chapter two
Stonybrook Academy is tiny; there are only about three hundred students from grades seven through twelve. So even if you don’t know everyone, you still kind of know them. There are only ten girls in my dorm, split up among five bedrooms on the second floor, since the first floor is just a great room and kitchenette. The fourth and fifth bedrooms on the second floor are joined together, so you have to walk through the fourth to get to the captive fifth. The two rooms combined are known as the quad, and I share it with three girls: Grace Paulsen-Taylor, Francine Bingham (who everybody calls Franny), and my best friend, Stephanie Prince. Franny and I have the front room, while Stephanie and Grace share the back.
I can tell something’s the matter as soon as I walk in. Stephanie and Grace aren’t around. Their door is open, unmade bunk beds visible through the beads hung in their doorway. Franny is alone, curled into the tiny ledge of the windowsill, staring at the hazy sky. She doesn’t notice when I walk in. She’s tugging at her blond hair, pulling strands out one by one. Franny has trichotillomania. It’s a kind of compulsion—I’ve looked it up online. It means that she pulls her hair out like crazy, but with Franny it’s always only one strand at a time. The room reeks of weed.
“Franny,” I whisper, shutting the door as fast as possible, cringing as it slams behind me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Hmmm?” she asks, not even looking at me. The window is open; all that separates my roommate from a fifty-foot drop is a flimsy screen. As usual, Franny appears tired, bored, and lonely.
Tug. Tug. After she pulls out each single hair, she gives it a long look of quiet satisfaction before carefully feeding it through the screen, like she’s threading a needle. One of these days, she’ll start getting bald spots.
I fan the air with my hand—like that’s going to do anything. “It reeks in here! Since when do you get high? And would you get off the windowsill?” I feel like I’ve been teleported to an after-school special, as though at any moment she might lose her balance and tumble to her death. What’s the lesson we’ve all learned? Weed kills kids, kids.
Franny gets up, wordlessly strips down to her underwear, and lies on her bed. “I’m so tired,” she says, curling onto her side to gaze at me. “Turn the light out. Let’s take a nap before dinner.” She gives me a lazy smile, followed by a yawn. “Come on, Emily. Come cuddle.” And she pats the spot beside her. “Sleepy time.”
For as long as I’ve known her, Franny has been a cuddlebug. Normally, I’d probably take her up on it. I mean, who doesn’t love cuddles? But I’m worried and angry, and not in the mood for playing.
“Where are Grace and Stephanie?”
She yawns again. Tug. This time, she lets the hair drift aimlessly into the air; it rises upward in the densely hot room and wafts past me, like the remnants of a cobweb. “I dunno. Probably over at Winchester.” Winchester is one of the upper-school boys’ dorms.
“Where did you get the smoke, Franny?”
Franny and I have been roommates since the seventh grade. At first, we didn’t have a choice; roommates are randomly assigned so that people don’t get too cliquey. But my roommates and I are kind of a clique anyway. It’s no secret to anyone that the four of us only scored the quad because I’m the headmaster’s daughter.
Over the years, I’ve grown more than a little bit protective of Franny. Stonybrook Academy is the kind of place where … well, kids get sent here for a few reasons, none of which are mutually exclusive. Tuition is high, one of the highest in the country for boarding schools, so of course we’ve got plenty of rich kids, particularly some children of high-profile people. For instance, Franny’s mom is a senator. Grace’s father owns the golf course where they’ve held the US Open more than once. Stephanie’s dad is a lawyer, and apparently he’s a pretty good one. Steph has told me plenty of times that it’s impossible to win an argument with him.
There are the kids who come here because they’re supersmart, and a diploma from Stonybrook is pretty much a ticket into any college you want. There are the bad kids whose parents just can’t deal with them. And then there are the kids who aren’t necessarily bad at all, but their parents just can’t deal, period. Those are the kids who show up on the first day of seventh grade and don’t even go home for most of the holidays.
