Always Jane

Jenn Bennett

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781534482333
• eBook ISBN: 9781534482340

A chauffer's daughter finds herself in the middle of a love triangle with the sons of her boss's wealthy next-door neighbors in this delightfully romantic story from the author of Alex, Approximately, Jenn Bennett. Love—and Fen Sarafian—do not care about your summer plans. Eighteen-year-old chauffeur's daughter Jane Marlow grew up among the domestic staff of a wealthy LA rock producer, within reach of bands she idolizes, but never a VIP. Every summer, Jane and her father head to the Sierras to work at the producer's luxury lodge at Lake Condor—a resort town and the site of a major musical festival.The legendary family who runs the festival are the Sarafians, and Jane's had a longtime crush on their oldest son, Eddie—doltish but sweet. So, when a long-distance romance finally sparks between them, she doesn't hesitate to cross class lines.But Jane's feelings for Eddie are thrown into question after she returns to the lake and reconnects with his alluringly intense brother, the dark horse of her placid summer plans. A fellow lover of music—and hater of the game—Fen Sarafian has been ousted from the family and is slumming it at a vinyl record shop. He burns for Jane like a house on fire and will do anything to sabotage his older brother, even if it means taking a wrecking ball to a multi-million-dollar music festival. Or Jane's heart.

Track [1] “Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down”/Interpol

Fen

Two summers ago

I was in a daze. That’s the only explanation I have for why I thought Eddie and I could sneak inside the villa without anyone noticing. It was nearly one in the morning—past house curfew. Of course Mama was waiting in her nightgown on the bench by the staircase. I just didn’t expect her to be sitting in the dark.

She turned to us like a haunted doll in a horror movie, face lit eerily by her phone’s screen, and I couldn’t tell if she was angry or upset. That couldn’t be good.

“Don’t tell Dad I let you drive his car,” Eddie whispered as he closed the Mediterranean wrought iron security gate in front of the door. “I forgot the code. You re-larm it. Relarm. Ha! Rlaaarm.” He snorted a laugh and finally looked across the foyer. “Oh, shiiit… Mama. You scared me. What’s that movie where the doll is haunted? You know the one, Fen.”

I didn’t answer because he was obviously still drunk, and that was the main reason why tonight was such a disaster. The other being that my brother thought he was a god.

“Why haven’t you answered my texts?” Mama asked me. Not Eddie. Even though he was eighteen and would start college in the fall. He was the oldest. “I’ve been calling like the world is coming to an end. Do you think I enjoy leaving voicemails? I do not.”

“My phone isn’t working. It got wet. I need to put it in rice or something. So much for that waterproof thing.”

“It’s only waterproof to a certain deepness, duh,” Eddie said, kicking off his shoes.

“Depth,” I corrected wearily. And what would he know? Nothing, that’s what.

Mama hurried across the dark foyer, nightgown swishing, and stopped in a slant of moonlight that streamed through the door gate. As she pushed dark curls away from her face, her gaze jumped from Eddie (disgust—she knew he was drunk) to my face (angry that I was involved) to the watery footprints on the terra-cotta tile around my sneakers. “What is this? You’re soaked? What happened? Are you okay? Fennec? Why won’t you answer me?”

When Jasmine Sarafian asks Too Many Questions, it’s only a matter of time. She fires them like a volley of arrows, knowing one will hit its mark and kill you.

“He jumped in the dam. Kapoosh!” Eddie said. “And saved a girl who was drowning when we were checking out a band at Betty’s.”

You freakin’ peanut brain. I swear.… How could I help him when he was trying to get us caught? I mean, that’s what it felt like.

Mama went very still. “You were out at the dam?”

“Sorry,” Eddie said, shrugging. “Some friends talked us into it. You know how it is.”

“Us? You took Fen? I know what kids do out there, Eddie. They drink and get high. Your brother just turned sixteen!”

“Never too young to be a hero,” Eddie said, golden face dimpling as he flashed her a drunken smile. “Be proud, Mama.”

Oh, how I was hoping to avoid this conversation. If Eddie had been smarter—and trust me, he was not—he would’ve lied. Because listening to a band that was playing at Betty’s on the Pier was exactly where we were not supposed to be. Betty’s was a bar with a pavilioned stage at the end of its pier. If you were old enough to pay the cover charge, you got to watch the show under its outdoor pavilion. If you weren’t? Well… you caught shows from boats around the pier—or a little way off, where Blue Snake River met the lake, up on the Condor Dam. BYOB, and bring your younger brother along to lug the beer from the car while you’re partying with your friends.

Is drinking on the dam dangerous at night? Yes. Is it dumb? Absolutely. Everyone’s gone there to catch free shows at Betty’s for years. It’s practically a Condor Lake tradition, and the cops only bust it up at the end of the month when they need to make their quotas.

“Fennec,” Mama said, “I think you need to explain about this girl. Is it true?”

I tried to make my voice sound calm. “The dam is dark at night. She fell over the railing and went in the water. I think she hit her head on the rocks—she floated down toward the lake, and no one was helping her.”

“The band was loud,” Eddie clarified unhelpfully. “We didn’t hear her.”

Weren’t paying attention was more like it. My brother never paid attention to anyone but himself. “Anyway, I dove in and swam. I found her.”

“She wasn’t breathing,” Eddie added.

She died. I think she died. For a minute. A few seconds. I think she was dead.

