She's Got a Way (9 page)

“Handyman stuff?”

He shrugged. “This and that.”

“I have a feeling you're a little more complicated than that.”

“Nah. I strive to be
un
complicated. World's tricky enough. I don't need to add to it.” He turned toward her. “How about you? What's
your
story?”

“My story? Far too long and mesmerizing to tell.”

“Ah.” He smiled, turning back toward the lake, his hands behind his head. “A woman of mystery.”

“Yup, that's me.” Gabi rolled her eyes.

“So tell me. This housemother concept is new to me. What do you actually do there?”

“I didn't put you off with the long and mesmerizing thing?”

“Nope. And I'm serious. It's … an unusual career choice.”

“If it saves my reputation, I didn't actually set out to be a housemother.”

“What
did
you set out to be?”

Gabi took a deep breath, picturing her freshman-year classes, back when her trust fund had been intact and her future had seemed solid.

“I started out wanting to teach math, actually.”

“So what changed that?”

“My calculus grade.” She laughed bitterly. “My professor hinted that perhaps I might be a better fit for the English department.”

“Ouch.”

“He was right, unfortunately. And then … I took a year off, got my bearings, and went back. Bypassed the English department building—thank you—and double-majored in psych and sociology.”

No need to talk about
why
she'd taken that year off. No reason Luke needed to know about her older brother, who lived life like he was entitled to whatever he desired, be it money.… or women. No reason to talk about how his actions had led to her complete and utter split with her family … and consequently, her trust fund.

No need to detail her year of scrabbling to find an apartment, two jobs, and her dignity.

“So you're yet another overeducated, underpaid minion of the American education system.”

“Absolutely.” She smiled. “But when my charges aren't driving me to drink, I actually almost love my job. I get to be substitute parent, guidance counselor, homework helper, crisis intervention officer, and midnight-snack sneaker, all in one.”

“Sounds … busy.”

“It's twenty-four/seven. These girls don't have parents on-site, obviously, and most of them don't have families who are even reachable, half the time.”

“So you're it?”

She shrugged. “I'm not the only
it
on campus, but I'm one of four houseparents. I'm responsible for the fifty kids in my dorm—making sure they're fed, happy, and successful in all of their Briarwood endeavors.”

Luke cocked one eyebrow. “That last part sounds straight from a job description.”

“Totally is.” Gabi laughed.

“So which part's the hardest?”

“The happy.” She said it without hesitation. “A lot of these girls have been tossed around to camps and boarding schools for most of their lives. And now the ones in my dorm, at least, are navigating their teen years, with all of the hormonal hell that comes with it. It's a rocky path, even for the most grounded of kids.” She cringed. “And we don't necessarily have a lot of those.”

“Can I be blunt?” He raised that one eyebrow again. “Your job title doesn't necessarily seem to do justice to the job—or jobs—you're actually doing.”

“You mean because it makes me sound like I sit by the fireplace and knit scarves while I wait for my students to come in for fresh cookies before tootling off to do whatever it is boarding school students do?”

He laughed. “Exactly.”

“I know.” She nodded. “I actually hate my title.”

“You can't change it?”

“Have you
met
Priscilla Pritchard? Titles are power, and she likes to make sure all of her staff members know exactly where they sit in the pecking order … which is ten to twenty pecks below her.”

“She sounds like a peach.”

“Rotten peach, maybe.” Gabi pressed her lips together. “Sorry. Given the events of the past week, I have some rather strong feelings on the subject of Priscilla Pritchard.”

“Hard to blame you.” He shrugged. “Seems to me, unless Briarwood is pandering to an audience of parents that long for the Dark Ages, Priscilla should
want
to show she's got academic deans and counselors and the like—all of which are titles that seem like they'd be a better match for what you're doing.”

“You'd think.” Gabi looked back out at the lake. “But Priscilla's first priority is Priscilla. She loves her own title, she loves the fact that super-rich families from all over the country kiss her proverbial boots in order to get their girls into Briarwood, and she loves that she gets to be the face of one of the best prep schools in America. What she
doesn't
want is any of her staff members getting ideas about moving up any invisible ladders and taking her job.”

“
Do
you want her job?”

Gabi paused, thoughts spinning through her head. “No. And yes. No, because omigod, I'd absolutely die having to deal with the parents she handles. But yes.” She nodded. “I'd love the chance to make Briarwood into a different kind of school.”

“Really.” He turned toward her, full attention on her, and it was both unnerving and zingy. “What would you do to it?”

Oh, that question was easy. “Set aside a huge chunk of endowment money to fund scholarships for kids like Sam and Eve.”

“Kids like…” He tipped his head, eyebrows scrunching together. “What do you mean?”

Oops. Oh, hell.

“Are the two of them on scholarship?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, but I never should have said that. The other girls don't know. Please, please don't … say anything.”

Even as she asked, somehow she knew he'd never dream of it.

He turned away, sitting back in his chair, hands folded behind his head again. “I'll try not to be insulted that you felt you had to ask that.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I know you wouldn't say—never mind. Sorry.”

“How many scholarship kids do you have in a normal year?”

She swallowed.
Before this year? Zero.
“We have … two.”

He turned back toward her. “With an endowment like that? Two kids?
Two?
”

“I know.” She put up her hands. “It's sickening. And I had to fight for three years to get the board to even do a trial run of two students this year. And now look. Both of them got themselves in enough trouble that we've been sent to camp for the summer. Priscilla would have expelled them, if it had been up to her. Luckily, she has to answer to the board, and this time, I think that board actually saved the girls.”

