Size 12 and Ready to Rock (19 page)

“
That’s
why we want the floor to have a rock ’n’ roll feel,” Lauren explains, more to Davinia than to me. “Mallory and Bridget will probably go edgy for their songs for the Rock Off. We can’t be sure about Cassidy, with that mother—”

“We’ll get her agent to have her go pop,” Stephanie says firmly. “She’ll sing ‘So Sue Me,’ blow away all the competition, Tania will cry, Cassidy will win, and the sponsors will
love
it.”

I’m starting to understand what Jared meant in my office when he said I’d be amazed at how little actual reality ends up in their “docu-reality” series.

“Speaking of Cassidy,” I say, “when I met Mrs. Upton outside just now, I—”

“Later, okay?” Stephanie says. “Lauren, what did Art say?”

“Done,” Lauren says, checking her phone. “Can we print them out in your office, Lisa?”

“Uh,” Lisa says uncertainly. “Sure, I guess—”

“Fantastic,” Stephanie says and glances at Davinia. “It wasn’t that yours weren’t right, sweetie. They weren’t right for the
show.
”

“I don’t feel so good,” Jared says from behind the desk.

Gavin spins to face him on the tall front-desk chair. “Dude. You got a nosebleed.”

This is the understatement of the summer—possibly of the year. Blood is flowing in two steady streams from Jared’s nostrils, dripping down onto his faded gray New York College T-shirt.

I’m immediately alarmed, especially when Jared says sarcastically, “You think I don’t know that?” and raises his arm. He’s apparently been dabbing his nose for a little while, since the sleeve of his blue hoodie has turned black. “It won’t stop. And I think I’m going to throw up. If someone could just call my doctor—here, he’s in my important contacts . . .” He fumbles in his pocket for his iPhone, then drops it. “Shoot.”

My mind darts to one of the many episodes of
Freaky Eaters
I’ve seen . . . and also one of the mandatory staff meetings I was forced to attend in the past few months.

“Gavin,” I say, throwing open the door to the front desk, “call 911. Brad, get the first aid kit. There’s a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in it—”

Gavin reaches for the phone. “Don’t let him hurl back here,” he says as he dials. “Take him to the bathroom.”

“What is it?” Stephanie’s eyes are wide. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I think it’s warfarin,” I say, grabbing a roll of toilet paper—toilet paper is one of the few things residents at Fischer Hall get for free—from beneath the desk and shoving it against Jared’s nostrils. “It’s an anticoagulant. It’s the active ingredient in a lot of rat poisons.”

“Oh my God,” Lisa cries, following me. She snatches the bottle of hydrogen peroxide from Brad and rips off the top, shoving it toward Jared’s face. “How much should he drink?”

I’m trying to remember. “I don’t know. Just make him throw up.”

“Uh,” Dr. Jessup says, approaching the desk, Simon and Muffy close behind him. “Maybe this isn’t—”

“Aw, jeez,” Jared is saying, pushing Lisa away. “Don’t worry. It’s not poison. It’s just a—”

“Don’t stand up!” Lisa and I cry at the exact same time as Jared attempts to climb to his feet.

It’s too late. His legs crumple beneath him as his eyes roll back into his head, and neither Lisa nor I is strong enough to support his weight as he collapses.

Chapter 14

Muffy Fowler decides—and Dr. Jessup agrees—that it’s not a good idea for the moms to see the show’s field producer being carted out of Fischer Hall covered in blood and on a stretcher. Nor does she think it’s a good idea for them to see Detective Canavan and the other law-enforcement officers from the Sixth Precinct who show up to question Gavin and anyone else who might have had contact with the individual who dropped off the cupcakes (though until there is a toxicology report proving they actually did contain a poisonous substance, we’re urged by Detective Canavan “not to make any assumptions”).

It also seems wise to keep the campers and their moms from witnessing the breakdown that Simon Hague has in the middle of the lobby, shortly after Jared’s collapse.

“
I
ate one!” he shrieks. “
I
swallowed a bite of one of those cupcakes too! Dear God in heaven, I don’t want to die!”

