Adored (8 page)

Until she saw the flyer taped to the bathroom mirror from the Senior Class Activities Fund that read
Pizza + College Application Party. Seniors: Buried in college apps? Come to Reynolds Atrium on Thursday night for some pizza and company—you bring your applications, we’ll bring the pizza!

In record time, Callie threw on her clothes: a pair of wide-leg J Brand jeans and a sage-colored St. John Collection fitted cashmere turtleneck that brought out the green in her hazel eyes. She sprayed some Oscar Blandi protein mist on her hair and gave it a shake. She quickly swiped her Nars eye shadow in All About Eve across her lids, grabbed her coat, and was out the door. There was no time to do any more. She was crashing the senior pizza party, and she had work to do.

Her mind raced as she walked through the dark quad toward Reynolds Atrium. The enormous contemporary structure, financed by Ryan Reynolds’s father, the inventor of the soft contact lens, was lit up in the distance like a giant lighthouse. Callie pushed through the enormous revolving glass door into the warm atrium, her eyes immediately scanning the crowd for the one face she was looking for. Seniors lounged on the cushy red Pottery Barn-type couches, pages of papers spread out over the glass-topped coffee tables. The lush potted ferns and ficuses made the whole room feel green and tropical, and the smell of pizza filled the glass barrel-vaulted space.

“Hey, Cal!” Emily Jenkins sidled up to Callie, a tiny zit on her cheek covered by a mountain of concealer that only highlighted the blemish. “Want a sip?” She offered Callie a silver flask engraved with the initials E. M. J. “Whiskey.”

“No, thanks,” Callie declined, mildly annoyed to find Emily, also a junior, at the party. She scanned the horizon and quickly discerned that the
senior
pizza party was
full
of crashing juniors: Sage Francis and Benny Cunningham sat cross-legged on the floor, helping seniors Celine Colista and Evelyn Dahlie organize a stack of papers. All four of them drank from lidded Styrofoam cups, and Callie suspected they weren’t drinking virgin hot chocolates. “I might steal some pizza, though.” Callie drifted toward the stacks of pizza boxes in the corner, more interested in getting away from Emily than in having a greasy slice.

She hovered near the boxes, but the collective smell of pepperoni, pineapple, and onions turned her empty stomach. No one had seemed to really notice Callie’s presence at all, besides Emily, who didn’t count. She missed the days when she and Brett and Tinsley would take a party by storm, everyone’s eyes turning to them as they sauntered through the door, fashionably late. And then when she’d been with Easy, they’d been the hottest couple on campus. Now, it was like she was invisible—an invisible old maid. She dislodged a mini can of Diet Coke from a stack on the table and took a sip.

Then she saw him. Sebastian Valenti was kicked back on one of the couches, wearing a pair of tan corduroys and a pale blue Abercrombie & Fitch button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His untouched applications were piled in front of him, serving as a coaster for his most likely spiked bottle of Gatorade. Callie felt a smile coming to her face. How had she never noticed this stunning specimen? Brett had talked about him, of course, as the guy she was tutoring, but she always seemed annoyed with him. Suddenly finding a hot guy at Waverly who wasn’t burdened with a girlfriend or an unkissable face felt as completely incredible as discovering a coveted trunk show item in your size, just when you thought there were none left.

But as Celine and Evelyn—both wearing slinky tops far too sexy for a pizza party—moved over to Sebastian’s couch, it became apparent that Callie wasn’t the only explorer on this expedition. They slid down next to him, one on each side, like cheap game show hostesses. Celine whispered something in his ear, and Sebastian smiled and nodded, his dark, floppy hair falling across his forehead. Callie casually made her way over to them, trying to hover inconspicuously in the background.

Chandler Dean, a senior guy sprawled in an armchair, stopped talking about how he’d taken his dad’s Porsche for a spin over Thanksgiving when he noticed all the girls paying attention to Sebastian. “Dude, you haven’t even started,” he snapped, nudging the foot of his John Varvatos loafer against Sebastian’s stack of applications, still lying untouched on the table.

Sebastian ignored him and smiled at the ladies surrounding him. “Anyone like another slice?” he asked politely before slipping away. The girls watched admiringly as he left.