Franny is one of those kids. I can’t count the number of holidays she’s shared at my house. By the time she was eleven, her mom was on her second husband, who turned out to be very affectionate with his stepdaughter. Instead of facing the fact that she’d married a perv and putting Franny in therapy, her mom opted for a quick divorce, boarding school for her only daughter, and a heavy case of denial. Senator Bingham (R-California) is on her third husband now, and Franny tells me that she refers to the time leading up to her second divorce as Franny’s “Lolita phase.”
Sitting beside Franny on the bed, I pull up the sheet to cover her frail body. She reaches under her pillowcase and fishes out a crushed pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Will you get me some water?” she asks. Tug. One at a time: controlled, neurotic, minimal. So totally Franny.
I sigh. “Yes. You shouldn’t smoke in here, though. It’s gross.”
“I’m stoned. I want a cigarette.”
“The cleaning ladies don’t come till tomorrow. You can’t blame the smell on them. You could get caught.”
“Whoopee.” She lights up, exhaling smoke through her tiny nostrils. “Nobody cares.”
I care; I hate cigarettes. But aside from how I feel, Franny is kind of right. On paper, Stonybrook Academy has a zero-tolerance drug and alcohol policy. Supposedly, if you get caught smoking or drinking or doing anything illicit on campus, you’re immediately expelled. I’ve never heard of it happening, though. The thing is, Stonybrook relies so heavily on private funding—donations, specifically—that it can’t afford to go kicking out everyone who gets caught doing something they shouldn’t be, especially since most of those kids are the children of rich people. Not only would we not be able to operate without all that money coming in, but we wouldn’t be able to attract such plush donors if we didn’t already have a reputation as a Posh Boarding School. My dad tells me that it’s just the way the world works, and I guess maybe he’s right. At least, I’ve never seen it work any other way.
But, oh, poor Franny. I want to protect her so badly. She and I are friends, sure, but we’re so different that it’s always been hard for me to get through to her. She’s shy and kind of dull and always, always throws up at parties after just one or two drinks, and is irretrievably sad—but I love her like a sister.
It’s really true: everybody here is like brother and sister. And even though people know that Franny has a miserable home life, and though I’ve never told anyone the specifics of her situation, it’s tough to keep a secret here, especially when a person never goes home and her own mother never comes to visit. So everybody ought to know better than to go getting her stoned, all by herself on a weekend, when she literally could have slipped away, out the window, her weak, tiny frame shattered against the sandy dirt below.
She sits up to drink the water, taking it in huge gulps, letting the sheet slip away from her body. For as long as I’ve known her, Franny has worn matching day-of-the-week bra and underwear. She’s worn them every day for over four years, always on the correct day. She has dozens of sets.
“All right,” I say, sighing, wrinkling my nose as the smoke from her cigarette wafts past me. “Spill. Who got you stoned?”
Tug. Gaze. Let go. Then she crosses her arms. “Why?”
“Because, Franny, you could have fallen out the window. You’re kind of delicate, you know?” I put my hands on her arms. All I can feel is bone under her skin. “Tell me.”
Franny rolls her eyes. Her left eye gets lazy when she’s tired, like right now, giving her a kind of sad look, her long hair—it reaches almost to her butt—greasy and in dire need of a trim, her underwear announcing to anyone who might happen to walk in that it’s SUNDAY!
I don’t know why I even bothered asking. As soon as her gaze flickers toward the hallway, before she has a chance to open her mouth, the answer is obvious.
“Renee,” we both say at the same time.
I glare at the doorway. “Ohhh … she’s gonna get it.”
“Can I take a nap now?” Franny asks. She grinds out her cigarette against the side of a coffee cup that she keeps beneath her bed specifically for use as an ashtray.
“Yes.” I tuck her in tightly, as though the sheet might be enough to keep her in place. I sit on the side of the bed and smooth the hair away from her sweaty brow, leaning over to give her a kiss on the forehead. Then I get up, turning off the light on my way out. “Just promise me you’ll stay away from the windowsill.” I pause. “And quit tugging your hair out.”
“Um-hmmm. I’ll quit breathing while I’m at it, Mom.”
