Brooklyn Girls Read Free

employee, you represent the agency. You’re also Facebook friends with all your brand-new colleagues. You were tagged, they saw it. I applaud your convivial approach to interoffice relations, but that sort of behavior is just … it’s unprofessional, and it’s completely unacceptable, Pia.”
    “I know.” A wash of sickly cold horror trickles through me, and I stare at the yellowed glow-in-the-dark stars on the sloping ceiling in Coco’s room. They lost their glow long ago.… Oh, God, I can’t be fired. I can’t be fired after one week . “I’m so sorry, Benny.” Silence. “Did you … tell my, um, father?”
    He sighs. “I e-mailed him this morning. I didn’t tell him why.” I don’t say anything, and his voice softens. “Look, Pia, it’s complicated. We made some redundancies a few months ago. So hiring you, as a family friend, really upset a few people, and that photo … my hands are tied. I’m sorry.”
    He hangs up.
    I can feel Coco and Angie staring at me, but I can’t say anything.
    I’ve lost my job. And I’m probably about to get kicked out of my house. After one week in New York.
    My phone rings again. It’s my parents. I stare at the phone for a few seconds, knowing what’s on the other end, what’s waiting for me.
    I wonder if Coco would mind if I borrowed her puke bucket.
    I need to be alone for what’s about to happen, so I walk back out to the stairwell and sit down. I can hear Madeleine playing some angsty music in her room on the floor below, mixed with Julia’s placating tones and Vic’s grumbly ones from down in the front hall.
    Then I answer, trying to sound like a good daughter.
    “Hi, Daddy!”
    “So you’ve lost your job already. What do you have to say for yourself?”
    My voice is gone. This happens sometimes. Just when I need it most. In its place, a tiny squeaking sound comes out.
    “Speak up!” snaps my father. He has a slightly scary Swiss accent despite twenty years living in the States.
    “I’m … sorry. I’ll get another job, I will, and—”
    “Pia, we are so disappointed in you!” My mother is lurking on the extension. She has a slight Indian accent that only really comes out when she’s pissed. Like now.
    “You wanted the summer with Angie, so we paid for it. You wanted to work, so we got you a job. You said you had the perfect place to live, so we agreed to help pay rent, though God knows Brooklyn certainly wasn’t the perfect place to live last time I was there—”
    “You have no work ethic! You are a spoiled party girl! Are you sniffing the drugs again?”
    They’ve really honed their double-pronged condemnation-barrage routine over the years.
    “Work ethic. Your mother is right. Your total failure to keep a job … well. Let me tell you a story—”
    I sink my head to my knees. My parents have the confidence-killing combination of high standards and low expectations.
    They also twist everything so it looks terrible. They told me if I got good grades they’d pay for my vacation, and that I’d never find a job on my own, and they offered me an allowance, so of course I said yes! Wouldn’t you?
    “… and that is how I met your father and then we got married and had you and then lived— What do you say? Happily ever after…”
    Yeah, right. My parents hardly talk to each other. They distract themselves with work (my dad) and socializing (my mother). They met in New York, where they had me, then moved to Singapore, London, Tokyo, Zurich … I went to American International Schools until I was twelve, and then they started sending me to boarding school. Well, boarding school s .
    “Life starts with a job, Pia. You think we will always pay for your mistakes, that life is just a party. We know you’ll never have a career, but a job is—”
    “A reason to get up in the morning!”
    “And the only way to learn the value of money. Do you understand?”
    I nod stupidly, staring at the wall next to me, at the ancient-looking rosebud