Lucky (14 page)

“If you don’t have any more games, can we at least go see some girls?”

Brandon was still seething at Heath for dumping Sam on him. And still reeling from the fact that Sage Francis had appeared in his doorway, a vision of loveliness in her Jackie O dress and smooth, pin-straight blond hair, and proceeded to flirt with him. Sage Francis. And all he’d had to do was send her a few text messages. Who knew girls could be so simple? Definitely not Heath, who’d filled his protégé’s head with all kinds of crazy ideas.

“Okay, let’s go somewhere.” Brandon stood up and pulled his black Hugo Boss hooded sweater on over his plain white American Apparel T-shirt. He grabbed his worn leather Prada wallet and slid it into the pocket of his charcoal trousers.

“To see some girls?” Sam hopped up and stood in front of Heath’s mirror, adjusting the gelled spikes in his light brown hair. “I like that one that was in here before. Sage? She’s got great legs.”

Brandon walked out the door, shaking his head. Where was he going to take this tool? As he marched down the hallway, he passed Easy Walsh’s half-open door. Of course—Easy and Alan St. Girard were up most nights playing Xbox for hours after lights-out, the volume on mute while occasional groans or cheers emitted from their room as they killed aliens or kick-boxed street thugs or whatever brainless task was required in those games. Brandon knocked on the door, taking a deep breath and trying not to think about the rumors that Callie and Easy had actually slept together.

There was a pause, and then a sleepy voice called out, “Yeah?”

“You got Wii?” Sam asked, pushing Brandon aside and poking his head in the door to scout the dorm room for its gaming system.

Easy was on his back on his bed, in a pair of torn jeans and a ratty-looking green sweater, his American history textbook facedown on his chest. “What?” he asked, propping himself up on his elbows. Then he shook his head. “Nah, I’ve got an Xbox … but it’s broken right now.” Sam’s face lit up and fell immediately.

“He’s looking for some new games,” Brandon said apologetically.

“I have to go into town to get some charcoal pencils,” Easy said, rubbing his sleepy-looking blue eyes with his hand. “You guys can tag along if you want.” Sam seemed unimpressed, until Easy added, “There’s an arcade.”

“Cool,” Sam squealed like the true thirteen-year-old boy he was, his mini-Heath persona momentarily forgotten.

They strolled to Rhinecliff side by side, Easy on one side of Sam and Brandon on the other, a wide gap between each. Brandon remained silent as Easy and Sam discussed the merits and drawbacks of Xbox versus PlayStation versus Wii. The smell of rain hung in the air and Brandon wished he hadn’t worn his good John Varvatos suede loafers.

“Which one of you is better at House of the Dead 4?” Sam piped up as the main street of downtown Rhinecliff came into view. It was a warm Tuesday afternoon, and the sidewalks were swarming with students and their corresponding prospectives. The hippie guy some of the kids—Heath included—occasionally bought weed from was manning a table of neatly folded tie-dye shirts in every color imaginable. Brandon highly doubted the students crowded around his table were there to buy T-shirts.

He gave Easy a sideways glance and Easy returned it, cracking a smile. “I’ve never even
heard
of that game,” Brandon said, scanning the crowd for familiar faces. He thought he spotted Jenny up ahead, looking in the window of the thrift shop. Her hair was loose and fell down her back in lush, dark curls. How could Easy have broken up with her?

“C’mon.” Sam kicked at a loose stone, sending it skittering toward one of the hunter green BMWs parked on the street. They rounded a corner and stood facing the arcade, its flashing lights visible through the windows. Sam’s eyes lit up greedily. “Who wants to play me first?”

“Who’s buying?” Easy asked mischievously, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his paint-splattered jeans. Did he own any articles of clothing that weren’t splattered with paint? Two weeks ago, Brandon would have suspected Easy of intentionally spilling paint on himself in strategic spots—a splotch of red on the knee, three drips of green on the left thigh, a smudge of black on his sleeve—in order to appear as endearingly arty to girls as possible. But over the past week or so, with Easy acting like a decent human being to him, Brandon was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was clearly just a slob.

“You guys got quarters, right?” Sam asked.

Brandon shook out his empty pockets. “Nada.”

Sam’s face fell as Easy shrugged his shoulders. “Guess I’ll have to break a twenty.” Sam sighed.

“I bet you can buy tokens at the arcade,” Easy reasoned. He pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced at it, probably to see if he had any messages from Callie.

“Are you kidding me?” Sam responded, sounding horrified. He checked his hair in the giant plate glass window of the Rhinecliff Community Bank, just next door to the arcade. “The rates are terrible. Tokens are for suckers. You
have
to bring your own quarters.” He stuck his thumb in the direction of the bank. “I’m going in.”

Brandon and Easy waited outside while Sam stood in the long line at the bank for quarters. They shuffled their feet awkwardly on the sidewalk.

“I’m going to run over to the pharmacy and get my pencils,” Easy announced suddenly, clearly as desperate to avoid awkward silences as Brandon was. He stepped off the sidewalk and into the street.

Brandon nodded slowly. The pharmacy was the only place in town to get all kinds of necessities, and they did have a huge aisle of school supplies—but still, he couldn’t help wondering if Easy was really going to stock up on condoms.

“Hey,” Easy said suddenly, patting his hand against the pack of Marlboro Reds half sticking out of his pocket. “Sorry things didn’t work out with Elizabeth. I heard about what happened. Think you did the right thing, though.”

Brandon searched Easy’s face for a smirk, but Easy looked totally sincere. “Thanks,” he said. “It does kind of suck.”

“Maybe she’ll come around.” Easy shrugged. The sun came out from behind a cloud, lighting up the gray afternoon sky. He pulled a pair of brandless black aviators from the collar of his green wool sweater. The sleeves were too short. “You never know.”

“Yeah,” Brandon said, looking down the street for Jenny again, but she was gone. “It was just … too impossible.”
Impossible
was the right word, wasn’t it? Maybe not. It was theoretically possible for Brandon to become one of Elizabeth’s rotating cast of boyfriends, crossing his fingers that he’d be the one to get the call for Friday or Saturday night, sometimes settling for a Wednesday lunch or a Monday movie, but it wasn’t
realistic
. Maybe that was a good answer when people asked: “It wasn’t realistic.” And it definitely wasn’t what he wanted.

A beat passed and then Brandon added, “Heard you and Callie worked it out, though.” Easy nodded, though Brandon noticed with interest that Easy seemed to nod tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure. As if to avoid looking Brandon in the eye, Easy pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He flicked open a book of matches, stuck a cigarette between his lips, and lit it in one smooth motion. “That’s cool,” Brandon said.

“Yeah.” Easy inhaled a deep breath of smoke, wondering if smoking in public was really the smartest thing for him to be doing right now. Well, fuck it. Marymount was probably too excited about tomorrow morning’s meeting to be doing any shopping downtown. Besides, it felt good to be outside. As soon as he’d left the Staxxx this morning, his uneasy feelings had returned, and he’d spent all afternoon cooped up in his room worrying. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like Callie
was
plotting something—and he wouldn’t be surprised if Tinsley was behind it all. “Have you, uh, talked to her?”

An elderly woman passed between them and Brandon opened the bank door for her. She smiled kindly at Brandon, then took one glance at Easy’s cigarette and shot him a scowl over her shoulder. “To Callie? No, not recently.”

“Oh.” Easy didn’t know how to bring the whole thing up without sounding like he was ratting Callie out to Brandon. He took another drag of his cigarette, old ladies be damned.

“Why?” Brandon asked curiously. This conversation was getting sort of creepily random. Why was Easy asking
him
about Callie?

Easy shifted his feet and sighed. “I just wondered if you knew what she was up to.”

“Is she up to something?”

“Well, everyone seems to be pointing fingers at me and her about the fire”—he rushed the phrase together so as not to get into a subject neither of them wanted to discuss—”and I’m worried she’s going to do something drastic to try to, like, save the day.”

Brandon laughed, smoothing out a wrinkle in his dark gray trousers. “Like what? Do something even worse to create a distraction?” He leaned against the brick wall of the bank. “Seduce the dean? That’s not exactly her style.”

Easy smiled despite himself, kicking a foot against the curb. “No, it’s not. I just have this weird feeling that she’s up to something, and that Tinsley’s involved.”

