Adored (11 page)

Ohmigod. “Wha…” Jenny trailed off. She could feel some dried spittle—she sometimes drooled as she slept—at the corners of her mouth. She quickly rubbed the back of her hand against her lips.

Kaitlin Becker’s orangey red curls bounced behind the camera screen. “Your roommate let us in!”

Jenny glanced at her clock radio, silently cursing Callie and the early morning Pilates class she’d insisted on taking after her bread-heavy date last night. She sat up, pulling her homemade quilt up to her chin and wishing she’d worn something sexier than her pink-trimmed gray flannel PJ Salvage jammies. At least they kind of hid her boobs. If the camera added ten pounds, she certainly didn’t need them
there
.

Claire Goodrich, sitting in Jenny’s desk chair, leaned over and lightly smacked Kaitlin with the back of her hand. “Shh…” she hissed. “Give her a chance to wake up.” Her bobbed hair was still damp from the shower and she looked perfectly put-together, in a New England preppie kind of way. She was the kind of girl who could pull off a bright yellow cable-knit sweater.

“We wanted to get your day from start to finish,” Izzy Vanderbeek explained, shrugging off her blue puffy down vest and dropping it on Callie’s unmade bed. She turned to Kaitlin and barked: “Pull back a little. You’re too close.”

Kaitlin stepped back, a disappointed look on her face. Jenny touched her hair—it was always completely disheveled in the morning. But the red eye of the camera inspired her, and she tossed her brown curls over her shoulder, hoping they were falling in kind of a sexy, bed-headed way. “Morning,” she said sleepily into the camera.
Please look sleepily cute and don’t have eye crusties
, she prayed. “What, exactly, do you want me to do?” she asked tentatively. She didn’t care how “real” they wanted to make this documentary. She wasn’t about to let them watch her shower or pee.

Kaitlin swept her camera around the room. Izzy jumped to her feet. “Just… walk us through what you do in the morning. You know, your routine.”

“Okaay…” Jenny threw the quilt off and slipped her bare feet into her ancient pink bedroom slippers. “Normally I don’t talk to anyone before I brush my teeth, so I’m sorry if my conversation skills aren’t up to par.” Jenny grabbed her blue plastic shower caddy and headed toward the door, the freshmen girls trailing after her into the third-floor bathroom. It was empty— not surprising at this hour on a Saturday morning. Most of the other girls were still sleeping after Friday nights filled with pizza and illicit drinking.

Jenny reached for her toothpaste. She heard one of the girls note the brand, Tom’s of Maine, in a reverent mumble. Another mumble of approval as Jenny squeezed some of the minty goop onto her Hello Kitty toothbrush. She held the toothbrush under the running water to erode the pile of toothpaste by half, knowing that a giant glob of toothpaste on her pajama shirt was not exactly glamorous behavior. She didn’t want it immortalized on film for generations to come.

Jenny tried to make brushing her teeth look interesting, but there was only so much she could do beyond staring at herself in the mirror and raising her eyebrows.

“Get her shampoo,” Izzy directed as Jenny kept brushing. As Kaitlin trained the camera on Jenny’s shower caddy, Jenny took the opportunity to spit into the sink, relieved that the camera hadn’t caught that. At least her teeth were clean. Did they really want to make a film about the beauty products she used? Jenny felt a surge of panic that her ratty blue toothbrush and her Clearasil pore-cleansing pads would make her look very uncool. But she took a deep breath and squirted a dollop of Burt’s Bees Orange Essence face wash into her hands. She rubbed it into her face as the camera zoomed back in and she thanked God she’d plucked her eyebrows the night before. And put away her box of Tampax Ultra.

“Soooo…,” Claire said cheerfully as she leaned against the toilet stall and eyed Jenny. “We know you’ve hooked up with lots of hot guys on campus,” she prompted in a gossipy tone. “Like Easy Walsh.”

“And Julian McCafferty,” Izzy jumped in, her blue eyes wide. “He’s in my English class, and he’s sooo hot.”

