Winter White (5 page)

“Nothing really. Just here to give Mom and Dad a slight heart attack.” Dylan stretched her legs out in front of her. “I just came from the house. God, B, I wish you could have seen their faces when I told them I dropped out of college.”

“You dropped out of Vanderbilt?” Brayden’s jaw dropped. “You’ve only been there for two months!” ’

“I don’t know what I was thinking going there,” she said to Izzie and Kylie. “It’s
so
stuffy, and the girls are all buttoned-up, headband-loving beauty queens in training.”

“Ugh, who would want to deal with that every day?” Kylie agreed.

Dylan rubbed her temples just thinking about the travesty. “I’m transferring to LSU next semester. I was originally wait-listed, but a spot opened up, so I’m in come January. My friend Lila goes there, and that place is a lot more fun.” She squeezed Brayden tightly. “Till then, I’m all yours.”

“For two months?” Brayden reminded her. “You’ll never survive.”

“Of course I will. I’ve been craving home,” Dylan told him. “I haven’t been home for more than a weekend since boarding school.”

Brayden didn’t look convinced. “What are you not telling me?”

Dylan glanced at Izzie. “Is he always this paranoid? I
swear, sometime in the last two years, we switched roles. When did you become the older sibling?”

“When you left me to fend for myself with Mom and Dad,” Brayden said pointedly, and Dylan stopped laughing. Izzie could sense some tension, but she pretended to stare at her nails. It was a Mira technique that always seemed to work.

“I should probably get going,” Dylan said, and for some reason, that disappointed Izzie. She liked this girl, and the truth was, she hadn’t liked a lot of people from Emerald Cove she’d met so far. She watched as Dylan threw a twenty down on the table. “This should cover their sundaes.”

“Nice tip,” Kylie said appraisingly. “Will I see you this weekend?”

“Absolutely,” Dylan told her, and looked at Izzie. “You should join us, Izzie. We can hang out and compare EC notes.”

Brayden’s face was strained, but Izzie was too busy staring at Dylan to say anything. Trading EC war stories with Dylan sounded like a better way to spend an afternoon than shopping for yet another dress with Aunt Maureen. “I’m in,” she said.

“Great.” Dylan slung her bag over her shoulder. “Want to hang tomorrow, too?”

“I have school,” Izzie said.

“So?” Dylan winked and headed for the door. “As far as I know, missing fourth period never killed anybody.”

100% CASHMERE.
Mira stared at the sweater tag in her hand and smiled. Just the words
100% cashmere
were enough to put her in a good mood.

The pale pink sweater with a ballet-scoop neckline felt so soft against her cheek that she could have slept on it. Prepsters, Emerald Cove’s popular high-end clothing boutique (so named for girls like her who went to Emerald Prep and could afford three-hundred-dollar riding boots) must have just gotten a shipment because the cashmere sweater was available in every size and color. The only decision Mira had to make now was pink or taupe. She was going to try on both along with a pair of those new jeans she saw on the table at the front of the store. While she was here, she might as well look for some casual dresses, too, to wear to a few of her dad’s
fund-raisers she was dreading. There was so much to choose from at Prepsters, she wished she could stay all day.

Shopping really was retail therapy. Maybe that was why Mira had been doing so much of it in the last few weeks. When her dad apologized to the family for the first time, Mira ran out afterward and bought expensive white flip-flops with interchangeable bands. When her mom cried over a blog that said she was crazy for standing by her dad, Mira bought luxurious lavender 900-thread-count sheets for her bed. And when Savannah, her friends, and pretty much the whole tenth grade blacklisted her, Mira bought her and Izzie matching sterling-silver evil eye rings so she would have something to look at in class when her former friends were talking about her.

Today’s TV interview with Waa-Waa Wendy had shot Mira’s nerves so badly that she headed to Prepsters in search of new sweaters. It was getting colder—well, cold for North Carolina—and she needed something to warm her up, especially now that she was single and didn’t have a boyfriend’s arms to wrap around her.

