The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

in the floorboards. Bunny walks into her room, flings herself onto her bed, buries her face into her blue toile pillows, and screams. Her check floats like a feather to the floor.

Bunny sits at her vanity, leaning into the mirror as she dabs glitter around her eyes, the $100,000 check still on the floor next to her.

“Hello?” Cate cracks open her door.

“Hey, you can come in,” Bunny says. Making sure her glitter placement is symmetrical, she turns her head left then right.

“You excited for tonight?” Cate asks, trying to be friendly, trying to convince herself she can still be the older sister Bunny never had without resentment, until she notices her birthday check on the floor.

“Yeah, should be fun.” Bunny sets down the glitter stick and picks up her lip gloss, unscrewing the top.

Cate, refraining from lighting into her, walks over to pick up the check. “Bunny, your check,” she says, holding it out. “Be careful with this, you can’t just leave something like this out, let alone on the floor!”

Bunny turns and snatches the check out of her hands. “It’s fine,” she says, placing it across a few bottles of perfume in front of her.

Cate’s tone shifts. “It’s actually not fine, you can’t just nonchalantly leave a check on the floor for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“It just blew over onto the floor, relax,” Bunny lies, swiping gloss across her lips, not wanting to think about it.

“Why are you being so cavalier about this? Most people don’t get a hundred thousand dollars on their eighteenth birthday. Actually, most people won’t ever see a check for a hundred thousand dollars in their lifetime—”

“Okay, I’m sorry!” Bunny says, “It’s right here.”

“I know it’s your birthday, but it’s not an excuse to act like you’re entitled. You’re entitled to none of it.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

Cate cuts her off. “You’re lucky your father isn’t the one in prison. I would encourage you to start showing some gratitude.”

Cate walks out of her room and closes the door behind her. As the door shuts, the light breeze sweeps the check up into the air again. Bunny watches as it lands swiftly at her feet.

A moment of shame and confusion before she reaches for her cell phone and impulsively texts Stan via their Signal app, an encrypted messaging service her parents don’t know exists. Baby cave dwellers know that at any time their parents can get access to their text messaging via a request if they want to, but this is the loophole, the way to communicate drug deals, secret recordings, after-party locations, and endless sexting.

I need 200 pills of molly.

Lizbet going down rabbit hole tonight? Stan replies.

Yes, and I’m taking everyone down with me . My treat for everyone. I’ll Venmo you.

An unconscious part of her wants to get rid of all her money and rid of it fast, the balance in her bank account—thinking maybe it can release her from her family’s past.

Done. Vodka?

Obvi. Daddy gave me money for my birthday so I’m emptying my account for my birthday. I’m an adult I can do what I want.

Stan replies with two pill emojis x 100.

You with Billy? Bunny texts. Three dots appear and then disappear and then appear again.

Yes.

Is he coming? The three dots appear and disappear and appear again.

Yes.

Bunny waits a whole minute to reply: Good . Trying to play it cool, still feeling guilty but ready to get obliterated.

The Society of the Cincinnati and the Anderson House

The Society of the Cincinnati was the first private patriotic society, founded in 1783 on the patriarchal legacy of the white men who fought to establish American independence during the Revolutionary War. With a chapter in each of the thirteen states (former colonies), its original purpose was to maintain the embodiment of and bond over civic virtue. Membership was limited to direct male descendants of officers of the Continental Army and Navy (including French military service members).I George Washington was the first president general of the society.

The society maintains its headquarters at the Anderson House, a gilded mansion on Embassy Row, formerly the home of diplomat Larz Anderson and his wife, Isabel, an author. The Andersons were known for being entertainers, often opening their home to presidents—Taft and Coolidge—as well as major generals, and members of the Vanderbilt and Dupont families. After Larz’s death in 1937, with no children to inherit the home, it was donated to the Society of the Cincinnati, of which Larz had been a proud member.II

I. Society of the Cincinnati website, https://www.societyofthecincinnati.org/

II. https://www.societyofthecincinnati.org/anderson_house/history

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Called the “Florentine villa in the midst of American independence,” a gilded mansion resides on Embassy Row dedicated to the memory of white heroes who secured America’s independence. Once home to a diplomat who’d served in Europe and Japan, it is filled with carved wooden walls, gilded papier-mâché ceilings, marble floors, iron staircases, and eleven bedrooms reserved for those who belong to the exclusive Society of the Cincinnati, the oldest private patriotic organization of the United States. And the Bartholomews have paid a hefty rental price for Bunny’s eighteenth birthday party.

Each drawing room of the mansion has been roped off. Portraits of Civil War heroes trapped in gold hang on every wall. The DJ sets himself up in front of the original nineteenth-century grand piano while Bunny stands shivering at the front entrance between ancient Corinthian columns two stories high. She’s wearing a pale-pink pleated suede miniskirt and white cashmere turtleneck, and her vegan Doc Martens. Her hair is wavy and long down her back; a matching white cashmere turban headband pulls it away from her face.

Billy walks up the cobblestone driveway clad in a blue collared shirt and unzipped black parka, clenching his jaw and carrying a dozen pink roses. Stan skips up to Bunny first in a red peacoat and fedora. He pretends to flash her but reveals two hundred pills of molly in a bag instead of his