallery, I run and hide. They always break something, and then I get in trouble.” She said that she had been a fine arts major and had a boyfriend in Boston who was going to law school at BU and came down to see her on weekends, or she went to see him.

They all seemed to have their lives in perfect order. Over dinner, Harlan said that he had broken up with his partner six months before, and then moved into the apartment, and was taking a break from romance. He said he wasn’t dating, and Victoria admitted that she wasn’t either. None of her romances had ever worked out so far, and she didn’t like her father’s theory that it was because of her weight and looks. She felt as though she was cursed. Her father thought she wasn’t pretty enough, and her mother thought she was too smart for most men and would put them off. She was either too ugly or too smart, but in any case, no one had fallen head over heels for her, and she hadn’t either. All she’d had till then were what she would have qualified as crushes, except for the ill-fated false start with Beau, and the brief affair with the physics major, and some dates that had gone nowhere. She was hoping her luck would improve in New York. And it had—she had found a great apartment and three terrific roommates. She really liked them. The dinner they served was delicious. Bunny had made paella with fresh seafood in it, which seemed perfect on a hot summer day, and she had made sangria that they drank after the wine. She served cold gazpacho first, before the paella. And for dessert she produced half a gallon of “cookies and cream” ice cream, which was unfortunately one of Victoria’s favorites, and once it was sitting on the table, she couldn’t resist it.

“This is like serving heroin to an addict,” Victoria complained, helping herself to a full bowl as the carton was passed around the table. Before that, they had all cleaned their plates. The paella had been delicious. And so was the ice cream.

“I love ice cream too,” Harlan confessed, but didn’t look it. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten in ten years, and was six-three, which allowed him a lot of leeway. But Victoria hadn’t had ice cream in ages, so she decided to indulge and treat herself. They were celebrating, after all. And later she silently congratulated herself for not having a second helping, although the first portion had been large. Between the five of them, they finished the ice cream. Julie put away a healthy amount too, but none of the others looked as though they had an issue with food. All of them were slim people, and very trim and toned. They all said they were religious about the gym, and both Bill and Bunny said it helped them with stress. Harlan said he hated working out but felt an obligation to stay in shape. And Bunny said they’d been thinking of collectively buying a treadmill so they didn’t have to go to the gym every day. Victoria said it sounded like a great idea. She couldn’t avoid it if it was sitting right in the apartment. They were a busy, lively group, full of projects, plans, and ideas. And Victoria was looking forward to living with them. It was going to be a happier circumstance for her than living alone in a tiny apartment. This way she could have more space, and company whenever she wanted. And when she didn’t, she could go to her room, which was peaceful and pretty now, thanks to IKEA. She was thrilled with what she’d gotten, and how it had all come together. It had been a great idea, and she thanked Harlan for suggesting it.

“Anytime,” he said, smiling at her. “I used to do window dressing on the side. I did stores all over SoHo, and the windows at Chanel. I want to be an interior designer when I grow up. But right now I’m busy at the Costume Institute. But I always have other ideas and projects.” He seemed like a very creative person, and Victoria liked the way he dressed.

Sitting around with them in the kitchen made her hope that maybe, living with them and going to the gym as often as they did, she could keep her weight under control. She knew her weight was constantly fluctuating and always higher than it should be, but she had a feeling they would be a good influence on her, if she stayed away from desserts. All her new roommates were slim. She had envied people like them all her life. She was naturally a big girl, thanks to her paternal great-grandmother, and her breasts made her seem top heavy. She had an hourglass figure that would have worked well in another era. She often wondered if her great-grandmother had had long thin legs like hers. You couldn’t tell in photographs, because they had worn long skirts in those days. Now that Victoria had lost weight over the summer, she could wear shorter skirts again. But she knew she’d never get there by eating ice cream. She felt guilty about the Ben and Jerry’s cookies and cream she had just consumed. She’d have to find a gym tomorrow, or go jogging. Maybe Bunny could take her to hers. Victoria suddenly felt overwhelmed by all she had to do here. And in a few days she’d be starting school, as a teacher this time, not a student. It was very exciting!

