Chapter One

CHAPTER One
The first time Grandma called, I ignored her. That probably sounds heartless to you, but only because you’re picturing a stereotypical grandmother. You know, one who bakes cookies. Gives lots of hugs. Loves her grandchildren unconditionally.

Marion Elizabeth Hunter Afton hugged you as if your clothes, no matter how clean, would dirty her impeccable tea dress. Any cookies she’d bake would probably have arsenic in them.

So when my phone lit up with GMA MARION as it buzzed against my breakfast table, I pushed it to the side so I couldn’t see it. It was early still, or at least early for a Saturday. For all she knew, I was sleeping.

I probably should still have been sleeping, considering how late I was out last night. And, okay, how much I’d drunk. My stomach was sloshing around at the mere sight of my usual egg whites with spinach and mushrooms. I couldn’t even think about eating them yet. It was enough, surely, that I was awake, sitting upright, staring at Central Park spreading out very green and way too bright through my picture window.

Her second call was harder to ignore, considering I’d pushed my phone so far to the side that it buzzed itself off the table. It landed with a clatter on the elaborately detailed porcelain tiles I’d picked out last time I was in Italy. They were hand-fired and hand-painted and hand-glazed and had nearly earned me Grandma’s hand slapping against my cheek when she learned how expensive they’d been. “I did not give permission for you to change the tile in your kitchen. Is this your hotel, Pomona?”

It wasn’t. None of the Afton hotels were, no matter that I’d grown up playing hide-and-seek in their fancy lobbies and ordering room service to their various feather beds, and they never would be. For many reasons. My older brother, Nicholas, the heir apparent, had gone to Princeton and majored in business and immediately come home to work for the family. I had done… well, pretty much the opposite of that.

“Pom.”

I jumped in my seat. My phone had stopped its buzzing on the floor, but my stomach hadn’t stopped flip-flopping all over the place like a dying fish. “Yes?”

Lori popped her head out of the kitchen doorway, where she’d been cleaning up after making my breakfast. “Do you need anything else before I head out?”

I shook my head slowly, the motion making the room swirl around me. Eyes closed. “I’m okay.”

“There’s a chicken Caesar salad in the fridge for lunch. I figured you’d want to eat light before the gala tonight,” Lori said. The smell of lemon drifted into my nostrils as she passed by, fresh and bright. Ugh. “See you Monday.”

I didn’t open my eyes again until the lock on the front door had clicked shut behind her. I’d totally forgotten about the gala. What was it even for? I vaguely remembered my mom talking about the latest charity she’d adopted, something about feeding starving orphans to endangered rhinos. No, that couldn’t be right.

At least I knew Grandma wouldn’t be calling about that. She and my mom hadn’t been at the same gala for at least two years now. If anything, Grandma would be hosting a competing gala raising money to feed endangered rhinos to starving orphans.

The third call rattled against my beautiful tiles, which had taken me weeks to choose. I could only put this call off for so long. I grabbed it and, for some reason, sang into the receiver. “Goooood morning!”

I regretted my attempt to sound cheerful and fully awake as soon as the words left my mouth, and braced myself to hear Grandma tell me she could see why my singing career hadn’t worked out. (In my defense, you couldn’t really call it a singing career when it was only one album I’d put out as a teenager, and the YouTube parodies of it had reached more ears than my actual songs.)

But the caller wasn’t my grandma. Not this time. “You sound like death,” said my older brother, Nicholas. “No, you sound like a rattling skull who spent its time on earth chain-smoking and chewing on rubble.”

“How poetic,” I said.

I could practically hear him preening through the phone. He’d had a few poems published in literary magazines and chapbooks before dear departed Grandpa declared it was time for Nicholas to stop toying with his silly poems and focus fully on the business. He’d started working fourteen hours a day after that, leaving no time for poetry. His work, plus his girlfriend of a year and a half, Jessica, left no time for his sister either. Mostly I saw him at formal family events he had to go to or in the elevator going to or from the floor we both lived on.

“Anyway, enough about how talented I am,” said Nicholas. “Grandma says to call her.”

