The Cinderella Society (5 page)

“No, it smells great, Cassandra. I just …” Wanted to crawl under a rock. “I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“It’s Cassie, or Cass, and don’t sweat the shake, Jess,” she said, grabbing several veggie-wrap slices from a nearby tray and handing them to me on a beach-print napkin. “There’s no alcohol at Overnight.”

A party with Populars and no alcohol? That was a jolt to my system. They’d have been laughed out of my old school. Most of my old schools, actually. Still, I couldn’t help thinking someone hadn’t gotten the message at the blender station.

Cassie followed my gaze. “Gwen,” she called to one of the girls on duty, “what’s on tap tonight?”

Gwen Fielding, an all-state volleyball champ who could’ve easily traded her sneakers for a modeling contract, held up the bottles in rapid succession. “Banana, mint chocolate chip, gingerbread, and peppermint.”

“The Grind Exclusives,” Cassie explained. “Best gourmet coffee syrups on the planet.”

Clearly, these were
not
your everyday Populars.

By the time everyone had arrived, there were more than a dozen girls milling around the Steeles’ state-of-the-art kitchen. For the next few hours, I sipped different shakes, nibbled on creamy, spicy wraps, and hung out with Sarah Jane, Kyra, and the other girls.

To my credit, I managed to contain my excitement about the fact that Ryan grabbed food out of that industrial-sized refrigerator every day (what was his favorite snack?) and ate breakfast at that table every morning (which lucky chair
got to feel his cute butt on it?) and did a hundred other things in the space we were occupying. The giddy potential was staggering.

Just before midnight, Cassie announced it was time to “retire to the dungeon.” I followed everyone downstairs to a massive rec room that was pure party paradise. The Steeles’ basement came complete with a massive flat screen, a pool table, and a sleek bar area loaded with every drink and snack imaginable. A true shrine to teendom.

We set up makeshift beds around the room and got changed into our pajamas. I remembered the pin in my pocket and wondered what that had to do with tonight.

“It’s for something special later,” was all Cassie would say. “A little bit of mystery makes the evening more fun.”

So far it was still Mystery 1, Jess 0. I hoped my record was about to improve.

The atmosphere was chummy and relaxed as we settled in for the night, with Sarah Jane, me, a beauty queen named Mel, and Kyra all in a neat little row by the sliding-glass doors leading out to the pool deck.

Sarah Jane stretched her long legs out in front of her. Her stars-and-moon pj’s made a constellation against her deep blue blanket. My yoga pants and Gap tee looked impossibly generic by comparison. Why hadn’t I thought to bring my cute lipstick-print boxer pj’s? Couldn’t I do anything right?

“You’re lucky you have a job already, Jess,” Sarah Jane was saying. “All the good ones were already taken by college students when I went looking last month.”

“I heard Casey Sturgeon got a job at Harry and Marie’s,” Kyra said, referring to the retro diner in the heart of town that was notorious for great tips. “Debbie Maloney and Jay Carter did too.”

“Wow, that’s a step up for Jay,” Kyra said. “Didn’t he work at the car wash on Main last year? I know he’s trying to save up for college. He doesn’t think his parents will qualify for financial aid, but they can’t swing tuition without it.”

I nodded along with everyone else at Jay’s good luck at landing the diner job, but I had no idea who Jay Carter was. Or Debbie Maloney, for that matter.

I knew more people than most new students would after only a couple of months, thanks to hours of studying last year’s yearbook in the library. That was always the first thing I did at a new school, to help me get up to speed quickly on who’s who. It’s pretty easy to gauge who hangs in which groups from looking at the yearbook candids and group shots.

But I didn’t know everyone. So I just nodded and smiled, taking my cue from everyone else’s responses, as I pretended I knew what they were talking about. All the while feeling like a fake.

We chatted about finals, guys (not Ryan, thank goodness), and plans for the summer. After a while, I stopped having to pretend. I even contributed a few funny stories, including one that made Mel spit a raisin onto the carpet from laughing. Which made us all laugh even harder.

It was a little weird being there with no parents, though. Cassie’s mom had died a year or two earlier, and Cassie’s dad was out of town at a surgeon’s conference. So it was just a dozen or so girls, yummy food, good music, and hours of chitchat.

