She's Got Game (11 page)

Finally, after four hours of trying, an exhausted Binky asked, “Isn't it possible for my dad to take the mike and just introduce the court? And no dancing?”

“Hmmm.” Alicia looked out into the distance.

“What does ‘hmmm' mean?” Binky asked Jamie.

“‘Hmmm' means that we pride ourselves on
quinces
that go above and beyond in every category,” Jamie said, translating. “If your dad's going to just emcee all of the big moments, then why hire us?”

Alicia's gaze grew suddenly focused. “I think I have an idea.”

And indeed she did.

True, Amigas Inc. prided itself as a group on going the extra mile, but even Alicia knew when to give up. If she couldn't force complicated moves on the court, she'd go back to basics—work with what they
could
do. After quickly figuring out some simplified moves, Alicia got to work crafting a number.

And by the time all of the
damas
and
chambelanes
left, two hours later, they were all gloriously in step.

THE FOLLOWING
Wednesday afternoon found Jamie walking up the front steps of the Mortimer mansion. She'd been at the house more than a half a dozen times since the
amigas
had started planning Binky's
quinceañera
and since she had started seeing Dash, but it was still quite a shock to see the ginormous place that Binky and Dash called home. How many rooms had Binky said it had? Twenty-five? Thirty?

She'd also met Dash and Binky's father, Chip, in passing several times over the course of her visits. He seemed like a nice guy, even though she blamed him for the family's apparent preference for odd nicknames. Now she rang the doorbell, feeling herself relax when the family butler opened the door.

“Miss Sosa,” Sherwood said, in his singsongy Bermudan accent, “do come in.”

She thanked him and explained that she'd come by to drop off favor samples for Binky. Though her
quince
was rapidly approaching, Binky still hadn't decided on the gifts for her guests. Traditionally, the
damas
and
chambelanes
got personalized presents, and each of the party guests got a simpler, more general gift—like a keychain that said,
BINKY'S FIFTEENTH
—as a favor. Jamie knew that Binky thought she could wait to decide, because money was not an object. Time, on the other hand,
was
an object.

Mission accomplished—or explanation delivered—Jamie handed Sherwood the bag of gift samples and just was about to leave when she heard a particularly sexy voice call her name. Despite the fact that they had been on several dates by now, kissed countless times, and talked on the phone for dozens of hours (or so it seemed), she still shivered when she heard Dash's voice. And she still found herself amazed that someone like him would be into someone like her—and that
she
could be into
him
.

“Hey,” she said, turning around. “I thought you had an interview with
Golf World
magazine.”

“The reporter got food poisoning and had to reschedule, so I'm home early,” he explained.

He looked as cute as ever in a yellow polo shirt and navy golf shorts.

Jamie kissed him on the cheek. “Well, it's nice to see you,” she said, beaming.

“I was just sitting on the patio with my stepmother,” Dash said. “I don't think you've met her yet.”

“Nope,” Jamie said, shaking her head. The stepmother had been suspiciously absent from all Binky's party-planning. As Binky had explained, the stepmonster cared only about one thing—herself. As long as Amigas Inc. made it
look
as though she cared about her stepdaughter, she'd leave them alone.

“You should meet her,” he said, taking Jamie's hand. “I promise you, her snarl is much worse than her bite. Most of the time.” He laughed, trying to reassure her.

Holding his hand, she followed him onto the patio. Her heart was racing. A bronze woman in a bright, papaya-colored sundress sat motionless, wearing a giant pair of sunglasses.

Dash smiled and said, “Bev, this is my girlfriend, Jamie. Jamie, my stepmom, Bev.”

The beating of her heart grew faster—but in a good way. Dash had called her his girlfriend—totally unprompted—in front of a major parental unit. Wow, she thought, mentally pinching herself.

With renewed confidence—after all, she
was
Dash's official girlfriend—Jamie extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Mortimer.”

Bev limply returned her handshake but said nothing.

Both Binky and Dash had complained about their stepmother and how her only interests were money and other people with money. Still, even though she'd been forewarned, Jamie felt a little wounded by what was obviously a brush-off.

