Tempted (13 page)

The bran muffin Callie had been forced to wolf down at breakfast in the cafeteria lurked dangerously in her throat. The cafeteria was little more than a set of wooden picnic tables scrunched together in a tight, wood-paneled room, as if it were some sort of prison camp. She’d hoped to commiserate with the other guests—i.e., inmates—but no one would look up from their muffins, which had appeared through a swinging door in the corner of the room, carried on silver trays by two stiff-backed men dressed head to toe in white. She felt like she was in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
the totally scary nuthouse flick they’d watched in freshman English class.

More disturbing than the quiet smacking of lips and the barely audible swallowing was the woman with her hair tucked under one of those caps with earflaps who didn’t even eat her meager breakfast, choosing instead to stick it into her pocket. What did that mean about lunch? Callie had never thought she’d miss the Waverly dining hall so much. She’d give anything for a toasted bagel slathered in butter.

The campers whose job it was to haul away the splintered firewood stood next to Natasha with their hands on their hips. Callie gripped the ax handle tightly and lifted the ax over her head, swaying dangerously as it threatened to pull her backward and into the six-foot snowdrift. She eyed the flat face of the stump and marked right where she wanted to bring down the ax. It was just like field hockey, she told herself. You had to keep your eye on the ball, or in this case, the spot. She brought the ax down with all the force her tired body could summon. The ax ricocheted off the stump and fell to the ground, twisting Callie’s wrist so that the pain in her back suddenly had company.

“Ow!” she cried out.

“Never mind,” Natasha growled and pushed Callie aside. She picked up the ax, and Callie noticed she wasn’t even wearing gloves. Natasha brought the ax down with authority and the stump shattered into pieces. The other campers scrambled to collect the wood before it could get wet in the snow.

Anger boiled in Callie’s brain. Why the fuck had her Republican mom sent her on some fascist retreat? How had she let herself be suckered so easily? Wasn’t anyone in her Friday afternoon calc class wondering where the hell she was by now?

Natasha handed Callie the ax and propped up another log on the stump, motioning for Callie to try again. Callie’s fingertips were numb and her toes were well on their way to frostbite. She doubted she’d still be alive come dinner—if they even served dinner in this hellhole. A light snow began to fall, and Callie blinked away a pair of flakes that landed on her eyelashes. Twelve hours ago she’d been on the Waverly campus—miserable, of course, but at least there. Where the hell was she now?

“Let’s give it another whirl, princess!” Natasha barked at her, a gleam in her eye that was practically begging Callie to fail.

As Callie raised the ax, she realized she hadn’t thought about Easy once since being so rudely awoken at dawn. Maybe this snowy hell was good for something. If all the pain could make her forget about Easy, it might be worth it.

If she ever made it out alive.

Email Inbox

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Date:
Friday, November 1, 4:15 P.M.

Jenny,

Callie Vernon’s mother just informed me that she has arranged for Callie to spend some time at a private health spa in Maine. I apologize for not letting you know about your roommate’s whereabouts earlier.

Best,

A.p.

“Don’t tell me it was the maid’s week off.” Kara stood in the doorway of Dumbarton 121 on Friday night, her greenish-brown eyes wide as she explored the spray of clothing covering Tinsley’s half of the room. Kara’s mattress, swathed in brightly colored Superman sheets, leaned awkwardly against the door frame. Dressed in a pair of black yoga pants and a loose-fitting gray American Apparel T-shirt that looked like it had been through the wash a thousand times, Kara looked casual and relaxed—everything Brett wasn’t.

Brett kicked a pile of Tinsley’s dirty laundry back over to her ice queen roommate’s side of the room with the toe of her Juicy Couture wedge-heeled boot. “Let me just clear some of this crap out of the way for you,” she grumbled, annoyed that Tinsley treated the whole room like her own personal walk-in closet. She’d come home from class at lunchtime to find Tinsley tearing through her wardrobe, tossing clothes onto every spare surface. Normally, she threw on the first thing she grabbed and looked amazing anyway. But when Brett asked Tinsley what the hell she was doing, Tinsley just gave her a withering glare and disappeared out the door, leaving the mess behind.

