“No …” Brett shook her head slowly, then more definitively. Tinsley was just being her usual bitchy self. But the problem was, it wasn’t just Tinsley who was getting to her. It was the whispers at the party last night, the e-mail from Jeremiah, the jittery feeling in her stomach.
“She’s just trying to get under your skin. And don’t worry.” Kara approached the doorway and turned to face Brett. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “We don’t have to use that title if you don’t want to.”
“Oh,” Brett said automatically, before she could think of anything else to say. “Um, okay.”
Kara shrugged easily, and Brett envied her composure. “No need for things to get all dramatic. We’re seventeen—we don’t even know what we’re doing,” she said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, should we go see if anything’s on TV before we leave to get a movie?” She tilted her head in the direction of the common room, the relationship portion of the conversation now apparently over. Brett loved the way Kara could transition so easily from heavy subjects to light. She made everything seem so simple.
Brett stood and pulled down on the waistband of her black J.Crew drawstring pants, which had ridden up. “Maybe we should just hang out in your room instead,” she suggested. “We could play Boggle. I’m an ace at Boggle,” she added with a small smile. She felt a thousand times more relaxed at the thought of being alone. Kara had a single down the hall, which meant they could hang out in peace, without sneering roommates or nosy Dumbarton girls.
Kara shrugged her shoulders. “Sure,” she agreed, leading the way out.
Brett followed, smiling. Kara was so easy to be with. And they were lucky she had a single. Living in a dorm with three hundred gossip-hungry girls wasn’t exactly conducive to privacy. But so long as they were able to keep a low profile, this could end up being the best relationship she’d ever been in.
Tinsley Carmichael stood in the waiting area outside Dean Marymount’s office, eyeing Mr. Tomkins’s desk. She’d never seen it deserted before. The prematurely bald administrative assistant was like a guard dog—always there, and extremely, almost stupidly loyal. Tinsley opened the top drawer of the dark oak desk, which was empty except for an open pack of spearmint chewing gum, a Sacagawea gold dollar, and a silver Tiffany charm bracelet with only one charm, a tiny teapot. Weird. Tinsley unsheathed a stick of gum and popped it into her mouth, wondering what else of interest there might be in the room. The space looked as though it had been decorated with pieces from the
Masterpiece Theatre
collection, with its heavy oak paneling and tall bookshelves filled with green, red, and black books with gold lettering. She could only imagine how intimidated other students must have felt standing at the gateway to Marymount’s office. She herself had stood here many times before. But today, her mission was graver than ever.
After seeing Jenny and Julian kiss last night, she’d been too furious to sleep. She’d stayed up most of the night, staring out at the Hudson River through her window, feeling stupid for falling for Julian in the first place. As the sky started to lighten, she fantasized about building a little raft out of branches and twigs or whatever and floating down the river to Manhattan, where people were probably still awake, and where there were guys even hotter than Julian, who was only a freshman anyway. It would serve everyone right if she mysteriously disappeared. What would they do without her?
But fantasizing about leaving was the stuff of late-night desperation. Today was a new day. She took out her phone and tapped at the buttons with her unpolished, nicely buffed nails.
“Hello?” Callie’s voice sounded far away.
“Where are you? We’re supposed to be meeting now.” Tinsley kept her voice down so Dean Marymount wouldn’t hear. His assistant might be out enjoying the weekend, but Marymount was a workaholic, so she knew she’d find him in his office on a Saturday—especially given last night’s events.
“Oh, right.” Callie’s voice was lazy and slow, as if she had just woken up from a nap. “I’m with Easy. Is it okay if we do it later?”
She heard Easy murmur something in the background, and then Callie giggled.
Tinsley rolled her violet eyes. “But I’m here
now
. Are you even listening?” She tried to keep the impatience out of her voice. Outside the enormous bay window a heavy, rain-bloated cloud passed overhead, and a few tiny sprinkles of rain scattered on the windowpane. She hoped Easy and Callie were out in the open somewhere so that they’d be forced to get the hell off each other.
“Yes, I’m listening.” Whisper, whisper, shuffle. Giggle. “I just can’t meet up with you right now.
Stop
it.”
