Notorious (3 page)

Brett walked over to her desk and draped her size-two Waverly blazer over her chair. “I’m not feeling well,” she replied primly.

Tinsley tugged at the zipper on her signature leather garment bag and pulled out an armful of chiffon and silk. She narrowed her carefully made-up eyes at Brett as she walked to the closet and slid Brett’s things out of the way. It made Tinsley think of all the times the three of them had faked day passes from their parents and taken the train into the city to shop at Barneys and the boutiques in Soho. Tinsley even spotted the silver Missoni slip dress she’d dared her to shoplift from Saks.
Fuck you,
Tinsley wanted to yell.
Just apologize and kiss my ass a little so we can all be friends again!
But Brett was just standing there stubbornly, running her finger along the collection of small gold hoops in her left ear. What did
she
have to be pissed about? “Still going out with Jeremiah?” Tinsley finally asked.

“That’s over.” Brett cleared her throat and willed herself not to think about Eric Dalton. Tinsley had some sort of extrasensory perception when it came to secrets, and as soon as she sensed anything surreptitious, she’d latch on until she’d uncovered every juicy detail.

“Oh, yeah? So, who’s the next victim?” Tinsley asked pointedly, thinking of Mr. Dalton and his sexy gray eyes and monogrammed platinum cuff links and the way Callie suggested she ask Brett about him. She knew her friends, and she knew what that meant. He had to be
quite
a score for a closeted Jersey girl like Brett.

“That remains to be seen.” Brett turned to start gathering her books. “Look, I’m on my way to Benny’s to study. I was just stopping by to get some things,” she lied.

Tinsley bristled. Since when did Brett care more about hitting the books with horse-faced Benny Cunningham than welcoming back her long-lost friend?

“I was going to check out what Brandon and Heath were doing anyway,” Tinsley responded casually. Now, there would be some faces happy to see her. She grabbed her oversized tangerine-colored Prada tote and headed for the door. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

She shut it loudly, scattering the girls who had been eaves-dropping, and waited in the hall until she heard Brett murmur,
“Bitch.”

Bitch?
she mused, clicking down the hall.
Well, we’ll see what Mr. Too-hot-to-be-a-teacher Dalton thinks of bitches.

Instant Message Inbox

TinsleyCarmichael:
Wts the deal with the insanely hot new guy?

BennyCunningham:
The super-tall one from Seattle? Looks delicious but he’s a freshman! Unfair right?

TinsleyCarmichael:
The dude is definitely not a freshman. Dalton or something?

BennyCunningham:
U mean
MISTER
Dalton? He’s a history teacher and does DC.

TinsleyCarmichael:
I think he’s my adviser.

BennyCunningham:
Lucky bitch. I heard he and Brett were playing footsie at the last DC meeting.

TinsleyCarmichael:
Très interesting …

Instant Message Inbox

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Tuesday, September 9, 3:14 p.m.

Subject:
New phone

Hello, my jalapeño pumpkin fritter,

I got your letter from last week. I’m still amazed by the email. Incredible!

Dan is settling into Evergreen. He hasn’t ended up in the infirmary with a case of alcohol poisoning or spinal meningitis or homesickness yet, so I think we’re off to a good start.

So you asked for a Tripod or a Treon or something? I didn’t know what this was, so I asked Vanessa—she’s living in your room … did I remember to tell you that?—and she brought me to the cell phone store. I waxed philosophic and showed off my I Break for Salamanders pin and rainbow suspenders, so the salesgirl cut me a deal. And you think I have no fashion sense. Keep an eye out for a duct-taped shoe box coming via snail mail!

Love you to the moon,

Dad

Jenny jogged back to Dumbarton after field hockey practice, enjoying the wholesome ache in her muscles and the view of the sprawling green campus, the ancient brick buildings, the preppy, pink-cheeked students. All the compulsory exercise she was getting made her feel like one of the lithe, blond, ponytailed girls doing playful cartwheels on the Waverly Academy Web site, though her hair was brown and curly and she was barely five feet tall. After fifteen years in New York City, she’d been shocked to discover she possessed any degree of athletic talent beyond hailing a taxi, but here she was, playing
varsity
field hockey at
boarding school
.

