The It Girl (13 page)

“You like cheese? Manchego? Coach Triple Cream?”

As if she could actually eat. “Sure. All of it.”

“Olives, too?” He pointed. “I like having little picnics.”

Brett demurely took a tiny sliver of cheese and popped it between her plump lips. The salt coated her mouth and she swallowed noisily.

“I got into eating this way from my family.” Eric scratched the side of his slender, clean-shaven neck. “My family, man. They’re crazy about cheese.”

“Yeah,” Brett agreed, mesmerized by his classic New England accent. She didn’t have any idea where he was from, but it had to be somewhere on the East Coast. Boston, maybe, but he most definitely did not speak with a townie accent. “What do your parents do?” She finally managed to say.

He paused. “Uh, well, my dad works in magazine publishing. My mom … she has her little projects, I guess. Yours?”

Talk about vague. “My dad’s a doctor.” Brett shrugged. She wasn’t about to tell Dalton a doctor of what. “And my mom … yeah. She has her little projects too.” One of those projects being buying designer sweaters for the seven family Chihuahuas.

“So, my sources say you’ve been to Italy,” Eric said, spreading Brie onto a Breton wafer and sitting back down in his chair.

Brett looked up at him. “Yeah. How’d you know that?”

He ducked his head a little shyly. “Well, I mean, I saw it in your file.”

She felt color rising to her cheeks. Duh. Of course he’d looked at her file. That was how he’d recognized her in first place. Did that mean he knew about her parents?

“I’m sorry,” he added quickly. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No!” she said. “God. I don’t care. I went to Europe through school. I spent some time in South America, too, with family.” She didn’t add that her family had bought the biggest, tackiest house in Buzios, Brazil, and flown all the Chihuahuas first class to spend the summer with them.

He looked at her seriously. “You’re modest. You went to France with the advanced French students—mostly seniors— when you were a sophomore—and you went to Crete with the honors program when you were a freshman.”

She shrugged. It was weird having someone repeat your achievements back to you. But kind of cool, too. Jeremiah probably had no idea where Crete even was.

“You’re smart.” He smiled. “I need a smart woman around helping me get through this first year.”

“Well, that’s me,” she said sheepishly, feeling a little funny that he’d called her a woman instead of a girl. She watched as he gracefully deposited an olive pit on the edge of the Italian-looking blue ceramic tray. Jeremiah would’ve spit it out in his hand.

“So, let’s get started.” He flipped his manila folder open and revealed a big stack of papers. “I want to show you this—these are some of the case files. They’re like nine thousand pages long. And seriously, keep this quiet. Remember, you’re not technically supposed to be doing this kind of work, since you weren’t on DC last year. Everything in these files is confidential. Think you can handle that?”

“Absolutely,” Brett assured him. She laughed lightly. “I’m good with secrets.”

“Yeah?” He looked up at her and broke into a slow smile. Brett felt her insides melt. He handed her a pile of papers, his fingers brushing the back of her hand. Brett nearly choked on her Manchego. He didn’t pull away very fast, either. Time slowed down. Brett counted: _One Mississippi, two Mississippi _…

Three seconds. Their hands were still touching. Tingles ran the whole way up her back and her hand hummed as if she were touching an electric fence.

“I was hoping you might be,” he murmured, finally breaking the silence.

Brett looked down, willing her lips not to break into an enormous grin.

Brandon spied Jenny in the distance, coming over the dewy green hill from Hunter Hall, the English building. She’d carefully arranged her long curly hair into two perky braids and was wearing a pink and white button-down shirt, her Waverly jacket, and a cute little khaki skirt. Brandon could almost imagine her as a farm girl, on her way to milk a cow or sing on a hilltop.

Two blond ponytailed girls hugged their books to their chests and smiled at him as they passed. “Hey, Brandon,” Sage Francis, an ice blonde in an ultrashort dove-gray pleated skirt and silver sandals, cooed. Brandon smiled distractedly. “Saw you eating dinner last night with that Jenny girl. Did she really sleep with the guy from the White Stripes?”

