Moby Clique (3 page)

“You know it was supposed to be a place where pirates hung out,” Lindsay says, showing me the fruits of her Google search. “It’s rumored there’s even an old pirate ship there. In a place called Whale Cove.”

“Is not,” I say, whipping the printout from her hand.

Lindsay shrugs. “
Tho
don’t believe me. What do I care? Anyway, how deep do you think that water
ith
?” she asks, looking over the side of the boat where the dark, cold water sloshes against the side of the hull. For some reason, it’s always foggy and overcast every time I make this trip, so the water between Maine and Shipwreck Island always looks inky black.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I think it’s creepy, though.”

“I think it’s cool,” Lindsay says, leaning nearly as far over the railing as she can so she can get a look down below. I grab her by the belt loops and pull her back down.

“Close your mouth or your retainer is going to fall out,” I warn. “And you’ll fall in after it.”

“What
ever,
” Lindsay lisps, spitting a little as she talks. She glances up and points to a single figure standing on the shore. “Who’
th
that?”

I know even before I get close enough to see his face that those big, broad shoulders belong to Heathcliff. He’s not allowed to leave the island, so he’s been stuck there all summer. My heart speeds up a little bit. I wonder how long he’s been waiting there for me. He runs a hand through his thick, jet-black hair and then holds his hand there as if to shade it from the overcast sky. He’s as dark and magnetic as ever. I throw up my arm to wave at him and he does the same. I didn’t realize until this moment just how much I missed him.

“Is that him? Is that Heathcliff?” Lindsay chirps beside me, jumping up and down and making a spectacle of herself. “You didn’t tell me he was so hot!”

Other people are starting to stare at Lindsay’s theatrics, probably because they’ve never seen anyone as hyper as my sister before. As we move in closer, Heathcliff gives my sister a quizzical glance, but nothing more than a glance. His eyes are fixed directly on me. I don’t think they leave me at all. I can feel them on me as I grab my bags and head down the gangplank to shore.

A slow smile spreads across my face as I get nearer to Heathcliff, who is standing very still on the beach, his hands stuffed in his pockets. I can’t read his expression exactly, but I think he’s glad to see me. When I’m face-to-face with him, though, I feel a sudden awkwardness.

“Hi,” I manage shyly. Heathcliff has that effect on me. I lose my ability to speak clearly. Behind me, I hear Lindsay struggling with one of her four bags. I’m determined to let her struggle. I told her not to bring too much luggage, but the girl insisted on bringing half the Nordstrom juniors’ department.

“Hey,” he says back, and then grabs my bag.

“So how long have you been waiting for me?” I ask, teasing.

“All summer,” he says, completely serious. He reaches up and gently tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. His touch makes me shiver. And there’s something about him that makes all the words in my head simply dry up and disappear. But Heathcliff doesn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation. He is, after all, the strong and silent type.

Lindsay interrupts the Hallmark moment, though, as she finally catches up to me, huffing and puffing with her bags, and being her usual annoying self.

“
Thankth
for the
help,
” she says sarcastically, dropping her bags around her and accidentally landing one on Heathcliff’s foot. Heathcliff doesn’t even flinch, he just glances at the bag and then at Lindsay, a curious look on his face.

“I’m sorry about that,” I say, quickly tugging Lindsay’s heavy bag off his foot. “This is my—”

Before I can finish, Lindsay has prattled on, spitting as she talks. “
Tho,
you’re Heathcliff? I’ve heard
all
about you,” she says. “You’re like
totally
a tough guy, right? I mean, what did you do to get
th
ent here? Did you kill
th
omeone? You can tell me if you did, because I will
totally
not tell anyone. I mean, Miranda
thays
I can’t keep a
th
ecret, that’s
th
uch a lie. I
totally
can. I mean, you had to do
th
omething really bad, right? Miranda said you can fight and stuff, and she is like,
totally,
into you, which i
th
crazy because it’
th
not like Dad would let her ever date a delinquent. I mean, no offense or anything, but you do look at least twenty-four, and how old did you
th
ay you were again?”

I worry how Heathcliff might react. He’s not known for his patience. But he doesn’t look angry, just puzzled. My sister has that effect on a lot of people.

