The Dolls (9 page)

“My mom was friends with their moms,” I try to explain.

“That doesn’t answer why they seem to think you’re their new BFF.”

“I know,” I say helplessly. “I don’t understand it either.”

“Right,” she says. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.” As she walks away, I know a wall has gone up between us. I wonder if the Dolls have done something cruel to Liv, and suddenly, I feel guilty. But even though all the logic in me tells me I should steer clear, I’m feeling more and more drawn to them by the day. It’s like they hold the key to who I was once was—and who I’m supposed to be.

Everyone else is roaring out of the parking lot in their expensive cars, but Aunt Bea left a voice mail saying that she’s tied up with something at the bakery and can’t reach Boniface to ask him to get me, so I’m stuck walking home. I don’t mind, actually. I used to walk all the time in New York; it was a chance to be alone with my thoughts, even in a sea of people.

But fifteen minutes later, the sun disappears completely, the humidity becomes oppressive, and the clouds turns black. I quicken by pace, but I’m only halfway around the cemetery when there’s a deep, earthshaking rumble and the skies open up.

I curse and begin running toward my house, but the rain is coming down in driving torrents, soaking me to the core, and the road is getting muddier by the second. Lightning is flashing everywhere, sending electricity crackling through the air. The wind is holding me back, and I look up nervously at all the arching oak and cypress trees over the road; any of them could be a lightning rod in a storm. It would be just my luck to have survived my first day of school only to get electrocuted on the way home.

As I trip and fall over a branch in the road, sending mud splattering all over my uniform, I notice a black Jeep Cherokee with a faded surfboard strapped to the top pulling up on my left.

“Get in!” yells the driver through the open window. It takes me a moment of wiping the rain out of my eyes to realize it’s Caleb. I scramble ungracefully to my feet, slosh through a puddle, yank the door open, and tumble inside.

“Sorry about your seat,” I say as my drenched skirt squishes loudly against the vinyl.

“It’ll dry,” Caleb replies. As soon as I shut the door behind me, he guns the engine and continues up the road without another word.

“Thanks for stopping,” I say. I smooth my hair a little but suspect it doesn’t help. “So you live out in this direction too?” I have to raise my voice to be heard over the roar of the downpour.

He nods, and for a moment I’m afraid he’s not going to answer. Then he says, “Other side of the cemetery from your place.”

“How do you know where I live?”

“Eveny, everyone knows. Your family is as legendary in this town as Chloe’s and Peregrine’s.” He doesn’t elaborate, nor does he look at me.

“So,” I say, bridging the silence. “I heard you aced your PSATs.” And then, because I apparently have some sort of disease that makes me blurt out idiotic things in front of handsome, enigmatic guys, I hear myself add, “Rock on.”

I can see him hiding a smile. “No big deal,” he says gruffly. But then he adds, “Does that mean you’ve been checking up on me?”

“What? No. Of course not.” I can feel my cheeks turning red. “But I did notice that you surf.” Outside, there’s a huge roll of thunder, and lightning crackles across the sky.

“How do you know that?”

I point upward. “There’s a board strapped to the roof.”

He laughs. “Right. Yeah, I take my board out whenever I get a chance. Or I used to, anyhow. I won’t be going much anymore.” A muscle in his jaw twitches as his expression hardens.

He probably wants me to shut up, but it’s not every day you meet a hot surfer who also happens to be a mysterious PSAT-acing genius, and I’m desperate to know more about him. “So, surfing, huh? I thought we were pretty landlocked here,” I say.

“We are.” For the first time since I’ve met him, his face relaxes a little. “I actually drive to a beach in the Florida panhandle called Sailfish Island, which is about four and a half hours away.” A faraway look crosses his eyes for a moment as he adds, “You wouldn’t believe the way the sunrise looks over the Gulf from the east side of the island.”

“Sounds beautiful,” I say, embarrassed that I’m suddenly picturing myself with Caleb on a beach watching the sun come up. Stupid overactive imagination. “So you think you’ll get out there again soon?”

Everything in his face immediately shuts down. “Things are different now. It’s a long story.” He stares straight ahead, and I have the strangest feeling he’s suddenly mad at me.

I try to make casual conversation as Caleb turns onto the road leading up the hill toward my house, but his only replies are one-word answers.

