Legacy, page 5
Their closest contact, essentially, Adrian thought, came during the weeks they worked together on their annual mother-daughter exercise DVD.
But that was her life, and she’d already decided what to do with the rest of it when she could make her own choices.
She’d already made one of her first, and sat now in the warm breeze waiting for the hammer to drop.
It didn’t take long.
She heard the glass doors behind her slide open, hit the stops with a solid thump.
“Adrian, for Christ’s sake, what are you doing? You haven’t begun to pack. We’re leaving in an hour.”
“You’re leaving in an hour,” Adrian corrected, and kept writing. “I don’t have to pack because I’m not going.”
“Don’t be such a child. I’ve got a full schedule in L.A. tomorrow. Get packed.”
Adrian set her pen down, shifted in her chair to meet her mother’s eyes. “No. I’m not going. I’m not letting you haul me around the country for the next two and a half weeks. I’m not going to live in hotel rooms, do school online. I’m staying here, and I’m going to the damn private school you pushed me into after you bought this place last spring.”
“You’ll do exactly what I tell you. You’re still a child, so—”
“You just told me not to be a child. Can’t have it both ways, Mom. I’m sixteen—seventeen in just a few weeks. I’ve had barely three weeks in this new school where I have no friends. I’m not going to sit alone most of the day in a hotel room or a studio or some event center. I can sit alone here after school.”
“You’re not old enough to stay here alone.”
“But I’m old enough to stay alone in some other city while you’re signing your new book or DVD, while you’re doing interviews or events?”
“You’re not alone there.” Flustered, baffled, Lina dropped down to sit. “I’m a phone call or text away.”
“And since Mimi’s not going with you because she has two kids she doesn’t want to leave for two weeks, she’s a phone call away. But I’m capable of taking care of myself. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been doing that for a while now.”
“I’ve made sure you’ve had everything you could need or want. Don’t you take that tone with me, Adrian.” Flustered and baffled turned to shocked and angry. “You’re getting the best education anyone could want, one that’ll get you into the college of your choice. You have a beautiful and safe home. I’ve worked, and worked hard, to provide those things for you.”
Adrian gave Lina a long, steady look. “You’ve worked and worked hard because you’re an ambitious woman with a genuine passion. I don’t hold that against you. I was happy in public school. I had friends there. Now I’m going to try to be happy and make friends where you planted me. I can’t do that if I’m out for two weeks.”
“If you think I’m leaving a teenager alone in New York so she can have parties and screw off from school and go out at all hours, you’re very mistaken.”
Adrian folded her arms on the table, leaned forward. “Parties? With who? I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs. I came close to having a boyfriend last year, but I have to start from scratch there now. Screw off from school? I’ve been on the honor roll since I was ten. And if I wanted to go out at all hours, I could do that when you’re here. You’d never know the difference.
“Look at me.” Adrian tossed up her hands. “I’m so responsible I annoy myself. I’ve had to be. You preach about balance, well, I’m going to take some for myself. I’m not getting pulled away from my routine again. I’m not.”
“If you’re determined not to go, I’ll see if your grandparents can have you for a couple weeks.”
“I’d love to visit them, but I’m staying here. I’m going to school here. If you don’t trust me, have Mimi check on me every day. Bribe one of the doormen to report my comings and goings, I don’t care. I’m going to get up in the mornings and go to school. I’m going to come home in the afternoons and do my assignments. I’m going to work out right in there, in that very nice home gym you set up. I’ll fix myself something to eat or order in. I’m not after parties and sex and drinking till I drop. I’m after a normal start to the school year. That’s it.”
Lina pushed up, paced over to the wall, and stared at the view of the East River. “You talk like … I’ve done my best for you, Adrian.”
“I know.”
Her grandmother’s words on that long-ago summer came back to her. Your mama does her best, Adrian.
“I know,” she repeated. “And you ought to trust me not to do something to embarrass you. If not, then you ought to know I’d never want to upset or disappoint Popi and Nonna. I just want to go to goddamn school.”
Lina closed her eyes. She could force it—she was in charge. But at what cost? And for what benefit?
“I don’t want you going out past nine, or leaving the neighborhood—unless it’s to go to Mimi’s in Brooklyn.”
“If I wanted to go to the movies on a Friday or Saturday night, it might be ten.”
“Accepted, but you’ll check in with me or Mimi in that case. I don’t want you letting anyone into the apartment while I’m gone—excepting Mimi and her family. Or Harry. He’s going with me, but he may fly back for a day.”
“I’m not looking for company. I’m looking for stability.”
“One of us—me, Harry, or Mimi—will phone every night. I won’t say when.”
“Spot-checking me?”
“There’s a difference between trusting you to be responsible and taking chances.”
“Accepted.”
The breeze stirred through Lina’s hair, the roasted chestnut sweep of it. “I … I thought you enjoyed the travel.”
“Some of it. Sometimes.”
“If you change your mind, I’ll arrange for you to go to Mimi’s or your grandparents’, or to fly out to meet me wherever I am.”