I groaned on the inside. Then on the outside. I should have figured as soon as I heard his voice. Normally Nicholas would have been far too busy to spend even the slightest amount of energy speaking to his one and only sister on a workday, also known as every day. But when Grandma beckoned, he jumped.

Which made sense, I guess. She had become the sole head of Afton Hotels after my grandpa passed four years ago. And Nicholas might be the heir apparent after our dad, her son, but she’d make all of the company decisions until the day she died, or until she became incapacitated enough that Dad could make a convincing-enough case for power of attorney.

I asked, “Did she say why?”

“I’m not an answering service, Pom. Call her.”

“Do you think it has anything to do with last night? The Vienna thing?”

“I doubt it.” Just the fact that he knew what “the Vienna thing” was without me having to spell it out didn’t bode well. It was only last night that someone had recorded that video of me in the club. Apparently news traveled fast. I grimaced, twisting the tie of my Afton bathrobe around my finger. The fabric, some optimally formulated cashmere-silk blend, was almost softer than baby skin. “You know Grandma doesn’t use her phone for anything but calling people and taking the occasional blurry photo with a finger blob in it.”

“Someone could have told her.” Her housekeeper. Another employee, feigning concern about my drinking habits. One of the “old hags” (her words) in her Pilates class.

“So what? It’s not like this was your first time dancing on a table at a club.”

Which was true, but it was my first time dancing on a table at a club while shotgunning champagne to the Wizard of Oz classic “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead.” Vienna wasn’t really dead, of course. Just metaphorically dead, cast out of the social scene. And yes, people in the comments, I knew the difference.

I sighed. “I’m busy. I have to get ready for the gala tonight.”

“I’m not telling Grandma that you can’t call her back because you need to spend the next six hours getting dressed, Pom,” he said. “Just get it over with before she disinherits you or something.”

The thought sent a cold shudder through me. What would I do without the family? Grandma had asked me to curate the corporate art collection right around when I graduated from college, telling me that maybe I could put that ill-advised art history major to good use. I’d thrown myself into it, excited to be given a chance, declining party invitations and letting my social media go dark, even leaving my front-row seat at The Avenue’s inaugural Fashion Week show empty. Finally I’d presented my decisions to Grandpa, Grandma, and my dad in a PowerPoint, pearl studs in my ears, my straight brown hair tied back into a professional chignon.

I kept my eyes on the presentation, hoping my passion for the work would shine through them onto the screen. My recommendations were to mix up our collection a little: sell some of the old, stagnant paintings by dead white men and invest in more art by women and people of color, younger people, queer people, pieces that incorporated physical space and music and motion. It wouldn’t just be good for the artists and the art world; it would be good for our public image. We could even donate a few of our older pieces as tax write-offs, making sure the world knew how charitable we were while keeping our portfolio in the black.

I finished my talk to a photo of me smiling toothily from the screen (my teeth were very white, I admired) and resounding silence from the room. My real-life toothy smile faltered a little when I turned to my family members only to find them staring stone-faced back at me. “Was this a serious presentation?” my grandma finally said.

“Yes?” I squeezed out meekly.

Grandpa chuckled and shook his head. “Dear, I wanted to know which pieces we should be rotating in and out for corporate events.”

Oh. My stomach crumpled up like a discarded piece of paper.

“Even if we were looking to make a full overhaul,” Grandma said, “none of this fits the goals or public perception of the business. What were you thinking?”

I’d had so many thoughts while I was making this presentation. And yet somehow, at this moment, I couldn’t pull up a single one of them.

My dad jumped to my defense. Well, kind of. “It’s okay if Pom doesn’t have a head for the business. She’s good at so many other things.” I waited for him to elaborate upon exactly what those other things were, but he just patted me on the head like a prized show dog as Grandpa nodded in agreement, his eyes almost apologetic. Not too apologetic, though. He didn’t apologize or change his mind before his death a year later.

And maybe they’d been right. Maybe I didn’t have a head for business, or money, or helping the world, or whatever. There were plenty of other things to keep me busy.

As long as I wasn’t being cut loose. “Grandma wouldn’t disinherit me over the phone, would she?”