“So tell us,” Claire prodded, her bobbed hair moving in time. Jenny felt a rush of pride. This was much more interesting than her facial routine… but who was going to see the video? Should she really talk about something so… private? “What was that like?” Claire’s eyes widened expectantly.

Jenny smiled modestly for the camera. “There are certain details a lady can never divulge,” she said slowly, dabbing her face with a rosemary-water-soaked cotton ball. The three girls looked crestfallen and Kaitlin lowered the camera a little, disappointed. The old panic Jenny felt to please everyone in the room reared. The tooth brushing had almost put them to sleep—the least she could do was give them something interesting. After all, they had chosen her, Jenny Humphrey, to be the subject of their film project. They could have asked
anyone
—but they wanted
her
story.

Jenny tucked a brown curl behind her ear and slowly answered. “But… I can say… my fling with Julian
was
really kind of intense.” The girls giggled excitedly and Kaitlin trained the camera on Jenny again. Jenny felt like she was on stage, and she desperately wanted to wow her audience.

In reality, the few times she’d kissed Julian—wonderful as they had been at the time—had slowly faded from her memory, but that wasn’t exactly dramatic enough. She tried to imagine what Tinsley or Callie or Brett would say. “He’s a
great
kisser,” she added, leaning toward the mirror and smiling at her image conspiratorially. The freshmen girls cooed.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones listening. Tinsley stood in the hallway, shower caddy in hand. Not willing to wait at the third-floor bathroom for a free shower stall, she’d thrown her tissue-soft Calvin Klein robe over her skimpy Cosabella jammies and headed upstairs to use her old bathroom. She’d paused at the door when she’d heard voices.

When she heard the words “My fling with Julian was really intense…. He’s a
great
kisser,” she almost let her shower caddy clatter to the floor. Even though Tinsley had been snooping around all week, trying to figure out whom Julian had slept with, she realized now that she wasn’t ready to hear it. Especially not from the unmistakable voice of cute-as-a-button Jenny Humphrey.

Intense? Jenny?
Was it possible that she’d actually… slept with Julian?

All of a sudden, the past month of friendship—when she’d more or less forgiven that wannabe for stumbling into Waverly and stealing all her thunder—disappeared from Tinsley’s mind. Gone were all memories of her and Jenny and Callie, bonding in the upstairs common room over popcorn and margaritas and bad movies, or late-night gabfests over pizza and Diet Coke. Why had she ever been fooled by Jenny’s sugar-sweet attitude and sparkling, innocent brown eyes?

She stole Easy Walsh from Callie practically her first week on campus, and then she’d taken Julian. And deflowered him. That bitch.

Tinsley’s eyes burned with anger as she pushed open the door to find Jenny staring at herself in the mirror, three dorky freshmen scattered around her. She’d forgotten about the freshman fan club.

“Good morning!” Jenny smiled cheerfully. Her cheeks were flushed and her whole face looked dewy. Tinsley eyed the three girls crowded around Jenny as if she were a Greek deity or something. Jenny was really letting these losers film her in those cutesy pajamas? Was she mentally defective?

“Is this a bathroom, or
The Hills: Prep School Years
?” Tinsley asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. The girls tittered uncomfortably. The one with orange hair in pigtails that stuck straight out from her head spun around and fixed her camera on Tinsley.

“Oh, sorry.” Jenny’s warm brown eyes widened. She just looked so sweet and innocent it made Tinsley want to puke. For a second, it was hard to believe that this girl, in her gray pajamas covered in tiny rosebuds, had actually slept with Julian. Could she have jumped to conclusions too quickly? “We were just sort of… filming.”

But then Tinsley remembered how she’d first found out Jenny and Julian were hooking up. Julian
had
been hooking up with Tinsley at the time, and she’d thought all was well and good between them—until, at the Cinephiles party at the Miller farm, she’d come across Jenny and Julian, sitting on a tree stump, kissing tenderly. It all came back to her like a lightning flash, and Tinsley felt her legs wobble. What had she been thinking, trusting Jenny after she’d stolen Julian from her once already? She was a serial boyfriend-stealer—and she’d managed to steal Julian’s
virginity
, too.

