The It Girl (22 page)

“Where’d you learn that?”

“Actually … it’s too weird to explain.”

“Huh,” Easy responded. “So, you know how I told you about those owls in that note?”

“Yeah.” Jenny was looking at his profile out of the corner of her eye. The night was getting colder, and she could see dew forming on the grass around them. She wondered what time it was.

“Did you think that was totally stupid?”

Jenny crossed her legs. “What? No. Why?”

“Because … I told you that I thought they talked.”

“No. Actually, I thought it was really sweet.”

“You did?” He smiled shyly at the ground.

“Yeah.” She smiled too, looking at him now.

Easy slid slightly closer to her. “Why?”

Jenny thought about why.
Because you’re hot? Because you’re beautiful? Because I can’t stop thinking about how perfect you are for me?

Jenny sat back. “Easy? Are you flirting with me because Callie told you to?”

He took a drag off his cigarette. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Oh,” she said, confused. She stared at her reflection in the pond. “Well, are you?”

“No,” he finally answered. Jenny noticed that his hand was trembling. “Are you?”

“No,” Jenny replied quickly. “I’m definitely not.”

“What are you going to do about DC?” he asked after a few seconds, stubbing his cigarette out on a rock. “Are you going to say it was Callie’s fault?”

“I still haven’t decided.” Jenny felt her face squinch up. She didn’t want to ruin Callie’s life, but she also didn’t want to get kicked out of Waverly. What if she walked out of DC and never saw Easy again?

“Look,” Easy sighed. “I don’t think any of this is right, and I don’t think you should be in trouble. And besides, I’m not even together with Callie anymore.”

Jenny held her breath.

“It’s weird that she’s manipulating us, you know?”

She nodded imperceptibly.

“And more than that … things don’t feel right,” he whispered, as if he were talking to himself.

“What do you mean?” Jenny asked, willing him to meet her gaze and then, maybe … her lips.

“Well …” Easy leaned back in the grass and stared up at the sky. Jenny remembered how he’d pointed out the Seven Sisters on their ceiling and wondered where that constellation was tonight. “You know how those De Beers diamond commer-cials show love as like this … this really sparkly, crazy thing?”

“Okay,” Jenny said, lying down on her back as well.

“Well, I want that,” Easy explained, talking straight ahead. “I don’t have that now, but I want it. Not in a stupid way, but I want all of that.”

Jenny’s insides shimmered. She understood what he meant completely. And as they stared up at the sky, the stars above them twinkled, shiny and sparkly. Kind of like diamonds.

Email Inbox

To:
“partygoers” (27 members on list)

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Sunday, September 8, 11:40 A.M.

Subject:
Awesome, awesome, awesome

Guys. The Black Saturday party was white-hot. Some interesting numbers:

6: Number of girls I made out with last night. (That’s the number I can remember, anyway.)

11: Bottles of Cuervo we went through. Hells yeah!

1: Weirdly well-groomed guy standing on the sidelines of the I Never game, looking longingly at a certain blond goddess from Atlanta.

2: Left-behind pairs of girls’ shoes. One pair of Manolos, one pair of Tod’s. Who got so messed up she went home barefoot?

2: People sitting by my goldfish pond, looking longingly into each other’s eyes. But I’m not gonna tell you who. That’s only for my goldfish, Stanley, to know for sure.

Later, party people,

Heath

P.S. Can’t wait for the next blowout.

P.P.S. It’s only three weeks away. Rest up!

The Waverly sports staff was so evil that they made every-one go to sports practice on Blacker Sunday (called that for obvious reasons). Everyone hit the field with stale-martini breath, eye shadow still smeared on their upper lids, and pink tongues, courtesy of two big swigs of Pepto to calm their gurgling stomachs.

Callie sat on the hockey bench with her head between her legs. She had a hickey on her neck, and she was certain it wasn’t from Easy. She’d tried to cover it with her Joey New York con-cealer stick, but the big purple welt was still there. Really, she felt too shitty to care. She wanted to curl back up under her double-thick cashmere blanket and suck her thumb. She eyed Jenny and Brett sitting on the grass, stretching, looking as if they hadn’t had a sip of alcohol last night. Since when were they such good friends?