“Probably not. She’d want to see the look on your face.”

My breathing was coming a little bit faster, my heart pumping hard like I was running away from something. Grandma never called about nice things, like to say she loved your latest post and was impressed by how many likes it got, or that the “simply enormous” nose you’d inherited from your mother was beautiful and perfect and didn’t need any sculpting or shaving down.

Deep breath, Pom. Deep breath.

“By the way,” Nicholas continued, and just the fact that this meant we were moving on from Grandma made the deep breaths come a little easier. “Speaking of people who have been disinherited, did you hear that Farrah and Jordan are in town?”

“No, nobody told me!” Maybe that was what Grandma had been calling me about. Then again, ever since she’d cut my cousins off along with their parents, my uncle and aunt, she’d done a bang-up job pretending not only that they didn’t exist but that they’d never existed at all. Which also made me breathe a little easier. Because it wasn’t like she had an unlimited supply of grandchildren. She couldn’t disinherit all of us, surely. I continued, “What are they doing here?” with a pang in my stomach. Farrah and I were the same age, had grown up side by side, giggling our way through Broadway shows and going on shopping sprees at the American Girl store and running wild in our family’s private box at Yankee Stadium. And now I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year.

“Not sure,” Nicholas said. Being older and also a boy, he hadn’t been as close to them as I’d been. “They didn’t tell me they were here. I found out from a friend who’d seen them downtown at some party.”

“Weird,” I said.

A muffled voice came through on Nicholas’s side. If he was working at the office, it was probably his secretary; if he was working at home, it was probably his girlfriend, Jessica. Either way, it probably meant he had to go. “Well, thanks for letting me know about Grandma,” I said. “See you later?”

“I’m coming,” he said to whoever’d spoken, and then back to me, “I have to go. See you later?”

He wouldn’t. Still, I let myself pretend for a little bit. “Sure. See you later.”

I took a deep breath as he hung up, though it didn’t dislodge the swell of anxiety in my chest. My fingers twitched on the table next to my now-cold eggs and congealing spinach. The urge to call for reassurance seized me. To call for the most maternal, motherly person I know, the one who always used to soothe me when I felt overwhelmed like this, who would envelop me in a big, soft hug and tell me everything would be okay.

My former nanny, Andrea.

My fist clenched before my fingers could reach for my phone. I couldn’t call my former nanny. I was twenty-eight years old. I hadn’t had a nanny since I was twelve and Nicholas was fourteen and our parents deemed us old enough not to need nurturing anymore. “You’re almost an adult,” my dad had said. “Do what the rest of us do and stuff your feelings deep inside, where no one can see them.”

Maybe those weren’t the exact words that had come out of his mouth. But the meaning had been clear.

“You’re losing it, Pom,” I told myself. “Just call Grandma back. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

So, of course, I started suiting up to go for a run. What better way to make yourself less miserable emotionally than to make yourself miserable physically? A quick outfit change later—out of the oversize T-shirt and boxers left behind from some random hookup into sleek, formfitting all-black with the exception of a hot pink sweatband—I was ready to go. I would run around the Central Park Reservoir a few times, I decided. Get out some of this stress while gazing across the water and listening to a podcast, absorbing enough to distract me from the burn in my calves. Once my body was nice and high with endorphins, I’d give Grandma a call back and weather whatever it was she wanted to throw at me.

Out into the hallway, where at least I didn’t have to worry about running into my parents—they’d relocated into a smaller but better-situated apartment a floor higher in the hotel when my brother and I had moved out. My family had apartments in our big hotels, plus use of rooms in other ones whenever we were there, obviously. Grandma had the penthouses here, in the Afton Palm Beach, and the Afton Los Angeles. My dad, as her son, had claimed the one in Jackson Hole, though I knew my mom coveted the LA penthouse, already scheming to inherit it whenever Grandma died.

