The It Girl (7 page)

Hey man, write back, ’cause we all think you’re dead.

Later,

H

Email Inbox

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Wednesday, September 4, 10:01 A.M.

Subject:
Better in person …

Hey, B. You got off the phone so fast. Just when we were getting to the good part! I can’t go another day without seeing you. I know your classes start tomorrow, but you’re done by 4, right? How about I hop the shuttle and come over tomorrow afternoon? Maybe we could spend a little time under that downy comforter of yours… .

“Oof!” Brett slammed into a tall guy as she walked down Stansfield Hall’s third-floor hallway. She’d been trying to kill a couple of minutes catching up on e-mails on her cell phone’s tiny screen before meeting with some new teacher named Mr. Dalton, who was supposed to be the new Disciplinary Committee adviser. Jeremiah’s message had just popped up on the screen. “Sorry,” she muttered to the person who’d bumped into her, without looking to see who it was.

“You better watch where you’re going with that. It’s Brett, right?”

She looked up. An unbelievably handsome boy with mussed dirty blond hair was standing in front of her. He looked like Prince William but taller, tanner, and better. He wore a slightly rumpled Savile Row-tailored small-check oxford shirt with the bottom two buttons buttoned incorrectly. Brett couldn’t help but imagine him haphazardly throwing it on over his hard, muscular chest, as he climbed out of bed.

“I recognize you from the picture in your student file,” the boy went on. “I’m Eric Dalton, the new DC adviser.”

Oops. This was no boy. “Oh! Um. Hi, Mr. Dalton,” Brett stammered, shoving her cell phone in her pocket. “I’m, uh, sorry about that.” She held out her hand.

He shuffled a coffee mug—the same maroon-and-white Waverly Owls mug that they mixed drinks in at their dorm parties—from one hand to the other and gripped hers. Brett was suddenly glad that she had a moisturizing fetish and that her palm would feel silky in his hand.

“Those aren’t allowed here, you know.” Mr. Dalton raised his eyebrows at her phone. For a second Brett thought he was serious and started to muster up an excuse. Then he whispered, “But I won’t tell … this time. Go sit down in my office and I’ll be with you in a sec.”

Flustered, Brett smiled, wishing she had something witty to say.

The door to his office stood open. She walked in and looked around. For a guy who’d just arrived at Waverly, he sure had a lot of stuff. There were posters wrapped in brown paper on the floor, a large black globe that still showed Russia as the
USSR
, and books and papers everywhere. She noticed a decanter filled with what looked like red wine on the oak table in the corner, and her mind started to race.

S
ettle down
, she told herself.
You’re here because he’s new to Waverly and he wants to meet all the DC members. That’s probably cran-raspberry Snapple, not win
e.

She walked up to one of the posters that Mr. Dalton had hung in a heavy, gilded frame. It was actually an old inscribed scroll, mounted and framed. She squinted at the Ancient Greek words and murmured
,
“‘Praise each god as though they were listening.’”

“How’d you know that?” a voice called out behind her.

Brett jumped. Mr. Dalton stood in the doorway, grinning at her slyly, as if he knew a big secret and was ready to spill it. “I spent a little time in Greece,” she said uncertainly.

“You want to sit down?” he asked. “Sorry for all the papers.” He quickly picked a stack of papers up off a chair, leaning so close to Brett that she couldn’t help but notice how good he smelled. Like Acqua di Parma, which was the only type of cologne she could stand on a guy.

“Can I get you anything?” Mr. Dalton sat down in his high-backed brown leather chair. It made a farting creak, which both of them pretended not to notice. “I have little fridge, some glasses, although I only have … well … actually, all I have, I think, is some pinot noir.” He frowned, then blinked hard. “Sorry. I mean, obviously we can’t have pinot noir. I don’t know what that’s even
doing
in here, because I wasn’t drinking it or anything.”

Methinks Mr. Dalton doth protest too much
, Brett thought wryly, watching him nervously pull his shirt collar away from his neck. “I’m fine,” she stated primly instead, perching on the edge of her chair.