Renee Graham: a sophomore at Stonybrook and the only child of three-time Oscar winner Amy Wallace. Her last name comes from her mom’s second husband, Bruce Graham, who is a Tony, Golden Globe, and Academy Award winner. I’ve never met Amy Wallace in real life, although I’ve seen plenty of her movies, and Renee looks exactly like her. Bruce Graham, however, is around plenty: he comes to all of the parent weekends, picks Renee up for vacation, and even shows up out of the blue sometimes to take her out for dinner. He hasn’t been her stepfather since she was ten, but from what I’ve heard, Renee doesn’t even live with her mom; when she goes home for the holidays, she stays with Bruce in Manhattan.
Even though she lives directly across the hall, Renee and I aren’t what you’d call friends. She’s nice enough, I guess, and we aren’t enemies or anything. We’ve just never bothered with each other much. First of all, there’s the fact that I’m a year older than she is. Besides that, I have Stephanie and Grace and Franny, and Renee has … whoever. Besides, Renee is so aloof, so casual and cool, that it’s impossible not to feel intimidated by her. Even at a school with so many celebrities’ kids and overachievers, and even though she’s only a sophomore, Renee has a quality to her that’s almost magical. I guess it’s what you call charisma.
Like when she answers her door, after I’ve been banging on it for a good thirty seconds. “Hola, babycakes,” she says, batting her long brown eyelashes at me. “What’s up?”
She’s just gotten out of the shower; a short, white silk bathrobe clings to her still-damp body, which is lanky and flawless. Her dark hair is wrapped tightly in a towel, her widow’s peak exposed on her forehead. I know for a fact that Renee, with all her money, does not own a blow-dryer. She just lets her hair air-dry, runs a comb through it, and voilà: tousled perfection. I don’t know why, but I’m infinitely annoyed by this factoid. I mean, who doesn’t own a hair dryer? It’s like not owning a toothbrush or something.
Personally, I don’t know what I’d do without one; I have long red hair that is thick and wavy and will not respond to a hairbrush without a heavy spraying of detangler beforehand. Nobody knows where the color came from; both of my parents have brown hair. I’m also covered in freckles. You’d think that, being a redhead and all, I’d have one of those fiery, feisty personalities, but I don’t; most people would probably describe me as quiet and somewhat shy. Standing across from Renee, I feel impossibly strange looking. Not exotic strange, like she is, just weird strange.
“Do you have to ask what’s up?” I say, trying my best to sound imposing.
She blinks. There’s no sarcasm in her voice; it’s just matter-of-fact. “I just did.”
“Franny,” I tell her. “I found her practically unconscious against the screen on our windowsill. She could have fallen out. I could be staring at her dead body right now.”
Renee shakes her head. “Don’t be so dramatic, Emily. That seems unlikely. She was fine when I left her.”
I look around; we shouldn’t be talking about this in the hallway. “Can I come in?”
Renee’s roommate, Hillary Swisher, is gone; there’s no doubt in my mind she’s over at her boyfriend’s dorm, making out on the common-room sofa. Instead, there are a few other girls in the room. They all look younger, and I don’t recognize any of them, which means they’re probably—
“Seventh graders,” Renee explains, nodding at them with a sincere smile.
Right.
Of the three, it’s obvious two of them have been crying. They sit cross-legged on Renee’s bed, legs and elbows touching, kind of holding on to each other. They look lost. The first few weeks at any new school are tough, but I can’t imagine going away to boarding school at age twelve. I mean—I did go to boarding school at twelve, but my dad was just down the hall in his office. I could walk to my parents’ house whenever I wanted. These girls are alone, parents probably hundreds of miles away. Sometimes I think it is kind of a cruel thing to do to your own child, but pretty much everyone starts at Stonybrook in seventh grade. It’s just the way things happen for some people.
Renee gives them another demure smile. Despite their homesickness, they’re clearly in awe of her. I mean, everyone who’s been to the movies or stood in line at a supermarket browsing the tabloids knows who Renee is. She leans over her bed and puts her arms around them in a group hug. She takes a moment to kiss each of them on the forehead. I find the gesture surprisingly sweet and touching, and it takes me a little off guard. I’d always imagined that Renee was too cool to be overly sensitive or caring, but she certainly seems that way now.
