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Giovanni left the table, and Delilah immediately began cracking up. I don't know what usually happens when you combine a ton of marijuana with alcohol, but in Delilah's case, it meant she was suddenly amused by absolutely everything. Jacinta looked at her and smiled fondly, and Delilah held her gaze for a long moment before bursting into another fit of giggles. Jacinta started giggling, too, and that's when Teddy looked right at her and said, “So when do you head back to Florida?”

Jacinta fell silent while Delilah kept giggling.

“It's gotta be pretty humid this time of year,” Teddy said.

“Uh-oh,” Delilah said, tittering. “He's starting in on something. Everybody get
out
of the
way
.”

“Does your grandparents' apartment have air-conditioning?” Teddy continued, never taking his eyes off Jacinta. I peered at her through my wine-and-tequila haze and watched all the blood drain from her face.

“Teddy,” Delilah said, her Marilyn Monroe voice even breathier than usual. “Are you trying to start a fight? There's no fighting at Baxley's. Baxley's is for
lovers
.” She sent herself off into another fit of giggles. I watched with growing alarm, while Jeff displayed increasing interest as Jacinta and Teddy stared at each other.

“You know she's a fraud, right?” Teddy said to Delilah, finally breaking eye contact with Jacinta. “You know she's a liar.”

“Shut
up
, you idiot,” Delilah laughed.

“I'm not kidding, Delilah!” Teddy hissed. She quit giggling.

“What are you even
talking
about?” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Your girlfriend here,” he said, jerking his thumb at a frozen Jacinta. “I'm talking about this girl. You know her name's not even Jacinta Trimalchio? She made it up.”

“So what?” Delilah challenged him. “So what if she made it up? You go by Teddy and your real name is
Alistair Theodore
.”

“It's not like that, Delilah,” Teddy said. “She's Adriana DeStefano. You remember that girl?”

At this, Jacinta stood up, knocking her glass of ice water into my lap. I jumped, wincing at the coldness.

“I'm so sorry,” Jacinta said to me, handing me her cloth napkin. “I didn't mean to—”

“It's fine,” I said. “Of course you didn't.”

“I don't want to stay here,” Jacinta said. I don't think any one of us wanted to stay there. Yet still there we remained, pinned to our booth by some immovable force.

Teddy and Delilah glared daggers at each other from across the table.

“I
know
who she
is
,” Delilah spat. “You think I wouldn't know my old best friend?”

Teddy seemed momentarily startled. “You knew?”

“Of course I knew! No—Jacinta, sit down. It's all right.” Gingerly, Jacinta sat.

“Of
course
I knew,” Delilah continued airily, putting a protective arm around Jacinta. “She
told
me herself. So what?”

“Who is Adriana DeStefano?” I whispered to Jacinta.

For a moment, silence. And then—

“I am, Naomi,” Jacinta said quietly, looking down at the table. “That's my real name.”

“She's from
Staten Island
,” Teddy said, his voice dripping with acid. “Her father was a federal contractor. Bought his way into Trumbo. Into our world.”

“Whose world?” I asked, hopelessly confused.

“Ours,” Teddy said. “You know. Mine and Delilah's and Jeff's and—ours. People who come to Baxley's. People like us.”

He may as well have just come out and said it:
the right kind of people.

“She's a fraud just like her father,” Teddy said. He slammed his hand down on the table. “She's a psycho and a fraud!”

“Teddy!” Delilah hissed. “Do not speak about her father that way. She never did anything to you, and neither did he.”

“She never did anything?” Teddy repeated, astonished. “She never
did anything to me
?
Are you out of your
mind
?” He was yelling now.

A manager hurried over and said, “Is everything all right here?”

“Everything's fine,” Teddy snapped. “We're fine.”

“Please try to keep your voice a little lower,” the manager said politely. Then he backed away.

“Yes, Teddy, do shut up,” Delilah said.

“You used to go to Trumbo?” I asked Jacinta. “You never told me that. Or your real name.” I couldn't help but feel a little—well, maybe “
betrayed”
isn't quite the word, but you'd think Jacinta would've trusted me enough to tell me this stuff.

