Adored (5 page)

He jumped slightly when Brett knocked a second time, and stood up to wave her in. The office was about half the size of a typical Waverly dorm room—or about twice the size of a broom closet. Ceiling-high bookshelves were stuffed with books and folders with papers spilling out of them. She fought off a dizzying surge of claustrophobia.

“Brett! Thanks so much for coming!” Mr. Wilde rubbed his hand against his forehead and looked as if he’d forgotten why he’d asked her to come in the first place.

“Am I late?” Brett asked politely, sliding into the padded chair facing the desk and promptly banging her knee into it. Faced with the DC adviser’s poorly chosen purplish button-down shirt, Brett felt slightly too dressy in her hunter green pleated Anna Sui skirt and silky white peasant shirt.

“No, of course not.” Mr. Wilde took a giant gulp of water from a green plastic cup on his desk, and Brett realized it was also about a thousand degrees in here. She unconsciously wiped a hand against her forehead. “You’ve been nominated for a special role.” Mr. Wilde smiled as he pushed his chair back from his desk. He made it sound about as appealing as
You’ve been nominated to clean the toilets.

“To do what?” Brett asked cautiously, crossing her legs and taking care not to kick the desk again. The last time she’d been called in for a “special role,” it had been to tutor Sebastian. A slight breeze blew in through the window, cooling Brett’s skin.

“Relax,” Mr. Wilde said, grinning. “It’s actually kind of fun.” He reached into his top desk drawer and riffled through a mess of papers and CD cases without covers, finally fishing out a stack of spreadsheets. “You’re in charge of organizing this year’s Secret Santa exchange.”

Brett had almost forgotten it was Secret Santa time, the allegedly community-building exercise that covered the two weeks leading up to Waverly’s annual black tie Holiday Ball. The whole campus got involved, everyone sneaking secret gifts into each other’s mailboxes or dorm rooms. “Isn’t that Emily Strauss’s job?” Brett asked, suddenly surprised that it was so close to Christmas. Where had the semester gone? “She’s the senior prefect.”

Mr. Wilde shook his head. “Traditionally it
is
the senior prefect’s responsibility,” he answered, and Brett could tell from the way he was carefully choosing his words that Emily had bailed. “But Emily is, uh, especially busy with college applications at this point in the school year, and wanted a little help with some of the senior prefect holiday responsibilities.” Brett was familiar with Emily Strauss’s unwavering desire to get into Yale, because she never shut up about it. “Basically, you’ll assign every Waverly Owl a Secret Santa and then supervise the whole process as it unfolds. And you’ll help plan the actual party itself. What do you think?”

Brett fidgeted. Between studying for finals, completing her other DC responsibilities, and prepping for the SATs, she was supposed to squeeze in taking charge of the whole Secret Santa process? Hadn’t she done the administration enough favors when she took on tutoring Sebastian at Mrs. Horniman’s insistence? And look how
that
had turned out.

“There are a number of important alums attending the ball,” Mr. Wilde reminded her, tapping a pen against the edge of his desk. “So we really need someone who can come through on this.” He lowered his eyes at Brett.

Brett nodded slowly, understanding that she didn’t have a choice. She was getting used to that feeling. But the Holiday Ball was less than two weeks away—Emily must have done some of the planning already, right? “Sure,” Brett said, suddenly realizing this was a blessing in disguise. She actually kind of welcomed the distraction—a new project was the perfect way to ignore Sebastian’s annoying sociological experiment.

“Excellent.” A look of relief washed over Mr. Wilde’s face as he handed the stack of spreadsheets to Brett. “Here’s a list of the student body for Secret Santa pairing. Go to it, and let me know if you have any questions.”

She took the ream of paper and stuffed it into her worn leather Chloé tote bag, eager to escape the confines of Mr. Wilde’s office. It wasn’t until later that afternoon, when she had the spreadsheets fanned across two tables at CoffeeRoasters in Rhinecliff that she realized what an enormous undertaking it was to pair students up for the Secret Santa exchange. Should she give only freshmen to freshmen? Girls to girls? Wasn’t there some way to just have a computer do it randomly? It was the twenty-first century, after all.