“Those two don’t need any help getting into trouble,” Brandon remarked. A couple of sophomore girls headed toward the
ATM
machine giggled shyly as they passed by.

Easy glanced through the giant, freshly Windexed bank window, trying to gauge Sam’s progress in the line and how much time they had left. “I’m worried it’s a scheme against Jenny,” he blurted out. He’d come to that conclusion this afternoon. If Callie was convinced Jenny had started the fire and was going to be sent home, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that she’d help speed the process along. And if there was a scheme in the works at Waverly, you could bet that Tinsley Carmichael was the mastermind. It would explain everything: Callie’s hushed conversation with Tinsley in the stables the other day, Callie and Tinsley’s reestablished friendship, Callie’s confidence that they wouldn’t be the ones to go home.

Brandon put his hands in his pockets and looked him straight in the eye. He raised a golden-brown eyebrow. “Jenny?”

“Yeah, I know it’s crazy, but I keep coming back to that same idea. I …” Easy’s voice trailed off. His dry throat felt like it would crack if he kept talking, but he wanted to confess to someone. “I feel like I screwed Jenny over. And I don’t want this on top of it.” As happy as Easy was to be back together with Callie, the girl he loved, he still felt terrible about how he’d dumped Jenny to get back with Callie.

“If you think you screwed her over,” Brandon said slowly, in a tone that sounded like he was trying very hard not to be judgmental, “then why don’t you just say you’re sorry?” At five feet eight inches and standing on the sidewalk, with Easy still on the street, Brandon was about the same height as Easy, and their eyes were exactly level.

“Maybe I will,” Easy conceded, mulling it over. It sounded so simple. But apologies were never simple. Two years of dating Callie had taught him that. “Thanks. I owe you one,” he added.

“Get my back tomorrow,” Brandon joked.

Easy nodded gravely, stepping up onto the sidewalk beside Brandon. “Deal.”

They shook hands again and Easy headed off toward the pharmacy, a little bounce in his step. Maybe things would turn out all right in the end. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Callie and Tinsley couldn’t seriously be trying to pin the fire on Jenny. Callie would never go that far. Would she?

Because that would mean the girl he loved with all his heart was, well, not the kind of person he
wanted
to be in love with.

Instant Message Inbox

JennyHumphrey:
You going to the Goodbye US party?

BrettMessershmidt:
Yup. Just getting out of the shower. You?

JennyHumphrey:
On my way over. Get here quick! I can’t face this alone.

BrettMesserschmidt:
Ditto. But don’t worry—that’s what booze is for.

As Jenny approached the Crater, the venue of choice for the Goodbye US party, she couldn’t help but compare parties at Waverly to those in Manhattan. Back home, they sipped cocktails at bars in the Meatpacking District or attended galas at the Met. Well, at least some people did—Jenny was only occasionally invited. At Waverly, the parties were more of the outdoor-adventure variety. The Crater was a grassy depression a couple of hundred feet into the woods, just south of campus. The site was close enough to skip class and grab a smoke, but far enough away to not get busted. Over the years, enterprising Waverly students had arranged logs into benches that lined the Crater, so that the whole thing looked like some kind of medieval holy meeting ground. Attending a party there was a bit like going to a party at Stonehenge.

Tonight, Heath had really outdone himself. There were heated tents along the rim of the Crater, so that it looked like a classy version of the Depression-era shantytowns Jenny had learned about in American history. The whole place was overrun with students in red, orange, and yellow clothing, as if everyone had had the same idea. A small bonfire crackled at the center of the Crater, casting flickering shadows on everyone’s faces so that it was hard to make out who was who. It was sort of a romantic setting actually, and Jenny couldn’t wait until Julian showed up so they could be a cheesy couple and stare into each other’s eyes as they kissed by the fire.

She skirted the bonfire in her favorite faded black Seven jeans and the long-sleeved black Marc by Marc Jacobs scoop-neck she’d found scouring the clearance racks at Barneys. It was a pretty top, made from the softest cotton imaginable, with a lace-trimmed neckline. Unfortunately it was entirely hidden by the silly orange Usual Suspects T-shirt she’d pulled tight over the top. She felt ridiculous, but everyone else on the dean’s suspect list was wearing the shirt, and she didn’t want anyone to think she thought she was above suspicion.