Infamous (19 page)

“How much is there to do in a hot tub?” Yvonne stumbled over her words as she slid closer to Julian. She adjusted the strap of her yellow C&C tank, a color that made her look like one of those marshmallow Easter chicks.

“How ‘bout a nice little game of Truth or Dare?” Casey spoke up, taking another swig from his beer. His dark curls were damp and plastered across his forehead. When he’d tugged off his T-shirt, Jenny had almost fainted. He had a gorgeous swimmer’s body—muscular shoulders tapering to a slender, toned abdomen. “You don’t get to play it as much in college.”

“How come?” Jenny asked, sinking down so that her shoulders went under the wonderfully hot water. Her head felt deliciously fuzzy, and it was all she could do not to throw her arms around Casey and start kissing him in front of everyone. He was just so
cute
.

Casey leaned toward her and raised his eyebrows. She felt his breath on her skin. “We play much more
sophisticated
games,”

he said jokingly. She wouldn’t have minded learning what they were.

“All right—Tinsley. Truth or dare?” Clifford Montgomery, the water polo player at Waverly who was completely in love with Tinsley, leaned toward her.

“Dare,” Tinsley said boredly as she reached up and twisted her wet hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. She’d been surprised to see Julian come out to the hot tub at all—or at least without stupid Sleigh Monroe-Hill—since he’d been completely reluctant even to be in the same room with Tinsley since dinner. Where was Sleigh, anyway? Maybe she’d gone home, satisfied now that she’d completely ruined Tinsley’s chances with Julian forever.

“I dare you to kiss Kara.” Cliff grinned from ear to ear.

“Hey!” Kara protested. “It wasn’t my dare.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Just because I’ve kissed girls in the past…”

Rolling her eyes, Tinsley stood up in the hot tub and quickly leaned over to Kara, kissing her softly on her cheek, right near her lips. “Sorry,” Tinsley whispered before sinking back to her own spot in the tub and staring up at the cloudy sky.

“No fair.” Cliff waved his empty beer bottle around in the air. “There was no tongue.”

Casey pointed a finger at him. “Guess next time you’ll know to specify, dude.” He laughed and leaned back, casually throwing his arm around Jenny’s bare shoulders. It felt heavenly. The stark night air was cool against her hot skin, and she felt each snowflake as it landed on her and melted. Beneath the water, she could feel Casey’s foot lightly touch hers. Everything just felt…perfect.

This was the Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.

“Truth or dare, Jenny?” Tinsley flicked a finger against the surface of the water, sending a tiny spray in Jenny’s direction.

Not wanting to have to kiss any girls, Jenny opted for truth.

Casey spoke up before Tinsley could say anything. “So, Jenny, if you had to kiss anyone in this hot tub, who would it be?” he demanded in a hushed voice.

Jenny giggled. He was so cute. Her wine cooler-soaked brain managed to tell her mouth to say what she’d actually been thinking, which was, “You, silly! You know I love you!”

Giggles broke out, but before Jenny could open her mouth to say anything more, Tinsley was practically on top of her, reaching a hand under Jenny’s arm and tugging her to her feet.

“You’re coming with me.” Tinsley pushed Jenny out of the tub and threw a crumpled towel around her shoulders.

“But I don’t want to go anywhere!” Jenny wailed, turning back to the hot tub and drunkenly waving at everyone. The group cheered back at her.

Jenny dropped the towel from her shoulders, and Tinsley had the feeling that if she didn’t get Jenny out right now, the next thing she’d be dropping—now that the
L
word was already out there—would be her clothes. “Let go!”

“You are drunk,” Tinsley hissed. She squeezed Jenny’s forearm harder, grabbed her towel off the ground, and shoved her through the sliding glass doors.

At the sight of two scantily clad, dripping wet girls, the living room, filled with clouds of marijuana smoke and college boys playing video games, erupted into appreciative hoots.

“Come hang out with us!” Jeremy Stidder called as Tinsley pushed Jenny down the hallway toward the bathroom. Once inside, the door locked behind them, Tinsley poured Jenny a giant plastic cup of water.

“What are we doing in here?” Jenny turned the knob but couldn’t figure out the lock. Her head lolled around like it was too heavy for her neck to support, and her eyes were completely glazed over. “I want to be out there…with Casey.”