“And I’ve read all about you because Miranda won’t
thop
…” She’s literally spraying Heathcliff with spit.

I step on Lindsay’s foot, hard. “OW!” she cries. “What’d you do that for?”

“You’re
spitting,
” I say.

“What! It’s not my fault,” she says. And then she does the unthinkable. She takes
out
her retainer and actually holds it up for Heathcliff to see. He looks at it like she just threw up an alien. She wipes it on her jeans and then she actually puts it
back
in her mouth.

“This,” I say and sigh, “is my little sister, Lindsay.”

Heathcliff nods slowly.

“I don’t know why you did that,” Lindsay is saying, rubbing her foot. “I mean, it’
th
not like violence ever
th
olves anything. Of cour
th,
Heathcliff might disagree, and, I mean, like no offen
th
or anything, but brute force i
th
just not where it’
th
at. Besides, it’
th
not even like I told him anything really embarra
th
ing, like how you scribbled hi
th
name a million times in your journal and you—”

“Lindsay!” I shout, exasperated.

“What? I’m just
thaying
you
th
ouldn’t keep your feeling
th
in all the time. Maybe if you let them out once in a while you wouldn’t be
th
uch a basket case. Ooh! I
th
that the bu
th
? Are we going on that bu
th
to the
th
cool? It’
th
kind of
th
mall for all of us. I wonder if they have room for my bag
th
.”

Lindsay runs up ahead to the bus that’s parked near the dock, leaving us alone with her four giant bags.

“Does she always talk this much?” Heathcliff asks me, looking a little bewildered.

“I’m afraid so,” I say, and sigh.

Three

In the campus chapel
during orientation, Lindsay is the only one actually taking notes as Headmaster B runs through the usual list of Bard no-no’s (no cell phones, computers, games, or anything else that runs on batteries and/or would possibly distract or entertain you). Heathcliff keeps sneaking glances at my sister, as if he can’t believe the two of us are related. I can’t either, actually. For her part, she shows absolutely no fear when it comes to Heathcliff (actually telling him to sit up straight, asking him why he never speaks more than one-word answers to questions, and the endless pestering about what he did to be sent to Bard in the first place). Honestly, I don’t think Heathcliff has ever run into somebody who feared him less. Most people in the school give Heathcliff a wide berth. He is the one, after all, who took out three school Guardians by himself, not to mention the things I’ve seen him do (wrestle with Dracula, for starters). But Lindsay shows no fear. At this rate, she’s going to last two days at Bard.

“There you are!” Blade cries, finding the three of us in the crowd after orientation, while the church empties out to the lines of boys and girls where our bags will be searched. Blade is my former roomie and also a self-professed Wiccan witch. On a Goth scale of one to ten, she’s an eleven. Since I’ve last seen her, she’s dyed her hair black with red streaks, and over the summer has gotten a new set of eyebrow piercings. She’s also wearing a chain that connects her left eyebrow to her nose ring. You’d think she had done something really bad to be sent here. Come to find out, it’s mainly because she likes putting up pictures of Satan on her walls to get under the skin of her father, who happens to be a pastor.

“Doesn’t that hurt when you raise your eyebrow?” I ask her, pointing to her latest face piercing.

“Nah, not anymore,” Blade says. “Hey, who’s this?”

My sister, Lindsay, for once, has shut up, and she’s just staring at Blade, her mouth open. It may be the eyebrow ring, or the black lipstick, or the fact that Blade’s sporting a red pentagram on her cheek in lipstick.

“Wow—you are
th
o cool” is all Lindsay can say, mouth open in awe.

“Hardly,” says Hana, who joins us. Hana was the first person I met at Bard and the closest thing to a best friend I have here. I throw my arms around her and give her a squeeze. “Whoa, let me breathe, girl,” she says, backing up a bit. She’s also the one I’ve been IMing all summer, and I feel like we’ve never been apart. Her summer was filled with family drama—as in, a lack thereof. Her parents spent the summer in Switzerland, leaving her alone in their New York penthouse suite. Hana was sent to Bard mainly because she got kicked out of other boarding schools and her parents can’t be bothered to deal. I don’t have time to ask Hana about her little brother (the one she’d been babysitting for the better part of the summer), before Samir joins us. He’s our group’s resident goofball.

