Epic Fail

  “Really, Elise? How exactly are you planning to get home?”

  Good question. It’s not like I had other options. Derek knew it and I knew it. “Come on,” he said in a gentler voice. “The sooner we find the others, the sooner you’ll be home.”

  “I’ll wait here.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the street lamp.

  “Suit yourself.” He walked away and strode through the huge metal gate.

  Chapter Seven

  The ride home was about as awkward as you could get.

  Juliana’s eyes kept straying anxiously over to where I sat opposite her, all curled in on myself.

  Chelsea sat between me and Derek. As we’d gotten into the limo, I’d remembered our Ping-Pong wager, but neither Derek nor I brought it up. We were both being stiffly polite but didn’t meet each other’s eyes or address each other directly.

  When her first few attempts at engaging Derek in conversation failed, Chelsea yawned and stretched and said a little too loudly, “God, I’m tired.” She daintily laid her head on Derek’s shoulder. “This is nice,” she said with a contented sigh. She fluttered her eyelashes up at him and then let her eyes close, thus missing the annoyed look he shot her.

  I caught it, though, and my eyes met his, briefly and unintentionally. We both quickly looked away again. Then he twitched his shoulders with a sudden violence that made Chelsea’s neck bounce. She lifted her head and said, “Hey!”

  “Can you not do that, please?” he said.

  She made a face, but shifted back into an upright position. “You’re not nice,” she said, with what I’m sure was supposed to be an adorable and irresistible pout.

  “So I’ve been told.” Those were the last words he spoke for the rest of the drive to our house.

  When we pulled up, I opened the car door before we’d even come to a full stop and headed up the front walkway with one quick and muttered good-bye tossed over my shoulder. I figured Juliana could thank them for both of us—I wasn’t in the mood.

  My father must have heard the car because he opened the door for me. “Did you have a good time?” he asked as he let me in.

  “Not really.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said cheerfully. “You’re like me, Elise,” he added. “You don’t want to be gadding about, going to silly parties, making inane conversation with shallow people. You’re happier curled up at home with a good book.”

  I almost laughed at that. Me, like my dad? No way. He was a social recluse—almost never left the house except for work.

  How could I be like him? I was young. I was a girl. I had long hair and liked to wear pretty clothes and go out at night. I loved my dad, but I was nothing like him.

  But then I felt a flutter of panic. I had his genes. What if they were just lurking in me, waiting to be expressed? He was always telling me that I was the most like him of his four daughters. Maybe someday in the future, I would be the one puttering around in an old cardigan with stretched-out pockets, carrying cups of strong tea to my office where I’d read books and journals hour after hour and complain about how standards were being compromised.

  I had a sudden violent desire to run out and get a tattoo.

  My mother came bustling into the foyer. “Oh, good, you’re home, Elise. Juliana outside?” She opened the front door, just as Layla came dashing down the stairs, wearing her pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt.

  “I want to see the limo,” she said and darted out the open door.

  “Layla!” I called and headed after her, terrified she’d say something embarrassing to Derek. Right now, that would be unbearable.

  She had reached the curb by the time I caught up to her. “Can I see inside?” she asked Chase who was standing there, saying good-bye to Juliana. “I’ve never been in one before.” Before he could respond, she had crawled through the door. I could hear her “Hey, Derek! Nice limo!” and his muttered “It’s not mine.”

  “There’s a whole cabinet of food in here! With Oreos! And a TV! Look—DVDs!” Layla stuck her head out the limo door. “Mom, you have to see this. It’s incredible!”

  I hadn’t realized that Mom had followed us out, but there she was, right behind me. She smiled, a little patronizingly. “Yes, I know, Layla. I saw it earlier.” She stooped and peered inside. “Hi, kids! Did you have a good time? No drinking, right? Who needs alcohol to have fun?”

  “Mom, they have to get going,” I said, desperate to stop her before she launched into an entire PSA. “Come on, Layla.” I hauled her out of the limo.