They all went back to their own rooms around one A.M., after lengthy conversations. Julie spent the night with Bill. And as Victoria settled into her new queen-size bed, she nestled under the covers and lay there smiling. Everything about this room felt good and looked just the way she wanted it to. It was her own cozy little world in the new life she was building for herself. It was just the beginning. Soon she would have a new job, new friends, new students, and one day maybe even a boyfriend. It was hard to imagine. Finding the apartment had been a first step, and now suddenly she was a New Yorker.

She missed Gracie as she fell asleep that night, and thought about calling her, but she was too sleepy, and she had talked to her that morning, while she was shopping at IKEA. Gracie had been so happy for her, and Victoria had promised to send her photographs of the apartment and her room. She drifted off to sleep thinking about her sister and when she would come to visit. And in Victoria’s dream they went shopping together, and she was suddenly much thinner, almost as though she had a new body to go with her new life. The salesgirl brought her a dress in a size fourteen, and Victoria told her she wore a size eight now, and everyone in the store applauded.

Chapter 9

Victoria had two days of meetings before the first day of school. She met the other teachers and tried to remember their departments and subjects and which age level they taught. She had a chance to study the books she’d be using, all of which had been selected by the teacher she was replacing for a year. She had even outlined the syllabus for her, which Victoria had been worried about for days. This was going to be much easier than she thought, and she chatted easily with the other teachers and introduced herself. The English department was one of the biggest, and there were eight teachers, all of them considerably older than she was, and most of them women, although three were men. She noticed that all of the male teachers who worked at Madison were either gay or married, but she hadn’t come here to find a boyfriend, she chided herself, she had come to teach.

And at night after the meetings, she studied the books and the syllabus again, and made notes to herself about homework assignments and quizzes she wanted to give the kids, but first she wanted to get to know them, and get a sense of who they were. She was going to be teaching four classes, one sophomore, one junior, and two senior, and she had been warned at Northwestern during her student teaching that seniors were always tough. They were chomping at the bit to leave school and get on with their lives in college, and by the second half of the year, when they had gotten their college acceptance letters, it was almost impossible to get their attention and make them work. It was going to be a challenging year for her, and she could hardly wait to sink her teeth into it. She hardly slept at all the night before school started.

On the first day of school, Victoria was up at six A.M. She made a healthy breakfast of eggs, toast, cereal, and orange juice, and made a pot of coffee for her roommates to drink as well. She was dressed and at the breakfast table by seven, and back in her bedroom, making some notes again by seven-thirty. And at a quarter to eight, she was out the door, and walking to school. She arrived promptly at eight A.M., and the students were due at eight-thirty.

She went straight to her classroom, and paced nervously around the room and then stood looking out the window. She was expecting twenty-four students that morning. There were desks for all of them and a few spares, and a big desk for her at the front of the room. It was a class on English composition, and she had writing assignments to give them. She knew it would be hard to get their attention after their summer vacations. And the kids she would be teaching that day were in the home stretch. They were seniors, and they’d be visiting colleges and doing their applications all through the fall. And she’d have to write recommendations for them. That made her an important element in their lives, and gave her a direct impact on their future, so they had to be serious and diligent in her class. She knew their names, and now she would see the faces that went with them. She was staring into space, looking out the window, when she heard a voice behind her.

“Ready for the onslaught?” She turned and saw a gray-haired woman. She was wearing jeans, a faded T-shirt with the name of a band on it, and sandals. She looked like she was still on vacation and it was a warm day in New York. She smiled when Victoria turned around with a startled look. Victoria had worn a short black cotton skirt, a loose white linen top, and flat shoes. The baggy top hid a multitude of sins, and the reasonably short skirt showed off her legs. But she wasn’t looking to seduce them, only teach them.

