The It Girl (3 page)

A cream-colored Mercedes convertible swept past her. She heard a stately clock tower bong out one o’clock.

“Yes,” she whispered, hugging herself. She had definitely arrived.

The truth was, she’d wanted to get out of the cab because she couldn’t wait a second longer to plant her feet on Waverly ground, not because she knew exactly where she was going. Staring at the little brick building beside her, she realized that ivy had grown over the windows and the door was rusted shut. This definitely wasn’t the front office, where she needed to check in. Another car, this one a battleship-gray Bentley, passed her. Jenny decided to follow the parade of luxury cars.

She dragged her bags up the freshly mowed hill, her kitten heels sinking into the slightly wet, springy lawn. A running track circled off to her right, flanked by tall white bleachers. A few girls were running briskly around the track, their ponytails bouncing. At the top of the hill, above the dark green trees, she could see a white church spire and the slate roofs of some more redbrick buildings. The boys with the soccer ball had stopped playing and were now standing together, staring in her direction. Were they staring at
her
?

“D’you need a ride?” a male voice interrupted her thoughts. Jenny looked over, and saw a tan, middle-aged man with dazzling white teeth hanging out the driver-side window of a silver Cadillac Escalade. She could see her reflection in his Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. She looked awkward and silly wearing a too-tight Lacoste cotton polo shirt and dragging her luggage up the hill in a pair of pointy pink kitten-heel sandals. She’d bought the shirt at Bloomingdale’s because she’d been sure it would make her feel like she absolutely belonged at boarding school, and she had gone back to visit the sandals several times before they finally went on sale so she could buy them.

“Um, sure. I’m going to the front office.” She slid into the backseat of the
SUV
, which smelled like new car. A dirty-blond boy with chiseled features was sitting in the passenger seat looking sulky, but he didn’t twist around to speak to her.

“I don’t know, Heath,” the man told the boy quietly. “You may not be able to have the party—your mother and I might need the Woodstock house that weekend.”

“Mother
fucker
,” the boy hissed under is breath. His father sighed.

Jenny barely acknowledged the boy’s rudeness. She only had ears for one word: party.

She felt funny, though, asking the boy about it, since he seemed pretty pissed off. The car stopped at an enormous red-brick building with a small maroon sign next to the stone pathway that said
FRONT
OFFICE
. Jenny squeaked her thanks, grabbed her bags, and made a beeline for the door.

Inside, the waiting room was ballroom size, with shiny floors made of dark cherry wood. A large crystal chandelier hung from the double-height ceiling. Four butter-colored leather couches were arranged in a square around a heavy teak coffee table, and a beautiful, amber-haired boy was stretched out on one of them, reading
FHM
and eating a bag of Fritos.

“Can I help you?” someone asked behind her. Jenny jumped. She turned and saw a Laura Ashley-clad older woman with a very hairsprayed gray bob and watery blue eyes wearing a name tag that read
HELLO
, MY
NAME
IS
MRS
.
TULLINGTON
sitting behind a desk with a little white sign that read
NEW
STUDENTS’
CHECK-IN
.

“Hi!” Jenny peeped. “I’m Jennifer Humphrey. I’m a new student!”

She studied the
Welcome to Waverly
schedule that was taped to the desk. School didn’t officially begin until tomorrow night at the orientation welcome dinner, but sports team tryouts would take place tomorrow during the day. Mrs. Tullington typed some information into a pristine, gunmetal-gray Sony laptop, and then she frowned. “There’s a problem.”

Jenny stared at her blankly.
Problem
? There were no problems in magical Waverly land! Look at how gorgeous that Frito-eating boy was!

“We have you down as a boy,” Mrs. Tullington continued.

“Wait, what?” Jenny snapped back to consciousness. “Did you say a
boy
?”

“Yes … we have you here as
Mr
. Jennifer Humphrey.” The older woman seemed flustered, flipping papers back and forth. “Some students have very old family names, you see, and maybe the admissions committee thought Jennifer was—”

“Oh,” Jenny replied self-consciously, twisting around to see if the boy on the couch had heard, but he was gone. All the Waverly mail she’d gotten had been addressed to a Mr. Jennifer Humphrey. She’d assumed it was just a typo. What a dumb thing to assume.
So
Old Jenny. “What does that mean? I had all my bags shipped to the … the Richards dorm, I think it was?”

