Spencer scooted her chair closer to the table, taking advantage of this intimate moment. “I hate when people ask me where I went to high school.”

That wasn’t a sentiment I could agree with. There were times I loved saying where I went to high school, loved the opportunity to prove how far I’d come. So I shrugged, my face stone, letting her know we weren’t bound to be buddies just because we had an alma mater in common. “I don’t mind. I feel like it’s a part of what makes me me.”

Spencer suddenly realized she was leaning in too close, that this was a point on which we couldn’t see eye to eye, and it had been presumptuous of her to think we could. She drew back in her chair, giving me my space. “Of course. I would probably feel the same way if I were you.”

“I’m participating in the documentary,” I volunteered, to show her just how much I didn’t mind it.

Spencer nodded slowly. “I wanted to ask you. But of course they would want you.”

I checked the TAG Heuer on my wrist. Luke had been promising me the Cartier for the last year. “I will say that you should definitely try and get an internship, even if it doesn’t pay.”

“How would I afford rent?” Spencer asked.

I eyed the Chanel bag hooked over the back of her chair. On second glance, I saw that the seams were starting to unravel. Old money, this one, tied up in trusts. Good family name, decent-size house in Wayne, and not a penny to spare the panhandler on the subway.

“Waitress or bartend at night. Or, commute in every day.”

“From Philly?” Not so much a question as a reminder of where she would have to come from, as though I was crazy to suggest it. My chest sizzled with irritation.

“We’ve had interns here who have commuted from DC,” I said. I took a slow sip of my coffee then cocked my head at her. “Isn’t it only two hours or so on the train?”

“I guess,” Spencer said, looking unconvinced. Her dismissal disappointed me. Things had been going fairly well up until this point.

Giving her the opportunity to redeem herself, I reached up to adjust the delicate gold chain around my neck. I couldn’t believe I’d left out the most important piece.

“Are you engaged?” Spencer’s eyes went cartoon character wide on my pride and joy: a fat, brilliant emerald planet, flanked by two winking diamonds, the band simple platinum. It had been Luke’s grandmother’s—pardon me, his Mammy’s—and when he gave it to me he’d offered me the option to reset the stones on a diamond band. “Mom’s jewelry guy said that’s the look a lot of girls go for now. It’s more modern I guess.”

And that’s exactly why I didn’t want to have it reset. No, I would wear it just the way dear sweet Mammy had worn it: at once restrained and ornate. A very clear message: This is an heirloom. We don’t just have money, we come from money.

I stretched my fingers out, taking in the hardware as if I’d forgotten it was there. “Ugh, I know. I’m officially old.”

“That is the most stunning ring I’ve ever seen,” Spencer declared. “When are you getting married?”

“October sixteenth!” I beamed at her. Had Eleanor been there to witness this blushing bride nonsense, she would have tilted her head and smiled her “Aren’t you cute?” smile. Then gone on to remind me that even though October wasn’t necessarily a rainy month, weather could be unpredictable. Did I have a backup plan in case it did rain? She’d had a tent on standby and even though she didn’t have to use it, the reservation cost her ten thousand dollars. Eleanor is bursting with neat little factoids like that.

I pushed my chair back. “I have to get back to work.”

Spencer was out of her chair in half a second. She stuck her hand out. “Thank you so much, TifAni, I mean”—she covered her mouth and her whole body tittered with a geisha giggle—“Ani. Sorry.”

Sometimes I feel like a windup doll, like I have to reach behind and turn my golden key to produce a greeting, a laugh, whatever the socially acceptable reaction should be. I managed a tight farewell smile for Spencer. She wouldn’t mistake my name again, not once the documentary aired, not once the camera narrowed in on my aching, honest face, gently dissolving any last confusion about who I am and what I did.

CHAPTER 2

I spent the summer between eighth and ninth grades listening to Mom rave about the Main Line. She said it was “very hoity-toity” and that I was really going to experience how the other half lives by going to high school there. I had never heard the word “hoity-toity” before but inferred what it meant based on the saucy dip in Mom’s voice. It was that same throaty purr that the Bloomingdale’s saleswoman used to convince her to buy a cashmere scarf she couldn’t afford: “It looks rich on you.” “Rich.” The magic word. Dad did not agree when she came home later and rubbed it against his face.

I’d attended an all-girls Catholic school since kindergarten, in a town that was devoid of any Main Line aristocracy on account of the fact that it was shy of the border by about fifteen miles. I didn’t grow up in the slums or anything, my surroundings were just morbidly middle class, with plenty of gaudy neighbors who mistakenly considered themselves upper. I had no idea that was the case at the time, had no idea money could show its age, and that old and worn was always superior. I thought wealth was shiny red BMWs (leased) and five-bedroom McMansions (mortgaged three times). Not that we were even fake rich enough to live in the five-bedroom travesties.

My real education started on the morning of September 2, 2001, my first day of freshman year at The Bradley School in Bryn Mawr, PA. I have marijuana (or “grass,” if you want to embarrass me like my father) to thank for landing me at the mouth of the old mansion that served as the English and Humanities wing of Bradley, swiping my sweaty palms on my orange Abercrombie & Fitch cargo pants. If I’d just said no to drugs, I’d have been storming the quad of Mt. St. Theresa’s upper school, my scratchy blue kilt catching between my thighs, tawny from a summer spent marinating in Hawaiian Tropic oil, day one of my mediocre young adult life that would never pan out to be anything more than a Facebook cliché. My existence defined in successive photo albums documenting my engagement weekend in Atlantic City, vanilla church wedding, and artfully arranged naked newborn.

What happened was this: My friends and I decided it was time to try pot at the beginning of eighth grade, the four of us climbing onto my best friend Leah’s roof from her bedroom window, passing a soggy joint between our Bonne Bell–slicked lips. The terrifying awareness it brought to every limb—even my toenails!—was so acute I started to hyperventilate and cry.

“Something isn’t right,” I half-gasped, half-laughed to Leah, who tried to calm me down but ultimately succumbed to a maniacal fit of laughter.

Leah’s mother came to investigate the commotion. She called Mom at midnight and said in a dramatic whisper, “The girls got into something.”

I’d had a Marilyn Monroe body since the fifth grade, and the parents had no problem believing I was the mastermind of our Catholic schoolgirl drug ring. I just looked like trouble. In one week, I went from being the queen bee of our small, forty-girl class to an annoying little fly trying to avoid being squashed. Even the girl who stuck French fries up her nose before eating them wouldn’t stoop so low as to sit with me at lunch.

Word traveled to the administration. Mom and Dad were called in for a meeting with the principal, an ogre of a woman named Sister John, who suggested I seek an alternative school to continue my education. Mom harrumphed the whole car ride home, finally arriving at the conclusion that she would send me to one of these exclusive private schools on the Main Line, which would give me a better shot of getting into an Ivy League, which would give me a better shot of marrying into some real money. “That’ll show them,” she announced triumphantly, her hands choking the steering wheel like it was Sister John’s wrestler’s neck. I’d waited a beat before daring to ask, “Are there boys on the Main Line?”