Tinsley checked her silver Movado watch impatiently. “Stop what?”
“I was talking to Easy,” Callie explained with another stupid giggle. “I said
stop
it!” she shrieked.
“Are you going to help me out or what?” Tinsley demanded angrily, forgetting to whisper. She wished she had her Blue-tooth with her, but she hadn’t had time to grab it from her room, not wanting to linger and make small talk with Brett and her lesbian lover.
“Yes. I said yes, okay?” Callie snapped in a hushed whisper, as if she didn’t want Easy to overhear. “I just can’t come right now. You can go ahead and do it without me. You’ll probably be better off on your own anyway.”
“Fine.” Tinsley turned off her phone and shoved it into her tan suede Calypso purse. As annoying as it was to have Callie bail on her, she was right—she probably would be better alone. She took a deep breath before taking a step toward the walnut door of the dean’s office.
“Come in!” he bellowed in response to Tinsley’s hesitant knock. Dean Marymount didn’t look up when she entered. His sandy comb-over fell loose as he bent over his desk, examining the sheet of paper in his hand. Wearing a bright yellow argyle sweater vest, he looked like Mr. Rogers’s evil twin: utterly suburban, yet somehow menacing.
“Dean Marymount?” Tinsley used her best little-girl voice. Her straight dark hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck, and her face appeared makeupless and innocent—or at least, that was the idea. Of course, she had thrown Julian’s lighter on the ground outside the barn after seeing him with Jenny, which had started the infamous fire. And that made her decidedly less than innocent. Unless she convinced Dean Marymount otherwise, her ass was toast. Even if it
was
the most perfect ass at Waverly. “Don’t you ever take a day off?”
Marymount patted down his scraggly hair and sighed wearily. “Governing this student body is a full-time job, Ms. Carmichael.” He gave her a long, disapproving stare. His normally organized desk was a mess of files and papers. Behind him, the enormous, second-floor bay windows gave way to an expansive view of Waverly’s campus. She briefly wondered if the dean had purposely designed it that way, so he could watch his students like a hawk from dawn till dusk. She pictured him swooping down and snatching up an unsuspecting student with his angry talons, before pecking away at his flesh with his carnivorous beak.
“I’ve met some of the prospectives,” Tinsley lied, trying to shake the image of her dean as a raptor-like bird. Plus, a little small talk might help her cause. She shuffled her feet nervously. “They seem like good Owls.”
“Wonderful timing, isn’t it?” Marymount complained, throwing his Cross pen down on his oversize leather-framed desk calendar and running a hand through his thinning hair. “How do you think it looks to have arsonists on the loose?”
Tinsley knew the question was rhetorical, but it gave her the opening she was looking for. “That’s why I’ve come to see you, sir.” She took a small step forward onto the plush Turkish carpet, trying to erase the memory of when she’d last stood in this exact spot. Just a few days ago, she’d pressured the long-married dean to approve the off-campus Cinephiles barn party, using the fact that he was having an affair with the also-very-married dorm adviser Angelica Pardee as leverage against him. He’d agreed to the party but had told her that he’d hold her responsible for anything that went wrong. And things had definitely gone wrong. They couldn’t get any more wrong. But if Tinsley had her way, she’d set them straight again. And she
always
got her way.
Marymount pushed back from his desk and laced his fingers across his stomach. The antique clock perched on one of the bookshelves in the corner chimed piercingly. “I needn’t remind you of our last meeting, Ms. Carmichael.”
Tinsley shook her head quickly. She knew he didn’t expect an answer, and she wasn’t going to give him the nervous mumble he was looking for. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the silver picture frame that sat on his desk. The family photo was now angled outward, as if Marymount couldn’t bear to have his wife’s picture staring him in the face all day long. The photograph must have included his extended family, because she noticed now that a dozen or so people were crowded into the frame. She singled out what must have been his niece, since the dean’s children were already in college. The girl’s hair was parted down the middle and she was wearing pink overalls. Her black glasses encircled a pair of frightened-looking blue eyes. The girl was in serious need of a makeover.
Dean Marymount picked up his pen and held it, as if ready to sign Tinsley’s expulsion letter at a moment’s notice. “And I suppose you’ve come because you know who started the fire?”
