Dad
4
A WAVERLY OWL IS A VERY, VERY TRUSTWORTHY OWL.
Jenny jogged back to Dumbarton after field hockey practice, enjoying the wholesome ache in her muscles and the view of the sprawling green campus, the ancient brick buildings, the preppy, pink-cheeked students. All the compulsory exercise she was getting made her feel like one of the lithe, blond, ponytailed girls doing playful cartwheels on the Waverly Academy Web site, though her hair was brown and curly and she was barely five feet tall. After fifteen years in New York City, she’d been shocked to discover she possessed any degree of athletic talent beyond hailing a taxi, but here she was, playing varsity field hockey at boarding school.
She wanted to call up her brother in Washington to brag as soon as she got her new cell phone, but she knew Dan wouldn’t be at all impressed. He’d probably accuse her of being a cliché or something equally mean. Jenny inhaled the late-afternoon air, with its hints of freshly mown grass and woodstove burning off in the distance. She swore she could smell the leaves changing color. She decided to email Dan later about the leaves and not mention the exercise. He was a poet. Poets liked leaves.
“Hey, sexy,” a lazy, stoned-sounding voice called out. Jenny whirled around and saw Heath Ferro lying on his back on one of the long stone benches that were artfully scattered across campus, each with a plaque naming the Waverly alum who had donated it. “Why don’tcha come over here and sit down?” He patted his lap. “Where are you running to, anyway?”
“Away from you!” Jenny called playfully without stopping. She’d kissed him inside the chapel on her very first night at Waverly, and then he’d told everyone they’d done a lot more than that. Apparently Heath really got around, so much so the girls had taken to calling him Pony because, as it had been somewhat ickily explained to her, he got more ass than a pony at the country fair.
She might still be upset about it, but then she’d managed to turn it all back around during the biggest field hockey game of the fall, called Black Saturday, when Waverly played its rival St. Lucius. Callie had given her some made-up lyrics to a cheer that were kind of dirty and a little embarrassing, but Jenny had gotten so into them that she’d spontaneously added a line of her own. She sang it to herself now as she ran along the ancient stone path leading up to Dumbarton: “There is a boy who they call Pony! He’s always acting gross and horny! He thinks he’s got a lot down there, but he sure wears tiny underwear!” She’d gotten back at Heath with that, and even if Heath was a sleazebag, it still felt good to be able to catch the eye of one of the best-looking guys at Waverly. God, she loved this place!
Jenny rushed into room 303 with her adrenaline still high and found her roommate Brett sitting on the window ledge, staring at an owl perched in the maple tree across the lawn. “Hey, Brett,” she greeted her, still out of breath. That’s when she saw her bed was covered with Louis Vuitton luggage. Jenny almost yelped. “Whose stuff is that on my bed?”
“I think Tinsley’s been rearranging things,” Brett offered quietly. “I thought you knew. …”
“I knew she was here, but I didn’t know she was going to just move my stuff like that!” Their encounter that morning had been brief and startlingly unpleasant. Now the sight of her neatly made bed stripped and piled high with Tinsley’s expensive luggage and her own blankets crumpled up and tossed onto a flimsy, sagging cot made her furious. She picked her pillow up off the floor and slapped the dust off it while she tried to calm herself down. “That’s just not fair.”
Brett shrugged and held her Urban Decay Acid Rain painted eyelids closed for a moment. “I really can’t picture Tinsley sleeping on a cot, though. …”
Uch! She’d never known anyone with violet eyes, except for Elizabeth Taylor, who was the most beautiful movie star she could imagine before she got old and kind of fat, but Jenny didn’t care how beautiful Tinsley was—this was just plain mean. But if it made Tinsley happy to have her old bed back, then she might as well have it. Jenny just wished she’d asked first and that she herself didn’t have to sleep on a cot that smelled like the musty basement it must have just come from.
“We missed you at practice today,” Jenny said, perching on her saggy, stupid cot to take off her soggy field hockey socks. Then she felt like a phony because she hadn’t even noticed that Brett wasn’t at practice until she walked into their dorm room and saw her sitting there, still dressed in her tight green cashmere sweater and ivory ankle boots. It was Tuesday, and Jenny had had her portraiture class before practice, meaning she had spent the afternoon sitting next to Easy, drawing and sharing glances and passing notes, and for the rest of the afternoon she had been unable to think of anything but him. Just being near him made Jenny feel kind of blissful and totally forgetful about things … like how he was still going out with Callie.
