Tempted (23 page)

To:
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Date:
Monday, November 4, 6:17 P.M.

Subject:
B.O.W.

Bring booze. Blankies not required.

Bradon

Email Inbox

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Date:
Monday, November 4, 6:24 P.M.

Subject:
Okay Already

Brett,

Don’t get your granny panties in a bunch. If you want me that badly, we’ll meet tomorrow. First floor of the library (I know where it is).

Next time, just ask nicely.

S.V.

Instant Message Inbox

JeremiahMortimer:
Hey, babe. I’m coming to Waverly tonight for a BoW meeting. You should come.

BrettMesserschmitt:
Heath’s boys club? Think I’m allowed?

JeremiahMortimer:
Sexy girls are always allowed.

BrettMesserschmitt:
How could I refuse?

JeremiahMortimer:
Sweet. Let’s have dinner first? Meet me at Nocturne?

BrettMesserschmitt:
Sounds good. Maybe you can sneak into the dorm afterward—looks like T’s out for a while.

JeremiahMortimer:
Don’t tease—we’re waiting for the Soho Grand … but I’m willing to let you try….

Snowflakes pelted Callie as she trumped through the woods, the moonlight purple as it reflected off the snow-covered branches and drifts. She was wearing her prison-issue jeans and her hands were numb beyond feeling. She rubbed together the two relatively dry sticks she’d found in the middle of a pile of firewood someone had abandoned just outside the perimeter of the rehab center. The sticks skidded against each other ineffectually, a few dry flakes of bark floating into the small hole Callie had dug under one of the giant bare poplar trees. A wind howled, blowing snow down around her like dandruff. Her eyeballs were so dry she thought they’d crack if she ever blinked again.

She’d wasted close to an hour trying to find the X that marked the spot on Meri’s secret map, hoping against hope that it was some kind of shelter, or a bus station. A dark shadow in the fall trees had misled her into thinking she’d found the spot, but the shadow had turned out to be just that, a dark deception that had cost her time and most of her hope.

She scraped the sticks together frantically.
It looks so easy on TV and in movies,
she thought, laughing maniacally as the sticks continued to do nothing. That was what Whispering Pines had turned her into—a maniac. She hoped her mother would be happy when they found her body after the first thaw, her purple fingers and toes perfectly preserved like those of a caveman frozen in the act of trying to start a fire.

Death lurked somewhere on the horizon—she wasn’t sure she could make it until daybreak, when she knew she’d be rescued from her stupid solo if she didn’t return. Frozen tears made their way down her cheeks. She felt herself begin to float above her body, looking down on the pitiful scene: a silly girl on her knees in the snow, trying desperately to make something happen that wouldn’t.

She thought of all the things she
had
made happen: cheating on Brandon Buchanan with Easy, and totally breaking his heart. Trying to force Easy to say he loved her, and being so needy with him that she’d chased him away from her clutching arms and into those of Jenny Humphrey. She’d pushed Brett away, blabbing her secret about Mr. Dalton to Tinsley, and then blabbing her secret about Kara to the whole world.

Callie was too cold to feel embarrassment or shame—she only felt stupid for doing such terrible things to people who cared about .her. They didn’t deserve to be treated as she’d treated them. Jenny—even if she
had
started dating Easy, it hadn’t been entirely her fault. Callie was the one who’d chased him away in the first place. And Jenny had felt bad about it. But instead of making up with her, Callie had let Tinsley rope her into the plan to get Jenny expelled. Getting her mother to cover the fire with a check, and bailing out Jenny was her great effort to make up for it. Wipe it all out—and get Easy back.

She’d wanted so badly to share that secret with Easy, to have his eyes light up when she turned out not to be the girl he thought she was. Not to be the spoiled princess he was convinced she was.

Callie thought about how she’d embraced the spa as a way to erase Easy from her life forever. She couldn’t believe how foolish she’d been. Tears welled up in her eyes from the cold, but she fueled them with her longing for Easy. She knew two things: she loved Easy, and the way he’d treated her had broken her heart.

