No Strings Attached: CC (Cape Cod); Partiers Preferred - Softcover

Reisfeld, Randi

 
9781442459786: No Strings Attached: CC (Cape Cod); Partiers Preferred
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1442459786 ISBN 13: 9781442459786
Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

This sizzling summer collection is filled with hot teens, hot flings, and hot digs.

A house at the beach. A bunch of hot strangers. A three-month party that’s off the hook.

From the shores of Cape Cod to the beaches of Hollywood Hills, everyone’s all in. From sunrise to sunset, rays to raves, and everything in between—anything goes. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from or whose heart gets broken. This is the summer that’s going to change everything.

This collection of two stories of coast-to-coast summertime scandal and drama is sure to satisfy.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Randi Reisfeld is the author of numerous original series and novels for teens, including three New York Times bestsellers. Her series with HB Gilmour, T*Witches, is the basis for two popular Disney Channel TV-movies. Her trilogy Starlet also reflects her life-long obsession with all things Hollywood. Randi lives in Washington Township, NJ. Visit her on the web at www.randireisfeld.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

What Katie Did

“Darling, your ride is here,” Katie’s mom trilled. “Should I call for Carlos to help with the luggage?”

“I’m on it, Mother,” Katie volleyed back in a light tone, calibrated to match her mom’s. “Be right down.” She had only to force her bulging suitcase closed, and wipe away that last bitter tear.

For someone so petite, she was strong: mentally and physically. Way stronger than she looked, and fierce when determined. Nothing sidelined Katie Charlesworth. Certainly not a trifle like a Tumi bag stuffed to triple its capacity. Least of all a telltale emotion.

Katie surveyed her bedroom. Had she overlooked anything? The light on her phone was blinking, indicating multiple new messages. She erased them without listening. For good measure, she loosened the phone jack, just enough to break the connection without looking unplugged. She double-deleted her e-mails, then changed her password. No one would ever guess her new one: Lilyhaterforever. With that, Katie closed the door and descended the stairs, “game face” on.

“Just one suitcase?” Vanessa Charlesworth asked. Her professionally plucked eyebrow did a practiced arch as Katie came into the living room to say good-bye. “Won’t you be needing more clothes? For an entire summer on the Cape?”

Her mom’s question didn’t signal skepticism. In sixteen years (seventeen in August), Katie had never once given Vanessa a reason to doubt her. Not that Nessa would’ve noticed, anyway. The matriarch of their Boston brownstone floated through life on her happy bubble, never conceding it could burst. If only she knew the truth, thought Katie, fighting hard to sound normal over the lump in her throat. “Duh. I FedEx’d the rest of the luggage ahead.” The lone truth in a sea of lies.

Vanessa raised a glass to her daughter—her morning toast was liquid. “That’s your Charlesworth brain, always thinking.”

The taxi driver leaned on the horn, not for the first time.

“Have the best summer ever, Mother, and kiss Dad good-bye for me.” Katie stood on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on Vanessa’s papery cheek. “Be careful to use lots of strong sunscreen. You’ll need it on the cruise of the Greek Islands and the tour of Bali.”

To which Vanessa parried, “I will, sweetie. And you: Do not forget to buy Lily’s aunt Sylvia a serious gift—something for the house, I’d think. And don’t wait until the last minute. It was very generous of Sylvia and Henry to let you and Lily live at their home for the entire summer.”

Katie nodded. “Already handled, Mom. I know exactly how to thank such gracious people.” If an ounce of sarcasm escaped, it went unnoticed.

Pleased, Vanessa hit the “play” button in her clichéd (unfortunately, alcohol-addled) brain: “Breeding will always win out, a trait you and Lily share. I would have thought”—a tiny tsk-tsk in her voice—“she’d pick you up in the Lincoln Towncar. Why the taxi?”

Surprised that it had taken her mother that long to ask, Katie trotted out the prefab fib. “Her dad sent the Lincoln for an airport run, her mom’s got the Esplanade, and one of her brothers commandeered the Jeep. By the time I get to her house”—Katie was afraid she’d spit if she said Lily’s name out loud—“I’m sure one of the cars will be back. Not to worry, Mother, we’ll arrive on Cape Cod in style.”

Katie and Vanessa’s exchanges were like a badminton game, light and airy volleys, little puffballs of superficial information bopping from one to the other. All very polite. No slamming, spiking, or sweating. Nothing weighty or substantive crossed into the other’s personal space. Anything out of bounds stayed that way, was not retrieved. And no one ever argued the point.

Katie didn’t see any reason to change the rules now.

The taxi driver, grizzled, grumpy, and BO-stinkified, made sure Katie knew she’d been charged for “all the waiting time.”

Whatever, she thought, resisting the urge to hold her nose.

“Where to?” demanded the crabby cabby.

Katie gave him the address of the bus station. She shuddered. Not that she’d personally ever been there, but she imagined the Greyhound terminal a depressing, grimy place with dirty windows, sticky floors, and surly ticket agents (for some reason, she pictured them old and wrinkly, with stringy gray hair and bad teeth). As for the passengers? Desperate and ashamed that bus travel was their only option.

Today she was one of them.

She’d been to Cape Cod dozens of times—by plane, limo, or SUV. She hadn’t even realized buses went there. As a kid, she’d spent summers in the tony town of Chatham, staying at posh resorts, or renting a mini-manse where her mother would entertain and her father, a Boston banker, would come up weekends.

Once Katie’s friends were old enough to drive (or find someone with a license), her crowd would go for weekends, crashing at someone’s parents’ summer home. The girls, bikini waxed and pre-tanned, spent lazy days on the beach, barbecuing and (except for Katie, who abstained) downing prodigious amounts of alcohol. Some capped evenings off with a random and/or romantic hookup. It never “meant” anything. Always, there was loud music, raucous laughter, salty munchies, like-minded friends, and freeform fun. Oblivion. Lovely oblivion.

That was Katie, then. Past tense. (Future tense, if she could swing it.)

For now? The present was just plain tense.

“‘Necessity is the mother of invention,’” Grandmother Charlesworth used to cliché.

Necessity had caused Katie to invent a mother of a plan back in May, when she discovered something Vanessa didn’t even know yet: The plug was pulled on the family funds. The horrifying discovery had set Katie’s plan in motion.

She needed to fake it, make everyone think this summer would be exactly like those old carefree Cape weekends, three whole months worth! Only this summer she’d be living in a luxury mansion with her best friend—without parental supervision!—shopping, sunning, and funning, sprinkled with large doses of worthy (read: wealthy) boytoys.

If nothing else, it would give her time and space to figure things out, and the chance to earn money of her own.

Her (ex) best friend Lily McCoy had rubbed mock tears from her eyes after Katie confided the real reason she needed to bolt Boston, fly under the radar, and what they’d be doing during those long, lazy summer days.

“Working?” Lily had sputtered, barely able to get the word out. The privileged daughter of State Senator Louis McCoy had been incredulous. “Kidding, right?”

“Kiddies,” Katie corrected her. “We’re going to be counselors at a day camp at the Luxor Resort. It’ll be a goof!”

“And the punch line is?” Lily wondered aloud.

Katie laid out for her best friend what she’d privately dubbed “Plan A,” for Awesome. As long as they were ensconced in Lily’s aunt’s deluxe five-bedroom mansion-with-pool, and showed up at trendy clubs at night, who’d be the wiser?

“But what about sleeping in?” Lily had asked, realizing daily drudgery eliminated noon wake-up calls.

“Weekends! We can sleep away Saturdays and Sundays.” Katie...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1442459786
ISBN 13 
9781442459786
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
624
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande