Jinx (2 page)

Then one of the strangers, a girl whose jet-black hair matched the color of her minidress and high-heeled boots, came swaggering out of the gazebo and stood with one hand on a narrow, jutting hip while she eyed me suspiciously through heavily made-up eyes.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

Aware that the people inside the gazebo were staring at me with equal hostility, I heard myself stammer, “Um, I'm Jean Honeychurch, Tory Gardiner's cousin….”

The black-haired girl said the F word again, this time in quite a different tone. Then she lifted the hand she'd been keeping behind her back, and took a long swig from the glass she held. “Don't worry,” she said, over her shoulder to the people in the gazebo. “It's just my freakin' cousin from Iowa.”

I blinked, once. Twice. And then a third time.
“Tory?”
I asked incredulously.

“Torrance,” my cousin corrected me. Setting the glass down on a low stone bench, she pulled a cigarette out from behind her ear and wedged it between her scarlet lips. “What are you doing here? You weren't supposed to come until tomorrow.”

“I…I guess I'm early,” I said. “Sorry.”

Don't even ask me why I was apologizing for something that wasn't even my fault—the Gardiners were the ones who'd got the day of my arrival wrong, not me.

But there was something about Tory—this new Tory, anyway—that made the knot in my stomach twist harder than ever.
This
was Tory?
This
was my cousin Tory, with whom, when the Gardiners had last come to visit us in Iowa, I'd waded down in Pike Creek, and climbed trees over by the elementary school?

It couldn't be.
That
Tory had been pudgy and blond, with an impish smile and an equally mischievous sense of humor.

This
Tory looked as if it had been a long time—a
really
long time—since she'd last smiled.

Not that she wasn't pretty. She was, in a supersophisticated, urban-chic sort of way. She'd lost her baby fat, and now her figure was reed-slim. The blond hair was gone, too, replaced with a severely cut, ink-black pageboy.

She looked like a model—but not one of those happy, sunny ones, like Cindy Crawford. She looked like one of the pouty, unhappy ones…like Kate Moss, after she'd gotten busted for doing all that cocaine.

Tory,
I wanted to say.
What
happened
to you?

Tory must have been thinking something along the same lines—only about
me
having changed since she last saw me—since she suddenly chuckled (managing to make it one of the most humorless chuckles I'd ever heard) and said, “God, Jinx. You haven't changed a bit. You still look farm-fresh and country-sweet.”

Oh. So maybe she
wasn't
thinking something along the same lines.

I looked down at myself. I had dressed with extra-special care that morning, knowing that when I stepped off the plane, it would be in the most sophisticated city in the world.

But evidently my jeans, pink cotton sweater, and the same-color pink suede loafers were not citified enough to disguise the fact that I am, for the most part, exactly what Tory had accused me of being: farm-fresh and country-sweet.

Although we actually live on a cul-de-sac, not a farm.

“God,” said a voice from within the gazebo. “What I wouldn't give for that
hair
.” And then, wriggling like a snake, a girl every bit as model-slim as Tory—Tyra to Tory's Kate Moss—slipped from the gazebo, and joined Tory in her inspection of me.

“Is this
natural
?” the girl asked, standing on her toes in order to take hold of one of the curly red tendrils that spring from my head with an abandon I've basically given up trying to contain. She seemed to be wearing some kind of school uniform made up of a white blouse, blue blazer, and pleated gray skirt.

But on her, even a school uniform looked like high fashion. That's how pretty she was.

“Oh, her hair's natural,” Tory said—not like she thought it was a good thing, either. “Our grandmother has it, too.”

“God,” the girl said. “That is so wild. I know girls who pay
hundreds
to get spiral curls like that. And the color! It's so…
vivid
.”

“Hey,” said a masculine voice from the gazebo. “Are you girls just gonna squeal over Red over there, or are we gonna get down to business?”

The girl who had liked my hair rolled her eyes, and even Tory—or Torrance, as she apparently now preferred to be called—cracked something that resembled a smile.

“God, Shawn,” she said. “Relax.” To me, she said, “You want a beer?”

