Devious (9 page)

“But isn’t that just lust?” Rifat Jones, the gangly captain of the girls’ volleyball team, shifted in her chair, pulling her sweat-dampened hair into a ponytail. Her Adidas gym bag sat at her feet. “How can you fall in love with someone you don’t know?”

Verena batted her eyelashes at the camera. “That’s the best way to do it,” she said, running her bloodred fingernails through her curls. The other girls giggled and adjusted their hair, almost collectively. Callie bit the inside of her cheek. It was weird that all these girls who showed up practically in their pajamas would be so concerned with how they looked on camera. Didn’t they realize that only Callie would be reviewing the footage? Maybe they thought it would be a part of her presentation, when all the Jan Plan projects were presented at the end of the month.

“Do you think it can only happen once? That people only have
one
true love?” Callie’s heart pounded as she asked the question. Though she didn’t want to admit it, this was what she most wanted to know—and kind of why she’d come up with this project in the first place. Was there hope for her after Easy? Or did she just happen to peak early in the love department? Was she destined to spend the rest of her life alone?

“No,” Sage Francis announced, sounding kind of cranky. She glanced back at the camera, too, giving it a funny look. “But the first one is always the hardest to forget, right?”

Callie glanced over her shoulder. Brandon was leaning against the end table, looking bored, his T-shirt gaping away from his stomach and revealing a sliver of squash-toned abs. It was then that Callie realized: the girls weren’t interested in the camera, they were interested in
Brandon
. Sage, who’d dated Brandon a few months ago before abruptly dumping him, seemed particularly interested in getting his attention. It was so weird. Brandon stopped shaving and got a girlfriend, and suddenly all the girls were sneaking glances and sticking their chests out at him.

Now that Callie had figured out what was going on, it seemed ridiculously obvious. She stuck to her list of questions, but as they began to get more personal, the girls took longer to answer, glancing up at Brandon for cues. Callie felt like a scientist who realized her experiment had been contaminated. These girls were clearly not being honest—they were just trying to look good in front of a guy. And Brandon, no less.

After a chorus of girls agreed that true love was something that almost always happened to a girl in high school, Callie took a deep breath. Her irritation grew when Benny announced that she could only fall in love with a musician—Brandon, of course, played the violin in the Waverly orchestra. Even more annoying was when, apropos of nothing, Celine said she always found herself attracted to guys with golden brown eyes, a feature, not coincidentally, that Brandon shared.

That was it. Not only were these lying harpies totally ruining her experiment, but if Brandon was going to be interested in anyone in this room, it would obviously be Callie. He’d been in love with her practically forever, and even if he wasn’t at
this exact moment
, it was only because he was distracted by his Swiss mountain girl. He’d called his relationship with Callie “ancient history,” but it wasn’t
so
long ago, was it?

Before she knew what she was doing, she got to her feet and waltzed toward him. He was standing behind the camera, arms crossed over his chest.

He looked up in surprise as Callie leaned toward him. “What’s up?” he asked under his breath. He wore a navy blue Ralph Lauren crewneck over a plain white T-shirt, looking sexier than ever. Was this Sebastian all over again? Was Callie only attracted to Brandon now because all the other girls were, too?

Only one way to find out.

The room grew noticeably quieter as the girls struggled to overhear Callie and Brandon’s conversation. Defiantly, she placed her hand on Brandon’s back and put her mouth close to his ear. She almost fainted at the familiar smell of his Acqua di Parma cologne.

“How’s the camera working?” she drawled, making sure to let her Georgia accent sweeten her words. Brandon always used to say it made him weak in the knees.

“The camera?” Brandon straightened up, a confused look on his handsome face. He shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’s fine.”

“Excellent.” Callie tossed her hair over her shoulder and leaned down to look through the camera. She saw the eyes of the girls focused firmly on her. Celine’s arms were crossed over her chest, and she had that pinched, irritated look on her face she always got whenever someone stepped between her and a guy.

Callie stared right back, a smug smile twitching at the corners of her lips. Suddenly, nothing seemed more important than showing these girls that Brandon was
her
partner. And Callie wasn’t positive, but she thought she’d caught a glimpse of something familiar in Brandon’s eyes—something that said maybe he wasn’t totally immune to her charms.

Maybe ancient history wasn’t so ancient, after all.

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Hey Cal,

Sorry I couldn’t make it to your interview session today—I got caught up in my project with Chrissy. But I’d still love to help—let me know if you need someone else to interview later.

BTW
, you’re going to love this—like four girls have asked me if there’s anything going on between you and Brandon. And they all seemed pretty jealous. HA!

Xo

B

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“What do you think about this?” Chrissy asked, wrapping a swatch of yellow floral fabric around a naked Barbie doll’s waist. “For Fantine?”

Brett tilted her head so that her red hair swung down to her shoulders. “I think whoever plays Fantine better not be shy.”