Because she knew her mother would do any of those things, and without too much I-told-you-soing, Adrian felt something soften inside her. “Thanks, but I’m going to be fine. School’s going to keep me busy, and I’m researching colleges. And I’ve got a project I want to start.”
“What project?”
“I have to think about it some more.” At sixteen, Adrian knew how to evade, and breezily. She also knew how to distract.
“Plus, I need to go buy a five-pound bag of M&M’s, a couple gallons of Coke, five or six bags of potato chips. You know, basic supplies.”
Lina smiled a little. “If I thought you meant that, I might knock you out and drag you with me. I have to go. The car’s going to be here soon. I’m trusting you, Adrian.”
“You can.”
Lina bent down, kissed the top of Adrian’s head. “It’ll be late here by the time I land in L.A., so I won’t call. I’ll text.”
“Okay. Have a safe trip, and a good tour.”
With a nod, Lina started back inside. Something twinged inside her chest when she looked back and saw Adrian had picked up the pen again.
She continued to write as if it were any other afternoon.
As she started down the stairs to the next level, Lina took out her phone and called Mimi.
“Hey, are you on your way?”
“In a minute. Listen, Adrian’s staying here.”
“She’s what?”
“She made a good case for it. I know it’s not what you’d do, but you probably would have thought through booking a national tour on the third week of the new school year. When she’s in a new school on top of it. I didn’t. Hold a minute.”
She used her house phone to call downstairs. “Hi, Ben, it’s Lina Rizzo. If you could send someone up for my bags, please. Thanks.
“Mimi, I have to trust her. She’s never given me a reason not to. And, Jesus, she’s tougher than I realized, so good for her, I guess. Would you just give her a call later, see how she sounds?”
“Of course. If she wants to stay here while you’re gone, we can make that work.”
“Her mind’s set—if it changes, I guess she’ll let you know—but she’s determined and that’s that.”
“Her mother’s daughter?”
“Is she?” Lina stopped at a mirror, checked her hair, her face. In looks, yes, she thought. She saw a lot of herself in her daughter. But the rest … maybe she hadn’t paid enough attention.
“Anyway, she’ll be fine. Just call or text her now and then.”
“No problem at all. I’ll stay in touch with her, and with you. Sorry, Lina,” Mimi added as the shouts blasted through the phone. “Jacob’s apparently decided to murder his sister again. I have to go, but you have a safe trip. And don’t worry.”
“Thanks. Talk soon.”
When the buzzer rang, she walked to the door.
And put everything else aside. She had some prep to do on the plane, and a full schedule ahead of her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Alone in New York, Adrian followed her morning routine. She got up with her alarm, did her morning yoga. She showered, dealt with her hair—always a chore—applied minimal makeup—she’d always had a love affair with makeup.
She dressed in the detested school uniform—navy pants, white shirt, navy blazer. Every day she donned the uniform she vowed never to voluntarily wear a navy blazer after graduation.
She put together a breakfast of mixed fruit with Greek yogurt, a slice of ten-grain toast, and juice.
Because Mimi had ingrained the habit in her, she did her dishes, made her bed.
A quick check of the weather on her phone promised mostly sunny and continued warm, so she didn’t bother with a jacket.
She shrugged on her backpack and took the penthouse’s private elevator down.
She couldn’t complain about the five-block walk to school, especially with the weather so fine. She used the time to go over her plan—her deviation from routine.
And the single rule laid down she fully intended to break.
When her phone rang, she checked the display. “Hi, Mimi.”
“Just doing my duty.”
“You can tell Mom when she asks that I was on my way to school when you checked. Of course, instead of going there, I’m going to grab a train to the Jersey Shore and soak up some rays, use my fake ID to buy a bunch of beer, and have lots of sex with strangers in a cheap motel.”
“Good plan, but I think I’ll leave that part out of my report. I know you’re fine, honey, but checking in is the right and loving thing to do.”
“I get it.”
“Do you want to come here for the weekend?”
“Thanks, but I’m good. If that changes, you’ll find me on your doorstep.”
“If you need anything, you call me.”
“I will. Talk soon.”
With that done, she put her phone away.
She had a backup plan if her first didn’t work. But she’d done her research, and thought Plan A had real potential.
She clipped her ID on the blazer as she walked up the short stone steps to the dignified brownstone that served as a school for grades nine through twelve—if you were rich enough and smart enough.
She went inside, through the small security vestibule.
The quiet, the gleaming wood floor, the pristine walls contrasted with the noise and movement and slight dinge of her old school.
She missed it, all of it.
Two years, she reminded herself as she turned away from the wide entrance to the hall on the left. Two years and she could make her own choices.
She intended to preview that by making one today.
By junior year, most of the students had formed their own tribes. Making room for the new girl took time, and she hadn’t had a full three weeks.
She knew those established tribes studied her, sized her up, considered. Though she’d never been shy, Adrian took her time as well.
The jocks could make sense for the next couple of years. Sports might not be so much her thing, but athleticism was. The fashionable girls could be fun, as she did love clothes. (Another reason to hate the uniform.)
The party animals didn’t interest her any more than the scarily serious eggheads.
As always, the group as a whole had scatters of the snobs, the bullies—often intertwined.
The nerds were, always, anywhere, deadly to social strata.