“Yes, but that’s the boys’ dorm.” Mrs. Tullington explained this slowly, as if Jenny didn’t get it. “We’ll have to find another space for you.” She flipped through some papers. “The girls’ dorms are all filled up… .” She picked up the phone. “We’ll sort this out. But go see if your things are in Richards dorm. They would have been sent to the lounge on the first floor— that’s where all mailed luggage is held. It’s down the path to your right, fourth building. There’s a sign. We’ll send someone for you once we figure this out.”

“Okay,” Jenny replied happily, picturing all the hot, shirt-less preppy boys she was about to see lounging around Richards. “No problem.”

“The main door should be open. But don’t go into any of the rooms. They’re off limits!” Mrs. Tullington called after her.

“Of course,” Jenny agreed. “Thank you!”

Jenny stood on the stone porch of the front office. From studying the campus maps, she’d learned that Waverly’s dorms, chapel, auditorium, and classrooms were all laid out in a big circle, with the soccer fields in the center. At the back of the circle were the crew houses, the Hudson River, the art gallery, the botany labs, and the library. All of the buildings seemed to be made of brick, with old, heavy windows and white trim.

Strolling excitedly toward the dorms, Jenny had to will herself not to skip. Girls in beat-up Citizens jeans and ragged grosgrain flip-flops were spilling out of Mercedes SUVs and Audi wagons, hugging other girls and talking excitedly about what had happened over the summer at their country houses on Martha’s Vineyard and in the Hamptons. Boys in zip-up hooded sweatshirts and camo shorts were ramming into each other with their shoulders. One guy carrying a Louis Vuitton duffel shouted, “I did so much E this summer, my brain is fried!”

Jenny felt her body stiffen, suddenly intimidated. Everyone looked so beautiful—scrubbed and clean and fashionable without even
trying
to be, which was so much cooler than spending hours primping, like she usually did—and like they’d known one another forever. Jenny took a deep breath and continued along the path.

Then, out of nowhere, a giant potatolike thing swooped down, making a horrific cawing noise, and flew about an inch from Jenny’s face.

“Aghh!” she screamed, swatting in front of her.

She watched as the thing soared into a tree. Scary! It looked like a rat on steroids.

Behind her, Jenny heard a snicker and wheeled around. All the girls were still talking to one another, but two boys in back-wards W baseball caps were sitting on a stone wall, watching. Then she noticed that in her fright, she’d dropped her overpacked suitcase on the path, and it had sprung open.
Oh, God
. Her giant nude extra-support bras, the kind with the extra hook-and-eye clasp and padded straps that she had to use when she had her period, were all over the ground. They were bras a huge, dumpy grandmother might wear.

She quickly shoved the bras back in her suitcase, peeking to see if the two boys sitting on the wall had noticed. They were already greeting some other guy in a white baseball cap, doing that hand-grab half-hug thing that guys do, not paying any attention to Jenny. With the fresh air and lush, rambling scenery, maybe oversized boobs and bras weren’t the kind of thing Waverly kids noticed… .

Then the new arrival turned to Jenny and touched the brim of his ratty white baseball cap with his index finger. He gave her a wink, as if to say,
The air might be fresh, but we’re not totally blind
.

Brandon Buchanan sat on one of his Samsonites and stared at Heath Ferro. No matter when he arrived on campus, he always saw Heath first. Even though they were roommates, Brandon found Heath really annoying most of the time.

“I brought a carton of smokes,” Heath bragged as he unzipped his black medium-size Tumi duffel and showed Brandon the edge of the Camel “unfiltered” box. They were in Richards’ lounge, waiting to get room assignments. It was just a normal common room—the meeting spot where the guys watched
SportsCenter
, shared sausage pizzas from Ritoli’s, and flirted with cute girls during visiting hour—but still, the lounge felt English and regal. The cream-colored plaster ceilings were fifteen feet high, with dark wooden beams, and there were comfortable, worn leather armchairs scattered all over the place. An old cabinet TV that got three network stations and, randomly,
ESPN
, loomed in the corner. On the floor lay a huge, ornate Oriental carpet. Careless cigarette burn holes made the rug look even more historic.