“So where have you been volunteering since you moved here, Jess?” Paige wanted to know as she plopped down at the edge of Mel’s sleeping bag.

I did a double take. I hadn’t mentioned my volunteering
to anyone, certainly not here, where they might figure out I spent all my time volunteering to avoid having to sit home alone.

“At the Humane Society, mostly,” I said. Helping abandoned animals sounded more glamorous than wielding a hammer on the porch of a Habitat house, even though I liked doing both.

“I wish I could do that,” said Mel. “I’d love to volunteer there, but I’m allergic to cats.”

“You could always do something outside or fund-raising or whatever. They’re getting ready to do a big adoption day at the elementary school, and adoption days always need a ton of people helping with paperwork. You wouldn’t even have to be in the cat area.”

Mel didn’t say anything for a second. I took the opportunity to mentally smack myself for sounding like Dillweed Do-Gooder.
Way to look cool, Jess. Suggest to the beauty queen that she spend a Saturday being a paper pusher. What’s next? Friday night at the old folks’ home?

“That could work,” Mel said. “They usually separate the dogs and cats anyway, right?”

“I’m planning to be there,” Paige told Mel. “I can pick you up, if you need a ride. You too, Jess.”

I sat there, stunned. Paige was definitely a power player among these girls. Not in a bad, Lexy kind of way either. She was totally nice and down-to-earth, and I’d already noticed how the other girls looked up to her. Looked up to Cassie too. Plus, Paige had just graduated, and yet here she was offering up rides to piddly high schoolers she’d just met. Could she
be
any cooler? When I grew up, I wanted to be like Paige Ellis.

Or Cassie Steele. Or Sarah Jane Peterson. Or really, anyone but me.

Kyra leaned her head back against her lavender pillow embroidered with a fancy K. “It’s so nice being here, just us,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve been able to relax all week.”

This time, when I nodded, it wasn’t just because I could relate to sleepless nights of finals anxiety. It was because I agreed with her sentiment about us.

For once, I actually felt like an us. Or part of an us, anyway. Which really brought the bizarreness home for me. I mean, come on. A bunch of good-girl Populars who mingled outside their assigned groups—cheerleaders, jocks, brains, an actress who’d already earned her SAG card
—and
managed to make an outsider like me feel welcome? Despite my lack of a social life and my do-gooder ways? It was enough to give a girl hope that she might finally, by some strange twist of fate, fit in. Most of the girls were socially out of my league, but if I could hang with them for one evening, maybe I could do it again sometime.

And yet…

How on earth had I gone from being Lexy’s emotional punching bag and Heather’s big snub to having a group of awesome girls treat me like a normal human being all in one day? Especially when we were camped out in the very place where Lexy hung her tall, pointy hat?

Too many years spent as an outsider made me suspicious. There had to be a catch. In my experience, there always was. Nothing was ever this easy.

I’d already scanned the rec room looking for hidden cameras or microphones that Lexy might have planted. Not being obvious about it, but Lexy had to know everyone was there, right? Decking it out seemed like her style. So I paid attention to our surroundings, even getting other people
snacks as an excuse to check out the bar area up close.

But everything looked kosher. Felt kosher too, with nothing sending off a danger signal. And I had a pretty well-tuned danger meter when I was paying attention to it. Tonight? I had it tuned to extra-high frequency. Maybe gadgets were too high-tech for a hands-on girl like Lexy. Either way, I vowed not to let my guard down like I had at The Grind. No way would she catch me off guard twice.

Despite the Lexy connection, Cassie and the girls had done nothing to make me doubt Cassie’s words of welcome. If my paranoia was front and center, I couldn’t blame
them
for it. Lexy, maybe. But not them.

Paige’s yawn spread like wildfire, and we began to form lines outside the various Steele bathrooms, laughing like old friends as we endured the nightly rituals that made us girls.

I ended up in the upstairs hallway waiting my turn, half listening to people rattle off their favorite spring-break hot spots.

“I don’t think you can beat Daytona for action,” Gwen said. “I found a pickup volleyball game on the beach every day while we were there.”

“I’ll take Manhattan over Daytona any day.” Cherie, the resident actress, shifted her Clinique bag to her other hip as we waited. “Broadway, baby.”

