Fifth Avenue #1 Read online

  Also by Ashley Valentine

  Bridgeport Academy

  Bridgeport Academy 1

  Upper East Side

  Upper East Side 1

  Upper East Side 2

  Upper East Side 3

  Upper East Side 4

  Upper East Side 5

  Upper East Side 6

  Upper East Side 7

  Upper East Side 8

  Upper East Side 9

  Upper East Side 10

  Upper East Side 11

  FIFTH AVENUE 1

  Copyright © 2016 by Ashley Valentine

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Based on The Carlyles series by Cecily von Ziegesar.

  Table of Contents

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  8

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  11

  12

  13

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  23

  24

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  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Author's Note

  1

  Baby Cartwright woke up to the sound of garbage trucks beeping loudly as they backed up Fifth Avenue. She rubbed her puffy eyelids and set her bare feet on the red bricks of her family’s new terrace, pulling her boyfriend’s blue Nantucket High sweatshirt close to her skinny frame.

  Even though they were all the way on the top floor, sixteen stories above 72nd and Fifth, she could hear the loud noises of the city coming to life below. It was so different from her home in Siaconset, Nantucket, better known as Sconset, where she used to fall asleep on the beach with her boyfriend, Ace Devlin. His parents ran a small bed-and-breakfast, and he and his brother had lived in a guest cottage on the beach since they were thirteen. He’d surprised Baby with a visit to New York over the weekend, but he’d left last night. When she couldn’t sleep, Baby had dragged a quilt onto the terrace’s hammock.

  Sleeping outside? How...au naturel.

  Baby shuffled through the sliding French doors and into the cavernous apartment she was now expected to call home. The series of large, cream-colored rooms, with their gleaming hardwood floors and ornate marble details, was the opposite of comfortable. She dragged the cover behind her, mopping the spotless floors as she wound her way to her sister's bedroom.

  India’s glossy black hair was strewn across her pale pink pillow, and her snores sounded like a broken teakettle. Baby pounced on the bed.

  “Hey!” India sat up and pulled the strap of her white tank top up on one shoulder. Her hair was matted and her slanted eyes were bleary, but she still looked regally beautiful, just like their grandmother had been. Just like Baby wasn’t.

  “It’s morning,” Baby announced, bouncing up and down on her knees like a four-year-old high on candy. She was trying to sound perky, but her whole body felt heavy. It wasn’t just that her whole family had uprooted themselves from Nantucket last week, it was that New York City had never felt—would never feel—like home.

  When Baby was born, her emergence had surprised her mother and the midwife, who thought Edie was only having twins. While her brother and sister were named for their maternal grandparents, the unexpected third child had simply been called Baby on her birth certificate. The name stuck. Whenever Baby had come to New York to visit her grandmother, it was clear from Grandma India’s sighs that while twins were acceptable, three was an unruly number of children, especially for a single mother like Edie to handle. Baby was always too messy, too loud, too much for Grandmother India, too much for New York.

  Unfortunately, their beloved grandmother had passed away earlier that summer. Benefactress extraordinaire, Grandma India gave away pieces of her fortune to museums, libraries, and parks the way other people donated last season’s dresses to thrift shops. At seventeen, she made headlines dancing on tables at Elvis’s first New York show. At twenty-one, she married (for the first time) and moved into the famous peach-colored townhouse on the corner of 61st and Park. And at seventy, she still drank scotch and soda and was always surrounded by fresh-cut white lilies. Most importantly, she knew exactly how to get what she wanted—from husbands, society hostesses, heads of state, anyone.

  And why should you care? Keep your panties on, I’m getting to that.

  India Cartwright’s wayward daughter, Edie—who ran away years ago to Nantucket to find herself through art—was called back to New York to sort through her mother’s affairs. Judging by the bookcase of leather-bound journals (and the six annulled marriages) the elder Mrs. Cartwright left in her wake, that process may take a while. Which was why Edie recently shut down the Nantucket house and moved herself and her fatherless triplets into the infamous penthouse located on 72nd and Fifth.

  Now, Baby wondered if Grandmother India might have been right. Everything, from the boxy rooms in the apartment to the grid of New York City streets, was about confinement and order. She bounced on her sister’s bed some more while India groaned sleepily. “Come on, wake up!” she urged, even though it was barely ten, and India always liked to sleep in.

  “What time is it?” India sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t believe she and Baby were related. Baby was always doing ridiculous things, like teaching their dog, Chance, to communicate by blinking. It was as if she were perpetually high. But even though her boyfriend was a raging stoner, Baby had never been into drugs.

  It doesn’t really sound like she needs them.

  “It’s after ten,” Baby lied. “Want to go outside? It’s really pretty,” she coaxed.

  India took in Baby’s tangled black hair and puffy doe eyes, and knew immediately that she’d been crying over her loser boyfriend all night. Back in Nantucket, India had done everything possible to avoid Ace, but this past weekend it had been impossible to escape his grossness, from the stained white socks he’d ball up and give to their cat, Roko, to play with, to the one time she had caught him doing bong hits on the terrace wearing only a pair of Santa-print boxers. She knew Baby liked that he was authentic, but did authentic have to mean appalling?

