The It Girl (19 page)

Brett flinched, then murmured, “Yeah, she would’ve.”

“It’s too bad she’s not here,” Callie continued quietly.
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.

Brett straightened up. “Yes, it is too bad she isn’t here, isn’t it?”

Wait, huh?
That wasn’t what Callie had been expecting Brett to say. Where was the
I’m so sorry, let me tell you what really happened or at least a Let’s forget all of this ever happened and go get drunk in our room and catch up
? Instead, the two girls stared at each other like two dogs sniffing one another out, trying to figure out whether they wanted to bark or not. Suddenly, a crazy Hindi techno song blared through the speakers. The rest of the guests had arrived, and the room was jammed with bizarrely dressed girls who stank of Dior Poison.

“Conga line!” Benny squealed. She wore a lavender towel turban on her head and a kaleidoscopic Pucci scarf around her midriff. Sage grabbed her waist and giggled, a large Waverly crest flag wound around her body, sari style. They passed Callie and Brett and giggled.

“Come on, ladies!” Celine squealed. “Stop with those pissy faces!”

Brett, who normally would have danced
Swan Lake
wearing a rabbit-fur muff if it meant being the life of the party, stood up, brushed off her lap, and shrugged. “I’m out.” Then she turned and strode out of the room.

Callie wound a thick piece of Kelly green fringe around her middle finger and watched her go. Something buzzed next to her. It was Brett’s tiny Nokia. The caller ID said Brianna Messerschmidt. Callie looked up and started to call for Brett but then stopped. Last year, she always used to answer Brett’s phone when she left it somewhere. Were things so different this year she couldn’t take the call? She snapped the phone open.

“Hey, it’s Callie!”

“Where
are
you?” cried Bree in a sexy, husky smoker’s voice. “Spice Market? It sounds fabulous!”

Callie sank back down into the lounge chair. “Nope. Just a dorm party.”

“I’ve
got
to do a shoot at your school sometime.”

“That would be awesome.” Callie wished Bree would give some of her enthusiasm to her nasty younger sister. “Should I find Brett?”

“Nah, tell her to call me. I’m home visiting our parents in Jersey this weekend.”

Jersey? As in New Jersey?
She’d always thought Brett was from East Hampton …

“But listen, Callie? That teacher my sister’s been hanging around? Like going to dinner with and stuff?”

“Uh—” Callie practically choked on a huge sip of punch.
What?

“Eric Dalton? She told you about this, right?”

“Um, of course.” Callie’s whole body began to sweat. She’d only eaten a couple of spoonfuls of Stonyfield vanilla yogurt this morning. A mug of vodka punch, and she was drunk. Her head spun: Brett was keeping more than a few secrets from her, all right.

Bree took a deep breath on the other end. “So listen. When I was a senior at Columbia, a friend of mine was sort of Eric Dalton’s girlfriend. And she told me he really gets around. You know what I’m saying?”

“’Course,” Callie replied automatically. Maybe Brett wasn’t acting spacey because she’d slept with Jeremiah. Maybe she was out of it because she’d slept with Eric Dalton. Callie fumbled in her bag for her cigarettes. How dare Brett not tell her this major news!
Hello
, were they just
complete
strangers now?

“But how funny,” Bree continued, snorting with laughter. “Maybe they’ll get married at St. Patrick’s! My sister will be a Dalton!”

Forgetting her buzz, Callie took another huge gulp of her drink. “Don’t you think she’s a little young for him?”

“Oh, of course. I would rather he stay fifty feet away from her at all times, but Brett’s got a good head on her shoulders. Anyway, just be sure to pass on the message? And tell her to call me. Ciao.”

“Um, okay. Ciao.”

Callie stared at the phone’s tiny
LED
window for a long time, mashing her lips together. Finally, she looked up. The conga line was still snaking around the room.

Fuck it
. Vodka punch burning in her stomach, she let out a whoop, grabbed Alison Quentin, who was wearing a vintage couture Alexander McQueen dress and tiny little olive leaves in her hair, and followed the line of gorgeous, drunk, dancing girls out into the hall.

Brandon was cutting across Dumbarton’s sprawling lawn toward Richards when he saw a girl in a flapper-style green dress smoking a cigarette and kicking her legs in the air like a Rockette.