“Hi,” Victoria said with a look of surprise. She had seen the other woman at the teachers’ meetings, but hadn’t met her and couldn’t remember what department she was in, and didn’t want to ask her.

“I’m social studies. I have the classroom next to you, so if they start a gang war, I can help you. My name is Helen.” She was smiling as she came to shake Victoria’s hand. She looked to be around Victoria’s mother’s age, somewhere in her mid to late forties. Victoria’s mother had just turned fifty. “I’ve been here for twenty-two years, so if you need a cheat sheet or a guide, just ask me. They’re good people here, except the kids and their parents. Some of them anyway. Some of them are great kids, in spite of the privileged circumstances they live in.” As she said it, a shrill bell rang, and a few minutes later they could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs. It sounded like everyone was running.

“Thank you,” Victoria said, not sure what else to say. The statement she had made about the students and their parents was pretty damning, and an odd position to take for a woman who worked in a school full of rich kids.

“I love my students, but sometimes it’s hard to get them to deal with reality. How real is it when your parents have a boat, a plane, and a house in the Hamptons, and you spend every summer in the South of France? That’s the way it is for these kids. What the rest of the world deals with is pretty remote to them. It’s up to us to introduce them to the real world. And sometimes it’s not easy. Sooner or later you can get there, with most of them. But not very often with their parents. They’re past it, they don’t want to know how the other half lives. I guess they figure it’s not their problem. But the kids have a right to know and make choices.” Victoria didn’t disagree with her, and she hadn’t thought a lot about the lifestyles of these kids and how it would affect their view of the world. But Helen sounded faintly bitter about it and resentful of the kids. And Victoria wondered if she was jealous of the privileged lives they led. And as she thought it, the first student walked into the classroom, and Helen went back to her own.

The first student was a girl called Becki. She had blond hair to her waist, and was wearing a pink T-shirt, white jeans, and expensive Italian sandals. And she had the most beautiful face and body Victoria had ever seen. She took a seat in the middle of the classroom, which meant she wasn’t anxious to participate, but she wasn’t one of the shirkers in the back row either. She smiled at Victoria as she sat down. She had a casual air about her and looked as though she thought she owned the world. She had the cockiness of seniors Victoria had seen before. There were only four years separating the two young women, and Victoria felt a tremor sensing Becki’s self-confidence, but she reminded herself that she was the boss here. And they didn’t know exactly how young she was. She realized that she was going to have to earn their respect.

As she thought about it, four boys bolted through the door, almost at the same time, and sat down. They all looked at Becki, and obviously knew her, and glanced in Victoria’s direction with mild curiosity. A flock of girls entered the room then, laughing and talking. They said hi to Becki, ignored the boys, glanced at Victoria, and took seats in a block at the back of the room. That meant to Victoria that they wanted to keep talking and exchange notes, or maybe even text each other throughout the class. She would have to keep an eye on them. More girls then, more boys, a few stragglers who came in alone, and several in groups. And finally, after a full ten minutes, her first class had arrived. Victoria greeted them with a big smile and told them her name. She wrote it on the blackboard and then she turned to them.

“I’d like you all to introduce yourselves so I can put the faces with the names.” She pointed to a girl in the front row, to her extreme left as she faced them. “Let’s go all around the room.” And they did. They each said their name as she looked at the list she had on her desk for that class. “Who knows where they want to apply to college?” Less than half the hands in the room went up. “How about telling us?” She pointed to a boy in the back row who already looked bored. She didn’t know it yet, but he had been Becki’s boyfriend the year before, and they broke up before the summer. Now both of them were unattached. Becki had just gotten back from her father’s villa in the South of France. And like many of the students at Madison, her parents were divorced.

The boy Victoria had asked about the colleges he was applying to reeled off a list. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Dartmouth, and maybe MIT. He had every top school on that list, and she wondered if he was telling the truth or pulling her leg. She didn’t know the cast of characters yet at all. But she would.

“What happened to the circus college in Miami?” she asked him with a blank expression, and everyone laughed. “That might be fun.”

