The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (2 page)

I looked into my dad’s eyes, exactly the same blue as my own,
and I knew he didn’t doubt whether I could make it here. He doubted whether
he
could make it back home. Images of pill vials flashed in my mind. Little white and blue tablets spilled across a water ring stained night table. A bin full of empty liquor bottles and crumpled tissues. My mother, wiry and pale, grousing about her pain, about how everything bad happened to her and none of us cared, tearing me down, tearing Scott down, telling us all we were worthless just to make us feel as miserable as she did. Scott had already made his escape—he had packed up and gone off to Penn State last week. Now it would be just Dad and my mother in that tiny little house. The thought depressed me.

“I don’t have to go here,” I said, even though the very idea that he might agree with me made me physically ill. To see this place, feel what it was all about, and then have it all taken away within the span of five minutes would be painful enough to kill me, I was sure. “We can go home right now. Just say the word.”

My dad’s face softened into a smile. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Like I would really do that. But I appreciate the offer.”

I grinned sadly. “No problem.”

“I love you, kiddo,” he said. I already knew that. Getting me into this school and out of that hellhole was about the most obvious display of love any parent could have produced. He was pretty much my hero.

“Love you too, Dad.”

And then he hugged me and I cried and before I knew it, we were saying good-bye.

“Easton Academy is one of the top-ranked schools in the country. Which is, I assume, the reason you sought out a place here. But many students who matriculate in from public schools find it to be a . . .
difficult
adjustment. I trust, of course, that you will not be one of those students, am I right, Miss Brennan?”

My advisor, Ms. Naylor, had gray hair and jowls. Actual jowls. They shook when she spoke, and when she spoke it was mostly about how I never should have applied to Easton in the first place as I was completely out of my league and teetering on the brink of failure before I had even entered my first class.

At least that was what she implied.

“Right,” I echoed, going for a confident smile. Ms. Naylor made an equally feeble attempt in return. I got the idea that she didn’t smile much as a rule.

Her basement office was dark, the walls made of stone and lined by shelves full of dusty leather-bound books. It was lit only by two windows set high in the wall. Her round body wedged so perfectly
between the arms of her chair that it seemed she was permanently bound there. If the musky/oniony smell in the air was any indication, it was quite possible that she never actually left the room. And that whatever she last ate within its four walls was seriously rank.

“The academic programs at Easton are extremely advanced. Most of the students in your year are taking courses that would be considered senior level by your old high school’s curriculum standards,” Ms. Naylor continued, looking down her nose at what I assumed were my Croton High records. “You’ll need to do a lot of extra work to keep up. Are you up to the task?”

“Yeah. I hope so,” I said.

She looked at me like she was confused. What did she expect me to say? “No”?

“I see you’re here on partial scholarship. That’s good,” Ms. Naylor says. “Most of our scholarship students have a certain fire in their bellies that seems to inspire them to attain their goals.”

Ms. Naylor closed her folder and leaned toward me across her desk. A shaft of light from one of the windows illuminated the distinct line between the makeup on her face and the fleshy rolls of her neck.

“We expect great things out of each and every one of our students here at Easton,” she said. “I hold my own advisees to particularly high standards, so I will be keeping a close eye on you, Miss Brennan. Don’t let me down.”

Maybe I was just being paranoid, but somehow this demand
sounded more like a threat. There was a pause. I had the feeling I was supposed to say something. So I said, “Okay.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Your schedule.”

She whipped out a thin sheet of paper and held it out over the little bronze nameplate on the edge of her desk, advertising her position as guidance director. As far as I could tell, all she was trying to do was guide me, crying in submission, to the nearest airport.

I took the paper and scanned it, taking in words like “Art History,” “Bonus Lab,” and “French 3.” How in God’s name had I placed into French 3?

“Thank you,” I said. I was pleased to hear that my voice was not trembling in concert with my insides.

“And, the honor code.”

