Page 85 of The Debutantes
“It was her own essay,” I say. “All I did was submit what Lily had written before I helped her.”
“Jesus,” Wyatt mutters. “Likethat’sthe most important thing right now.”
“She manipulated me. She convinced me to write her essay for her, and then—”
I stop short, suddenly at a loss for how to explain it. Because the thing is, Lily didn’taskme to write it for her. She mentioned being stressed about her essays when she was over for family dinner once, and Mom started gushing about how great a writer I am, how maybe I could help, and I knew I had no choice but to offer. Anyway, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have Lily LeBlanc owe me one.
The next thing I knew, we were working on edits in a study room at Beaumont.
“You’re so much better at this than I am,” Lily had said, flopping dramatically onto the desk, her head in her hands. “Like, seriously. Wyatt’s always going on about how you’re the smartest person he knows, and he’s right.”
Something started to tap on my heart at those words, like an egg on the kitchen counter, cracking until the inside oozes out.
Lily turned to look at me. “I don’t think enough people get you, you know? They might think you’re this, like, high-strung, anal-retentive freak, but it’s only because you’re not afraid to care.”
Now I can’t believe I didn’t see through that backhanded compliment. I was too caught off guard by her complimenting me at all.
“Anyway,” she’d said, turning back to her laptop. “Sorry my essay is such garbage.”
“It’s not,” I told her, even though the essay was, by most objective standards, bad—a puffed-up narrative about her family’s debutante tradition that would only make her look spoiled and out of touch to the admissions board. But I couldn’t say that. Instead, I said, “It has potential.”
The next week, I was surprised when Lily wanted to work at her house instead of at school. Even more surprising: once the hour was up, she asked if I wanted to stay for dinner. Her parents, both busy that night, had left a credit card behind. We ordered pizza and ate it by the pool, talking about school and college and Les Masques. I thought it was a one-off, or maybe just Lily’s way of thanking me for the help.
But then, a few days later, she invited me to go shopping with her at the boutiques on Magazine Street, the ones she usually went to with Vivian and Savannah. As we went from shop to shop, Lily offered me fashion advice that I was embarrassed to admit I was grateful for, and the more we talked, the more I realized that Lily was smarter than I thought—she had depth, even though she managed to say things in a way that was more accessible and less condescending than I ever could.
I started to think we could, maybe, truly be friends.
And then, the next week, when we were back in the study room, Lily did something that changed everything: she looked at her new essay draft—still bad, but better—and burst into tears.
“Sorry,” she said. “You’re helping so much. It’s just—my parents are going to kill me if I don’t get in. And clearly, I’m a lost cause. I just wish you could, like, crawl inside my head and do it for me, you know?”
She laughed at that last part as she wiped her tears, like it was just a joke, but I felt the idea burrowing under my skin.
“I could,” I told her. “Write it for you, I mean.”
“Oh my god, seriously?”
Looking back, her performance was flawless: surprise, then uncertainty, followed by gratitude. But in the moment, it felt real.
“That would be amazing. But you really, really, really don’t have to.”
“It’s no problem,” I told her. “It’ll be easy.”
She pulled me into a tight hug. “You’re the best, Piper.”
So I trashed the debutante crap and wrote her a kick-ass essay, one full of her own words and sentence patterns but better, brighter. I knew it was wrong, obviously—that it could mean disaster for me if Vanderbilt found out—but I was careful. I knew they wouldn’t. And some part of me was still aglow in the magic of Lily LeBlanc’s admiration. Her friendship.
Friends.I should’ve known it was bullshit from the moment she came to me for help. But I didn’t learn the harsh truth until a few weeks later at school, when I overheard Lily and Savannah talking about their essays in the senior lounge.
“It’s truly unfair,” Savannah was saying. “Six hundred and fifty words can’t possibly express the talents I bring to the stage.”
She was mostly joking, putting on an ironic old Hollywood accent, but Lily said breezily, “I know someone who could help.”
Savannah paused. “You mean, like, a tutor?”
“Sort of.” Lily lowered her voice. “I got Wyatt’s sister to do mine. All I had to do was massage her ego and throw her some pity hangouts and she literally offered to write it for me. Forfree.”
Her laugh. That’s what I remember, a little twinkling soundat the end, glitter falling through the air. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard laughter at my expense, but it was the first time I hadn’t seen it coming.