She was just formulating a plan of escape when Dash ruined it. “I have a great idea, Jamie. Why don't you join us for a family dinner Saturday night?”

Mrs. Mortimer evidently liked the idea about as much as Jamie did. “Oh, but, Dash, dear, we're having dinner at the club that night.”

He shrugged. “And…?”

Mrs. Mortimer pushed the glasses down on her nose and gave Jamie a once-over. “There's a dress code.”

“And…?” Dash repeated.

“That means no tennis shoes. No hip-hop gear. Nothing so
urban
as what she's wearing right now, dear.”

Jamie willed herself not to let her Bronx slip out. “No problem,” she said, through gritted teeth. Suddenly, she felt as if she were thirteen again and the token minority member at an unwelcoming boarding school.

“You can always join us another night,” Bev went on, finally addressing her directly. “We tend to be much more relaxed at home.”

Jamie shook her head. “I'm perfectly comfortable with coming to dinner at the club. I went to Fitzgibbons Academy, you know.”

Both Dash and his stepmother looked surprised at this revelation. Mrs. Mortimer took her sunglasses completely off and stared at Jamie a little more attentively.

“Fitzgibbons is a very good school,” she said. “And where do you go now?”

Jamie squared her shoulders, determined not to let Bev Mortimer get the best of her.

“I go to Coral Gables High School,” she replied.

Mrs. Mortimer put her sunglasses back on. “Public school?” She practically sneered the words. “Pity.”

Dash didn't bother to hide his anger. “We'll be leaving now, Bev. Have a good rest of the afternoon.”

Jamie knew she should have said, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Mortimer,” but she just couldn't. Instead, she simply followed Dash back inside the house.

At the front door, Dash said, “I'd love to give you a ride. Make up for my stepmother's utter lack of manners. I'm sorry she was like that. I hope it didn't upset you.”

“Forget about it,” Jamie said, struggling to keep her composure in front of him. “Trust me, if you didn't live on this crazy island, I'd take you up on the offer. But you'd have to take the ferry to your car, then drive to my house and back again. It's a sweet offer, and I appreciate it, but I could really use some time alone to think.”

After a few more attempts to persuade her, Dash agreed to let her go home alone. But not without first giving her a sweet, long kiss good-bye.

Jamie fumed the whole way home. She kept replaying the conversation in her head, kept seeing the way Bev had dismissed her with one glance, the way the corners of her mouth had turned down in a frown when she said “public school.”

The moment Jamie got home, she went straight to the garage. At that point, she wondered if she weren't more angry than hurt. All she knew was that the complex web of emotions rolling around inside her was causing her a lot of pain, and it was time to pump up Badly Drawn Boy. One of her British suitemates at Fitzgibbons had played the band's music all the time. Jamie hated the band at first, but eventually it had grown on her. Whenever she felt like painting her heart out, BDB was the perfect music—melodic, tortured, primal. She must really have cranked it, because a few minutes later, her mother came out.

“Whoa, no future plans for your eardrums, huh?” her mother said.

Jamie turned the music down.

“What's wrong?” her mother asked. “Is it the
quince
?”

Jamie shook her head.

“Is it Dash? I thought things were going really well with you two.”

“They are,” Jamie said miserably.

“Then what's the problem,
hija
?” Zulema asked, making herself comfortable on the studio couch.

“Dash invited me to a family dinner at the country club, and his snooty stepmother kept going on about the dress code and country-club standards like I was someone who had no class at all,” Jamie explained.

Her mother got up, smiling, and came over to her daughter. “I, for one, love it when people underestimate me,” she said, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You'll put on a nice dress, you'll go to dinner, and you'll knock their socks off, because you are one impressive young woman.”

“Why should I want to impress her?” Jamie asked.

“Be the bigger person,
hija
.”

“
Why
should I be the bigger person? Because she's rich and I'm not?” Jamie asked, exasperated.

“You should be the bigger person,” her mother said softly, “because you are the incredible Jamie Sosa. And she's not.”

With that, her mother kissed her on the forehead and left the studio. Jamie was once again alone with just her thoughts for company.

Every time her mind drifted to the idea of dinner at the club, all she could think of was the pinched, distasteful expression on Bev Mortimer's face. The look that said,
You don't belong here. You don't belong with a guy like Dash.

Jamie wanted to believe that she was being too sensitive. Her mother always said, “What people think of you is none of your business.” But at Fitzgibbons, Jamie had encountered plenty of Bev Mortimers and their daughters, and it had left a nasty taste in her mouth. As much as she didn't want to think back to those days, the memories suddenly rushed back, impossible to suppress.

There had been her art teacher, Mrs. Ward, who had accused Jamie of plagiarizing her term paper, “Picasso, the Ultimate Player.” Mrs. Ward had been so convinced that Jamie could not have written such a sophisticated analysis of the relationship between the artist's work and his affairs with women that she'd taken the case all the way to the dean, in the hopes of having Jamie expelled. It was only when Jamie agreed to submit to an oral exam on Picasso's life and work with the entire art department that the plagiarism charges had been dropped.

Even now, just thinking about the whole incident made her furious. It had been utterly unfair. Her parents might not have gone to fancy colleges, but they'd seen a little bit of the world.
Guernica
had been her father's favorite painting ever since he was a high school student and saw a play that used the Spanish Civil War and Picasso's iconic painting as a metaphor for the sugarcane wars between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And her mother might not have been able to afford a real Picasso, but she had poster reproductions of his work that she cherished.

As for her own theories about Picasso's psychology as a cheating dog with majorly ambivalent feelings toward women, all Jamie had had to do was read Françoise Gilot's memoir. Gilot was the only woman who had had the strength to leave him.

It wasn't rocket science, Jamie remembered thinking. I just did my research.

Being called a cheat had hurt her. And while she had had her fair share of run-ins with social ostracism at the hands of mean girls, her position as the freak of the school hadn't been complete until she started hanging out with Nils Stotter.

Jamie'd had no interest in Nils, the son of a Swedish ambassador, when she first met him. But never having gotten close to the girls in her dorm, she was happy for the company he seemed willing to provide. She had liked to tease him for his fondness for wearing knee-length shorts and dark socks. He'd called it the Bermudan business suit, but Jamie had let him know that he was firmly in
Sound of Music
territory.

Once they'd started hanging out, they soon fell into a pattern. Every Friday night they went to see a film at the student center. Afterward, Nils would walk her back to her dorm. One night, he asked her, very formally, “May I hold your hand?” She had nodded, more surprised than excited. But when her hand was in his, Jamie had marveled at how long and smooth his fingers were and how warm his hand was as he grasped hers on the cool Connecticut evening. It was as if he had had a warm ball of coal sewn into his palms, transmitting heat from his hand to hers.

For weeks, Jamie had let herself bask in the warmth of Nils's attention. He walked her to class, sat with her in the lunchroom, joined her at assembly. On Sunday afternoons, Nils cooked her traditional Scandinavian meals from ingredients that his grandmother shipped over in big wooden crates: Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes with lingonberries, salmon gravlax with mustard sauce. She was still a girl who loved her
lechón
, her rice, and her beans, but Nils got her to fall for new foods, and, in the process, she fell for him, too. Hard.

Then Parents' Weekend had arrived. On that Saturday morning, all of the parents had gathered in the great hall of the big stone building that had been the original residence. Adults milled around, holding cups of coffee and agendas. Nils, Jamie, and the other students were dressed in their charcoal gray blazers, the boys in red and gold ties, the girls in red and gold pleated skirts.

Her own parents couldn't make it, so Jamie had volunteered to work at the event for a little spending money. She was sitting at the information table, greeting new parents and giving them their necessary information, when Nils walked over with his parents and introduced her to them.

Nils's mother had thin blond hair, pale pink lips, and high cheekbones, like an art-house movie star. She was perfectly lovely to Jamie, asking questions about the Bronx and Jamie's artwork that made it clear that Nils had spoken of her a lot.