Luckiest Girl Alive

“There’s coffee, there’s tea, take your pick.” I plucked a coffee cup from the stack and pumped a dark stream while Spencer stood behind me, considering.

“The peppermint tea is very good,” Loretta said, wisely.

“Is it?” Spencer asked.

“Yes,” Loretta said. “Very refreshing.”

“You know”—Spencer hiked her classic quilted purse higher on her shoulder—“I’m not really a tea person. But it’s so hot out, and that sounds really good.”

We-hel-hellll. Maybe the esteemed Bradley School was finally living up to its mission statement: “The Bradley School is committed to educational excellence and dedicated to developing compassion, creativity, and respect in each of its students.”

I paid for our drinks. Spencer offered, but I insisted, like I always do, even though I have this recurring vision that my card is declined, this meager $5.23 charge the thing that obliterates the whole dog and pony show: stylish, successful, engaged, and all by twenty-eight years old, no less. The Amex bill went straight to Luke, which I felt fu

Spencer took a sip of her drink. “This is delicious.”

Loretta sparkled. “What I tell you?”

We found a table in the empty cafeteria. Gray, rainy light crowned us from the skylights above, and I noticed that Spencer had three distinct lines across her tan forehead, so fine they could have been hairs.

“I really appreciate your meeting with me today,” she began.

“Of course.” I sipped my coffee. “I know how hard it can be to crack this industry.”

Spencer nodded ferociously. “It’s so hard. All my friends, they’re doing the finance thing. They’ve had jobs lined up since before we graduated.” She fiddled with her tea string. “I’ve been at this since April and I’m really starting to wonder if I should just try my hand somewhere else. Just so I have a job, it’s getting embarrassing.” She laughed. “And then I can actually move here and I can keep looking on the side.” She looked at me questioningly. “Do you think that’s a smart thing to do? I worry if my résumé shows I’m working in another industry I won’t be seriously considered in magazine publishing, but then I’m also worried that if I don’t get just any job, the job hunt could stretch on for so long that they’re going to be more concerned that I have zero real-life work experience.” Spencer sighed, frustrated by this imaginary dilemma. “What do you think?”

I was just shocked she didn’t already live in the city, in an apartment on Ninety-first and First, rent and utilities all taken care of by Daddy. “Where have you interned?” I asked.

Spencer glanced at her lap, sheepishly. “I haven’t. I mean, I have, but at a literary agency. I want to be a writer, which sounds so stupid and aspirational, like, ‘I want to be an astronaut!’ but I had no idea how to make that happen and a professor suggested I work on the business side of things to get a sense of the industry. I didn’t even realize like, hey, magazines, which I love, and I love The Women’s Magazine, I used to sneak my mom’s when I was little”—this is such a common anecdote, I never know if I should believe it or if it’s just become this thing people say. “Anyway, I never realized, someone is writing that stuff. Then I started researching the industry and this, what you do, is what I know I’m meant to do.” When she finished, she was breathing hard. So much passion, this one. But it had pleased me. Most girls just wanted a job that let them play with clothes and mingle with celebrities and stroll into the Boom Boom Room because their names were permanently on the list. Those were some nice perks of the job, but they had always been secondary to seeing “By Ani FaNelli” in print. To receiving my copy back with a note: “Hilarious” or “You have the perfect voice.” I’d brought that page home and Luke had hung it on the refrigerator like I’d gotten an A on a paper.

“Well, you know that as you rise up the ranks as an editor, you will write less and edit more.” This is something an editor had told me once in an interview, and it had u

“But I see your byline all the time,” Spencer said.

“Well, when you stop seeing it you’ll know I’m ru

Spencer rolled her teacup between her palms, shyly. “You know, when I first saw your name on the masthead, I wasn’t sure if that was you, you. Because of your name. But then I saw you on the Today show and even though your name is a little different and you look so different—not that you weren’t always pretty”—a deep flush began to crawl into her cheeks here—“I knew it was you.”

I didn’t say anything. She was going to have to ask.

“Did you do that because of what happened?” The question quieted her voice.

Here’s the little song and dance I give to anyone who asks this question: “Partly. A professor in college suggested I do that so that I would be judged on my own merits and not by what people may know of me.” Then I always shrug modestly. “Not like most people really remember my name; what they remember is Bradley.” Now, here’s the truth: I started to realize there was something wrong with my name on the first day of high school. Surrounded by Chaunceys and Griers, the many simple, elegant Kates, not a single last name that ended in a vowel, TifAni FaNelli stood out like the hillbilly relative who shows up at Thanksgiving and drinks all the expensive whiskey. I never would have realized this if I hadn’t gone to The Bradley School. Then again, if I had never gone to Bradley, if I had stayed on my side of the tracks in Pe

I didn’t dare push my luck and apply to any Ivy Leagues, but plenty of their hangers-on would have me, told me they wept as they read my essay, bursting with purple prose and histrionic declarations of all I had learned about this vicious life even though I had only just begun it. Oh, it was a tearjerker, I made sure of it. So in the end, my name and the school that taught me to hate it got me into Wesleyan, where I met my best friend, Nell, the most beautiful WASP whose stinger pierced everyone but me, and she was the one, not some sage professor, who suggested I drop the Tif and go by Ani, pronouncing it “Ahhh-nee,” because “A