“She’s been bitchy all year,” Callie said, bitter at Brett for having rejected her company yet again. “And she’s bummed that Mr. Dalton lost interest.” Callie picked up someone’s half-full mug and downed it. She knew she was getting plastered, but it distracted her from feeling sorry for herself. Why were Brett and Jenny getting so cliquey without her? What made
them
so chummy? She wouldn’t have minded curling up on one of the couches downstairs with her cashmere blanket and a bag of Cheetos and watching a Lindsay Lohan movie with the two of them,
if
they’d thought to invite her.
“About that …” Tinsley leaned in confidentially. “I might know the reason for the sudden change in his affections.”
“You?” Callie tried not to look horrified. She glanced around. Benny and Alison were pouring more drinks and not paying attention, and Verena and Celine and Sage were completely wrapped up in Angelo.
Tinsley nodded her glossy head. “Yeah. We had a very …
promising
meeting last week. And he’s taking me to New York tomorrow for a little romantic getaway.” She grinned proudly.
Callie had to look away. How could Tinsley
do
that? And what about Mr. Dalton? How many students was he going to try and sleep with? Poor Brett. Of course Tinsley was to blame. Callie shivered, wondering if she should go down and talk to Brett right now. But then, she was undoubtedly too busy with her
new
best friend, Jenny.
Instead, she poured herself another drink. Tinsley was horrible, yes, but at least she was open about it. Callie couldn’t help feeling like Brett and Jenny were just as bad … just more secretive. But maybe it was just the wine talking. Maybe.
Instant Message Inbox
To:
Eric Dalton’s students and advisees
From:
[email protected]
Date:
Tuesday, September 17, 8:55 a.m.
Subject:
No class today
Dear Students,
Due to unexpected circumstances, I won’t be able to attend class today. Please continue with the scheduled assignments from the syllabus. Thank you—I’ll see you tomorrow.
Sincerely,
EFD
Instant Message Inbox
From:
[email protected]
Date:
Tuesday, September 17, 9:17 a.m.
Subject:
U sick?
Hey, Callie,
I’m in Latin, but you’re not here. Just wanted to see if you want me to bring you soup or an almond croissant … or Gatorade?
Love,
Brandon
Callie woke up with a headache like a car wreck and her mouth tasting like sawdust. She peeked out from under her cashmere blanket and was greeted by hot, blinding sunlight. What time was it? She had to pee, but any movement sent alarm sirens through her head, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave her snuggly burrow to face the day. Her stomach was roiling—how much had she had to drink? She had a vague memory of stealing other people’s plastic cups of wine and Waverly mugs filled with rum and Cokes. The smell of rum coming from a mug on the floor made her stomach lurch, even though it was empty. She remembered spending a few hours in the bathroom, vomiting up everything in her stomach, which was really just alcohol since she’d skipped the pizza. No wonder her mouth was so dry. She had to get some water or she’d die. What time was it, anyway? Today was Tuesday, right? She was sure she was missing some class, but it hurt her head to try to think of which one.
She kicked off her blanket, revealing an empty, sun-dappled room. Pizza boxes still lay on the floor. She reached for her cell phone and turned it on. Next to it, on her nightstand, stood an Evian bottle and two Tylenol capsules. Tinsley. Tears came to her eyes. Tinsley never managed to get as drunk as anyone else and always managed to remember the water. An image from last night came back to her—Tinsley holding back her blond hair as she knelt over the toilet. Callie had been a stumbling, swearing, crying, sweaty mess, and Tinsley had sat with her in the bathroom, making her drink water and holding her hair back when she was sick. Tinsley had listened to her wail about Easy for hours, just reassuring her things would be okay and that he’d get what he deserved.
She loved that girl, even if she had stolen Mr. Dalton from Brett. That was totally insane. But none of her business, really. Let Brett and Tinsley duke it out; it had nothing to do with her. Callie cracked open the bottle of water and washed down the Tylenol before collapsing back on her pillow with her phone in hand. 10:29 A.M. She pulled her covers back over her head, shutting out the annoying sunlight. She had seven new text messages. At least one of them could be from Easy, right? Her thumb clicked down through them. Five from Brandon. Two from Angelo—when had she given him her number? Probably when she had her tongue down his throat. What was wrong with her?