“I have to talk to Emily in private for a few minutes,” she says, “but why don’t the three of you come get me when you’re ready to go up to dinner?”
They nod. They give me hesitant, tearful smiles on their way out. For a minute I forget all about Franny, but as soon as the door closes I remember why I’m here: because that was Franny, four years ago. And in a lot of ways, it still is.
As I step farther into the room, Renee says in a sarcastic tone, “Be careful to stay on my side.”
This is the first year Renee and Hillary have been roommates, and I hear they’ve already been bickering nonstop.
Right now, a thick line of duct tape divides the room into two halves.
“It creates kind of a problem,” Renee says as I stare at the tape, “because, as you can see, our closet is on Hillary’s side of the room, and the door is on my side.”
“Uh-huh. And this was whose idea?”
“Not mine.” With a wicked little grin, Renee strolls pointedly across the line to Hillary’s bed, takes her wet hair out of the towel, and tosses the towel onto her roommate’s side of the floor. Then she lies down on Hillary’s bed, her hair getting the pillowcase all wet. “God, I miss Madeline.”
I sigh. “No kidding.” Madeline Moon-Park was Renee’s old roommate. She didn’t come back to school this year. “Where did she go?” I ask.
Renee shrugs. “I don’t know. I can’t get ahold of her. She changed her e-mail address, and her home phone doesn’t work. All I know is that I came back expecting to room with Madeline, and she didn’t show up, so they put me with Hillary instead.” She pauses. “Don’t you know where she went? Didn’t your dad say anything?”
I shake my head. “Just that she wasn’t coming back. I figured you would have talked to her by now.”
“Well, I haven’t. You know what she’s like. If she doesn’t want to talk, she’s not going to talk.”
I almost smile. There was nobody else like Madeline. I never understood how she and Renee got to be so close, but their relationship was practically telepathic. For a moment, I imagine how I’d feel if Franny or Steph or Grace suddenly disappeared, never to be heard from again. I’d be heartsick.
“Want to know why she did it?” Renee asks, her tone shifting from nostalgia to bitterness.
“You know why Madeline left?”
“No. Want to know why Hillary put the tape down?”
“Oh. Sure.” With the room split in two, it’s obvious this is a mismatched pair of individuals. Renee’s side is a mess: piles of clothing and shoes litter the floor; the bed is unmade; Renee’s desk is covered with books and papers and a coffeepot that is half-full, definitely not fresh—there’s fuzzy white mold climbing the sides of the pot, growing on the surface of the sludge. Amidst the mess on her desk, there are several framed photographs of Renee with Bruce Graham. In one of them, she’s standing beside him on the red carpet at, like, age twelve, his “date” to the Academy Awards. I remember that so vividly from eighth grade; Renee going to the Oscars for spring break was the talk of the school.
Hillary’s side of the room is spotless—at least it was, until Renee threw her towel on the floor and got into the bed. There isn’t a stitch of clothing in sight; all of Hillary’s schoolbooks are stacked neatly on a small bookshelf. Above her bed, there’s a collage of photos, mostly of her and her boyfriend and a few other friends. I don’t see Renee in any of them.
“Last Saturday, I came home early from the city, and Hillary was gone—off somewhere with Max, of course.”
Max Franklin is Hillary’s boyfriend. The two have been inseparable since the ninth grade. They’re the kind of couple who makes everyone, including me, want to gag. They’ll probably get married someday.
“So Hillary rolls in around midnight, drunk as a skunk, and she starts puking everywhere, right?” Renee sits up, getting angry all over again. “I mean everywhere. I was asleep, and she woke me up with … well, let’s just say it was disgusting.”
“But you said she’s the one who put down the tape?”
Renee’s tone is calm. “Would you listen to me, Emily? I’m trying to explain something to you. After she passed out, I was so … I don’t know, so kertwanged over the whole mess. But somebody had to clean it up, right? I mean, we’ve gotta live in this room, obviously.”
I glance at the moldy coffeepot again. “Uh-huh.”
“So I cleaned it up all by myself,” she finishes.
