Julian swallowed a big chunk of apple, hardly pausing to chew. “I’ve never been in here before.” His eyes wandered across the high angled ceilings and the huge walls of windows.
“Sometimes I like to pretend I’m some famous artist and this is my SoHo loft.” Jenny stepped back from her angled desk to look at her preliminary drawing. She’d sketched in Julian’s figure, crouched somehow both awkwardly and elegantly in the armchair. The sleek lines of the graphite seemed to suit him well as a subject—if she were to change to another medium, she’d definitely lose some of the immediacy of him she thought she was capturing. The scene gave her the feeling that it could disappear at any moment: Julian could stand up and stretch out and walk away. The spontaneity of pencil just seemed right for him.
He looked right at Jenny, sending a little jolt through her, like when she was in a hurry and only had time for an espresso shot in the morning. “Except you can see trees outside.” She tried to capture Julian’s sagging shoulders, the relaxed posture of his body that seemed to contrast with his almost uncapturable energy. “They have trees in the city, you know.” “Oh, yeah?” He lifted his chin at her. “Like, five.” “Ever heard of Central Park?” Jenny asked incredulously, trying not to smile. Her pencil soared across the paper. “It’s, like, nine hundred acres of trees.” Julian chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t get defensive. I just like my cities with trees.” “Are you going to start bashing New York? Because I don’t think I can draw anyone who doesn’t realize it’s the greatest city on the planet.” Jenny paused, lifting her pencil from the paper threateningly. “I mean, that would just go against everything I believe in,” she said playfully.
“Well, I kind of already told my mom I was getting my portrait done. So I’d better not screw it up now.” “How could I disappoint someone’s mother?” Jenny sighed with mock resignation and returned to her drawing. How adorable was it that he’d told his mom about their portrait session? “You really do have a great face, you know,” she couldn’t help adding. It was true. After sketching in the framework of the drawing, Jenny finally was able to concentrate on the part she’d been trying hard to avoid staring at: Julian’s face. “Very expressive.” “Girls like the broken nose,” he said a little shyly. “It makes them think I’m tough.” Jenny blew a stray hair out of her eyes. “Are you?” “Depends on your definition.” “I think being tough means . . .” She held her pencil away from the paper for a minute to think. She could feel his eyes scanning her face. “Means not being afraid to make a fool of yourself.” “Then I’m Rambo and the Terminator rolled into one.” Julian laughed. “I’ve been known to make a fool of myself more than once, and have a good time doing it.” He had a great, goofy laugh—it made his mouth open so wide you could practically tell whether he’d had his tonsils out. Immediately, she tore off the top sheet of her pad of paper and started a new sketch. She had to draw his laugh—the way it made his whole body shake with energy, with delight, with pure pleasure in being exactly where he was, at exactly that moment. Jenny could read it all in his body language, and she was determined to try and capture it on paper. She thought again about the assignment Mrs. Silver had given them: to reveal something about the subject’s personality. She wanted everyone to look at her portrait of Julian and think, Yeah, that is totally what that kid is like!
“Um, would you mind if I drew you while you’re laughing?” Jenny asked, a little tentatively. “I mean, you don’t have to be laughing the whole time or anything—but if you could keep trying, that would be great?” “First you want to me to sit in that baby-bear chair, and now you want me to pose laughing?” Julian stared at her incredulously, looking amused nonetheless. “You didn’t tell me this was going to be hard.” And then he laughed again, and Jenny’s pencil flitted across the paper. “You’re going to have to tell me some good jokes.” She groaned. “I’m really horrible at jokes. I always ruin them.”
“Well,” Julian teased, “if being tough means not being afraid to make a fool of yourself . . .” A giggle came bursting out of Jenny’s throat. His energy was infectious. “All right,” she said, her brain searching way back into its recesses for the sort of witty, creative joke that might impress Julian. Nothing. “Okay . . . Knock, knock.” He burst out laughing, and the sounds of the two of them seemed to rise up to the ceiling and fill the entire room.