“I want to take chemical engineering, with a minor in physics, or maybe the other way around.”

“How are your grades in English?” she asked him. He was the kind of boy who would think an English comp class was a drag. But it was a required course, even for him.

“Not so good,” he admitted sheepishly in answer to her question. “I’m stronger in science.”

“What about you?” she asked the others. “How are you at English comp?” It was a reasonable question, and they were honest with her. Some said they sucked and others said they were good at it, and there was no way for her to know the truth, particularly not this soon.

“Well, if you want to get into those colleges, and I assume that several of you do, then you’re going to need decent grades in English. So let’s work on it together this year. I’m here to improve your writing skills. It should help you with the essay on your college app, and I’ll be happy to assist any of you with those applications, if you like.” It was an interesting spin on the purpose of the class, and the point hadn’t been lost on them. They sat up and listened to her more closely for what came next.

She talked about the value of being able to write clearly and coherently, not in flowery prose, but to be able to write an interesting story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. “I think we ought to have some fun this year too. Writing doesn’t have to be dreary. And for some people, I know it’s hard.” She glanced at the boy who wanted to go to MIT—English comp was clearly not his thing. “You can add some humor to what you write, or write it tongue-in-cheek. You can write social commentary on the state of the world, or a story that you invent from beginning to end. But whatever you write, make it simple and clear, and make it something special that others will want to read. So in that vein, I’m going to ask you to write something that we’ll all enjoy reading.” As she said it, she turned around and wrote on the blackboard that ran the length of one wall of the room, behind her desk. She wrote in a clear hand that they could all read easily: “My summer vacation.” And as she did, everyone groaned, and she turned around to face them again. “There’s a twist to it, a little spin. I don’t want to hear about the summer vacation you did have, which might be as boring as mine with my family in L.A. I want you to write about the summer vacation you wish you’d had. And when you’re finished writing it, I want to wish I had that vacation too. And I want you to make me understand why. Why was that the vacation you wanted to have, or wished you had? You can write it as an essay in first person, or as a story in third. And I want some really great stuff. I know you can do it if you try.” She smiled broadly at them then, and said something they didn’t expect. “Class dismissed.” For a moment they looked at her, a little stunned, and then they let out a whoop and got up, and started shuffling out of the room. She tapped her desk once, and told them that the assignment was due the next time the class met, in three days. With that, they groaned again, and she got more specific. “And it doesn’t have to be long,” she said as they beamed.

“I wish I’d spent my summer vacation in a bordello in Morocco,” one boy said, and everybody laughed at his irreverence. Making fun of a teacher was something kids always enjoyed at every age. It was a thought Victoria couldn’t imagine the boy saying, but she didn’t react. Kids that age liked to shock adults. She gave no indication that he had.

“That would work,” Victoria said calmly, “as long as I believe you. If I don’t, you’re out of luck. That’s the hitch. Make me believe you, make me care, make me fall in love with the characters, or with you. That’s the whole point of writing, to convince the reader that what you’ve written for them is real. And in order to do that, you have to believe it too. Have fun,” she said, as the rest of the students left the room.

Victoria had a break between classes then, and sat at her desk making a few notes, when Helen, the teacher from the next classroom, walked back in. She seemed to be interested in everything Victoria did. Carla Bernini, the teacher on maternity leave, was her best friend, and Victoria wondered if she was defending her buddy’s turf, or at least keeping an eye on it for her.

“How did it go?” she asked as she sat down in one of the chairs.

“Pretty well, I think,” Victoria said honestly. “They didn’t throw things at me, or hit me with any bottle rockets. No stink bombs. And I kept it short, which always helps.” She had done that with her student teaching too. You couldn’t sit around forever, talking about writing. You just had to do it, no matter how hard and daunting it was. “The assignment I gave them was easy. It’ll show me what they can do.”

“It must be difficult stepping into someone else’s shoes,” Helen said randomly, and Victoria shrugged.

“I try not to think about it. We each have our own style.”