“What?” Brandon asked, scratching an artfully tweezed eyebrow.

“I heard she slept with the lead singer from the Raves, Jack White, and Easy Walsh—all in one week!”

“And don’t forget, she was ponied!” shrieked Sage’s friend, a girl named Helena who was well known for starring in school plays and making out with the student director at the cast parties. Brandon was a little tired of the term
pony
. All the girls were throwing it around and acting completely ridiculous about it. Worse, Heath
loved
that they’d made up a sex term just for him. Last night, before heading to dinner, Heath had poked Brandon in his power yoga-toned abs and boasted, “You wanna bet I can pony someone between first and second courses?”

“She didn’t say anything happened between her and Easy,” Brandon replied evenly, trying to sound calm.

“She’s worse than Tinsley!” Sage and Helena giggled, then linked hands and walked off.

“No she—” Brandon started. But they were already gone. Personally, Brandon felt nauseated over all the rumors about Jenny. He’d heard she’d been caught having loud sex with Easy Walsh last night wearing nothing but a lacy push-up bra on the roof of her dorm—the rumors were all over Waverly. Not that he believed Jenny had done it—she was way too sweet to do something like that. Especially with a dog like Easy Walsh.

Jenny was still walking toward him, looking even more innocent and wide-eyed than when Brandon had first met her. He reached out and caught her arm as she passed. “Hey.”

Jenny stopped, deep in a daze. “Oh!” she exclaimed. Now that she was looking at him, he could see the dark purple circles under her eyes. He wished he could gently pat his L’Occitane Open Eyes Magic Eye Balm onto her delicate skin. “Hey.”

“You okay?”

“Um, sure.”

“I got you this.” He searched through his John Varvatos tan suede satchel and found a turkey-and-Brie sandwich wrapped in a dining hall napkin. “I didn’t see you at lunch, and I thought you might be hungry.”

“Yeah, I was e-mailing my dad.” Jenny pressed her lips together, not looking him in the eye. “It’s just … I’m kind of ready to crack under the pressure,” she admitted, her lips trem-bling. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What happened?”

“Never mind.” Jenny shook her head, her chin quivering. “I’m all right. I just have to think about things for a while, you know?”

Brandon wondered what she meant. Did this mean she had been with Easy after all? Or that someone was just spreading vicious unfounded rumors about her? Easy, probably. God, he hated Easy.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Brandon said, trying to look into Jenny’s big brown eyes.

“Who?”

“You know. Easy.”

“Easy? This really isn’t Easy’s fault.” Jenny kicked at the perfectly manicured green.

“No? Then is it the pony stuff? Because you know, practically every girl at Waverly has made the mistake of hooking up with Heath.” Brandon smiled a little. “Seriously. They’ll find someone else to talk about soon.”

Jenny shook her head and looked up at him through her think black eyelashes. “I didn’t even know he was called Pony,” she confessed dejectedly. “But at least I know what those drawings mean now. Anyway, no, it’s not only Heath. That was just the start of it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I feel like …” Jenny swallowed hard. She was sort of embar-rassed to admit this to someone she hardly knew, but she felt like she could trust Brandon. “I feel like Easy and I could have a real connection. It’s weird. I can’t explain it.”

Brandon felt his throat close up.
What. The. Fuck
. “So,” he finally got out. “You … like him?”

“Well, I …” Her voice trailed off.

Brandon shook his head vigorously. “You can’t like Easy.”

Jenny shrugged. “Well, yeah. I know. He’s my roommate’s boyfriend.”

Yes, he was well aware of that, thank you very much.
But no, you shouldn’t like him because he’s fucking bad news
. After all, Easy had stolen Callie from him last year and nothing had been the same since. One minute, she was standing next to him at the party at the library, asking for a Grey Goose and tonic. The next, she was ascending the library stairs, with Easy’s tongue practically down her throat in public.

Now Jenny had some sort of connection with him? Puh-lease.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway.” She stared down at her shoes and squeezed her eyes shut. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No …” Brandon offered lamely. “I’m glad you did.”

