Winter White (17 page)

Friends.
It’s not like they were ever more than that, right? So why did hearing Brayden officially label them that make her so sad? “Friends,” she echoed.

“Good.” He looked relieved and grinned. “So if we’re friends again, then why don’t you tell me how I went from seeing you at Scoops to Emerald Cove’s kickoff of the fall season regatta party?”

“Don’t you have somewhere you should be?” Izzie couldn’t get herself to say Savannah’s name, but she was dying to ask why he was with someone like Savannah if he felt the way he did. Wasn’t Savannah the perfect example of what he hated about EC? But she knew she didn’t have the right to ask him that.

“No one will even notice I’m gone.” He motioned to two chairs at an unmanned table and smirked. “I’m all yours, so start talking.”

Izzie wasn’t sure how long she and Brayden sat there, but by the time she was done, DJ Backslide had gone on a break. Brayden had already known about Grams’s condition, so he wasn’t shocked to hear that Grams was now in a nursing home. What did floor him was how alienated she felt at school.

“Hayden is a great guy and Mira is nice,” he said carefully. “She and Savannah have been best friends for as long as I’ve been with her.”

“Maybe they’ve rubbed off on each other,” Izzie said lightly, then stopped herself. She did not want to bash his girlfriend to him. “Mira surprised me, I guess. I didn’t realize how much she resented my being here. She can’t stand me, and after tonight, I don’t think I can stand her, either. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself.”

“The Iz I know wouldn’t let her get away with that kind of behavior.” Brayden smirked.

She closed her eyes tightly like she was preparing to rub a magic lantern. “I just wish I was on the beach right now. That’s the only place I can ever make sense of things.”

He sprinkled some of the confetti lying on the table around her hands. “I can’t take you to Harborside Beach, but I think I have the next best thing.” He held out his hand. “Follow me.”

She was curious so she let him lead her out a side entrance and past the catering tent, where they were nearly run over by a waiter trying to get someone’s lobster tail to his table. He wove around the adults’ party and led her down a wooden dock where tall green grass grew on both sides of the path. A few minutes later, they were staring at the darkening sky and—even better—the water.

“It’s not the ocean, but at least you can dig your toes in the sand,” Brayden said, staring at the bay. Lights from a town across the water were bright in the distance against the orange-hued sky. “Come on, take a dip. It will make you feel better.” He pulled off his shoes.

Izzie slipped off her heels and waded into the bay, hiking her dress up above her knees. The sand felt good against her toes. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the water till she was in it. She’d swum laps in the Monroes’ pool a bunch of times to get ready for tryouts, but it wasn’t the same thing. She breathed in the salty night air and kicked the water with her foot, her dark cranberry pedicure barely visible in the low light. “God, I would kill to swim right now.”

“Then why don’t you?” Brayden nudged her forward, getting the bottom of her dress wet.

“Dude, I’m in a ball gown!” She laughed.

She shoved Brayden back, getting his pants wet. They splashed around for a few minutes, and by the time they were back on dry land, Izzie’s updo had fallen out and her dress was soaked. Brayden’s shirt looked like it had just come out of the wash, and he had water marks up to his thighs. But she didn’t mind. Brayden always put her at ease. She’d been mad at him an hour before, but now she felt lighter than she had in weeks.

“There’s the smile I remember.”

She hadn’t realized Brayden was looking at her. He wrapped his sports coat around her shoulders. He had wisely removed it before their water fight.

“You’re going to be okay, Isabelle Scott,” he said softly.

“You think?” She could barely breathe. He was standing so close she could smell his cologne.

“Yes,” he told her. “Because the girl I know has guts. You won’t let this place beat you. If anything, you’re going to turn this town on its head. I just know it.” She smiled to herself at the thought.

A second later the moment was gone, and they were laughing about something stupid. They’d barely reached the top of the beach walkway when Izzie saw Lucas striding toward her. She almost dropped the shoes in her hand when she saw how peeved he looked.

