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Thanksgiving came and went without incident. Unlike Elise, we didn’t have any glamorous plans to sail to Nantucket to dine with fashion designers and millionaires. We had a quiet meal in which Barbara cooked the turkey into shoe leather, Grandma got a little silly on old-fashioneds, my dad complained about finances, and I sat as silently as possible, hoping no one would pay me any attention.

By dessert, my father had gotten around to his requisite college badgering, and just to appease him, I rattled off a list of colleges I was planning to apply to: Boston College, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Amherst. Given my performance in school lately, I might have been aiming a little high. I got a stomachache thinking about what my dad’s reaction would be once my PSAT scores arrived.

The next morning, I went for a run on the beach, trying to take out all my stress and anxiety on the sand. I ran all the way to the lighthouse, sprinting the last two hundred feet or so, then stopping so suddenly I thought my heart might give out. I doubled over to catch my breath, heaving in bursts of cold air that burned my lungs.

I peered up at the lighthouse and watched its steady beam, wondering if there was some sailor out in the sea right now watching it, too, thinking of a loved one he’d left on shore. Of course, this made me think of Gray, and a fresh wave of pain ripped through me.

It had taken Gray an entire year to fall in love with me and only two months to fall out of it. But me? I couldn’t seem to let him go. I wondered if I’d ever stop loving him.

I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it, pull my hair out, smash something hard against the ground. I latched onto the scorpion necklace.

To Emma, the only antidote for my sting.

What a crock!

Impulsively, I yanked the necklace off and chucked it into the ocean. I stood there for several minutes staring angrily at the waves, watching them churn and break into foam. When the roaring became too maddening, I started for home. I’d only taken a few steps when a glint of light on the sand caught my eye. I leaned down to inspect it and laughed bitterly. It was Gray’s scorpion pendant.

I had tried to get rid of it, but like a sick joke, the sucker had washed back to me. Some uneasy, superstitious feeling made me refasten the dog tag around my neck. I knew Gray had meant the scorpion to be my touchstone, my lifeline to him. But now it felt like a burden I had to wear, a stinging reminder of the love I no longer had.

C
HAPTER
9

A
s soon as we got back from Thanksgiving break, the teachers went into high gear in preparation for midterms. When Elise walked into Bio, I noticed a small red scar under her right eye where the hockey puck had hit her. I felt a tiny smidgen of guilt mixed with a good deal of satisfaction.

But when Elise sat next to Michelle, my momentary feeling of victory faded, and I only felt depressed. I hated that Michelle was falling for Elise’s charms and that I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. And even though I didn’t trust Elise’s motives, I couldn’t believe that Michelle’s judgment had lapsed so severely as to allow her to befriend someone who wanted to destroy her.

Toward the end of the day, I sat in French class, taking out my anger on a piece of loose-leaf. We were translating the last chapter of
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,
in which excavators find Quasimodo’s dead body embracing Esmeralda’s skeleton. It was both morbid and heartbreaking.

At the end of class, Madame cleared her throat. “Mademoiselles, j’ai un annonce special,” she began to say in French. I’d sort of taken to tuning Madame Favier out, but when I heard the words
Paris
and
école,
my ears sprang to attention.

Apparently, our sister school in Paris was sponsoring a full scholarship of tuition, room, and board for an entire year for an incoming Lockwood senior with a stellar academic record and a desire to study French literature. A letter of interest was due before winter break, followed by transcripts and letters of recommendation in January.

Everything fell away—the chattering of the students, the sound of Jess cracking her gum, the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead—as I realized this was exactly what I needed. To make a clean break from this place. To cut my ties with all these bad memories and venture out on some exciting new journey in a foreign city. And what’s more, to study French literature. I wanted—no, I needed—this scholarship.

My biggest competition would be Elise. Not that she needed the money, but once she found out I was interested, she’d apply just to spite me. I got a sudden image in my head of Elise striding down the Champs Élysées wearing a striped boat-neck top with black wide-leg trousers and a beret. She’d stop at a little café where everyone knew her name and where the proprietor, Phillipe, always reserved her favorite table.