By the time he pulls up my driveway and sweeps the Jeep around in front of the house, the silence and tension in the car are so thick I can feel them.

“Well,” I say awkwardly, grabbing my sopping backpack from the floor, “thank you again.”

When he doesn’t reply, I get out into the rain, which is pounding down so hard that I barely hear him say, “Rock on, Eveny,” in that perfect, deep voice of his, just before I slam the door closed.

And then, before I have the chance to react, he’s already pulling away.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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T
he storms pass by that evening, but the humidity lingers in the air, making it hard to breathe. Drew will still be out sick for the next couple of days, and I try calling him a few times but it goes straight to voice mail. I remind him he’s invited to Aunt Bea’s bakery opening on Wednesday night, but he texts back that he’s not sure he’ll feel well enough to be there.

I eat lunch Tuesday and Wednesday inside the caf with Liv and her friend Max, a scrawny, smart guy who wears thick hipster glasses and announces right away that he’s gay. “Just so you don’t accidentally develop a crush on me,” he adds quite seriously. “It’s been known to happen.” He tells me that he’s from central Carrefour instead of the Périphérie, but that he’s always been kind of different from the other kids at Pointe Laveau, so he has that in common with Liv.

“You may have noticed,” he says stiffly, “that unless you get a blessing from Peregrine and Chloe, you might as well not exist around here.”

Liv chomps angrily on her burger and says, “Eveny
hasn’t
noticed, considering the Dolls are, like, totally fixated on her.”

And as bizarre as it seems, she’s right. Peregrine and Chloe beam at me in English class, wave hello to me in the halls, and seem bewildered when I say I’ll be eating in the caf instead of the Hickories.

“But no one
ever
turns down an invitation to eat with us,” Chloe tells me Wednesday, looking truly baffled as she wanders away from me and heads outside.

The thing is, even though I know it’s supposed to be some kind of huge deal to be invited into the Dolls’ inner circle, I’d prefer to eat with people I like. And I like Liv and Max. They remind me of my friends back in New York, but more than that, they’re
normal
. The Dolls, on the other hand, seem like they’re from Planet Glamour. I look out the window at their tree-shaded spot overlooking the school, and I see both Peregrine and Chloe gazing at me coolly, as if they can read my mind.

“Told you that you couldn’t just automatically become one of us,” Arelia trills as she passes me in the hall on the way to fifth period.

“I never said I wanted to,” I reply sweetly, although she’s already disappearing around the corner with Margaux. But I feel a little annoyed that she apparently thinks I’ve been banished from the Hickories for not being cool enough.

Caleb Shaw is the one flaw in my plan, because if I exile myself from the glamazons in the Hickories, I’ll be writing myself out of his life too. He doesn’t even look at me in American history, the one class we share, though I have the weirdest feeling he’s aware of my every move. He shifts in his seat each time I shift in mine, and sometimes I can feel his eyes on me even though he’s always gazing off into space when I turn around.

Boniface picks me up after school on Wednesday and drives me the short distance to Aunt Bea’s bakery for the opening.

“Any luck finding the key for the parlor doors?” I ask him on the way. I still can’t shake the nightmares I’ve had twice now, and I’ve begun to think that the only way to convince myself they’re just dreams is to get inside the room.

“Not yet, Eveny,” he says, and the uneasy feeling sticks with me as we drive the rest of the way to Main Street in silence.

Bea is rushing around like a flour-covered maniac when we get there, and the bakery smells heavenly. The plan for the opening night party is that she’ll have miniature versions of a dozen of her signature pastries circulated by two waiters. Because the shop is so tiny, the celebration will spill out onto the street, so Boniface heads outside to set up a few high-top tables and tablecloths while I go into the back to help frost miniature cakes.

“Did you invite any of your new friends?” Bea asks hopefully as she hands me a pastry-decorating bag filled with lemon-thyme icing for the olive oil cakes.

“A few,” I tell her as I carefully pipe the pale yellow icing. “I texted Drew, but he’s been out sick. There’s a girl Liv at school who might make it, and maybe this guy Max too.”

The timer goes off on one of her ovens, and she turns to remove a baking sheet full of chocolate mint meringues. “And how about Peregrine and Chloe?”

“I didn’t ask them.”

“They might come with their mothers,” Aunt Bea says lightly. “I felt like I needed to invite them since they were such close friends of your mom’s.”

