The Dirty Truth

I nudge her. “Come on. I doubt you do nothing.”

“Uncle West expects me to go straight home, but sometimes I hang out at Central Park or stop at the Duane Reade and look for a new lip gloss or get one of those celebrity weekly magazines with the fake articles. Mostly boring stuff.”

In a city chock full of life and culture and adventure and fascinating people, being bored is a punishable offense in my book.

“Ah, so you like magazines?” I muse. “A girl after your uncle’s heart . . .”

“I mostly like the pictures. All the stories are made up. Like, most of those relationships are for publicity or whatever. But it feels like you’re catching up on your favorite show, you know? One week Sabrina Carpenter is with Joshua Bassett, and the next week she’s moved on to someone new. And there’s always drama.”

Of course. Drama is what sells. Nobody’s interested in the mundane everyday lives of the people they idolize. They want the glamour, the tears, the joy, and the heartbreak, and they want it with a side of glossy, photoshopped images.

“You remind me so much of myself at your age it’s scary.”

Scarlett gives me side-eye, fighting a temperamental smile. “I hope that’s a good thing.”

“Me too,” I laugh.

“You must be doing something right if Uncle West trusts you with me,” she says. “He’s such a control freak.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t become the man he is today by leaving everything to chance.” Defending West Maxwell is the last thing I thought I’d find myself doing, and yet here I am. The words are foreign on my tongue, though delivered with the ease and confidence of someone who actually knows the inscrutable titan.

“I guess.” She blows a tuft of sandy hair from her eyes, her voice monotone. As much as I’d like to squeeze every ounce of West Maxwell intel from her young little mind, I won’t do that. It’d be wrong. And she’s insanely savvy—she’d see through it in a heartbeat.

“You ever check out any museums?” I change the subject. “Or join an after-school club? What are you interested in?”

Scarlett chuffs, her white Converse scuffing along the pavement. “Nothing, really.”

“What kinds of things did you do back home? Nebraska, was it?”

“Just mostly hung out with friends, I guess.”

“But what did you do when you were hanging out?”

A half smile tugs at her lips. “Stuff Uncle West doesn’t approve of.”

“I get the sense there isn’t much he does approve of.”

“Right?” She perks up as if she’s pleased to finally have someone with whom to commiserate. “Nothing I do is ever good enough for him. He’s constantly telling me everything I’m doing wrong, and he just gets all annoyed no matter what I say, and it turns into a fight every time.”

I’m sure there are two sides to Scarlett’s story, but as her mentor, I choose hers.

“He was the same way in the office.” I point my coffee south, toward Made Man’s headquarters. “So don’t take it personally.”

“You’re lucky you got away from him. Wish I could just quit being his niece . . .”

“You’re family. At least he’s morally obligated to be nice to you.”

Her eyes widen, and she shoots me a cocked glance. “You obviously don’t know my uncle.”

“You’re right. I don’t know him at all.” I sip the last of my iced latte before chucking it in a nearby garbage can in passing. “It’s kind of his whole thing. Closed off or whatever.”

We stop at a crosswalk and wait for the light. I have no idea where we’re going, just that we seem to be headed toward the Upper West Side. Either way, I’m following her lead and taking this one step at a time—literally.

“Then why’d you agree to mentor me? Or whatever you guys are calling it so it doesn’t sound like babysitting . . .” She mutters the last part under her breath.

“Long story.” A story that begins with me dying and ends with me quitting my job after pulling an all-nighter. Mind-numbing stuff to a fourteen-year-old, I’m sure. “Where are we going, by the way?”

“Home.” She tugs on her uniform polo. “Not walking around the city looking like a preppy clown.”

We round the corner to Seventy-Third Street and make our way up a picturesque tree-lined street with narrow but statuesque townhomes shouldered up to one another.

“It’s this one.” Scarlett waves me to the last unit in the set and tramples up the pristine limestone steps before holding a shiny silver fob against the glossy jet-black door. The dead bolt clicks, and Scarlett pushes her way inside, motioning for me to follow.

Within seconds, I’m standing on the black-and-white-checkered marble floor of West Maxwell’s foyer. A familiar trace of his cologne fills my lungs—a small reminder that he was recently here. And that, perhaps, he still is. After all, the man works from his home office 99 percent of the time. But before I have a chance to process the surrealness of this moment, Scarlett punches a button on the wall and steps into an elevator I hadn’t realized was there.