Non, non, ce table est reservé pour Elise! Mon petite ange!

Ugh.

Maybe the Admissions Committee would sympathize with the fact that I’d never been to Paris before. Maybe between now and March, I could brush up on French literature and impress them with my vast knowledge of Camus and Sartre, my stunning command of French naturalism and existentialism. Maybe Elise’s head would spontaneously combust in Biology.

I was still daydreaming about it as I left class and headed toward the gymnasium. “Hello?” I heard behind me. “Terre à Emma!”

I turned to see Jess struggling to catch up with me. “Hey,” I said. “Now you’re mocking me in French?”

“Mais oui,” she said. “You’re thinking of applying for that scholarship, aren’t you?”

“Definitely,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

She shook her head. “I have no desire to rub shoulders with a bunch of snotty Gallic prep school kids. Everyone chain-smoking and quoting Baudelaire all the time? No, thank you.”

I laughed. “Well, I’m in love with the idea. I’m going to type up my letter of interest and get it to Favier this afternoon. I’m not taking any chances on this one.”

“You shouldn’t,” she said. “Elise will be gunning for it.”

“Don’t remind me. I feel like no matter where I turn, she’s always there.”

Jess was nodding; she knew exactly what I was talking about. “Hey, what are you doing this weekend?” she said.

“I’ll have to check my calendar,” I said. “My social life is a whirlwind of activity.” Jess grinned. “Why? Did you have something in mind?”

“Want to get out of this place? Like, go into Waverly or something? I’ve been meaning to get my roots touched up.”

I studied the crown of her head and saw that her natural brown hair was indeed growing in. “I would love that,” I said.

She glanced over at my hair, her brows knitting together. “You know, I think you ought to do something with your hair, too.”

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing. You just need a change. A symbolic break.”

“A break from what?”

“More like who?” she said, wagging her eyebrows knowingly. “This weekend, I’m taking you to Salon Axis. And we’re going thrift shopping for some new clothes.” I looked at her skeptically. “You’re going to forget about Gray, and we’re going to set you up with someone new. Now that Owen and Michelle have broken up, maybe you could—”

“Don’t even say it,” I said. “Way too complicated. Even if I thought of Owen as more than a friend—which I don’t—it would never work. There’s too much history there. And of course, there’s Michelle.”

“Why are you going out of your way to protect Michelle’s feelings when she won’t even talk to you?” she said.

I shrugged and shook my head, but she had a point. “How about you and Flynn?” I said. “You two have that love-hate thing going.”

She laughed a little too loudly. “Flynn? Are you serious?”

“What? You guys seem to flirt a lot.”

“It’s not flirting,” she said. “I assure you.”

“Okay, okay.”

She laughed again like the idea was absurd. As much as I disliked Flynn, he was easy on the eyes, and he had that whole rebel-without-a-cause vibe that was pretty much catnip to girls my age. If he wasn’t such an asshat, I might have had a thing for him myself.

That Saturday, as planned, Jess and I stood waiting in front of Easty Hall for the highly unreliable shuttle. With any luck, by this time next year I’d be driving my dad’s Volvo, which I’d have to wash and scrub within an inch of its life to get out the fish smell. The car was a boat—long, bulky, and pumpkin orange. But I didn’t care. As a senior with wheels, I would no longer be a prisoner at Lockwood. I could take off every weekend, drive anywhere in the country. Briefly, I allowed myself to entertain the fantasy of visiting Gray in North Carolina before my stupid subconscious realized the error.

“Terre à Emma,” Jess said.

“Huh?”

“You were off in the clouds again. Please tell me you weren’t thinking of a certain muscular Coast Guardian.”

“No,” I said. “But it would help if you wouldn’t remind me how muscular he is.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

“I was just thinking what it would be like to have a car next year. All the cool stuff we’d be able to do.”

“Hello,” she said. “You’re not going to be here, remember? You’re going to be in Paris, eating chocolate croissants and drinking too much wine and maybe developing a fashion sense.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes, conjuring up the image of Elise in pinstripes again, Parisian Barbie.

