Reckless (3 page)

Jenny really seemed to be afraid of her. As well she should be.

Not that Callie’s life wasn’t better without Easy Walsh. Since they’d broken up (she’d convinced herself that it was mutual and that she had not actually been dumped on her skinny ass), Callie had managed to snag an A on her last bio test, score six goals in the last two field hockey games, and flirt with just about every single cute guy on campus. Last Thursday, she had received special permission to take the train into Manhattan for a “medical emergency” and had spent the afternoon at Bergdorf-Goodman followed by six sample sales in the Garment District. Walking off the train at Rhinecliff station, arms loaded with bags of Theory clothes (trunk show!), wearing new Christian Louboutin platform espadrilles with sexy ankle ties and adorable butterflies embroidered on the toes, her newly cut, fresh-from-the-Red-Door-Salon-smelling blond locks six inches shorter and swooshing against her shoulders, she felt … lighter. And free! Although she’d feel a whole lot lighter if Easy wasn’t dating her roommate. Or better yet, if he wasn’t dating anyone at all.

Callie glanced at herself in her dresser mirror and shook her head, enjoying the way her new haircut looked in motion. She bet Easy would like it.

Fuck
. It was so hard to turn off feelings that had been alive and pulsing for over a year. Just because Easy suddenly decided he was better off with a silly little pink-cheeked sophomore with stripper-sized breasts, she was supposed to just get over it? It was hard. For twelve months, Easy had been the one in her thoughts as she crawled into bed at night. When she saw a pretty white wedding gown in a magazine, it was Easy she dreamed of wearing it for. She sighed. She would take him back in half a second.

Callie felt her cheeks heating up. Tinsley was the only one she could still talk to about how hurt she was over the whole breakup. Instead of getting bored with it, Tinsley seemed to enjoy hearing about it. She almost seemed more pissed off at Jenny than Callie was.

Outside, the rain seemed to have slowed a bit. Callie yawned once again and decided to get her shit together and get on over to the gym. Exercise released endorphins, the only all-natural antidepressants. If she couldn’t get her hands on any of her mom’s Paxil, she might as well hop on a treadmill. From her overstuffed top dresser drawer (the one dedicated to her gym clothes, field hockey uniforms, and other fugly things), Callie pulled out a pair of stone-colored Adidas by Stella McCartney gym pants and stepped into them.

Hair band, hair band,
Callie thought as she glanced over her dresser top. She was always losing them. Where the fuck did they all go? Guiltily she glanced at Jenny’s dresser. It was almost as messy as hers. Maybe if Jenny hadn’t turned out to be such a scheming, backstabbing boyfriend stealer, they might have become friends.

Without hesitation, Callie strode over to Jenny’s dresser and reached for her Altoids tin full of hair bands. Her hand paused in midair, however, when she spotted the folded piece of note-book paper with the letter
J
on it. She touched the letter and it smeared. Charcoal.

Her heartbeat increased tenfold. She snatched up the piece of paper and examined Easy’s familiar, eight-year-old penmanship—only he could make the letter
J
look practically illegible. She paused for a moment to debate the moral implications of reading someone else’s private note before her curiosity got the best of her.

On the inside of the paper there were no words, just a drawing, in pencil. It was a caricature of a guy with a giant head of dark, unruly hair, wearing beat-up jeans with holes in the knees and a T-shirt with a peace sign on it. It was easy to guess who he was supposed to be. Easy. He was blowing a kiss.

Before she knew what she was doing, Callie had crumpled the paper into a tiny, tight ball. She stared at it in her palm for a second before stuffing it into the tiny zip-up pocket in her track pants, meant only for a gym locker key. Her eyes raced around the room, searching for something to break or tear apart or throw against the wall or … She spotted the Altoids tin and grabbed a fist full of Jenny’s hair bands and flung them one by one, slingshot style, around the room in every direction. Her incredible fury disappeared as each one went flying through the air and disappeared into the piles of crumpled-up designer clothes heaped on the floor.

Grabbing her gym bag, Callie stomped out the door and flew down the two flights of wooden stairs to Tinsley and Brett’s room—she desperately needed someone, STAT!, to tell her how much prettier she was than munchkin, top-heavy Jenny and how Easy would regret their breakup for the rest of his life.

