“Dinner would be more fun,” she flirted. She tilted her head slightly so that a lock of strawberry blond hair fell in front of her face.
Sebastian appraised her, his smile widening. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”
“Pick me up at eight. Dumbarton,” she said as a late-arriving senior appeared breathlessly outside the revolving door, a “what the fuck?” look on his face when he saw Callie and Sebastian trapped inside. “Don’t be late.”
She gave the door a push and Sebastian was spit out inside the atrium. She glanced back over her shoulder to give him a smile to show that she was serious.
The look on his face was priceless.
10
A WAVERLY OWL ALWAYS PLAYS BY THE RULES—AND NOT THE MADE-UP ONES.
“Watch this, Ferro,” Brandon Buchanan said sarcastically as he threw his sweaty squash practice clothes into the wooden hamper at the foot of his bed and carefully replaced the lid. “This is what you do with dirty clothes.”
Heath lay on his back, shirtless, on his unmade bed, reading his Dark Knight comic book. “Don’t be such a douchebag.” He didn’t even glance up at Brandon. The floor of Heath’s half of the room was covered with rumpled clothing that gave off a host of offensive odors. Normally, Brandon just dealt with it, but on Friday afternoon, after a long week of the guys wise-cracking about his imaginary Swedish girlfriend, all he wanted to do was relax in a clean—or at least, relatively clean—room.
With a sigh, Brandon slid into his wooden desk chair, his hair still wet from his post-practice shower. He loved the “ aching of muscles that only came when you gave your hardest. The team’s first squash match was next week, against their rivals, St. Lucius. Brandon had been so busy psyching himself up for it—and daydreaming about Hellie—that he hadn’t even opened the e-mail from Brett Messerschmidt with his Secret Santa assignment. Already, the campus was abuzz with Secret Satan—there wasn’t a doubt in Brandon’s mind that Heath was behind it, and he was determined not to give his annoying horny roommate the satisfaction of buying anything perverted for his Secret Santa gifts. Brandon clicked open his e-mail from Brett and frowned. “Who is Mark Fred-erickson?”
“Dude, you’re not supposed to tell anyone who your Secret Satan is!” Heath dropped his comic book in disgust. He propped himself up on his pillow, his disheveled hair sitting on top of his head like a bad hat. He blew a kiss to the giant poster of Megan Fox in Transformers that hung crookedly over his bed. Brandon was forbidden to touch it—as if he wanted to.
“I love you too much to harbor any secrets,” Brandon shot back sarcastically.
“Wait, Mark Frederickson—I think I know that guy.” Heath’s eyes lit up. “He’s always reading Moby-Dick. Takes it with him everywhere—I saw him reading it in the locker room the other day. Moby-Dick! You can totally fuck with him. Nice.”
Brandon cringed at Heath’s advice. “Everyone in Doc Gilbert’s class reads Moby-Dick. I’m sure it’s not because he likes it.” The last thing Brandon wanted to do was give some stranger something perverted. “I was thinking more like a sweater or something,” Brandon replied, closing his laptop.
“Man, have some sack.” Heath stared at Brandon in disbelief. He swung his bare feet to the floor and sat up, scratching his bare chest. “Get the guy some anal beads. Or what about a set of chocolate dicks from that adult candy shop in Wickam?” His green eyes widened and he held his hands in the air to indicate something huge. “A Moby dick.”
“I don’t know if it’s a real word.” Brandon glanced out the window. Snow was falling, and under one of the gaslights on the path in front of Richardson, two people stood with their arms around each other. “And I’m not going two towns over to buy some X-rated candy,” Brandon scoffed. Since Brandon and Heath’s tryst with the Dunderdorf twins over Thanksgiving, the immediate buddy feeling of having accomplished something together had receded. Brandon had reverted to his disdainful feelings toward Heath, whose slothful qualities seemed to announce and define him wherever he went.
Heath continued to harangue him with a list of suggested gifts, each one as vile as the next.
It was too much. Brandon grabbed his black Diesel bomber jacket from the hook on the door. “Shut the fuck up. I’m going to buy him a fucking sweater, all right?”