Jenny took the ball of bedding off the cot and started pulling her fitted sheet around the small, flimsy cot mattress. It fit like saggy granny underwear.
The sound of a band of freshmen singing “Drop It Like It’s Hot” at the top of their lungs drifted through the open window. Brett was still staring absentmindedly at the Hudson. Jenny walked over and sat down on Brett’s unmade bed. Neither Brett nor Callie made their beds, but Jenny wasn’t comfortable enough to leave her sheets and blanket in a tangle like they did. That would be like letting them see her bra, and it was definitely too soon for that. She was still changing in the bathroom.
“You okay?” Jenny asked, not wanting to disturb her, but also not wanting to be the kind of roommate who didn’t ask if everything was okay, when something was so clearly not okay. “Coach said you were sick.”
Brett turned her head toward Jenny. “Something like that.”
There was a reason she felt queasy: Eric. Sure, he was technically a teacher, but he wasn’t her teacher. When he took her home to Lindisfarne, his family estate in Newport, Rhode Island, last week and they sat on the porch of the guesthouse, it didn’t take more than a sip of vintage bordeaux that was older than she was before she blurted out the truth about her family. And Eric Dalton—a Waverly legacy, heir to a veritable American dynasty, with his gorgeous, classy Newport house and gorgeous, classy blue-blood New England family—made her feel intriguing and sexy in spite of her classless upbringing.
Brett tucked her fiery hair behind her ears. Jenny was so sweet, sitting there at the edge of her bed, as if she were afraid of disturbing it. It was no wonder everyone was talking about how Easy Walsh was in love with her. Brett didn’t know if it was true, but she could definitely see how it could happen.
Brett flopped down on her bed next to Jenny, their knees bumping. “You have to swear you won’t tell anyone, okay?” She had only known Jenny for a week now, but Brett had been feeling friendless this year, with Tinsley away and Callie acting like a complete ice queen. And now Tinsley and Callie seemed like they were back to being BFF and were probably plotting to ruin her life. Besides, Jenny already knew about Eric since she’d seen Brett sneaking back into the room in the middle of the night last week.
“I promise.” Jenny drew a cross over her heart.
“Good, because you know how it is when you like someone so much, you just can’t stop thinking about them, and all you want to do is talk about them?” Brett bit the corner of her lip. There was probably at least a little truth to the rumors about Jenny and Easy. Jenny had to understand.
“Yeah,” Jenny said quietly. “I do.” Jenny remembered gazing at the stars with Easy at Heath’s party when he told her he wanted to be in love like in the De Beers diamond ads. He’d been embarrassed about saying it, but Jenny had known just what he meant. He’d said he didn’t have that now—meaning he didn’t have it with Callie—but that he wanted it. She wondered if maybe he wanted it with her.
“Well, you know about this … thing … going on with …” Brett peered closely at Jenny. “You know.” Jenny nodded, so Brett kept going. “But the thing is, he’s not returning my texts or calls.”
?
??How long has it been since you guys talked?”
Brett pretended to have to think about it, but she knew exactly how long it had been. “Two days. I’ve called him twice.” Eleven times, actually, but she didn’t want Jenny to think she was obsessive.
Outside, the same girls who had been singing “Drop It Like It’s Hot” started loudly elaborating on which Waverly boys were the cutest. “Easy Walsh is so hot!” wafted up to the room, and Jenny’s face immediately flushed.
Brett smiled. It looked like Jenny definitely had a secret of her own.
CelineColista: B, I couldn’t finish my paper on Herodotus. U think Dalton will give me an extension?
BrettMesserschmidt: How would I know? I’m not in your class.
CelineColista: Well u guys are friends, right? Maybe you could put in a good word for me?
BrettMesserschmidt: I work with him on DC … so do you.
CelineColista: But don’t you have, like, private meetings?
BrettMesserschmidt: DC business only.
CelineColista: That’s too bad. I mean, for my extension.