But as she sped around the corner, she skidded to a stop. Fuck. Right in front of Tinsley and Brett’s door was Jenny, still dressed in slim-fitting ultra-dark jeans trucked into an adorable pair of flowered rain boots and a cute red modish vinyl rain-coat. Her dark curly hair was plastered to her forehead, and her pale, perfect skin was slick with water. She might have looked like hell if her cheeks weren’t flushed and a cute, self-satisfied smile wasn’t perched on her ruby red lips. Her hand was holding a marker and poised to write something on the plastic wipe board hanging on Tinsley’s door.

“Oh, hi!” Jenny looked up, startled. “I, uh, was just leaving a note for Brett.” Her cheeks colored even more, and Callie just stood there, silent.

Tinsley must have heard them because half a second later, before Callie even had sufficient time to ignore Jenny, the door opened. Tinsley stood there, in just a pair of black yoga pants and matching sports bra. She took in the scene objectively, first giving Callie a quick grin and then focusing her violet eyes on Jenny, who had taken a startled step back, still holding an open red marker in her hand. Tinsley cocked her head, as if trying to imagine what Jenny could be doing at her door.

Jenny practically melted beneath the silence and the withering gazes of the two older girls. “Uh, see you at the gym, I guess… .” Her tiny voice trailed off as she backed away toward the stairs.

“Is that my marker?” Tinsley demanded coolly.

“Oh, sorry.” Jenny retraced her steps and handed the marker to Tinsley, pulling her hand back as if she was afraid of getting burned. “Can you tell Brett … Never mind,” she corrected herself, suddenly remembering that Tinsley and Brett weren’t exactly talking either. “I better go.”

Callie and Tinsley stared at her as she disappeared around the corner. Then Tinsley placed her hand on Callie’s long, slim arm. “Don’t worry. She’ll get what’s coming to her.” Tinsley’s mischievous violet eyes sparkled. She was a schemer, and revenge was her favorite kind of fun. It was obvious she already had a plan in the works to “get” Jenny.

But Callie wasn’t amused. The truth was she didn’t want to get Jenny.

She just wanted Easy back where he belonged.

Email Inbox

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Wednesday, October 2, 4:04 p.m.

Subject:
Bliss

Bree,

Haven’t heard from you in a while. I hope your boss isn’t pulling a
Devil Wears Prada
on you. Things are going well here at good ole Waverly—though I’m planning on being kind of a traitorous Owl this weekend and cheering on St. Lucius’s team at Jeremiah’s homecoming—but I’ll really just be cheering for him. He’s been unbelievable lately, and I’m planning on rewarding him soon… . I’ll keep you posted.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be your Little Sis

;)

Brett Messerchmidt didn’t have time to check her email in between afternoon classes because she hadn’t finished the translation of her assigned portion of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
for last-period Latin. She was in an intermediate class, and until three weeks ago, she’d been cursing herself for not testing into beginning Latin, taught by sexy Mr. Dalton. Past tense. Due to an altercation of a sexual kind with a student named Brett, he had been fired and would no longer be available for intimate wine-enhanced student-teacher conferences. Brett was grateful now that her teacher was the somewhat asexual, forty-something Mrs. Graver and not someone she had almost—almost—slept with. Still, the last week and a half with so-in-love-with-her Jeremiah had almost erased all memories of how she’d completely made an ass of herself over Mr. Dalton. Almost.

After class, she grabbed her kelly green Pasha & Jo belted raincoat and rushed out to the field house, hoping to practice shooting before the rest of the field hockey team got there. But there was a note taped on the heavy metal doors, telling the team to meet at Lasell gym instead. Ugh. All the way back across campus in the hair-frizzing rain? Brett tugged on the door—it was unlocked. She grinned and pulled out her phone.

Thirty-five minutes later, she was lying on one of the blue pole-vaulting mats next to Jeremiah. Their bodies sank into the cushy mat like they were sprawled on the softest, queenliest mattress in the world. The field house, where all the Waverly sports teams stored their equipment, felt ghostly and romantic.

“I’ve never seen the inside of this place.” Jeremiah looked up at the high, beamed ceiling, his hands beneath his head. Rain pounded the aluminum roof relentlessly.