Not that she was that upset about the boyfriend part. Taylor Covington, EP’s own version of the Ken doll, had been nice to look at, but he wasn’t really boyfriend material. Mira knew she was better off without him; she just wished she had a few more shoulders to cry on. But Savannah had taken those away, too. Losing friends had definitely turned out to be worse than losing a boyfriend.

Mira piled a few pairs of jeans on top of the cashmere sweaters she was carrying and headed to the fitting room. She made it only a few feet when she spotted a wine-colored sweater dress with a turtleneck collar that would look adorable with her new riding boots. She stopped to check it out, and that’s when she heard talking.

“Sarah Collins, daughter of Myra and Peter Collins, was escorted by Todd Selzner, at the White Ball in Birmingham, Alabama….”

Mira heard the voice and froze with her hand on the dress tag.

“Miss Collins is a proud cotillion participant who hopes to someday study special education at her mother’s alma mater, Ole Miss.”

“What does she look like? Stop hogging the magazine, Lea!”

“Would you two stop? Give it to me. I paid for it. Which one is she? Oh,
her
.” Talk about bad lighting. She looks like she belongs with the rest of the undead on
True Blood
.” The others laughed. “What a waste of a gorgeous gown. See what I mean, girls? My mother is right. One bad photographer can ruin your whole cotillion.”

Cotillion!
How could Mira have forgotten about her favorite tradition in Emerald Cove? Making her formal debut into society was something she had dreamed about since she was in pre-K. She’d spent the last three years
preparing for the sophomore girl tradition—taking etiquette classes, going to Saturday morning dance lessons, and doing approved Junior League charity work—and somehow she had let all this drama with her dad make her completely forget the most important event of the year!

“It says here Sarah Collins made her debut with forty-five girls. That’s not a debut; that’s a cattle call. Maybe that explains why half these girls look like cows.” The girls’ laughter increased, and so did the snorting.

Mira prayed they couldn’t see her behind the rack of sweater dresses. When she peeked through the rack, she saw exactly what she’d suspected. Savannah, her former best friend, and her two—make that three—sidekicks, Lea Price, Lauren Salbrook, and their protégé, Millie Lennon, were huddled around the latest issue of
Town & Country
, reading the magazine’s debutante announcements. It’s something Mira had done with Savannah many times before. She used to love picking up the latest issue, getting iced coffee, going for pedicures, and then ripping apart each girl’s announcement sentence by sentence. It wasn’t till Izzie showed up that Mira realized words, however nicely said, could still cut so deep that they made people bleed.

“Miss, can I help you find something?”

Mira looked up.
Dang.
A saleswoman had spotted her. She could only imagine how this looked. She was crouched down, her right hand clutching a dress like a towel and her
left arm holding the cashmere sweaters and now-crumpled jeans. The saleswoman did not look pleased.

Mira shook her head, hoping that would be enough to send the woman away. If she opened her mouth, Savannah might realize she was being spied on.

“Should I put that dress in a fitting room for you?” The woman attempted to pry the wrinkled dress from Mira’s hands, but she wouldn’t let go. “Or wrap it up?”

That would work. “Yes,” Mira whispered, and reached into her bag for her credit card. “Wrap it. Please. Quickly. I, uh, have a doctor’s appointment to get to.”

The woman glanced at the name on the credit card, and her expression changed. “Are you Senator Monroe’s daughter?” she asked, her voice going up an octave. “You look just like your father!”

This was Mira’s cue to get out of there. She left the dress on the counter and snatched her credit card back before the saleswoman had the chance to react. “I’m late. I’ll come back for this later,” she said, and headed for the exit. She’d made it to the accessories table when Savannah and the other girls stepped into the aisle and blocked her path. They looked like the fashion mafia in their color-coordinated designer outfits.