He slammed the door behind him, but still managed to hear Heath shout, “I bet he’d like a whale-shaped dildo better!”
“Look what my Secret Santa got me!” Teague Williams thundered down the hall, waving something red and lacy over his head. Brandon jumped out of the way.
Alan St. Girard snatched the red thing from his hands and held it up against his flannel shirt. “What the fuck is this?” Alan asked, fingering the lace.
“It’s a cupless bra, dude.” Teague snatched it back from him and wrapped it around his neck. “I hope she wore it first!”
Alan leaned forward and sniffed. “Smells like chick.”
Brandon hurried out the door, the cold air feeling good against his skin. Christ—it was only the second day of this whole Secret Satan madness. Another whole week of this? He just wanted to get it over with. A glance at his watch told him the stores in Rhinecliff would still be open, and he decided to make the hike into town. Get this Mark kid a nice present and be done with it.
A light snow began to fall as he reached Main Street, and the freshly shoveled sidewalks were covered with a dusting of powder. He thought of Hellie in Switzerland and wished, for the millionth time, that she went to Waverly instead of some stupid Swiss boarding school where half the students were descended from royalty. The streetlights snapped on as Brandon stepped up from the curb, a sign he always considered good luck. Fuck Heath. The degenerate Secret Satan gifts were so childish and disgusting. Brandon knew he couldn’t give this poor stranger anything remotely like that.
He headed into the antiques shop, thinking he could get Mark a classy flask or a cigarette case or something. But everything in the store was either froufrou or way over the official budget. Next he tried the used clothing store, Next-to-New, where Waverly guys bought overpriced, ironic T-shirts. But staring at the racks of clothing, he realized he didn’t know what size this guy was, or anything about him. Impersonal it had to be, then. He headed back out onto the street, wishing Rhine-cliff had a real downtown, with a music store or something.
As he wandered down the street and stared into the lit shop windows, he thought of the annoying annual ritual of buying a Christmas present for his father, who had no outside interests or hobbies to speak of. After years of clichéd gifts like ties and cuff links, last year Brandon had asked his father point blank, “What kind of movies do you like? I’ll buy you some DVDs.” His father’s empty stare as he tried to think of a single movie was terrifying, and Brandon slunk away. A week later, an e-mail came from his father with a list of titles obviously put together by one or more of his assistants. He was sure his father had never seen Pulp Fiction or Amélie, and couldn’t dissemble the plot of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels if his life depended on it. Brandon ended up giving him a silk Versace tie instead.
Brandon finally wandered into Illuminations, a small gift shop. The store was empty except for an elderly woman behind the counter, flipping through a copy of The New Yorker. Brandon nodded hello as he carefully made his way past a rack of greeting cards with pictures of dogs wearing different kinds of hats. The small aisles of shelves were overstuffed with pre-packaged candles and soap sets giving off enough conflicting girly scents to make him lightheaded. He lifted a small, pretty pink bottle of bubble bath and unscrewed the top. It smelled like strawberries and cream, and for a brief moment, Brandon allowed himself to imagine Hellie in a bubble bath, her long blond hair pulled up in a tangled bun.
“You open it, you buy it,” a cranky voice cried out. Brandon glanced at the old lady, who hadn’t looked up from her magazine. He kept the pink bottle in one hand, thinking he’d send it to Hellie with a sexy note.
Mark Frederickson, however, was more d
ifficult to shop for. As Brandon turned a corner, his coat brushed against a silver Christmas tree, knocking a round blue ornament to the floor. Luckily, it landed on a faded, salt-stained Oriental rug instead of the worn hardwood floor. Brandon quickly replaced the ornament. In front of him was a display of baskets with packaged smoked cheeses and meats. If Heath were here, he’d probably insist on buying the obscene-looking beef stick.