The mirrored elevator was empty when I stepped inside. I turned away before I could catch more than a glimpse of myself—I was due for work on my tan, and the tightness of my brown ponytail meant that my eyes, already wide-set, made me look a little like an alien. The elevator stopped at a few floors, letting some more people on. A businessman in a tailored suit and Hermès tie who didn’t glance away from his phone at me. An older couple holding hands and giving each other such smoldering glances and sneaky smiles that they had to be here having an affair. A few teenage girls with an older woman who was surely their chaperone.

I stiffened as I felt their eyes land on me, crawling like flies. One whispered in another’s ear. The other giggled. That club video really must have been making the rounds. I stuck my headphones in, bowing my head as I scrolled through my phone in search of my podcast. If only I had a private elevator like my grandma and my parents, one where you needed a special key to get to their floor.

Podcast found. I turned it up so that I couldn’t hear the giggling anymore, then winced a little bit as the host’s sharp voice cut into my ear. You’re on Episode 3 of Here to Slay. I’m your host, Doe. Today we’ll be looking at the seething pit of vipers that surrounded our victim, Danica Moore, before her fateful final day.

If you looked at it through a judgy side-eye, I probably counted as one of those vipers. I wasn’t a true crime junkie, but I’d known Danica—we’d modeled together a few years back before I decided modeling wasn’t for me (too many reviews on how I didn’t glide down runways, I clomped). We hadn’t particularly liked each other, but there hadn’t been anything personal about it; we were just both hangry all the time. I hadn’t even heard she’d disappeared before the podcast hit the charts. Now I had to know what had happened to her.

I strode out as soon as the elevator doors opened to the lobby. Crystal light fixtures twinkled above me; I caught the smiles of the front desk clerks in the corners of my eyes.

“Pom! Pom?”

There was no ignoring that voice, even through my headphones. I stifled a sigh, pulling them out and pasting a smile on my face. It hurt my cheeks. “Fred. Good morning.”

Fred chuckled in what he probably thought was a fatherly way but came off more like a robot’s first attempt at mirth. “I think you mean good afternoon.”

Though it was the weekend, he was still decked out in a suit, one not nearly as well fitted as the businessman’s on the elevator. You’d think he’d be able to afford a good tailor, considering he was the CFO of Afton Hotels, ranking only beneath my grandma, my dad, and Nicholas. I’d known him my whole life, watching his blond hair fade to gray and fall out and placing secret bets with Farrah on how long his nose hair was in centimeters.

I couldn’t imagine feeling so free to look that old and weird. My mom had already started talking about how I should be working on my preventative Botox.

“Good afternoon,” I said impatiently, glancing behind him toward the front doors. So close!

“Pom.” He leaned in closer, so that my nostrils filled with his coffee breath. I tried to shift backward without making it too obvious what I was doing. He might be old and weird, but I still didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Has your family mentioned anything about a…”

He trailed off, and backed away much more quickly than I had. “Never mind,” he said. “I shouldn’t be asking you about it. You wouldn’t know. Anyway, it was nice to see you.”

Well, now my interest was piqued. “What are you talking about?”

He laughed shakily, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. “It’s not important. I just had to come see your grandmother right away. Do you know if she’s home?”

I blinked. “You didn’t call her first? You know she really doesn’t like surprises.”

He chuckled again, just as shakily. “See you later, Pom.” He stuck his hands in his pockets so that his suit jacket tented even more before walking briskly past me toward the private elevator in the back that would take him up to my grandma’s apartment. He had a key to get up there, of course—my grandma often worked from her home office, which was pretty much a separate wing from the penthouse’s living quarters. I had a key, too, as did all the rest of the family members. I couldn’t remember the last time I used it, though.

Well, good luck to him. I’d made it out through the whisked-open doors into the chilly early spring air before the thought occurred to me: Grandma would be busy in a few minutes. I could call her back now, put up with whatever she had to say to me, and then get cut off before I had to deal with it for too long. The perfect crime.

“Call Grandma,” I said into my phone. It began to ring. For someone who was apparently so eager to speak with me, it took her a lot of rings to pick up.

“Pomona,” she said without preamble. She was one of the few people allowed to call me by my full name, mostly because I was too afraid of what would happen if I asked her to call me Pom like everybody else. “Please tell me you didn’t wake up only now.”