The two girls were holed up in a sunny upstairs alcove of Maxwell Hall on Wednesday night, their magazine clippings and swatches of fabric spread out across the slightly sticky coffee table. That morning, they’d climbed into Chrissy’s rickety orange Volkswagen Rabbit and spent hours at the fabric store in downtown Rhinecliff, rummaging through bins of sale scraps. “And that fabric looks like it belongs to Laura Ingalls.”

“What, you don’t think we should go in the Little Stripper on the Prairie direction?” Chrissy asked innocently, twisting Barbie back and forth.

“I think it’s weird that you keep a stash of Barbie dolls under your bed, by the way.” Brett leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her steaming latte. She tugged at the neck of her slim-fitting chocolate brown Joie turtleneck. “Don’t tell Heath Ferro—it’s probably some fantasy of his.”

“They’re only naked until I can design clothes for them,” Chrissy insisted, adjusting Barbie’s arms and legs so that she posed in a very risqué handstand. “And besides—I bet Heath Ferro’s the kind of guy who has plenty of dolls of his own stashed under his bed.”

Brett almost snorted foam up her nose as she and Chrissy dissolved into giggles. She hadn’t expected the project to be so fun. Last Jan Plan, she’d spent the month translating a bunch of Greek poetry with Celine Colista. Brett had never thought of herself as an artistic person before—she certainly wasn’t as creative as Jenny, who was always making amazing sketches of random things she’d seen, like a tipped-over garbage can or an apple core. But Chrissy, whose taste was a weird combination of classic and bizarre, made Brett feel like she was an essential part of this team. She was the straight foil to Chrissy’s out-there sensibilities.

“You know what would look great for the soldiers—what about Nehru jackets?” Brett scooted to the edge of the couch and leaned forward over the coffee table. She flipped through one of their photography books until she found a picture of the Beatles, in their trip-to-India-to-find-Buddha-and-get-high days, wearing long, colorful jackets with banded collars.

“You’re brilliant!” Chrissy squealed, pushing her bleached-blond hair behind her ears. “I think that’s awesome.” She leaned back and stared dreamily up at the slanted dark wood ceiling beams, as if she were already picturing it.

“Mr. Shepard’s okay with this being unconventional, right?”

“You think this is unconventional?” She tapped her forehead. “Once, when Seb and I were together, he took me to this off-off Broadway performance of
Cats
where all the actors were dressed up as dogs.” Chrissy laughed, as if reliving the experience. “They were still meowing and shit—it was bizarre.”

Brett’s heart almost stopped beating. She felt her body slide back down into the leather couch. “When you and Sebastian were together?” she repeated.

Seeing the look on Brett’s face, Chrissy dropped the Barbie doll she’d been holding. It clunked loudly against the worn hardwood floor. “Oh, you’re kidding. I thought you knew.” Her wide blue eyes widened with concern. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No, he didn’t.” Suddenly Brett’s stomach dropped. Why wouldn’t Sebastian have told her about Chrissy? He knew about Jeremiah, after all. Brett had talked about the whole sordid saga of their relationship—in fact, she’d told Sebastian even before they’d starting dating, when he was still just her tutee. But why had they never had a conversation about
his
exes?

“Well, probably because it wasn’t a big deal. It was only, like, a few months.” Chrissy shrugged apologetically. She looked really worried, and it touched Brett that she was so concerned about her feelings.

But a
few months
in high school was like… five
years
in the real world.
Everyone
knew that. Brett and Jeremiah had really only been together for a few months, yet she’d been completely in love with him. And had almost slept with him.

“I’m just kind of surprised he didn’t tell you,” Chrissy said softly.

Brett leaned over and picked up the naked Barbie doll from the floor, just to have something to do with her hands. So the postcard on Chrissy’s wall hadn’t been totally platonic. She wondered what Sebastian had written on the back of it. Her throat tightened when she remembered what he’d said to her as he gave her the framed photograph of the Italian village. That he wanted to take her there someday. Had he said the same thing to Chrissy?

Brett sucked in her cheeks and forced a smile to her lips. “Yeah, me too.”

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I
t was dark by the time Jenny stepped onto the unshoveled sidewalk that led to the Field House. She shivered in the cold night, rubbing the arms of her red Gap peacoat. Her small hands were covered by the cute white Anthropologie gloves Brett had given her for Christmas, but the thin angora wasn’t made for snowy days in upstate New York, and her fingers felt like icicles. At least her legs were warm under her Citizens jeans—she had on a pair of thick wool stockings. Totally worth it, even if they made her look a little thicker than normal. A cold breeze picked up, chilling Jenny’s face, and she wondered why she’d been so urgent to have her walk with Isaac tonight. It could have waited until tomorrow.

But then she caught sight of him, sitting on the steps outside the Field House, a gray canvas messenger bag slung across the shoulder of his navy coat. A thick cream-colored wool scarf was tucked casually around his neck. He looked totally adorable, in a British-prep-school way. He straightened up when he saw her, the electric grin lighting up his face. Her stomach flipped.