In Too Deep (2 page)

“Look,”
Sophie whispered under her breath, diamond studs glinting in her honey hair, the majority of which was obscured by an Anna Kula gray knit cap. “Check out the happy couple—major bonding at twelve o’clock,” she added in a conspiratorial, fake espionage voice. Ever since
The Bourne Ultimatum
came out on DVD Sophie wouldn’t shut up about spies and the CIA. Not to mention Matt Damon’s impressive biceps that fairly bulged beneath that hideously grungy jacket he wore for most of the movie.

And speaking of slightly crazier, fashion-obsessed wardrobes, in celebration of the rapidly approaching fall weather, Sophie was wearing a pair of gray wool, wide-leg pants and a white silk blouse with an enormous, loopy bow tied at the neck. An oversized leopard Jimmy Choo clutch sat on the table in front of her, and she absentmindedly stroked it while continuing to stare over Madison’s head, her glossy pink lips parted. After years of being a veritable slave to Mystic Tan, Sophie had mysteriously halted her spray tan obsession immediately following Drew’s party with no explanation whatsoever, and, as a result, her creamy skin glowed, her face rosy from just a hint of cherry-red cream blush rubbed onto the apples of her cheeks. Now that both Sophie and Phoebe were so scarily pale, Madison had taken to calling both of them the cadaver twins on account of the fact that they looked like they belonged in a fucking coffin.

As if she’d somehow read her mind, Phoebe raised her head from her iPhone and quit her incessant texting to glance across the room, her fingers halted on the keypad, her dark hair shining around her pale, heart-shaped face as she sang along with Jay-Z and Rihanna as they blared through the dining hall’s sound system.
You can stand under my umbrella . . . ella . . . ella . . . eh.
Rihanna sounded as like she had been cursed with a truly unfortunate, incurable stutter—or a case of Tourette’s. Madison rolled her green eyes, exhaling heavily. If she had to sit through this song one more time, she was going to stab herself in the eye with a fork. And if whatever spectacle going on behind her required actual
movement
, then it had better be good.

Madison stretched her arms over her head, and carefully turned around, her green cat eyes sweeping the crowded room, and settling uncomfortably on Casey and Drew, who were standing over at the coffee kiosk. Like they’d be anywhere else—Drew was so addicted to caffeine there should’ve been a twelve-step program founded in his honor. Casey was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a white sweater that looked like it came from some horrible suburban outlet store. Even so, Madison had to admit that as happy as Casey looked at that moment it wouldn’t have mattered if she were wearing a paper bag. Casey’s cheeks glowed pinkly and her irrepressibly curly hair waved down her back in yellow curls that shone in the glaring overhead light. She was still the total definition of a hot mess though—albeit a
happy
hot mess. Drew, of course, was yummy perfection as usual—even though his dark hair fell into his eyes, obscuring them from view. Clearly it was time for a haircut—and the loose, white button-down shirt he wore was splattered with coffee stains. Drew was nothing if not a total slob, but it didn’t matter. He was still a vision in khakis. And as she watched Drew feed Casey a bit of a ginormous chocolate chunk cookie, Madison felt like she was about to claw her way out of her own decidedly green skin.

“They really are kind of ridiculously cute together in a Saturday-morning-cartoons-and-Lucky-Charms kind of way,” Phoebe said after noticing Madison’s unbroken gaze toward the coffee kiosk.

“Lucky Charms make me want to vomit. Seriously,” Madison said. She was having none of this cutesy bullshit.

“You don’t like Lucky Charms?” Sophie practically screamed. “I LOVE Lucky Charms. I would always eat all the cereal bits first so the marshmallows would get all soft and the milk would turn purple . . .”

“ME TOO!” Phoebe squealed, interrupting her and then attacking her phone again as it beeped noisily.

“I’m not talking about cereal, damnit,” Madison interrupted, trying to hold herself back from spitting her pent-up venom all over Sophie. “And who the hell are you texting anyway?” she snapped, pointing at Phoebe’s phone. “We’re practically your only friends.” Phoebe’s face turned crimson as she giggled nervously, shoving her phone into her oversized Tod’s cream-colored leather tote that perfectly matched her ivory pants and cabled-cashmere sweater.