Another kick sent a delicate chocolate brown Kate Spade pump crashing into Tinsley’s dresser. Tiny glass bottles of perfume and makeup fell in an avalanche to the floor.

Kara gave a little snort, and the familiar sound of her laughter lightened the mood in the room. “Oops.”

“She probably won’t even notice.” Brett pushed a loose lock of fire engine red hair away from her face, snagging it on the tiny gold earrings she wore at the top of her ear.

An awkward silence fell. They could hear the sound of
Pretty Woman
playing on sad Suzanna Goldfinger’s laptop next door, a movie she watched at least once a week. Brett plucked a pair of her black True Religion jeans from Tinsley’s clothing tornado. If she and Kara just kept talking, Brett told herself, things wouldn’t get uncomfortable. She wouldn’t think about how she’d blatantly lied to Jeremiah, or how she’d kind of betrayed Kara by telling him that nothing had happened between them… .

“I think my mattress got wet.” Kara patted the back of her mattress, and Brett took the non sequitur as a sign that Kara was nervous about their temporary arrangement, too. “The flood ruined, like, half my books.”

“That’s terrible.” If the situation had been reversed, Brett knew that Kara wouldn’t have thought twice about letting her camp out in her room—which made her feel even worse. “I’m sure Waverly has some kind of insurance policy that covers that sort of thing.” Brett ran a hand through her hair, disentangling it from her earrings. Was she really talking about
insurance?
How lame could she get?

“Yeah, maybe.” Kara looked doubtful.

“Let me help with that.” Brett scrambled to grab a corner of Kara’s mattress. Together, they tugged it over to the cleared space on the floor.

“Timber …” Kara smiled as they let the mattress fall against Brett’s handcrafted bamboo rug from a boutique in Hoboken. The mattress landed with a thud that shook the floor. Almost immediately a small gray mouse scurried out from underneath Tinsley’s bed and scampered out the open door. Brett shrieked and hopped on her bed.

“Fuck!” Kara backed against the door, alarmed. “Was that a
mouse?”

“Or a
rat?”
Brett wheezed and held her hand against her chest. Once, in the New York subway, a rat had run across the toes of her red suede Ferragamo loafers as she waited for the C train, and she’d never recovered. “Apparently there’s a hole in the side of the building.”

“It was definitely a mouse.” Kara’s eyes scanned the corners of the room. “But who knows if he has any buddies.”

“Goddamn wild kingdom,” Brett huffed, jumping down off her bed. The floor felt cold to the touch and she suddenly felt guilty for making Kara sleep on a cold, wet mattress with Mickey and friends.

There was a knock on the door, and Angelica Pardee, wearing a much too tight red velour tracksuit, appeared in the doorway.

“I just thought I’d check up on all my refugees before lights out.” Pardee’s bland brown hair had been blow-dried, and her face was nicely made up, as if she was ready to go out and only needed to change into something more flattering. “The whole place is upside down, topsy-turvy. I’m so glad you girls are making the best of it.”

“How long will it be before we can all go back to our rooms?” Kara asked impatiently.

“Maintenance is on it,” Pardee told Kara as she glanced at her watch. “But there are no guarantees. There’s water, water everywhere … and not a drop to drink.” She laughed at her own cheesy literary reference.

“Days or weeks or months?” Kara pressed, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Definitely not months,” Pardee answered vaguely. “Do you girls need anything in the way of extra bedding or pillows or towels?” She backed out of the room, her mind clearly somewhere else. Brett wondered if there was any truth to the rumors that Pardee and her hubby—who’d been
MIA
for the past few weeks—had separated. He was reportedly living at the Holiday Inn in town, and it looked like Pardee was about to sneak out on a not so secret date. Brett tried to catch Kara’s eye, but she was staring down dubiously at her Superman mattress.

“Well, sleep tight, as they say,” Pardee said. “Oh, and”— she glanced at Brett—”I really appreciate your letting Kara share your room. In times of crisis, Owls have to look out for other Owls.” Pardee smiled, her bright pink lipstick exactly the wrong color for her pale complexion. “I understand from Mrs. Horniman that you’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Keep it up.”