The tables shook as Heath Ferro appeared out of nowhere and slid into an armchair across from Brett, his black puffy North Face parka jostling some papers onto the floor. He eyed the spreadsheets of names, his greenish eyes wide with glee, as he unwrapped a hideous red and yellow striped scarf from his neck. “So I hear you’re Santa Claus!”

Brett scrambled to collect all the papers and flipped them over. “Shhh,” she hissed, glancing around her. Mr. Wilde had told her to keep quiet about the Secret Santa—as if it were a matter of national security. She took a sip of her cappuccino, cold at this point, and gave Heath an icy glare. “Apparently.”

“Want a little helper?” he asked, oblivious to Brett’s annoyance as he tried to peek under one of the papers.

“No!” Brett snatched them all up in her arms, shielding them from Heath’s prying. “There’s a reason it’s called
Secret
Santa.”

“I could really sex this thing up for you, if you want,” he offered, brushing the snow out of his shaggy dark blond hair. “I mean, it’s totally lame, right? Some dork gives you some present you could only give a cousin you don’t really know—a gift certificate for the snack bar, maybe one of those Waverly owl key chains, lottery scratch tickets—”

“You’re not allowed to give scratch tickets,” she said automatically, only half-listening, as she stuffed the papers into her bag.

“That’s what I’m
talking
about!” Heath squirmed in his chair as if she’d agreed with what he was saying. “Let’s make it all about what you’re
not
supposed to do.”

Brett threw her pen down on the table, slightly amused at Heath’s childish enthusiasm for the Secret Santa gift exchange. “They should’ve put
you
in charge of this,” she suggested, only half-joking.

“I’m not so good with responsibility. But this ship needs a rudder, and that’s you,” Heath declared. “This is the perfect opportunity to shake up the system.” He rubbed his hands together, and with his cheeks flushed red from the cold, Brett could kind of see why Kara Whalen had gone out with him. “What if everyone took nude pictures of themselves from the waist down and exchanged them? And everyone had to guess who their Secret
Naked
Santa was?”

Brett shot him a contemptuous look. It was also kind of easy to see why Kara had dumped him. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay, okay.” Heath was nonplussed. “That idea’s not for you. I got a million of them, though.” He closed his eyes, conjuring up his next dirty proposal. “Oh! This is perfect: what if everyone gave coupons for a free hookup, to be redeemed at a time and place of our choosing? Someplace dark. We could use the old—”

“You’re insane, you know that?” Brett asked, getting to her feet. She slung her heavy bag over her shoulder and realized she’d need to hole up at an empty desk on the third floor of the library if she actually wanted to get anything done.

Heath sighed. “I can see you’re going to make this difficult,” he said, scratching his head with his hand as if Brett were the nuisance, not him.

“And I can see you’re going to try to distract me from my job,” she shot back. She wound her white pashmina around her neck.

“Easy, tiger.” A wounded look crossed Heath’s face, but Brett knew him too well to be fooled. Nothing really bothered him—at least, nothing besides Kara dumping him. Heath seemed to care so little about anything besides having a good time, and yet, he’d been so unexpectedly crushed when Kara told him she didn’t want to go out with him anymore last month. Brett remembered seeing him, vodka-soaked and miserable, staring forlornly at pictures of the two of them in happier times. Brett knew what it was like to get dumped—in fact, it was that same night that Jeremiah Mortimer, her on-again-off-again boyfriend, had dumped her for the last time. It made her feel kind of sorry for Heath.

Kind of. “I’ve got to get to work.” Brett zipped up her coat and adjusted her messenger bag.

Heath ran a hand over his hair and slunk back in his armchair, smiling his infuriatingly satisfied smile—as if he knew a secret no one else did. “Don’t be such a Grinch.”

“Don’t be such a pervert. It’s getting really old.” Brett spun on her heel and stalked out of the coffee shop. Outside, snow-flakes were slowly falling and melting onto the pavement. Pretty holiday decorations hung from the cast iron lampposts that lined Main Street, and couples carrying overstuffed shopping bags strolled down the sidewalk, holding hands. A cluster of Girl Scouts were singing “Jingle Bells” on the steps to the First Presbyterian Church.

Brett took a deep breath of cold fresh air and stuffed her bare hands into the pockets of her coat. What she really wanted this holiday was to win a certain bet.