Mrs. Smail blew her whistle and called the girls up to scrimmage. Of all things to do at a post-Black Saturday party practice, they were actually going to
play
? Why couldn’t everyone do a couple of laps and go back to bed?

“Callie Vernon, Brett Messerschmidt, you’ll play centers,” Mrs. Smail instructed.

A collective gasp rose up from the bench. Everyone’s heads swiveled back and forth, from Callie’s blond ponytail to Brett’s fire-red bob. Callie heaved herself up from the bench, feeling bloated and disgusting. She watched Brett storm off to the middle of the field. Frustration welled up inside of her again. How
dare
Brett not tell her about Mr. Dalton!

As soon as Mrs. Smail dropped the small silver ball, Brett whacked it, following through so roughly she hit Callie’s left shin guard.

Callie backed up in pain and anger. She tore after Brett, who was now a few steps ahead of her, dribbling the ball. The sod was mushy under her feet, and her black and white Nike cleats dug fiercely into the ground. Brett’s skirt rose so that you could see the bottom of her
STX
maroon bloomers and her skinny butt. Callie caught up to her and stuck her stick in between Brett and the ball. Then Brett’s hands twisted and she whacked the ball with the rounded side of her hockey stick, sending it careening away from Callie, toward one of the midfielders on Brett’s team.

“Foul!” Callie screamed, stopping in her tracks. “Mrs. Smail! That was a foul!”

“I didn’t see it,” Mrs. Smail responded. “Keep playing.” She gestured to the other girls, who had taken the ball and swept it down toward one of the goals.

“Jesus Christ!” Callie threw her stick to the ground in disgust. “She hit the ball with the wrong side of the stick!”

“Whatever,” Mrs. Smail said. “It’s only practice, and I didn’t see it.”

Callie turned to Brett, eyes narrowed. “They don’t teach field hockey in New Jersey, do they?”

Callie watched as Brett’s milky-white skin turned whiter.

“Go to hell,” Brett finally muttered.

“Ooh, the big comeback from class prefect, Brett Messerschmidt. I thought you had great debate skills! I thought you could talk your way out of anything!”

“Girls,” Mrs. Smail warned. “Play. Brett, your team just scored a goal.”

Brett stepped around Mrs. Smail to face Callie. “What is it, Callie? What’s the huge thing you have against me? If anything, I’m the one who should be angry at you—not the other way around!”

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you’re a manipulative bitch, that’s why!” Brett screamed.

The other players gasped. Mrs. Smail tried to step between them, but Callie shot her a look of warning that said,
Stay away
. Mrs. Smail turned and began walking briskly toward the field house.

Callie turned to Brett. “You take that back. I’m not manipulative.”

Brett barked out a laugh. “No? So what’s this whole Jenny-and-Easy thing about? How is that not manipulation?” She shot a look over at Jenny, who was standing perfectly still, stick poised, watching them from her midfield position.

Callie glanced at Jenny too. Great. Just great. A comment like that wouldn’t help sway Jenny to stick up for her at DC. She glowered at Brett. “You don’t know anything.”

“I don’t have to know anything,” Brett shot back. “I know you and how you operate. From what you did to Tinsley.”

“Tinsley?!?” Callie’s mouth dropped open.

“That’s right.” Brett’s voice was hushed. She stepped closer to her former friend, so close that their noses were almost touching. “Why don’t you just come clean? You set Tinsley up to take the rap. You made it so you wouldn’t get in any trouble.”

Oh, this was something. “
I
set it up? Who’s to say
you
didn’t set it up?” Callie yelled. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I didn’t even
talk
to Tinsley before she left! I was called into DC, I left, and she was already gone!”

“Oh, yeah. That’s a good one—”

“Why would I set Tinsley up? We were friends!”

Brett stepped back and glared at Callie confusedly. They both stared at each other for a few long seconds before Brett’s shoulders relaxed a bit. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Callie nodded fiercely.

“And you think that
I
got Tinsley in trouble?”

“Well
I
didn’t, so
you
must have,” Callie explained, but Brett could hear her resolve weakening.

“I didn’t have a chance to talk to Tinsley, either. She was gone before I could.”