Brandon turned from the beef display in disgust and found himself in an aisle lined with candles of every color and size. What about a candle? That was a nice, innocuous gift, right? Even though they were technically forbidden in the dorms, it was always nice to light a candle if there was a girl in the room—or if you wanted to disguise the smell of a sweaty, unwashed roommate like Heath. Brandon touched a gift basket of mini candles wrapped in blue cellophane—nice, but over the fifteen-dollar budget. Instead, he grabbed a small green candle in a glass jar from the top shelf, scented cedar. He took a sniff and felt like he’d walked into a forest. A nice, impersonal scent.
The bell above the door dinged as another shopper entered and Brandon made his way to the counter, careful not to touch the Christmas tree. He wondered if he should skip dining hall food and eat at Nocturne, the diner up the road. Maybe the baked lasagna. He set the cedar candle and the pink bottle of strawberry bubble bath for Hellie on the counter and the woman rang him up. She expertly wrapped the candle in purple tissue paper and dropped it into a small brown paper bag with purple ribbon handles.
“Do you deliver?” he asked, glancing at the bag. He grabbed the bottle for Hellie and dropped it into his Hermès messenger bag, but he didn’t exactly want to stroll into Nocturne carrying what was obviously a Secret Santa gift—not to mention a daintily wrapped one.
The woman nodded, pushing her glasses further up her nose.
“I’d like to send this to Mark Frederickson, at Waverly,” he said.
“Just fill out a card,” the woman said, tossing a card on the counter.
Brandon searched his pocket for a pen and the woman reluctantly produced the one clipped to the inside of her shirt. As he bent down to write Mark’s name in his neatest handwriting, a flash of light sparked in the corner of his eye, distracting him. He looked out the window, but didn’t see anything. He went back to the card and the flash popped again. This time he traced the source to the other shopper, a girl wrapped in a long dark coat, her camera phone pointed toward Brandon. She snapped another picture and then ducked out the door.
“What was that?” Brandon asked, staring out the door.
“Damn kids,” the owner said, grabbing a baseball bat next to her and looking like she was going to hop over the counter and chase the girl down. “Instead of buying things, they take pictures of them.” She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater and shook her head again. “I could murder the guy who invented cell phones.”
Brandon nodded in agreement, worrying about the old woman’s sanity as he finished the card to Mark Frederickson. He handed the woman his American Express platinum card, paying extra for the present to be dropped off that night. He changed his mind about the baked lasagna and headed back to campus instead, happy that he’d satisfied his Secret Satan assignment in such a classy fashion.
Although part of him wished he’d bought the beef stick and stuck it under Heath’s pillow.
* * *
Owl Net
Instant Message Inbox
* * *
KirinChoate:
Ohmigod, just saw Brandon B buying candles and bubble bath in town.
AlisonQuentin:
Maybe his Swiss GF is visiting?
KirinChoate:
No, she’s made up. They were for Mark Frederickson!!
AlisonQuentin:
Ohhh. No wonder Sage broke up with him.
* * *
* * *
Owl Net
Instant Message Inbox
* * *
AlanStGirard:
Heard u got some bubble bath for someone special?
BrandonBuchanan:
What’s it to u?
AlanStGirard:
Nothing. Just think its sweet.
BrandonBuchanan:
R u spying on me?
AlanStGirard:
I heard that Mark F loves to take baths. Make sure to lather him up good.
BrandonBuchanan:
WTF? The bubble bath is for Hellie, you jackass.
AlanStGirard:
Thought her name was Helga? What else are you keeping from us?
* * *
11
A WAVERLY OWL KNOWS THAT FINDERS DOESN’T ALWAYS MEAN KEEPERS.
“I wanted the spicy tuna rolls to come with the wasabi separately. Not everyone wants it wrapped inside,” Brett Messerschmidt snapped into her cell phone as she trudged away from Hopkins Hall late Friday evening, her weary legs leading her in the direction of Dumbarton. She hated wasabi, and she hated even more the arrogant caterer they’d hired for the Holiday Ball. Brett had met with him twice already, and he was a fat old man who thought the only opinions that mattered were his own. “Look, I don’t care how you normally do it. This is the last time I’ve having this conversation. The wasabi comes separately or Waverly Academy is never doing business with you again.” She snapped her phone closed, feeling a surge of power.