“And that’s what made Hillary so mad?” I give her a doubtful look. “Really?”
Renee shrugs. She tries to hold back a smile without success. “Well … I used her clothes to clean up the … mess.”
“You used her clothes?”
“Right. But not her uniforms—I mean, we had school the next day. Hillary’s a clotheshorse—she’s all about couture and whatever, you know?”
I do know.
“I used her real clothes. Some of them got ruined.” She sighs, looks around the room. “I might have gone a little too far. Hence the tape. We’re still adjusting to each other.”
“So I take it Hillary’s still mad?”
Renee shrugs. “She’ll be over it soon.”
That’s what it’s like here: things flare up and diffuse, flare up and diffuse. You get really good at conflict resolution. Ten girls in a dorm—you can’t be mortal enemies with anyone, especially your roommate. It would make life miserable.
But we’re way off track. I cross my arms and try to glare at her. “Listen, I don’t want you getting Franny stoned anymore.”
Renee raises one thick, perfect eyebrow. “What are you, her mom?”
Good thing I’m not, I think.
“You two aren’t even friends,” I say. “Why were you hanging out in the first place?”
It occurs to me that Renee is probably stoned, too. I can’t even tell. That’s another thing about her. She’s the kind of person who’s so self-assured, she’d never be the type to get paranoid or weird when she’s high.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Sincerely. I just wanted to help.”
“By getting her high? How was that helping?”
“I was trying to get her to eat. You know—the munchies?”
I shake my head. “Yeah, I know all about the munchies. But that makes no sense. Why were you trying to get her to eat?”
“Emily, have you seen the girl naked? We were in the bathroom together, okay, and she was walking around in her shower shoes and those weird underwear of hers, and I could see the divot in her sternum. With her hair pulled up, I could see the outline of her skull. She has fuzzy hair on her arms—did you know that happens to people when they’re starving themselves? And then I was thinking about it, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her eat.”
“You think she’s anorexic?” I frown. “Listen, I know Franny. She’s got plenty of problems, but that’s not one of them.”
Renee takes a long moment to consider me. “You seem so certain. The girl is so stressed that she’s literally pulling her hair out. It’s called—”
“I know what it’s called. And she’s seeing a therapist for it,” I lie. Franny’s mother is very antitherapy, very much “everything’s happy and great as long as we don’t talk about it.” She’s a very popular politician.
“So you aren’t worried?” Renee asks.
“No,” I say. “I see her eat. Franny’s always been too skinny.”
Renee shrugs. “If you say so. I thought stuffing her face might do her some good. I was only trying to help.” She gets up, smooths the sheets on Hillary’s bed, and flips the pillow to hide the wet spot. With her back to me, she says, “I stay up really late sometimes.”
When I don’t respond, she turns around, steps deliberately across the tape to her side of the room, and adds, “Sometimes I hear you. What do you dream about?”
I’m not sure how to answer her. Why is she bringing this up? “I don’t remember. Everyone has nightmares sometimes. We’re, you know”—I borrow one of Dr. Miller’s favorite reassuring phrases, trying to hide my sarcasm—“in a time of great transition from childhood to adulthood.”
Renee shakes her head, damp hair landing perfectly across her shoulders. “You’re lying to me, Emily.”
“Oh yeah? Who are you all of a sudden, Sigmund Freud? My roommate’s anorexic, I’ve got issues with my dreams … you’re like a real Svengali, aren’t you?”
She seems genuinely sorry, almost confused. “I was just trying to help Franny. And sometimes when you scream …” She shudders. “It’s horrible.”
I’m at a total loss for words. I’ve never had a conversation remotely this intimate with Renee before.
“Well … I’m sorry I wake you up.”
She blinks. “I didn’t say you woke me. I said I heard you. I’m already awake.”
“Oh.”
“ …”
“ …”
“Just … let me worry about Franny, okay? She’ll be all right. We’ll both be fine.” I attempt a smile. “Worry about your territory war over here, okay? You’ll get used to Hillary.”
“Hillary Swisher,” Renee declares, “will never be Madeline Moon-Park.”