Brett forced a smile. She hated how everyone at Waverly talked about everything. She could just hear Mrs. Horniman measuring Brett’s progress with Pardee, with maybe Dean Marymount listening in, nodding his balding head. Although she was pretty lucky they hadn’t decided to remove her as junior class prefect after all the scandals she’d been involved in. With a final wave, Pardee shut the door, and they could hear her hurried footsteps as she went back to her own room down the hall.

“What did she mean by that?” Kara kicked her mattress with the toe of her brown Ugg moccasin so that it lay flat on the floor.

“Nothing,” Brett said, waving a hand. She didn’t feel like talking about her new tutoring job. Sebastian still hadn’t bothered to e-mail her back, which Brett found extremely rude — and arrogant.

Kara ran a hand absentmindedly through her shoulder-length brown hair. She looked stranded in the middle of the floor, like a lost orphan. Brett couldn’t help remembering the not so long ago good times when she and Kara would brush each other’s hair as one of them read out loud from Kara’s comic books. They’d spent one evening in Kara’s single watching
The Hills
and doing a shot of peach schnapps each time someone said “like.” (They were trashed halfway through the first episode.)

Despite what she’d told Jeremiah, she and Kara had kissed and kissed that night.
Don’t think of that,
Brett told herself. They were friends now. Kara just needed a temporary place to sleep. And that was it.

“I’m going to change,” Kara announced, grabbing her bag and heading toward the bathroom. Brett took the opportunity of Kara’s absence to paw through her dresser drawers. She eyed her favorite black Oscar de la Renta chemise. The silky softness always lulled her to sleep, no matter how stressed out she was. She pushed it to the back of the drawer and instead grabbed an old pair of green-and-white plaid Calvin Klein flannels. She peeled off her clothes and slipped into the uncomfortably warm pajamas. Kara reappeared in the doorway, wearing drawstring cotton pants and a matching long-sleeve T-shirt. Apparently she shared Brett’s need to reveal as little skin as possible.

It was pretty ridiculous, and Brett would have laughed if the nagging feeling that she was still lying to Jeremiah weren’t hanging over her. “Do you think Mickey will come back?” Kara looked nervous. “With reinforcements?” Her hazel eyes scanned the floor, searching for signs of their rodent friend.

“I hope not.” Brett glanced at Tinsley’s empty bed. Where was she? And what were the chances that she’d stay out all night? Slim, she knew—Tinsley usually got in sometime after midnight. She could just imagine the scene if Tinsley came home and found Kara in her bed.

But she couldn’t very well let her sleep on the floor, either.

“You can bunk with me,” Brett said casually, as if the idea had just occurred to her. “That mattress looks uncomfortable.”

Kara wrinkled her nose and played with the drawstring of her pants. A tiny stripe of stomach showed, and she quickly tugged down on her shirt. “Are you sure?”

Brett nodded. “No biggie,” she said, before she lost her nerve. She walked over to the bed and lifted back the fuchsia Indian-print comforter, revealing her hot pink Egyptian cotton sheets. “Here, you can have the comforter—I’m kind of hot already, anyway.” Brett pushed the covers to one side of the unreasonably skinny bed—clearly designed to discourage sharing—and tugged the sheets toward her.

“Okay.” Kara sat down gingerly on the other side of the bed. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Brett turned on the small fan on her nightstand, and it whirred to life. She glanced at Kara. “Is that okay?”

Kara nodded and started to fluff her pillow. She tilted her head slightly and gave Brett a curious look. “Did you, uh, change your toothpaste?”

“What?” Suddenly, it seemed a little awkward that Kara would notice that Brett had run out of her favorite cinnamon Close-Up and had been forced to use her backup, spearmint Colgate. It meant that, well … Kara knew Brett’s mouth. What it smelled like … and tasted like. “Oh, yeah,” Brett mumbled. “Yeah, I did.”

An awkward silence fell over the room as Kara curled up under the comforter while Brett lay stiffly with a sheet on top of her. A trickle of sweat ran down Brett’s spine as she lay still, trying to keep her shoulders from drifting dangerously toward Kara. Kara inched over to the opposite side.

Brett tried not to think about Tinsley’s empty bed mocking her. A desert heat enveloped her and she closed her eyes, listening to the rain beating against the window, praying for sleep to come and put an end to her torture.