“I’m not an idiot. I can see that.” Tinsley threw her towel over the top of one of the curtain rods. “But I’m taking a shower. If you don’t want a lawsuit on your hands, you can turn the fucking camera off.” The orange-haired Pippi Longstocking quickly clicked off the camera and looked about ready to wet her pants.

Tinsley threw her bathrobe and pajamas onto the hook on the ceramic-tiled wall and tugged the shower curtain closed behind her. Instead of waiting for the water to heat up, she stepped directly into the freezing spray, hoping to calm down a little. But all she could think about was how Julian—sweet, sexy Julian—had cared enough about stupid little ho-bag Jenny to actually waste his V-card on her.

“Wow,” Jenny said brightly, once the sound of running water filled the bathroom. “Someone must have had a bad night.” But her insides were shaking. She couldn’t believe how rude Tinsley had been. Even if Tinsley
did
have a really bad night… it didn’t mean she could be so insulting to Jenny. And in front of people. People with a video camera.

While in the past, she might have crumbled in the face of Tinsley’s bitchy cruelty, Jenny was not about to take this lying down. She’d show Tinsley Carmichael exactly what she was made of.

Instant Message Inbox

“C
an we sneak into the Cinephiles screening room and watch a movie tonight?” Julian murmured into Tinsley’s ear on Sunday afternoon. They were sitting on his dorm room bed, Julian’s hands on Tinsley’s shoulders as he massaged them. She’d pulled a muscle that morning when she’d gone to the gym and tried to work out her murderous energy by kickboxing. Some kind of jazzy music Tinsley didn’t recognize was playing on his Harman Kardon stereo, and outside, the sun was starting to set, filling the room with the last of its dying rays. It would have been romantic, but all she could think about was Jenny and Julian. Julian and Jenny. Had they done it in this room? On this bed? To this music?

“Huh?” Tinsley said, shaking the horrible images from her brain. This had to stop. She knew she was being childish— whatever Julian had done in the past didn’t involve her, and ” that was just the way it was. She needed to get over it. “The screening room?”

“You remember it?” Julian teased, giving her shoulders a gentle squeeze. “Let’s put something romantic on the screen and…” he trailed off.

Tinsley felt the smile coming back to her face.
Okay
, she told herself, pep-talk style.
Let’s just get back to where we were earlier this week.
She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feel of Julian’s hands on her shoulders. “And do what?” she prompted, in a husky voice.

Julian leaned forward, his breath close to her ear. Tinsley suddenly felt warm in her black Free People sweaterdress and she leaned back against Julian. He was about to answer when there was a knock on the door.

Julian kissed her neck softly, sending shivers through her whole body, before standing up and opening the door. No one was there, but on the floor was a small package, neatly wrapped in paper. “Looks like my Secret Satan was here,” Julian said with a smirk, tossing the red package on his desk.

“You’re not going to open it?” Tinsley asked, suddenly suspicious. What was Julian trying to hide? Tinsley certainly wouldn’t have been afraid to show him her gifts—not that they were anything to write home about. Everyone had been getting super-dirty things, but all Tinsley had was a bottle of olive oil—she didn’t even want to think about that one—and a gift card to a music store. Just plain random. What was Julian hiding?

Julian shrugged and grabbed the box. “Sure.” Okay, maybe he wasn’t hiding anything, Tinsley thought guiltily. She glanced over his shoulder as he unwrapped the package and pulled out a
DVD
.

“What is it?
Girls Gone Wild
?” Tinsley laughed.

Julian flipped the
DVD
over and Tinsley’s mouth dropped when she saw
To Have and Have Not
, one of the most romantic movies of all time. “Cool.” Julian pried the plastic covering off it, oblivious to Tinsley’s discomfort. It was one of her favorite movies—you could practically
see
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall fall in love on-screen.

Tinsley snatched the movie from Julian’s hands and flipped it over, staring miserably at the black-and-white photographs on the back. This was ten thousand times worse than any stupid soft-core porn—this was actually a thoughtful gift, bought by someone who wanted to give Julian something he’d really like. From someone who really
liked
him.