The It Girl (23 page)

“Yeah, I guess I can do that.” She smiled quietly to herself and ran her hands along the guide rails on the dock to climb aboard.

As Callie rounded the corner to Dumbarton, she saw Easy blocking the front doorway. Her first instinct was to turn in the other direction and go back to the playing fields.

But Easy saw her. “Wait.” He started down the concrete steps. “Come back.”

Callie turned reluctantly around. She flashed back to blurry images of the party last night: a mess of tequila bottles, Heath’s ugly Celtic tattoo, Easy peeking out from the door beads, Heath’s juvenile follow-up e-mail. Ever since the beginning of the year, everyone had been making fun of how Heath ponied all the girls; and sure, she’d been drunk, angry with Brett, and even angrier at Easy, but why had she let Heath pony her, too?

“Hey,” she answered gruffly.

“So. You have fun last night?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

“I’m sorry.” She flapped her hands against her maroon and blue plaid hockey kilt. “About the … you know. The thing. It was stupid. A drinking game.”

“It definitely caught me off guard.” Easy shuffled his foot against a pebble on the walkway. Seeing Easy awkward like this made Callie melt.

“That was a weird party.” She looked down.

Easy didn’t answer.

“They weren’t like that last year,” Callie went on. “They were just fun.”

She sat down on the steps and pressed her knees together, fighting back an overwhelming urge to squeeze her eyes shut. “I just want things with us to be like last year, too. We had so much fun.”

“Yeah,” Easy said softly.

“What’s happened with us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe we could get it back.” Callie raised her head hope-fully. “Maybe if we just, I don’t know. Go somewhere off campus and talk. Somewhere where nobody else is. Anywhere you want. I’ll even go riding with you,” she added impulsively. Easy used to always try to get her to ride with him and she never had.

“You would?”

“If they don’t boot me out of here, yeah.” She shifted on the step. “I still don’t know what Jenny’s going to do. I mean, I don’t think she wants to tell on me, but she doesn’t want to get in trouble.”

Easy stared at his sneakers. “I don’t think Jenny
should
get in trouble.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that.” Callie heard the edge in her own voice.

“I think you should take the blame. Jenny has nothing to do with this.”

“If I take the blame, I’ll be expelled. You want that?”

Easy shook his head. “No. I … I don’t know. If only there was a way for neither of you to get in trouble… .”

“I don’t get it.” Callie stared at him. “Why do you care so much whether or not she gets in trouble? You guys didn’t even know each other until I …” Suddenly, it was as if a lightbulb had gone off over her head. What Brandon had told her after the pre-Black Saturday party. The writing on Jenny’s arm. Heath’s gossipy e-mail—
two people looking lovingly into each other’s eyes
. They were both so open to flirting with each other when Callie asked them to.

Easy liked Jenny. Not because Callie had told him to like her, either. Because he really did.

Callie shoved her thumb into her mouth and turned away so that he couldn’t see the expression on her face.

Easy watched her as she turned, wondering what she was thinking. How could he save both Jenny and Callie? The only thing he could think of might put his own place at Waverly in jeopardy. Was he man enough to do that?

Callie turned around again. “I guess whatever happens happens.”

“Who knows. They still might kick me out.”

She was quiet for a second. “I wish I could just, like, turn back time.”

Easy laid his hand over Callie’s. “I know,” he responded, thinking. This … whatever it was … with Jenny—it felt too big for him to understand. And maybe too scary. Looking at Callie, sitting on the steps in her field hockey kilt and after-practice flip-flops, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and without a stitch of makeup, she looked like a kid. Not a worldly, full-of-emotion adult. She was sweet and safe and something he understood. He hated to think of leaving her— whether that meant leaving her for Jenny or leaving Waverly completely. “Maybe I can make that happen,” he said, squeezing his fingers around hers.

An hour later, Brett walked back down the gangplank, hugging herself, her mind reeling from what she’d just done.