“What’s yours?” Helen asked with interest, as though she were interviewing her.

“I don’t know yet. Today is my first day. I graduated in May.”

“Zow! That’s got to be pretty unnerving. Aren’t you a big brave girl.” Her tone reminded Victoria of her father, but she didn’t care. She knew she had done a good job. And Helen could challenge her all she wanted, for whatever reason. Victoria knew she would have to prove herself to the teachers too, not just the students. But so far she thought it had gone well.

Victoria’s next class came in an hour later, and this time several of them were seriously late. They were seniors too.

The assignment she gave them was different than the first one.

The topic this time was what I want to be when I grow up, and why. “I want you to put some serious thought into it. And I want to respect and admire you when I’m through reading. It’s okay to make me laugh. Keep it light, unless you want to be an undertaker or embalmer. But short of that, I want to laugh.” And then the second class left too. She had held her own with both groups. And she had met all her seniors now. They seemed like good kids and hadn’t given her a hard time. But she knew they could if they wanted to, and she was very young. They didn’t have any particular allegiance to her yet, but she knew it was too soon. She hoped they would in time. And she knew that the level of their respect depended on her. It was her job to make them care.

Helen stayed and talked to her for a few minutes, and then they both packed up their things and left their classrooms. Victoria checked her mailbox on the way out, and then sat in the teachers’ lounge poring over a stack of memos from the headmaster and the dean of students. There were several announcements, mostly about policy changes that impacted the school. She went to an English department meeting that afternoon, and when she left the building, it took her ten minutes to walk home. She loved living so close. She wanted to walk to work every day.

When Victoria got to the apartment, everyone asked how her day had gone. They were all there.

“It was actually terrific,” Victoria said happily. And Gracie called her and asked her the same question an hour later, and she gave her the same answer. Essentially, it had gone really well, and she liked the kids. They might have been around the world with their parents, and had every lesson known to man, yet there was something innocent and endearing about them. And she wanted them to learn to think intelligently, use good judgment, and wind up with the life they wanted, whatever and wherever that was. Her job, as she understood it, in this school or any other, was to open the door into the world for them. And she wanted to open many, many doors. They had begun.

Chapter 10

Victoria met her junior and sophomore students on the second and third days of school, and she was surprised to find them much harder to deal with than the seniors. The juniors were stressed about the heavy workload they’d have that year, which would count more than any other year in their applications to colleges, and they were afraid she’d give them too much homework. And the sophomores were unfriendly and almost belligerent, and there was no harder group to teach than fifteen-year-old girls. It was everyone’s least favorite age, and Victoria’s too, with the exception of her sister Grace, who seemed nicer than most girls her age. There was a nasty quality to them, and Victoria heard two of the girls talking about her size as they left the class. They talked just loud enough for her to hear them, and she had to remind herself that they were just bratty kids, but their comments cut through her like a knife. One of the girls had referred to her as “fat;” the other one said she looked like a tank in the dress she’d worn. She took it off that night and put it in a pile to give away. She knew she wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing it again. And when she went out to the kitchen in her apartment that night, she finished off someone’s pint of Ben and Jerry’s, in a flavor she didn’t even like.

“Bad day?” Harlan asked as he walked in and made himself a cup of tea, and offered one to her.

“Yeah, sort of. Sophomore girls can be pretty nasty. I met my sophomore class for the first time today.” She looked seriously unhappy as she sat in the kitchen and sipped her tea, eating the brownies she had bought on the way home.

“It must be tough being so young, and teaching high school students who’re almost as old as you are,” he said sympathetically.

“I guess so. The seniors were pretty good actually. The younger ones were the worst so far. They’re just bitchy. And the juniors are always scared to death, because it’s the most important year before college, so they’re under a lot of pressure, from us and their parents.”

“I wouldn’t want your job,” he said, grinning ruefully. “Kids can be so tough. Standing up in front of thirty of them would do me in.”

