Authors: Cecily von Ziegesar

Tags: #Romance, #Young Adult, #Chick-Lit

Reckless (10 page)

BOOK: Reckless

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Mr. Walsh took the liberty of pouring another glass of wine for himself, pouring half glasses for Easy and Callie. Easy took his eagerly, not exactly sure what to feel. His father took a sip and gazed appreciatively at Callie “I never thought of it that way, my dear. But I suppose you have a point.”

“Besides,” Callie added softly, holding her glass of wine to her lips. “Easy’s art is really good.” She glanced at Easy. “He’s very, um, talented.”

Easy stared at his plate of half-eaten
terrine des filets de sole.
The weird feeling he’d had before in his stomach had spread throughout his whole body. Callie was being so sweet and protective of him. She’d handled his father like a woman beyond her years. It was as if the past few months of her bitchiness and nagging and needling him had been a dream and he was seeing the Callie he knew before all that, the Callie he’d fallen in love with last year.

Was that what he wanted? The past few months to be erased? That would mean he’d never have met Jenny … never have kissed her sweet face.

He couldn’t quite imagine that. But as he glanced up at Callie and saw her warm hazel eyes smiling at him shyly, he couldn’t keep his thoughts straight at all.

Email Inbox

To:
Dumbarton Residents

From:
[email protected]

Time:
Friday, October 4, 9:30 p.m.

Subject:
Lockdown

Dumbarton Residents,

Please note that lockdown begins now. All residents should be in the dorm and are barred from leaving, short of emergency, until Monday morning at 7:00 a.m.

Brett Messerschmidt will be in charge of collecting everyone’s essays on what it means to be a responsible Waverly Owl. Please email her directly with any questions.

Your dormitory adviser, Mrs. Pardee, will be mostly absent from the dorm this weekend as her presence is required at the trustee events. However, I assume you understand that anyone who violates the lockdown will be expelled.

Dean Marymount

Email Inbox

To:
Dumbarton Residents

From:
[email protected]

Time:
Friday, October 4, 9:40 p.m.

Subject:
Breakfast meeting

Girls,

Tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m.—mandatory breakfast meeting in the downstairs common room. (None of us should have any problem getting up that early since it looks like tonight we’ll all be trapped in our rooms giving ourselves facials and getting plenty of beauty sleep.)

We have to discuss this essay.

BM

13
A
WAVERLY
OWL
LISTENS
TO
SUGGESTIONS
FROM
HER
PEERS
.

Saturday morning at 9:03, Brett Messerschmidt was surprised to see the Dumbarton common room full of girls. She’d half expected everyone to blow off her “mandatory” meeting, but maybe everyone had been so bored last night that they were actually grateful for the chance to get together and complain about it. Dining services had dropped off several large boxes of freshly baked bagels and muffins, individual packets of butter and cream cheese, plastic knives, and jugs of orange juice. No coffee, though. Brett could feel her caffeine withdrawal headache already blossoming in her brain. Most of the other girls were still in their pajamas, as if this was some giant breakfast-in-bed treat. It was funny, but Brett didn’t even recognize some of them. There were only one or two girls actually dressed. One of them was the Girl in Black, as she and Jenny always called her—the pretty, quiet girl with shoulder-length light brown hair and enormous greenish brown eyes, who always carried a book. She was sitting in the window seat now reading a comic book, wearing a black Bob Dylan concert tee and a pair of black jeans. Brett didn’t even know she lived in their dorm.

With a sigh, she grabbed an already-cut everything bagel and a packet of light cream cheese and sat down in an empty armchair in the corner. She couldn’t help being in a foul mood. The whole thing was ridiculous—today was St. Lucius’s home-coming game, and she was supposed to be in the stands, looking cute and cheering Jeremiah on and making all the St. Lucius cheerleaders know that they weren’t going to be the ones going home with him after the game. It was Jeremiah’s big day, and she wanted to be there for him. She’d almost fucked things up for good between them, with the whole thinking she was in love with Eric Dalton fiasco, but now things were good again, and she wanted to prove how much she loved him.

Surprisingly, Tinsley and Callie were already seated on one of the couches, Tinsley with her legs draped over an arm. She was wearing a tight-fitting Arizona Wildcats T-shirt (had she dated someone from Arizona?) and her red silk pajama bottoms, her long dark hair rumpled with bed-head. Callie was wearing a white cotton slip and the two girls were whispering in each other’s ears, clearly plotting something as usual.

Brett tore off a piece of her bagel and spread some cream cheese on it.

“Thanks for coming, everyone. I thought it would be a good idea if we all got together and brainstormed a little about this … um … ridiculous essay bullshit.” Oops. Brett wanted to sound professional, but she couldn’t help letting her bitterness creep through.

A chorus of voices sprang up. “Sage and I had passes to go into the city today.” Emily Jenkins’s face sported a victimized expression. “There’s a Jovovich-Hawk trunk show at Barneys, and we’ve been planning this for, like, ever. Maybe I can write about that?”

“Yeah, like Marymount’s going to give a shit that you didn’t get the hot new minidress of the season,” Benny Cunningham scoffed as she picked at her banana nut muffin, clearly miffed that she wasn’t invited on the Barneys excursion.

Yvonne Stidder, her corn silk hair pulled into two ponytails, raised her hand tentatively. Brett said patiently, “You don’t need to raise your hand, Yvonne. We can all just speak up here.”

