If you add to that the fear that your family is on the verge of total financial collapse, you have the makings of a birthday that is memorable for all the wrong reasons. You should probably go back to bed.
Scarlett tried to make the most of her day. She wandered around some stores and went to Central Park. She’d even gotten away with using the expired ice cream coupon, which felt like a minor victory. When it got too hot and walking around got tiring, she went home and sat on her bed with her computer.
Her computer was one of the things in life that made her very happy, despite the fact that it was old and very slow. It was a hand-me-down from Chloe, who got new computers and phones on a regular basis. Aside from Marlene, Scarlett was the only Martin with a personal computer; everyone else shared the one at the front desk.
This was especially useful since Scarlett liked to write—and you didn’t need money to do that. She could be one of those people who published a book at age fifteen and went on to worldwide fame and fortune and didn’t have to scam ice-cream places with expired coupons.
That sounded very appealing, so she spent several hours trying to string together some meaningful sentences. She tried to write about what she knew—but what she knew didn’t seem very interesting. No one was going to want to read about getting stuck in the elevator or missing subway trains or having furniture break underneath you.
Lola came home at a little after eight, and went immediately to take a post free-makeover-day bubble bath. The tiles, massive clawfoot tub, sloped high ceiling, and skylight in the bathroom next to the Orchid Suite created a perfect echo chamber, enough noise to easily penetrate the thin walls—so Scarlett never got to miss a thing in terms of the bathroom activities. It was just one of those little bonuses that life had thrown her way.
Scarlett’s writing process was therefore interrupted by Lola and Chip’s phone conversation. Tonight’s was all about shirts. Granted, she was only hearing Lola’s end of it, but this was still pretty clear. Spencer was right—their conversations weren’t exactly romantic. This one certainly wasn’t. Who made the highest count cotton dress shirts? Was tawny rose just pink, was pink what he really wanted, and if so, was it this pink? Was it better just to get shirts made? If so, by whom?
So very, very boring. Everything was boring.
Scarlett listened to the distant droning on about shirts and stared at the screen. Nothing was coming to her now—nothing but thoughts about shirts. She put on her headphones to block it out.
A few minutes later, Lola returned to their room, wrapped in her silky, pink knee-length robe. She sat down on her bed primly, knees tucked together, and stared at her dresser. She cocked her head slightly, following its angle. One of the legs had come off years ago and been replaced by one that was a centimeter or two too short.
She let out a light, airy sigh. Lola was often like this when she finished talking to Chip. Not exactly sad, but not brimming with excitement, either. Tonight, she seemed a bit more pensive than usual. She picked up her brush and stroked her hair slowly.
“Problem?” Scarlett asked.
“Something’s come up tomorrow,” Lola said. “I have to go somewhere with Chip. But I’m supposed to be taking Marlene to an event in the morning.”
“Oh,” Scarlett said sympathetically. Marlene was strictly Lola’s job, because Marlene pretty much refused to go anywhere with anyone else.
“I was wondering if you could do it, since you’re not…well, working. And it won’t take long.”
“Me?” Scarlett gasped.
“Well…”
“Don’t you, um, have work?”
“I took off,” Lola said. “Or, I will in the morning. I’ll call in sick. She really likes going places with you. She just doesn’t know how to show it.”
Scarlett leveled a look at her sister that could have penetrated a cement barricade.
“It’s really not that bad,” Lola said. “Honest. I won’t forget this. I will owe you, and you know I’m good for it.”
Lola was actually good for these kinds of things. She very much operated on the system of doing and returning favors. Her credit was impeccable. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was Marlene would burst a blood vessel. She would scream and howl and make all their lives a misery.
Before Scarlett could point out this incredibly obvious fact, there was a rapid knock on the door. After a short decency pause, Spencer let himself in without preamble. He went airborne and landed hard on Scarlett’s bed, causing her frail computer to bounce. She grabbed and stabilized it before it exploded into its component parts.
“I have news,” he said. “Remember how I told you that I was going to call everyone I knew? It turns out that one of my friends from school knows these people who are doing Hamlet. One of their cast members just got cast in a touring company of Mamma Mia, like, yesterday. So he’s leaving, and they called me to come in and read for the part.”