Maybe because she only wanted one person and he wasn’t interested. Callie dialed his number anyway, feeling safe beneath her covers. Maybe he’d just needed some time apart? Maybe he missed her? But his phone didn’t even ring, just went directly to voice mail: “This is Easy. Leave me a message.” The only thing worse than leaving a hungover message on an ex-boyfriend’s voice mail was leaving a drunken one, and she was grateful that Tinsley had taken away her phone last night; otherwise she probably would have tried that too.
She flipped her phone shut before the beep and pressed her face into her pillow. Maybe she could just sleep through this day. Or this year.
Jenny wandered around campus on Tuesday morning, so overcome with guilt that she couldn’t sit still. She’d been unable to sleep last night, even after Brett had gotten her out of there and the two of them had giggled and watched
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
in the lounge. But Jenny was still tormented by how she had idiotically let Tinsley goad her into making out with Angelo. It made her sick just thinking about it. What had she done?
Part of her had wanted to hide under her scratchy baby-blue blanket all day, but then she felt like she was going to suffocate breathing the same air as Callie and Tinsley. Now she was outside on the quad, but she still felt the same stifling bubble around her head. If she didn’t get away from here, she was seriously going to flip out. She pulled out her new Treo and dialed the one person she knew could make her feel better.
“Muffulupugus!” Rufus’s deep baritone rumbled loudly through her new phone. His voice made her smile, even though she had to hold her cell phone away from her ear. “How the hell are you?”
“I’m … I’m good, Dad.” Jenny tugged at a long curl of hair. “I was just kind of hoping you could maybe call the Waverly office and get them to give me a mental health day.”
“A what? A mental health day? Are you all right?” Great, make him worry about you getting kicked out of another school.
“I just need an afternoon in the city, but I won’t do any shopping, just go to a couple of museums. You’ll meet me. We’ll get fried dough at the Mexican place on Amsterdam.”
“No can do, sweets. I’m assisting Vanessa on a film this afternoon. ... There’s this hugely overweight squirrel in Bryant Park. We want to capture what it eats in an entire twenty-four-hour period, except we’re kind of cheating. Anyway, you’re still doing all right there?” Rufus sounded worried. “I thought you were enjoying it—the As, the field hockey, the horseback riding?”
“I’m doing great, I swear.” Jenny crossed her fingers as she lied. “I just miss the city—it gets a little suffocating … being out here with all this fresh air. I think I might be getting too much oxygen or something.”
He sighed heavily, but Jenny could tell he couldn’t resist. “All right. I’ll call the office and tell them I need you home for the day.”
Jenny squealed and thanked him profusely. The second she hung up, she called a cab to meet her at the front gate and practically skipped back to the dorm to grab her wallet. Suddenly Waverly didn’t feel suffocating now that she knew she could get away from it for the day. Yeah, she’d screwed up, but with any luck, Easy wouldn’t find out about it, and it really
was
just a little kiss. Plus it wasn’t like she and Easy were dating … not officially. She couldn’t wait to catch the next train out of this incestuous world and into the big, wonderful city.
“Jenny!” She whirled around to see Easy jogging across the grassy quad toward her, and her skin tingled. His long legs caught up to her easily. He looked extra cute in a pair of dark brown cords—she’d never seen him in anything other than Levi’s—and a plain white T-shirt. “Where are you running off to?”
“Oh, um, I’m going to the city for the day. ... I need to breathe, you know, polluted air.” Jenny felt herself fidgeting, convinced that Easy could see right through her. She tapped her red boot against the grass.
“Yeah, this much fresh air can’t be good for a city kid.” A dark curl flopped in front of his eyes and he blew it out of the way. “Waverly can feel like it’s got this giant bubble over it, and you forget sometimes that nothing here is really life or death.”