“Hey, sweetie!” she called. “Come dance with me.”

Brandon walked over and squinted in the light. It was Callie. Was she trashed? “Hey,” he called out.

As soon as he got closer, she lunged at him and buried her face in his neck.

She smelled of fruit punch and cigarettes and that fresh chamomile shampoo she always used. Brandon felt a shudder run through him. Smelling Callie’s hair conjured up memories of last year. They’d undressed each other under a quilt in the common room late one night and spelled out sexy messages on each other’s bare stomachs. She looked up at him with giant, watery eyes.

“Brandon.
Hiiiii.
”

That’s when he got a whiff of her breath. “Whoa.” She was
definitely
trashed. “You drink the whole bottle yourself?”

Callie righted herself and smiled. “I’m cool,” she cooed. “Want some of my cigarette?”

“No, thanks.”

Callie shrugged and stuck it back in her mouth. “So listen,” she slurred, running her long, manicured fingernails up and down his bare arm. “Why were you so mean to me after bio class yesterday?”

In the porch light, Brandon could see little goosebumps on her bare, creamy legs. “About Easy and Jenny? I was telling the truth.”

“No, you weren’t,” she teased, tipsily touching his nose. “Nobody’s stealing anybody away from me. I’m behind the whole thing.”

Brandon scowled. “No, Callie. Jenny
likes
him. They like each other.”

Callie giggled. “That’s because I told them to like each other.”

“Huh?”

“I told them to like each other.” She covered her mouth and giggled. “Oops. That was supposed to be a secret.”

Brandon shook his head. “But Jenny
does
like him. And he likes her.”

“That’s what they’d like you to believe!” Callie yelled, and then covered her mouth. “Get it?” she slurred more quietly and broke into a goofy grin. “They’re faking it so that I won’t get in trouble for having Easy in my room!”

Brandon stood back and thought for a moment. Yesterday in the quad, Jenny had sounded way too genuine to be faking it. “And they both went along with this?”

“Yeah.”

“Jenny too?”

“Sure. Jenny’s cool.” Callie flicked the ash off her cigarette, but she was so drunk that it landed right on her big toe, blackening it.

Brandon shook his head. He looked at Callie, who, though hammered, looked as if she’d been secretly crying in the girls’ bathroom for hours. He wanted to cradle her and rock her to sleep.

“I mean,
you’d
flirt with another girl if I asked you to, wouldn’t you?” she asked, slurring her words.

“Uh …no?” Brandon stuck his hands in his pockets.

She looked down, frustrated. “You wouldn’t?”

Brandon lowered his eyes. “If I were going out with you, I wouldn’t even look at another girl.”

“Oh, Brandon,” she sighed. “You’re so cheesy.”

Funny. He thought girls
liked
romance.

She snapped her fingers, brightening. “Hey! So what do you think about Brett sleeping with that Mr. Dalton guy?”

“What? I hadn’t heard that.”

Callie threw both her hands over her mouth and then slowly removed them. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that… .” She bit her lip. “Oops.”

“It’s, like, public news?” Brandon hadn’t really met Mr. Dalton except at chapel the first day, but it seemed highly sleazy for a teacher to hit on a student, let alone sleep with one.

“I don’t know.” She looked down at the grass. “I didn’t know, but Brett doesn’t tell me anything anymore, so …” She trailed off.

Brandon wasn’t sure, but it seemed like she was about to burst into tears.

“Hey …” He reached his hand out to her. “You okay?”

Suddenly, Callie threw her cigarette into the grass, grabbed Brandon, and gave him a huge, wet kiss on the mouth. At first he resisted, but after tasting her DuWop mint lip gloss, he couldn’t help but melt into her. The kiss felt so good. Warm, soft, and sweet, just like a year ago. He thought of football games wrapped under blankets, the wobbly Metro-North train to the city where she’d fallen asleep in his lap, and playing foot-sie at formal dinner.

But then he pushed her away. He wanted this—he’d dreamed so many times of kissing Callie again—but this, right now, was wrong. All wrong.

“What’s the matter?” Callie shrieked drunkenly, staggering backwards.

“You’re really wasted.” Brandon shook his head. “We shouldn’t do this … now.”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered, leaning into him. “Easy and I had a big fight. I think we might be oooooover.”