There was no breath.

No life.

“What?” Mama said, eyes widening.

I just wish Eddie would have kept that between us. He was the one who nearly had a breakdown back on the beach and begged me not to tell our mom. Now he was yapping like this? I didn’t know if it was because he was drunk or just not bright upstairs.

Either way, now I had to explain the rest of it to Mama. “It wasn’t a big deal,” I told her in the most casual voice I could muster. “I found her in the water and pulled her in to shore. She wasn’t moving, so I did CPR on her. It didn’t take much. She coughed up water after a couple compressions.”

Push hard, push fast. She wasn’t a CPR dummy. She was a dying human, so small, and I didn’t know how hard to press. What if I broke her? What if I screwed it up?

It was the scariest thing I’d ever done in my life.

“Mother of God,” Mama whispered, clutching her chest. “I told your father those CPR classes were important. Thank you, Saint Gregory!”

Here come the saints. Gotta wind this up and fast. “Anyway, her head was bleeding—”

So much blood. I thought she was dead.

“—and she was out of it. Someone called an ambulance.”

“By then, the band stopped because people across the lake had noticed what was happening,” Eddie added.

“The ambulance came and took her away, just to monitor for concussion, or whatever. They said she’d be okay,” I assured Mama. They said she might have memory loss.

She might not remember that I pulled her out of the dam.

“Hero!” Eddie said, slapping me too hard on the back for the millionth time that night. I slugged him in the arm, and he staggered. “Ow, dude. That hurt, you freak.”

“Calm down,” I told him. “You’ll wake the twins.” If our brother and sister woke up, then Dad would be next. I couldn’t handle him right now.

Mama shook her head slowly, holding her mouth as if she couldn’t believe it. “Who, my baby? Who was the girl?”

I gave Eddie a quick but dirty look: Don’t blow this. Then I told Mama, “No idea. Just some summer girl, here for the festival.” Summer people: what we called the out-of-towners who flew, drove, and carpooled to turn two thousand of us into two hundred thousand by late July.

“You don’t know her name?” she asked, dark hair frizzing wildly around her temples.

And here’s where the real lying began. I knew exactly who she was. And I knew why she was at the dam: she was one of Eddie’s devotees who treated him like he was some kind of Pope.

I didn’t get it. He farted in his sleep, told dumb jokes, and had the worst taste in music. Yet, he could do no wrong. And it wasn’t just girls. His teachers adored him too. The only reason he even graduated from high school was because he charmed his way through makeup tests. I’d bet everything in my wallet that he couldn’t name the current US president; he thought Switzerland and Sweden were the same country.

And yet, one smile was all it took, and he had a passing grade. My dad was one of the most important people in town, but you wouldn’t know it. Eddie Sarafian was the real star.

“Who is this girl, Eduard?” Mama asked. “Was she with you?”

For once, Eddie had enough sense not to elaborate and incriminate himself. He just shook his head. A little too much, maybe, but he didn’t say anything. Like we’d rehearsed in the car. Like he’d begged me. I asked her to come to the dam. People are going to say this is my fault because that’s how people are. Cover for me, bro, he’d said, crying a little. I hadn’t seen him cry since we were kids. I wasn’t sure if it was the beer, or if he was scared of getting caught, or if he was upset about the girl because he genuinely liked her. Maybe all three, but it was still weird.

My mom’s brown eyes glinted in the moonlight as she stared at him, then me. My pulse sped. I didn’t think she was buying it. Why should she? Everyone knew Eddie, and Eddie knew everyone. He even knew the girl who almost drowned. He shouldn’t. She was my age—too young for Eddie. But I saw them talking earlier that night. Then I saw her crying.

That was a few minutes before she fell in the water.

Look. I’m not saying he was to blame. I didn’t even know what the two of them did. Eddie damn sure wouldn’t tell me. But I did know if Mama found out he was hitting on a sophomore, she’d be pissed. And she would explode in white-hot fury if she knew who the girl was.

Jane Marlow, the chauffeur’s daughter—Mad Dog Larsen’s chauffeur.

Oh, yes, that Mad Dog. The famous rock producer. Owner of Rabid Records.

Forget his Grammys. Forget the fact that he’d produced some of the biggest albums of the last couple decades. The problem was that Mad Dog only spent the summers here at Condor Lake because my dad sold him the dream of this town like he sold it to everyone, a fairy tale in the Sierra Nevada. My father was the last of the great music promotors. Serj Sarafian.

My dad created one of the biggest indie music festivals in California.

But he’d have lost the amphitheater and festival grounds that hosted it if he didn’t have a cash infusion from a major player. His nightmare was being forced to sell the whole thing off for half of what it was worth to a national events promoter.

Unless someone with a lot of money was willing to invest...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• 1. Fen
• 2. Jane
• 3. Jane
• 4. Jane
• 5. Fen
• 6. Jane
• 7. Fen
• 8. Jane
• 9. Jane
• 10. Fen
• 11. Jane
• 12. Jane
• 13. Fen
• 14. Jane
• 15. Jane
• 16. Fen
• 17. Jane
• 18. Jane
• 19. Fen
• 20. Jane
• 21. Jane
• 22. Jane
• 23. Jane
• 24. Fen
• 25. Jane
• 26. Jane
• 27. Jane
• 28. Jane
• 29. Jane
• 30. Fen
• 31. Jane
• 32. Fen
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright