Notorious (22 page)

Tinsley set down her tray. “I’m really sorry to be the one to tell you, but I didn’t want you to find out from someone else.” She took a deep breath, and Callie looked up at her in alarm, their eyes meeting across the clear plastic sneeze guard. “Jenny and Easy are totally together.”

Callie paused mid-scoop. “What?” The temperature of her body immediately dropped twenty degrees. Her hands went clammy. She dropped the wooden fork back into the bin of greens. “That’s not true.”

Tinsley quickly picked up her tray and hurried over to Callie’s side of the bar. She looked like she was about to faint. “I’m so sorry. But it is. I saw them in New York together.”

“But that doesn’t mean any …” Callie’s voice faltered. Tinsley’s pitying look could mean only one thing—it really was true. Easy liked Jenny? That
shrimp
? Those deformed-looking boobs? For real? Jenny had assured her—
promised
her—that nothing was going on! That
liar
! “How could she do that? We
live
together. I talk to her every fucking day! How could she not tell me?”

Tinsley touched Callie’s arm. “She probably didn’t want to piss you off.”

“That bitch.” Callie shivered and looked down to find herself holding her dinner fork in stabbing position. If Jenny wanted to live through the night, she might want to sleep somewhere else.

“Wait up!” Jenny spotted Brett leaving the library that night, her sleek red hair bouncing as she descended the steps. There was a definite spring to her step—her high-heeled lace-up Prada oxfords practically skipped across the sidewalk. She swung around to face Jenny and smiled.

“Hey.” Brett flicked a lock of hair out of her eyes.

“It’s nice to see you smiling.” Jenny slipped the strap of her heavy suede bag across her body—it was too heavy to carry on one side, but she hated it when the strap cut between her breasts, calling even more attention to them than normal. Of course a backpack would be even worse.

Brett giggled. “I know I shouldn’t be this happy, but I can’t help it. It’s just … poetic justice, you know. Even if Tinsley
is
going to kill me.” The thought of sharing a room with Tinsley now made her feel almost physically ill. Hard to believe that last year they were giving each other manicures and gushing about their most recent crushes. “I haven’t seen her since the news broke.”

They giggled as they walked back to the dorm. Inside, the door to Dumbarton 303 was wide open, with “ABC” by the Jackson Five blaring from the Callie’s iPod docking station. “Great,” muttered Brett under her breath as she and Jenny drew near. “They’re having a disco party.”

“Hey, Cal,” Brett greeted Callie as she walked through the doorway.

“Hello.” Callie nodded, pulling on her pajamas. Strands of her strawberry-blond hair stood straight up from the static. She flopped down on her unmade bed.

“Sounds like you’re in a great mood,” Brett said, dropping her antique Prada shopping tote to the floor carelessly.

Callie didn’t respond. She slid the hair band she kept on her wrist around a ponytail and fiddled with the volume on her iPod. The music switched to a moody Belle & Sebastian song.

“I
love
this song,” Jenny offered. Callie looked up, her hazel eyes focused and cold, and clicked off the music. Suddenly the silence in the room was deafening. Whoa.

“Well, look who it is,” a new voice said, and all three of the girls turned their heads to see Tinsley, in her Egyptian cotton bathrobe, playing with the cap of a bottle of Evian. “Callie and I wanted to talk to you both about something. We just wanted to tell you both that you can’t be in Café Society anymore.”

Jenny’s reddened face turned even redder. She glanced at Brett. Why was Tinsley doing this? It seemed like an open declaration of war.

Brett’s eyebrows scrunched together threateningly. “Oh, yeah?” She picked up her Brine field hockey stick as if she were preparing to whack Tinsley’s head with it. “Is this because of Eric?”

Tinsley leaned her head against the door frame. “Eric?” she asked casually. She pretended to think about it. “Actually, yes, I’m kind of annoyed you got him fired just when we were starting to get close.”

“How can you even say that with a straight face?” Brett demanded. “Who do you think you
are
?”

“I wouldn’t be asking that question if I were you.” Tinsley strode across the room and dropped the water bottle onto her bed-side table before looking back at Brett. “
I know who I am
. Do you?”

Jenny, who had been following the rapid exchange with horror, felt completely lost. What was Tinsley hinting at? Whatever it was, it shocked Brett into silence pretty quickly.

Brett turned her back on Tinsley. A Dorothy Parker quote suddenly came to her mind:
The woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say “No” in any of them
. When she turned back, her face was more composed and her lips were steady. “I know I’m not a
slut
.” She returned Tinsley’s nasty smile. “That’s something.”

“You should think about who you hang out with, then.” Callie spoke up for the first time since Tinsley’s arrival. She was staring straight at Jenny, and her fury suddenly made a lot more sense. Tinsley must have seen her with Easy in New York yesterday.

For a millisecond, Jenny thought maybe she could make things better by promising not to see Easy anymore. Maybe things could go back to the way they were the first night at the pizza parlor. She wanted desperately to get that feeling back—that feeling of belonging, of getting drunk with the cool girls, of having them like her. But the second passed. Who was she kidding? She’d never wanted to be with a boy so badly in her entire life as she wanted to be with Easy. She wouldn’t trade him for all the Tinsley Carmichaels and Callie Vernons in the world.

Brett was about to come to Jenny’s defense when Jenny surprised herself by doing it on her own. “I know why you’re angry with me,” she said softly. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I should have been honest from the beginning.”

Callie had none of Tinsley’s abilities to control her anger elegantly. Instead, her normally picture-perfect skin became red and blotchy and her left eyelid started to twitch. She looked unbalanced. “You’re a liar,” she snarled.

“Don’t you realize what a hypocrite you’re being?” Brett railed at Callie. “You’re mad at Jenny for getting together with Easy
after
you guys broke up while
she
“—Brett gestured toward Tinsley with the curved end of her stick—”started chasing down Eric while I was
still with him?
” She glared at Tinsley. “That’s so …
shitty
.”

“Honey.” Tinsley gave Brett a pitying look. “You were never with him.”

“Fuck you!” Brett whirled back to Callie. “And fuck you too. You can have your stupid, self-absorbed Cafe Society and your stupid, fucked-up games.” Brett shook her head. Her fiery red hair looked wild but regal. “I have better things to do.” With that, she stalked out of the room, leaving silence in her wake.

Jenny glanced at Callie. Tinsley was an enormous bitch, but she still felt like she owed Callie something. She’d lied to her, after all. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Maybe one day you’ll forgive me?”

Callie’s eye twitched. Not bloody likely.

Thank God it was Friday. Jenny had looked for Easy all day on Thursday but hadn’t been able to find him. She’d wanted to talk to him about Callie and getting kicked out of Café Society, but given how pissed off Callie was, she hadn’t wanted to just run around campus asking everyone if they’d seen him. Easy was probably just spending his time with Credo, enjoying the glorious blue skies before they turned cold and gloomy. But it
was
a little strange that he was
MIA
. They’d had such an amazing time in New York, and they’d flirted all through class on Wednesday afternoon. Didn’t he miss her?

Now it was Friday, which meant art class again. She slipped through the door and saw Easy pulling his pastels and pad of thick pastel paper from his supply shelf. She came up behind him and ran her hand across his shoulders. “Hey.”

Easy raised his head. His enormous blue eyes looked stressed but happy to see her. “Oh … hi.” He gave a distracted smile.

“Are you all right?” Jenny glanced around for Mrs. Silver, who was going around the room, checking in with students.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Easy raised his eyes. “What’s up?”

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Jenny smiled at Alison, who was just now pulling her sketchpad from her shelf next to Jenny’s. She raised one of her sleek eyebrows toward Easy and nodded her dark, pigtailed head. Jenny felt a twinge of regret that she wouldn’t get to hang out with her anymore, now that she’d been unceremoniously kicked out of Café Society. But did that have to mean her social life at Waverly was over?