Eric Dalton had taken off her clothes and kissed her every-where. Then he’d taken his own clothes off slowly, as if he were in a strip club. Brett had never seen a guy take his clothes off
in the daylight
. He’d kept his eyes on her the whole time. They’d massaged each other and fooled around and then, just when things were going to go … further, she’d suddenly told him she needed some fresh air. Being with Eric was more than she had expected. More than her fantasy about him had been. It felt overwhelming. And not necessarily entirely in a good way. She needed to think.

And then, who did she see standing at the end of the dock? Fuck.

“There she is,” Jeremiah muttered to himself. “I thought you weren’t into sailing.”

There were huge circles under his eyes. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt that said
CBGB
OMFUG
, that punk club in Manhattan’s East Village, and he was carrying a giant

L.L. Bean duffel bag with his initials embroidered into one side. Brett felt a stab of guilt—something about Jeremiah, tough and cool, toting around a bag that no doubt his mommy had gotten monogrammed for him, seemed really vulnerable and sweet.

“Oh. Hey.”

“Hey?” Jeremiah shook his head. “That’s all you can say,
Hey
?”

“Well,” Brett tried to walk past him, but he stopped her with his arm. His hand gripped her bicep tightly. For a split second she was a little afraid and looked back to the boat for help. Then she realized—this was Jeremiah. She wrenched herself from his grasp. “Don’t touch me like that! Didn’t you get my message?”

“What, so you break up with somebody on a voice mail?” he yelled back. “That’s real classy. I thought you were better than that.”

Brett didn’t want to have this out right in front of Eric’s boat—Eric, who had undressed very slowly. Eric, who had touched her deftly and maturely, not in the fumbling, grabby way boys her age did. Eric, who hadn’t gotten mad when Brett covered herself with the Ralph Lauren paisley sheets and said they should stop. She started walking down the path back to campus. “Fine.” She turned back. “I’m breaking up with you in person, then. You happy?”

“I don’t suppose you could give me any fucking reasons, could you?”

“Sure,” Brett scoffed. “Did you really think this was serious? There. That’s one.”

Jeremiah stopped. His eyes were all puffy and red. It looked as if he hadn’t gone to bed yet.

“Yeah. I
did
think we were serious. Why else would I ask you to come to California with me?”

“Well …” She stared at the ground.

“But obviously there’s somebody else,” he ventured. “I was told to look for you here. This is some guy’s boat, right? You were with some guy down there, on his boat, in his cabin? C’mon, Brett. That’s a little trashy, don’t you think?”

Brett prickled and narrowed her eyes. As if he were one to talk about low class, using that stupid townie accent! Then it hit her. “Wait, who told you I’d be here?”

Jeremiah shrugged. “Why does it matter?” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a pack of Camel Lights. “The point is, somebody told me, and you made it really clear. So fuck it. It’s your loss.”

He turned and loped back up to the green, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Wait,” Brett called hoarsely. A streak of nerves ran through her. “Who told you I’d be—?”

But he was too far away to hear, and she didn’t want to yell. She turned back and stared down at the docks. Eric’s boat bobbed placidly on the water, as if it hadn’t just almost been witness to the most life-changing moment of Brett’s existence. With a few short steps, she could go back down there and climb back into bed next to Eric. They could drink wine and talk about things and he could make her feel better about everything. Then she could have sex with him, for her first time ever.

But she couldn’t. And she wasn’t sure why.

On Monday morning, Jenny sat at the large, round oak table in Dean Marymount’s office, a few minutes into her Disciplinary Committee meeting. The room smelled like a combination of old books and new paint. Easy sat only a few chairs away; Brett, Ryan, Celine, and the other DC members, as well as Mr. Pardee, Mr. Dalton, and Dean Marymount, sat in a line on the other side of the table, their hands folded and their eyes fixed carefully on her. Because it was DC members only, Callie wasn’t allowed to be at the hearing. Jenny pictured Callie nervously smoking a whole pack of cigarettes inside Dumbarton right now, in anticipation of the verdict.

On the wall across from Jenny were silver-framed paintings created by Waverly’s graduating classes, 1985 through present.

They were handprints, in different poster-paint colors, each footnoted with the student’s name. Even Waverly students’ hands had a wealthy look about them. She wondered what hers would look like up there with the others. Then she wondered if she’d be at Waverly long enough to even to put her handprint on her class’s painting.