Dalton switched on the flat-screen Mac G5 sitting on top of his desk. “Okay. Brett. So they’re making me put all the old DC cases into a database. They gave me the grunt-work jobs because I’m new.” He flashed his perfect teeth nervously, and she wondered silently if he just had amazing dental genes or if these were veneers. It was a tough call, one she wouldn’t mind investigating more closely. With, say, her lips.

He shuffled the papers. “So besides meeting all the DC appointees, I’m looking for someone to help me weed through all this DC stuff to get to the pertinent information and then help enter it into the computer. But it has to be someone who was on DC last year, because the material is confidential to non-DC students. Were you on DC last year?”

Brett licked her lips. “Well, no,” she answered, wanting to lie.

“Oh.” Mr. Dalton sounded disappointed. He let out a sigh. “That’s too bad.”

“We wouldn’t have to tell anybody, though, would we?” Brett suggested slowly. “I mean, I want to help. It would … it would look good on my transcript.”

Sure. That’s why I want to do it
, she thought.
My transcript.

“I don’t know… . ” Mr. Dalton shook his head. He stared at her quizzically. Brett nervously brushed a hair off her cheek. “How old are you?” he finally said.

“Seventeen.”

“Huh.” He tilted his head and smiled with one side of his mouth.

“What?”

“Well. You don’t look seventeen. That’s all.”

Guys said this to Brett all the time. They were always astounded she was still in high school. “How old are
you
?” He straightened up a little. “Twenty-three. I just finished Brown.” Brett unconsciously chewed the Hard Candy Vinyl polish off her pinkie.

“I’m going to go to grad school, but since I went to Waverly, I thought I’d pay my dues and teach here for a couple years,” Mr. Dalton continued.

“I want to go to Brown,” Brett blurted out.

“I could imagine you there.” He nodded.

She stared at her gorgeous twenty-three-year-old teacher and didn’t pull her eyes away for the second he stared back.

“All right.” He finally broke the silence. “I think maybe we could figure out a way for you to help me—I mean, if you really want to.”

I want to
, Brett wanted to say.
I really, really want to.
But she remained silent.

“Maybe we could meet up again tomorrow morning, before class? Oh, and the name Mr. Dalton sounds really weird. Maybe I’ll be used to it when I’m fifty and running the family business. But for now …” He lowered his eyes and then looked back up at her from beneath his thick blond lashes. “Call me Eric?”

“Sure,” Brett agreed, smiling. She could think of a lot of things she’d like to call him.

Just then the papers that he’d removed from her chair started to slide off his desk toward Brett’s lap. He lunged forward, grabbing for them. At the same time, Brett leaned down to catch some papers that had landed on the floor. Their heads collided.

Ouch. “Fuck!” Brett cried, seeing a brief flash of white. Then she clamped her mouth shut. Even though most Waverly kids had dirty mouths, you weren’t supposed to swear in front of the teachers. Waverly Owls must always have good manners, and bad language was a sign of indecency and bad breeding.

He rubbed his forehead, wincing. “You okay?”

Brett swallowed hard. What if Mr. Dalton thought she was uncouth and trashy? But then she noticed his concerned expression and decided he didn’t care.

“I think I’ll live,” she replied finally.

“Well, that’s good,” he laughed. “Because I’d definitely like to keep you alive.”

Email Inbox

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Wednesday, September 4, 10:53 A.M.

Subject:
Hot, hot, hot

Hey Sis,

I just met the perfect guy. He’s smart, gorgeous, shy, and sweet and hotter than the models in the Ralph Lauren Romance ads. Trouble, though: he’s a teacher. As in, the kind that gives you homework assignments. The kind that sits up on the Waverly stage during assembly. The kind that grades papers and isn’t supposed to touch students … I’m sure you get the gist. What to do?

xoxoxo,

Little Sis

Email Inbox

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Thursday, September 4, 10:57 A.M.

Subject:
Re: Better in person …

J,

Sure, you can come over tomorrow, but my room’s out. Callie’s being a real prima donna. Surprise, surprise.

See ya soon.