Callie dropped the sticks, kicking them away in disgust. She sat cross-legged on the hard, cold ground, rubbing her arms for warmth. Another blast of arctic air blew through her and she sensed the end was near. Were they really going to let her die out here?

She could feel her blood thickening, slowing in its tracks as her heart started to beat slower and slower. She put her head in her hands, her fingers massaging her frozen ears, which burned with the beginning of what Callie could only imagine was frostbite. They’d read this terrible Jack London story in freshman comp about a guy trekking for gold up in the Yukon or something—somewhere really cold like Maine. He’d slowly frozen to death in the snowy tundra.

How would Easy remember her? He’d be devastated by the things he’d said the last time they saw each other, she knew. She imagined him replaying his words to her over and over again, until they started to haunt him, day and night. He’d drop out of Waverly and spend the next twenty-three years living in the small room above his parents’ garage, smoking cigarettes and eating Cheetos, unable to ever say anything except her name. The thought made her feel a teeny bit better.

But she really wanted him to remember the good times. Their first kiss in the rare books library, so sweet and delicious. Snowball fights out on the quad, when Easy would tackle her, all bundled up in her puffy coat and thick cashmere scarf and mittens, and kiss her cold, red lips.

A sob worked its way up from the bottom of her empty stomach, throbbing in her chest. It mocked her for believing that she might ever be able to get over Easy. He was the love of her short, sorrowful life. The sob erupted in her throat and she wailed into the wind, straining her vocal cords, the image of complete sadness and longing, her heart full of poetry for What Might’ve Been and What Would Never Be.

The only time Brandon had been in the activities room in the basement of Maxwell Hall was last spring. He’d joined Waverly s French club in order to spend a little more time with Eloise Michaud, the gamine-looking exchange student from Paris. His Francophile phase had been brief: it had taken a mere five minutes of sitting next to Eloise on one of the dilapidated sofas to realize that deodorant really was a prerequisite for a relationship. Luckily, on Monday night, all BoW members came wearing deodorant—or at least, close enough.

Brandon surveyed the landscape. Alan St. Girard and Easy Walsh were lounging on a green polyester sofa, staring at the ceiling and looking stoned. Ryan Reynolds and Lon Baruzza traded insults over the massive pool table in the corner. The room was used mostly for various club meetings in the afternoons, where girls could argue about decorations for the dances and boys could try and sneak closer to them on the sofa. Heath sat in a faded blue polyester armchair off to the side, wearing a filthy Dartmouth sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. He looked like a despondent homeless person.

Heath tilted his head back to empty his third can of Bud while simultaneously opening a fourth.

“Dude, slow it down a little,” Brandon couldn’t help saying. Crushed tin cans were littered around Heath’s feet. He’d hoped, in desperation, that hanging out with the other guys would help lift Heath’s mood—discussing the most “do-able,” to use a Ferro word, underclassmen always cheered Heath up—but he was beyond help tonight.

“This stuff is shit, anyway.” Heath abandoned his beer can and instead pulled a flask from his green Patagonia backpack. He discreetly wiped his face against the shoulder of his sweatshirt. Brandon hoped none of the other guys had noticed. It was one thing for Heath Ferro to tear up in the bedroom—but in front of a bunch of dudes? No one wanted to see that.

“Cheer up, man.” Ryan, who’d never had a girlfriend for more than half an hour, stared at Heath from the pool table like he was an alien. Ryan fingered the platinum stud in his nose, which looked like an infected zit, and twirled his pool cue. “Another bus comes along every twenty minutes.”

“That’s right,” Lon agreed, dropping his pool stick onto the green felt of the table and slumping onto an empty sofa. He lifted his muddy boots onto the already dirty coffee table. “I mean, Benny and I break up all the time, and it’s not a huge deal.” He grabbed a beer can from the gym bag on the floor and flicked the pull tab into a garbage can across the room. He grinned slyly. “If you’ve got good stuff, she’ll come back for it.”

