Pretty Little Devils (2 page)

B
y the end of the first week of school, everyone had their designated seats in the cafeteria. Hazel Stone's spot was at the third table from the diversity mural on the west side. There, the diffuse light from the thick windows cast a halo over the heads of her so-called friends—Lakshmi, Ginger, Jamie, and the embarrassingly named LaToya.

Friends…they were more like friends by default. Joy had been the one they had in common, and Joy had moved to San Jose during the summer. As soon as she'd left, Hazel had tried her hardest to break away. It hadn't taken.

She had gotten a job and steered clear of the phone, preferring to blog on her LiveJournal or watch
Osbournes
reruns with her little brother, Corey. Hazel had spent more time that summer with Corey than she had the rest of their lives combined, and if her parents had been the kind of people who actually commented on what was going on around them, they would have told her they were pleased.

They wouldn't have been pleased if they'd known what else had happened during the summer, but she was not going there.

Lakshmi spotted Hazel and waved expectantly. Hazel cringed as the four girls smiled and beckoned her over, as if they had to invite her or something. It would never occur to them that she didn't want to sit with them. It didn't matter that Hazel had pretty much avoided them for the entire summer.

She had pretty much hidden herself away from everybody, feeling guilty and unsure about what she was doing. She would start to think,
Okay, I've made the break
. Then her mother would answer the phone and unknowingly accept an invitation from the Lakshmi contingent on Hazel's behalf. Her mother was clueless, as usual.

Unable to explain that she was trying to dump “those nice girls,” Hazel would find herself at the movies or the mall. Thus she would be reconnected with Lakshmi's group, and all her careful isolation would be thrown out the window.

Hazel didn't feel she was asking for much. All she wanted were
real
friends—friends who were interesting and intelligent, friends who understood her. Lakshmi and the others were just treading water until they got out of school, content to stay in the background, idly worshiping the popular kids. Graduation was their only goal.

Hazel had bigger dreams—way bigger. She wanted high school to count for something. She wanted to be one of the girls people remembered when they opened their yearbooks. Not just some other “Who?” in a sea of unrecognizable faces. This was the year to make it happen. Senior year would be too late. The time was now.

And this was a defining moment. Or at least it felt that way. Here she was, halfway through October and still trapped. She knew she needed new friends. And not just good friends, but great ones. And if she worked it right with the right group, she might even have a shot at the object of her total desire, the new guy, Matty Vardeman.

She stole a glance at his table. Despite being new, he was already on the varsity football team, and he sat with some of the first-string guys, like Stephan Nylund, Brandon Wilde, and Josh Douglas.

Stephan was stocky, with red hair and a goatee. He was some kind of tackle or something. Brandon and Josh were the team quarterbacks—friendly rivals—and Josh was Sylvia Orly's boyfriend. He was tall, blond, and very wiry. He laughed a lot, and he was very smart. He would have to be, to keep up with Sylvia.

Brandon was bigger, with chestnut hair and a pair of very thick eyebrows. Unlike Josh, Brandon was a total jerk. Last year he had humiliated a girl in Hazel's geometry class by pretending to ask her out, then telling her he was kidding when she stammered out a yes—as if he would ever go out with someone so beneath him.

Hazel felt sorry for the girl. Then she felt sorry for herself. For her, Matty was just as unreachable.

But God,
she thought,
he is hot.

Matty Vardeman sat at the far end of the table, leaning back casually in his chair. He was wearing a gray sweater that looked thick and expensive, maybe hand-knit, and a pair of black jeans. He favored dark clothes, and he looked good in them. The other guys had on their green letter jackets and jeans. Matty usually just carried his jacket, but when he did wear it, his shoulders looked enormous.