“We’ve been searching for you everywhere,” he said sharply, looking disdainfully from her disheveled appearance to Brayden’s. “Don’t you check your phone? I have the photo set up and the press ready to go. I’ve spent the whole night making sure your introduction to the community goes perfectly, and now look at you! The whole family is waiting for you in front of the boathouse.”

Her phone was in her bag, Izzie remembered. And she’d left her bag at coat check. It hadn’t occurred to her to keep it on her. “I’m sorry,” she said, that feeling of being an outsider flooding back to her. She instinctively touched her wet head. “Just give me a few minutes and I’ll pull myself together—”

Lucas cut her off. “I am not letting you ruin things for this campaign. You cannot get into a picture with your uncle for the first time looking like that! No. I’ll tell them I couldn’t find you.” His brown eyes were on fire. “Clean yourself up before anyone else sees you,” he snapped, and walked away.

Izzie started shaking. It took a lot to rattle her, but Lucas definitely could. She looked at Brayden.

“What a jerk,” he mouthed. She pulled his jacket tighter and shrugged, embarrassed.

“Oh and Isabelle?” Lucas said, turning around. She looked over at him. “I don’t
ever
want something like this to happen again. You’re a Monroe now. You’d better start acting like one.”

Thirteen

Izzie stood at the edge of the pool and waited for the signal. At the sound of the buzzer, she dove into the cool water and zipped across the lap lane doing the breaststroke, her specialty.

Just swim
, she told her body.
Forget about Coach Greff and whatever she’s going to write on her clipboard. Block out the three dozen girls sitting on the bleachers, watching your every stroke. Ignore the giant ticking clock that is counting the seconds till you reach the end.
She heard her mom’s voice inside her head:
No guts, no glory, kiddo.

She swam as hard as she could. When her hands finally hit the wall, she removed her Speedo goggles and looked at the clock.

Christie Greff, the EP swim coach, grinned. “Just under a minute and ten seconds. Nice.” The petite blond crouched at the pool edge, the whistle around her neck hovering above Izzie’s head. “Are you always that fast?”

“Yes,” Izzie said, slightly winded. “My personal best is even a few seconds quicker.”

“Good to know.” Coach Greff scribbled on her pad. “Think you can do it again?”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to get too excited. She knew the Emerald Prep swim team was highly competitive. They’d won their division the past three years, and most of the team was made up of juniors and seniors. She was lucky they had four slots to fill. Izzie desperately wanted one. She had been thinking a lot about what Brayden had said the night of the regatta party. She’d never been a quitter and she wasn’t about to start now. She had to show this town they couldn’t beat her.

The coach looked over Izzie’s info sheet. “I see you placed at the Harborside Community Center for diving. And the breaststroke. And you were a lifeguard this summer? You seem pretty qualified for the team.” She frowned slightly. “As long as you get those grades up this year.”

Izzie nodded. She knew the Cs she got at Harborside wouldn’t cut it here at EP. Her aunt and uncle had told her that when they’d squeaked her by admissions. She also knew she had more time to study now that she wasn’t working. (
Or taking care of Grams
, she thought guiltily.) She could do better. She
would
do better, which was what she told Coach Greff.

The coach smiled. “Okay, then, take a seat, and we’ll have you challenge one of the girls in a few minutes. I’d love to see what you could do with an IM.” An IM was an individual medley that included four laps, each with a different stroke: freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly, and backstroke. The IM was one of Izzie’s strongest races after breast.

Izzie pulled herself out of the water and wrapped a towel around her waist before walking the long way around the pool and over to the bleachers. She kept her eyes locked on the bench to avoid the piercing stares of some of the other swimmers. Whether they were impressed with her swimming or just making a snide comment, she didn’t know. She was getting used to the staring, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Savannah’s whispers echoed off the high ceilings. She was the hardest to ignore. She was dressed in a lime-green one-piece and a navy-blue swim cap with green polka dots.
Even her swim caps are trendy
, Izzie thought. Izzie sat on the bottom bench, feeling the steel against her legs, and looked down at her toes. She had painted them green for luck. Green was her community center team’s color. As she was examining her less-than-stellar pedicure skills, she felt someone slide down the bench next to her.