Time passed like nothing at all, and it wasn’t until Julian had to get up and stretch for the fourth time, and made his millionth adorable, funny face for Jenny’s amusement, that she realized, with a shock, that she had completely missed the Women of Waverly meeting.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Date: Thursday, October 10, 8:55 P.M.
Subject: Uh, hello?
J,
Did you get my e-mail? Playing hard to get? Well, fine. It’s working. . . .
T
27
A WAVERLY OWL KNOWS THAT JUICY SECRETS ARE MEANT TO BE SHARED.
Callie yawned and tried to psych herself up to get out of her cozy beanbag, but the vodka she’d drunk during the WoW meeting had made her limbs heavy, and she quickly gave up. Heath had, as promised, come bearing gifts—in this case, three bottles of Stoli, wrapped up snugly in sweatshirts in his backpack. Much to the delight of the ladies, he had worn a long blond wig and told everyone he was the new Swedish exchange student, Inga. There was always something bizarre about football guys using Halloween as an excuse to wear cheerleader outfits and stuff balloons up their sweaters, but Heath had been a natural Inga, in his normal boy clothes and gorgeous head of long, silky blond hair that he kept stroking throughout the meeting. At 9:10, just before Pardee generally started doing her pre-curfew rounds, the Women of Waverly meeting disbanded, the girls rising reluctantly from their cushy beanbags.
“Ladies.” Heath bowed graciously, the hair of his wig almost touching the ground. “It has been a real pleasure.” “Looks clear.” Brett had her entire torso stuck out Kara’s open window. She pulled herself back in and took another sip from her not-just-Arizona iced tea. “You should get out of here.” To everyone’s surprise, she gave him a quick, drunken hug before unceremoniously shoving him toward the window. Callie raised an eyebrow. Since when did Brett Messerschmidt deign to touch sleazy Heath Ferro?
Once Kara closed the window behind him, the other girls started to trickle out the door, still buzzing with excitement and a little tipsy. The discussion topic for the night had been love, and everyone had something to say about it, especially when their tongues were loosened by Heath’s vodka. But for most of the meeting, Callie had just nestled into her beanbag and nursed her spiked Country Time lemonade. It was great that Rifat and Benny and Sage could all talk about their crushes and loves and heartbreaks and all, but Callie wasn’t exactly in a position to share what was happening with her, no matter how relevant her current goings-on were to the subject at hand.
“Coming, babe?” Benny kicked her socked toe into Callie’s beanbag and giggled, her thick, perfectly shiny brown hair neatly in place behind her small, diamond-studded ears. Even when Benny was drunk, she never managed to look it. Apparently that was one of the genetic benefits of being practically descended from aristocracy. “You need to get upstairs and dry out.” Callie sighed heavily and started to get to her feet, but the room immediately started spinning like an evil merry-go-round, and she sank back into her seat. She rested the back of her hand over her eyes and wished everyone would just go away. She peeked through her fingers to see if Benny was going to bug her more, but she was already headed for the door. Callie couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her dizzy, helpless self. Brett and Kara were standing at the door, their heads together, whispering. Great. They were probably complaining about her drunkenness, how they were stuck with her. Bitches. But then Brett gave her a smile that looked sincere and disappeared out the door.
Callie sniffled miserably and noticed for the first time a run in the knee of her dove
gray nylons. “Fuck.” She fingered the snag, wondering if she’d gotten it from sitting on that stinking hay in the stables. An almost unbearable wave of longing washed over her as she thought about how just a few hours ago she had been alone with Easy, and she’d only let him kiss her as they said goodbye. It had taken an almost unprecedented amount of self-control on her part, and she knew that if he were in front of her right now, she’d throw herself at him and devour him with kisses. Why the fuck had she been holding out for so long? He was in love with her—finally. And she loved him. “Why does anything else have to matter?” “What?” Kara, who had been stooping down to pick up an empty Dixie cup off the floor, stood up and looked at Callie quizzically, her round cheeks flushed pink with alcohol. Callie certainly hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud, but once she did, it was like the seal was broken. Although her tongue moved slowly in her mouth, she couldn’t stop it.