She wanted to call up her brother in Washington to brag as soon as she got her new cell phone, but she knew Dan wouldn’t be at all impressed. He’d probably accuse her of being a cliché or something equally mean. Jenny inhaled the late-afternoon air, with its hints of freshly mown grass and woodstove burning off in the distance. She swore she could smell the leaves changing color. She decided to email Dan later about the leaves and not mention the exercise. He was a poet. Poets liked leaves.

“Hey, sexy,” a lazy, stoned-sounding voice called out. Jenny whirled around and saw Heath Ferro lying on his back on one of the long stone benches that were artfully scattered across campus, each with a plaque naming the Waverly alum who had donated it. “Why don’tcha come over here and sit down?” He patted his lap. “Where are you running to, anyway?”

“Away from you!” Jenny called playfully without stopping. She’d kissed him inside the chapel on her very first night at Waverly, and then he’d told everyone they’d done a lot more than that. Apparently Heath really got around, so much so the girls had taken to calling him Pony because, as it had been somewhat ickily explained to her, he got more ass than a pony at the country fair.

She might still be upset about it, but then she’d managed to turn it all back around during the biggest field hockey game of the fall, called Black Saturday, when Waverly played its rival St. Lucius. Callie had given her some made-up lyrics to a cheer that were kind of dirty and a little embarrassing, but Jenny had gotten so into them that she’d spontaneously added a line of her own. She sang it to herself now as she ran along the ancient stone path leading up to Dumbarton:
“There is a boy who they call Pony! He’s always acting gross and horny! He thinks he’s got a lot down there, but he sure wears tiny underwear!”
She’d gotten back at Heath with that, and even if Heath
was
a sleazebag, it still felt good to be able to catch the eye of one of the best-looking guys at Waverly. God, she loved this place!

Jenny rushed into room 303 with her adrenaline still high and found her roommate Brett sitting on the window ledge, staring at an owl perched in the maple tree across the lawn. “Hey, Brett,” she greeted her, still out of breath. That’s when she saw her bed was covered with Louis Vuitton luggage. Jenny almost yelped. “Whose stuff is that on my bed?”

“I think Tinsley’s been rearranging things,” Brett offered quietly. “I thought you knew. ...”

“I knew she was here, but I didn’t know she was going to just move my stuff like that!” Their encounter that morning had been brief and startlingly unpleasant. Now the sight of her neatly made bed stripped and piled high with Tinsley’s expensive luggage and her own blankets crumpled up and tossed onto a flimsy, sagging cot made her furious. She picked her pillow up off the floor and slapped the dust off it while she tried to calm herself down. “That’s just not fair.”

Brett shrugged and held her Urban Decay Acid Rain painted eyelids closed for a moment. “I really can’t picture Tinsley sleeping on a cot, though. ...”

Uch!
She’d never known anyone with violet eyes, except for Elizabeth Taylor, who was the most beautiful movie star she could imagine before she got old and kind of fat, but Jenny didn’t care how beautiful Tinsley was—this was just plain
mean
. But if it made Tinsley happy to have her old bed back, then she might as well have it. Jenny just wished she’d asked first and that she herself didn’t have to sleep on a cot that smelled like the musty basement it must have just come from.

“We missed you at practice today,” Jenny said, perching on her saggy, stupid cot to take off her soggy field hockey socks. Then she felt like a phony because she hadn’t even noticed that Brett wasn’t at practice until she walked into their dorm room and saw her sitting there, still dressed in her tight green cashmere sweater and ivory ankle boots. It was Tuesday, and Jenny had had her portraiture class before practice, meaning she had spent the afternoon sitting next to Easy, drawing and sharing glances and passing notes, and for the rest of the afternoon she had been unable to think of anything but him. Just being near him made Jenny feel kind of blissful and totally forgetful about things … like how he was still going out with Callie.