B

Callie leaned up against the dusty wooden doors of the old stables, trying not to get dried horse manure on the heels of her brand-new Stella McCartney round-toed black patent leather shoes. The weathered red barn sat next to a three-acre horse paddock, separated from the rest of the Waverly campus by a patch of densely settled pines. A whistle blew in the distance, and Callie recognized the gruff voice of Coach Smail, the girls’ field hockey coach, yelling, “That won’t cut it on varsity, ladies!” The first full day at school consisted of grueling eight-hour tryouts for the fall teams, but Callie was exempt since she was already a varsity field hockey captain.

The sun was low in the late-afternoon sky and Easy was walking toward her. He was wearing one of the T-shirts he’d taken home from her house—a ratty green thing with a horseshoe, of course—under his beat-up maroon Waverly jacket. No tie. His dark brown hair stood up in disheveled peaks and there was a smudge of blue ink next to his left ear. A huge, sexy smile spread across his face when he saw her. She wanted him so badly. Maybe everything between them was okay after all.

“You could’ve at least changed your shirt,” she teased, taking the hem between her fingers.

“I suppose, because I feel way underdressed next to you,” he teased back.

“I’m not all that dressed up.”

“Are too. Look at those shoes.” He pointed. “I can imagine you standing in front of your closet, agonizing over your newest, sexiest pair. Right?” He smiled at her. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Wrong,” Callie shot back, although he was, of course, right. It pissed her off that Easy knew her so well. And that he was smarter than she was. Actually, when it came down to it, everything about him made her simultaneously seethe and shudder with pleasure.

Easy lit a cigarette and ducked so that he was out of sight of Marymount’s house, a grand Tudor mansion right on the edge of campus. Callie tossed her long strawberry-blond hair behind her shoulders. Why was he just standing there? Here they were, alone by the abandoned horse stables, while everyone else was finishing up sports tryouts. She could hardly wait to lie down in the tick-infested hay and tear his clothes off.

“Missed you at the party last night,” she whispered tenderly.

“Mmm. Yeah. I was really tired.”

Okay, this was infuriating. He was
still
just standing there.

“So, you want to come over here?” Callie finally asked, pulling at his jacket.

“Just a sec.” He jerked away slightly and took another drag.

“Never mind, then. Forget it.” Callie backed away, pulling out her own pack of Marlboro Lights. She stuck one in her mouth and tried to flick on her fluorescent green lighter but kept fumbling with the childproof lock.

“No, no, come on,” Easy pleaded in a low voice, turning to her and throwing his cigarette on the ground. “Don’t be like that… .”

“Well, I don’t know,” Callie started. “I mean, you—”

Easy put his hand on the nape of her neck. “I’m just a little out of it.” He kissed Callie’s jawbone lightly, then pressed her against the stable door and kissed her harder. His capable hands floated all over her body. Callie pulled a mess of tangled hair back from her face.

“Have I told you how good it is to see you?” Easy murmured between kisses.

Callie sighed. Things were suddenly right again. What had she been agonizing about? She and Easy were perfect together. Maybe she shouldn’t have felt so freaked about what had happened in Spain. Maybe she shouldn’t have paid any attention to that stupid IM she’d gotten from Heath saying they’d broken up.

“Maybe we could lie down?” she whispered.

Easy tugged her toward the paddock where the grass was green and soft, kissing her collarbone lightly. He pulled her to the ground and kissed her neck.
This is the way it should be
, she thought, looking toward the setting sun. The abandoned stables were beautiful and the sun was low and glowing pink in the sky. No, there wasn’t any John Mayer playing softly in the background like there had been that night in Spain, but this would definitely do.

“D’you remember what we were talking about in Spain?” Callie murmured, her heart shivering in her chest. The memory of that night came rushing back: they had been in her bed, under the sheets, almost naked. Callie had mustered up all her courage and said to her beautiful, messy, sexy, brilliant, bel-ligerent boyfriend, “I love you.” She’d planned on having sex with him then: they’d tell each other they loved one other and then make love for the first time. All of the rumors about Tinsley from last year would clear up, and Easy would be hers forever.