She hated it.
There are five diaries dedicated to how much she hated it. How the kids found out that she grew up in La Jolla and she instantly became pegged as “the Mexican Princess,” though she was far from that. How the girls ganged up on her, spreading rumors about her, all because she spoke more eloquently, and seemed more cultured, and carried herself with grace.
They even attacked her behind the school once, leaving her with a swollen eye and a split lip before a teacher broke it up.
The guys weren’t much better. She discovered there was a running bet to see who could steal the Mexican Princess’s virginity. At the one and only party she ever went to in high school, at age seventeen, someone slipped something into her drink. Had it not been for the help of one of her few friends, she would have very likely been raped that night.
And she never told me.
Never uttered a single word, except to say how perfect things were, how happy she and Rosa were. How everything was just fine. While I bitched about how small my private school room was and how cold it was in Massachusetts, how the technology was three years behind and the girls there sucked, Celine listened and offered apologies for what wasn’t her fault and never once mentioned the Peeping Tom that the police caught sitting outside her window, watching her change. Or the gang shooting two blocks over.
Or how Rosa was robbed at knifepoint late one night, walking home from the bus stop after a twelve-hour shift.
Celine was miserable, having lost her relatively privileged life. She didn’t want to be the girl who used to live in La Jolla and now lived in a glorified mobile home. She wanted to be far away from all of it.
That’s why she chose New York. She would take the money that Rosa saved for her college degree, she’d apply for every scholarship she could, and she’d make something of herself. She’d take her passion and talent and knowledge of antiques and make a real, comfortable life for herself where it might be most appreciated.
She would not be kicked out of her home ever again, and she would stop wishing that she had my money.
The diary entry a few days before my twenty-first birthday is especially scathing.
April 17, 2007
There are two kinds of rich people in this world: materialistic and idealistic. If she has to be one of the two, I guess the latter is more bearable. I just wish she was REALISTIC. She’s never had to live like the rest of us, and here she is, ready to just sign all that money over to some “foundation.” Money she didn’t earn, from someone who gave her everything that she has today. Meanwhile I’m begging for thousand-dollar grants just to finish an undergrad that’s useless on its own. Her mom phoned me last night and asked me to try and persuade her not to do it. The selfish, vindictive part of me wants her to. Wouldn’t that be a cold slap in the face, the day she finds herself looking at bills and wondering how she’s going to pay them? I know it’ll never come to that. But wouldn’t it be nice for her to walk in my shoes for a year. Maybe then she’ll climb down off that self-righteous, ignorant horse she’s been riding all this time.
She may as well have smeared “I hate Maggie” in blood, as cutting as that particular entry was. In later journal entries, Celine rarely ever refers to anyone by name. They are simply “he” or “she.” Once in a while she references someone with an initial, but that’s as far as she ever goes. It’s like she was protecting herself in case anyone ever read these. I’m not surprised. Celine was never the type to talk badly about anyone, so it would make sense that she felt guilty about doing it even in the privacy of her journals.
I had to take a break not long after reading that entry, chug a glass of vodka, and calm my scorned heart before I moved on. Thankfully, it seemed that my decision to keep the money and start Villages United appeased Celine somewhat. I was finally getting a grip on reality, according to her. Doing something real instead of being that “holier-than-thou person who bites the hand that feeds her.”
I wonder, had my family’s money come from organized crime, would she have said the same? Does no one see the criminality of what Sparkes Energy and other companies like ours do to the world, even if it’s not deemed “illegal” by government standards? Sure . . . there are tax incentives and propaganda and “investments” being made in renewable resources, but not nearly enough for a six-trillion-dollar global industry. There isn’t a day that goes by without seeing what some people more ideological than me consider environmental murder: entire forests being cut down, glaciers melting away, poisoned water from coal ash and radioactive leaks. Everyone knows what’s happening and yet we continue to gobble up the world’s resources like hungry little puppies. And I sit on a pile of wealth borne from it.
Over the next several diaries—I broke an antique screwdriver while trying to pop the lock on one of them (I’m hoping the screwdriver isn’t valuable, or Hans will have my head)—Celine seems more focused on school, her fledgling eBay business, her new antiquing blog, and dating than on me and my life choices. She’s still struggling, eating ramen noodles and canned tuna, but she’s doing what she wants and she sounds happier.
More hopeful.
I skim through the pages about her ex-boyfriend Bruce because I already know how that story ends and seeing how infatuated she was with him makes me want to throw the diary at the wall.
She talks about graduating and moving from NYU’s residence to share a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with a friend from school, paying for her share with a waitressing job until, nine months later, she finally lands an admin job at Vanderpoel. An insurance company and nothing glamorous, but she knows that with a bachelor’s in art history, she’s lucky they looked twice at her application. Plus, she figures working at an insurance company is good on her résumé, down the road. Of course she would have rather gone straight to her MA, but New York is expensive and she just can’t afford tuition. She has her future mapped out, though. She knows she wants to apply to Hollingsworth and that, based on what her brilliant friend, Hans, told her, they look more closely at graduates of Hollingsworth Institute of Art in their hiring process. I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.
So, she just needs to save sixty-eight thousand dollars for tuition fees. Or borrow it.
From a bank.
Not from her wealthy friend.
Up until this point, I’ve read her diary entries with an eager heart, though heavy at times.