Free Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

study had anyone in that house been capable of complex thought. In the back corner, beneath a reproduction Holbein, was what I was looking for: the sideboard. I poured myself a generous serving of something expensive and smooth and was nearly halfway through when I heard a snuffling behind me.
    I turned to find a huddle of girls in front of the room’s staggeringly large sofa. They were young—twelve or thirteen—and tiny, hardly formed, that awkward stage between eft and newt. Soon enough they’d start buying big breasts and bigger bags of coke, and before long they wouldn’t dream of sitting in a circle unless it involved some kind of a jerk, but that night they were still little girls, and for a fleeting moment I wanted to gather them up in a bear hug and spirit them away someplace simple and straightforward, like—I don’t know, Glendale or Encino.
    A chubby redhead mustered up her courage and stood. “Hi, Jane,” she said. She had the willfully cheerful voice of a preschool teacher. Her skirt wasn’t quite long enough to hide her dimpled knees.
    I climbed onto a massively proportioned chair and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my purse. As the girls awaited my response, they crowded together, expectantly, baby penguins angling for regurgitated fish.
    “Mind if I smoke?” I asked, not that I cared. Back then I didn’t ask questions; I collected data.
    They shook their heads emphatically. The redhead half raised her hand, requesting permission—actually requesting permission—to speak.
    I nodded, enjoying myself.
    She gestured toward my cigarettes. “Could I—”
    “No.”
    She shrank back and I lit up, holding the smoke in my lungs until I felt the fizzy tingle in the back of my head that always accompanies the first smoke in a chain. The party promptly became more bearable.
    “What’s your name?” I asked the girl.
    “Maggie,” she said, “Maggie O’Malley.”
    “Jesus. Your parents Boston beat cops or something?”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Forget it.” I looked her over. A skirt that didn’t quite fit; a halter whose neckline she kept picking at. Along her jawline, a constellation of plump whiteheads she’d tried to cover with concealer. Her red plastic cup clearly hadn’t been touched. “What’re you drinking?”
    She hesitated. “Vodka cranberry?”
    I plucked the cup from her hand and took a sip; it was strong enough to make my lips curl around my teeth. I set it on a side table. “Are you trying to get laid or something?”
    “What? Oh my god, no. Gross.”
    “Then don’t accept mystery drinks from strangers. If you’re going to be stupid, be stupid on purpose.”
    Maggie pushed back her hair and lifted her chin, and I wondered with some horror if she might be about to ask me to the seventh-grade prom.
    “Are you really dating Tobey Maguire?” she asked instead.
    The rest of the girls found their voices all at once. “No way,” one said. “I heard she’s with Pacey—”
    “—that guy from that movie—”
    “—Leonardo DiCaprio—”
    “Leo totally only dates models.” This from Maggie, who shot me an abashed look immediately thereafter. But I didn’t take offense. I just sipped my whiskey and admired my boots and let them speculate. They’d come up with taller tales than I ever could.
    I had long since stopped following the conversation when I realized a guilty silence had fallen over the group. I opened my mouth to say something, but then I caught sight of a blond weave and enough body glitter to blow a pupil. Ainsley. I stretched my way to the sideboard for a refill.
    Ainsley’s hand was wrapped around the bicep of a guy with the oily good looks of a serial adulterer. She was wearing an outfit so relentlessly hideous I refuse to describe it.
    She stood just outside the door to the study, examining the girls and toeing the threshold like it was quarantine tape. “I didn’t realize we were throwing a charity ball,” she said. She turned to her escort with a