Dylan flung open the door of Tudor House, soaked to her underwear from the rain that had been pouring down ever since lunchtime. She peeled off her Burberry trench coat and hung it from one of the many hooks in the front hall, nailed there for exactly this purpose. If there was one thing the English knew how to do, it was prepare for wet weather.
Wringing out her hair, which had slickened and darkened with the water, Dylan sloshed into the kitchen to make a cup of hot chocolate. As she spooned out the powder and heated the milk—skim, of course—she heard heckling and chatter spilling from the common room next door. A clump of juniors were in there, a tangle of legs and arms and long hair on the maroon sofas. They were watching Neighbours, that smug Australian soap that everyone seemed to love in this country. Dylan had no clue why. As far as she could tell, it was a hash job of cardboard sets, stilted scripts, and unbearably suburban characters.
“Just you wait,” Mimah had told her. “It’s like crack. Once you try it, you’re hooked.”
Dylan still hadn’t given in. But today, she noticed that Farah Assadi was among the group on the couch. Maybe she’d try to join in.
“Excuse me.”
Dylan whipped round. Sonia was standing behind her, looking pointedly at the tea kettle. Her cheeks, still puffy from the bruising round her nose, gave her the air of a muskrat.
“I said excuse me,” Sonia repeated, her nose cast quivering. She’d just found out that Alice and Tally were jetting off to Paris without her tomorrow night and was having trouble controlling her jealousy. Talk about kicking a girl when she was down. “I’d like to make some tea?”
“Oh, sure.” Dylan stood aside, deciding to ignore Sonia’s hostility. She was in a good mood, having spent most of the afternoon in the art block with her collection of half-clothed men. Her study of torsos was looking set to be a big hit. Miss Baskin was already rapt by it—she came by to check out Dylan’s collage at least once an hour.
“Hey, Sonia?”
Sonia carried on filling the kettle without turning round. She fitted it pertly back onto its stand.
“I was thinking,” Dylan bubbled on. “You know I’m doing Advanced Art? Well, I’d love to help out with—”
“Urrrgh, nasty,” Sonia interrupted, flapping her hand disgustedly across the front of her school sweater. “Look what you’ve done. Why do you have to stand so close to me?”
“Oh, sorry.” Dylan struggled to see what the fuss was over. In her excitement to make her offer, she’d flung her arm into the air, spraying a few tiny drops of rainwater from her sodden sleeve onto Sonia’s clothes. All of a sudden Dylan felt like a drowned puppy next to her roommate who, as always, was impeccably turned out. Sonia’s hair was devastatingly straight and shiny. Her manicured hands flashed with gold rings. Her shirt cuffs protruded to just the right degree from under her sweater.
“But… but anyway,” Dylan continued, careful to keep her arms still this time, “if you want any help with the sets for Pashminas to the Rescue, I’d love to come up with some designs. I was thinking we could make some big white screens. I’d cut them into silhouettes of dancing girls and then we could project different colored lights onto them to echo the colors of the pashminas. It’d look really hip.”
Sonia was staring at her.
“Hip?” she sneered. “By ‘hip’ do you mean a total rip-off of the iPod ads?”
Dylan felt like she’d been slapped. She focused on the trail of crumbs snaking along the counter near Sonia’s arm.
“I think you’ll find that’s plagiarism,” Sonia said. “Worse, it’s intellectual property theft. And we don’t need ‘help’ like that. Thanks.” She slit open a packet of Earl Grey and placed the tea bag deliberately in her mug.
“Fine,” Dylan muttered, grabbing her hot chocolate and storming toward the staircase.
Across the hallway in the dining room, a school caterer was laying out the plates and silverware and candlesticks for tonight’s dinner with the Hasted House boys, who were due to arrive in just under two hours. Dylan was getting jittery at the thought. According to Mimah, these social dinners with boys’ schools were organized on a rota, with different juniors asked to each one. The girls in Dylan’s corridor had been invited this time, which meant that Sonia and Tally and Alice Rochester would be there in full force. Way to ruin the evening. At least Tristan wasn’t among the guests. She’d triple-checked the list to be sure.
