because Sebastian wouldn’t let me.
“I want to know all about you,” George says, taking my hand from across the table.
I slip it away, hiding my resistance by acting like I simply have to have another sip of my martini. How does a person explain everything about themselves anyway? “What do you want to know?”
“For starters, can I expect to see you at Brown next fall?”
I lower my eyes. “My father wants me to go. But I’ve always wanted to live in Manhattan.” And before I know it, I’m telling him all about my dream of becoming a writer and how I tried to get into the summer writing program and was rejected.
He doesn’t find this shocking or embarrassing. “I’ve known a few writers in my life,” he says slyly. “Rejection is part of the process. At least at first. Plenty of writers don’t even get published until they’ve written two or three books.”
“Really?” I feel a soaring hope.
“Oh, sure,” he says with authority. “Publishing is full of stories about the manuscript that got rejected by twenty publishers before someone took a chance on it and turned it into a huge bestseller.”
Just like me, I think. I’m masquerading as a regular girl, but somewhere inside me there’s a star, waiting for someone to give me a chance.
“Hey,” he says. “If you want, I’d be happy to read some of your stuff. Maybe I can help you.”
“Would you?” I ask, astonished. No one’s ever offered to help me before. No one’s even encouraged me. I take in George’s gentle brown sloping eyes. He’s so nice. And damn it, I do want to get into that writing program. I want to live in “the city.” And I want to visit George and hear the lions roaring in Central Park.
I suddenly want my future to begin.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if you were a writer and I was an editor at The New York Times?”
Yes! I want to shout. There’s only one problem. I have a boyfriend. I can’t be a louse. I have to let George know now. Otherwise, it isn’t fair.
“George. I have to tell you something—”
I’m about to spill my secret, when Eileen approaches the table with a self-important look on her face. “Carrie?” she says. “You have a phone call.”
“I do?” I squeak, looking from George to Eileen. “Who would be calling me?”
“You’d better find out.” George stands as I get up from the table.
“Hello?” I say into the phone. I have a wild thought that it’s Sebastian. He’s tracked me down, discovered I’m on a date with another guy, and he’s furious. Instead, it’s Missy.
“Carrie?” she asks in a terrified voice that immediately makes me imagine my father or Dorrit has been killed in an accident. “You’d better come home right away.”
My knees nearly buckle beneath me. “What happened?” I ask in a hoarse whisper.
“It’s Dorrit. She’s at the police station.” Missy pauses before delivering the final blow. “She’s been arrested.”
“I don’t know about you,” says a strange woman clutching an old fur coat over what appears to be a pair of silk pajamas, “but I’m finished. Through. Ready to wash my hands of her.”
My father, who is sitting next to her on a molded plastic chair, nods bleakly.
“I’ve been doing this for too long,” the woman continues, blinking rapidly. “Four boys, and I had to keep trying for a girl. Then I got her. Now I have to say I wish I didn’t. No matter what anyone says, girls are more trouble than boys. Do you have any sons, Mr., er—”
“Bradshaw,” my father says sharply. “And no, I don’t have any sons, just three daughters.”
The woman nods and pats my father on the knee. “You poor man,” she says. This, apparently, is the mother of Dorrit’s notorious pot-smoking friend, Cheryl.
“Really,” my father says, shifting in his seat to get away from her. His glasses slide to the tip of his nose. “In general,” he says, launching into one of his theories on child rearing, “a preference for children of one sex over the other, especially when it’s so baldly expressed by the parent, often results in a lack in the child, an inherent lack—”
“Dad!” I say, skittering across the floor to rescue him.
He pushes his glasses up his nose, stands, and opens his arms. “Carrie!”
“Mr. Bradshaw,” George says.
“George.”
“George?” Cheryl’s mother stands, batting her eyes like butterfly wings. “I’m Connie.”
“Ah.” George nods, as if somehow this makes sense. Connie is now clinging to George’s arm. “I’m Cheryl’s mother. And really, she’s not a bad girl—”
“I’m sure she isn’t,” George says kindly.
Oh jeez. Is Cheryl’s mother flirting with George now?
I motion my father aside. I keep picturing the small marijuana pipe I found in Mr. Panda. “Was it—” I can’t bring myself to say the word “drugs” aloud.
“Gum,” my father says wearily.
“Gum? She was arrested for stealing gum?”
“Apparently it’s her third offense. She was caught shoplifting twice before, but the police let her go. This time, she wasn’t so lucky.”
“Mr. Bradshaw? I’m Chip Marone, the arresting officer,” says a shiny-faced young man in a uniform.
Marone—the cop from the barn.
“Can I see my daughter, please?”
“We have to fingerprint her. And take a mug shot.”
“For stealing gum?” I blurt out. I can’t help myself.
My father blanches. “She’s going to have a record? My thirteen-year-old daughter is going to have a record like a common criminal?”
“Those are the rules,” Marone says.
I nudge my father. “Excuse me. But we’re really good friends with the Kandesies—”
“It’s a small town,” Marone says, rubbing his cheeks. “A lot of people know the Kandesies—”
“But Lali is like one of the family. And we’ve known them forever. Right, Dad?”
“Now, look here, Carrie,” my father says. “You can’t go asking people to bend the rules. It isn’t right.”
“But—”