She had noticed him on the first day of school. He was Matty, not Matt—and he was a miracle of quirks. Push the quirk meter one more click on the dial, and he would be ugly. But somehow, all of his face's strangenesses came together into one amazing picture. He had a long, straight nose, flaring cheekbones, and deep-set eyes that were dark chestnut in color. His eyebrows were heavy and also dark, like his wavy hair. No spiky tips for him; instead, it was a little long—more Ashton Kutcher than Chad Michael Murray, to use Lakshmi's fan-girl vocabulary.

He was smart, too, Hazel knew. His classes were all AP or honors. He carried a sketchbook wherever he went and sometimes spent study hall or lunch working on a drawing.

His birthday was March 16 and he was from Virginia. He had a soft southern accent that made Hazel smile.

His father was in the navy and his parents had moved to Japan. He had come to Brookhaven to live with his sister and finish out his junior and senior years. Hazel had heard he was really pissed off about having to leave Virginia, but whenever she saw him, his full lips were curled in a faint smile, as if everything secretly amused him.

He was little reserved and still a little apart from the other guys. He sat at their table and hung with them, but Hazel could tell he wasn't one of them. Not yet.

Hazel had tried everything to get him to notice her. She had memorized his schedule and had “just happened” to wander by his classes so many times that one of the boys in his precalculus class had asked her what the homework was. Despite the fact that Hazel sucked at drawing, she'd taken to carrying a sketchbook as well. She hoped if she appeared to be into in art, it might pique his interest. Nothing seemed to have any effect.

“Hazel!” Lakshmi shouted over the din, half rising from her chair as the others waited for her to come and sit down. LaToya gazed at her over her soda cup, sucking on a straw.

Hazel sighed. She just didn't know how to do it, how to go through with cutting them loose. Putting on a little smile, she made eye contact, walked steadily to the table, and put down her tray.

They all had on knockoffs of the current fashions: short blazers, white shirts, and light wash jeans. But somehow on them, it looked like trying too hard.

Hazel had gone preppy, with an oxford shirt, knee-length denim skirt, and black ankle boots. Blue went nicely with her auburn hair, which she'd added a tiny bit of henna to. She had blue eyes, and she knew she wasn't ugly. But looks weren't always enough.

“Hi,” Lakshmi said, grinning at her as the others made a show of clearing a welcoming place. “Didn't you see us?”

“Oh, I—I…” Hazel stuttered. “I just got distracted for a sec. I thought I heard someone call my name.”

“Guess what!” Lakshmi said. “Breona and Sylvia had a fight in the mall last night. The security guards had to come and pull them off each other. There's a deep scratch on Breona's cheek and she's going to sue Sylvia.”

Jamie nodded. “She's going to get plastic surgery. Because of the disfigurement.”

Hazel's attention immediately ticked to the cheerleader table, where Breona sat with her new, spiky haircut. Her brown sugar complexion was flawless; her dark almond eyes glittered as she talked with the other cheerleaders, all of them in tight kelly green sweaters and gold cheer skirts that showed off their skinny, muscular bodies. There was a Band-Aid on her cheek. But it hardly covered a plastic-surgery-worthy wound. Lakshmi was good for gossip, but sometimes she tended to overdramatize.

Not that the Breona-and-Sylvia war needed dramatization. The two queen bees had always hated each other. They were the two most popular girls in school, and the source of their conflict was always Josh.

The gossip went that last summer things had come to a head. Even though he was officially Sylvia's boyfriend, Josh had hooked up with Breona two weeks after Sylvia had gone to France with her family. Sylvia came back and Josh pretended everything was fine. But of course Sylvia found out the truth. From what Hazel had heard, Josh was lucky to be alive.

“It's all over the school,” Lakshmi gushed as she plucked a couple of french fries off Hazel's plate. “Everybody's talking about it.”

Hazel watched as Lakshmi popped the fries into her mouth and chewed.

Lakshmi had a skin problem. Hazel had tried to tell her not to eat greasy food, but Lakshmi was very fragile on the subject. She would start crying and insisting that Hazel thought she was ugly. She
wasn't
ugly, but her skin could definitely use some help.