He paused for a long time. Again, he’d waited forever to hear those words. But no, not now. Not like this. Brandon knew he was cheesy, but that was because he was a romantic. And fooling around with the girl he loved while she was shitfaced and on the rebound was totally fucking dumb. “That’s … whatever.” He pulled away from her.

“Come
on
,” Callie called. “Don’t you want to have sex with me?”

“You’re drunk. You should sleep this off.”

And just like that, he wiped his mouth off and walked away.

Instant Message Inbox

BennyCunningham:
Hey. Did u send her the cheer words yet?

CallieVernon:
Not yet.

BennyCunningham:
Well, do it!

CallieVernon:
I will. Hey, what cheer are the rest of us doing?

BennyCunningham:
I dunno. What about “Be Aggressive”?

CallieVernon:
K.

BennyCunningham:
Don’t forget to send her the cheer, unless you want nippleless bras!

Email Inbox

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Date: Saturday, September 7, 10:05 A.M.

Subject: Cheer

Hey Jenny,

You missed a great party last night. How was your new students’ thing?

Anyway, Benny asked me to send you the words of the cheer. It involves some dancing—sexy! And you sing it to the tune of “Sound Off.” I’m attaching a Word doc of the cheer lyrics here, and I’ll show you the movements in the room, K?

—C

P.S. Did the KissKiss! beauty basket arrive today? Enjoy!

P.P.S. Any more thoughts about what you’re going to say at DC? Let me know!

Everyone was hanging out on the vast green hockey field, which was surrounded by thick woods. The sun was directly above them, and the sky was a flawless blue, with a tiny bit of bite in the air. Parents, students, and alumni crowded the bleachers. The St. Lucius girls paraded out to their side of the field. They were dressed in their purple and white sweaters and skirts, with matching purple shin guards. The St. Lucius mascot, a giant black and white Canadian goose, followed behind them, flapping its wings menacingly at the bespectacled Waverly owl.

Brett picked some stray grass off the bottom of one of her Nike cleats and snorted at how stupid the owl looked. She couldn’t help thinking of the Dorothy Parker quote, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.” An owl in glasses seemed like the nerdiest mascot ever.

Jenny sat next to her, tensely wrapping and unwrapping the duct tape around her hockey stick.

“So how was that party last night?” Jenny asked. “I heard you guys come in last night really late… .”

“That was Callie, not me,” Brett corrected her. “I tried to slide in without you noticing. You didn’t miss much, though. Except I lost my cell phone. Have you seen it?”

“No.” Jenny shrugged.

Brett gritted her teeth. Not having her cell phone—she was
always
losing it—meant she had no idea if Jeremiah or Eric had called. She wondered if Jeremiah was here in the crowd. She scanned the group of people across the field but didn’t see a tall, cute boy with floppy red hair anywhere. She wondered how he’d taken her message the other night.

“So, I’m excited for the cheer.” Jenny grinned. “It sounds like it’s going to be really fun.”

Brett abruptly turned to her. “You know it’s a setup, right?”
Screw Callie
.

“A setup?” Jenny’s eyes widened.

“Yeah, it’s this—” Brett started, but just then Callie came up behind them and laid her hand on Jenny’s shoulder. Brett turned away.

“Hey, girl,” Callie said sweetly to Jenny. “You look so cute today. Is that my Stila lip gloss you’re wearing?”

“Uh, no. It’s mine. It’s
MAC
.”

“It’s so pretty.” Brett noticed Callie looked slightly green, probably from too much of that vile punch last night. Nice how she didn’t even say hi to her. She was too busy kissing Jenny’s ass.

Benny came up to the group. “We ready for the cheer?”

“Yeah,” Callie agreed. She looked nervously at Jenny. Jenny looked nervously at Brett. Brett shrugged. This was their shit to figure out.

“Let’s go, then!” Benny squealed.

All the girls on the bench jumped up and began to bounce on the balls of their feet. They’d asked Devin Rausch, a senior whose dad was a famous record producer, to play drums and DJ. Callie gave him a nod. The needle crackled on an old Funkadelic record: he scratched it a few times, and then the backbeat wafted out of the speakers. The girls started to stomp their feet.