  To my surprise, Derek followed her out onto the sidewalk. “I think this is yours,” he said and handed me the cardigan sweater I had shrugged off hours earlier and completely forgotten about.

  “Oh, right. Thanks.” I accepted the sweater without meeting his eyes.

  Layla tugged at his arm. “You have to take me for a ride one day. It would be so cool to show up at a rave in this!”

  “Layla!” my mother said. “What do you know about raves? She’s very advanced for her age,” she told Derek. “I worry about it sometimes, but, really, what can you do?”

  “Tie her to a tree,” I muttered and I could have sworn I heard a smothered laugh, but when I glanced at Derek, his face was blank.

  “Please thank your parents for the use of their limo,” Mom said to him.

  “It’s not theirs,” I snarled. “It’s the Baldwins’.”

  “Anyway, good-bye!” said Juliana, clearly as eager as I was for this farewell to end. Chase and Derek quickly—and with some relief—said good night and climbed into the limo.

  Mom leaned in. “Come back soon and stay awhile!” she said gaily. “Both of you are welcome anytime. And your families too, of course. We just set up a croquet course in our backyard. It’s a little cramped but it’s fun!”

  I reached around her and slammed the door shut.

  “So what was going on at the party with Derek and that Webster guy?” Juliana asked when we were both back in our room.

  I told her the little I knew.

  She furrowed her brow, clearly trying to make sense of it. “Derek thinks there was something weird going on with Webster and his sister?”

  “I guess. Webster says she just had a crush on him.”

  “Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” she suggested. “Maybe Webster flirted a little with the sister and it bothered Derek.”

  “Webster’s chatty and outgoing, so it could easily come across as flirtatious—but he’s also obviously harmless. And if that’s the case, Derek way overreacted tonight: he threw him out of the party and then made him leave without me. Don’t you think that’s pretty bad?”

  “Well,” she said, “there may be more to the story we don’t know.”

  “You just want to side with Derek because he’s Chase’s friend.” She didn’t rush to deny it. “Did Chase say anything about Webster to you?”

  “We didn’t have a lot of time to talk. He just said something like, ‘There’s a lot of history there.’”

  There was a knock, but before we could even respond, the door opened and Layla came in. “Hey, guys,” she said in a low voice. “I need to use your room for a second.”

  “What’s going on?” Juliana asked.

  She shut the door behind her. “I got this text—” She raised her hand, which had been pressed against her hip, and revealed the cell phone hidden in her palm. “I have to call my friend Campbell. Some guy she barely knows sent her this weird message, and she desperately needs to talk to me.”

  “You know you’re not allowed to use cell phones in the house,” I said. “Call her back on the landline.”

  “I can’t use the phone—Mom’s downstairs and she’ll hear.”

  “Jules and I are talking. Go call from your own room,” I said.

  “It’s not fair that I have to share a room with Kaitlyn—she goes to sleep so friggin’ early. And she’s a tattletale. Just let me call Campbell, okay? I’ll be fast.” She looked back and forth be
tween us. “You know who she is, right? Campbell McGill? Her dad is that guy on that show.”

  “That guy on that show?” I repeated.

  “You know,” she said. “On that entertainment news show—he’s the whatchamacallit. The one who sits at the desk and says what the next story will be.”

  “The anchor?” Juliana said.

  “Yes! That’s it. Her dad’s the anchor.”

  “I know who she means,” Juliana said to me. “George McGill. He’s on Entertainment Access, and Mom said he has a kid at Coral Tree. Not that it matters,” she added, turning back to Layla. “You still can’t use your cell phone in here.”

  “Just for like five minutes?”

  “No,” I said. “Now get out. We want to go to sleep.”

  She stamped her foot. “You guys are so mean. You get to have this room to yourselves and I’m stuck with stupid little Kaitlyn and her stupid little toys and her stupid little bedtime.”

  “I know it’s hard to share a room with someone who’s so much younger.” Juliana stood up and tried to put her arm around Layla, but Layla knocked it away irritably. “I really am sorry. But it’s best to stick to Mom and Dad’s rules when we can. You know how they can be.”

