Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (6 page)

Isabella seems even more livid than I am as we settle into a table in the empty upstairs lounge. “We’re not getting rid of that coffeemaker. Darlene wouldn’t care, if she knew. And I don’t want to go back to drinking the rat pee from the cafeteria.”

This gets a small smile out of me, even though there’s a pit in the bottom of my stomach. A hot-pink, Post-it-note-sized pit. “Are you sure? I don’t want to get us in trouble.”

“Trust me. If she pushes it, I’ll tell Darlene about how Alexis has an illegal power strip in her room just so she can plug in all of her hair-torture devices. Seriously, I’m so
sick
of her crap.”

This new layer of venom to Isabella’s voice shocks me a little. “So why do you hate her so much?”

“Do I need a reason? She’s just … she’s the worst of any of them.”

We let her words hang in the air between us for a minute. I think about Isabella’s Old Navy weekend wardrobe and her dinged-up computer. It hits me what she really meant when she said any of
them.

She doesn’t consider herself one of them. And I’m betting that whatever Isabella’s father does, he’s not a senator.

CHAPTER

SIX

Friday is the only day this week Brent isn’t late to English. The seat next to me is still open when he walks in. I pretend to be immersed in scrolling through the e-mails on my phone as he slides in next to me. When I don’t look up, he pokes my side.

“Oh, hey.” I put my phone down. “No grand entrance today?”

“I like to mix it up. Keep things interesting.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me.

I don’t say anything, because it sounds like something I’d say, and I don’t like when people take my lines.

Fowler, our instructor, tells us to turn to Book 4 of
Paradise Lost.
I’m rifling through the tissue-paper-thin pages of my literature anthology when Brent nudges me again.

He leans into me so he doesn’t have to whisper. “I have to ask you something after class.”

“Why can’t you ask me now?”

Fowler looks at me and repeats for us to turn to Book 4. Loudly.

I’m not going to let Brent see how much I’m dying for class to be over now. I’m not going to be distracted by the incredibly realistic doodle of Fowler in Brent’s notebook—complete with nose hairs and an oversized bow tie—even though I’m pretty sure he’s only drawing it to make me laugh.

Fowler has this thing where he insists on doing all of the reading himself and randomly calling on people to see who’s listening. I guess I’m on his shit list today, because I’m the first person he locks eyes with. “Ms. Dowling. What is your reading of these lines?”

I glance down and quickly reread the passage he’s talking about. Jackpot: One of the people who had this textbook before me highlighted it.

… do they only stand

By ignorance? Is that their happy state,

The proof of their obedience and their faith?

Then, scrawled in the margins:
Ignorance is blind faith. The fall
=
a metaphor for subverting authority.

I clear my throat, look up so it doesn’t seem like I’m reading from notes, and say as much. The atmosphere in the room stiffens, and I wonder what it is I’ve said that’s wrong.

A wry smile spreads across Fowler’s lips. “That is a very astute observation, Ms. Dowling. If only it were about the passage to which I was referring.”

Brent nudges me and points to the right passage, but Fowler has already moved on to someone else. I silently curse whoever highlighted the passage, because apparently Fowler doesn’t even care about it.

To make myself feel better, I flip to the inside cover in the book. There are a list of names scrawled beneath the
THIS BOOK BELONGS TO
sticker. I match the handwritten notes in
Paradise Lost
to one of them: Matthew Weaver.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Brent tells me after class. “Fowler humiliates everyone at least once a semester. And I thought what you said was pretty smart.”

I wrap my scarf around my neck and follow Brent out of the building. “Yeah, well, I didn’t even come up with it. Matthew Weaver did.”

Brent raises an eyebrow at me. “Hah. Funny. Where’d you hear about Matt Weaver?”

“My textbook. Why, you know him?”

Brent opens his mouth, then closes it. After a beat, he says, “Matt Weaver went here more than thirty years ago. He disappeared during his junior year. They never found his body.”

The textbook in my arms suddenly feels different. “How is anyone even sure he’s dead?”

Brent shrugs. “There’s a ton of rumors about what happened to him. People like to mess around with the freshmen and say he got lost in the forest and eaten by wolves.”