Callie re-crossed her legs so that she couldn’t see the snag anymore. “You know. Why isn’t love ever enough? Like, why do other things matter so much?” Kara nodded her head slowly. Callie felt a touch of warmth for Kara for not staring at her like she was insane, instead ignoring the probably drunken sound of her voice and listening to her words. That was sweet. She was sweet. “What do you mean? What other things?” Kara asked.
“You know,” Callie repeated, leaning back into her chair, enjoying the noise the little beans—or whatever the hell was inside—made as they shifted to accommodate her. That’s more like it, she thought drunkenly. “All the hiding your real feelings . . . and sneaking around. Just so people don’t get hurt . . . when all you want to do is just be in love.” She felt herself waving her arms about her, but they seemed to be doing it on their own, without any sort of signal from her brain.
Kara flopped into a chair next to Callie and put her elbows on her knees. She was wearing a flattering chocolate-colored tunic with bell sleeves over a short black skirt and black tights. It wasn’t really a look Callie would go for herself, but it seemed to suit Kara well. She took a swig of her own drink. “Wait, so what exactly are you talking about?” Callie pushed a tangled piece of hair back from her face. “Um, you kind of have to swear not to tell anyone, okay?” Kara’s friendly greeny-brown eyes seemed to smile at her as she nodded solemnly. She reminded Callie a little of a girl who had been her best friend way back in the second grade. Alena something. Yeah, Alena was nice. “I swear.”
Callie lowered her chin a little, her head starting to feel heavy. “Well . . . Easy and I are sort of seeing each other again.” Kara’s mouth formed a little O of surprise. “Oh, wow.” She exhaled loudly. She crossed her ankles and Callie caught a glimpse of her anklet—a tiny, worn-out leather strap with a peace-sign pendant on it.
“I mean, I know it’s really shitty,” Callie continued quickly. “Because of the promise I made to Jenny and all . . . which I really meant to keep.” She dug her long nails into her scalp. “But it’s just too hard. I still love him. Am I supposed to, you know, fight it? Forever?” She pictured herself as a glamorous thirtysomething interior designer or big-shot editor in the city, owning her own swanky uptown apartment and having weekly salons and soirees where exotic and brilliant movie stars and writers and artists came to get drunk and flirt. Then one day, raggedy starving-artist Easy would turn up on her doorstep and tell her he still loved her. And she was supposed to turn him away even then? It just wasn’t fair.
“No,” Kara answered emphatically, surprising Callie. She wasn’t sure why she was sharing this with Kara, when Kara and Jenny were kind of buddy-buddy. But something about Kara—maybe the way she looked kind of tortured herself?—had compelled Callie to open up. That and the vodka. Obviously. “I mean, you have to be a little sensitive, of course, because there are a lot of people involved.” She shrugged her petite shoulders. “But if you’re in love . . . that’s out of your control, right? We don’t get to pick the people we fall in love with. And it’s really nothing to be ashamed of, is it?”
“Not at all.” Callie nodded. She raised her iced tea bottle toward her and they drunkenly clinked glasses, both giggling. “There aren’t that many real things in this world, you know? And love is one of them,” she slurred, sounding like a cheesy pop song—or a prolific stoner.
“You know . . .” Kara cleared her throat after sipping her drink. “I’m kind of . . . seeing someone in secret too.” It was Callie’s turn to be shocked. “Just tell me it’s not Heath Ferro, okay?” Heath had sat next to Kara all night, kind of staring at her with his googly eyes, like he was picturing her naked. Because if she had to listen to Kara talk about being in love with skeezoid Heath, she’d probably vomit. Which, admittedly, she’d probably be doing pretty soon anyway.