That’s when Lisa and I force him—and Stephanie too—to swallow some hydrogen peroxide and vomit into various trash cans (so we can preserve the evidence).

Then we send the RAs outside to invite all the campers into the cafeteria to enjoy breakfast and “bond” with one another. It seems to work. Not only do none of the moms notice the unconscious man being smuggled out of the building through a side exit into the waiting ambulance—or the staff members who leap into a taxi to follow it (Muffy feels that representatives from New York College should go along to the hospital to support Jared and Stephanie, and of course Simon)—but they seem unfazed by the announcement that filming has been postponed until tomorrow because of a “technical delay.” It helps that Magda does such a terrific job of telling them how “byootiful” they all look, like true movie stars, making sure they get all the fruit salad and nonfat yogurt they can eat.

The rest of the staff do their own jobs amazingly as well, exactly the way they’ve been trained . . . well, except for the president, who leaves, muttering, “Glad I didn’t eat one of those things.”

I’m sitting at my desk, waiting to give my statement to Detective Canavan and staring at a red spot on the sleeve of my white blouse—a spot, I realize, that is probably never going to come out, no matter how much stain remover I use, because it’s Jared Greenberg’s blood.

Otherwise check-in has gone on as planned, just a couple of hours later than scheduled. All of the girls (and their mothers) seem happy with their rooms—which, given how much money CRT has spent on the decor, they should be. There are flat-screen TVs bigger than my desk in each room, as well as bucketloads of swag donated from Sephora and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Davinia reported having been able to hear the squeals of delight all the way down the hall in her own room.

My phone rings, but it’s my cell, not my office phone.

“I just heard,” Cooper says when I pick up. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I lie. My fingers still haven’t stopped shaking, despite the two—nondiet—sodas and Reuben sandwich I’ve downed to cushion the shock. “
I’m
not the one who swallowed a vegan cupcake dusted with rat poison.”

“Thank God,” he says. “My dad says they’re doing everything they can for the guy, but that it’s not looking good. Stephanie Brewer seems to be in the clear, though, and so does the guy from the other residence hall—”

I’ve forgotten all about Simon.

“Too bad,” I say before I can stop myself. “If anyone deserves to die like a rat—”

Then I clamp my mouth shut guiltily. I can’t wish that kind of death on anyone, not even Simon . . . especially when Sarah, sitting at her desk nearby, looks up in surprise from the hushed conversation she’s having on her cell phone. I feel ashamed of myself. I’m supposed to be a role model.

“Heather, there’s no proof it was poison,” Cooper says. “The guy could have had a heart attack, for all you know.”

“Cooper.” I lower my voice, conscious of Sarah’s gaze on me and the fact that Detective Canavan is in Lisa’s office with another officer, interviewing Gavin and Brad. Her office is separated from the outer office—where my desk is located—by only a half wall and a metal grate. Muffy’s given us all strict instructions that if a single word of what’s happened gets out, we’re going to lose our jobs. Even though I know Cooper isn’t going to run to the
Post
with what I’m telling him, I don’t want to get caught gossiping. “A heart attack? Are you kidding me? Blood was gushing out of the guy’s nose like a fountain. Just seconds before he was eating cupcakes some fan dropped off at the building for Tania.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Cooper, they taught us at a staff meeting not long ago what symptoms to look for in human poison ingestion. Nosebleeds and nausea were two of them. Jared was suffering from both before he passed out. Warfarin, the active ingredient in older rat poisons, is both odorless and tasteless. I saw an episode of
Freaky Eaters
about a woman who loved eating it, only in small amounts. It was killing her too, just much more slowly.”

“Who the hell,” Cooper asks, “eats rat poison on purpose?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “There was one guy on there who ate his own car. ‘When a hobby becomes an obsession,’ ” I inform him, quoting from one of my other favorite shows, “ ‘it’s called an addiction. That’s when you need an
intervention
.’ ”

Cooper is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I’m canceling our cable subscription. You watch way, way too much television.”