“Makes sense.”

Aunt Bea peers at me curiously. “You aren’t getting along with them?”

“I’m not
not
getting along with them,” I hedge. “They’ve actually been pretty nice to me. It’s just that they’re so . . . different.” She waits for me to continue, and after a moment, I add, “I guess I don’t really get why they want to be friends with me. They’re completely opposite from me in every way.”

Aunt Bea turns away and begins to frost a big tray full of chocolate lavender cakes. “Tradition means a lot in this town,” she says.

“Everyone keeps saying that,” I say, “but I have to be friends with them just because my great-great-grandma liked their great-great-grandma?”

“It’s more than that. But I’m glad you’re a little skeptical. It’s important that you remember who you are and how I raised you.”

Three hours later, the bakery and sidewalk out front are filled with at least a hundred people. Everyone seems to know Aunt Bea and Boniface, and I watch with pride as they circulate among the crowd.

Along with the chocolate lavender cakes, the lemon thyme olive oil cakes, and the chocolate mint meringues, Aunt Bea has also prepared butter sage cookies, rosemary popcorn balls, pear and bay leaf tarts, and several other herb-based confections. “I wanted to honor my sister, Sandrine, whom many of you knew,” Aunt Bea says in an impromptu speech on the front step just past six thirty. “She loved flowers and herbs, so we’ll specialize in just that: baked goods with an herbal or floral twist. I hope you enjoy tonight’s party, and please do come see me again soon.”

The crowd applauds and goes back to chowing down. I feel proud of Aunt Bea and especially connected to my mother as I jump behind the counter and help the two harried waiters fill up champagne flutes. Liv and Max make a brief appearance and thank me politely for inviting them, but they disappear soon after, Liv mumbling that this isn’t exactly her crowd. I don’t have time to feel bad, though, because Peregrine, Chloe, and the other Dolls sweep in a few minutes later.

“So sorry we’re late, sweetie,” Peregrine says as she glides over to me. She’s wearing a floor-length leather coat, a leather miniskirt, a sheer silk blouse, and leather stiletto heels that lace up to her knees. Her stone necklace catches the pale light of the bakery and shimmers against her dark skin. “But it’s dreadfully tacky to arrive on time, don’t you think?”

I open my mouth to reply, but Chloe beats me to it. “We really did mean to be here earlier,” she says. “But Pascal couldn’t decide on a pair of shoes.”

He looks offended. “I have over a hundred,” he says. “And I wanted to look just right.”

“You look nice,” I say. And aside from his smarmy expression, he does. He’s in a tailored black suit with an eggplant-colored shirt that’s unbuttoned at the collar. The expensive-looking tasseled leather loafers he’s wearing complete the look.

“They’re Italian,” he says, gesturing to his shoes. “Custom made.”

Chloe looks like she’s channeling vintage Carrie Bradshaw in a frilly pale pink tutu made from a hundred layers of tulle. Her legs look long and tanned, and she’s wearing camel-colored stiletto ankle boots, a tight, military style camel leather jacket, and an intricately beaded white tank top to complete the look. Like Peregrine, she’s wearing her black stone necklace. Justin, in designer jeans and a suit jacket with a lime green pocket square, is draped on her arm like an accessory. “This place is gorgeous, Eveny,” he tells me before asking if that was Max and Liv he saw just a few minutes ago. He looks weirdly disappointed when I tell him they’ve already gone.

Arelia and Margaux are there too, wearing nearly matching little black dresses.

“Where’s Caleb?” I whisper to Chloe as the others move toward the bakery counter to grab drinks.

“Ah, so you
do
like him,” she says knowingly. “Peregrine was right.”

“No.” I can feel myself turning red. “I mean, I barely know him. I just thought he was always with you guys.”

“Not always,” she says. “He goes away a lot.”

“Surfing, right?”

She looks surprised. “I see you’ve talked to him.” When I nod, she looks troubled. “Just so you know, he kind of broke Peregrine’s heart last year.”

I feel like she’s dumped a bucket of water over my head. “He and Peregrine dated?”

But then Chloe leans closer and says, “Don’t tell Peregrine I told you, but I don’t know if I’d call it dating exactly. She was in love with him forever, and they finally went out on a few dates, but nothing ever happened.”