The shuttle finally arrived and took us into Waverly Falls, an old mill town turned eco-friendly shopping mecca and the only place within a ten-mile radius where a Lockwood student could buy somewhat fashionable clothes, a decent cup of coffee, and a meal that wasn’t patty or finger-shaped.

We started our tour at Vintage, where it became clear that Jess was an expert at thrift-store shopping and I . . . well, wasn’t. As I strolled through the rows of tightly packed jeans and halter tops and wedge shoes, I realized Jess was right: I had no fashion sense. It wasn’t that my clothes were hideous or outdated, just that I dressed to disappear. Fade into the woodwork. Lots of beige and gray and black. On that particular day, I was wearing a black turtleneck over a gray skirt with black tights and black boots. I might as well have been a Puritan.

Jess encouraged me to choose clothing for more frivolous reasons, say, just because I liked the color or the material felt good in my hands. After several failed outfits, I tried on a halter dress in a blue textured knit with a pattern of opposing diagonal stripes that met at a vertical line down the center, in effect splitting me in two. With my black tights, the dress looked both playful and sexy, sort of rock star.

When I emerged from the dressing room, Jess raised her eyebrows admiringly. “That’s a hot dress,” she said. “But you know what it needs?” She ran back into the store and came back with a pair of Mary Jane heels in glitter red.

“Really?” I said. “
Wizard of Oz
shoes?”

“Trust me. Put ’em on.” And so I did, to Jess’s enthusiastic approval. “Oooh, devil in a blue dress, yes!” she said.

I stared at myself in the mirror. I had to admit, Jess had a certain flair for styling an outfit. And the dress, while a bit out of my comfort zone, looked like me. Or at least the “me” that had been emerging lately. I went back into the dressing room and changed into my normal clothes, feeling that temporary thrill of transformation dissipate, like all the air deflating from a balloon.

Afterward, we strolled through Waverly Falls, making our way across the covered bridge to the other side of town where the falls were. Salon Axis was on the opposite side of the train tracks.

Jess knew all the employees there and introduced me to a tiny stylist named Tilda. “You’re in good hands,” she told me, then said to Tilda, “Don’t let her wimp out!” just before I got dragged out of sight.

I sat in Tilda’s chair and she gathered my hair into her hands, studying it. I suddenly felt self-conscious about my lack of style. “So,” she said with a heavy Italian accent, “what would you like?”

I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t really thought it through. “Maybe we could just do a consultation today and I could come back another day for the cut?”

Her eyes met mine in the mirror, issuing a challenge. “No, you should cut it. Get rid of this dead stuff that’s weighing you down.”

I glanced around nervously, my eyes falling on a woman at the far end of the salon. She had chin-length black hair, straight and shiny, with a widow’s peak. But a chunk of her hair was ice blue. It made her look like a comic book hero, spunky and fearless.

“How’d she do that?” I asked.

Tilda glanced over. “The blue streak? Her hair’s been double processed, stripped of its real color, then the blue added on top.”

I watched as the girl shook out her hair, that streak of blue fanning out and settling back into place like magic. “I want to do that.”

Tilda’s eyes bulged. “With your hair this long, it won’t work.”

“So cut it,” I said. “Up to my shoulders. And I want to do red instead of blue. A red streak on the right side.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. And can you put some layers in the front so it’ll fall like that?”

Tilda nodded, a satisfied smile on her lips.

An hour later, I sat under one of those finishing helmets with foil wrapped around the chunk of hair, wishing I could turn back time. Jess came over to keep me company. “I’m dying!” she said, glancing up from her magazine. “I can’t believe you did this.”

Neither could I. And I was getting that regretful feeling in the pit of my stomach, that pang people must get when they wake up to find a tattoo on their body. Only my stripe wasn’t permanent; at least, that’s what I told myself. Finally, Tilda took me back to the sink to remove the foil and wash off the extra dye.

When I sat back down in the chair, I couldn’t see the stripe since my hair was so wet. But as Tilda dried it, the cut revealed itself as a sleek asymmetrical bob, and the streak emerged like a lick of flame. Tilda called it vermilion red, and it was anything but subtle. And so far in my life, I’d been all about subtle.