I giggle. Everybody misses Madeline—she was obnoxious to the point of hilarity, a tiny bundle of energy with the foulest mouth I’d ever heard—and it’s just like her to disappear without a word to anyone.
“If you leave Franny alone,” I say, “I’ll try to find out what happened to Madeline.”
Renee shrugs. “If we don’t know by now, we probably never will.” Her expression grows serious. “Emily—you can knock, you know? If you can’t sleep. I have tranquilizers. They’re prescription. They’ll knock you out. Or we could stay up …”
All of a sudden, I’ve had my fill of Renee. I stare at the duct tape, unwilling to meet her gaze. “I should check on my roommate.”
Back in the quad, I find Franny snoring softly into her pillow, fast asleep. The sheet beside her is covered in a tiny bundle of hairs. Even though it’s only late afternoon, she’ll likely stay this way until morning if I don’t wake her up. She sleeps a lot.
Grace and Stephanie’s door is closed. They’re back.
I walk in without knocking. Both of them are on the bottom bunk—Stephanie’s bed—sitting cross-legged atop the covers in their bras and underwear. Because their room is captive, it’s always like ten degrees hotter than everywhere else in the dorm. The heat is incredible; it’s gotta be close to ninety. Both of them are sweating, sipping mineral water, having a lazy conversation.
“I’m going to cheat on my Latin quiz,” Stephanie murmurs to nobody in particular. Her gaze flickers to me and she gives me a bright smile. “Emily! Yay!” She pats the space beside her on the bed. “Come. Sit.”
“How are you gonna do that? You’ll get caught. You’ll get kicked out.” Grace is the most excitable person I’ve ever met. She’s constantly making wild predictions about everybody’s future. She’s almost always wrong.
Stephanie hooks her arm around me as soon as I’m seated beside her, my head resting on her shoulder. “I will not get caught. She uses the same quizzes for every class. Ethan took his last week, and he kept it for me. I’m just going to memorize his answers. Would you relax already?”
Oh, Ethan Prince. Ethan is Stephanie’s twin brother, and they’re superclose. He’s a prefect and an all-around good guy. He even looks like Clark Kent, except not in an “I can’t tell that Clark Kent is Superman” kind of way, but in a “Clark Kent is obviously Superman” way. The only reason he’d ever help his sister cheat is because Steph has taken Latin for almost four years and can still barely conjugate.
Stephanie has been my best friend since about the first week of seventh grade. We had all the same classes together, and the friendship just kind of fell into place. We’ve been inseparable ever since. But Stephanie and Ethan are completely different. While Ethan doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, Stephanie is much more … spirited. She says what’s on her mind all the time, even if it hurts someone. A lot of people think she’s a bitch. I like to think she provides balance to my personality—I’ve always been so quiet, I can use someone outspoken sometimes. But lately, especially since school started this year, something feels different about our relationship. Stephanie seems more callous, more defensive somehow, and it bothers me more than it used to.
But she’s been my best friend since we were twelve. I’m not going to let things just slip away. So I rest my head on her shoulder again, and feel content knowing that, for right now, life is good.
“Hey, Em.” Grace turns her head lazily in my direction. She sighs. “It’s a freaking oven in here.”
I undo the top few buttons of my own shirt. The windows are open, but the air outside is stagnant; there’s no cross-breeze. “We could go into my room.”
Stephanie yawns. “Franny’s practically comatose. Besides, your room stinks. Is she stoned?”
“Yup.” I give them a quick rundown of the afternoon’s events.
Stephanie digs a Latin quiz with a big A+ at the top out of her book bag, stares at it blankly for a few moments, and then tosses it aside. It glides to the floor like there’s a thickness to the air; that’s how hot it is in here.
“So Madeline isn’t coming back for sure?” Stephanie asks. “Emily, ask your dad already. He’s gotta know something.”
“I can try.” If I’m supersneaky, I can probably get my dad to tell me what he knows—maybe. Like I said, he thinks it’s important to treat me like any other student … most of the time.
