“Penis. Testes. Fallopian tubes. Uterus,” Kara barked out quickly as Callie pressed her hands to her ears. Everyone burst out laughing, even Jenny and Brett, who’d been looking like death.
“Can’t we just agree that all guys are jerks? At least sometimes?” Callie rubbed the back of her neck, which was all in knots after the long stressful evening.
“Guys only act like jerks when someone lets them,” Kara pointed out, tracing her finger along Callie’s quilted bed-spread. “What if every girl just agreed to stop letting them get away with it?”
“Then they’d have to learn to behave like human beings.” Brett twirled a lock of fiery red hair around her finger.
“Let’s make a pact,” Callie suggested, suddenly interested in doing something to ensure that she wasn’t going to let Easy jerk her around anymore.
“Okay,” Jenny said quickly, from out of her long silence. “How about we all agree to respect ourselves so guys will respect us?” She bit her lip. “I mean, if we all do the first part, the second part will just … happen.”
“Maybe we can work it into the responsible Owl essay,” Brett suggested, tapping her chin with her peach-polished finger. “You know, a responsible Owl doesn’t let boys push her around, et cetera. It can be kind of a girl power thing.”
“Do you think we can all hand in the same one?” Kara asked hopefully. “I mean, they probably saw
The Breakfast Club
in theaters when it came out. Giving us a collective detention is sort of, like, asking for it.”
“It could be kind of symbolic—like we have only one answer because …” Jenny gave a sheepish grin and paused. “We’re kind of all the same, you know,
underneath
.”
Right. As ridiculous as that sounded, and it sounded pretty ridiculous, the girls glanced around at each other and considered how true it was. Jenny, in her pajamas, with her dark curls pulled into a messy knot at the back of her head. Brett, her eyes bleary but determined. Kara, who was almost a complete stranger, with her enormous greenish brown eyes taking in the scene, her cheeks flushed like she was actually excited about this whole weekend. And Callie—well, for once, she didn’t care what she looked like. All she knew was that this felt kind of nice.
“A pact,” Callie repeated.
Grinning like they meant it, the four of them leaned forward and put their hands in a pile, like they were getting ready to do a field hockey cheer. It was kind of hokey, but like a cheer, it made Callie feel, at least for a moment, that she was really part of something. That maybe she wasn’t so alone anymore.
“I can’t believe Heath and I dragged a keg up here!” Julian exclaimed. He was standing at the edge of the roof, looking over the stone wall and down at the wrought iron fire escape.
“A half keg,” Tinsley pointed out teasingly from behind him. “And why’d you do that, again?”
“A pretty girl told me to.” Julian picked up a pebble from the gravelly roof, blew on it, and swung his arm back and forth a few times before flinging it out over the quad below, like he was skimming a stone across a pond.
“Do you do everything pretty girls tell you to do?”
“What can I say? I was raised right.”
He was certainly doing
something
right. After the party disbanded, Julian and Tinsley and a few others had wandered upstairs to the smaller common room that housed the TV and
DVD
player. Julian, a little shyly, had pulled from his messenger bag the library’s copy of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
“Since your film meeting had to be postponed,” he’d whispered. Tinsley, at that moment, was thankful they weren’t alone—otherwise, who knows what would have happened. Instead, while Lon and Benny snuggled up on the chintz love seat, the two of them sat a comfortable distance away from each other on the oversized sofa. Which sagged in the middle, meaning that they were slowly sliding toward each other, and at the beginning of each scene Tinsley had to move away or else she’d end up in his lap.
Not that she would have had a problem with that if they had been alone. But … there were a lot of factors to consider. She knew it was silly—age shouldn’t matter. Madonna was ten years older than Guy Ritchie! But Guy Ritchie wasn’t a freshman.
It really was more than that, though. Her favorite moments were the ones leading up to that first kiss—when you’re not sure if it’s going to happen or what it’s going to feel like, when your nerves are all on edge, waiting for it. Sometimes—sadly, too many times, for Tinsley—the anticipation was better than the payoff. The kiss, and the guy, often disappointed her. And once the kiss was over and it was only so-so, the whole thing basically ended.
And she really didn’t want that to happen with Julian. It felt so thrilling to be sitting next to him in the dark, with Benny and Lon just a few feet away, watching one of the funniest movies on earth and trying not to wonder what Julian’s lips would taste like. He had a great laugh, too—like he didn’t care who was listening.
After the credits rolled, they snuck out of the common room, Benny’s head lying softly against Lon’s big chest, one of them snoring loudly, and snuck up to the roof. Where they were now.
“Come here,” Julian said suddenly, looking down over the edge again. Tinsley quickly approached him and peeked over, wondering if Pardee was finally coming home. But she didn’t see anything except the dark grass and bushes far below. Nothing even moved.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Tinsley demanded, aware of how close she was standing to Julian. He was only inches away.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
Tinsley looked up at him, puzzled. He’d taken off his knit cap at some point in the night, and the breeze ruffled his grungy hair. The dimple at the corner of his lips deepened. “I just wanted you to come closer.”
“Oh,”
Tinsley replied. “What else do you want?” A shiver ran through her body.
“I want you to stop asking questions so I can kiss you.”
“Why would you …” she started, suddenly feeling nervous that things were happening too quickly. She didn’t know if she was ready to give up that anticipation yet. But then Julian leaned toward her and pressed his lips to her right cheek, holding them there for a moment, and Tinsley remembered what his hair smelled like—pine trees.