I tried not to let my shock show. A beer? Tory was offering me a beer? Tory, who five years ago wouldn't even eat Pop Rocks, because she was convinced they would make her stomach explode?

“Um,” I said. “No, thank you.” Not because I don't drink—I had champagne at Stacy's mom's wedding to her new stepdad, Ray—but because I don't like beer.

“We've got a pitcher of Long Island iced tea, too,” Tory's friend said in a friendly way.

“Oh,” I said, feeling relieved. “Okay. I'll have some of that.”

Tory's friend made a face. “Yeah,” she said. “I don't
like beer, either. I'm Chanelle, by the way.”

“Chanel?” I repeated. I wasn't sure I'd heard her right.

“Right,” she said. “Only with an extra L and E at the end. Chanel's my mom's favorite store.”

“Good thing it wasn't Gucci,” the boy Tory had called Shawn said.

“Ignore him,” Chanelle said to me, rolling her expressive dark eyes again, as I followed her into the gazebo. “That's Shawn,” she said, pointing to a blond guy who was seated at a glass-topped table inside. He had on gray trousers, a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a red-and-blue-striped tie, which had been carelessly knotted, and just as carelessly loosened again.

“And that's my boyfriend, Robert, over there,” Chanelle went on. Another boy, this one dark-haired, but wearing exactly the same clothes as Shawn, nodded at me over the cigarette he was rolling.

Which was when I realized it wasn't a cigarette at all.

“And that's Gretchen,” Chanelle said, pointing at another model-pretty girl—this one blond, with a pierced eyebrow—wearing the same uniform as Chanelle. “And that's Lindsey.” Lindsey, also in school uniform, was a smaller version of Gretchen, minus the piercing. Instead, she was wearing a velvet choker and bright red lipstick.

Both girls barely acknowledged my existence. They looked way more interested in the drinks they held than in me.

“Okay,” Shawn said, rubbing his hands together. “We
done with the chitchat now? Can we get back down to business?”

In the farthest corner of the gazebo, over where the glass wall met up with the brick one, someone cleared his throat.

“Oh,” Chanelle said. “I almost forgot. That's Zach.”

The guy in the corner tipped a can of Coke in my direction as a sort of salute. “Hello, Cousin Jean from Iowa,” he said pleasantly. He, unlike the other two boys, wasn't wearing a tie or dress slacks, but jeans and a T-shirt. He was also, I thought, a good year or two older than everyone else in the gazebo, who looked more or less my age.

He was also hot. Way hot. In your average wide-shouldered, dark-haired, green-eyed, Greek-god kind of way.

“Weren't you leaving, man?” Shawn asked Zach…and not in a very friendly voice.

“I was going to,” Zach said, moving over to make room for me on his bench—the only seat left. “But maybe I'll stick around a bit longer.”

“Suit yourself,” Shawn said. But he didn't sound too happy about it.

“Good,” Tory said, pouring a glass of iced tea from a pitcher that sat on the gazebo floor. She passed the glass to me. I'd taken the seat next to Zach. “I hate how you never stick around to party, Zach.”

“Maybe I'm just not that into copping a buzz before dark,” Zach said.

“I wish I could be buzzed twenty-four seven,” Robert
said wistfully, as he licked the ends of his rolling paper.

“You are,” Chanelle assured him. And not like she was pleased about it, either.

“Okay, where were we?” Tory wanted to know. “Oh, yeah. I need at least enough to get me through midterms. How about you, Chanelle?”

“Well,” Chanelle said. I noticed that the sweater she had tied around her waist was the same color blue as the stripes in the boys' ties. So were Gretchen's and Lindsey's.

So they all went to the same school—the Chapman School, which I was transferring into…a bit late in the year, admittedly. But there'd been extenuating circumstances.

I swallowed. Better not to think of the extenuating circumstances right now.

“None for me, thanks,” Chanelle said.

“God, Chanelle,” Tory said, her lip curled. “Midterms. Not to mention, spring formal. Do you want to be a heifer at it? Hello?”

“God, Torrance. Blackheads. Not to mention, zits. Do you want my dermatologist to kill me? Hello?” Chanelle shot back, not unpleasantly, and in a dead-on imitation of Tory that made Lindsey snort until iced tea came out of her nose.

