“How good did Tinsley look? Like, Jessica Alba in
Sin City
hot?” Ryan Reynolds asked pleadingly. “What was she
wearing
? Why have I not seen her yet?”
Brandon Buchanan set his sleek black squash bag down on the worn yet polished hardwood floor of the Richards common room. Even draped with teenage boys, the room felt like an old English hunting lodge, with its dark mahogany moldings, forest green walls, and bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes of classics no one had ever heard of. It kind of made Brandon wish he had one of his father’s pipes.
He rolled his eyes at Julian McCafferty, the tall, long-haired freshman from Seattle who had just come from squash practice with him. Brandon had beaten him, of course, but it was a little too close for him to feel comfortable. Normally, that would have been enough to make Brandon avoid him, but Julian was surprisingly cool. Girls were going to like him too, Brandon thought a little jealously, once he cut his caveman hair.
“Who’s Tinsley?” Julian asked in a mock whisper. As always, the room was crowded with zoned-out boys, exhausted from sports practice and re-acclimating to school life after their relaxing summers at their country and beach houses.
ESPN
flashed from the cabinet television in the corner, the sound muted, Brandon assumed, so that they could all gossip about Tinsley. They were worse than girls.
Everyone chuckled at Julian’s ignorance. “Dude, clearly you’re a freshman,” said Alan St. Girard, the crunchy junior whose parents both taught philosophy at expensive East Coast liberal arts colleges and reportedly owned a marijuana plantation in New Hampshire. He had bushy brown hair and perpetual beard scruff, which the girls found endearing but Brandon thought disgusting. Fucking shave, dude. “She’s only the foxiest girl on the planet.”
“Isn’t there something in the handbook about her?” asked Teague Williams, his post-soccer practice body dripping sweat on one of the expensive leather armchairs. “Like, ‘Male Waverly Owls, beware this girl. She will tease you and torture you and haunt your dreams with her luscious presence all four years at Waverly and for the rest of your life on earth.’”
“I can’t wait to meet her.” Julian dropped his maroon Nike squash bag onto the floor and pulled his bleached-out dirty blond hair into a ponytail, using the rubber band he kept on his wrist to secure it. Brandon shuddered with distaste. “What’s she look like?”
The guys gave a collective sigh, and Brandon sank into one of the ancient armchairs. Tinsley was hot, but these guys were ridiculous. She was nowhere near as beautiful as Callie, who Brandon had dated all of freshman year before Easy fucking Walsh stole her from him. They’d been at a party in the library, and when he’d gone to go get Callie a drink, like the gentleman that he was, Easy had swooped in and dragged her up to the rare books room and put some kind of southern cowboy spell on her. And now there were all kinds of rumors that he was leaving Callie for Jenny Humphrey, the cute new girl who Brandon had thought could actually get him over Callie. Fucking Walsh. He shot an angry look at Easy’s sprawled-out, horsey-smelling body on the scratchy plaid couch.
“Don’t get your hopes up, kid,” said Ryan as he made room on the couch for Julian to sit. “Tinsley doesn’t even talk to freshmen.”
“Now that she’s back, I have a feeling this year just got a whole lot more interesting,” drawled Easy without looking up from the sketchbook on his lap. Brandon fought the urge to roll his eyes. Was there a girl on campus that Easy was
not
into? First Callie, then Jenny, now Tinsley? There were rumors he and Tinsley had hooked up at her parents’ house in Alaska spring break freshman year, but Easy had never confirmed the story, not that Brandon even cared.
“Hell, yeah!” Everyone turned to see Heath Ferro standing in the doorway with a wicked grin on his handsome face. “I was just talking to my cousin who graduated from here, like, five years ago, and he told me something freaking
awesome
. He said that if you walk to the other side of the crater, it gets all swampy and shit, and guess what’s growing there?” Heath looked at everyone expectantly, as though anything he was saying made sense.
“’Shrooms, dudes!” he yelled. “I thought we’d head over to the woods and enjoy some natural highs, Alice in Wonderland style. It has been a long week,” he added, even though it was only Tuesday. “So who’s in?” Heath snapped his fingers impatiently.
Ryan and Alan immediately bumped fists with him. “We’re in.”