“Drink.” Tinsley handed the glass to Jenny, who obediently sipped it down. She flicked a switch on the wall and a red heat lamp overhead whirred to life.

“Uh-oh.” Jenny abruptly set the cup down on the bathroom counter. In her loose white towel and with her dark hair plastered to her head, she looked like a kid. And in a way, she really kind of was one. All the more reason she shouldn’t be professing her love to guys she didn’t even know.

“What’s the matter?” Tinsley asked warily, shivering a little. She’d caught a glimpse of Julian as she forced Jenny out of the tub. From the look on his face, she knew the scene was just further evidence of what a bossy bitch Tinsley Carmichael was.

“I think I’m gonna…” Jenny trailed off, but Tinsley recognized the greenish cast to her skin and quickly rushed Jenny over to the toilet. She held her hair back as all of the wine coolers Jenny had guzzled—as well as her efforts to remain detached and just have fun—swirled down the drain.

The musty wood smell of the sauna filled Brandon’s nose as he laid his towel along one of the benches. He wiped the sweat from his brow and stretched out across one of the cedar benches, adjusting his Ralph Lauren boxer briefs.

“This is beautiful.” Heath stuffed his towel beneath his head and yawned. “Without Dunderdorf, I could get some serious relaxing done here.”

After dinner they’d tossed and turned under the eaves of the stifling Dunderdorf twins’ room, unable to fall asleep in such a strange setting. Brandon had originally balked at Heath’s suggestion that they take a sauna to “sweat out their sexual frustration,” but twenty sleepless minutes later, he had relented. Heath assured him he’d made the right choice, insisting that the sauna would “open Brandon’s pores.”

“I can feel the kirsch coming out of me.” Heath closed his eyes and took a giant gulp from one of the bottles of Evian they’d grabbed from the fridge on their way downstairs. “That stuff is foul.”

“Evil,” Brandon added, leaning his head back against the cedar wall and letting the steam help him sober up. He was still infinitely pissed at Heath for dragging him to Mr. Dunderdorf’s under false pretenses—the fable about the supposedly legendary twins now seemed to him as fantastic as tales of the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot—but he was happy, too, in a way. Happy to have something else to be miserable about besides Sage. The sting of Sage’s sudden breakup had started to subside, if only because the whole day at the Dunderdorfs’ had been so stifling and boring, it now felt like five years had gone by.

Steam filled the sauna and Brandon rubbed his tired eyes. Two faces at the glass sauna door startled him. “Heath!” he hissed, still slightly drunk.

A soft snore emanated from Heath.

“Heath.” He snapped his towel at Heath, smacking him against his bare chest.

Heath opened one eye. “Huh?”

“Look. Over. There.” Brandon indicated the sauna door just as it opened and Heath bolted upright. They watched in amazement as two girls armored in puffy ski jumpsuits—one orange, one blue—poked their heads in, their hair encased by thick wool caps. Their matching black-framed glasses fogged up immediately.

“Are you friends of our father’s?” one of them asked, removing her glasses to clear the steam. A whoosh of cold air breezed into the sauna.

Brandon and Heath just stared, their mouths agape. Worse than the idea of the twins being phantoms was the actual sight of them in their dumpy clothes.

They’re
nerds
,
Brandon thought.

“We go to Waverly,” Heath finally managed to say. He stuck his chest out a little—to him, even dorky girls were still girls. “Your father invited us over for Thanksgiving.”

“Then you must have an opinion,” the one in the blue said. “Is America really a democracy, or is it actually a republic?”

Heath’s face, which had showed a glimmer of hope, immediately fell again. “No schoolwork on holidays,” he grunted. Brandon was still too drunk to have any sort of political discussion, and wondered how they were going to get out of this. They couldn’t be rude to Dunderdorf’s kids, could they? But all Brandon wanted to do at this moment was grab his clothes and hightail it back to campus.

The other twin began unzipping her ski suit. “It’s a democracy,” she said, stepping out of the pants to reveal a pair of black leggings. “That’s all Americans talk about. How they live in a democracy.”

“I’m not stupid,” her sister said, tossing her ski suit carelessly out the door, and pulling her cable-knit sweater covered in snowflakes over her head. “I know that. But it’s not
really
a democracy.” She shimmied out of her dark leggings, revealing a pair of long, slender legs. Brandon heard a gurgling sound from Heath as he watched in awe.

