The It Girl (20 page)

“Be. Aggressive.
B-E
aggressive… .”

Brett, who stood at the back of the gang, mouthed the words. This was so dumb. She glanced over at Jenny, who launched into her part of the cheer.

“St. Lucius girls think they’re all that, but no one wants a girl that flat!”

Jenny heard her solo screechy voice and immediately covered her mouth. Unfortunately, she was also at the portion of the dance where she had to stick out her chest. She looked over and noticed that no one
else
had thrust their boobs out.

Her teammates snorted with laughter. Jenny froze, boobs still thrust out. So this was the setup. Ha, ha. So
not
funny.

Things began to move in slow motion: the laughing girls, stupid mean Heath Ferro slapping his thigh in the front row, the entire school starting at her gigantic boobs. Then she realized something. She knew she could either feel like total shit and act like Old Jenny, who, mortified, would sit back down on the bench and never speak to anybody ever again. Or she could try and turn this situation into something interesting. After all, this might be her last weekend at Waverly. So before she could stop herself, Jenny strode up to the front of the team and started belting out the lyrics of the bogus cheer Callie had e-mailed her in her loudest voice.

“St. Lucius girls think they’re all that, but no one wants a girl that flat!” Jenny started, shoving out her double-Ds again. “Waverly girls get all the boys! C’mon, people, make some noise!” She made a swishing motion with her hips.

“Our eyebrows are waxed and yours are bushy; our butts are cute and yours are cushy!” Then she hit herself hard on her adorable little round butt. The other girls’ mouths dropped open. “Our mascot’s an owl and yours is a goose! We’ve got hooters and y’all are loose!” Again with the boob-thrusting.

“So c’mon St. Lucius, throw in the towel. Your ass is gonna get kicked by an owl!” Then Jenny, as she’d been instructed, ran crazily lengthwise down the field and did three cartwheels, as best she could, showing the crowd whatever they hadn’t already seen of her baby-blue boy shorts.

A dazed silence followed. Even though the words were totally ridiculous, every single Waverly and St. Lucius boy—not to mention the fathers and male teachers—was gazing at her.

Then, across the field, Lance Van Brachel, one of Waverly’s star football players, started to clap. “Yeah!” he screamed. “Hell yeah!”

Another boy clapped slowly. Someone whistled. Then the whole other side of the field erupted in applause. Everyone began to go nuts.

Brett stared at Jenny, who was standing with her arms stretched out, staring dazedly at the crowd, a huge smile on her face. Jenny had just twisted Callie’s manipulation, something even Tinsley had never managed to pull off. Jenny seemed so unafraid of people paying attention to her, and her curvy, tiny body looked great dancing. She had a good shouting voice, too- hoarse and kind of sexy.

Jenny looked at her adoring fans across the field. Wow, this was fun! Then she had a flash of inspiration.

“There is a boy who they call Pony! He’s always acting gross and horny!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “He thinks he’s got a lot down there, but he sure wears tiny underwear!”

The Waverly bleachers went wild. A bunch of boys covered their mouths and yelled a collective “Oh!” in Heath’s direction. Everyone was laughing. Jenny looked at Heath in the front row—his face was an angry red.
Gotcha
.

“Let’s do it again!” Jenny launched back into the cheer, hardly noticing the other girls. They were all party poopers. If they didn’t want to cheer with her, she didn’t care. She felt free and crazy.

Brett was dumbfounded. Suddenly, she grinned, and ran up to join Jenny.

“St. Lucius girls think they’re all that, but no one wants a girl that flat!” they screamed together. Jenny smiled and bumped her butt against Brett’s hip. At the end of the cheer, Brett even did the skirt-lift. The boys across the field went crazy.

Then Celine joined in, too. Then Alison, then Benny. Then the rest of the girls. And finally, because it would look weird if she were the only field hockey player
not
cheering, Callie started shouting too.

Buoyed by their cheer, the Waverly Owls beat the St. Lucius Geese 6 to 3. As soon as the final period’s buzzer sounded, Brett hustled to her dorm room. There, on her bed, was her cell phone. Had she left it on her bed all this time? On it were three unanswered calls—all from her sister—and one text message:
I’m in port. Come by if you want. -ED.