  “I hate their rules,” Layla said in a low, vicious voice. “I hate their rules and this family and everyone in it. It’s the most repressive dictatorship anyone’s ever had to live in and I’m going to run away first chance I get! God, I want out of here!” Clutching her cell phone against her chest, she flung herself out of our room and slammed the door behind her.

  There was a pause.

  Then Juliana said, “Well, at least she used some decent vocabulary words,” and we both laughed.

  “If we’re really lucky, she won’t talk to us for days,” I said.

  Jules moved over to her dresser and started to take off her earrings. “About all this other stuff, Lee-Lee, with Derek and Webster . . . promise me you’ll reserve judgment until we know more.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “If you’ll promise me you won’t automatically side with Derek because he’s Chase’s friend and Melinda Anton’s son.”

  “I don’t care who Derek’s mother is,” Juliana said with an edge to her voice.

  “Then you and I are the only two people in the world who don’t.” I slid off the bed and onto my feet. “I’m going to go brush my teeth.” Out in the hallway, the light was on in the bathroom and the door was shut. As I approached, I heard the low murmur of a voice.

  Layla had found a place to make her phone call after all.

  I had less luck with my own phone call the next day. The home number listed in the school directory for Webster kept putting me through to a generic voice mail message, so I wasn’t even sure it was the right one, and his cell phone wasn’t listed. I really wanted to touch base with him about what had happened at the party, so I kept trying the useless home number.

  “Are you calling Derek?” my mother asked, coming into the kitchen just as I’d put the phone down.

  “Why would I be calling him?” I said irritably.

  She just smiled coyly at me. And rather than embark on a useless attempt to introduce reality to my mother, I rolled my eyes and stormed up to my room—which was so much easier.

  Chapter Eight

  Webster was already sitting in astronomy class when I got there on Monday. I nabbed the desk right next to him and said, “Give me your phone number, like, right now so I have it.” Before he could even respond, I said, “I didn’t blow you off on Saturday night—you know that, right?”

  His blue eyes scanned my face uncertainly. “Really? I was told that you had made other plans for getting home.”

  “He said that? What a jerk.”

  “And, right on cue, he appears.”

  Derek Edwards had just entered the room and was being enthusiastically hailed by the usual sycophants. He glanced around and our eyes met. I instantly turned my shoulder to him and shifted closer to Webster. “I came out to find you, and you were already gone.”

  “What a mess.” He shook his head. “I honestly thought you were going home with your sister. You must have been so pissed off at me.”

  “Not even for a second. Derek told me he sent you away. I would have called you but—”

  “Here.” He ripped a corner off a piece of notebook paper and scribbled his number down. I did the same for him.

  “I’m not allowed to use my cell in my house, though,” I said, folding and pocketing the paper. “You can call the landline but be warned: my parents are pains in the butt if they answer.”

  “Isn’t that why texting was invented?”

  I shook my head. “Not allowed to do that at home either. Sometimes we cheat when they’re not looking—but if they caught us, we’d lose our phones altogether.”

  “Wow,” he said. “They’re strict.”

  I sighed. “More weird than strict.”

  “Which makes them normal for parents.” Then he said, a little sheepishly, “Elise, I thought you had ditched me. I mean, there aren’t a lot of girls who wouldn’t choose to go home with Derek Edwards over me.”

  “I wanted to go with you.”

  “I’m glad.” He looked at me then—really looked at me. “You’re different,” he said softly.

  I was pleased he could see that about me: that I didn’t fall for status and fame like everyone else at that school.

  He went on. “Anyway, the truth is, I was stupid to go to that party in the first place. I knew better. It’s just . . .” He hesitated, and right then Mr. Cantori looked up from whatever he was doing at his desk and said, “Why didn’t someone tell me how late it was? Let’s go over the homework. Elizabeth, read the first question.”