Talk about down to the wire. She still hadn’t decided what she was going to say in DC yet, and now it was time. Marymount, looking especially suburban in a navy argyle sweater vest under his maroon Waverly blazer and his gold wire-rimmed round glasses, licked his finger to turn the page of his steno pad. “Okay. Mr. Pardee, the notes here say that Mr. Walsh was caught in Miss Humphrey’s room. They were talking, and Mr. Walsh was nearly naked. That’s correct?”

“That’s right,” confirmed Mr. Pardee. “I caught them, and it looked as if some sexual activity had taken place.” He looked down at the table then, color rising on his neck. Jenny bit the inside of her cheek.

Marymount swung his gaze over to Jenny. “Miss Humphrey?”

This was it
. Time to either sell out Callie, or sell out herself and her new life. She took a deep breath, even though she had no idea what she was about to say.

“It was all my fault.”

Everyone in the room turned to Easy. He cleared his throat.

“Excuse me?” Marymount asked.

“It was all my fault,” he repeated. “See, I was looking for Callie. I’d been asleep, in my boxers, and I went over like that. I wandered into their room, but Callie wasn’t there. So I started talking to Jenny, but she in no way invited me in. That’s when Pardee caught us. It might have looked like Jenny and I were together, but we weren’t. She really had nothing to do with this.”

Jenny’s mouth fell open.

“I sat on her bed,” he went on. “She didn’t ask me to. I just went ahead and did it.”

Marymount ran his hand through his thinning sandy hair. “Do you realize the repercussions of that? The inappropriateness?”

“Yeah.” Easy hung his head.

Jenny bit her lip and sat on her hands. The student part of the committee stared at her blankly, their faces completely devoid of emotion. Most likely because everyone was still hun-gover from Saturday night. Although she was trying her hardest to be unemotional, inside, she felt like a malfunctioning pinball machine. She was off the hook, but now Easy was in major trouble. What if he got kicked out? Would everyone blame her? More important, did Jenny risk losing the first boy she might even … love?’

Marymount straightened up and rolled his knuckles on the desk. “Miss Humphrey? This is what happened?”

Jenny nodded slightly. It was true, after all. Sort of.

“Well, even so, this isn’t the best way to start off the year, especially with your cheer at the field hockey game. I want you to report to my office next week.” Marymount frowned. “I think we’ll have to figure out something to keep you out of trouble.”

Jenny nodded. “Okay.”

Marymount turned back to Easy. “Just so we’re clear. Mr. Walsh, you’re taking all the blame for this?”

Easy took a deep breath. He’d dreamed of this moment, the very second they
actually
kicked him out of Waverly. Somewhere inside of him it had always felt sort of inevitable. He’d imagined what he’d say, what he’d be wearing. He’d crazily imagined that he’d have on this red Mighty Morphin Power Rangers outfit he had as a kid and would wave around one of his dad’s unloaded vintage rifles, just to freak them out a little. He’d have his oversized
Terminator
Dolce & Gabbana sun-glasses on his forehead. He’d tell all the Waverly staff precisely what he thought of them and then he’d climb on Credo and ride off into the sunset.

But things never happened as you imagined them. Now he broke out in a cold sweat in his white Brooks Brothers button-down and maroon pressed Waverly jacket. He thought of all the stuff he’d miss if they booted him out. The owls. The way the sun set orange and purple over the Hudson. His favorite stained glass window in the chapel. Playing soccer with Alan when they didn’t feel like studying. The cafeteria’s cherry pie and the cheerful cafeteria worker Mabel, who was from a little town near Lexington. Callie. Jenny. He’d miss everything he saw in Jenny.

“Well?” Marymount prompted again.

“Yes.” He nodded. “I am.”

“Well, then,” Marymount continued in a small, disappointed voice. “Committee, do we find Mr. Walsh guilty? All in favor?”

Brett, Mr. Dalton, Mr. Pardee, and Benny raised their hands. The freshman and sophomore DC committee members shrugged apologetically but raised their hands too. Finally, Alan reluctantly raised his hand, and so did the two senior girl members.