Jenny took the ball of bedding off the cot and started pulling her fitted sheet around the small, flimsy cot mattress. It fit like saggy granny underwear.

The sound of a band of freshmen singing “Drop It Like It’s Hot” at the top of their lungs drifted through the open window. Brett was still staring absentmindedly at the Hudson. Jenny walked over and sat down on Brett’s unmade bed. Neither Brett nor Callie made their beds, but Jenny wasn’t comfortable enough to leave her sheets and blanket in a tangle like they did. That would be like letting them see her bra, and it was definitely too soon for that. She was still changing in the bathroom.

“You okay?” Jenny asked, not wanting to disturb her, but also not wanting to be the kind of roommate who didn’t ask if everything was okay, when something was so clearly not okay. “Coach said you were sick.”

Brett turned her head toward Jenny. “Something like that.”

There was a reason she felt queasy: Eric. Sure, he was technically a teacher, but he wasn’t
her
teacher. When he took her home to Lindisfarne, his family estate in Newport, Rhode Island, last week and they sat on the porch of the guesthouse, it didn’t take more than a sip of vintage bordeaux that was older than she was before she blurted out the truth about her family. And Eric Dalton—a Waverly legacy, heir to a veritable American dynasty, with his gorgeous, classy Newport house and gorgeous, classy blue-blood New England family—made her feel intriguing and sexy in spite of her classless upbringing.

Brett tucked her fiery hair behind her ears. Jenny was so sweet, sitting there at the edge of her bed, as if she were afraid of disturbing it. It was no wonder everyone was talking about how Easy Walsh was in love with her. Brett didn’t know if it was true, but she could definitely see how it could happen.

Brett flopped down on her bed next to Jenny, their knees bumping. “You have to swear you won’t tell anyone, okay?” She had only known Jenny for a week now, but Brett had been feeling friendless this year, with Tinsley away and Callie acting like a complete ice queen. And now Tinsley and Callie seemed like they were back to being
BFF
and were probably plotting to ruin her life. Besides, Jenny already knew about Eric since she’d seen Brett sneaking back into the room in the middle of the night last week.

“I promise.” Jenny drew a cross over her heart.

“Good, because you know how it is when you like someone so much, you just can’t stop thinking about them, and all you want to do is talk about them?” Brett bit the corner of her lip. There was probably at least a
little
truth to the rumors about Jenny and Easy. Jenny
had
to understand.

“Yeah,” Jenny said quietly. “I do.” Jenny remembered gazing at the stars with Easy at Heath’s party when he told her he wanted to be in love like in the De Beers diamond ads. He’d been embarrassed about saying it, but Jenny had known just what he meant. He’d said he didn’t have that now—meaning he didn’t have it with Callie—but that he wanted it. She wondered if maybe he wanted it with
her
.

“Well, you know about this …
thing
... going on with …” Brett peered closely at Jenny. “You know.” Jenny nodded, so Brett kept going. “But the thing is, he’s not returning my texts or calls.”

“How long has it been since you guys talked?”

Brett pretended to have to think about it, but she knew exactly how long it had been. “Two days. I’ve called him twice.” Eleven times, actually, but she didn’t want Jenny to think she was obsessive.

Outside, the same girls who had been singing “Drop It Like It’s Hot” started loudly elaborating on which Waverly boys were the cutest. “Easy Walsh is so hot!” wafted up to the room, and Jenny’s face immediately flushed.

Brett smiled. It looked like Jenny definitely had a secret of her own.

Instant Message Inbox

CelineColista:
B, I couldn’t finish my paper on Herodotus. U think Dalton will give me an extension?

BrettMesserschmidt:
How would I know? I’m not in your class.

CelineColista:
Well u guys are friends, right? Maybe you could put in a good word for me?

BrettMesserschmidt:
I work with him on DC … so do you.

CelineColista:
But don’t you have, like, private meetings?

BrettMesserschmidt:
DC business only.

CelineColista:
That’s too bad. I mean, for my extension.