5
A WAVERLY OWL DOES NOT ENGAGE IN HALLUCINOGENIC ACTIVITIES, ORGANIC OR OTHERWISE.
“How good did Tinsley look? Like, Jessica Alba in Sin City hot?” Ryan Reynolds asked pleadingly. “What was she wearing? Why have I not seen her yet?”
Brandon Buchanan set his sleek black squash bag down on the worn yet polished hardwood floor of the Richards common room. Even draped with teenage boys, the room felt like an old English hunting lodge, with its dark mahogany moldings, forest green walls, and bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes of classics no one had ever heard of. It kind of made Brandon wish he had one of his father’s pipes.
He rolled his eyes at Julian McCafferty, the tall, long-haired freshman from Seattle who had just come from squash practice with him. Brandon had beaten him, of course, but it was a little too close for him to feel comfortable. Normally, that would have been enough to make Brandon avoid him, but Julian was surprisingly cool. Girls were going to like him too, Brandon thought a little jealously, once he cut his caveman hair.
“Who’s Tinsley?” Julian asked in a mock whisper. As always, the room was crowded with zoned-out boys, exhausted from sports practice and re-acclimating to school life after their relaxing summers at their country and beach houses. ESPN flashed from the cabinet television in the corner, the sound muted, Brandon assumed, so that they could all gossip about Tinsley. They were worse than girls.
Everyone chuckled at Julian’s ignorance. “Dude, clearly you’re a freshman,” said Alan St. Girard, the crunchy junior whose parents both taught philosophy at expensive East Coast liberal arts colleges and reportedly owned a marijuana plantation in New Hampshire. He had bushy brown hair and perpetual beard scruff, which the girls found endearing but Brandon thought disgusting. Fucking shave, dude. “She’s only the foxiest girl on the planet.”
“Isn’t there something in the handbook about her?” asked Teague Williams, his post-soccer practice body dripping sweat on one of the expensive leather armchairs. “Like, ‘Male Waverly Owls, beware this girl. She will tease you and torture you and haunt your dreams with her luscious presence all four years at Waverly and for the rest of your life on earth.’”
“I can’t wait to meet her.” Julian dropped his maroon Nike squash bag onto the floor and pulled his bleached-out dirty blond hair into a ponytail, using the rubber band he kept on his wrist to secure it. Brandon shuddered with distaste. “What’s she look like?”
The guys gave a collective sigh, and Brandon sank into one of the ancient armchairs. Tinsley was hot, but these guys were ridiculous. She was nowhere near as beautiful as Callie, who Brandon had dated all of freshman year before Easy fucking Walsh stole her from him. They’d been at a party in the library, and when he’d gone to go get Callie a drink, like the gentleman that he was, Easy had swooped in and dragged her up to the rare books room and put some kind of southern cowboy spell on her. And now there were all kinds of rumors that he was leaving Callie for Jenny Humphrey, the cute new girl who Brandon had thought could actually get him over Callie. Fucking Walsh. He shot an angry look at Easy’s sprawled-out, horsey-smelling body on the scratchy plaid couch.
“Don’t get your hopes up, kid,” said Ryan as he made room on the couch for Julian to sit. “Tinsley doesn’t even talk to freshmen.”
“Now that she’s back, I have a feeling this year just got a whole lot more interesting,” drawled Easy without looking up from the sketchbook on his lap. Brandon fought the urge to roll his eyes. Was there a girl on campus that Easy was not into? First Callie, then Jenny, now Tinsley? There were rumors he and Tinsley had hooked up at her parents’ house in Alaska spring break freshman year, but Easy had never confirmed the story, not that Brandon even cared.
“Hell, yeah!” Everyone turned to see Heath Ferro standing in the doorway with a wicked grin on his handsome face. “I was just talking to my cousin who graduated from here, like, five years ago, and he told me something freaking awesome. He said that if you walk to the other side of the crater, it gets all swampy and shit, and guess what’s growing there?” Heath looked at everyone expectantly, as though anything he was saying made sense.
“’Shrooms, dudes!” he yelled. “I thought we’d head over to the woods and enjoy some natural highs, Alice in Wonderland style. It has been a long week,” he added, even though it was only Tuesday. “So who’s in?” Heath snapped his fingers impatiently.
Ryan and Alan immediately bumped fists with him. “We’re in.”