I wanted to take a deep breath to soothe myself the way Andrea had taught me, but considering I was walking beside a giant pile of garbage bags, that was not particularly advisable. “Of course not. I’ve already eaten, done some preparation for the gala tonight, and I’m going for a run now.”

“You’re running right now? Amazing. Usually you gasp and wheeze and grunt like a stuck pig when you exercise,” she said. I pressed my lips together. I guess that now I had the answer to why I’d never been invited back to her Pilates class. At least she hadn’t asked what preparation I’d done for the gala tonight, since that preparation consisted entirely of learning that there was a gala tonight. “Anyway. Pomona. I must speak with you.”

“You’re speaking with me now.” I tried to keep my voice light as a bicyclist nearly swerved into me while I crossed Fifth Avenue. So what if I was walking against the light? I was a pedestrian, and pedestrians always have the right of way. I stopped at the entrance to the park, leaning against the mossy stone wall that encircled it as I waited for this conversation to be over.

“No, not on the phone.” She sounded like I’d asked her to meet at the Times Square Olive Garden. “In person. It’s important.” Her voice softened the tiniest bit. “Pomona.”

Okay, I was intrigued. She certainly didn’t sound like she was gearing up to tear me to pieces with her sharp tongue. Not with her voice going soft like that. “Should I come up?”

“All sweaty and smelly from your run? Certainly not.”

It couldn’t be that important, then. I rolled my eyes.

“Afterward,” she continued. “You need to—” Her voice cut off as the chime of her doorbell sounded, which got louder each year in the same increment that her hearing diminished with age.

That had to be Fred. I listened to her shuffle across the floor and pause, probably her peering through the peephole. “Oh. It’s you.” She sounded vaguely annoyed. “Well, you might as well come in.” Then back to me. “Pomona, I have to go. Can you come by later tonight?”

“I’ve got the gala,” I told her. I didn’t know what time or where it was, but these things were always at the same time, at the same few places, with the same mediocre food and free-flowing drinks. The only things that changed were the names of the charity and the guests’ outfits. “Tomorrow?”

She paused again, but this one felt heavier. Like she was weighing her words before she said them. “I suppose that will have to do.”

She hung up without saying goodbye. Which was fine. Let her have her secret meeting with Fred about something he assumed I was too stupid to know about. Whatever. I didn’t care. I just let my feet pound the dirt track around the reservoir as fast as they could, which, to be entirely honest, was not all that fast. In my high school days of running laps around the court before tennis practice, I was a fixture at the back of the pack. Still, I finished my run feeling vaguely queasy, and not just because I’d seen not one but two dead pigeons being eaten by rats and listened to one of my and Danica’s former model friends dish about how she’d hated everyone she worked with, including me.

Who cared what people thought of me? I threw myself into getting ready for the gala. I had to exfoliate in the shower and wash my hair, barely finishing before Kelly showed up to blow it out. Then I had to pick out a dress before Kai came to do my makeup. The Avenue and Poquette had sent over new gowns since the last time I’d been in that section of my closet, as had several up-and-coming designers I’d asked the family assistant to look into. I decided on a black and green silk dress with geometric, origami-like folds created by a local FIT graduate—she’d appreciate the boost my patronage gave her label more than The Avenue or Poquette would.

You know what would go perfectly with an avant-garde dress like this? My mom’s chunky emerald and diamond earrings. I grabbed my parents’ key from where it hung on its hook beside the front door, stuck my feet in the fluffy hotel slippers, and ran up the back stairs.

My dad was out golfing, but my mom was in the same headspace as me. Her hair had been done in an elegant updo, her makeup understated and soft on her long, oval face. She turned to me as I entered her closet, where she sat perched on a blush velvet pouf, surveying her racks upon racks of clothes and shoes and accessories. “I’ve simply been so busy today trying to decide what to wear tonight. What do you think?”

I counseled a navy blue sheath that showed off her toned calves and arms with a classic yet modern silhouette. She pursed her lips and chose a glowing magenta floor-length gown with full-length lace sleeves and a high collar. Par for the course.