“Here?” Easy looked dubious.

Jenny grabbed his arm, feeling another little thrill of excitement at touching him. “No, let’s go to the kiln room.”

Easy raised his eyebrows. “That sounds kind of sassy.” Jenny giggled.

Jenny pulled him into the small room around the corner from the supply shelves. It was a dark room with a single window looking out over the Hudson. Two large kilns and three small ones took up most of the space, and the room smelled like clay and dust. Shelves of pottery in varying degrees of completion lined both walls. It was a romantic place, and it reminded Jenny of the sexy scene in
Ghost
where Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore get all wild with the clay on the potter’s wheel. Mmmm. Jenny stepped close to Easy and looked up at him with longing.

Easy smiled down at her. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”

That brought Jenny back to reality. “Um, no. I just wanted to say that I’ve been kicked out of Café Society.” The words sounded so silly. “I guess I’m not going to Boston.”

Easy didn’t look very surprised. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jenny stared down at her black-and-white-plaid ballet flats. “So,” she said nervously, “are you still going to go?”

Easy let out his breath, and Jenny looked up at him in alarm. For the first time, she began to think that maybe something was seriously wrong. Her palms started to sweat. Maybe he hadn’t had fun in the city after all? “I’m not sure yet,” he admitted.

“Did I … did I do something? To make you mad at me?” Jenny bit her lip nervously.

“I don’t know.” He turned away from her for a minute and played with a clay pot on the top shelf. He was being an asshole; he knew it. But his mind had latched onto that awful thing Tinsley had told him in the city—that Jenny was making out with another guy—and Heath’s IM. He had to find out if it was true, and he hoped Jenny would forgive him if he was wrong. But he had to know. “Any chance you were making out with another guy? Like … Monday night?”

Jenny’s mouth fell open. She could feel her cheeks turn crimson when she remembered the stupid pizza boy kiss. “Oh my God … there
was
this stupid thing that happened.” She stared at her shoes again. “It was an initiation rite for Tinsley’s society. We all sort of kissed this …”

“Wait a sec.” Easy ran his hands through his hair. “How do you ‘sort of kiss’ someone?” His eyes were blazing. “Either you kiss someone or you don’t.”

“Easy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jenny’s enormous brown eyes—the ones he’d trusted—brimmed with tears, but Easy was too angry to be moved. “I kissed him, but I didn’t mean to. It was just a … a dumb thing. Like a game … I
had
to. And I … I didn’t know if we were exactly together yet. ...”

“You didn’t
mean
to? Your lips just accidentally found their way onto some dude’s mouth?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe this.” Easy picked up an ugly, lopsided bowl and clutched his fingers around it. He had the urge to hurl it against the wall and watch it break into a million pieces. He reached for the doorknob.

“Where are you going?” Jenny cried. Her hands were fumbling with a loose thread at the bottom of her light pink sweater.

She looked so sweet and distraught that Easy almost changed his mind. His heart was so full of the feeling that he might be making a huge mistake, ending something that felt this big and this right before it even had a chance to really begin. But then he pictured some asshole’s lips mashed against hers and her kissing back. He opened the door. “I have to get to class. I’m on probation, remember?”

Jenny nodded miserably. “But please, you have to understand. Can’t we talk about …”

“I think we should probably not talk for a while.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, hesitated one more time, then walked away.

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From:
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Date:
Friday, September 20, 8:09 p.m.

Subject:
Puttin’ on the Ritz

My darlings,

Tomorrow evening begins with cocktails at 6 sharp, suite 605, at the Boston Ritz. To feel at home in our elegant surroundings, the dress code is glam glam glam.

Don’t forget a toothbrush and sexy jammies, if you plan on wearing any at all.

Our next victim: he talks about himself a lot, yes, but there’s no one on earth more ready to have a good time than Mr. Heath Ferro. I expect us all to make out with him at least once throughout the night. Let’s make him earn that “pony” reputation.

Conspiratorially yours,