Lowering her voice, Lakshmi leaned forward and added, “Sylvia's got to go to anger management classes. Court-ordered.”

Lakshmi's face was flushed with excitement: the thrill of having serious information—the coup of being in the know—was almost too thrilling for her.

“Who told you all this? Your mom?” Hazel asked. Mrs. Sharma worked in the school's office and told Lakshmi all kinds of privileged information. It was wrong and tacky, but Lakshmi and her mom thought it was a way to raise Lakshmi's social Q, and it gave the rest of the group something to talk about.

Lakshmi nodded and Hazel shifted her attention to Sylvia's table.

There they were, the PLDs—the Pretty Little Devils—rivals of the cheerleaders as the most popular, stylish, lucky girls at Brookhaven. Party rumors aside, the PLDs
got it
. They talked about universities and internships and summers abroad. They made appearances at school events but weren't all “rah-rah” about it. They were just the right combination of interested and too-cool-to-care. Hazel would have given anything to be friends with them—if only she knew how.

Sylvia was dressed all in black, and she looked incredible. Her blue-black hair fell in long, sexy waves down her back. Regal as a queen, she sat in the middle of three chairs. Megan Williams and Carolyn Bosch sat on either side of her. Megan was all girlie-girl in a tan corduroy blazer and light green pleated skirt. Carolyn was serious fashion in black-and-white check. Ellen Schmidt sat across from them in a soft pink poncho (not over?), like a contestant from
The Apprentice
. She was touching her hair, which was pretty bad, actually: a poorly streaked, hacked-off kind of a bob thing. Hazel wondered if the PLDs were getting on her about it. If they were, they were doing her a favor.

Lakshmi picked up her fish taco and took a big bite.

“We'll ask Breona about it in lab,” she said, her mouth full of cabbage, cod, and mayonnaise.

“I wish I had a class with Breona,” LaToya said to Hazel and Lakshmi. “It must be nice.”

Hazel shrugged, at the same time that Lakshmi said, “Oh, it
is
.”

Hazel stifled a laugh. It wasn't as if she, Lakshmi, and Breona actually
spoke
. But bragging like that was Lakshmi's style. Unlike Hazel. Hazel didn't remind the others that she
was
on Breona's radar, that now and then Breona actually said hi to her and complimented her on her clothes, little things like that.

“What's Breona like?” Ginger asked Lakshmi.

“She's very nice.” Lakshmi gazed over at Breona's table. She started blinking, the way she did when she was all wound up. “She looks like Alicia Keys.”

“Not even,” LaToya said, snorting. “Breona is, like, half Korean.”

“Chinese,” Lakshmi corrected her. “And she
does
look like her.” That triggered something else, and Lakshmi smiled at the others without taking her gaze off Breona. “Ooh, did you guys see Orli Bloom on
People's Choice
last night?” She picked at her face, and Hazel had to force herself not to bat her hand away. “Hot.”

“Hot,” Jamie agreed.

Lakshmi had five Orlando Bloom posters in her bedroom. Jamie had two. LaToya was an Usher fan.

Hazel agreed that Orlando was good looking, but she didn't fawn over him like he was a boyfriend. She tended to live in the
real
world.

Talk of Orlando continued. Hazel was frowning down at her meal, trying to stay out of the conversation, when a bizarre, discordant drone wheedled into the cafeteria. Heads turned, then people began laughing and applauding and getting to their feet. Hazel's table did the same, but all Hazel could see were craning necks and shoulders.

“Oh my God! It's a bagpiper!” Lakshmi announced.

There was a stir among the students; the cluster in front of Hazel's table parted as the piper, fully decked in Highlander plaid and a beret with a green pom-pom, marched into their midst. He was playing “Scotland the Brave.”

Directly behind him was a delivery guy carrying two enormous bags with P.F. C
HANG'S
written on the side. P.F. Chang's was an upscale Chinese restaurant in Brookhaven Center. Hazel had never eaten there, but she'd always wanted to.