“About what?”
“I think being around overprivileged kids is messing with my head. Don’t get me wrong, I yearn for the finer things in life, but I’m losing the delicate balance. The other day, Kaitlyn told me I needed collagen injections for my mouth, and I considered it. I don’t need collagen injections. Do I?”
“No. Of course not, silly,” answered Natalie with a quick glance at Rebecca’s mouth, which Rebecca didn’t miss, by the way.
The drawings above the blackboard weren’t of monsters and bunnies, but designer fashions, formal dining rooms, pictures ofSouthBeachwinter homes and four Picasso-esque paintings of polo ponies. “It’s these kids. I’ve dated men with less understanding of finance than little Claudio Gettleman. How a six-year-old can calculate earnings per share is really beyond me.”
“He gave me stock tips the other day,” Natalie admitted.
“Really? Did you invest?” The words slipped out before Rebecca could stop them.
“He is only six.”
Rebecca grabbed the pen from behind her ear. “What’s the name of the company?”
“B-I-O-N-E-X-T.”
Carefully she blocked the letters on her hand, making her “N” with the three-step process they practiced in class. “You invested, didn’t you?”
“No,” answered Natalie. “Some. He gave me this whole spiel about engineering biological components—and it made sense.”
Rebecca made a mental note to herself to call her broker that afternoon and then tucked the pen back behind her ear. The money was one thing—she could adjust to that—but the mind-set of the school was another. That was the one that kept her awake at night.
“This school is doing a huge number on them, depriving them of sugar, Santa, the tooth fairy. All the carefree things in life. Do you know that Cruz told Justin Lowenstein the tooth fairy didn’t care if he lost a tooth because the tooth fairy didn’t exist? Where’s the justice in that?”
“You could quit.”
Rebecca snorted inelegantly, a sound reserved only for her very best friends. “I’d die first. These children need me. Their childhood is zipping right past them. I was happy when I was a kid. No ADD, no bubble-gum-flavored Prozac. I’m the only piece of sanity in their lives it seems, certainly in this stylized mental institution. Present company excepted, of course.”
Natalie popped a Tums into her mouth. “The kids do like the birthday parties you give. They think that keeping it a secret from their parents and the headmistress makes it extra special. Although I think Cruz is catching on.”
“If she does, I can handle her.”
“I hope so because now my class is asking for it, you child-corrupter, you.”
“Go ahead, Natalie. Walk on the wild side.”
Natalie laughed. “Oh, right. Classroom antics aside, you’ve never walked on the wild side. Your closet is littered with skeletons of skeletons that have never gotten a chance.”
“Who needs skeletons anyway?” Rebecca shrugged it off. Her skeletons were all gone now.
“A skeleton is much better than a regret, do you at least have any of those?”
“Not many,” answered Rebecca, because honestly, there wasn’t much she regretted. She’d always gone after what she wanted with an élan that made her captain of the cheerleading squad, homecoming princess and president of the student body. No, not many regrets, except for…
“What?” prodded Natalie, whose dogged determination was probably the reason she got pregnant in like, two seconds.
“It was nothing.” Quickly Rebecca tried to change the subject. “Isn’t Cruz due about now?”
Natalie checked the clock. “You have over eight minutes. Just enough time to spill all the regrettable details.”
“There’s nothing to spill,” Rebecca insisted.
“You’re lying,” answered Natalie, and Rebecca heaved a sigh. She was getting weak in her old age (not quite thirty-one, although if anyone asked, she was twenty-nine).
Natalie flashed her tough-girl look. The one she used when determined to get the truth—whatever it took. Rebecca held up a hand before she brought out the instruments of torture.
“Okay, fine. You want to know? It’s completely nothing. There was this one day, this one guy in high school. Cory Bell. He looked at me. And I got this tingling in my fingers, my toes and the back of my neck. This was in my fully hymenated days, so I didn’t quite understand the biology of tingles very well. Then Lawrence—who was captain of the football team—came up and took my books and walked me to class. Cory never looked in my direction again, but I’ve always wondered what would happen if…End of regret.”