Kara laughed. “It’s not Heath. But you’ll promise not to tell anyone either, okay? I mean, it would be really . . . weird if this got out.” Callie nodded as emphatically as she could in her drunken state. Her stomach was already started to gurgle, and she knew—unfortunately—from experience that once you started thinking about vomiting, that meant it wasn’t too far in the future.
“It’s, uh . . . Brett.” WOW! was right.
28
A FORMER ENEMY CAN OFTEN BE AN OWL’S MOST VALUABLE ALLY.
Brandon hesitated outside the door of Easy Walsh’s room, not quite confident he should be doing this. He hated Walsh with a passion—the way he’d swept in like a vulture last year and stolen Callie away from him, and then the way he’d tossed Callie aside as soon as funky, cute little Jenny Humphrey came along, and the way he was tossing Jenny aside right now. He hated everything about him, including the way his jeans were always just so perfectly splattered with paint, so as to remind everyone in the entire world that he was an artist. Everything about him was just so fucking effortless—and it drove Brandon absolutely insane.
And yet, they’d had sort of a cease-fire moment when Brandon bumped into him in the woods earlier in the week. Walsh had actually asked for his advice—like he wasn’t even aware of the fact that Brandon was waiting for the day when he got expelled so that he could gleefully wave goodbye to him forever. If Walsh could be big about it and ask for Brandon’s opinion on something, then, well, Brandon wasn’t going to let him be the only mature one. Resolutely, he knocked on the door.
“Yeah?” a muffled voice called out from the inside, distractedly. Brandon opened the door and stood in the doorway awkwardly. Easy was lying on his back on his unmade bed, hands cupped under his head, staring at the ceiling. Brandon reflexively glanced up to see if maybe there was something there—a dirty poster, or maybe some of those glow-in-the-dark star stickers, but there was nothing.
“Hey.” Brandon coughed. “You busy?” “Dude, do I look busy?”
Brandon bristled, but then Easy turned his head slightly and gave him a half-grin. If he was surprised to see him there, his face showed no sign of it. Thankfully, Easy’s pothead roommate, Alan St. Girard, was off somewhere, probably making out with his new girlfriend, Alison Quentin, who was also way too good for him.
“Hey, everyone works in different ways.” Brandon shrugged, trying to look as casual as Easy.
“Definitely not working.” Easy rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. He had on his requisite paint-covered jeans and a T-shirt that looked like it had once—a long, long time ago—been white. Bob Dylan’s harmonica was screeching out of the white iPod docking station. “What’s up?” “I don’t know.” Brandon picked up a notebook off a desk chair and placed it gingerly on the overflowing desk, then sat down. This was totally awkward. He was going to ask Walsh for girl advice? “This . . . girl. She’s driving me nuts.” Easy nodded slowly. “The one at the party? Leather jacket? Free Tibet?” Brandon felt his chest puff up with pride. “Yeah, Elizabeth. She’s awesome, but she’s sort of hard to get, you know?” Brandon played with the French cuff of his navy pin-striped Banana Republic dress shirt. “The thing is, she’s kind of like you—she’s like a, you know, free spirit. Doesn’t-
want-to-be-tied-down kind of thing.” “So you want my advice?” Easy rubbed his neck, sounding a little surprised.
Brandon bit the inside of his cheek. “Uh, yeah. I like her. I want to be with her. I don’t want to chase her away or anything, though.” “Well, if she’s like me, then you’ve got to just let her be who she is.” Easy sat up and swung his feet to the floor. Both his white socks had giant holes in the toes. Didn’t his parents give him packages of new socks for Christmas like everyone else’s? Even if they didn’t—was it so hard to buy them yourself?
Brandon tore his eyes away from Easy’s socks. He scanned the room, counting five paper coffee cups from Maxwell Hall—he recognized them from the little maroon owl on the white background. Either Easy or his roommate had a coffee problem. And both of them had a cleanliness problem. He tried to focus on what Easy was saying. “I definitely don’t want her to not be who she is—I just want to be with her as she, you know, is who she is.”