“That day when you came to my house,” I said to Delilah. “You knew who she was?”

“Not until you left the room,” Delilah said without taking her eyes off Jacinta. “Then she told me.”

I exhaled slowly. It was starting to make a kind of creepy sense now. All I wanted to do was zap myself home to Chicago and tell Skags everything.

Jacinta opened her mouth and then closed it without saying anything. Her green eyes were big and watery.

“There's plenty she didn't tell you, Naomi,” Teddy said. “Like how the feds put her father away for selling busted body armor to the army. Or how her family lost everything but her trust fund—which, as far as I can tell, is how she's been funding this whole summer. Or how she's basically just a freak blogger from Florida.”

“Why do you keep talking about Florida?” Delilah demanded. “She's not
from
Florida. She has nothing to
do
with Florida.”

Teddy's eyes widened. A slow smirk spread across his face.

“Oh, interesting,” he said. “So she
hasn't
told you everything.”

“Yes she has!” Delilah said, loudly and fiercely enough for neighboring tables of diners to look over curiously.

“Really,” he said. “Tell me all about Jacinta Trimalchio, then.”

“Please don't,” Jacinta said faintly. “Please, just—please.”

“After the trouble with her father, her mother took her to Europe,” Delilah said staunchly. “That's where she grew up. Swiss boarding school. She started blogging because she missed it here and she loves fashion. She's
always
loved fashion. We used to dress up together when we were little.” She grabbed Jacinta's hand and looked at Teddy defiantly.

“See,” she said. “I know everything. And I still love her. I love her more than I've ever loved you. She
understands
me.”

Teddy laughed scornfully. “You know nothing,” he said. “And you don't love her. You don't even know her. She's been feeding you bullshit and you swallowed it whole. After her dad went to jail, she and her mother moved to a shitty little town in Florida to live with her grandparents. Her mother's been a stripper for years. My PI saw her dance. She gave him a lap dance, in fact.”

Jacinta buried her head in her hands.

“Oh, don't do that,
Jacinta
,” Teddy said with faux sympathy. “He said she's quite good.”

“Th-that's not true,” Delilah said. “You're lying.”

“This guy has worked for my family since I was a kid,” Teddy said. “He doesn't lie about lap dances.”

“You pig,” Delilah snapped. “You know that's not what I mean. She grew up in Europe, not Florida. Didn't you, Jacinta?”

Jacinta kept her head buried in her hands, not responding.

“Didn't you?” There was a note of desperation in Delilah's voice. Jacinta's answer, when it came, was very small and quite muffled.

“No,” Jacinta said.

Delilah sat back in her chair, visibly shocked. I cast a quick, begging look at Jeff, who was watching the scene unfold with rapt attention. I wanted no part of any of this.

“No?” Delilah repeated.

“No,” Jacinta said, raising her head up. Her face was stained with tears and with the mascara that was running down her cheeks.

“He's right,” Jacinta said. “I didn't go to Swiss boarding school. I haven't been to Europe since my father took us to visit his family in Italy when I was five.”

Delilah just looked at her, mouth slightly open.

“Our housekeepers used to bring us to school together. I didn't recognize you at all,” Jeff said with fascinated awe.

“Well, the nose job probably threw you off,” Teddy said snidely. “That's new. She got it when she got her trust fund. Eighteenth birthday.”

“Jesus!” Jacinta burst forth, her eyes fiery with anger. “What are you, some kind of stalker?”

“I think that's your job description,” Teddy said. “Along with con artist. So you lied to everybody about your name and where you came from, and even when you told Delilah the ‘truth' about where you've been for the past seven years, it was
still
a lie. What else did you make up?”

Jacinta looked at Delilah, who was now staring at her hands. Then she looked at Teddy.

“It's over,
Adriana
,” Teddy said, his voice thick with satisfaction.