“Anyway, I wanted to borrow your emerald and diamond earrings,” I said. “Is that okay?”

She pursed her lips even harder. “The emeralds? Pom, dear, you know that emeralds make your skin look sallow.”

I hadn’t known that, but okay. “What about the plain diamonds?” She looked at me blankly. “The cluster?” She still looked at me blankly. “The five-cluster?”

Those she deemed more acceptable. As she dug them out of her jewelry safe for me, I went and grabbed her shoes for her. I didn’t have to ask about those: she always wore her signature custom-made stilettos, so high and so sharp that other women fell over or got stuck in the ground when they tried to walk in them. It was a point of pride to her that one of her friends had broken a bone after she’d borrowed them without her permission. I had never even bothered asking. Just looking at their tall, black, narrow silhouette scared me. Probably from the time when I was a kid and ran up to her for a hug, and she’d accidentally stepped on my foot. I’d almost lost a toe.

“Thank you,” she said, glancing at them, then immediately down at her phone, frowning hard. Which was unusual for her. Not just because it was difficult for her to make expressions through all the Botox, but because she liked to advise against both frowning and smiling because of wrinkles. Botox couldn’t catch all of them without making you look like you’re wearing a mask, she liked to say.

It made me curious enough to risk asking her a question. “Are you okay?”

She scrolled viciously through what appeared over her shoulder to be someone’s feed. “It’s just that bitch at it again.”

Well, that could apply to pretty much anyone she knew, friend or enemy or random stranger. “Which bitch?”

“That anonymous bitch.” She stabbed at something with her finger. “RibbetRabbit.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. “Some anonymous celebrity gossiper? Is it another DeuxMoi?”

“No. This one—it’s easier if you just look.” And she thrust her phone at me. I took it, scrolling through the feed, which consisted of pictures of… herself? I took a closer look, swiping through them. They were all pictures of my mom dressed up for various galas and events, looking stunning as always, each dress or power suit selected to accentuate the features she liked (the large, wide eyes we shared, the straight nose a very talented surgeon had given her, the definition of her calves) and downplay the ones she didn’t (her narrow lips, the small bust she refused to augment because “that would be tacky” in a way the nose job apparently wasn’t). But the captions mocked her and her outfits, one calling her in a green lace dress “a frog coated in pond scum,” another saying that a formfitting white dress “emphasizes every bulge and lump in her figure like she’s the Michelin Man.”

I wanted to snicker, but I knew better. Handing the phone back, I said, “It’s just some jealous wannabe.” That may or may not have been true. It could also have been one of the many ex-friends or frenemies she’d betrayed or talked shit about behind their back for years. If I had to write up a list, it would have overflowed pretty much any standard-size sheet of paper no matter how small I wrote. “So what? Just ignore them.”

Advice that was always easier said than done, as I knew well from my hours in the middle of the night scrolling through comments on pieces about me. And Mom didn’t give it any more credence than I would have, huffing and rolling her eyes.

“Seriously,” I said. “You look gorgeous in all those pictures. None of what this person is saying is true.”

In other mother-daughter relationships, this might have led to a moment of bonding. She might have told me that I was always gorgeous, too, and then she might have leaned in for a hug, and we might have gotten ready for the gala together, zipping each other up and finishing each other’s makeup.

But this was the Afton family, and so she only frowned harder (but not too hard, per her credo). “No, I’m hideous.” This might have led to a cycle of reassurance, where I tried to tell her she was beautiful and she kept denying it and so on, but instead she continued with “By the way, have you talked to your grandma yet? Apparently she was looking for you.”

A change of subject would usually have been welcome in this situation, but the last thing I wanted to talk about with any of my relatives was any of my other relatives. “I’d better go get dressed,” I said, already moving toward the exit, earrings clutched tight in my sweaty palm. “See you soon!”

By the time to leave for the gala, I was exhausted from shimmying into shapewear and then twisting all the way around myself like a pretzel to zip up the back. Since the spring day had cooled down considerably by now, the heated seats in the back of our black car were so welcome. I leaned my head back against the leather and almost let myself drift off to sleep.