“My man H!” Samir cries, putting up a fist for Heathcliff to meet. Only Heathcliff just leaves Samir hanging, giving him a dirty look. Like I said before, Heathcliff is the original brooding bad boy. “Er, right, well, maybe they didn’t have that in 1847.”

“What?” asks Lindsay, confused.

“He’s joking,” I say quickly. The last thing I want to do is get into the big secret with Lindsay.

“Guys, this is my kid sister, Lindsay. Lindsay—that’s Hana and Samir and Blade.”

“Like, ohmigod,
real
delinquents,” Lindsay says, rubbing her hands together in glee. “
Th
o, like, tell me, what did you guy
th
do to get
th
ent here?”

“Are you sure you two are related?” Hana asks me as the two of us unpack our suitcases in the senior girls’ dorm. She’s my roommate this year, because Blade went off to room with one of her Goth friends, who’s a witch-in-training. Blade said she felt bad about abandoning me, but at the same time felt the need to stay true to her Wiccan roots. Honestly, I don’t mind. Blade’s idea of room décor is pictures of skulls and Satan. Plus, most of her “spells” smell like old gym socks.

“I think she was switched with my real sister at birth,” I say, shaking my head.

“You think she’s going to be okay?” Hana asks me.

The last time we saw her was when we dropped her off at her dorm, which is next door to ours.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just hope she doesn’t get in trouble, which she’s prone to do, especially if she goes around asking everybody why they’re delinquents.”

“Yeah, that’s not the sort of thing to win you friends among the criminal set,” Hana says. “And there are plenty of those types at Bard.”

She’s right. The school mostly falls into six basic cliques: druggies, freaks, Goths, kleptos, jocks/date rapists, and white-collar criminals (the extremely rich kids). The lst group doesn’t need Bard Academy scholarships (offered up to thirty percent of the student body), and everybody knows they are the absolute worst offenders. Ironically, they also seem like the most clean cut.

Hana, Samir, and I stay out of the cliques for the most part. Blade has her Goth friends, but we don’t usually hang with them. I wonder how Lindsay is going to fit in.

“Miranda Tate, are you sure you’ve got the right room?” purrs the unmistakably evil voice of Parker Rodham, interrupting my thoughts. Parker is standing in our doorway looking her usual viper self, her sleek blond hair pulled up tight in a ponytail, her makeup flawless, and she’s clad from head to toe in Burberry.

Parker, a.k.a. queen of the white-collar kids, is rumored to have poisoned her mother and nearly killed her, as well as murdered two of her ex-boyfriends in convenient “accidents.” She also happens to hate my guts for dating Ryan Kent last semester, because she’s been pining over him since he transferred to Bard.

“Parker, what are you doing here?” I ask.

“I was about to ask you the same question,” she says.

Immediately, I realize my mistake. I’ve moved into her turf, not the other way around. Last year, she was in the upperclassman dorm, and I was in the underclassman dorm, and now I’ve moved up a level.

“It looks like we’re
neighbors,
” Parker’s roommate says, nodding to their room across the hall. She’s one of Parker’s clones, a girl who essentially has no identity other than to look and sound exactly like Parker.

“You live there?” Hana asks, her face falling. She has no love for Parker, either. And she knows exactly what kind of bad news it is that Parker is living right across the hall.

“Miranda!” I hear my sister shout in her telltale lisp. “Miranda! Where
are
you? Miranda!”

Oh God. She’s found me somehow. And in front of Parker, no less. And she’s not even supposed to be
in
this dorm. She’ll get us both in trouble.

“Looks like you’ve got a fan,” Parker says, and gives me a slow, calculating smile.

Lindsay runs up to my door and nearly collides straight into Parker. “Um,
tho
rry,” she lisps. “I need to talk to my
thithter
.”

Parker looks at Lindsay like she’s a cockroach, taking in Lindsay’s pressed pastel Polo shirt and khakis. “
This
is your sister?” Parker asks me, an amused look on her face. God, this is so embarrassing. Not that I care what Parker thinks, but why does Lindsay have to be so, well, embarrassing? “Nice shirt,” Parker says, but she clearly means the opposite.