“That’s ridiculous. There are no wolves in Wheatley, right?” Brent is silent.
“Right?”

“Right.” Brent laughs. “A lot of people say Matt was tripping on acid or something and died of hypothermia. A woman who lived across from there said she saw a young guy go into the forest the night he disappeared.”

A chill passes through me. We’re on the path that loops around the outer edge of the forest instead of zigzagging through campus. “And they never found his body?”

“Nope,” Brent says. “Hey, about that thing I was going to ask you … There’s a party in my dorm this weekend. You should come.”

I’m trying to picture what a party at a Massachusetts prep school entails. I picture a bunch of people in Boston College T-shirts playing beer pong and talking about elections and baseball and other crap I don’t care about.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Can Isabella come?”

Brent hesitates. I don’t think it’s meant to be mean. Probably he just doesn’t get why, of everyone I’ve met here, I prefer to hang out with a nerd like Isabella.

“She’s actually really cool,” I tell him.

“Yeah, sure she can come.” Brent looks like he’s going to say something else, but he smiles. “Especially if it gets you there.”

Okay, so, going to a party and risking getting in trouble two weeks after getting kicked out of St. Bernadette’s probably isn’t in my best interest. But I never was good at staying away from boys who look really good in ties.

*   *   *

Remy practically tackles me as she opens the door to her room Saturday night. “Does this mean you’re coming?”

She and Alexis are roommates, but luckily, the harpy is off stealing souls elsewhere tonight. Kelsey and April wave at me from Remy’s bed, where they’re sitting cross-legged.

Remy gives me the rundown of how the whole sneaking-out-of-the-dorm thing works. Weekend curfew is midnight, and there’s a resident advisor on duty downstairs from then until the morning. The only other way out of the dorm is the door at the bottom of the laundry-room stairwell, which locks from the outside. As long as we leave a paper clip wedged into the door, we should be able to sneak in and out after checking in with the RA.

I stop in my room on the way out to say good night to Isabella, who’s sitting on her bed with a book she’s not reading open on her lap. She looks up at me, gnawing on her thumbnail.

“You okay?” I cock my head at her. She’s been acting like she’s on another planet all day. I couldn’t convince her to come to the party. I’m a little paranoid she’s upset I’m ditching her for the first night this week, even though that doesn’t make sense, because she’s been doing just fine on her own all year.

“Just a little tired.” She closes her book and yawns. It’s a slow and methodical one, as if even she doesn’t believe she’s tired. “I’ll probably get an early night.”

“I promise not to be loud and obnoxious when I get back,” I say.

“You know I could sleep through a nuclear holocaust.” Isabella grins at me.

When I find Remy, Kelsey, and April waiting for me in the hall like a pack of loyal Pomeranians, I’m reminded just how far away from home I really am.

I almost tell them I’m not going to the party. I’d much rather be watching reruns of
House Hunters
and making fun of Alexis with Isabella. But the thought that maybe Isabella needs a break from me propels me down the hallway to where the girls are waiting.

A tall boy with sand-colored hair meets us at the back door of the boys’ dorm. Remy introduces him as Phil, and he smiles at me, his tongue poking through the small gap between his front teeth. He looks like a Phil.

Phil leads us upstairs, which is an exact replica of Amherst, except there are two doors to each room. We stop in front of 201A, which is leaking the type of whiny alternative music people only listen to at American Eagle.

“The crew team guys live in suites,” April explains.

“They have their own bathrooms.” Remy sighs.

“Wait, they get special rooms because they play a sport?” I ask. “Why, so their menstrual cycles sync up or something?”

“I like her,” Phil says to Remy, sliding his ID into the door. She’s still laughing at what I said, and I can’t help but hate how pretty she is with her perfect top row of teeth showing. There’s no way every guy in this school isn’t in love with her.

Not that I’m threatened or anything.

The living room is about the size of my room at home, and it smells oddly okay—and by okay, I mean okay for four teenage guys living with minimal adult supervision. There are two straight-backed couches like the ones in the lounges here, and a TV with video game boxes stacked on each side.