Mom shook me awake as the car slid to a stop. “We’re here.” The gala was being held at the American Museum of Natural History, right across the park and a thematic setting for this charity event meant to raise money to protect endangered rhinos (I’d been half-right). Our car pulled up and deposited us neatly in front of the building, where a small crowd was clustered around a safari-themed backdrop. I sashayed through the crowd—sashaying over cobblestones in heels as high as these was tricky, but I was a pro by now—and posed in front of the backdrop, tucking my chin, smiling without teeth, turning from side to side with my hand on my hip as cameras and phones flashed before me.

“Who are you wearing?” somebody called.

I spun so that they could get a good view of the back of the dress, where the most ingenious folds were. “Rita Ngo. She’s new.”

Though she wouldn’t be new for long, not now that I’d shouted her out. I grinned at the lenses again before heading into the venue, where the famous model of a blue whale swam overhead, suspended from the ceiling.

I was picking a goblet of champagne off one of the circulating trays, a little mesmerized by the way the golden bubbles shimmered under the lights, when I heard a telltale cooing and swishing behind me. I spun just in time to embrace my best friend, Opal, and give her some air kisses on her perfectly contoured cheeks. My other best friends, Millicent and Coriander, were next.

“Oh my God, Pom,” gasped Opal, green eyes wide and round in her heart-shaped face. Her auburn hair, the shade carefully calibrated by the pros to bring out the rose tones in her cheeks, brushed my face as she pulled away. “That dress is the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

Millicent and Coriander murmured in agreement as I struck a pose. Then unposed and leaned in a little more modestly. “No way. Your dress is the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

It wasn’t; it was just your standard LBD. She really should have gone with a more understated necklace than that chunky pink thing, which made the neckline look busy, and put all the flashiness into her shoes and earrings instead. But Opal beamed when I said that, which made the little white lie worth it. She leaned in, snickering a little. “What do you think Vienna’s wearing tonight? Yoga pants? Sweatpants?”

Millicent and Coriander snickered along with her. To be fair, they’d gone more adventurous than Opal, Millicent in a pure white tulip gown that made her olive skin glow bronze and Coriander in a shimmering gold Grecian one that made her tiny frame a bit more imposing.

I’d almost managed to forget that, typically, Vienna would have been at the front of the crowd, leaning in for the first air kisses, smelling like roses. Opal smelled like roses now, actually. Had she claimed Vienna’s perfume now that Vienna was out? The thought kind of made me want to stab myself with one of the sharp-looking commemorative brass rhino horns that served as gifts to everyone who’d donated over a certain amount.

I drew in a deep breath, then regretted it, because Opal’s perfume just made me think harder about Vienna. About the things she’d said to me. About the knife she’d twisted in my back. She was lucky all I’d done was push her out of the social scene. She was lucky—

Stop it, Pom. Or you’re going to start crying and ruin your makeup.

I took a big gulp of champagne to push the tears down. It was not nearly as crisp or dry as the Moët my parents liked to break out for special occasions. The people throwing the gala had probably sunk the beverage budget into bathing the rhinos, or whatever. “I don’t even want to think about Vienna,” I said. “Can we just pretend she doesn’t exist?”

“She may as well not exist,” said Opal, but, loyal friend that she was, she changed the subject. “So, real drinks sometime soon? I think there’s an actual bar up near the dinosaurs.”

I slipped my arm through hers as I tossed down the rest of my cheap champagne. It glittered down my throat, then rested, sour, in my stomach. “Why wait for soon?”

Well. The night got a little blurry from there. With all due respect to the rhinos, we didn’t stick around the gala very long.

I blinked and we were on the street, weaving on our heels as we waved down one of the other girls’ cars, and then we were bypassing the line at some exclusive new club, and then I blinked again and I was on top of a table, some liquid spilled down the front of my beautiful, beautiful dress, and people were cheering at my frozen smile. Opal and I were dancing, shouting along to some new song I hated, but she was holding me up so that I wouldn’t slip and embarrass myself, and that shot of love and appreciation I felt for her was the last thing I remembered.