“Hi, Mira,” Savannah said pleasantly, looking like she had just come from a modeling shoot. Her long pale blond hair was as glossy as ever, held back in a plaid headband, and she had on the same fitted navy sweater as the mannequin
behind her that always modeled Prepsters’ latest must-have outfit. Savannah gave Mira a brief once-over. “What are you doing here?” she asked with a thick drawl. “We just saw you on TV.
The Wendy Wallington Show
is so”—she hesitated, trying to find the right word to make Mira flinch—“quaint. I don’t think anyone outside the state even sees that show.”

“Probably not.” Mira glanced helplessly at the door, which was feet away.

Savannah smiled. “I haven’t seen the show because I was at school, but my mom said you managed okay.”

Savannah was like a python. Mira had learned to watch her closely because she was never quite sure when she would strike. Even her compliments were venomous. Mira ignored the comment and looked at the others. “Hi, guys.” The girls responded by glancing at their shoes or the items on the accessories table. Millie seemed particularly interested in a thick headband that was clearly last season.

“You’re not here alone, are you?” Savannah’s eyes widened innocently as she looked to see if Mira had company even though she knew she didn’t. Who would Mira hang out with? Savannah had claimed all their mutual friends after their nasty friendship breakup, and she’d probably destroy any girl stupid enough to befriend Mira now.

“I was just leaving,” Mira said.

Savannah and the others didn’t move out of her way. “I never understood how anyone could go clothes shopping
alone,” Savannah said, leaning on Lea. “I could not make a single decision on dresses for cotillion events without backup. You
are
still going to do cotillion, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Mira said, drained.
Just a few more questions and it will be over
, she told herself. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Oh, I… never mind.” Savannah broke into another one of her patented plastic smiles. “I’m glad you’re still going. We’ll see you at cotillion rush events, then.”

“When is that starting?” Lea asked, her voice slightly anxious.

“I don’t know for
sure
,” Savannah stressed as if she had a clue. She always acted in the know even when she wasn’t. “I heard Mary Beth Pearson might be running it.”

“Your cousin?” Lauren asked. “Lucky you! She’ll give you the easiest tasks.”

Cotillion pledging. Rush. Debutante initiation.
Whatever you wanted to call it, Mira had forgotten about this secret tradition, too. While the Junior League didn’t approve of it, or even acknowledge its existence, over the years it had become customary for former debs to put the current cotillion class through a series of sometimes funny, sometimes mortifying games to prove their worthiness like they were a college sorority pledge class. No one knew who ran the rush till the games ended, but participating was pretty much mandatory. Those who didn’t do it were socially blacklisted for the rest of the year, and no one at Emerald Prep wanted that.

“You guys have nothing to worry about.” Savannah pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “If it’s Mary Beth, and I bet it is, she’ll take care of you guys.” She glanced at Mira. “She knows who my friends are.”

If Mira needed proof that she was no longer in Savannah’s inner circle, there it was. Savannah made her feel worse about herself. Weren’t friends supposed to do the opposite? The school’s reigning queen was never going to forgive her. Mira had chosen Izzie over Savannah, and Izzie had won Brayden, which left Savannah out in the cold. And she did not do the deep freeze well. She liked to cause hell rather than be in it.

“But enough about cotillion,” Savannah said, stepping closer to Mira with an expression of deep concern. “How are
you
doing? I would be mortified if I had to go on TV and talk about my dad having a kid he never told us about. Not that my dad would ever do such a thing,” she added just as quickly. Lauren tried to hold in a snicker.

“I’m fine,” Mira said, trying not to sound testy. She was glad she had changed out of the outfit she wore on Wendy’s show and into her fitted green tunic and capri leggings. She felt like her go-to outfit gave her superstrength, which she needed right then.

“Are you sure?” Savannah frowned, and the wrinkles that formed around her mouth almost screamed in protest. “You look pale, and you have bags under your eyes, but that’s
nothing that a little under-eye cream can’t fix.” Savannah rooted around in her enormous designer bag and pulled out an equally expensive eye cream. “This is my mom’s. She has horrible bags, too, so this should help.” Lea smirked, while Millie looked mildly mortified. She was still new to Savannah’s group, so she was still learning how cutting Savannah could be.