  Short answer? No.

  “Fine, I’ll come outside.” India pulled herself out from under her six-hundred-thread-count Italian cotton sheets and walked barefoot onto the terrace, and Baby followed. India squinted in the bright sunlight. Below her, the wide street was empty except for an occasional sleek black town car whooshing down the avenue. Beyond the street was the lush expanse of Central Park, where India could just barely make out the tangled maze of paths winding through its greenery.

  The two sisters sat together, swinging in the hammock and looking over the other landscaped Fifth Avenue terraces and balconies, deserted save for the occasional rooftop gardener. India sighed in contentment. Up here, she felt like the queen of the Upper East Side, which was exactly what she was born to be.

  Is that right?

  “Hey.” Their brother, Trey, six foot two and shirtless, stepped onto the terrace carrying a carton of orange juice and a bottle of champagne, wearing only a black Speedo bathing suit. India rolled her eyes at her swimming-obsessed brother, who could easily drink anyone under the table and then beat them in a 10K.

  “Mimosa anyone?” He to
ok a swig of orange juice from the carton and grinned at India’s repulsed grimace.

  Baby shook her head sadly as her tangled hair brushed against her shoulder blades. Always tiny, Baby now looked absolutely fragile. Her messy hair had already lost the warm brown highlights that always showed up during the first weeks of a Nantucket summer.

  “What’s up?” Trey asked his sisters.

  “Nothing,” India and Baby answered at the same time.

  Trey sighed. His sisters had been so much easier to understand when they were ten, before they’d started acting all coy and mysterious. He took a swig of orange juice, wondering if he’d ever understand girls. If they weren’t so irresistible in general, he might have given them up and become a monk. Case in point: The only reason he was up so early was the semi-pornographic dream that had forced him out of bed and on an unsuccessful hunt for a pool.

  Dream about whom? Details, please.

  He placed the unopened bottle of champagne in a large, daisy-filled planter and took another swig of OJ before squeezing into the hammock next to his sisters. He glanced down at the mass of trees, not believing how small Central Park seemed. From up here, everything looked miniature. Not like Nantucket, where the expanse of dark ocean went on forever. Sconset was the nearest point in the country to Portugal and Spain, and Trey always wondered how long it would take him to swim there.

  “Helloooooo!” The sound of their mother’s voice and the jangling of her handcrafted turquoise and silver bracelets carried out onto the terrace from inside. Edie Cartwright appeared in the doorway. She wore a flowy blue-patterned sundress, and her normally black-streaked-with-gray bob had been knotted into a hundred tiny braids. She looked more like a scared porcupine than a resident of Manhattan’s most exclusive zip code.

  “I’m so glad you’re all here,” she began breathily. “I need your opinion on something. Come, it’s inside.” She gestured toward the foyer, her chunky bracelets clanking against each other.

  India giggled as Trey dutifully slid off the hammock and padded into the apartment, following Edie’s long stride. For the past week, Trey had been acting as Edie’s art advisor. He had been to an opening almost every night, usually in an overcrowded gallery in Brooklyn or Queens, where he’d drunk warm chardonnay and pretended to know what he was talking about.

  The expansive, wood-paneled rooms of the penthouse that had once probably housed luxurious chaises and opulent tables were now barren except for a few castoffs Edie had found through her extensive network of artist friends. India had immediately ordered a whole ultramodern look from Neiman Marcus, but the furniture hadn’t yet arrived. In the meantime, Edie had managed to find a moth-eaten orange couch to place in the center of the living room. Roko was furiously scratching at it, his favorite new activity since moving to New York. Most of the Cartwrights’ pets—three dogs, six cats, one goat, and two turtles—had been left in Nantucket. Roko was probably lonely.

  Not for long. Sitting next to Roko was a two-foot-high plaster chinchilla, painted aquamarine and covered in bubble wrap.

  “What do you think?” Edie asked, her wide eyes twinkling. “A man was selling it for fifty cents on the street down in Red Hook when I was coming home last night from a performance. This is authentic, New York City found art,” she added ecstatically.

  “I’m out of here,” India announced, backing away from the plaster sculpture as if it were contaminated. “Baby and I are going to Barneys,” she decided, locking eyes with her sister and willing her to say yes. Baby had been moping around in Ace’s stupid sweatshirt all weekend. It had to stop.

  Baby shook her head, pulling the blue sweatshirt tighter against her body. She actually kind of liked the chinchilla. It looked just as out of place in the ornate apartment as she felt. “I have plans,” she lied. She’d decide what those plans were just as soon as she was out of her family’s sight.

  Trey gazed at the statue. One of the chinchilla’s heavily lidded eyes looked like it was winking at him. He really needed to get out of the house. “I, uh, need to pick up some swim stuff.” He vaguely remembered getting an e-mail saying he needed to pick up his uniform from the team captain at St. Jude’s before school started tomorrow. “I should probably get to it.”

  “Okay,” Edie trilled, as India, Trey, and Baby scattered to opposite ends of the apartment. School started tomorrow. It was the dawn of a new era.