“Well, we’re the most
important
anyway.” Sophie giggled, leaning over and sipping her iced hazelnut latte through a red plastic straw. “Did I tell you guys that we finally found a location for my party?” Sophie asked. Her green eyes were bright with excitement as she pushed her latte away and began absentmindedly flipping though the pages of her cocoa-colored Hermès leather notebook she used to take notes in AP Algebra class, the pages filled with neat mathematical diagrams in precise purple ink. “And, oh my God, it’s going to be soooo amazing! Just last night I heard that . . .”

Madison sighed in exasperation and turned away, staring off into space, the sounds of Sophie and Phoebe’s incessant gossiping fading away like a bad radio signal. How could they not understand that what was going on in front of them was downright treasonous? In fact, it was an assault against all that the sovereign nation of Madison Macallister stood for. She had a mind to have Phoebe call Jason Bourne in to put a hit on the two for their crime against her. Or maybe there was another way . . .

Madison turned back to her empty plate and smiled as she pushed it away from her. She knew from experience that the best way to recapture a guy’s interest was usually by getting interested in someone else, and Drew was definitely no exception. Besides, all guys were basically the same entity anyway—all they wanted was what they couldn’t have. As soon as Drew saw her with another guy, he’d want her back all over again. She knew he’d start sending her flowers, showing up at her door-step, basically groveling—and she was going to enjoy every ego-boosting minute of it.

Madison watched as Drew leaned in and gave Casey a long kiss good-bye, his hands on her shoulders, his fingers buried in her hair. Let him kiss whomever he wanted . . . now. By next week, she’d have a new boyfriend, and then he was going to be
really
sorry. Just the thought of her being interested in someone else would make him completely crazy—even if he didn’t know it yet. And just because she got played didn’t mean she had to sit around moping all year long, did it? Manhattan was a big city—and there were more than enough cute guys to distract her while she got this Drew problem ironed out. And, with Drew out of the picture, the Casey situation would naturally take care of itself: Before the fall term was over, her frizzy ass would be on a bus back to Nebraska, or wherever the hell she was from.
Count on it,
Madison thought as Casey tentatively approached the table, a bashful smile on her glowing, freckled face.

As much as it killed her to do so, Madison parted her lips and smiled back, remembering the advice her mother, Edith Spencer Macallister, had given her after Becca McCormick had the nerve to declare on the first day of fifth grade—and in front of the entire class—that Madison Macallister was a stuck up little priss:

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer . . .

the spanish inquisition

Casey walked over to The Bram Clan’s table, the imprint
of Drew’s lips still lingering on her mouth as Madison’s icy green eyes regarded her with obvious disdain before quickly turning away. Casey watched with growing unease as Madison pulled a pair of huge Valentino shades over her eyes like a very expensive, couture smokescreen. Ever since Casey and Drew had become a “thing” (she still wasn’t sure exactly what to call it, and asking him seemed like a decidedly bad idea), she’d gotten the feeling that, although she didn’t seem angry, Mad was basically just tolerating her presence most of the time. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the big question that Casey couldn’t help turning over again and again in her mind was why wasn’t Madison
more
pissed off? Not that she really
wanted
her to be or anything, but the fact that she was as cool as ever just didn’t seem to make sense—unless she really
was
over it. Maybe she just really didn’t care about Drew or want him for herself anymore . . .

Right
, Casey thought, sitting down in an empty chair next to Sophie.
And monkeys will momentarily fly out of my butt
.

“Well, if it isn’t Juliet,” Phoebe chirped with a small smile while picking apart a fat-free blueberry muffin with her short, white-lacquered nails. Phoebe liked to absentmindedly obliterate whatever she happened to be eating—before it ever made the short journey from her fingers to her mouth. It came across as totally mindless, but Casey knew that it was actually something Phoebe forced herself to do on a daily basis so that she wouldn’t scarf down the entire thing in two bites. Better to act like you didn’t really care about food at all than to come off as a giant pig. “Where’s Romeo running off to?” she asked as Drew paused at the door to the dining hall and turned, raising one hand in the air at Casey with a grin, before ducking through the door and out of sight.

“I think he’s got AP Film . . . or maybe Chem,” Casey mumbled, her face flooded with heat.