Gabi pictured the board members sitting in their seats at the huge oak table in the main conference room. To a person, she could predict exactly what their responses to the girls' little escapade probably were. She imagined the expulsion votes divided evenly down the center of the table, and then she pictured Laura Beringer sitting in her spot at the end, nodding carefully. At eighty-something years old, she'd been the board chair for ten years now, and she showed no signs of leaving, much to one side of the table's dismay.

Gabi adored her, and she had a strong feeling that the only reason Sam and Eve weren't packing for Boston right now was because of Laura's deciding vote.

“Did they deserve it?” His voice was quiet, but the question was honest.

“It depends how you interpret the school policies, but I guarantee you, if it had been just Sam and Eve who'd snuck out, Priscilla would have pushed even harder to expel them. The fact that they did their crime with Madison and Waverly probably saved them, as ironic as that seems.”

Gabi saw a look pass over Luke's face—a mixture of emotions she couldn't quite identify—before he set his jaw and nodded slowly.

“What if it'd been the other two who'd snuck out?”

“Then I can almost guarantee you and I would have never met. The incident would have been quietly swept under the rug.”

“Shocking.”

“They're good kids, Luke. All four of them are. But they're so locked into their patterns that you'd never know it. You'd
certainly
never know it, based on what you've seen the past few days.” She fisted her hands in her lap. “I've spent the entire year trying to figure out how to get through to them, but wow. Turtles have nothing on the shells these girls wear.”

“And I imagine Sam's and Eve's are the toughest of all?”

“Of course they are. They've both been shoved around their entire lives, house to house, family to family, hell to bigger hell. I interviewed fifty girls for these two scholarships, Luke. I would have taken them all, just to get them out of the lives they were trying to survive. It broke my heart.”

He was silent for a long, long moment, just staring out at the lake. Then he turned to her. “I have to ask, then. Why would you stick the four of them together in a suite? Madison's as bitchy as they come, and Waverly will do whatever Madison tells her. Why'd you sic them on two innocents?”

Gabi looked down at her lap. “I've asked myself that a thousand times, believe me.” Then she sighed. “Honestly? Beyond my bigger, lofty, impossible goals, I thought, given time, they'd figure out that they're not nearly as different as they think. All four of them have essentially been abandoned by their parents—just in different ways. I thought that somehow, some way, maybe that would bind them.”

“But no?”

“God, no. I mean, there have been moments … weeks, even, when things were pretty okay. But then Madison will step up her game, or Sam will preempt her by stepping up hers, and Eve and Waverly end up caught in the middle choosing sides, and then…”

“Chaos.”

“Yup.”

He was thoughtful for another long moment, and then he shifted in his chair, turning to look straight at her.

“Hey, Gabi?” His voice was soft, almost tender, as he touched her shoulder. It was just the briefest touch, but it sent swirling, zappy zings straight to her toes. “Would you kill me if I said it sounds like maybe … maybe you've actually all ended up exactly where you need to be?”

 

Chapter 8

Hours later, Gabi lay awake on her cot, desperate for sleep, but unable to close her eyes as she replayed her conversation with Luke. It was almost dawn, and the girls were asleep, the usual scratches and snuffles filtering in from outside the tent as the coons and skunks made their rounds. Funny how after only a few days, the girls were learning to sleep through it.

She didn't dare move, since one squeak of her cot could wake them all up, and really, sleeping was the
only
cooperative thing they'd managed since they'd arrived.

In her more delusional moments in the week before they'd left Briarwood, she'd tried to convince herself that maybe, like Luke had hinted, this summer could be an opportunity to finally draw the four teens together … to find some common ground that could bind them for the upcoming year … to find
some
way to make sure they wouldn't do something to get themselves booted right
out
of Briarwood as soon as school opened again.

But despite her best efforts over the past couple of days, the girls were more ornery than ever. She could understand hating the craft projects and the scavenger hunt that nobody had won, and she could
totally
buy the outhouse and mosquito hatred going on. But even swimming—which should have been easy and enjoyable—was fraught with screeches and whines as they complained about the water temperature, about the clams in the sand, about how their hair was never-ever-
ever
going to be clean again.

Actually, she'd give them that one. Thanks to the special lake-safe soap-slash-shampoo Luke had given them, her hair already resembled a frizzy dishrag, as did the girls'.

There had to be a way to rig a shower of some sort. She tapped her fingers on the blanket, thinking. Maybe tomorrow they could figure something out. Surely the girls would work together for something like the promise of a hot shower, wouldn't they?

Just then, she heard something scratch loudly over by where Waverly's and Madison's cots met. She sat up, grabbing her flashlight. She'd grown accustomed to the usual scratching noises, and this was not them. Her pulse picked up speed as she listened. Was something bigger out there?

Trying not to wake up the girls, she shined her flashlight toward the sound. For a few seconds, she saw nothing, but then she drew in a quick breath as she spotted dark fur and a thick white stripe.

A skunk.

In
their tent.

Two feet from Waverly and Madison's heads.

She sat stock-still, not wanting to startle it. Maybe it'd do its little investigation and be on its way. But thirty long seconds later, it didn't seem to be going anywhere. It snuffled and snorted its way around the underside of their cots, then stopped at a plastic bag someone must have stuffed in the corner of the tent.

“What's that noise?” Eve's sleepy voice came from the other side of the tent.

“Shh.” Gabi pointed her flashlight at the skunk.

“Shit.” Eve dove into her sleeping bag, making just enough noise to startle the skunk, who turned around and arched his tail threateningly.

Crap-crap-crap.
Gabi cringed, bracing herself, not knowing what to do. Should she make a run for it? Would she get to the tent flaps in time to get out before he sprayed? Should she wake up the girls? Would that make it worse?

She stayed silent and still, willing the stupid little critter to go away, but once he apparently decided he wasn't in mortal danger, he turned around and went back to mauling the plastic bag.