Brandon glanced in Heath’s direction to gauge his reaction. Heath just stared over everyone’s head at the giant bulletin board against the wall, cluttered with flyers about dance recitals and play tryouts. “We just had so much fun together.” He glanced at Brandon, pleading with him to back him up. “Didn’t we?”

Brandon nodded sagely, taking a sip of Budweiser. The sofas looked like things might be growing in them, so he leaned against the pool table instead.

“I dated Emily Jenkins freshman year,” Ryan spoke up suddenly, replacing his cue in the rack on the wall. “And she dumped me
on my birthday.
” He looked around to see if the room shared his incredulity at such a cruel, cruel act. “It was my birthday and she was supposed to take me out for a milk shake, and she breaks up with me. And”—he held up his hands for emphasis—”she did it
in a text message.
”

“Dude, that sucks.” Lon patted the sofa next to him, like he wanted Ryan to come over for a hug or something. “But I dated this girl for all of eighth grade, and we were planning on going to Waverly together—it was, like, all we could talk about. You know, hooking up in our dorm rooms, et cetera.” He glanced around sheepishly. “And then when I hear I got in, she tells me she didn’t even
apply.
”

Easy, sprawled on the opposite sofa and nursing his first can of beer, crooked his arm up on his knee and gave Lon a sympathetic look. “A girl dumped me on the top of a Ferris wheel at Six Flags when I was fourteen. The stupid thing went around like eight more times before we could get off.” Easy shook his head, his floppy dark hair completely out of control and badly in need of a cut. “We just had to sit there, not looking at each other.”

“Why’d she dump you?” Brandon didn’t really care, but there was something satisfying about knowing that Easy had been dumped before. He took one of the balls still on the table and tried to roll it into one of the corner pouches.

Easy rubbed his hand against the back of his neck and grinned crookedly. “Think she was kind of annoyed that I didn’t have a car.” He shrugged. “She was eighteen.”

Brandon suppressed a groan. That was Walsh’s most devastating breakup story? The fact that he’d been dating an eighteen-year-old when he had barely hit puberty counted as more of a triumph than a disappointment. Christ, Brandon had been dumped by Callie when she left a party to make out with Easy.
That
was a breakup story.

“This is a good one,” Heath said suddenly. They’d almost forgotten him, slumped off to the side, resigned to his misery. He held up his iPhone so everyone could see a picture of him and Kara dressed up as coordinated superheroes at the Halloween party. Both of them had completely unself-conscious, tooth-baring, truly happy grins on their faces. They didn’t look like they’d be breaking up in a few short days.

Heath cradled the iPhone in his hand, scrolling through a series of pictures. He occasionally took a swig of beer from the can on his lap in the armchair. Brandon anticipated another sob. His body tensed as if he were watching an impending car crash, unable to do anything about it. He wasn’t sure what his responsibilities were. His empathy for Heath was still fresh and he wasn’t entirely sure that they wouldn’t be back on the same footing tomorrow, when Heath sobered up. Likely as not, Heath would probably go out of his way to be all macho and jackass-y, just to prove his sensitivity had been fleeting.

A short knock sounded at the door and everyone except Heath scrambled to hide their beers. The door opened a crack and Jeremiah stuck his head in, his face lighting up with his all-American smile when he saw he had the right place. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Come on in,” Brandon said, kind of enjoying his position as the host of this informal evening. Jeremiah pushed the door open, and everyone’s mouths dropped when they saw Brett standing behind him.

“No girls!” Heath bellowed drunkenly, staggering to his feet.

“Lighten up, man,” Jeremiah laughed. “I brought enough for everyone.” He produced a bottle of Absolut from inside his bulky purple-and-yellow St. Lucius letterman’s jacket.