Brett turned on her side to face him, grateful that her one-of-a-kind Indian print gypsy skirt was supposed to be crinkled. A short lock of red hair—the piece that always managed to fall into her face no matter how many barrettes she had holding it back—was hanging right in front of her eyes, and it felt like she was looking at Jeremiah through a gauzy red curtain.

Before meeting him, she wasn’t into jock types. She was always attracted to older men—well dressed, sophisticated, maybe even European—like Gunther, the Swiss guy she’d met on a ski trip, whom she had supposedly lost her virginity to. At least, that was her story. But now that things were going so well with Jeremiah, she wanted to clear up any lingering misunderstandings between them. When they’d first started dating last year, after meeting at Heath Ferro’s spring bash at his parents’ estate in Woodstock, she hadn’t exactly been up front with him. He’d assumed she was the worldly, mature, experienced girl she’d pretended to be since coming to Waverly. That assumption included the fact (or non-fact) that she wasn’t a virgin. She’d made no effort to correct the misunderstanding, even after he’d confided to her that
he
still was. Brett knew it was stupid and immature to pretend to be something she wasn’t, but it had made her feel more confident about their relationship. She liked being the one who made the rules, the one who drew the boundaries, the one who had been there, done that. Besides, she hadn’t been ready then to tell Jeremiah the truth or to lose her virginity.

But now, things were different.

“You won’t get in trouble for skipping practice to make out with your girlfriend?” she asked coyly, tracing her fingers gently across Jeremiah’s broad chest. He was so … delicious. Brett kept her touch light since, for the whole week following a football game, Jeremiah’s entire body was completely bruised and battered. He was St. Lucius’s star quarterback this year, and he got tackled a lot.

Speaking of tackling,
Brett thought. She rolled toward Jeremiah.

“S’okay.” His blue-green eyes swept across her face. “The practice field floods when it rains like this. We’re just supposed to put in a few hours at the gym tonight.”

“Yeah, I’m supposed to do that too.” Brett made a face. “I fucking hate the gym, though. All the goony jock guys—no offense—just drool over the girls in their little Puma shorts. It’s kind of gross.”

“Wait, you think I’m a jock?” Jeremiah asked in mock surprise.

“You’re the star quarterback, sweetheart. Doesn’t that automatically make you a jock?” Brett craned her neck and touched his lips with hers, not exactly kissing him. “You’re a cute jock, though.”

“I guess that’s a little better.” He kissed her back, a little harder. “And I like it when you call me ‘sweetheart.’” It came out
sweet-haht,
in Jeremiah’s raw Boston accent. How could she ever have gotten tired of it? It sounded so exotic to her now and even sexier when she thought that this was the way that John F. Kennedy had sounded. Ooh. Kennedys. Jeremiah was practically cut from the same cloth—well, without all the sex and drug scandals. His family was much too sane for that.

“Hey.” She pushed his getting-a-little-long reddish brown hair behind his ear. “What are the plans for this weekend?”

“Oh, baby!” Jeremiah moved his hands from his head and rubbed them together over his chest. “It’s gonna be awesome. First, we’re going to kick Millford’s asses at homecoming, then we’re going to party like rock-stars.”
Rock stabs.

“Rock stars, huh?” Brett grinned. Sounded like fun. She had been studying hard lately, and it felt good to be thinking about another party. She hadn’t been sad to miss the bash at the Ritz-Bradley the other weekend after Tinsley kicked her out of her exclusive girls’ club. She’d had much more fun hanging out with Jenny, and, of course, Jeremiah when he snuck into Dumbarton. But ever since the forced room swap, sharing a room exclusively with her former
BFF
Tinsley Carmichael had caused Brett to do a lot more homework than she normally would. At first, she’d tried to avoid the room as much as possible, spending her evenings in the library, but then she’d realized that meant Tinsley won. And so she started doing her homework in the dorm room with Tinsley, both of them completely ignoring each other. It was slightly fucked up, but Brett wasn’t about to cave. After all, Tinsley had stolen Mr. Dalton right out from under her. Sure, it ended up being a blessing in disguise. But deliberately stealing your friend’s crush was totally traitorous behavior that deserved a grave punishment.