  Edie tenderly carried the chinchilla sculpture into her art studio. “Have fun on your last day of freedom!” she called, her voice echoing off the walls of the apartment.

  Like they don’t always find a way to have fun?

  2

  India couldn’t help grinning to herself as she emerged from the apartment building and started walking south down Fifth. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but the streets were already buzzing with tourists and families. The late August heat was laced with a cool breeze that made her shiver in anticipation. She couldn’t wait to see the trees flanking the avenue turn brilliant orange, red, and yellow. She couldn’t wait to snuggle up in a cashmere Burberry coat and sip hot chocolate on one of the benches lining the stone walls surrounding Central Park. She couldn’t wait until tomorrow, when she would start school at Manhattan’s exclusive Emma Willard School for Girls and her life would finally begin.

  She turned onto Madison, pausing at the large plate-glass windows of the Calvin Klein boutique on the corner of 62nd Street to take in her reflection. With her long, glossy black hair wrapped in a Gucci print headscarf and a pink Fendi sleeveless dress hugging her athletic frame, she looked like any Upper East Sider out for a stroll. In Nantucket, where fleece was party attire and a party was drinking a six-pack of beer on Sconset beach, India had always been out of her element. But this year it was all going to be different. Finally, she was right where she belonged.

  India tore herself away from the shop window and continued to walk down Madison. Just past 61st Street she reached the door to Barneys and smiled as the dapper, black-suited doorman held it open. She breathed deeply as she entered, the achingly familiar scent of Creed Fleurissimo hitting her along with the AC. It had been her grandmother’s favorite perfume, and India could practically feel the elder India’s spirit steering her away from an oversize apple green Marc Jacobs bag and toward the true designer purses.

  India walked through the luxury handbag department, reverently touching the crocodile skin and soft leathers. Her eyes stopped on a cognac-colored Givenchy satchel, and she felt her stomach flutter. Its gold buckles reminded her of the antique chest she’d left behind in Nantucket. She’d always imagined some ancient blue-blooded great-aunt had lost the trunk in the Atlantic when her ship sank on her honeymoon, only for it to be recovered by a bearded lobsterman years after her romantic death. India had a habit of making things far more romantic than they actually were.

  Well, that’s way better than sucking your thumb and biting your nails.

  “Exquisite piece.” India heard a smooth voice over her shoulder. She turned around and took in the saleslady behind her. She was in her mid-forties, with gray-streaked hair pulled back into a sleek bun.

  “It’s beautiful,” India agreed, wishing the saleslady would disappear. She wanted this moment to be pure: a moment between her and the purse.

  And the imaginary lobsterman?

  “Limited edition,” the saleslady noted. Her name tag read NATALIE. “It was actually claimed, but we never heard back from the buyer...Would you be interested?” Natalie raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

  India nodded, transfixed. She glanced at the price tag—four thousand dollars. But she hadn’t really bought that much since she had arrived in New York, and wasn’t that what Edie’s new accountant, Alan, was for? Besides, as Grandmother India had once reminded her when she’d admired a particular vintage Hermès bag in it's extensive collection: Handbags never die. Men do. This bag was forever.

  “Oh, there you are!”

  India and Natalie turned in unison to see a willowy
girl with cascading auburn hair and a dark olive complexion sweep across the marble floor. India paused, transfixed. Even in a fluttery white sundress with enormous sunglasses perched on her head, the girl looked exactly like the ballerina in the painting hanging in Grandmother India’s library.

  “I came to pick up my bag. So sorry I didn’t get your messages—I was in Sagaponack. My cell phone service is awful out there.” She sighed deeply, as if a weak cell phone signal in the Hamptons were the most monumental handicap. “Thanks again for holding it.” The girl grabbed the satchel from India’s hands, as if India’s job had been to hold it for her. India narrowed her eyes as she firmly grasped the bag’s strap.

  “You must be Vanity Laurent.” Natalie pressed her lips into a tight line as she turned to the girl. “Unfortunately, because we do have a release policy and we have someone interested, I’m afraid that we’ll have to put you back on the waiting list.”

  India smiled a too bad smile at the girl, feeling giddy. No one at Emma Willard could possibly have this bag. It seemed all the more valuable now that she saw how in demand it was. She tugged on the handle, but the girl made no effort to loosen her grip.

  “I can see why you need a new bag.” Vanity glanced pointedly at India’s worn Louis Vuitton purse. It had been her thirteenth birthday present from her grandmother, and it was well loved, as Grandma India would have put it. “There are some outside you might be interested in.”

  India narrowed her slanted eyes at the girl and gripped the bag’s shoulder strap. Outside? As in, the tacky knockoffs sold by vendors on the street? She was speechless.

  “Now that that’s settled,” Vanity went on, tightening her grasp around the Givenchy’s straps, “can we please take care of this?” she ordered Natalie haughtily, her green eyes flashing.

  Natalie drew herself up to her full height of five foot two. She stood comically between the two girls, who faced each other eye to eye five inches above her head. “That’s the only one we have,” she began authoritatively. “It’s a limited edition and rather fragile, so I’m sure you both will be able to work something out.” She reached for their fingers, trying to pry them from the bag’s leather handles.