“Hey. Nice breaststroke.” It was Violet, the girl who had stopped her on the way to lunch on the first day of school. At least Izzie
thought
it was her. It was hard to tell when her hair was hidden under a swim cap, but there was no mistaking the girl’s deep-set, dark, oval eyes.

“You’re Violet, right?” Izzie asked, and the girl nodded. “Good, because I feel like I’ve been stalking you unsuccessfully—but not in a creepy way,” Izzie added quickly. “You’re one of the most normal people I’ve met at EP, and I’ve only talked to you once. It makes for a pretty lonely existence.”

Violet laughed. “Well, I’m glad to hear I’m one of the select few who fall into the normal category.” She leaned closer. “Although I totally know what you mean about this place. This is Nicole,” she said, motioning to a blond girl, who slipped as she descended from the seat above them. Nicole was so beautiful and Amazonian in stature that it would be easy to be intimidated, but Izzie also knew the girl was a klutz, which brought her back down to earth. Whenever Izzie saw Nicole on campus, she was tripping or dropping something, and that morning she’d actually mixed the wrong chemicals during biology and smoked out the class.

“You’re Mira’s cousin, right?” Nicole said, not waiting for a reply. “I heard about you and Brayden Townsend! Were you two really hanging out the night of the regatta party? Savannah is so peeved.” She whispered conspiratorially. “She was whining to Mira about it in the locker room before gym. She thought I was tying my sneakers with my iPod on, but I ‘forgot’ to press Play and heard everything.”

“Nic, ‘Hi, nice to meet you’ might have been a better ‘hello,’ ” Violet deadpanned.

Izzie heard Savannah’s laugh, and her chest tightened. She was not scared of the girl in the least, but she also didn’t want to give her any more ammunition with Brayden.

“Don’t worry about Savannah,” Violet assured her, reading her thoughts. “Karma’s a killer. She’s made a lot of girls’ lives miserable—including mine and Nic’s. I’m glad to see something finally go wrong in her otherwise perfect life. One time she had me locked out of the cafeteria because I was carrying the same lunch bag she was,” Violet said. “Where I come from, they’d stuff you in a locker for a stunt like that. I can’t do that here. I’m on scholarship.”

Izzie was comforted by the fact that Violet couldn’t afford the twenty-thousand-dollar yearly tuition, either. “Have you gone here since sixth grade?” she asked.

Violet fiddled with her watch, which looked like an orange. “No. We moved here last year from New York. It’s okay, I guess. A little too much open space and a few too many debutantes.” She grinned. “Savannah was fine with me at first. Then she realized that just because I’m from New York doesn’t mean I’m a ‘Gossip Girl.’ We couldn’t have lived farther from the Upper East Side.”

“I got in because I’m a founder’s great-granddaughter,” Nicole admitted. “It’s practically written in the school code that they have to admit Jameses.”

“Thank God, or you would have flunked out your first week of sixth grade,” Violet said, and the two started to bicker playfully.

“I wasn’t with Brayden at the regatta party.” Izzie felt the need to say that. They stopped and looked at her. Izzie glanced quickly at Savannah. If she was upset about Brayden, she didn’t show it. She was deep in conversation with half the team and barely came up to take a breath. “I mean, I was with Brayden, but not like that. We’re friends.” The word
friend
still stung even after a weekend of letting it sink in.

“You must be good friends, then,” Nicole said. “He left Savannah half the night to hang out with you. Well, that’s what she told Mira. Brayden’s one of the coolest guys in the grade. Why he’s still with Savannah, I’ll never know.”

“Jedi mind powers,” Violet said knowingly. “He can’t see how evil she is because she acts like a peach whenever he’s within ten feet of her. Is he in one of your classes?”