The Disciplinary Committee had decided that since Brett had done such an efficient job with the Secret Santa assignments, she should take charge of the whole planning committee for the Holiday Ball—or at least, that’s how they spun it. Rumors were floating around that Emily Strauss had had a mini nervous breakdown and couldn’t do anything except stare at her Yale personal essay on her laptop, leaving the planning committee in the lurch.
And so Brett spent the entire afternoon with the committee, made up mostly of dorky, overachieving sophomores she didn’t even know. Now her head swirled with floral arrangements and table settings. Her mouth was dry from tasting frosted cupcakes and miniature fruit tarts, and if one more florist or caterer tried to tell her she couldn’t have what she wanted, Brett was going to lose it. She felt like she was planning a fucking wedding instead of a high school formal. The pride she’d initially felt about being given such a big responsibility had dissipated—any more days like this and her schoolwork would start to suffer. She would end up needing a tutor… like Sebastian.
Almost the second his name popped into her brain, Brett rounded the path toward Dumbarton and spotted Sebastian himself on the front steps, the cold breeze ruffling his dark, ungelled hair. He was leaning against one of the porch columns, looking incredibly uncomfortable in a slightly too-small navy blue peacoat, open at the neck to reveal a neatly pressed button-down. Brett was sure she was hallucinating, her sugar levels finally skyrocketing after too many cupcake tastings.
She stopped in her tracks at the bottom of the steps, rubbing together her tan leather gloves to warm her hands. “I thought you were all booked up this week. You look like you’re going yachting.”
“Yeah, well…” Sebastian nodded politely, tugging at the collar of his shirt. Was he wearing a sweater over it? A sweater-vest? “A man’s got to get some air.”
Brett narrowed her eyes at him and stepped carefully up the recently salted steps, her pointy-toed black ankle boots with the three-inch heels not exactly the best cold-weather foot-wear. She pulled up the collar of her Nanette Lepore emerald green jacquard coat. “Don’t tell me you miss our study sessions already?” she asked, curious. What was he doing here? Her toes tingled in her boots. Was he here… to see her? Brett had a sudden urge to invite Sebastian in for some microwaved hot cocoa in the common room.
But a strange look Brett couldn’t decipher crossed Sebastian’s face, and he pushed his longish hair out of his face. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, the front door to Dumbarton flew open, revealing Callie Vernon, buttoning up her Jill Stuart puff-sleeved crimson coat over a silky black dress and her shiny black riding boots with the f
our-inch heels. “All set.” Callie grinned at Sebastian, touching her hand to his arm.
Brett froze. Sebastian was waiting for… Callie? She felt like she was in an elevator that had suddenly dropped fifty floors.
“Brett!” Callie squealed at the sight of her friend. She rushed over to give Brett an air kiss, the scent of her Jean Patou perfume making Brett’s eyes water. “You should have seen the pretty flowers Sebastian brought me!”
“Really,” Brett said, her mouth suddenly feeling like sandpaper. “That’s very sweet of him.”
Callie’s blow-dried hair and pale pink eye shadow made her look positively angelic. “We’re off to dinner now—want me to bring you something back?” she asked, hooking her arm into Sebastian’s. He grinned shyly at Brett.
“I’m good, thanks.” Brett sucked in her cheeks and somehow managed to throw open the door to Dumbarton. In a flash, she remembered the look on Callie’s face the other day when Sebastian walked into the dining hall wearing his new clothes. She remembered how, just last week, over strawberry piña coladas in the upstairs common room, Callie had gone into another one of her fits bemoaning the lack of eligible boys at Waverly. About how she needed someone new.
And of course, Brett remembered her childish bet with Sebastian, who was positive that if he de-greased himself, he could land any girl at Waverly.
Apparently, he was right. Starting, of course, with Brett’s former BFF.
“Are you hungry?” Sebastian asked Callie softly.
Callie shrugged and pulled on a pair of cream-colored cashmere gloves. “A little,” she answered.