“Loser,” Tory said, when she saw this. Lindsey wiped her nose on her sweater sleeve, and said, “Put me down for twenty.”

“Twenty,” Shawn said, punching numbers into the
Treo he'd pulled from a backpack sitting on the floor. “You, Tor?”

“Same, I guess,” Tory said.

She lit her own cigarette, studiously ignoring me, even though I was looking right at her. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I mean, it was bad enough Tory was a brunette now, and thin as a movie star. But she was buying drugs, too? Although I had to admit, Shawn didn't look anything like the drug dealers they show so regularly on
Law and Order
. He wasn't superskinny or wearing dirty clothes. He looked…
nice.

And Tory didn't look like a junkie. I mean, she's totally gorgeous.

Still, her life, at least so far as I could tell, seemed perfect. What did she need drugs for?

These were the thoughts that were banging around in my head as I sat there. I guess you could say I was suffering from some major culture shock.

Also, the knot in my stomach was bigger and tighter than ever.

“And I need some Valium,” Tory added. “I've been very tense lately.”

“I thought that's what your little trips with Shawn down to the boiler room during free study were for,” Gretchen said, speaking up for the first time. Her voice was surprisingly gravelly.

So was what she was saying. Surprising, I mean. Tory and Shawn were going out?

But Tory just shot her friend a sarcastic look. And her middle finger.

“I can get you ten,” Shawn said, grinning. “Any more'n that is just askin' for trouble. I know it's a lost cause, but how about you, Rosen? Need anything?”

Beside me, Zach said, “No, thanks. I'm good.”

Tory looked shocked. “Zach,” she said. “Are you sure? Because Shawn can get the real thing, you know. None of that generic crap. His dad's a doctor.”

“Jesus, Tor, the man's straight, all right? Leave him alone,” Shawn said. His gaze settled on me. “How 'bout you, Red?”

Tory, who'd looked annoyed a moment earlier, laughed so hard that some of her drink went up her nose, and she started choking. This made Lindsey say, “Loser,” exactly the way Tory had when it had happened to her.

I said, trying not to show how completely freaked out I was, “No, thank you. I'm—I'm trying to quit.”

“Hey,” Zach dead-panned. “Good for you, Cousin Jean. The first step is admitting you've got a problem.”

“Thanks,” I said, and tried to hide my mortification that the hottest guy in the room was talking to me by taking a sip of my iced tea…

…which I promptly spat out.

Unfortunately, all over Zach.

“Hey,” Robert said, clutching his joint defensively. “Say it, don't spray it, Red!”

“Oh my God,” I cried. I could feel my cheeks going up
in flames. “I'm so sorry. I didn't realize…I didn't expect there to be—”

“—alcohol in it?” Tory had recovered herself, and now she threw a handful of napkins at Zach. “Why do you think it's called a
Long Island
iced tea, moron?”

“I've never had one before,” I said. “I've never even been to Long Island. Oh my God, Zach, I'm so sorry.”

But Zach didn't look mad. In fact, he had a bemused smile on his face. “‘I've never even been to Long Island,'” he echoed, as if he were trying to memorize the phrase.

“I'm so sorry,” I said again. I really couldn't believe it. I mean, I
could
, because it was so typical of me, of course. But I also couldn't because—well, because I had just spat Long Island iced tea all over the cutest boy I had ever seen. I mean, I'd been in New York barely an hour, and already, I'd made a complete ass of myself. Tory and her friends had to think I was the worst backwater hick they'd ever met. It wasn't like none of the kids from school back home ever drank, or got high, or bought drugs.

They just didn't tend to do it…well, around me.

“I really am sorry,” I said.

Zach grinned at me. I felt a pluck on my heartstrings.

Steady there, Jean.

“No problem, Cousin Jean from Iowa. You want a Coke, or something?” The grin grew broader. “And I do mean the carbonated kind.”

“Sure,” I said, completely dazzled by the smile. “That'd be great.”

Zach rose, but sat down again when Tory barked,
“
I'll
get it for her,” and abruptly marched out of the gazebo.

“Jesus,” Gretchen said. “What's with
her
?”