“He might not be able to tell you,” Steph murmurs. “You know, student confidentiality laws and all that.” Her long, curly blond hair is pulled into a messy ponytail. She and Ethan are fraternal twins, obviously, and they’re both good-looking as hell, but they don’t even seem related in lots of ways. Aside from the differences in their personalities, Stephanie looks just like her dad, while Ethan looks like their mom. “Ooh, Grace!” Stephanie is suddenly excited. “Show her! Show her what we got at the mall!”
“Yes!” Grace hops out of bed. Her muscles are visible everywhere beneath her tan skin; she’s a cross-country runner. She goes to a bag beside her bed, leans over to dig inside, and emerges looking triumphant. “Look. What. We. Got.” She adds, as though I wouldn’t know, “It’s for your dad’s car. Think we can sneak it onto the Escalade somewhere?”
My roommates call my father “Dad.” You’d think it would bother me, but it really doesn’t. After all, I’m his real daughter; we both know that. I’m so used to sharing him, and besides, my roommates all have strained, sad relationships with their parents, whereas my own father is loving and kind and … well, wonderful. I love my roommates like sisters; they deserve someone like him in their lives.
Grace is holding up an airbrushed license plate that says “Dadmobile” in hot pink letters.
I clap a hand to my mouth. “Oh my God. He’ll die.”
“I was thinking we could switch it with his real license plate,” Grace says.
I nod. “Yes! We should do it after dinner, when he’s still up at school.”
For a split second, Stephanie frowns. “You don’t think Dad will be mad?” She rolls her eyes. “My dad would flip.” Her father is a total jerk. We have nicknames for him, too, but none of them are very nice.
I shake my head. “Come on. You’re talking about Headmaster John Meckler. He’s a teddy bear.”
“I don’t mean to change the subject,” Grace says, “but we need to tell her about the other thing, Steph.”
Stephanie picks up the Latin quiz from the floor. She peers at it for another few seconds, sighs, and tosses it away again. “Right. So let’s tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
“Oohhhh …” Grace, who is petite with curly chestnut hair and a pixie’s face to match, rubs her hands together in excitement. “We were over at Winchester, right?”
I nod.
“And there’s a new boy. He’s a junior like us. He said his parents enrolled him over the weekend.”
This is beyond unusual for Stonybrook. There’s a long wait list and an exhaustive admissions process; nobody ever starts after the beginning of the school year.
“A new boy?” I repeat. A boy! A boy a boy aboy!
“Is he ever.” Grace reaches out, grasps my wrist. Her hands are clammy. “Emily. He has a tattoo.”
I feel a tingle of excitement in my spine. “He does? Where?”
“On his wrist,” Stephanie interrupts. “It’s right over his veins.” She shudders. “I didn’t even want to ask him about it. Must have hurt like hell.”
“Oh, you could barely talk to him,” Grace says. “She let Ethan do all the talking. Steph could hardly look Del—that’s his name—in the eye.”
Stephanie flicks Grace on the ear. “Shut up, Grace.”
“You shut up!”
“His name is Del?” I ask, ignoring the bickering. “That’s not a name.”
“Del Sugar,” Grace finishes. “What do you mean, it’s not a name? It’s his name, isn’t it?” She pauses. “Okay, it’s a little bit weird. But Emily, he’s so cute.”
“What does his tattoo look like? What does he look like?”
“Emily,” Stephanie says, “calm down. You’ll see him at dinner.” She pauses. Then, trying to be nonchalant, she adds, “It’s not like it’s a big deal that he has a tattoo. People have tattoos, Em. You know, my brother and I are getting matching tattoos once we turn eighteen.”
Grace and I share a quick glance. We’re both trying not to smile.
“What, um, what tattoo are you getting, Stephanie?” I ask, winking at Grace.
Steph narrows her eyes at us. “You know. You both know.”
“I forgot,” Grace says. “Why don’t you tell us again?”
Everyone calls Ethan “The Prince.” Mostly because that’s his last name, but also because it’s just too perfect. He’s something like six feet five, really well built with dark hair and a coolness to him that isn’t a bit intimidating. He plays baseball. He loves music, and is really good at percussion instruments. Aside from my father, he’s just about the nicest person I’ve ever met.