Brandon felt faint. It was like one of those dolls where there was another doll inside and the more dolls you found, the smaller the doll got—except this time, the dolls just kept getting
sexier
. The twins must’ve had twenty pounds of layering against the cold, which all ended up in a pile at the sauna door, their slim bodies, now in silky dove gray panties and matching bras, each with a tiny rose in the middle, looking nothing like the pictures of the girls in lederhosen. No braces, no dorky white boots, no terrible hairstyles. They’d grown up and matured—very, very nicely. Brandon looked at Heath, whose eyes were trained on the twins as they sauntered to the bench in the corner.

“Well?” the one nearest Brandon asked. Without her glasses, her gray-blue eyes, framed by dark lashes, were clear and sharp. They looked like some kind of gemstone, though Brandon, either from the kirsch or the steam or something else, couldn’t remember which.

“It’s definitely a democracy,” Heath answered, sliding down the bench toward the girls.

The twins giggled. “See what I mean,” one said to the other. Brandon couldn’t stop staring at the sight of two beautiful, identical girls in matching bras and panties, tiny beads of sweat starting to form on their collarbones. He felt like he was in some kind of beer commercial, where the loser guy manages to score two hotties just because he’s carrying the right kind of beer.

“I’m Helga, by the way,” the twin sitting next to Brandon said. She slid the elastic off the end of one long braid and slowly untwined her hair. “And this is my sister, Gretchen.”

Gretchen gave a short wave. “It’s a republic, by the way.” She flicked her braids over her shoulder. As she turned to smile at Heath, Brandon caught a glimpse of a tiny tattoo in the shape of a fairy on her shoulder blades. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have the electoral college.”

Heath shrugged, and Brandon could tell he had no idea what the electoral college was. “That’s true,” Brandon answered, learning forward, elbows on his knees. “What do they have in Switzerland?” Up close, the girls had skin that looked like white chocolate.

“They have everything.” Brandon noticed that both girls slightly elided their
t
‘s into
z
‘s so that it sounded like she said,
Zey have everyzing
, which gave Brandon goose bumps. They could have been Bond girls. He watched as Helga opened a compartment in the sauna bench that neither he nor Heath had known existed and retrieved a pair of spray bottles. The girls squeezed the triggers, unleashing a cool mist around their heads and chests.

“How was the flight?” Brandon asked, shifting on the bench and trying not to think about how almost-naked these girls were. Heath, with a beatific smile on his face, seemed too dumbfounded to contribute.

“Fine.” Helga leaned back against the bench. Or maybe it was Gretchen. No, Gretchen had the tattoo, right? “I read Goethe, and that always makes time fly.” Brandon just nodded and tried not to stare at the tiny bead of sweat that was trickling down her chest.

“Where’s your father?” Heath asked suddenly. His normally relaxed face looked tense, like he was terrified Mr. Dunderdorf would run through the doorway at any moment, waving around his bloody turkey-killing ax and chasing them away.

“He’s in a kirsch coma on the couch.” Gretchen—or the one still in braids—touched Heath’s arm casually, to calm him down. “He won’t wake up until tomorrow.”

“A kirsch coma on the couch,” Helga repeated, and the girls erupted in laughter. There was something so incredibly sexy about the twins—besides the obvious killer bodies and gorgeous faces—that Brandon couldn’t quite place. The way they played off each other, made jokes, asked questions, laughed big laughs. He tried to imagine Helga and Gretchen at Waverly. Who would they be friends with? He couldn’t see Tinsley or Callie giving them the time of day, especially not if their puffy skiwear was any indicator of their fashion sense. Maybe Jenny. But Jenny liked everyone. He tried to imagine the twins on the Commons, laughing and arguing about politics, and then it occurred to him: The twins totally lacked self-consciousness. They had no idea how hot they were, because they didn’t spend their whole life thinking about it, unlike most of the girls at Waverly.

“Maybe a little too much Thanksgiving fun for him.” Heath perked up suddenly, now that he knew Dunderdorf was safely passed out. “Man, you’re really lucky you missed out on killing the turkey.”

“We’re vegetarians.” Gretchen spritzed herself again, the water droplets glistening on her skin.

“You really shouldn’t eat animals.” Helga collected her blond hair and magically twisted it up into one of those loose buns that girls with long hair were always making. “It’s bad for the environment.”