He hadn’t said anything to her about the bitchy way she’d ended the stupid game of I Never, and Tinsley liked that. He didn’t seem surprised, or disappointed, or anything—he just seemed to like her.
And so she couldn’t help herself any longer. She let her nose brush against his, and then her lips touched his, gently and then harder, and Julian’s hands tightened around her waist as he pulled her toward him.
He may be young, but he definitely knows how to kiss,
she thought.
“See?” Tinsley said when she pulled away from him, but not too far. “I know how to shut up sometimes.”
Julian pushed back her hair and kissed her ear, or kind of kissed it, his soft lips actually just touching it lightly. Then his mouth slid down to her neck, sending an icy explosion of pleasure through her body. “Don’t get me wrong, I like it when you talk too… .” His words felt even more intimate than kisses against her skin. “But it’s nice to mix things up. I really dig you, you know.”
Tinsley sighed. “You hardly know me.” She pulled herself out of his arms and leaned against the wall around the roof.
“I don’t know about that,” Julian countered. “I know how you shave your legs in the shower. I know how you start to giggle even before a funny line comes in a movie just because you know it’s coming. I know you have a funny little mole behind your left ear that only really lucky people get to see. Or to kiss.”
Tinsley stared at the multitude of stars in the sky, which seemed to be winking at her. “Thanks,” she said dreamily, wishing they could both fall asleep up here. “I like you too.”
Julian ran a hand through his hair, making it all flop over to one side. He looked kind of like one of those starving rock stars. He could use a little meat on his bones. Tinsley picked up a pack of cloves that someone—Callie?—must have left up there, a box of matches next to it. She lit one up and offered the box to Julian. He shook his head. “No one is going to believe this.” He had a kind of goofy grin slapped on his face.
“Wait, what?” Tinsley was suddenly wide awake. “We can’t actually tell people about this. This has to be, kind of, our secret.”
Julian looked like she’d just thrown a bucked of cold water on him. “Why?”
Because you’re a freshman,
she wanted to cry. But instead she gathered her thoughts and spoke calmly, like she was presenting her position in a debate—except this was definitely not debatable. “I don’t mean it in a bad way—but you haven’t been here long, so you haven’t seen how all Waverly relationships tend to crash and burn under all the intense scrutiny.” She shrugged innocently, but she was already thinking about Jenny and Easy’s imminent collapse. “I just don’t want that to happen to … this, you know?”
“It’s not that you’re afraid of dating a freshman, is it?” Julian’s brown eyes examined her face, as if searching for clues.
“Not one as hot as you,” she replied quickly. The freshman thing really was only part of it. In reality, Tinsley was just kind of … bad … at relationships. As soon as she felt like she was in one, she wanted out. And the prying eyes of Waverly Owls did nothing to help the situation. As soon as it was rumored that two people were dating, people always seemed astonished to see them apart. Tinsley hated the thought of people greeting her with “Where’s Julian?” It was like once you were a couple, you ceased to exist as an individual. It made her a little sick to her stomach.
And right now, her feelings for Julian were just so pleasant, she didn’t want to fuck it up.
“It’ll be so much cooler if it’s just between us,” she continued, seeing that Julian was wavering. “There’ll be no one to get in the way.”
“Does anyone ever say no to you?” Julian asked after a short pause. His eyes twinkled with exasperation, like he knew he was getting into something he should resist but couldn’t.
“Rarely,” she admitted, her mouth curling into a grin.
Email Inbox
From:
[email protected]
CC:
[email protected], Dumbarton residents
Date:
Sunday, October 6, 5:14 p.m.
Subject:
Essay
Dear Dean Marymount and Miss Rose,
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice an entire weekend in lock-down for what we did. What we did
WAS
wrong. But we have come to a different conclusion after discussing what we think a responsible Owl is. You see Waverly Owls as you want to see Waverly Owls—in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as legacies, princesses, psych cases, delinquents, band geeks, and responsible Owls. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other before we were locked in. We were brainwashed.
We are not all guilty of what you thought we were—but we are all guilty of something. We are guilty of giving in to labels, to letting them be placed on ourselves, and for trying to fill them.
Therefore, it has come to our collective realization that a “responsible Owl”
Does not try to be someone she is not, even when wearing someone else’s clothes
Knows who her dormmates are and who they are not Does not lie about herself, to others or to herself Says what she means and means what she says Respects herself so that other will too
This is our collective answer. This is what we have learned this weekend and what we won’t forget.
Sincerely,
The Girls of Dumbarton
Instant Message Inbox
BennyCunningham:
Nice work, B! I’m proud to call you my class prefect. How’d you come up with all that crap?
BrettMesserschmidt:
Jenny and Callie and Kara helped me. And I’m not convinced it’s crap …
BennyCunningham:
You mean J and C haven’t strangled each other yet??
BrettMesserschmidt:
I don’t think that’s going to happen—at least, not anymore.
BennyCunningham:
Everybody’s talking about Kara throwing her beer in Heath’s face—that was pretty effing cool… . She’s a funky chick. I’m glad we got to discover her.
BrettMesserschmidt:
She’s been downstairs all year, B… . It’s not like she was waiting for you to discover her or anything.
BennyCunningham:
Still … I like her style. She’s got … I don’t know. Something.
BrettMesserschmidt:
Maybe we all do.