Brandon groaned and ran his hands through his freshly showered and gelled hair. “It’s fucking Tuesday. I’ve got five chapters of
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
to read for tomorrow.”
“Oh, poor Brandon!” Heath snickered in the falsetto he reserved for making fun of his roommate’s girly attributes. “Not five chapters!”
“Fuck off, Ferro. Not everyone’s daddies can buy them A’s.”
“If freshmen aren’t banned, I’d love to partake.” Julian’s deep baritone boomed as he stood up. It was so unfair for a freshman to be so fucking tall and manly. When Brandon was a freshman, he was barely five-foot two and his voice sounded like a girl’s.
Easy dropped his sketchbook to the floor and uncrossed his legs. “Why not?”
Brandon sighed under his breath. Although he wanted to spend as little time as possible around the loathsome Walsh, he wasn’t about to let Easy and some novice freshman make him look like a pussy. “Fine. Let’s get out of here,” he relented. Thomas Hardy was meant to be skimmed anyway.
Easy and Alan tossed a Frisbee back and forth, reminding Brandon of a couple of sloppy golden retrievers, as the group crossed campus to the patch of woods separating the brick buildings from the river. Preppy boys and girls with backpacks and cable-knit sweaters hustled off to the library for a few hours of cramming before curfew, and Brandon wished he could just sit with Callie again on the library steps like they used to, talking and flirting and making out when no one was looking. Instead, he was going hunting for ’shrooms with a bunch of jackass guys, one of whom had actually stolen the girl he loved from him and was possibly now on the verge of breaking her heart.
Brandon’s calfskin Gucci loafers padded down the path through the woods until Heath and Easy stepped off the stone path and into the brush. Brandon tried not to ruin his shoes as they picked their way through the tall weeds and low branches. The woods opened briefly onto a small clearing filled with large rocks that students had been using as a clandestine party spot for decades—the crater. The sky above was darkening, but it wasn’t yet cold.
“He said to look for the biggest rock along the edge and then walk into the woods until it gets soppy.” Heath identified the biggest rock and motioned to them like he was flagging in a plane on the runway.
Brandon frowned at his shoes. The parade of boys crunched the sticks and leaves underfoot, and then suddenly the earth got spongy and damp. “Fuck,” Brandon muttered under his breath.
“Behold!” Heath crouched at the base of a tree. “Mushrooms!”
Everyone started to pick them, gathering the dirty caps in their hands. Brandon would have expected them to look a little more exotic. These looked so innocent and, well, culinary, as if they belonged in some kind of Szechuan stir-fry his family’s cook, Greta, might throw together.
“Hate to break it to you, Ferro.” Ryan nibbled on one of the caps and then sniffed it as though he was a mushroom connoisseur, which, given the rumors about his parents, was possible. “But these aren’t the real thing.”
“Shit, man,” Heath muttered. “Well, should we chill at the crater or head back?”
Disappointed votes to chill were murmured, and a few minutes later Brandon felt the cold wetness of the grass soaking through his Dolce & Gabbana jeans as the rest of the guys revisited the topic of Tinsley’s hotness. Brandon closed his eyes and let the sound of the crickets drown out the boys’ voices. He really wasn’t interested in thinking about Tinsley. He loved
Callie
. She’d dumped him for Easy over a year ago, so they’d been broken up for longer than they’d been together, but still Brandon couldn’t get her off his mind. And she wasn’t helping much—last week he’d bumped into her after one of the girls-only welcome-back parties and she’d drunkenly asked him to sleep with her. He’d just wanted to hold her and talk to her until the alcohol wore off. He would have sat up with her all night, but he wasn’t about to take advantage of her when she was clearly an emotional wreck about whatever was going on with that slimeball Easy. Sleazy Easy.
“The stars are coming out. Chicks love stars,” Heath remarked. “You know who I’d take here?”
“Tinsley,” a few of the guys said in unison.
“Good luck with that, Ferro,” Easy drawled. He was lying on the grass, staring at the sky. Callie had named a star for him once through some cheesy Web site, but looking at the sky right now, he couldn’t imagine looking for his star with Callie. The only girl he wanted to look at stars with was Jenny. If only she were here right now.