“Isn’t he
incredible
?” Evelyn Dahlie asked. With her pale, bleached blond pixie ’do and red cat’s eye glasses, she looked kind of like an Icelandic pop star. Not Sebastian’s taste, Callie could tell. She was a little more worried about Celine, with her perfectly smooth olive skin and perky boobs.

“I saw him first.” Benny giggled, coming up behind Callie and slinging her arm over her shoulder. “Don’t you remember, Sage? I told you I saw him studying with Brett and thought she should get on that.”

Sage furrowed her brow. “Yeah… but I thought you were joking.”

“He drives a Mustang,” Evelyn added. “How retro is that?”

Callie stared at her, wondering if she really was from Iceland or someplace where they didn’t have Mustangs.

“I’ll let you know,” Celine said casually, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder. Even in the dead of winter it was easy to pick Celine out of a crowd of students. Jealous freshmen spread rumors that she used a tanning booth in town, but Callie knew her father was Lebanese and guessed that was probably why she looked so good when everyone else was winter pale. He was a big-shot director and Celine always bragged about the Hollywood stars she got to lunch with over breaks. “I told him about being an extra and he said he’d love to meet my father. Said he was going to be in L.A. over Christmas anyway—which may or may not be true, but who cares?—and I told him to look me up.”

“Wait,” Benny gasped, her pink-tinted mouth dropping open. “Where did he go?”

They all turned, none too subtly, toward the food tables, but Sebastian’s tall, dark figure was nowhere in sight.

“Shouldn’t waste this,” Evelyn said, unscrewing the top to Sebastian’s Gatorade bottle. She took a sip, then passed it to Celine.

The chatter in the room seemed to increase, and Callie touched her forehead, feeling suddenly overheated. She knew Sebastian would be back soon—he’d left his stuff here—and she needed a plan.

She decided to step outside for some fresh air. Just as she entered the revolving door, Sebastian appeared on the other side, coming back into the atrium, a package of Marlboro Reds in his hand. He smiled casually at Callie through the glass and she felt her skin get even hotter as the two of them shuffled through the glass door. In another second he’d be back in the lion’s den. While Callie was only an average math student, she was smart enough to know that once Sebastian retook his seat amongst the overeager groupies, her odds would decrease dramatically. She needed to act now.

Without another thought, she pulled on the metal bar in front of her, stalling out the revolving door and causing Sebastian to crash against the glass.

“What the hell?” he asked, his voice muffled by the glass. He touched his hair reflexively, as if checking his body for bullet holes. Then he turned around and saw Callie, grabbing the metal bar and leaning away from it, anchoring the door closed.

Callie giggled. “Hey,” she managed to say.

Sebastian sensed a game was being played, though he couldn’t guess what. A slight look of confusion crossed his face, but he continued to smile at her. Even though there was a sheet of inch-thick plate glass between them, Callie could see the glint of mischief in his dark eyes. “What are you doing, blondie?”

“I’ll let you out if you have dinner with me tomorrow night,” she said boldly. She felt like a wild game hunter, snaring Sebastian in her trap.

“You know I’m stronger than you.” His muted voice filtered through, a sexy smirk on his lips. “I could just push my way through.”

“Dinner would be more fun,” she flirted. She tilted her head slightly so that a lock of strawberry blond hair fell in front of her face.

Sebastian appraised her, his smile widening. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”

“Pick me up at eight. Dumbarton,” she said as a late-arriving senior appeared breathlessly outside the revolving door, a “what the fuck?” look on his face when he saw Callie and Sebastian trapped inside. “Don’t be late.”

She gave the door a push and Sebastian was spit out inside the atrium. She glanced back over her shoulder to give him a smile to show that she was serious.

The look on his face was priceless.

“W
atch this, Ferro,” Brandon Buchanan said sarcastically as he threw his sweaty squash practice clothes into the wooden hamper at the foot of his bed and carefully replaced the lid. “This is what you do with dirty clothes.”

Heath lay on his back, shirtless, on his unmade bed, reading his
Dark Knight
comic book. “Don’t be such a douchebag.” He didn’t even glance up at Brandon. The floor of Heath’s half of the room was covered with rumpled clothing that gave off a host of offensive odors. Normally, Brandon just dealt with it, but on Friday afternoon, after a long week of the guys wise-cracking about his imaginary Swedish girlfriend, all he wanted to do was relax in a clean—or at least, relatively clean—room.