I leaned against the faux painted wall, my eyes settling on the room across from us. Light from the hallway spilled into a neat and tidy space with a color-blocked comforter and a soft painting of a single dandelion gone to seed. The guest room, I assumed.

The line moved, and I started to turn away but caught a glimpse of the opposite wall, which housed a bookcase full of trophies. An image of a curvaceous, scantily clad female was
taped to the closet door. Unless the Steeles’ guest room was frequented by teenage boys, I had to assume the room was Ryan’s.

The room slid out of view as I moved on, but it didn’t stop me from basking in his pseudo-nearness. While maintaining an air of normalcy, of course. No need to alert the others about my obsession. Ryan’s room was so close I could’ve reached out and touched it. Good thing I was surrounded, or I might’ve succumbed to temptation and stepped inside the private world of my fantasy guy to explore. Just for a minute.

Later, as I lay wrapped in my fuzzy blanket in the rec room, I replayed the image of Ryan’s room. In an instant, my mind had memorized the details. I tried to picture him in it, wondering what he thought about when he turned off the light. But eventually, days of cramming for finals did me in, and I drifted off to sleep, hoping to dream about Ryan and a pair of tasty lips locking with mine.

Sweet bliss.

*   *   *

Long before it was light out, I woke up after having one of those dreams where I had to go to the bathroom really badly, but everywhere I went, the bathroom stalls only had little half walls around them and no doors. Plus, the stalls were outside on a patio in the middle of a party, and I was completely mortified that I couldn’t find anything to shield myself with while I, you know, did the business.

I think that’s supposed to mean I felt vulnerable in my real life (that’s what my dream encyclopedia says, anyway), but as I lay there wondering why I was dreaming about toilets instead of about Ryan, my bladder suggested it might just be because I had to pee.

I tiptoed through the sleeping masses, careful not to step on anyone in the dark. I crept up the stairs into the kitchen and made a beeline for the hall bathroom. I was washing my hands and admiring one of the worst cases of bed head ever when I heard voices outside the door.

“Chill, you guys. Cass, where are the candles?”

“I think—”

“I’ve got ’em. Ouch!”

“Shhh!”

“That was my foot, Cherie. Are you trying to cripple me before camp?”

“Give me a break. We’re working like it’s the Dark Ages in here.”

I opened the door, wondering what the heck was going on. “What are you guys—?”

“Geez.”
Sarah Jane slapped a hand to her chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack, Jess!”

I stepped out, keenly aware of my crazy-haired look in contrast to the girls in the hallway. They looked radiant, decked out in long white dresses that definitely weren’t nightgowns.

I looked at them.

They looked at me.

Some of them looked to Cassie for guidance, but she was frozen in place. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t know what protocol is. No one’s ever caught us mid-setup before.” Her eyebrows knit together, which I hoped meant she was thinking hard and not trying to decide if a family of canaries had built a nest in my hair. “You guys take Jess downstairs and wake the others. Just give us a few extra minutes to finish up.”

Sarah Jane herded me down the stairs, while a few
other girls in white followed. Quietly, they woke the sleeping beauties.

My eyes snapped to the high heel I’d pinned to the corner of my pillowcase so I wouldn’t lose it. If this was the “special” part of the night, why couldn’t they have given us some warning? I gave my hair a quick brush while Sarah Jane helped someone find her contacts case, but I still felt way underdressed and undercoiffed for whatever they had planned.

Once everyone was fully awake, we single-filed it up the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back doors onto the Steeles’ massive deck. I don’t know what I was expecting, but a full-on ceremonial setting wasn’t it.

The moon cast its rays through the overhang of trees, giving a bluish dappled effect to everything. In the middle of the deck, Paige stood in her flowing white gown, the gauzy fabric billowing in the night breeze. She looked like an ancient Greek goddess. Almost ethereal. She stood behind a large round table with a white tablecloth draped over it and welcomed us silently with a gentle wave of her hand.

We moved closer, and the older girls led us behind a half-moon of chairs covered in more white fabric and tied with bows that shimmered under the stars. I glanced around and noticed we were arranged in two neat rows behind the seven chairs. Everyone except for Gaby (another brainiac like me) and Cassie, who both stood off to the side observing the procession.