A
n arctic wind whipped across the common on Wednesday evening, but Tinsley barely felt the cold against her bare neck. She’d circled the campus twice after picking at her shrimp pad thai during dinner. Usually she loved Thai night in the dining hall, but ever since her bowling date with Julian, she’d been completely distracted. She’d smoked a pack of Marlboro Lights down to the last two, and now her olive-colored cashmere fingerless gloves from Barneys reeked of smoke. But she barely noticed. Her mind kept circling back on itself over and over again:
who could Julian have lost his virginity to?

He was only a
freshman
, she thought as she trundled through the snow, purposely stepping across the lawns instead of the plowed sidewalks. It made her feel good to burn off some energy. This time last year, Julian had been an eighth grader. How do you go from the eighth grade to having sex? (Never mind—according to Heath Ferro and his wild imagination, he’d lost his virginity on a prospective weekend at Waverly. To a senior, no less.) She imagined Julian as the Dustin Hoffman character in
The Graduate
, only a lot taller and much cuter, having been seduced by some cougar next-door neighbor or friend of his parents.

Tinsley looked up to see the warm, yellow lights from the windows of Maxwell Hall welcoming her in from the cold. She clomped up the steps and ducked into the door to the mail-room.

She shook the snow from her boots and stepped around an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog covered with footprints. She stood on her tiptoes to peek into the tiny glass window of her box—empty. A pod of freshman girls giggled at the bulletin board in the far corner, sipping from their steaming coffee cups and scanning the board for who knew what. She was about to turn and leave when she thought she heard Julian’s name. All the girls laughed in unison and Tinsley’s heart quickened. What were they saying about him? She casually drifted toward them, taking out her phone and pretending to send a text. The girls’ voices got maddeningly quieter as Tinsley approached, and the more she strained her ears, the less she could hear. The girls burst into a fit of giggles and then ripped down a flyer from the bulletin board, looking at Tinsley as they rushed out of the mailroom, the smell of peaches and strawberries and café mocha swirling in their wake.

Tinsley stared at the fresh blank spot on the bulletin board. Slivers of pink were stapled tightly around the empty spot where the flyer had been posted. For a brief, nightmarish second, she imagined the flyer reading slutty girl steals julian mccafferty’s v-card in giant block letters. She turned away from the bulletin board, feeling stupid.

She caught a glimpse of Brandon Buchanan hurrying out of the student lounge, a sleek black squash bag thrown over his shoulder. The squash team—yes! Julian and Brandon played on the team together, and everyone knew that guys bragged about their conquests in the locker room, so chances were the whole squash team would know Julian’s hookup history. “Hey!” she called out, dashing out the door after Brandon.

He gave a tentative wave in response but didn’t slow down. On the steps of Maxwell, she caught up with him and placed a hand on the arm of his black down parka. “Hey,” she said again, trying to sound natural. As if she were always going out of her way to talk to boring, metrosexual Brandon. “What’s up?”

Brandon regarded her face carefully, as if searching for a hidden agenda. “Nothing,” he said shortly. “Just headed back to my room to study. Why?” He stepped cautiously around an icy patch on the cement stairs.

“No reason.” Tinsley shrugged her shoulders casually, seeing her breath in the cold night air. Damn Brandon for being so suspicious. Was it so hard to believe that she was just being, you know, nice? Most Waverly guys would jump at the chance to have Tinsley Carmichael show a little interest in them. “I’m headed your way.”

Brandon looked at her askance and then shrugged his shoulders, too. “Whatever.” He tightened his Burberry scarf.

“Coming from practice?” Tinsley asked cheerfully, tapping Brandon’s squash bag. “Julian’s always talking about squash.” The absurdity of the complete non sequitur almost made her laugh. She would have felt like a moron if she were talking to anyone except Brandon. But she knew too much about him from Callie—i.e., he actually paid extra to have the Fluff-and-Fold laundry service
iron
his boxer shorts—to be embarrassed. Tinsley squinted at a plume of smoke rising from the chimney of Dumbarton. Part of her wanted to call the whole investigation off and just curl up in front of her dorm’s common room fire.

But she
had
to know whom Julian had slept with. She had to know who her competition was.