“We should head back.” Brandon interrupted Easy’s thoughts, and the boys stumbled awkwardly to their feet, still talking about Tinsley and what it would be like to be with her. Easy
had
been with her, before Callie, when a bunch of them went up to Alaska for spring break. They’d stayed up all night, naked in the hot tub, mostly just talking and looking at the stars. Tinsley was gorgeous, but Easy was pretty sure that the thing that made guys obsess over her was the same thing that made him happy to stay away. She was kind of …
wicked
.
Then, as they stepped back onto the manicured green of the main campus, Easy saw Tinsley marching toward them across the grass. He watched her approach, wearing a strapless turquoise minidress and black cloth Mary Janes like the kind you buy in tacky Chinese gift shops. Leave it to Tinsley to pair a dress like that with five-dollar shoes.
“Don’t you all look suspicious, coming out of the woods like this,” she observed provocatively. “What were you
doing
in there?” she continued when the boys were close enough to smell her sweet and musky perfume.
“Secret society meeting,” Easy replied mysteriously. His almost-black curls hung sloppily in his face, embedded with crushed leaves. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Tinsley smacked his stomach with the back of her hand. “Oh, yeah? What do you do? Smoke pot and talk about girls?” Her violet eyes gleamed. Tinsley could always sniff out a secret. “Can I come next time?”
“Sorry, lady.” Easy grinned, speaking for all of them. “Gentlemen only.”
“Well, that’s
stupid
,” Tinsley pronounced, her lips forming a pink pout. “I guess I’ll have to start my own secret society, then.” She stuck out her tongue before turning away, a master at leaving her audience gasping for more.
Brett’s silver Nokia vibrated noisily against the wooden dresser as both she and Jenny raised their eyes from their Norton anthologies and stared at each other. Brett’s bright-green, cat-like eyes gleamed triumphantly as she dashed over to the phone and read the caller ID. “Finally!” she yelped before taking a deep breath and attempting to remove all excitement from her voice. “Yes,” she answered coolly as Jenny giggled and pulled her Nick and Nora flannel cherry-print pajama-clad knees to her chest.
“Can you meet me at my place in Rhinecliff? I have to see you.” Eric’s deep voice immediately erased any worry she’d been feeling, as if he had just tucked aside her hair and spoken softly, breathily into her ear. She felt her face heat up, and Jenny gestured toward the door and mouthed, “Should I go?”
Brett shook her head before turning toward the window and looking out at the darkening evening. It was nine-fifteen. Less than an hour to curfew.
“How will I get there?” Brett responded finally, looking down at her pale pink silky La Perla camisole and favorite pair of super-soft black C&C California yoga pants that she wore on days she was feeling fat or depressed.
“I’ll send a car for you. Be at the front gate in twenty minutes, okay?”
Brett hung up quickly and immediately started tugging off her pants. “I knew he’d call,” she squealed, pulling a pair of dark James jeans out of the depths of her closet. She kept on her camisole since she was wearing the matching underwear and she automatically felt much sexier when wearing a complete set. Brett stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was clean of makeup since she had already performed her nightly pore-cleansing ritual. She spread a layer of DuWop lip venom across her naked lips, enjoying the way it tingled. Then she stepped into a pair of pink Marc Jacobs ballet flats and pulled on a romantic-looking brown velveteen blazer from Anthropologie. “Do I look all right?”
Jenny didn’t know what to say. “Uh, you’re going out?
Now?
”
“No one will know. Don’t mention where I am to Callie and Tinsley, okay?”
Brett looked beautiful—clean and sweet and delicate—but Jenny still wasn’t so sure how she felt about her with Mr. Dalton. She knew Brett was way worldlier than she was, but there was something kind of skeezy about it all. Yet standing in front of the mirror, adjusting her red hair behind her ears, Brett seemed to positively glow. Who was Jenny to be the unwelcome voice of reason when Brett was clearly happier than she’d been all week?
“Sure, I’ll make something up,” Jenny said, standing up to brush a fleck of lint off Brett’s shoulder. “You look really pretty.”
Brett twirled out of the room in a cloud of romantic exhilaration, but a knot of nerves settled in her stomach as she slipped into the black Town Car that was waiting for her outside Waverly’s front gate. The driver didn’t say anything to her, and Brett suddenly felt like the mistress of some wealthy banker dude, being summoned while his bitchy wife was away at the spa.