Tinsley looked down at the toes of her Miu Miu maryjanes. A mistake, she realized, as soon as she did. If you looked at your shoes, people assumed you were lying. The only thing worse was scratching your nose—everyone knew that. The trick was to look them straight in the eyes—or between their eyes. She focused on the tusky gray-brown hairs between Marymount’s eyebrows. “Not exactly. But I know who
didn’t
do it.”
A thin smile broke out on Marymount’s lips, as if he was willing to allow himself this minor amusement. “Who
didn’t
do it?”
“Well, I heard you found Julian McCafferty’s Zippo, but I know for a fact he gave that lighter to
Jenny Humphrey,
” Tinsley pressed on, continuing to stare at his eyebrow hairs in case she lost her nerve. They looked like sandy gray buds forcing their way through his forehead. Maybe they’d blossom in spring.
“I haven’t interrogated Mr. McCafferty yet.” Marymount picked up the paper and examined it, his sharp blue eyes running over lines of print. Tinsley took a step closer to his desk. He flicked a finger against the paper. “This is the police report from the fire. It says the fire was without doubt started by an incendiary device.”
“Jenny was in the barn before it caught fire,” Tinsley insisted. One of the trees outside the window swayed in the breeze, and she was momentarily blinded by a sharp glint of sunlight. She squinted, hoping the dean didn’t mistake the movement for a flinch. She knew that one wrong move could mean the difference between Jenny’s expulsion and her own.
“What’s all this about blaming Jennifer Humphrey?” Marymount picked up a heavy brass paperweight in the shape of an owl and turned it over in his hand. He peered at her over the gold rims of his glasses with his piercing blue eyes. “Did you two have a fight?”
Tinsley felt her shoulders tense up. A fight? Not exactly. It was more like a long, drawn-out war, started when Jenny appeared with her enormous chest and decided she could just throw herself at any guy on campus regardless of who he happened to be with at the time. “If you’re worried that I have an ulterior motive, then just ask Callie Vernon. She was in the barn. She saw Jenny, too.” Tinsley crossed her arms over her chest. It was about time Callie got off of Easy and pulled her weight.
“What was
Ms. Vernon
doing in the barn?” The dean leaned forward. She hadn’t realized how suspicious her explanation might sound. Oops. Marymount’s e-mail alert dinged. His eyes flicked to his flat-screen monitor for a moment and then settled back on Tinsley.
“She was with Easy Walsh … um … talking. He saw Jenny, too,” she added hastily. If she wasn’t careful, she’d tell him
she
started the fire. Shit. What was wrong with her?
Marymount gave a little snort of laughter. “Our list of possible suspects is growing exponentially by the minute,” he declared, looking almost gleeful.
Tinsley suddenly noticed that the Trident spearmint gum in her mouth had lost all its flavor. “They didn’t have anything to do with the fire,” she insisted. She perched her hands firmly on her slim hips, desperate to not
seem
desperate. “But they saw Jenny. She started it. I’m positive it was her.”
Marymount pushed his chair back and stood up, indicating that their meeting was nearing its conclusion. “You don’t mind if I don’t take your word for that, do you?” Another rhetorical question. Tinsley blinked her violet-colored eyes at him. “I appreciate your taking time from your Saturday morning to drop in.” He shuffled the papers on his desk and then placed the police report in his top drawer, closing it with an ominous thud and locking it, pocketing the key. “I’ll overlook your carelessness in organizing the disastrous event, for now. But I’m sure we’ll talk soon.”
Tinsley turned and walked out into the empty outer office, closing Dean Marymount’s door behind her. She stood in front of Mr. Tomkins’s empty desk. She lunged forward and grabbed another piece of gum from the top drawer, sticking the old piece underneath the desk. Childish, yes, but she was pissed, and not about to restrain herself. She wasn’t used to not getting her way. And she would stop at nothing to see that in this case—the case of Jenny Humphrey getting booted out of Waverly on her big-boobed ass—that she got
exactly
what she wanted
and
deserved. After all, she’d always been lucky, and this fire incident would be no exception. She and her friends would stay, and Jenny Humphrey would go.