Jacinta turned back to Delilah in a panic.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you about where I really grew up,” Jacinta said quickly. “I'm really sorry. It was just . . . it was such a bad time. It was so, so awful there. My stepfather . . . it was terrible. I wanted you to think I'd had a nice life. You don't know what it's been like the past seven years. . . .”

Delilah looked confused, which Teddy took as an invitation to speak again.

“We could sue you, you know,” he said to Jacinta, his voice rising with each word. “We could sue your ass off for fraud. It's a family tradition, right?”

“Fuck you,” Jacinta said, loud enough to invite the attention of nearby diners. One couple scowled at her. Their blond twin little girls stared.

The manager hurried up again, this time accompanied by two valets.

“I think it's time for all of you to go,” he said firmly. “I'm not sure what's going on here, but it's affecting the rest of the restaurant.”

“Don't worry, man,” Teddy said, standing up and stretching lazily. “We're going.”

The manager waited to lead us all out, with the valets bringing up the rear. Teddy followed the manager, walking with a jaunty bounce in his step, smiling and saying hi to acquaintances and family friends as if nothing were wrong. Jeff followed. Then came me, and then—whispering frantically back and forth the whole time—Delilah and Jacinta. I couldn't catch what they were saying, and I couldn't even really guess. I wanted to take them both aside and get the real story, but
was
there even a real story? Who exactly was conning who, anyway? My mind was whirling. I wanted to believe Jacinta wasn't a total phony. She was still my friend, and she was obviously hurting.

We passed a dejected-looking Giovanni, who was wiping down the bar.

“Bad night for both of us, man,” Teddy said to Giovanni.

“I guess so,” he said in a dull voice.

By the time we got outside, other valets had already brought our cars around.

“You girls have a nice ride home,” Teddy said pleasantly, waving as they drove off with Jacinta in the driver's seat. The manager stood outside uneasily for a moment before turning around and walking back into the restaurant.

“I'd say this calls for a cigar,” Teddy said, pulling two out of his back pocket.

“You had these the whole time, man?” Jeff asked, laughing. He took one from Teddy.

“I knew tonight was gonna be a celebration,” Teddy said, smiling. He looked at the valets. “It's cool if we stay a little while, right? I just can't smoke this in my car—my mom would freak out if she smelled smoke in it.”

“No problem, man,” said one of the valets. “Just, if my manager comes out, you're probably gonna have to go.”

“Yeah, you're gonna have a new manager on Monday,” Teddy said. “Trust me. I've got a couple of phone calls to make about tonight.”

“Fine with me, man,” another valet said. “That guy's a dick, anyway.”

Teddy laughed and high-fived the valet, then turned to me.

“Sorry I don't have an extra for you, Naomi,” he said.

“That's fine,” I said, and wandered away while they puffed on their stogies. When would this nightmare of an evening end?

“Man,” I heard Jeff say to Teddy, “I knew Jacinta was weird, but I never would've predicted this. What are you gonna do?” Any sympathy he'd previously shown her seemed to have disappeared. Jeff's alliance was clearly with Teddy.

“What am I gonna do?” Teddy repeated with a hard laugh. “Make sure everybody in this town knows exactly who she really is. You remember what it was like when we were kids. Her last name was like a curse word. All those stories in the papers, all those reporters outside Trumbo . . . she'll be gone in no time. Back to the swamp she slithered out of.”

“Could you really sue her?” Jeff asked.

“You can sue anybody for anything,” Teddy said. “But she's not worth it. As long as she gets out of here, everything's fine.”

They went back and forth for a few more minutes about Jacinta the fraud, Jacinta the liar, Jacinta, Jacinta, Jacinta, as if I wasn't even there. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel. Jacinta had lied to me and everybody else in town, but she wasn't a monster.

Then the manager reemerged from the restaurant, his face livid.

“I told you all to get out of here,” he said.

Teddy chomped on his cigar and chuckled, turning his back to the guy.

“Hey, sir, we're leaving,” Jeff said in a conciliatory tone. “Just taking a few minutes to have a cigar. We don't want to cause any trouble.”