With a sigh, Brandon slid into his wooden desk chair, his hair still wet from his post-practice shower. He loved the ” aching of muscles that only came when you gave your hardest. The team’s first squash match was next week, against their rivals, St. Lucius. Brandon had been so busy psyching himself up for it—and daydreaming about Hellie—that he hadn’t even opened the e-mail from Brett Messerschmidt with his Secret Santa assignment. Already, the campus was abuzz with Secret Satan—there wasn’t a doubt in Brandon’s mind that Heath was behind it, and he was determined not to give his annoying horny roommate the satisfaction of buying anything perverted for his Secret Santa gifts. Brandon clicked open his e-mail from Brett and frowned. “Who is Mark Fred-erickson?”

“Dude, you’re not supposed to tell anyone who your Secret Satan is!” Heath dropped his comic book in disgust. He propped himself up on his pillow, his disheveled hair sitting on top of his head like a bad hat. He blew a kiss to the giant poster of Megan Fox in
Transformers
that hung crookedly over his bed. Brandon was forbidden to touch it—as if he wanted to.

“I love you too much to harbor any secrets,” Brandon shot back sarcastically.

“Wait, Mark Frederickson—I think I know that guy.” Heath’s eyes lit up. “He’s always reading
Moby-Dick
. Takes it with him everywhere—I saw him reading it in the locker room the other day. Moby-
Dick
! You can totally fuck with him.
Nice
.”

Brandon cringed at Heath’s advice. “Everyone in Doc Gilbert’s class reads
Moby-Dick
. I’m sure it’s not because he
likes
it.” The last thing Brandon wanted to do was give some stranger something perverted. “I was thinking more like a sweater or something,” Brandon replied, closing his laptop.

“Man, have some
sack
.” Heath stared at Brandon in disbelief. He swung his bare feet to the floor and sat up, scratching his bare chest. “Get the guy some anal beads. Or what about a set of chocolate dicks from that adult candy shop in Wickam?” His green eyes widened and he held his hands in the air to indicate something huge. “A
Moby
dick.”

“I don’t know if it’s a real word.” Brandon glanced out the window. Snow was falling, and under one of the gaslights on the path in front of Richardson, two people stood with their arms around each other. “And I’m not going two towns over to buy some X-rated candy,” Brandon scoffed. Since Brandon and Heath’s tryst with the Dunderdorf twins over Thanksgiving, the immediate buddy feeling of having accomplished something together had receded. Brandon had reverted to his disdainful feelings toward Heath, whose slothful qualities seemed to announce and define him wherever he went.

Heath continued to harangue him with a list of suggested gifts, each one as vile as the next.

It was too much. Brandon grabbed his black Diesel bomber jacket from the hook on the door. “Shut the fuck up. I’m going to buy him a fucking sweater, all right?”

He slammed the door behind him, but still managed to hear Heath shout, “I bet he’d like a whale-shaped dildo better!”

“Look what my Secret Santa got me!” Teague Williams thundered down the hall, waving something red and lacy over his head. Brandon jumped out of the way.

Alan St. Girard snatched the red thing from his hands and held it up against his flannel shirt. “What the fuck is this?” Alan asked, fingering the lace.

“It’s a cupless bra, dude.” Teague snatched it back from him and wrapped it around his neck. “I hope she wore it first!”

Alan leaned forward and sniffed. “Smells like chick.”

Brandon hurried out the door, the cold air feeling good against his skin. Christ—it was only the second day of this whole Secret Satan madness. Another whole week of this? He just wanted to get it over with. A glance at his watch told him the stores in Rhinecliff would still be open, and he decided to make the hike into town. Get this Mark kid a nice present and be done with it.

A light snow began to fall as he reached Main Street, and the freshly shoveled sidewalks were covered with a dusting of powder. He thought of Hellie in Switzerland and wished, for the millionth time, that she went to Waverly instead of some stupid Swiss boarding school where half the students were descended from royalty. The streetlights snapped on as Brandon stepped up from the curb, a sign he always considered good luck. Fuck Heath. The degenerate Secret Satan gifts were so childish and disgusting. Brandon knew he couldn’t give this poor stranger anything remotely like that.