She quickly pulled on her most flattering it’s-getting-crisp-at-night-weight Joseph pants and slinkiest Diane von Furstenberg sleeveless silk top and zipped on her pointiest black patent leather boots. She sprinted down to the waterfront.

Eric stood on the white sailboat’s small deck wearing khakis and a green long-sleeved polo. He was holding binoculars up to his eyes and was gazing at something in the trees. A fishing pole was propped against the boat’s railing. When he heard her behind him, he turned around, the binoculars still pressed to his eyes. Brett instinctively covered her chest, as if they were x-ray glasses.

“No football game for you?” he asked, putting the binoculars down.

“Nah.”

“Isn’t the football game the biggest part of the day?”

Yeah, except her ex-boyfriend happened to be the other team’s star quarterback. Brett wasn’t exactly sure if Jeremiah had even gotten the I-need-a-break message she’d left on his voice mail, but she kind of didn’t care. “I’m not really into football,” she replied coyly. “May I have permission to board?”

He laughed. “Yeah, sure.”

“So.” She ran her hands over the boat’s chrome rails. “Does this thing have a name?”

“Not yet. She’s brand-new,” Eric answered, his piercing gray eyes on her. “I was thinking about something from Hemingway.”

Brett’s insides scrambled up.
Like maybe something from
The Sun Also Rises
?
she wanted to ask.

“What field hockey position do you play again?”

“Oh, center,” she responded, as if it didn’t matter, even though she’d played field hockey since she was seven and had scored two of the six goals today.

He chuckled, then picked up the fishing pole.

“Why is that funny?”

“It’s not. It’s just, I can’t imagine you in a field hockey outfit.”

“Have you tried? Imagining it, I mean.” Brett smiled coquettishly. She was being bold, even for her.

“Maybe.” Eric’s eyes were on her. “It’s a pretty short kilt. You girls shorten them, don’t you?”

“Of course not!” Brett lied. “They’re that short to begin with!”

She sat down on one of the captain’s chairs and stared out at the glistening water. Waverly’s chapel spire peeked up through the elegant, blue-green thicket, and the owls criss-crossed over-head, as if magnetically drawn to the yacht. Even the water smelled sexy.

“So, I wanted to thank you for the other night,” she finally ventured. “The plane. Dinner. Seeing your family’s house. It was really fun.”

Dalton removed the binoculars from around his neck. “I’m glad.”

A cheer rose up from the football stadium in the distance, and the band started to play. Brett glanced over in its direction, wondering who had scored. Jeremiah was probably on the field right this second.

Brett looked over at Eric. Biting her lip, she stood up and took a tiny step in his direction. “So, yeah, it was fun, but …”

“But what?” Eric paused.

Brett thought she detected something funny in his voice. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff that over-looked the turquoise Caribbean Sea. It was either turn around and head back to the bungalow to drink a Red Stripe in the hammock or dive off the cliff. She took a huge gulp of air.

“Do you think that there was something maybe that could’ve been
funner
?” Brett asked, twisting her head to the side.

“
Funner
isn’t a word.” Eric smirked. Water lapped at the side of the boat.

“Yeah, I know,” she whispered, lowering her eyes, feeling young and dumb.
Go back to the bungalow! Now!
Fighting her better judgment, she batted her eyelashes and stuck out her chest. She had no idea where she was getting these moves from. Jenny, maybe? She heard Eric breathe in sharply.

Fuck it. She was diving. She walked right up to where he stood, still fishing. He was a few inches taller than she was. His blondish hair fell messily over his eyes, and he had a tiny scratch on the side of his nose. He propped his fishing pole against the railing again.

“Maybe
this
could be … funner?” Then she leaned her entire body against his and kissed him.
Ahh, yes
.

His mouth felt amazing. Brett tried to restrain herself, but part of her wanted to devour him, like he was Beluga caviar. She kept kissing him, softly at first, willing his lips to part until finally his strong hands circled her waist and his lips melted around hers. He pulled her closer. Her mouth opened. Brett worried that she tasted like sweat from the game, but she didn’t care. Nor did she care that they were in broad daylight, on Waverly’s campus, on Black Saturday, and the whole school was only half a mile away.