Brandon groaned and ran his hands through his freshly showered and gelled hair. “It’s fucking Tuesday. I’ve got five chapters of Tess of the D’Urbervilles to read for tomorrow.”
“Oh, poor Brandon!” Heath snickered in the falsetto he reserved for making fun of his roommate’s girly attributes. “Not five chapters!”
“Fuck off, Ferro. Not everyone’s daddies can buy them A’s.”
“If freshmen aren’t banned, I’d love to partake.” Julian’s deep baritone boomed as he stood up. It was so unfair for a freshman to be so fucking tall and manly. When Brandon was a freshman, he was barely five-foot two and his voice sounded like a girl’s.
Easy dropped his sketchbook to the floor and uncrossed his legs. “Why not?”
Brandon sighed under his breath. Although he wanted to spend as little time as possible around the loathsome Walsh, he wasn’t about to let Easy and some novice freshman make him look like a pussy. “Fine. Let’s get out of here,” he relented. Thomas Hardy was meant to be skimmed anyway.
Easy and Alan tossed a Frisbee back and forth, reminding Brandon of a couple of sloppy golden retrievers, as the group crossed campus to the patch of woods separating the brick buildings from the river. Preppy boys and girls with backpacks and cable-knit sweaters hustled off to the library for a few hours of cramming before curfew, and Brandon wished he could just sit with Callie again on the library steps like they used to, talking and flirting and making out when no one was looking. Instead, he was going hunting for ’shrooms with a bunch of jackass guys, one of whom had actually stolen the girl he loved from him and was possibly now on the verge of breaking her heart.
Brandon’s calfskin Gucci loafers padded down the path through the woods until Heath and Easy stepped off the stone path and into the brush. Brandon tried not to ruin his shoes as they picked their way through the tall weeds and low branches. The woods opened briefly onto a small clearing filled with large rocks that students had been using as a clandestine party spot for decades—the crater. The sky above was darkening, but it wasn’t yet cold.
“He said to look for the biggest rock along the edge and then walk into the woods until it gets soppy.” Heath identified the biggest rock and motioned to them like he was flagging in a plane on the runway.
Brandon frowned at his shoes. The parade of boys crunched the sticks and leaves underfoot, and then suddenly the earth got spongy and damp. “Fuck,” Brandon mut
tered under his breath.
“Behold!” Heath crouched at the base of a tree. “Mushrooms!”
Everyone started to pick them, gathering the dirty caps in their hands. Brandon would have expected them to look a little more exotic. These looked so innocent and, well, culinary, as if they belonged in some kind of Szechuan stir-fry his family’s cook, Greta, might throw together.
“Hate to break it to you, Ferro.” Ryan nibbled on one of the caps and then sniffed it as though he was a mushroom connoisseur, which, given the rumors about his parents, was possible. “But these aren’t the real thing.”
“Shit, man,” Heath muttered. “Well, should we chill at the crater or head back?”
Disappointed votes to chill were murmured, and a few minutes later Brandon felt the cold wetness of the grass soaking through his Dolce & Gabbana jeans as the rest of the guys revisited the topic of Tinsley’s hotness. Brandon closed his eyes and let the sound of the crickets drown out the boys’ voices. He really wasn’t interested in thinking about Tinsley. He loved Callie. She’d dumped him for Easy over a year ago, so they’d been broken up for longer than they’d been together, but still Brandon couldn’t get her off his mind. And she wasn’t helping much—last week he’d bumped into her after one of the girls-only welcome-back parties and she’d drunkenly asked him to sleep with her. He’d just wanted to hold her and talk to her until the alcohol wore off. He would have sat up with her all night, but he wasn’t about to take advantage of her when she was clearly an emotional wreck about whatever was going on with that slimeball Easy. Sleazy Easy.
“The stars are coming out. Chicks love stars,” Heath remarked. “You know who I’d take here?”
“Tinsley,” a few of the guys said in unison.
“Good luck with that, Ferro,” Easy drawled. He was lying on the grass, staring at the sky. Callie had named a star for him once through some cheesy Web site, but looking at the sky right now, he couldn’t imagine looking for his star with Callie. The only girl he wanted to look at stars with was Jenny. If only she were here right now.