Reaching the first floor of Tudor, Dylan turned the corner to her bedroom and passed directly in front of Alice and Tally’s door. Usually they kept it shut—except to a select few—but this afternoon Dylan could see right in. Alice was leaning over her bed in front of a half-packed Anya Hindmarch weekend bag. She seemed to be staring at nothing, lost in thought. Behind her, the window was streaked with rain and the trees outside were bowed over in misery. As Dylan slowed down to get a proper look, Alice raised her eyes, met Dylan’s, then walked forward and clicked the door shut.
* * *
“Hey, Dilly!” Lauren Taylor chirped from Dylan’s computer screen as her face popped up on Skype. From downstairs, Dylan could hear the whiny theme tune of yet another soap, Home and Away.
“Hi.” She grinned at her sister. Keeping her hands underneath the desk so Lauren couldn’t see, Dylan dipped into her drawer and fished out the bottle of Bacardi Superior that she’d nicked from her mother’s stash in London. She cracked open the seal on the rum and topped off her half-finished hot chocolate to the brim. Dylan hadn’t been expecting to find such useful stuff in her mom’s pantry; it was only since Piper had met Victor that she’d started keeping booze around the house. Now she was obsessed with it. When Dylan had rolled into the kitchen last Sunday morning with a horrendous hangover, she’d found them both guzzling Bloody Marys with their breakfast.
“How are you?” Lauren gushed. “Oh my god, is that your room I can see? Boarding school looks so cool. How’s it going?”
“Great!” Dylan lied. “Yeah, school’s awesome. People are being so much nicer to me now.”
She stirred her cocktail with the end of her pen. She wouldn’t normally be drinking at six in the evening, but she could hear laughter down the hall from Alice and Tally’s room. The others were probably choosing outfits and starting to get wasted in preparation for dinner. It was bad enough being lonely without being sober, too.
“I might even design the set for this fashion show that we’re putting on,” Dylan said. “My roommate saw my artwork and asked me to help her. But I’m not sure if I have time.”
“That’s fantastic!” Lauren exclaimed. “You’re so talented, I knew people would realize. Wait, that show’s next Saturday night, right? I think we got an invitation. Yeah, here it is.” She held up an elegant black card with swirly gold writing on it:
Please join us at St. Cecilia’s for
an evening of Fun, Frolics, Philanthropy,
and…Fashion!
“Did you design this?”
“Sort of.” Dylan stared. It was the first she’d seen of the invitations.
“Lauren!” a voice called in the background.
“One second, I’m talking to Dylan!” Lauren yelled. “Mom’s going out.” She turned back to the screen. “She and Vic have some cocktail party with media types. I swear, her social life is better than ours.”
“Vic?” Dylan coughed. “Excuse me, but since when do you call him Vic?”
Lauren flushed. “Since… since he asked me to. He’s kind of a sweetheart, Dilly. He gave me tickets to the taping of his show last week. It was so cool!”
“I’m glad some of us can be bought,” Dylan glared. She couldn’t believe her sister was defecting to the other side. They’d both agreed from the beginning: They hated Victor Dalgleish and wouldn’t rest till he was history—he and his fucking sideburns.
“Don’t be like that,” Lauren insisted. “Anyway, Mom’s still crazy about him. He isn’t going anywhere and neither are we. So forget about escaping back to New York.”
Dylan was about to hang up on Lauren when her mom burst into the frame.
“Dill Pickle, is that really you?” Piper Taylor twittered. She thrust her face right into the camera so that her eyes bugged out on Dylan’s screen. “Remarkable! It’s like futuristic videoconferencing. I feel like I’m in Star Trek!”
Dylan rolled her eyes. “Hi, Mom.”
“Mom, guess what?” Lauren told her. “Dylan’s designing the sets for that fashion show at her school next Saturday.”
“No, no, not really—” Dylan started to protest.
“Honey, how thrilling! In that case we’ll definitely come. Vic will be delighted—he loved the look of St. Cecilia’s when we dropped you off.”
I’ll bet he did, Dylan thought. Now that her mom had backed away a little, Dylan got a glimpse of her outfit: platform shoes and leggings with a frilly bubble dress over them. Totally age-inappropriate. She looked like she’d been on a spree at H&M.
“Umm, maybe you shouldn’t come,” Dylan suggested. “I don’t know if anyone else’s parents are.”
“Nonsense. We’ll be there. We’re dying to meet all your friends! Anyway, Pickle, I must go. Kiss kiss. Wish you were here!”
“Me too,” Dylan said, but her mom and sister had already disappeared from the screen. She sighed and drained the rest of her now-cold hot chocolate.