“Another hand!” someone cried. In the corner of the room, what looked like a deformed beach ball bounced up high in the air, but as it descended it was clear someone had blown up a magnum-size condom. Cheers went up as the condom was batted from table to table, the dining hall workers stopping their various chores to watch the impromptu game of condom volleyball.
Brett forgot about the cards, and before she could think about what she was doing, she scrambled up onto her chair. Her legs quivered with anger and she prayed it would hold. “
Everyone calm the fuck down!
” she screamed.
Instantly, the room quieted to a hush and the inflated condom hit the floor and bounced twice before rolling under a table. All eyes were on her—including the beady ones of Benny’s ferret. “This has
got
to stop!” She paused to clear her throat, remembering from her debate team days that timing was everything if you wanted people to listen. Her eyes scanned the half-empty dining hall. “This string of inappropriate gift-giving is childish, and it needs to end now.
“The Holiday Ball is this weekend, and anyone who misbehaves will be punished accordingly. The DC will be enforcing the rules to the letter. And if you think I’m kidding, just try me!” She glared threateningly at the crowd, then carefully jumped down from her chair, grabbed her nearly untouched tray, and marched toward the tray return. As she stomped out of the dining hall, lips set in a straight line, she glanced out of the corners of her eyes. Teague Williams was gathering the X-rated playing cards and stuffing them into his pocket. Someone had popped the condom balloon with a fork, and Sage was zipping her riding crop into her backpack, looking shamefaced. Brett nodded to Sage as she walked toward the door, a hush following her as she pushed her way through the heavy double doors.
That’s better
, she thought, though it wasn’t until she was out in the crisp wintry air that she wondered when she’d become such a cranky old lady.
“B
eautiful,” Kaitlin Becker whispered on Thursday afternoon, crouching down on one knee. Her camera was pointed upward toward Jenny, who carefully arranged herself in the window seat of her Dumbarton room. Jenny propped one leg up as she leaned out the open window, a lit cigarette—borrowed from Callie’s pack of Marlboro Lights— dangling from her fingertips. She rarely smoked, but after an entire week of one failed photo op after another, she needed something to calm her nerves. She blew a funnel of smoke into the cold afternoon air, trying to keep it out of the room. The sun was starting to set and she hoped the last light framed her nicely for Kaitlin. In her black cowl-neck Banana Republic sweater and faded boot-cut jeans with the holes in her knees and paint splotches everywhere, she hoped she looked cute and sort of artsy—and not just boring.
Jenny had always imagined that being in the public eye was like a second skin, that after a while you wouldn’t even realize that other people were always looking at you. (How else could you possibly explain all those horrible pictures of celebrities without their underwear on?) But the reverse had been true for the last week, ever since Jenny had agreed to be the subject of the freshman film class documentary: she was acutely aware of the camera’s eye on her at all times. Jenny felt constantly on guard. She’d started planning things to say out in her head before saying them, knowing that they could be recorded for all time. (Or at least until Kaitlin or Claire or Izzy deleted them.) The stress had made her lose about three pounds—so far, the only really good thing to come out of it.
“Tell us about the Cinephiles party, where the barn burned down,” Claire prodded, leaning her head against the wall.
Again?
Jenny wanted to ask. She swore she’d already told them about it—but her head was spinning. She’d never talked about herself so much in her life and it was starting to make her feel like a complete narcissist. But the girls apparently wanted to hear it, so Jenny did her best to recall the Cinephiles party— which felt like months ago. Was it?
Across the room, Callie was sitting at her desk in a pink spaghetti-strap Calvin Klein tank top, her iPod earbuds stuffed firmly into her ears. Her blue sparkly fingernails clicked against the keyboard of her laptop as she typed an e-mail. Jenny felt an intense longing to be e-mailing her dad instead of talking to her freshman filmmakers.
That morning, she’d had to make the three of them pinky swear to erase some embarrassing footage of her talking about how hard it was for her to buy a bra in her size. Izzy had asked her, half-jokingly, what kind of underwear she wore, and before Jenny knew it, she was railing about how hard it was to find cute bras that fit her massive boobs. Only after Claire goaded her into holding up a few of her bras for them did Jenny remember that her classmates might actually watch the film. And that maybe she didn’t want them all to see her thick-strapped, unsexy double-D-cup granny bras.
Having the film crew trio following her around made Jenny realize how boring her life really was. The girls had filmed her during an art class, but they kept asking her if she could move a little more as she painted, or paint a little faster. “Like this, or something,” Izzy suggested, grabbing the brush from Jenny and making cartoonish sweeping motions with her arm, accidentally adding a dash of red to Jenny’s still life.
“And then the whole thing went up in flames…” Jenny trailed off, unable to think of anything else to say about the barn. She didn’t want to get into the whole story about Drew, the hot senior who’d lied to her about bribing Mrs. Miller to get Jenny out of trouble for the barn. All the girls wanted to hear about, though, was boys. They kept encouraging her to flirt with guys on camera, and so Jenny found herself striking up conversations with people she didn’t even like—just so they could see, as they called it, an “It girl in action.”
“But I don’t get it,” Izzy said, running her hands through her short, pixie hair. Its chlorine smell was starting to drive Jenny crazy. “Why did you confess to burning the barn down if you didn’t do it?”
“I don’t know.” Jenny shrugged her shoulders and glanced out the window longingly. She saw Heath Ferro and Alan St. Girard pelting each other with snowballs. She wished she were out there, actually having fun, instead of sitting here and trying to make her life sound more interesting than it was.
The girls stared at Jenny blankly a minute before Kaitlin lowered the camera. She nodded her head, her orangey red curls bouncing, toward Callie, who’d abandoned her laptop and was fumbling around her closet floor. “Wasn’t
Callie
at the Cinephiles party too?”
Izzy’s blue eyes lit up and Jenny stubbed out her cigarette in an empty Diet Coke can. “Weren’t she and Easy Walsh actually in the barn when it started to burn?” Izzy whispered loudly.
“I can hear you, you know,” Callie muttered, fumbling through the shoes on the floor of her cluttered closet. “And I don’t have time to be interviewed, thank you very much.”
“Where are you going?” Claire asked, and Kaitlin spun the camera toward Callie. Jenny felt like she’d been slapped in the face. Their movie was supposed to be about
her
. Jenny knew that Callie Vernon was a way more interesting subject, but
they
weren’t supposed to know that.
Callie certainly looked glamorous in her skin-toned corseted camisole and her tight-fitting black pencil skirt. She held one open-toed crimson Manolo in her hand. Her strawberry blond hair was freshly blow-dried, and she looked like a half-dressed model backstage at a runway show. “I can’t find this goddamn…” She trailed off, throwing expensive designer shoe after expensive designer shoe into the middle of the room. Claire hopped out of the way of a deadly stiletto. “Aha!” Callie finally cried triumphantly, holding the matching Manolo up over her head.
Kaitlin, Izzy, and Claire giggled. A wave of panic crashed over Jenny and she crawled out of the window seat. “Where are you going tonight, Callie?” Claire asked, and Jenny saw Kaitlin press the zoom button as she scanned the pile of shoes on the floor that Callie carelessly kicked out of her way. It was like Callie was a full-size Barbie doll.
“Huh?” Callie glanced at the girls as if she were seeing them for the first time, although Jenny had introduced them about three times now. “Out,” she said, stepping into the Manolo pumps and stalking over to her dresser. She spritzed her wrists with her almost empty bottle of perfume and rubbed them behind her earlobes.
“With who?” Izzy asked shyly. She was sitting cross-legged on Jenny’s bed, and Jenny resisted the urge to tell her to put her feet on the floor.
Callie turned toward the girls, eyeing them up and down, oblivious to the camera. A slow smile crept over her face, and she turned back to the mirror. She grabbed a silver tube of her Givenchy lipstick and ran it across her lips.
“What color lipstick is that?” Claire asked eagerly.
“Illicit Raspberry,” Callie answered, popping the top back on it and tossing it casually aside. Jenny’s heart thumped in her chest at the sound of the girls cooing with interest—that was what they were supposed to do when
she
did or said something interesting.
