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Jacinta smiled at her. “That’s me, love.”

“Oh my gosh,” the woman said, sounding starstruck. “I’m Alyssa Goldberg. I’m the associate style editor at Vogue.”

“Alyssa!” Jacinta cried, standing and throwing her arms around the startled editor. “We’ve corresponded! Oh, what an honor to meet you.”

“No, the honor’s mine, really,” Alyssa gushed. “You’re just so incredible, and I’m so inspired by you. Some days when I’m feeling stuck, I’ll just look at your site and get all kinds of ideas. We all think you’re just amazing.”

If Jacinta’s story was even a little bit exaggerated, her reaction to Alyssa was 100 percent genuine. She got very quiet, and her eyes grew enormous.

“At—at Vogue?” she whispered. It was almost as if she were speaking to herself. “Vogue thinks I’m amazing?”

“Completely,” Alyssa said.

Jacinta put her hands over her heart. She opened her mouth and closed it soundlessly. Her big green eyes shone. For a moment I thought she might weep. But she quickly regained her composure. If she blinked away any tears, I didn’t catch sight of them.

Alyssa gave me a cursory glance, then decided I wasn’t worth acknowledging. I’ve had this experience plenty of times with my mother, when press people or fans assume I’m just her assistant, and don’t bother shaking my hand or even making eye contact with me. I end up being invisible. Not that it really bothers me, but it does tell you something about a person. Alyssa Goldberg had quickly achieved “not a nice person” status in my book.

Jacinta was too kind to let me dangle there in silence for too long, so she quickly said, “And this is my dear friend Naomi Rye.”

“Hi,” Alyssa said with as little effort as possible. “Jacinta, it’s so fabulous to see you out here. Do you think you’ll come to the city soon?”

“Well,” Jacinta said, “I’ve finally got a September coming up with a clear schedule. For once, I won’t be traveling everywhere. I can actually go to Fashion Week. I suppose you’ll be there, too?”

“I always am,” Alyssa said. “We really should talk—I could use a good guest correspondent with a really fresh, young approach.” She handed Jacinta her card. Jacinta accepted it almost reverently, handling it like a precious jewel.

After Alyssa bid us farewell—in other words, air-kissed Jacinta and ignored me—Jacinta looked at me gleefully.

Vogue magazine!” she whispered. “Can you believe it?”

“You’re really getting influential,” I said.

“Oh, I’ve only just begun,” she replied. I believed her. I didn’t know how much of Jacinta Trimalchio was real and how much was fake, but she was clearly a force to be reckoned with. I’ll admit it—I was impressed at how snooty-snoots like Alyssa Goldberg and Ainsley Devereaux fell to pieces when they met her. A little over-the-top, but that’s part of what made her so fun to be around. As if she were reading my mind, Jacinta said, “About last night. . .”

“Yes?”

“Remember when I asked if you could have Delilah Fairweather over so that I could meet her?”

“Of course.”

“Did you mean it when you said that was all right, love?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, goodie!” Jacinta clapped her hands together like a little girl and let out an excited mini-shriek. I laughed at her childlike enthusiasm. It was kind of adorable.

“Jeez,” I said. “You must really be a Delilah Fairweather fan.”

“Oh,” Jacinta said. “You have no idea.”

As we drove home, I asked Jacinta if she had a boyfriend. “No time for a boyfriend,” she said.

“No time for anything, really, but my work. I guess you could say I’ve been waiting for the right one for a long time.”

I thought of Jeff, wondering if he could be the right one. Then I told myself I should calm down. We’d only kissed a few times.

Jacinta pulled into her driveway, worriedly pointing out the divots in the grass where drunk girls’ high heels had sunk into the sod.

“I’ll have to get a lawn man over to fix that before I meet Delilah,” she said.

“I thought we were having her over to my house,” I said. “Oh, to start. But of course I’ll want to bring her over to see my house, too.”

“Of course.”

“I hope she likes it,” Jacinta said wistfully. “Do you think she’ll like it?”

“I don’t know her well enough to say,” I said. “But I can’t imagine anyone not being impressed by this house. And by you.”

She gave me one of her signature big, tight hugs. “Thank you, love. I am so glad we’re friends.”

“Me too,” I said, and I meant it. My summers in East Hampton were usually awfully lonely. But this year, within the space of a couple days, I had acquired two friends and a maybe-possibly-not-to-be-a-dork-but-it-could-happen boyfriend guy.

Jacinta and I put each other’s numbers in our phones. Then I walked home in the afternoon sunshine, leaving Jacinta behind to poke around in her rented lawn, a look of concern on her pretty face. I wondered why she cared so much.

CHAPTER SIX

After I left Jacinta examining her lawn, I went into the house and sequestered myself in my room, curling up with a Noam Chomsky book my Honors US History II teacher had recommended the previous year. I finished it in two hours and moved on to an old favorite, Anne of Green Gables. After that, I went through another old favorite, the L. M. Montgomery book Emily of New Moon. I fell asleep with an almost-finished Emily of New Moon clutched in my hand, my clothes still on.

I woke up the next morning to the buzz of a text from my mother. It read, “Emergency meeting at HQ—tell no one.”

I rolled my eyes and texted back, “Oh, so I shouldn’t post it on Facebook?”

“That’s not funny,” came the response.

My mother and I have slightly different senses of humor.

I put the phone down and rolled over to go back to sleep. I was drifting off quickly when my phone buzzed again. I was prepared to fire off a bitchy retort to my mother, when I saw that the text was from Jacinta. It was an 813 number. I wondered where 813 was, anyway.

Have you called Delilah yet? the text read.

Not yet, I texted back. But I will soon.

I’ll call her now, I texted. For some reason, I didn’t want to do anything to make Jacinta unhappy—even if what would make her unhappy was waiting a completely reasonable amount of time to meet Delilah Fairweather.

T H A N K Y O U T H A N K Y O U T H A N K Y O U XOXOXOXOXO <3, came the response.

I’m not the biggest fan of talking on the phone, unless it’s to Skags, because my phone voice gets kind of high-pitched and weird. I’m sure there’s some complex, deep-seated psychological reason for this phenomenon, but as yet, I can only attribute it to performance anxiety. I hate saying the wrong thing, because then I revisit it in my head over and over again for days after. I don’t know where I get it from, because my dad seems to have no trouble barking orders on or off the basketball court, and my mother has probably never wasted a single moment of time feeling embarrassed over anything she’s said, no matter how dumb.

I called Delilah’s cell. It rang a few times and she picked up, sounding kind of out of it.

“Helllllooooo?” she said lazily.