  Amid all the rustling of pages and Elizabeth’s soft voice starting to read, Webster leaned over and whispered quickly, “I went to the party because I was hoping to see you there. And it was worth whatever happened because I did.” Then he ducked down to get his book out of his backpack.

  I just sat there, staring at the teacher without seeing him, feeling a smile play on my lips.

  Juliana had to meet with her college counselor during lunch that day, so when I walked into the courtyard with my tray, I scanned the tables for someone else to sit with. I spotted Gifford but she was sitting with Chelsea, which amused me. Those girls defined the word frenemies: all Gifford ever wanted to do when we sat together in French and English (which we almost always did now) was complain about Chelsea, whose main appeal seemed to be the access she provided to handsome senior boys—and whose main drawback was that she didn’t want to share said access with the devoted friend who couldn’t stand her.

  I looked around for another possibility, thinking maybe I’d just take my sandwich to a tree somewhere and read a book while I ate, when I heard someone calling my name. I turned and spotted Layla waving to me from the end of a nearby table. Another girl her age sat across from her.

  “Hey,” I said, coming over. “Aren’t freshmen supposed to eat on the patio?”

  Layla shrugged. “We felt like sneaking in here today. No one really cares.”

  “It’s not that much fun, though,” her friend said with a yawn. “It’s kind of boring actually.” She was a moonfaced girl with small blue eyes and expensively highlighted thick blond hair. She was a solid chunk from her broad shoulders to her square hips. Not fat. Just solid.

  “You can sit with us if you want, Elise,” Layla said, “but only if you promise to introduce us to some hot upperclassmen. That’s why we’re here. To meet guys.”

  “Ninth-grade boys are so lame,” her friend said.

  “The only difference between them and the seniors is a few years,” I said. “And they’ll outgrow that. What’s your name?” I sat down next to her and across from Layla.

  “Oh, that’s Campbell,” Layla said. “Campbell McGill.” She caught my eye meaningfully, and I realized this was the girl whose father was on TV.

  I sighed and wondered who t
he hell didn’t have a famous parent at Coral Tree? Other than us.

  Five minutes later, I was wistfully recalling my reading-under-a-tree plan and wishing I’d had the good sense to act on it.

  Not that the conversation at our table wasn’t riveting: Campbell complained that her sandwich had mustard instead of mayonnaise until Layla pointed out that it, in fact, had both. Layla spotted a cute guy and asked me if I knew him and I said I didn’t and she called me a loser. Campbell cursed because she had managed to get mustard on the wrist of her Juicy Couture hoodie, and Layla wiped at it with a napkin. Layla pointed at another cute guy and asked me if I knew him and once again was disgusted that I didn’t. Campbell asked Layla if she was going to eat all her chips, and Layla said she hadn’t decided yet. Then she noticed another cute guy who she was sure I had to know because it wasn’t possible for anyone to be so socially clueless . . . but it was possible and I didn’t.

  See what I mean? Riveting.

  “This is useless,” Layla said irritably. “You don’t know anyone, Elise.”

  I was a little freaked by the hunger in Layla’s eyes when each new guy appeared: she was so childish in so many ways, always arguing with Kaitlyn and trying to get extra dessert—no way was she mature enough to start dating. But girls her age did. I didn’t at her age and neither did Juliana. But other girls did.

  Campbell narrowed her eyes. “I thought you said she was good friends with Derek Edwards.” Apparently Campbell’s own (admittedly minor) celebrity status didn’t prevent her from getting excited about other people’s.

  “Really, Layla?” I glared at her. “Is that what you’re going around telling people?”

  “Well, it’s true,” she said defensively. “You guys have gone to parties together and stuff.”

  I was prevented from strangling my sister by the arrival of a very welcome Webster Grant at our table. “Elise! Fancy meeting you here. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world . . .”

  “Huh?” said Campbell McGill.

  “It’s from a movie.” Webster transferred the Sprite he was holding to his left hand and offered her his right. “Hi! I’m a friend of Elise’s.”