Callie looked down. “Really?”

“Yes.”

The other players held their breath.

“I don’t get it,” Brett surmised. “Tinsley just … took the blame for us, on her own?”

“I guess. But why would she do that?”

“No clue.”

Callie began to laugh. “That’s really fucked up.”

Brett slowly began to giggle too. “God, I totally thought you did it.”

“And I thought
you
did it!”

“
I
thought you were going to transfer rooms on me, just to avoid having to talk about Tinsley!”

Behind them, Mrs. Smail ran up with Mr. Steinberg, the boy’s soccer coach, in tow. When she saw Callie and Brett laughing and then hugging, she stopped short in confusion.

“I swear they were ready to kill each other.”

“Girls,” Mr. Steinberg sighed hopelessly, shaking his head.

Mrs. Smail ran her fingers through her short honey-blond hair. “You know, why doesn’t everyone just hit the showers,” she suggested after a moment.

Finally.

Brett felt like she’d just run a marathon, which was always how she felt after vigorously fighting with somebody. She walked slowly back to the bleachers with Callie, neither of them speaking. But it was a comfortable silence, not a tense one. She threw her shin guards in her Hervé Chapelier
cabas
gray nylon bag and noticed her cell phone buzzing. She had a text message:
Come meet me on my boat when you can. We need to talk. -Eric.

She put her head in her hands. That single lingering kiss. His soft lips. The way he’d finally put his arms around her, pulling her closer to him. The way he smelled, like peppermint and cigarettes and French lavender laundry soap. The way he’d groaned a little when they stopped. She’d felt so rejected after their kiss yesterday, but maybe he’d changed his mind? She knew it was dangerous, but wasn’t life about taking risks? She only hoped Eric felt the same way.

He was sprawled on a modern white lounge chair on the boat’s deck, a bag of honey mustard pretzels at his side, when she arrived. He stood and brushed crumbs off his crisp chinos.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she answered, standing at the water’s edge. She’d quickly thrown on a black C&C California tee and hip-hugging Blue Cult jeans, hoping to look casual and unassuming, but now the outfit felt all wrong. Her shirt was too short and her pants were too low, so too much of her toned midriff winked up at him. It was too déclassé for Eric. She tried to cover it up with her hand. It didn’t help that he looked absolutely gorgeous, his blondish-brown hair curling against the edges of his white polo shirt.

“Hey.” He smiled down at her.

“Hey again,” Brett said quietly.

They fell silent, looking at each other from a distance. Brett felt stupid—obviously he didn’t feel the same way. Her stomach clunked inside of her, irritated that he would make her come here to tell her what she already knew: that they couldn’t see each other anymore, blah, blah, blah. Fine, big fucking deal. She wanted it to be over quickly. And not
ever
see him again. She could resign from DC. Who cared if it looked good on your college applications? There were other ways to get into Brown.

“So this is what I’ve been thinking.” He interrupted her thoughts. “You have one more year here. And you’re seventeen. I’m twenty-three. That’s like, six years.”

“Uh-huh,” Brett responded, twisting a piece of rope lying on one of the dock’s pylons.

“Six years. Like, when we’re in our twenties … you’ll be, say, twenty-two, and I’ll be twenty-eight. And when I’m fifty, you’ll be forty-four.”

Brett snorted. “So what are you saying?’”

“I—” Eric started.

“No offense,” Brett retorted quickly, straightening up. “But I’m not, like, holding out for you until I’m forty-four. Hopefully I’ll be with a younger guy by then.”

Eric stared at her intensely. “I don’t think I could wait until you were forty-four.”

“Oh,” she replied, winding the rope around her finger so tightly that it began cutting off the circulation.

He stared at her, then sighed. “Come into my cabin?”

Brett paused. She wasn’t positive, but she suspected that this was about to be the biggest, most important moment of her life so far. Standing there, in a crappy T-shirt and her crappiest jeans, on a random Sunday after field hockey practice, slightly hungover, seventeen years old, a tiny pimple on the corner of her right cheek that was covered up with
MAC
concealer, AP bio homework to do … Her life a boring mess, otherwise. But if she wanted it to happen, the next moments could change her life forever.