“Funny thing, chemistry . . .” Sophie added with a sly smile, stealing a hunk of Phoebe’s crumbled muffin and popping it into her mouth as Madison glared at her disapprovingly from behind her shades. “I never did understand what Juliet saw in Romeo anyway—he’s totally DNDL if you ask me.”

“Good thing nobody’s asking you,” Madison said with a snort.

“What’s DNDL?” Casey looked at Sophie quizzically. Why did it always seem like whenever it came to The Bram Clan there was a secret code she was never going to crack, even if she worked at it night and day?

“Date now, dump later,” Phoebe said, splaying her fingers out and inspecting her manicure, which was predictably perfect. Did she do her nails every single night? Casey wondered, looking over at the smooth polish. She’d never seen Phoebe have so much as a chip. It just wasn’t natural. Casey looked down at her own nails, which were ragged and bitten almost all the way down to her cuticles, and promptly hid them under the table.

“Not that you’d know anything about it,” Madison said coolly, picking up her glass of Perrier with a bright green lime wedge the color of her eyes smashed at the bottom. “You don’t really date—
or
dump.” She sipped her fancy water, her lips set in a smirk.

“But I
will
,” Phoebe said with impatience. “I’m just
choosy
.”

“More like petrified,” Madison answered as she retrieved a Lancôme lipstick from her Furla tote and ran the baby pink stain over her lips with a practiced hand. How the hell did she do that without using a mirror? Casey marveled while staring at Mad’s perfect pout. Casey could barely apply ChapStick without getting it everywhere—much less anything that involved actual color and a steady hand . . .
Further proof that she’s some kind of alien grown in a pod in outer space
, Casey thought as Mad threw her lipstick back into her tote, and pushed her platinum hair from her shoulders with a graceful swing of her head.
Kind of like Katie Holmes
. . .

“So, speaking of dating . . . how are things with the Drewster?” Sophie turned to Casey and smiled, her small, even teeth shining in her face like pearls. “Has he forced you to sit through Woody Allen’s complete oeuvre yet?”

“Are you kidding me?” Phoebe deadpanned. “They couldn’t make it through the first five minutes of
The Rocky and Bull-winkle Show
without making out.”

Sophie giggled around her straw, slurping her iced latte like someone was going to rip it away from her. Casey laughed nervously, but couldn’t help noticing that Madison was staring at the floor—and rapidly shredding her paper napkin between clenched fingers.

“I know,” Sophie said, turning to Phoebe. “I get a chronic case of third wheel-itis whenever they’re around.”

“Sure,” Casey broke in good-naturedly. “Just talk about me like I’m not here—it’s okay . . .”

“Well, at least we’re not talking about you behind your
back
. . .” Phoebe grinned slyly and swept the crumbs of her muffin off of the table and onto the floor. “
Yet
.”

Phoebe and Sophie broke into a fit of giggles, and proceeded to slap each other a noisy high ten. Although she still had her shades on, and was still busily shredding what was left of her napkin into something the rexies might consume for a light snack, Casey was sure that behind those dark lenses Madison was rolling her green eyes in annoyance. In truth, Casey was feeling kind of conflicted about her newly minted couple status. Even though Mad and Drew weren’t exactly “together” when Casey hooked up with him that night at his party, she knew Mad well enough at this point to realize that there was no way she could actually be happy for her. Madison Macallister had an ego the size of the tiniest yacht in the Hamptons—which was to say humongous.

But what bothered Casey even more was the thought that she might have turned into one of “those” girls—the kind that blow their friends off to hang out with some random guy. The kind that practically glues her cell to the palm of her hand, and checks her e-mail a hundred times a day—
and
her MySpace for any new messages. Ugh. She had officially become a teen cliché. Casey drained the last of her raspberry Italian soda and pushed the cup to the side, resting her elbows on the table. Had she magically turned into a backstabbing boyfriend stealer overnight, the kind of girl she used to loathe? And, worse yet, did she care enough to do anything about it?

“So what’s the 411?” Sophie turned to Casey while exasperatedly pushing her bangs from her face, and reached into her bag with one hand, pulling out an amber prescription bottle. She popped the top off and placed a pill nonchalantly into her mouth, swallowing hard. “Or are you guys keeping things on the DL for now?”