At that moment, a Raves song started playing through Jenny’s iPod docking station.
Izzy nodded her head. “Great song.”
“I saw them in concert when I was in Madrid once,” Callie said offhandedly, mascara wand in hand. Jenny’s jaw dropped. The Raves were
her
claim to fame. Through a miraculous stroke of luck, Jenny’s poet brother, Dan, had temporarily joined the New York-based band as its singer/songwriter. Jenny had tagged along with them to shows, and they’d been totally sweet and charming to her.
“Really?” Claire asked excitedly.
Kaitlin zoomed in on Callie as she chattered on about the double encore and how she’d managed to get backstage with her Spanish model friend, who was a friend of a friend of the lead singer, Damian Polk.
“That’s so cool,” Izzy gushed. “I would die if I met him.”
“He
was
hot,” Callie admitted, affixing her earrings. “He smelled like chocolate. I always think of him when I drink hot chocolate.” Callie giggled like a schoolgirl and the camera ate it up, as did Claire and Izzy and Kaitlin.
A rising panic seized Jenny, and her mind raced for a way to bring the attention back around to her.
She
was the star of this show, after all. “That’s so funny. Didn’t I ever tell you about the time I spent with the Raves?” she blurted out, trying to sound blasé about it. “At the Plaza Hotel? And Damian’s West Village town house?”
Kaitlin swung the camera around instinctively.
“No fucking way!” Claire squealed, immediately stopping in mid-dance step. “How did you score that?” The admiration was back in her voice, and Jenny felt relief flood through her body.
“Long story… but I actually ended up recording a song with them.” The girls crowded around Jenny, begging her to tell them the whole story. She was so excited to have something interesting to talk about again that she didn’t even notice Callie rolling her eyes in the background, having heard the story more than once.
Before she knew what she was doing, Jenny reached for her Razr. She found Damian Polk’s number in her address book— she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually talked to him, but he’d insisted she could call him at any time—and let it ring, staring straight into the camera as the phone rang in her ear. The freshmen were drawing small, shallow collective breaths and even Callie stopped what she was doing to watch.
“’Ello, ’ello, ’ello,” Damian answered. He sounded like he was in a long tunnel.
“Damian?” Jenny asked louder than she needed to. She’d totally expected his voice mail to pick up and hadn’t planned on actually
talking
to him. She just needed to prove she had his number. She dug her bare toes into her shaggy pink rug and prayed.
“Who is this?” Damian asked.
“It’s little Jenny Humphrey, silly,” she said, as if they talked on the phone every day. Her brain reeled, trying to come up with some believable excuse for calling him. Telling him she wanted to impress some freshmen girls making a movie wouldn’t cut it.
After the briefest of pauses, Damian replied, his voice warm and surprised. “Hey, cutie. What’re you up to? Aren’t you… at school somewhere?”
Jenny said a silent prayer of thanks that Damian remembered at least that much about her. “I’m up here at boarding school in Rhinecliff.” Then her eyes landed on the embossed silver invitation thumbtacked smack-dab in the middle of her bulletin board. “And everyone wants the Raves to play the Christmas ball!”
“Oh yeah?” Damian asked, chuckling. “When is it?”
“This Saturday.” Jenny somehow managed to wink at the camera even though she felt like her insides were melting with panic. “Don’t say you can’t come,” she teased, amazed at her own forwardness. “We’re all, like, dying up here without any good music.”
A loud static burst in her ear and she worried that the connection was lost. But Damian’s voice came through the static. “We have a show that evening, babe. Sorry.”
“We’ll be out really late, though. Can’t you come when you’re done?” Jenny closed her eyes. “Please, please, please?”
Damian laughed. “I guess we can come after our show.”
“I knew you’d come through!” Jenny squealed, and Izzy, Claire, and Kaitlin all gasped collectively. Even Callie raised her eyebrows as if impressed. “You guys rock!”
The static buzzed again and this time the line went dead. But Jenny casually closed her phone. “It’s on,” she said into the camera. “They’ll do it.” She smiled smugly as the freshmen jumped up and down.
“A Raves exclusive!” Claire exclaimed, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead as if she was about to faint. “The coolest.”