Chapter 18

Last seen: The eight most popular families of the Kingston School for Boys and the Patricia Loyalton School for Girls getting ready for St. Barts. Emma Graham and Luke Brown's families were going first. They couldn't all very well go at the same time, they couldn't all fit in First Class.

And of course they were all taking First Class.

The picture was horrendous. It was taken from outside Emma's building on Park Avenue. It was four in the fucking morning, and the families were standing around waiting for the limo to arrive. Emma's hair was thrown into a bun, she was wearing her Hardtail pants, and a Yale tee that clung to her bulimic body perfectly. An Autumn Cashmere sweater and her down vest was over it. God it was freezing outside. Her Pucci scarf was wound around her neck, her feet in New Balance sneakers, and her Coach hobo bag hanging on her arm, full of stuff for the plane. Her Emma Spade luggage was surrounding her, as was the rest of their families' crap. She had sunglasses on top of her head, like she couldn't wait to put them on.

And Emma Graham was horrified. They must have taken the picture at the actual time they were there, four in the morning, quickly laid it out onto Page Six, and then shipped it off to the printers just in the knick of time before they should have had it out. Emma headed over to the store of JFK, and found the guy who worked there just filling in the space for the magazine. She grabbed one, a bunch of candy, gum, water bottles, and the like, and headed back, stopping at the Starbucks there for a Mocha frappaccino for herself and a Caramel frappe for Henry. No one else had really asked for anything. And it wasn't like she was even going to look at Luke, much less ask if he wanted anything from the store. Even though he had offered to help her, most likely just so he could get her alone and talk to her.

No, I can handle it myself, she had snapped back, and stalked off, her golden brown bun bobbing.

She practically threw the magazine at Henry as she dropped down in the blue, pseudo leather seat. He dropped his Sports Illustrated into his lap, and picked it up.

Nice ... he said, and picked up his SI again.

Nice? It's disgusting ... she growled.

This vacation was already turning out to royally suck.

At least she and her posse and their families wouldn't be portrayed on Page Six for a long time ... they were going to be in St. Barts for a long time!

Thank god ... she muttered to herself.

And promptly groaned. The parents on the trip had demanded that they get there an hour and a half early ... meaning five in the morning ... meaning leaving at four in the morning ... meaning waking up at three in the morning ... meaning thank god the flight was long and she could sleep ... meaning she better not be sitting in a three-person between Henry and Luke, even though she already knew this was the case...

Amanda and Chris weren't leaving until seven. Meaning they got two hours more sleep than Luke and Emma did. Luke had had to wake up at two thirty, because his parents were worried it would take forever, and they wanted to get to Emma's on time. Screw on time, how about some sleep?

Dan, Liz, Nicky, and Jake were all leaving at the same time. They couldn't very well go in couples, and split up the twins, so all four went together. They all met at Dan and Nicky's place, and would be leaving at nine.

Two hour stagger.

Meaning Emma probably had about two hours until someone other than Luke was there from her crowd, and could provide her with some much needed distraction.

Three hours later, Emma had downed two gin and tonics, and was sitting next to her own version of Anna Percy's seatmate from hell in The A-List by Zoey Dean. Without fat, primo shit and a Funk Daddy hat, he could have been much worse, but under the circumstances, she definitely couldn't think of anyone she wanted to sit next to less.

So she whipped out her U2 iPod, turned on some Stones song, loud, and proceeded to drown him out with alcohol and rock and roll.

An hour later, she was in an alcohol induced sleep, and he was staring at her longingly.

He knew he had fucked up, big time.

But her ... God she was beautiful. No matter how many drugs she did, he still was in love with her. And he knew her, better than almost anyone. Except for her junior posse, who did all the same things she did, and for the same reasons. He knew her better than anyone in his group. He knew about her parents' problems, her older sister's substance abuse problem, and how her paternal grandmother had died in the Holocaust, leaving a hating the world, Nazis, and life grandfather behind. Her maternal grandparents were just as obnoxious and annoying as Richard and Emily Gilmore on Gilmore Girls could be, they had their social scene, their society, the world where they had to obey a certain set of rules, and of course played right into all the stereotypes that went with the words WASP and Upper East Side.

She tried to break out of the mold in any way she could. She hooked up with guys from public schools, from some of the Hill Schools (the coed schools in Riverdale, Bronx, New York) that were kind of in their social circle. She bought clothes from hole-in-the-wall boutiques in Soho, Noho, Chelsea, and other various areas downtown. She wore vintage Beatles tees that were actually her father's from his wilder days. She wore her mother's ACDC tees from her wilder days. She wore white in winter, experimented with her hair (once in eighth, she dyed it raven black, but had immediately decided that her natural hair color was the one for her, so she had most of it chopped off, and dyed back to her normal color), drank and did drugs more than the wildest of the Upper East Side bad and wild kids, had more fake IDs than credit cards (one for every year since she turned twelve), and still managed to keep up this perfect girl image at school and at societal events.