Also?
Ew.
I keep wondering if Carter will bail, too, and go live with Mom or at least mooch her money. While he’s become oddly more tolerable since we got to Tickled Pink, he still annoys me, mostly because he’s a grown-ass adult who’s more worthless than I pretend to be, getting preferential treatment when it comes to tasks around the school. I don’t know why he’s here, but I can guess it’s a reason similar to mine.
Gigi’s revoked access to the trust fund, and if he wants to ever get back to traveling the world looking for inspiration—or just screwing around smoking pot and doing groupies—he has to do his time with the family first.
As far as my father goes, I have no idea why Michael Lightly is still here.
Gigi can’t freeze his trust fund—once we Lightlys turn thirty, it’s ours, which means I was roughly ten months shy of freedom when Gigi choked—but even if she could, he’s had access to it for so long, along with getting his corporate-lawyer salary from Remington Lightly, that he doesn’t need his trust fund anymore. He could retire and live comfortably as a billionaire for the rest of his life. Theworstworst thinghe might have to do if shecouldhit him financially in any way is sell a house or two and a few of his cars.
The horrors.
Everyone knows he cheats on Mom, so it’s not like Gigi could be lording that over him to keep him here.
Phoebe thinks Gigi threatened to get him kicked out of his golf club back in Manhattan, except he’s not using his golf club membership now, and he could just buy his own golf club, so what does he care?
It’s almost like he’s here just to support the rest of us, which I would believe if we were any other family, but we’re the Lightlys.
We don’t do that.
And I probably shouldn’t be late to family meetings if I ever want to get back to Costa Rica on a permanent basis.
So Pebbles and I hustle up the stairs from the locker room—yes, thelocker room, where I shower every morning and wherethe incidentwith Dylan took place—and around the corner, past rows of ancient lockers that are slated for removal in a couple of weeks, and barrel into the cafeteria, hoping today isn’t one of those days where Gigi makes us watch that horrificPink Goldmovie again.
Thank God I can play a good ditz and utilize plot summaries from the various placards that Phoebe’s been getting rehung around town talking about howthis is where the blah-blah-blah scene was filmed in Pink Gold, because I tune out and go into a meditative state every time Gigi turns it on.
Possibly it would be an okay movie if it hadn’t been lorded over me as the path to my soul’s eternal salvation since we got here.
I open my mouth to make excuses to Gigi for being late, and I promptly almost trip over my own two feet.
There arefivepeople already in this room, when there should only be four—Dad, Carter, Gigi, and Niles.
I manage to recover quickly when Gigi opens her mouth, presumably to tell me I’m late, despite my growing horror at the unexpectedfifth person sitting at the lone cafeteria table in the room built to hold twenty of them.
“God’s watching, Gigi,” I say before she can get a word out.
Carter sniffs at me. “You smell.”
“God’s watching you too.”
And he’s watching me watch that fifth person in the room, who shouldnotbe here, and who is the absolute complete and utter worst thing that could be happening right now.
“But you smell like ...” He pauses and sniffs harder. “Bacon.”
“I was doing charity work and didn’t have time to wash it all off, Carter. You can’t control what people around you eat.”Shit.Did I not brush my teeth well enough after my shower? If he goes snooping in my room and finds my hidden stash of precooked bacon—which isnotthe best, but this was an emergency—I’m toast.
Lola Minelli smiles at me. “That’s so kind of you, Tavi.”
Yes,thatLola Minelli. The Lola Minelli who’s not part of my family, who wasn’t here yesterday, and who’s sitting in my school cafeteria slash home kitchen right now, where she absolutely does not belong, for no discernible reason.
She’s a social climber, attention seeker, star of the reality TV seriesLola’s Tiny House, heiress to a perfume-and-candle company, and, unfortunately, a more popular social media influencer than I am, despite the fact that I currently have a million more followers than she does.
I mean she’s more popular with sponsors.
In the world of top-tier famous-for-being-famous social media influencers, there’s no friendship, only competition.
And Lola Minelli is my biggest competition. I score an endorsement contract with Gucci—she gets one from Armani Beauty. She posts a picture in Seychelles wearing Bulgari sunglasses on a contract we were trying to nab, and my team goes to work trying to score a sunglasses deal with Cartier for shooting in Fiji, which we usually fail at, because I’m known for shilling my mother’s purses, which are aboutseven levels below the Louis Vuitton and Hermès handbags that stock Lola’s Hollywood Hills and Manhattan closets.