She handed me another piece of paper, this one thicker, more substantial, than the first. At the top corner was the Easton crest and the words “Easton Academy Code of Honor for Students.” Beneath that, “Tradition, Honor, Excellence.”

“Read it over and sign it,” Ms. Naylor said.

I did as I was told. The honor code basically stated that I would not cheat and that I would report any classmate if I suspected him or her of cheating. If I failed to meet these standards, I would be instantly expelled. No second chances at Easton Academy. But since I had never had to cheat in my life, and couldn’t fathom that anyone else who had been accepted to this school would have to, I signed it quickly and handed it back. Ms. Naylor inspected my signature.

“You should get going,” she said. “House meetings begin in fifteen minutes. You don’t want to make a bad impression with your house mother on your first day.”

“Thank you,” I said again, and stood.

“Oh, and Miss Brennan?” she said. When I looked at her again, she had twisted her face into a smile. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. “Good luck,” she said.

The “you’ll need it” was implied.

Feeling nostalgic for the hopefulness I had felt back in my dad’s car, I grasped the cold, brass doorknob and walked out.

My tendency to walk with my head down has had both benefits and drawbacks in the past. The major drawback was the fact that I had walked into my share of people. The benefit was that I was always finding things. Tons of coins, fallen necklaces and bracelets, secret love notes people thought they’d secured in their binders. Once I even found a wallet full of cash and when I turned it in I got a fifty-dollar reward. But I should have known that walking that way around Easton would be bad. I was halfway across the quad that backed the dorms when I heard someone shout, “Heads up!”

Which, of course, made me look when it was supposed to make me duck.

I dropped my schedule and grabbed the football out of the air about a tenth of a second before it would have sent me to the infirmary with a broken nose. My heart was in my throat.

“Nice reflexes.”

There was a guy sitting directly in my path. Had the ball not almost rearranged my face, I would have tripped right over him
with my next step. He slipped the sleek cell he’d been texting on into his pocket, unfolded his long legs, and stood up, picking up my schedule along the way. His dark hair fell over his forehead in a messy yet somehow totally deliberate way, one lock landing right over one of his strikingly deep blue eyes. He wore a gray heather T-shirt that hugged a perfectly lithe frame. His features were angular, his lightly tanned skin flaw-free.

“New girl,” he said, looking me up and down.

I flushed. “That obvious?”

“I know everyone that goes to this school,” he said.

“Everyone?” I said. Hardly possible.

“It’s a small school,” he said, studying me.

Didn’t feel that way to me. In fact, it felt pretty damn huge. But then, it was my first day.

“Pearson! Quit flirting and throw the ball back!”

Before I had only
felt
the guys hovering. Now “Pearson” held his hand out for the ball and I looked up at his friends, six of them, all sweating and heaving for breath about twenty yards away. Rather than handing it over, I turned, took a few steps, and punted the ball to the guy farthest from me. It fell right into his hands. One of the players—a tall, broad, blond kid who had “cocky” written all over him—threw me a lascivious glance before jogging back into the game.

“Reed Brennan. Sophomore.”

My heart skipped a disturbed beat. “Pearson” was reading my schedule.

“I’ll take that back now,” I said, reaching for it.

He turned away from my grasp, holding the schedule up with both hands. I racked my brain trying to recall if there was anything embarrassing or overly personal on there. Did it say I was on scholarship? Did it say where I was from?

“Hmmmm . . . tough schedule. We have a smarty on our hands.”

The way he said it, I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. “Not really,” I replied.

“And modest, too,” he said, sliding a glance in my direction. “You’re one of those girls, aren’t you?”

I was flaming red by this point. “What girls?”

“Those girls who are smart but pretend they’re not. Those girls who are absolutely model-level gorgeous but are always saying they’re ugly,” he said.

Gorgeous?
Gorgeous?
I hated compliments. Never had any idea what to do with them. Especially ones I suspected were backhanded.

“Those girls whose very existence tortures all the other self-esteem-lacking girls around her.”

I snatched my schedule out of his hands and stuffed it into my back pocket.