She stopped kissing him and took a step back, smiling shyly.

Eric licked his lips. It looked like he was trying to hide a grin. “Um, well. That’s, uh, definitely …” He took her hand in his, and his eyes met hers. He chewed on his lower lip a little. “So I think … I think I should go back to my office for a while.”

“Great. Let’s go,” Brett replied, smiling. “Now.”

Dalton steeled himself against the railing. “I mean, I think I should go back to my office and I think
you
should go back to your football game,” he whispered, his hand brushing her ear.

Brett stepped away from him and looked frantically back in the direction of the stadium. Eric stepped off the yacht. He reached out for her and helped her onto the dock too.

“If I come to your office, you won’t regret it.” She’d never said anything like that to anybody in her life.

“I realize that.” Eric sighed. “Believe me. I most definitely realize that. But, um … .” He looked down at his navy blue Docksider boat shoes. “I think … I think I should go. But thank you.”

And with that, he stuck his thumb out, touched her on the chin, and turned, leaving Brett and her beautiful black pointy boots, standing on a stupid boat dock, alone.

Brandon stood, gin and tonic in hand, talking to Benny Cunningham at the Black Saturday party, which was, surprise surprise, at Heath Ferro’s country house in Woodstock, about an hour away from Waverly. He saw Jenny spill out of a Hummer with a group of field hockey girls. They were all dressed up in matching pumpkin-colored slouchy V-neck cashmere sweaters. Jenny’s sweater showed off her beautiful porcelain skin and exposed some of her bare shoulders, and he could see a wide, cream-colored bra strap.

After the football game, Heath had handed Waverly’s elite overnight off-campus passes and ushered everyone toward a fleet of black Hummer limos that he’d borrowed from his dad’s Wall Street I-banking firm. Brandon had watched from a distance as Heath approached Jenny, who was flanked by gaggle of admirers, kissed her primly on the cheek, and handed her a pass. Even he had to give her props for the cheer.

The party took place on the house’s massive back lawn. It was warm and still out, and Heath had had the gardener install a giant white tent and rows of twinkly Christmas lights. He’d also nabbed six giant sculptures from his parents’ ever-growing collection of random gallery purchases to decorate the expansive tent. The sculptures were gigantic blooming lilies. Their lustrous folds reminded everyone not so subconsciously of sex. As if anyone needed another reminder of sex. After watching Jenny’s chest, it was all anyone could think about.

Jenny spied Brandon and hurried over. “Hey! Where’d you go after the game?” she exclaimed brightly.

“Just took off for here a little early, I guess,” he answered, then looked away fast. He still felt all messed up over this Callie-Easy-Jenny business.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Jenny, that cheer was totally fun.” Benny squeezed Jenny’s hand. Benny’s Mikimoto freshwater pearl earrings were so big they made her earlobes droop.

“Thanks!” Jenny cried.

“Brandon, did you see it?”

“I saw it.” It would have been hard not to see it. It had been kind of slutty but kind of hot at the same time. And his brain had felt like it was going to explode, watching both Jenny and Callie stick out their chests and smack their butts at the same time. And of course he’d relished watching Heath shrivel in embarrassment when Jenny called him out on his small weenie.

Jenny eyed him carefully. “Seriously, you all right?”

“Eh,” Brandon murmured.

“What’s the matter?” she asked again. Benny shimmied away to hang around someone else. “You can tell me.”

He mashed his lips together. He didn’t know what he was feeling. Was he confused about Callie? Pissed at Jenny for being so into Easy? Annoyed to be back at school, period? Suddenly an alarmingly high-pitched voice pealed over the crowd.

“Jenny!” Brandon and Jenny’s heads swiveled. Celine sat across the room, on a pristine white leather couch. Brett, dressed all in black, sat on the couch’s arm. Callie stood on the other side, smoking through a thin silver cigarette holder. Brandon’s heart started thudding. “Jenny, c’mere!” Celine crowed.

Jenny looked back at Brandon. “You sure you’re all right?” she asked.

“
Jen-ny!
” Celine squealed again.