Paulina Rostakova’s Adventures
JULY 14
9:22 a.m.
The house (where else?)
“This,” I announced to Angela at breakfast, “is definitely the worst day of my life. No, worse than worst... it’s the pinnacle of horribleness. It’s hell and a nightmare combined. It’s serial-killer awful.”
That’s how it all started two days ago, with me complaining about my life. I have to say, it feels a bit weird writing everything that happened down in a journal, but hey, if it was good enough for a certain intrepid lady reporter, it’s good enough for me.
“Serial-killer awful?” Angela is the best stepmother a girl could have, if only for the fact that she is used to dealing with the drama queen that is Dad. So rather than calling me on my dramatic statements—which I admit were a bit over-the-top—she simply looked up from her laptop and gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, dear. You don’t have to help your father, you know. He simply said if you needed an occupation, you could help with the inventory. I will admit that there are few things I’d rather do less than spend the next four days inventoryingflooring materials stacked in five warehouses, but if you are as bored as you say you are—”
“Of course I’m bored. I have nothing to do!” I said, slapping my hands down on the marble counter.
She pursed her lips, making me feel like a spoiled brat. “I’m sure if you needed something to fill your time, I could find a charity—”
“I volunteer everywhere,” I said, despair making me feel like I was floating in a sea of molasses. “I read to the old folks at the assisted-living place, I was a Big Sister until my kid moved to the other side of the country, I walk dogs at the old-dog sanctuary, and I bundle stuff at the women’s shelter. I help at the library with the special- needs kids’ hour, and once a week I get a cardio workout by mucking out stables at the horse rescue. I hate to seem ungrateful, but... but...”
“But you want something to do other than volunteer at charities,” Angela finished for me, nodding. “I wish I could help you, dear, but charities are all I have experience with, especially now that we’ve founded the group to oversee all of the local area charitable organizations.”
I sighed and slumped down on a barstool that sat at the counter. The remains of my meager breakfast lay before me. “And now I sound petulant and spoiled.”
“Not spoiled—not in the sense that you grew up with affluence around you,” Angela said kindly. “You can’t help it if your father is the flooring king of Northern California. And I do understand your ennui. Your father is a bit...”
“Overprotective? Maniacally intent on ruining my life by not letting me have any freedom? Borderline obsessive about keeping me away from anything even remotely interesting?”
“He is afraid for you,” she said, giving me a gently chiding glance. “He fears you will be kidnapped again.”
“He’s just using that as an excuse,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I was six when that happened, and it was my mother’s parents who took me. They weren’t trying to extort any of his millions. They just wanted to see me since Mom had died and Dad was being his usual paranoid self.”
“If he is a bit overprotective—and I will grant you that not allowing you to choose a career that will take you away from us is not healthy for either you or him—it comes from a good place. He loves you, Paulie. He fears for your well-being.”
“He worries I’ll hook up with some man who wants me for his money, you mean,” I said sourly. “He’s beyond unrealistic if he thinks he can keep me stuck at home until I’m an old lady. I’m going to be thirty in a year! Thirty! Who else do you know who lives at home until she’s thirty?”
Angela had gone back to reading her e-mails, but she did pause long enough to cock an eyebrow at me.
“OK,” I admitted, not bothering to look around a kitchen that was bigger than most of the apartments in San Francisco. “I will give you that living in a house that is borderline mansion and having my own suite of rooms makes it ludicrous to complain, but the point remains that he’s got a stranglehold on me, and I want out. I want to be free. I want to go places, and meet people, and... and have adventures!”
“Like that Nancy Bly,” Angela said, nodding as she continued to peruse her in-box.
“Nellie Bly,” I corrected, sighing. “Shedidn’t let anyone tell her she couldn’t do anything. She wanted to be an investigative journalist, so she just marched into a newspaper and demanded the editor give her a job. And he did, despite the fact that in the late 1800s there were no women reporters.”
“It’s not that your father doesn’t want you to be happy,” Angela said absently. “He loves you very much. He just wants to make sure you’re protected against those who might wish to do ill to you.”
“He wouldn’t be so paranoid if he hadn’t been part of the Russian Mafia,” I muttered under my breath.
“What’s that, dear?”
“Nothing. I swear, Angela, if it didn’t sound too ridiculous for words to say this, one of these days I’d tell Daddy that I’m going to run away from home.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” she said, tapping on the laptop’s keyboard, her mind obviously on her work. “Your father would insist you take a bodyguard with you.”
“Bodyguard,” I said, snorting derisively. Daddy had threatened me with that particular atrocity every single time I told him I wanted to move out on my own. As it was, every time I left the house I ended up having one of my father’s goons (as I thought of them) trailing me everywhere, every day, “just in the case,” as Daddy said. Only recently had Angela and I managed to convince him that I could do my volunteer duties without a steroid-swilling ex-military Russian muscleman accompanying me. “I just want to have a life. Is that so much to ask?”
Angela didn’t answer, being thoroughly engrossed in her correspondence. So, feeling like an overgrown child, I glumly made my way back to the three-room suite where I spent my time at home and pulled out a well-worn copy of one of Nellie Bly’s books. “I betshewould have made Dad listen to her if she was in my shoes,” I grumbled to the book, then felt a thousand times worse because what did it say about me that I couldn’t get out from under his thumb?
“I’m doomed,” I said morosely two hours later, lying on the floor with my cell phone held to my ear.