“I guess that makes you one of those obnoxious guys who thinks he knows everything and is so full of himself that he’s convinced that everyone around him wants to hear his every last unoriginal thought,” I said.

He grinned. “Got me pegged.”

He didn’t even have the decency to
act
offended. He had that air
about him that said he knew who he was and didn’t much care what I or anyone else thought of him. I envied that.

“Reed Brennan, sophomore, I’m Thomas Pearson, senior,” he said, offering his hand.

No one even close to my age had ever offered to shake my hand before. I eyed him uncertainly as I slipped my hand into his. His palm was unbelievably warm and the firm assuredness of his grip sent a rush of anticipation right through me. As he stared directly into my eyes, his smile slowly widened. Did he feel it too, or did he just know somehow that
I
felt it?

His cell phone rang and he finally pulled away, sliding it out of his left pocket. Odd, I had thought he’d placed it in the other one. “I have to take this,” he said, spinning the phone on his palm like a six-shooter in an old western. “Business before pleasure. And trust me, it
was
a pleasure to meet you, Reed Brennan.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“Pearson,” he said into the phone.

Then he strolled off, head up, so comfortable that he may as well have owned the place. I wondered if he actually did.

My roommate was a talker. Her name was Constance Talbot and she apparently lacked the need for oxygen. She started talking the moment I entered our room after my encounter with Thomas Pearson and didn’t come up for air once. While she blabbed, I checked out the posters of rock bands and Rodin paintings she had hung in my absence. Took in the piles of cardigans and T-shirts and low-rise cords on her bed. Wondered if her Manhattan school had kicked her out for continuously disturbing the peace.

Her favorite topic of conversation? Herself. Making me wonder if I had been idiotic to think that the girls here would be different. In those five minutes I found out that she was an only child, that she was new to Easton like me, that she had attended a private school in Manhattan and could have kept going there but felt the need to “expand her horizons,” that her dog was unfortunately named Pooky, and that she had a boyfriend back on the Upper East Side even more unfortunately named Clint.

“Clint and I went to the U2 concert last summer at the Garden.
Not like anyone
wants
to go to the Garden, but where else is U2 gonna play, right? So my dad gets us backstage passes because he was promoting it, and—did I mention that my dad is a promoter?”

She had.

“And he was all like, ‘The band isn’t going to be back there, but you’ll get to see where they get dressed and hang out.’ But then we get back there and open the door and guess who’s standing there? Guess!”

It was actually my turn to talk.

“Bono?” I said.

“Bono!” she exclaimed. “Right there! Like five feet away! And do you know what he said? He said, and I quote, ‘Pleasure to meet you. . . .’ ”

Her Irish accent was really bad.

“ ‘You have some of the most gorgeous Irish skin I’ve ever seen.’ He knew I was Irish! Just from looking at me!”

Apparently Bono was neither blind nor stupid. After all, Constance had the requisite thick red hair. The freckles. The green eyes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had Erin Go Bragh tattooed across her ass.

Except that she was too wide-eyed and perky to be the tattoo type.

“So of course I asked him to pose for a picture with me and of course he did. My friend Marni took like a hundred of them—”

“Really? Do you have them?” I asked, trying to make an effort.

There was at least a five-second pause as Constance turned her back on me and dug through her pink satin jewelry box—so long
that I grew concerned. “Oh, no. I didn’t bring them with me. I didn’t want to, you know, show off.”

Right.

“Anyway!” She was back in my face, bright smile and all, fastening a beaded necklace around her neck. “Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“For the house meeting!” she said, her abnormally large eyes bulging. “We’re gonna meet our house mother!”

“Oh. Right,” I said, scooting forward on my plaid comforter.

“Doesn’t that sound so seventeen hundreds? We have a
house mother
,” Constance said, cracking herself up. “I can’t wait to meet the rest of the girls on our floor.”

She looked at me expectantly. “Yeah. Me neither,” I said, forcing a smile.