His constant kindness is what I’d say is Ethan’s only downfall: he’s so nice, he gives people the benefit of the doubt too much. It’s like he has blinders on when it comes to other people—especially his sister. I mean, sure, Stephanie is my best friend, but I’m not oblivious to the finer points of her personality. Ethan, however, does seem oblivious. He thinks she can do no wrong. He doesn’t even acknowledge that she smokes cigarettes, and more often than not, she reeks unmistakably.
Anyway, for years Stephanie has been trying to give herself the nickname “The Princess.” But as much as she’s tried, it just hasn’t stuck. Sometimes Ethan calls her Princess—but Ethan calls lots of girls Princess. Mostly, he calls his sister Stephie.
But the plot gets thicker. Last year, Ethan went out with Lindsey Cole for about six months. They were like the golden couple. Since everyone calls Ethan the Prince already, they started calling Lindsey the Princess. To say that Stephanie didn’t like it at all is a major understatement. After Ethan and Lindsey broke up, Stephanie got the idea that she and Ethan should get matching Prince and Princess tattoos someday. And she made sure nobody ever called Lindsey the Princess again.
I know Steph better than I know Ethan, so I can’t really say how he feels about the idea. But I know how Grace and I and pretty much everybody else feels, and as her closest friend, I haven’t held back in sharing my opinion with Stephanie.
“Please stop talking about that,” I say. “It’s so gross.”
Grace nods. “You need to let it go. Just imagine how your husband will feel someday.”
Stephanie has full, pouty lips, which she presses together now in agitation. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, then you need to have a talk with Dr. Miller. I think there’s a name for it.” Grace glances at the clock. “We have to go to dinner. Somebody wake up Franny.”
Steph glares at both of us. “You two go ahead.”
“I’ll spray some perfume on her,” I say.
“Uh-huh.” She continues to pout. “Don’t save me a seat.” For a second, I think she might really be mad. But when she remembers to slip the Dadmobile plate into her backpack as she’s getting ready to leave, I know she’s mostly joking.
Grace and I head out together. Franny peers at us with sleepy eyes as we walk into my room, but she doesn’t say anything. Her frame is so tiny that I can barely make it out beneath the sheets.
I go over to her bed and kneel beside her. “Hey, my little waif. Time to wake up.”
“Mmmm … ,” she murmurs. “I want cuddles, Emily.”
“Later. It’s time for dinner.”
Once we get outside, we join the threads of students leaving their dorms to head up to dinner, everyone eventually forming a thick cluster of bodies that winds up the hill.
Just ahead of us, Renee walks with the seventh-graders from earlier. They’re almost tripping over each other as they try to stay close to her, hanging on her every word.
At one point, when she turns around to say something, she catches my eye. She raises her right hand and wiggles her fingers in an easy wave.
“You know how her mother’s a cocaine addict?” Grace murmurs under her breath.
I nod. It’s been in the tabloids, on and off, for years.
Grace hooks her arm through mine, leans closer to whisper, “I heard she relapsed.”
Grace can be a major gossip sometimes. But I still feel bad for Renee. I can’t imagine what it would be like to grow up with a mother like that.
Before I have a chance to respond to the wave, Renee turns around to lead the way again. She isn’t wearing her school blazer. The back of her white shirt is untucked from her plaid skirt. Her hair is pulled into two messy braids that trail down her back, leaving wet spots that make it obvious she isn’t wearing a bra.
“I don’t know how she gets those groupies,” Grace says. “For someone so rich, she’s awfully … disheveled.”
I’m wondering if she has a blow-dryer back in New York; if she let her hair air-dry when she went to the Oscars with Bruce Graham. “I don’t know, Grace,” I say. “If you were in seventh grade, wouldn’t you want to be just like her?”
Grace doesn’t say anything; she just shakes her head.
“Tell me if you see the new boy,” I say.
“Oh, I will.”
We walk silently, both of us staring at Renee.
Even now—even though we don’t have a single thing in common, besides Franny—I can’t stop feeling disappointed that she didn’t wait for me to wave back before she turned around.