“Exactly.”
Jenny smiled. “Hey, do you … want to come with me?” she asked impulsively. Although she had been fantasizing about wandering through the vast halls of the Met by herself, suddenly the picture seemed so much more complete if Easy was in it too. And maybe if she could be alone with him in the real world, the things that had happened last night in the Waverly bubble wouldn’t matter so much. “We could get lunch, maybe go to a couple of museums.”
“Yeah?” Easy looked at Jenny’s face with eagerness, then frowned in disgust. “I’m on, like, double probation from Dalton. And since I don’t know who his spies are, I don’t know if I can risk pissing him off more.”
Jenny’s face fell. “I totally forgot about that. Oh, well, the last thing I want is for you to get kicked out of here—”
“Except …” Easy interrupted Jenny and smiled at her. “Dalton sent out an email this morning saying he was sick. So presumably he’s not around. ... Let’s go.”
Jenny’s brown eyes widened. “But …”
He grabbed her hand, and the feel of his warm, rough fingers against her skin silenced her.
The train to the city was crowded, but Jenny and Easy found two seats together, playing tic-tac-toe in her sketchbook and each listening to Easy’s iPod with one headphone until they pulled into Grand Central Station. They took a cab uptown to the Met, but before going in, Easy bought them each a hot dog from a sidewalk vendor and they sat on the steps of the museum in the early-autumn sunshine. She’d done this so many times, hoping that one of the cools girls like Blair or Serena would notice her or that someone famous might sit down next to her and suddenly she’d show up in
Us Weekly
as the mysterious companion of some famous A-list actor.
Jenny leaned back against the stone steps and sighed. For years, all she’d wanted was to be one of those girls people talked about. When Socrates said that an “unexamined life” wasn’t worth living, Jenny totally agreed—so what if he was talking about
personally
examining your life and not, like, Page Six examining. It meant the same to her. She knew it was shallow, but she couldn’t help it. All of literature was filled with the sort of devastatingly beautiful and seductive women whose image became tattooed on the brain of everyone in the room, making them smile or groan in anguish when they thought of her, which they inevitably would. Flaky Daisy Buchanan from
The Great Gatsby
. Lily Bart from
The House of Mirth
. Petrarch’s Laura, Dante’s Beatrice. She didn’t want anyone to write a book about her necessarily—but she wanted to be the kind of person that
could
inspire someone to do that. Was that so wrong?
But now, sitting here with Easy, she suddenly didn’t care if she was the kind of girl Jay Gatsby would remember years later, or Heath Ferro, or Tinsley crazy-scary-bitch Carmichael. Or if she ever showed up on Page Six again. All that mattered was Easy sitting next to her in one of her most-favorite spots in the world, with a small blob of ketchup on his cheek.
“Waverly’s definitely a small place. Especially when you start out like you did—with a big splash.” He took another bite of hot dog. “But people would have known you right away anyway.”
Jenny wiped the ketchup away with her thumb. “Why do you say that?” She nervously thought of her chest—not too many of Waverly’s pedigreed cashmere-cable-knit-sweater-and-tweed-Theory-skirt crowd had the double D’s she sported. She definitely did not want any sonnets written for her boobs.
Easy swallowed. “Because … I don’t know, it sounds stupid … but you’ve got this
sparkle
.”
“Me?”
She looked down at the cement steps, feeling a little shy but totally flattered.
Easy just smiled and requested a “Jenny Humphrey highlights tour” through the museum. They ended up winding back through the galleries several times, looking for the things Jenny loved the most—a Cézanne painting with dozens of apples spilling across a table, the pink Klimt portrait of a pretty young girl that Jenny had always wished was her, the quiet Vermeer of a young woman holding a water pitcher, the misty George Inness of a single girl wandering through an orchard, the beautifully calligraphied Islamic manuscripts. Easy paused in front of each one, silently taking it in and then kissing her.
She knew she’d never see the same pieces of art in the same way again. They were more than her favorite paintings now. They were part of her most-perfect day ever.