“Thanks, Brett.” Yvonne looked around the room a little nervously, looking small and actually kind of funky in her faded red pajamas with Jetsons cartoons scattered all over them. “I just wanted to say that complaining about what we’re missing out on is probably not what Marymount had in mind.” She glanced at Emily and Sage and added quickly, “No offense.”

“I think Yvonne’s right,” Jenny spoke up, sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing a pair of True Religion jeans and a striped Ralph Lauren crewneck tee—Brett knew she wouldn’t be wearing her pajamas, as she was always careful not to be seen without a bra on. “I mean, he knows we’re missing out on stuff—that’s the point of the punishment, right?” She took a deep breath. “But he wants us to learn about responsibility, and responsibility is kind of about taking your punishment, fair or unfair, and dealing with it the best you can, you know?”

Tinsley and Callie burst into giggles, and Jenny’s face flushed.

“Callie?” Brett said pointedly. “Do you have something to contribute?”

“Actually,” Callie answered, still giggling, “we do have an idea about how to deal with the punishment the best we can.”

“Marymount might have found one keg,” Tinsley announced regally. “But”—she paused for effect, enjoying the looks of bewilderment on the faces of all the half-awake girls—”he didn’t find the other five.”

Immediately the room buzzed with excitement. “What are you talking about?” Brett demanded crossly. “There are more? Where?

“Under Kara’s bed,” Callie revealed proudly.

More buzz as the girls glanced around, not all of them sure who Kara was. It became clear when the Girl in Black jumped up from the window seat, her pale face red with horror. “You’re kidding?”

“Sorry,” Tinsley tossed out, not sounding apologetic in the least. “You were in the shower, your door was open, and there’s too much shit under my bed.” She made it sound almost like it was Kara’s fault.

“So you put five kegs in my room without asking?” Kara looked irritated. Brett smiled a little, pleased to see the Girl in Black speak up for herself. She had to be pretty cool to stand up to Tinsley Carmichael in front of a room full of Tinsley wannabes. She liked this girl already.

“They’re half kegs, actually,” Callie corrected.

Yvonne cleared her throat. “It sounds like this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of a negative situation—we’re all trapped here, and Pardee’s not going to be around.”

“So, let’s have a party!” Celine Colista stood up, her Gap Body short-shorts revealing her super-long legs. She did a little jig. A buzz of excitement rippled through the room.

“Right.” Brett sat up straighter in her chair and wished she had a gavel or something to regain control of the room. “So what happens when Pardee walks in and sees a bunch of drunk girls passed out in the common room with five empty kegs?”

“Actually,” piped up Rifat Jones, the tall, athletic volleyball captain, “I think I can help.” Her parents were rumored to practically be running Wall Street before they took time off to join the Peace Corps and were now teaching people in Ghana how to start their own businesses. Kind of cool. “My boyfriend’s one of the students on the Trustee Committee,” she explained. Her hair was dark and curly and Natalie Portman V
for Vendetta
short, and her long, dark legs that seemed to go on for a million miles were propped up on the coffee table. “He’ll be helping out at the big dinner party at the Marymount’s house tonight. He said that every year it goes to, like, early morning, and the trustees and teachers get all wasted and have to stumble home. So …”

“So he could call us when Pardee leaves?” Tinsley interrupted.

“Sure.” Rifat nodded. “He can give us some advance warning, at least. Then we could just lock up the kegs and dive into bed.”

“That rocks. Thanks, Rifat.” Tinsley clapped like she’d solved the problem herself. Brett was pretty sure that Tinsley had never spoken to Rifat in her life before now, but suddenly she was her best friend. Why not? Tinsley loved everyone she could use.

“So the party is on? Shall we say, eight o’clock?” Callie hopped up from the couch and stretched out her long, thin body. “Just enough time to pick out my outfit.”

“Wait a sec,” squeaked Yvonne Stidder. “I just had an idea. What if we all have to wear someone else’s clothes to the party tonight—someone that we don’t really know? I mean, it’ll give us a chance to get to know each other.” She shrugged and frowned slightly, as if worried that someone would laugh at her.

“That’s a fabulous idea!” Rifat exclaimed excitedly, glancing at Callie and Celine and the other tall girls.

Benny Cunningham rolled her eyes at Callie. But Callie was already searching the room, trying to estimate which girls were the same size as her. As if anyone else was that skinny. Other girls were murmuring in excitement.

Brett sighed. A party was certainly not going to make up for missing Jeremiah’s homecoming, but the idea of spending an afternoon pawing through closets full of brand-new clothes was appealing to her. It was sort of like the time she and Callie had spent an entire Sunday cabbing around New York, popping into almost every single vintage clothing store in the city in search of a Chanel slip dress she had spotted while flipping through the library’s collection of sixties
Vogue
magazines. They hadn’t found a dress like it, but they’d managed to bring home bags and bags of other treasures.

“All right,” Brett said, brushing everything bagel crumbs off her lap and hoping there weren’t any poppy seeds in her teeth. “Everybody, do some thinking about what it means to be a responsible Owl and send me an email.” Maybe they could all just compile their thoughts and make one essay. She crumpled her napkin into her hand. “And leave your closet doors open.”

Email Inbox

To:
[email protected];

[email protected];

[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Saturday, October 5, 10:12 a.m.

Subject:
Shhh …

Dearest boys,

Just wanted to let you know that we’ll be having a party tonight in Dumbarton—thought we should invite you since we’ll be using your beer.

Pardee won’t be around, but security and groundskeeper Ben will be patrolling the quad to make sure no one comes in or goes out. Be here if you can find a way in—just don’t get caught or you will be screwed (and not by us).