“I have to go,” she said, still pouting at the ground. “I hope your day goes okay.” Her voice quivered again, as if she were about to cry.

For maybe the second time in his life, Brandon wanted to punch a hole in something. Why did Easy steal every cool girl? And did this mean something
had
happened between them?

Brandon’s next class was molecular and cell biology, and he was two minutes late. He slid into his seat and glared viciously at the girl with long blond hair sitting in front of him. She wore a sparkly amethyst ring on her right hand and smelled vaguely of cigarettes and Jean Patou Joy perfume. She turned and twisted the corners of her pretty, pouty, Chanel-glossed mouth up into a half-smile.

“Hey, Brandon,” Callie chirped. “Meet any nice girls this summer?”

Brandon shrugged, averting his eyes to watch a flock of geese flap by the classroom’s picture window on their way south, honking their heads off. He hadn’t met any nice girls over the summer, but he’d met one on his first day back at school. How could he prevent Waverly from ruining Jenny the way it had ruined Callie?

Instant Message Inbox

BennyCunningham:
So they’re not even speaking to each other any-more.

CelineColista:
Did you see the
SAVE
TINSLEY! on their board?

BennyCunningham:
I think they both wanted her gone—you know Easy was into Tinsley.

CelineColista:
Now C’s being nice to that slutty Jenny girl, even though she practically had sex with her BF. It’s just to piss B off.

BennyCunningham:
God, those bitches are crazy!

Instant Message Inbox

SageFrancis:
So Angelica Pardee’s marker board got ponied! Do you think?

BennyCunningham:
She’s married. And old.

SageFrancis:
Maybe she’s secretly wild for Heath… .

BennyCunningham:
Do you dare me to ask her about it at tonight’s check-in?

SageFrancis:
OMG
, do it!

Callie sat in biology class and felt eyes on her that were definitely not welcome. Not the vacant stares of the emaciated dead cats that lay on the metal dissection trays at their lab stations. Brandon Buchanan wouldn’t stop staring at her.

It had been almost a year since they’d broken up. She’d gone to a party for Waverly’s literary magazine,
Absinthe
, at the library, not intending to break up at all. But the party had been classically romantic—they’d turned the lights down at the library and covered the walls in thick gauzy netting. Old twenties flapper music lilted lightly through the speakers, and everyone had been instructed to wear creative black tie. Easy had been there. She’d known Easy, of course—the eclectic circle of Waverly’s elite was small—but not well. She’d always found him sexy and mysterious in a sensitive-artist way, and she’d caught him checking her out a couple of times at chapel. When Brandon went off to get them some drinks, she made eye contact, thinking she’d innocently flirt with Easy from across the room. But then he’d walked up to her. And it had been like those nature shows on
PBS
, with a lion striking a gazelle. It had happened so fast, she hadn’t even known what hit her.

She would’ve pleaded that Easy had slipped something into her glass, but she hadn’t even had a drink yet. Only a few seconds later, they sneaked off into the Waverly ancient-books room, as if they desperately needed to find those dusty tomes of lost John Donne sonnets. Sinking into one of the worn leather smoking chairs, they’d kissed for hours, communicating by telepathy as their tongues twisted together. The next day, Brandon knew—everybody knew—and Callie and Brandon were broken up by lunch.

“By the end of the semester, you will have examined the cat’s various bodily systems and identified every organ.” Their handsomely weathered teacher, Mr. Shea, paced the room. “In December you will be given a final oral exam during which you must correctly identify all of the organs.”

From the back of the room, Heath Ferro snickered at the words
oral exam
. Mr. Shea switched on the overhead projector and started to point at a line-drawn diagram of a cat. Callie peeked at Brandon again. His eyes remained fixed on her, and she quickly jerked her head away. She doodled,
Stop staring at me, perv
, in elaborate cursive on a fresh piece of notebook paper. As soon as she finished the letters, she scribbled over them in broad black strokes.

Suddenly her cell phone vibrated in her back pocket. She slowly took it out, and discreetly slid it onto her lap so that it was obscured by the tabletop. It was a text message from Benny, who was sitting only three rows over.