Excerpt 2

TARA WASHINGTON is the mediator among her friends, the girl guru who tries to keep everyone happy, relationships in balance, despite the occasional summer storm....

If Tara had to hear one more word of debate from her mother regarding the merits of micro-blinds versus sheers she was going to rip the window dressing aside and jump out onto the sand.

“I don’t know...” Selena Washington stepped back from the window and lowered her reading glasses. The cat’s eye, rhinestone glasses fell to her chest, dangling on their chain as she reassessed the design crisis. “The micro-blinds are better for privacy, but then the sage drapes go so well with this armoire. Very seventeenth century French provincial.”

But we’re in a 21^st century Southampton beach house, Tara wanted to tell her mother. The era of microwaves and VCRs.  “Whatever you think,” she said dutifully.

“Though I worry that this armoire might be too big for this room.” Tara’s mother paced around the bed in Wayne’s room, her Dolce and Gabanna sandals leaving footprints in the deep carpeting. “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the armoire altogether, but your brother is so attached to those video games and he’d pitch a fit if I got rid of them.”

Tara just nodded and stared down at the carpet, thinking how the family had always catered to Wayne while Tara and her older sister Denise were the ones moving the armoires and cleaning the blinds and vacuuming footprints of designer shoes out of the carpeting. Tara’s mother Serena Washington had moved from the furnishings to the wall treatments when the phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” Tara answered, running for her life down the stairs of the starkly geometric beach home.

“You have got to meet me tonight,” Darcy ordered, bossy as ever. “I’ll be at Coney’s.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Tara said, familiar with Darcy’s quest for Kevin McGowan. “But I’m incarcerated in spring cleaning boot camp.”

“Hire a maid service,” Darcy said.

“Have you learned nothing about my mother over all these summers? Serena Washington has two maids, Tara and Denise, only Denise wised up and got the hell out of here.”

Darcy laughed. “You’re so funny. Meet me in half an hour.”

“What about Lindsay?” Tara asked. “Is she coming?”

“Big groan. I’ll explain when I see you,” Darcy said, then clicked off.

Promising to return the sage curtains to the store in Riverhead tomorrow, Tara managed to escape Design 101. Soon she was cruising down Southampton’s Main Street, a charming stretch strung with tiny white lights – small cafes, upscale boutiques, galleries, bed and breakfast inns and outdoor markets that had a New England feel.

Waiting at a red light as a flock of pedestrians – all white – passed in their summer whites, Tara got to wondering why her parents, two educated, hard-working individuals, had chosen Southampton as their summer residence twelve years ago.

Tara was just nine when her parents bought the ocean-front house in the Hamptons, a sleek contemporary box on the beach that an architect had designed for his beloved wife then put on the market when she left him for an artist she’d hooked up with at a cocktail party. Typical Hamptons story. Although Tara and her older siblings Wayne and Denise were not consulted about the purchase, Tara recalled the thrill of thinking her parents had purchased this house with its turquoise swimming pool and jacuzzi tub, this land with its stubbly dunes and front-row view of the crashing ocean. That they owned a second house on the beach, well, surely this must mean they were rich and were simply feigning poverty when Tara pleaded for a television in her room and a VCR and a complete collection of Louisa May Alcott’s books.

It wasn’t long until Tara realized the Washingtons were not the average Hamptons summer resident. Though she was only nine she’d already developed a keen sense of the world around her, the awareness that African Americans were still a minority race but a significant part of New York City’s ethnically diverse population. In Brooklyn, people didn’t stare.  I belong here, she used to tell herself as she walked down along a cobbled Park Slope sidewalk to the park with Denise or went down to the pizza place with a quarter for an Italian ice.  Brooklyn was her home, and it welcomed her as readily as it embraced the Chinese, Latvian and Pakistani children in her class.

Although she was African-American people often assumed that she was Caucasian because her skin was light, a creamy mocha shade. Their mistaken perception was a constant source of discomfort for her. Throughout her four years of private high school, she’d overheard murmurings from the other students, speculation over whether she was black or white, mixed race, Caribbean or a descendant of Sally Hemmings. 

Here in the Hamptons, Tara wondered if the fact that she hung out with white girls confused people all the more. But could she help it if her two best friends at the beach were Irish-Catholic and total WASP?

Coney’s was hopping with patrons when Tara arrived, but it wasn’t hard to find Darcy. Like the sun, she was the center of the bar, half the guys in the room caught in her gravitational pull. From head to toe, Darcy was model sleek – gold on blond highlights in waist -length hair, periwinkle blue eyes that sparkled with confidence, sheer white blouse that revealed the electric blue camisole underneath. Looking down at her own black tank and denim skirt, Tara felt like she was slumming.

Darcy greeted her with a lift of the chin. “Tara! Thank God.” She gave her a bony shoulder hug. “I was worried that you’d porked out, too.”

“Excuse me?” Tara squinted.

“Haven’t you seen Lindsay?” Darcy’s eyes closed to slivers. “I guess not. She’s enormous. She’d make Carny Wilson look svelte.”

“I haven’t seen her,” she said haltingly, thinking that Darcy looked unattractive when she was being caddy. “But I’m sorry to hear that.” Poor Lindsay. “So why isn’t she here?”

“Are you kidding me?” Darcy shot a glance over her shoulder at two guys who seemed to be waiting for an audience. “She wasn’t invited. I’m not going to be seen with a girlfriend like that. I mean, what’ll people think?”

“They’ll think you’re her friend,” Tara said pointedly. “Which I thought you were. What’s going on with you, Darcy?”

“Listen to me,” Darcy said, stepping up beside Tara so she didn’t have to shout over the music. “I’m just not comfortable hanging out with someone like that. It’s gross, okay?”

“She’s your friend!” Tara shot back. “Our friend, since we were little kids.”

“Well, those days are gone,” Darcy said, raking back a strand of blond hair with crimson nails. “So why don’t you move on, honey? Kevin is going to be here any minute, and if you mellow out and have a drink, we can have a few laughs, okay?”

But Tara was shaking her head fiercely. “I don’t think so. Right now, I’m not liking you so much, honey.”

Darcy cocked her head to the side, a strand of hair falling seductively over one eye. “Oh, don’t be that way. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink? Want a marganita? A cosmo?”

But Tara backed away, shaking her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.” Rage thrumming in her head, Tara pushed past Darcy, leaving the bar.

What an incredible bitch, Tara thought as she closed her into her mother’s Mercedes and gripped the steering wheel. She still couldn’t believe Darcy was that shallow, that catty.

As she started the car, Tara felt doubly guilty for not calling Lindsay in these past two weeks. She’d wanted to, but Tara had been under her mother’s thumb, cleaning and redecorating. It was time to take back her life – whatever was left of it.

Years ago they’d lost Elle in a near tragic incident. Thank God Elle had survived, but when her parents whisked her away, never to return again, Tara felt as if Elle had taken a piece of them with her. And now this. Damn it, at the rate Darcy was cutting people off, there’d be nothing left of the Hamptons friends.

This was unacceptable. Time to take a stand.

Tara stopped at a payphone, and, surprised that she remembered it, dialed Lindsay’s number. “Hey, girl,” she said when Lindsay got on the line, “I’m headed over your way and I won’t take no for an answer. How about we catch a movie or something? Hey, have you seen Good Will Hunting yet?”

That would show Darcy that she didn’t have the power to decimate Tara’s relationships. Granted, she could destroy her own, but while Darcy crashed and burned, her friends would be getting their groove on with Matt and Ben, two of the sweetest looking white boys to hit the big screen.