“Said the man who carries a gun in a fanny pack. You’re hardly one to talk.”

“I do not—what are you—” he sputters.
“Who told you that?”

“Whatever, Cooper,” I say, glancing at Sarah. She’s spun her desk chair to face the wall and is speaking in hushed, angry whispers into her phone. I assume she’s talking to Sebastian. After the near-death experience we’ve both witnessed, it makes sense that we’d reach out to loved ones. It also makes sense that we might lash out at them. Tensions are running high. “I know all about it, okay? I know why you were so hot and bothered about finding your cargo pants. I know you lied to me about owning a gun. And that’s fine, because guess what? I have secrets too.”

“What secrets?” Cooper demands. “And I didn’t lie to you exactly. I omitted telling you the truth about something I knew was only going to—”

“Excuse us.” Two figures appear in the doorway to the office. It’s Mrs. Upton and her daughter Cassidy. I have to restrain a groan. Really?
Now?

“I have to go,” I say to Cooper. “I will speak to you at a later time about that subject of which we were discussing.” I hang up and smile at the Uptons with as much graciousness as I can muster. “Hello, ladies. Is there something I can do for you?”

“I certainly hope so,” Mrs. Upton says, steering her daughter by the shoulders into the office first, then plunking her onto the couch across from my desk. Cassidy’s expression is mulish, and when her mother releases her shoulders, she collapses onto the couch as if there isn’t a solid bone in her body.

Her mother settles herself into the chair next to my desk. I’m willing to overlook it this time, because I’m so terrified of Mrs. Upton, but I didn’t ask her to sit down.

“The young woman at the front desk told me you were the person to whom I should speak about this,” Mrs. Upton says with a gracious smile, evidently not remembering our encounter from earlier in the morning. Jamie, I know, is working the desk while Gavin and Brad are in with the police. “I’d like to see what I can do about having our room changed.”

I look from Cassidy to Mrs. Upton and back again. Cassidy’s expression is still mulish. Her elfin face is tilted at the ceiling, her lower lip jutting out, her long blond hair splayed out across the blue couch.

“I see,” I say. “May I ask what’s wrong with your current room?” Besides the fact that it used to be a creepy tribute to Prince Caspian. “Because I know that Cartwright Records went to a great deal of trouble to furnish it—”

“Oh, it’s not the furnishings,” Mrs. Upton says pleasantly. “They’re very nice. It’s just that Cassidy has never had to share a room before, and now she’s sharing one with not just one but two other girls, as well as me, and I’m afraid that isn’t going—”

“You’re in a separate room,” I point out. I know it’s rude to interrupt, but after the day I’ve had, I can’t help it.

“Yes,” Mrs. Upton says, her voice not quite as pleasant as before. “But the girls have to walk through mine in order to enter and exit the suite.”

“Right,” I say. “Because they’re fifteen years old, and you agreed to be their chaperone. New York College doesn’t allow residents under the age of eighteen—”

“Well, that’s plain silly,” Mrs. Upton says, beginning to swing her Louboutined foot. “My Cassidy is very mature for her age. She knows perfectly well how to handle herself—”

“What are those?” Cassidy asks, pointing at the condoms in the candy jar on my desk.

Mrs. Upton looks in the direction that Cassidy is pointing and turns a shade of pink that contrasts nicely with the many yellow gold necklaces she’s wearing.

“Put your finger down, Cass,” she says, glancing quickly away. “You know better than to point.”

“But what
are
they?” Cassidy asks. “I’ve never seen candy like that.” There’s a slyness to her perfect little smile that tells me she knows
exactly
what they are and is toying with us—she’s a teenager after all, surely she’s watched MTV—but her mother evidently doesn’t notice.

“That’s because they aren’t candy,” Mrs. Upton explains in disapproving tones. “They’re something that doesn’t have any place being in a candy jar on a lady’s desk.”

“Then why does this lady have them on hers?” Cassidy asks, cocking her head at me the way Owen cocks his head at the wall when he hears mice scratching inside.