Cole and Murali open the door, their eyes immediately falling to the sea of female legs in tight black skirts. I opted for something less obvious—a gray lace skirt over black tights. I still feel all three pairs of male eyes make their way over to me.

“Welcome, ladies.” Murali bows. “May I offer you some wine?”

“It’s not even from a box this time,” Phil says, as if this is a major accomplishment. “Sebastian brought a whole case home from his vacation last summer.”

Sebastian is a tall boy with a doofy grin on his face and really dark eyebrows. His black hair is styled too high in a way that turns my douche-sensors on.

“And who is the new lovely lady?” His voice lilts with a subtle accent. French, probably.

“This is Anne,” Cole says. Reluctantly. “Anne, this is Sebastian.”

The boy sticks out a hand with really long fingers. Everything about this kid—his eyebrows, nose, hands—look too big for his body, despite his height. “Pleased to meet you,
belle dame.
”

I offer him a polite smile.
“Enchanté de vous connaître.”

Sebastian’s face turns pink, but he smiles. Cole and Murali raise their eyebrows.

“What?” I say. “Six years of French.”

“Ah, the language of love, no?” Maybe it’s just me, but now Sebastian’s accent seems more exaggerated. When someone calls him over, he bows to me and kisses my hand. I don’t know whether to gag or laugh, so the tickle in the back of my throat is a mix of both.

“Sebastian’s father is a French diplomat,” Cole says when he’s gone. “He’s lived in the U.S. since he was five. The accent is how he picks up girls. Or tries to, at least.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I say, with a smirk to let him know I didn’t need it.

Cole passes around plastic cups of wine as I’m introduced to a few more guys from the crew team and two athletic-looking blond girls named Jill and Brooke whom I recognize from some of my classes.

Brent isn’t here yet, so I join the game of Never Have I Ever around the coffee table. I’ve always thought it was a lame game, but at least it helps me get some more information on my classmates. I’m halfway through my third glass of wine when someone says Remy is related to John Adams.

I’m laughing my head off, when everyone starts staring at me, and I realize, no, they’re not joking. I mumble an excuse about needing the bathroom.

When I get back, Kelsey latches on to my arm and starts slurring about someone named Justin, who said he would be here tonight but isn’t because he’s hooking up with some freshman skank. I’m reminded of the fact that I still haven’t seen Brent, and scan the room for him.

My heart catches in my throat as I see him in the corner of the room, talking to the volleyball girls. I’m torn between feeling butterflies that he’s here and wanting to ignore him for not coming to find me, when he’s the only reason I came in the first place.

I decide on ignoring. Five seconds later, Kelsey blasts a hole right through my brilliant plan to make him think I don’t care he’s here by yelling, “HEY! BRENT!”

He looks over. His expression quickly morphs from indifference to amusement.

“Really smooth,” I say to Kelsey as Brent makes a
Hold on a second
sign to the volleyball girls and heads toward us.

“You made it.” Brent leans against the wall next to me, his shoulder almost touching mine. “Now I need to avoid Cole until he forgets I owe him money.”

“You
bet
on whether I’d show up?” I eye him over my shoulder. We’re both kind of looking ahead and not at each other. But I’m glad he’s here.

“Brent, why didn’t you tell me about Justin and the ninth-grade skank?” Kelsey blurts, grasping both of us for support.

“Because you’re drunk, Kels, so whoever did tell you is an idiot.” Brent gently sets Kelsey up against the wall and turns to me. “This is Sloppy. Have you met the other dwarves? Pukey and Dopey?”

I survey the living room. April is lying on the couch with her head in Cole’s lap. Remy is telling everyone who will listen that Phil hasn’t changed his socks in two weeks since he’s convinced the Patriots won’t make it to the Super Bowl if he does and isn’t that
disgusting
?

“Interesting party,” I say.

Brent laughs. “You have no idea what spending all your time with the same people for three years will do to you.”

“I’m getting an idea,” I say, watching as Murali and one of the crew guys drag Phil across the kitchen floor by his socks.

“How long have you been here?” Brent sips his beer, meeting my eyes for the first time tonight. He has really nice eyelashes for a guy, I notice. I also notice that Kelsey is gone, and it’s just me and him.