Page 72 of Filthy Rich

After lunch, Jake has to rush back—reporting that Bea made a miraculous recovery from her “sprain,” but we keep shopping and I practically shove her into Anthropologie for a look around. It’s just pricey enough we may have luck, but cheap enough it could come in under budget.

We’ve barely walked past the front display when I see it—a minidress that would be utterly indecent on its own, but covered with a mermaid-silhouette lace overlay, it’ll cover me from wrist to throat to ankle.

They even have it in both black and ivory.

Bea sighs. She turns to face me slowly, but then she nods. “Fine.”

It’s not a work of art, but we look pretty darn good. We also come in under budget, and no one’s going to be bugging me to wear something I have no business wearing. But as I pack for our quick trip back to New York, a tiny part in the deepest corner of my heart laments that I won’t ever own that Picasso ballgown.

In another life, it would have been epic on me.

Chapter 17

Octavia

Fall in Scarsdale, New York is either magical or it’s diabolical.

Of course when I was younger, I lived for the diabolical days. I remember one day in particular that the weather forecasters were just plain wrong. A front they said was going to swing south came north instead.

It dumped six inches of snow overnight, and when I woke up, it looked more like a winter wonderland than anything I’d ever seen outside of a snow globe. I was absolutely entranced. My mom? Not so much.

When she saw they were still holding the audition, but public transit into the City was closed down, she swore a lot. Apparently she had an audition she’d now miss thanks to the storm.

“If we didn’t live in the bumpkiss middle of nowhere, I could still go, but thanks to your dad’s job, we’re stuck out here, away from the epicenter of the acting world.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. “Maybe they’ll get it cleared up soon, and then?—”

“What do you know about snow?” Mom shook her head. “Just go clean up your room.”

I’d learned by then that when Mom was in a bad mood, nothing I did helped. Instead of arguing that my room was already clean, I ducked out of the kitchen without finishing my now-soggy cereal. I walked around my room, wondering what I could possibly clean. It took a minute, but it finally hit me—my closet had a box full of old toys from when I was a kid. I could go through them and pull a few things out to keep. I could donate the rest. It was only a few weeks until Christmas, and I’d heard that was the best time to donate toys. Parents who were on a limited income could pick them up at the donation center in time to put them under the tree.

About halfway down in the box, I found my favorite dress for playing dress up, Belle.

The enormous, glittery golden dress had a massive skirt, an off-the-shoulder, drape neckline, and long sleeves with tiny sequins sewn at odd intervals. At the time, I thought it was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen. Since I didn’t go to church very often as a kid, I didn’t own many dresses. I knew I should donate it so another little girl could enjoy it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it if it still fit.

Alone, hiding in my room, trying it on seemed like a good idea.

To my utter shock, even though I was almost thirteen, I could zip it up! I remember spinning around in my room, wishing I had a friend here to tell me how it looked. Sadly, I couldn’t see for myself.

Mom had covered my full-length mirror, my dresser mirror, and the bathroom mirror after my accident, “so you won’t feel bad every time you look at yourself.” But it had been more than a year and a half, and I’d had loads of painful surgeries and also recoveries. Mom was homeschooling me, to her great dismay, and I wondered—with a dress this stunning on, how bad could I really look?

I whisked off the sheet covering my mirror, and I stared at myself.

The gown was a little too short, showing my ankles, and the bodice was tight, since I was just starting to have the beginnings of a chest, but with the sparkles and the pin-up floofs decorating it, I didn’t even care. I stepped closer, looking at my own face.

It wasn’t like everyone else’s, but it wasn’t grotesque. In fact, it sort of looked interesting and unique.

Where the unmarked side of my face had tiny holes and hairs, the burned side was smooth and rippled. On that side, I looked a little like a statue. I rummaged around in the box until I found the gold shoes that went with the dress. They had tiny, one-inch heels, and I slid my feet into them. Then I posed again, turning my left side, my damaged side, facing the mirror.

I smiled, and I looked really nice.

When I took this off, it was definitely going in the keep pile.

My door burst open, and Mom froze, holding my backpack in her outstretched hand. “You left this in the kitchen.” Her lips compressed into a flat line. “What on earth are you doing?”

I blinked. “I—well, you said to clean my room, but it was already clean, so I thought I’d go through my old toys, and I found this?—”

“Go through? It looks like you dumped out every toy you ever owned into a massive pile.” But when her eyes tracked up to where I was standing, her eyes widened precipitously. “What on earth are you doing right now?”

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