“I don’t have a lot of experience with it yet,” Victoria admitted, “but I think I’m going to love it. My student teaching was fun, but I was assigned to freshman kids. This is pretty different, and these are very high-end kids. They’re a lot more sophisticated than the ones I did my student teaching with in Chicago. These guys are going to keep me on my toes. I just want to keep my class interesting for them. Kids that age can be very unforgiving.”

“They sound dangerous to me,” he said and pretended to shudder, and Victoria laughed.

“They’re not as bad as that,” she defended them. “They’re just kids.”

But the next day when she met with her seniors again, she was inclined to agree with Harlan. She was expecting both groups to hand in their writing assignments. Less than half of each class had done them. When she first realized it, Victoria looked disappointed.

“Is there some reason why you didn’t?” she asked Becki Adams.

“I had too much work to do for my other classes,” Becki said with a shrug, while the girl sitting next to her laughed.

“May I remind you that this is a required English class? Your English grade this term will depend on what you do here.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Becki said, turning to the girl next to her to say something in a whisper. And she glanced up at Victoria as she did, which made her feel they were talking about her. She tried to regain her composure, collected the papers that had been done, and thanked the students who had completed the assignment.

“For those who didn’t,” Victoria said calmly, “you have till Monday. And from now on, I expect you to turn your assignments in on time.” It threw off the assignment she had planned to give them to do over the weekend. But less than half the class had done the work.

She discussed the power of the essay then, and handed out some examples, explaining why they worked, and pointing out the strengths of each piece. And this time the entire group ignored her. Two girls in the back row were wearing iPods, three of the boys were laughing at a private joke, several of the girls were passing notes, and Becki pulled out her BlackBerry and sent texts. Victoria felt like she’d been slapped and wasn’t sure what to do. They were five years younger than she was and behaving like total brats.

“Are we having a problem here?” she finally said quietly. “Are you under the impression that you don’t have to pay attention to this class? Or even be polite? Do you care about your grades at all? I know you’re seniors, and your junior transcript goes on your college apps, but if you flunk this class, it’s not going to look so great and may keep you out of the college of your choice.”

“You’re just a temp till Mrs. Bernini gets back,” a boy in the back row called out.

“Mrs. Bernini isn’t coming back this year. That could be bad news for both of us, or good news if you decide to make the best of it. It’s up to you. If you’d rather fail this class, that’s your choice. You can explain it to the dean. And your parents. It’s very simple actually—you do the work, you get the grades. You don’t bother, and don’t turn your assignments in, you fail the class. I’m sure Mrs. Bernini saw it the same way,” Victoria said, as she walked past Becki and took her BlackBerry away.

“You can’t do that! I was texting my mom!” she complained with an angry look.

“Do it after class. If there’s an emergency, go to the office. Don’t text in my class. That goes for you too,” she said, pointing to a girl in the second row, who had actually been exchanging text messages with Becki. “Let’s get this straight, no BlackBerrys, no cell phones, and no iPods in my class. No texting. We’re here to work on English composition.” They didn’t look impressed, and while she was talking to them, the bell rang, and they all stood up. No one waited for her to dismiss the class. She was seriously disheartened as they left the room, and she put the assignments that had been turned in into her briefcase. And she was even more depressed when her second class of seniors came in, and were equally disruptive. She had been identified as the teacher to play with, be rude to, and ignore.

It was as though a memo had gone out to all seniors to jerk her around. She was near tears when Helen came into her classroom after the kids left. Victoria was gathering up her things and looked upset.

“Bad day?” she asked, looking sympathetic. Until then Victoria wasn’t sure if she and Helen were allies, but she looked friendly when she walked in.

“Not so great actually,” Victoria admitted as she picked up her briefcase with a sigh.

“You’ve got to get them in control fast before they beat you up. Seniors can be nasty if they get out of hand. Juniors are always stressed out of their minds, and sophomores are just kids. Freshmen are babies and scared to death the first half of the year. They’re easy.” She had it down pat, and Victoria smiled.