But for her project, that’s exactly where she aimed.
She made the choice during lunch period that would almost certainly doom her chances of joining the social hierarchy.
In the dining hall, Adrian carried her tray—field green salad with grilled chicken, seasonal fruit, sparkling water—past the table of jocks, away from the fashionable girls, and to the lowest of the rung, the nerd table.
She caught the lag in some of the conversational buzz, and a few snickers, as she paused by the lowly table and its three occupants.
Since she’d done her due diligence—reading back issues of the school newspaper, combing last year’s yearbook—she targeted Hector Sung.
Asian, coat-hanger thin, square-framed black glasses with dark brown eyes behind them. Those eyes blinked at her now as he stopped in the act of biting into a slice of veggie pizza.
“Is it okay if I sit here?”
He said, “Um.”
She just smiled and sat across from him. “I’m Adrian Rizzo.”
“Okay. Hi.”
The girl beside him, with skin like caramel cream and a gorgeous head of braids, rolled big, round, black eyes. “He’s Hector Sung, and he’s thinking nobody sits here but us. I’m Teesha Kirk.”
She jerked a thumb with a thick silver ring to the boy sitting warily and red-faced beside Adrian. “The ginger is Loren Moorhead—the third. You’ve got about five-point-three seconds to move before you’re infected by nerd germs and permanently ostracized from society.”
Adrian had done her due diligence on Teesha as well, who’d have ranked with the scarily smart eggheads but for her nerd bones. She preferred Dungeons & Dragons tournaments or Doctor Who marathons to meetings of the National Honor Society or National Merit Scholars.
“Oh well.” Adrian shrugged, added a squirt of lemon to her salad, took a delicate bite. “Guess time’s up. So, nice to meet you, Hector, Teesha, Loren. Anyway, Hector, I’ve got a proposition for you.”
He dropped the pizza onto his plate with a little splat. “A what?”
“Business proposition. I need a videographer, and since that’s your interest, I thought you could help me out with a project.”
His gaze darted between his two friends. “For school?”
“No. I want to do a series of seven fifteen-minute videos. One for each day of the week. I’d want voice-overs for some of them, real-time audio for others. I thought about setting up like a tripod and camera, just doing it myself. But that’s not the look I want.”
His gaze finally came back to hers, and she read interest in it. “What kind of videos?”
“Fitness. Yoga, cardio, strength training, and so on. To put on YouTube.”
“Maybe you’re messing with us.”
She shifted to Loren. His hair, painfully red and cut close to his head, framed a milk-white, freckled face. He had soft blue eyes and a good fifteen pounds of extra pudge.
She thought she could help him with that if he wanted.
“Why would I? I need somebody to video my segments, and I’ll pay fifty dollars for each one. That’s three-fifty for seven. I guess that’s negotiable, within reason.”
“I could think about it. When did you want to start?”
“Saturday morning—sunrise. I want to do segments at sunrise, and at sunset. I have a big terrace, and it would work for this.”
“I’d probably need assistants.”
Adrian ate more salad, considered. “Seventy-five per segment. Split it however you want.”
“What time’s sunrise?” Loren wondered.
Before Adrian could speak—because she’d looked it up—Teesha said, “Sunrise on Saturday, six-twenty-seven a.m. Sunset, seven-twenty p.m. EDT.”
“Don’t ask,” Loren suggested. “She just knows stuff like that.”
“Great. You’d need to get there in time to set up and whatever you need to do. I’ve got my address, and what I’ve outlined, the basic scripts.”
Adrian took a thumb drive out of her pocket, set it beside Hector’s tray. “Look it over, think it over, let me know.”
“Your mom’s the Yoga Baby lady, right?”
Adrian nodded at Teesha. “That’s right.”
“How come you don’t have her people do it? She’s got her own production company.”
“Because this is for me. It’s mine. So, if you decide to take the job, I’ll have you cleared to come up. It’ll probably take the whole weekend. Maybe longer. I don’t know how much postproduction time you’d need to get it done, get it up.”
“I’ll take a look, let you know maybe tomorrow.” Hector offered her a little smile. “You know, you really are screwed around here now. I hope it’s worth it for you.”
“Me, too.”
She got through the rest of the day by ignoring the smirks, the snide comments, and the snickers.
When she stepped back out into the air, Hector and his little tribe came after her.
“So hey, listen. I had a chance to look at some of your outline. Seems doable.”
“Great.”
“I’d want to see the space, though, before committing. Make sure it’ll work for what you’re after.”
“I can show you now if you’ve got time. I’m only a few blocks from here.”
“Now’s good.”
“We’re all going,” Teesha told her.
“Fine.”
“So …” As he trooped along beside her, Hector shoved up his glasses. “I took a look at a couple of your mother’s videos during my free period. Her production values are total, right? I’ve got some good equipment, but I’m not going to be able to match what she’s got going in the studio.”
“I don’t want what she’s got. I want mine.”
“I looked up stuff about her, and you.”
Adrian glanced back over her shoulder at Loren.
Debate team nerd, she remembered. Always picked last for any team in PE—and first to volunteer for hall monitor.