“That’ll last you about a week,” Brandon scoffed, pushing his short wavy golden-brown hair back into its deliberately tou-sled place. Heath smoked like a fiend right outside Richards even though smoking was forbidden on campus, but the faculty constantly looked the other way. It might’ve been because of Heath’s stunning good looks—he was tall, lean, and athletic, with gold-flecked green eyes, sharp cheekbones, and shaggy dark blond hair. But more likely, it was Heath’s family that kept him out of trouble. Heath’s father had donated four and a half million dollars for the Olympic-size natatorium and another million for a three-floor addition to the renovated botany library, so Heath could pretty much do as he damn well pleased and never get so much as a warning.

“You bring your weird girly cream with you this year?” Heath teased.

“It’s moisturizer,” Brandon clarified.

“It’s moisturizer,” Heath echoed in a high-pitched voice.

So what if Brandon took good care of his skin? And liked nice clothes and shoes and liked his wavy hair to be just so? He was neurotic about his height—he was only five-eight—and shaved his chest because he hated the tiny little hairs that grew in the caved-in part of his breastbone. His less-clean friends busted on him to no end. But so what?

“Who you think they’re gonna room us with?” Heath asked.

“Don’t know. Maybe Ryan. Unless he gets a single again.” Ryan Reynolds’s father had invented the soft contact lens and openly used his wealth as leverage to his son’s advantage. Lots of kids’ parents bribed the school, but usually it was kept a secret.

Heath snickered. “Maybe you’ll get paired up with Walsh.”

“Nah, even the administration knows better than that,” Brandon replied. Just the sound of that name—Walsh, as in Easy Walsh—made Brandon’s blood curdle.

“So, how’s Natasha?” Heath recited her name with a bad Russian accent.

Brandon sighed. Last April he had started going out with Natasha Wood, who went to Millbrook Academy, after Easy stole his old girlfriend, Callie Vernon, from him. “We broke up two weeks ago.”

“No shit. You cheat?”

“Nah.”

“What, then?”

Brandon shrugged. They’d broken up because he was still moony over Callie. He and Natasha had been making out on the Harwich main beach in Cape Cod, and Brandon had accidentally called Natasha Callie by mistake. Oops. Natasha had climbed up the rickety wooden lifeguard stand and refused to come down until Brandon went away. Forever.

“Whose stuff is that?” Heath looked across the room and kicked his feet up on the brown tweed couch. There was a whole pile of bright pink canvas L.L. Bean bags that didn’t have an owner yet.

Brandon shrugged. “Don’t know.” He picked up one of the tags. “‘Jennifer Humphrey.’”

“There’s going to be a guy named Jennifer Humphrey in this dorm? Freaky.”

“No,
I’m
Jennifer.”

A little curly-haired girl in a sweet light purple Marc Jacobs knockoff skirt stood in the common-room doorway. Brandon knew the skirt was a knockoff, because he’d bought Natasha the real deal this summer. This Jennifer had a tiny upturned nose and pink cheeks and wore little skinny-heeled pink shoes with tiny cut-outs at the front so he could just glimpse her toes peeking through.

“Hi,” she said simply.

“Uh,” Brandon stammered. “You’re not … supposed to be—”

“No … actually … I am.” She laughed a little. “I was assigned to this dorm.”

“So you’re
Mister
Jennifer Humphrey?” Heath butted in, crossing one foot over the other.

“Yeah. Waverly had me down as a guy.”

Brandon had a pretty good idea what Heath was thinking right then:
With tits like those, you certainly don’t look like a guy
. God, his friends annoyed him sometimes. “I’m Brandon.” He offered his hand politely, stepping in front of Heath.

Jenny tugged at her skirt. “Hello.” She felt a little flustered. Of the seven boys who were milling around the lounge with their stuff, she’d picked out the two cutest. Brandon was gorgeous, with his flawless skin, perfect dark gold hair, and long, luxurious eyelashes, but he was prettier than she was! Jenny liked boys who looked a bit rougher and messier, like the one sitting behind Brandon, whose dirty blond hair was slightly greasy and whose Kelly green oxford shirt looked slept in. She stared at him again, realizing that he was the boy who’d given her the ride up the hill. The one who was having the party. Didn’t he recognize her?

“I’m just supposed to wait here until they figure out what to do with me.” She looked directly behind Brandon, trying to jog his hot friend’s memory. “Can I hang out with you?” She tried to keep her voice steady.
New Jenny does not squeak when inviting herself to hang out with hot boarding school boys!
she silently scolded herself, digging her nails into her palms.