Sweet Revenge

here who can teach me anything except hypocrisy.”
    “Little bitch,” Althea muttered when Adrianne turned and left them.
    “Shut up, Althea,” her escort advised. “You’ve been outclassed.”
    *  *  *
    “Baby, I wish you’d tell me if something’s wrong.”
    Adrianne pushed open the side door that led to their tiny garden. There was very little that had endeared her to California, but she’d learned to appreciate the sun. “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve had a lot of homework.” It was the best way to keep to herself and think through the things she had heard since the night of the premiere. She’d already dealt with the rumor that Phoebe had posed for a nude layout for a men’s magazine. Two hundred thousand dollars had been the price tag on her mother’s self-respect.
    It was hard, so very hard to justify the shame through love. Adrianne had spent years struggling to learn a new way of life. She had come to embrace wholeheartedly a woman’s equality, her freedom to choose, her right to be her own person rather than a mere symbol of fragility or desire. She wanted to believe, needed to believe. Yet her mother had stripped, selling her body so that any man could open the pages of a magazine and own her.
    The school was too expensive. Adrianne watched the overblown roses drop their petals and thought of the tuition her mother paid to keep her in the exclusive private school. Phoebe was selling her pride for her daughter’s education.
    Then there were the clothes, the clothes her mother insisted Adrianne needed. And the driver—the combination driver and bodyguard Phoebe felt was necessary to keep her daughter safe from terrorism … and Abdu. The Middle East was perpetually plagued now by ugly violence, and whether Abdu acknowledged her or not, Adrianne was still the daughter of Jaquir’s king.
    “Mama, I was wondering about going to a public high school next year.”
    “Public school?” Phoebe checked her purse to be certain she’d included her credit card. Until Larry came back, she was a little short of cash. “Don’t be ridiculous, Addy. I want you to have the
best
education.” She paused, at a loss for a moment. What had she been looking for in her purse? She stared at the plastic credit card, shook her head, then slipped it back into her wallet. “Aren’t you happy there? Your instructors are always telling me how bright you are, but if the other girls are a problem, we can look for another school.”
    “No, the other girls aren’t a problem.” Adrianne privately thought most of them snotty and self-absorbed, but harmless. “It just seems like a waste of money when I could learn the same things somewhere else.”
    “Is that all?” Laughing, Phoebe crossed the room to kiss her. “Money’s the last thing you have to worry about. It’s important to me, so important, Addy, that I give you the best. Without that … well, it doesn’t matter.” She kissed her again. “You are going to have the best, and next year you’re going to be looking out the window at the ocean.”
    “I already have the best,” Adrianne told her. “I have you.”
    “You’re good for me. Now, are you sure you don’t want to come with me, get a manicure?”
    “No, I have a Spanish test on Monday. I need to study.”
    “You work too hard.”
    This time Adrianne smiled. “So does my mother.”
    “Then we both deserve a treat.” Phoebe opened her bag again. Did she have her credit card? “We’ll go to the Italian place you like so much and eat spaghetti until they have to roll us out the door.”
    “With extra garlic?”
    “Enough so no one will come near us. We’ll go to the movies after. See that
Star Wars
everyone’s talking about. I’ll be back around five.”
    “I’ll be ready.”
    It was going to be all right, Adrianne decided when she was alone. Phoebe was fine—they were both fine as long as they had each other. She turned on the radio, fiddling with the dial until she found a rock station. American music. Adrianne grinned and sang a few lines along with Linda Ronstadt.
    She liked American music, American cars, American clothes. Phoebe had seen to it that Adrianne was given citizenship, but Adrianne couldn’t see herself as an American teenager.
    She was wary of boys, while the girls her age pursued them relentlessly. They giggled and talked about open-mouth kissing and petting. It was doubtful any one of those girls had ever seen her mother raped. Even her closest friends