Georgetown Academy, Book One

Chapter Five

Tuesday, 8:32pm.

Ellie sat on the floor of her closet in sweats, stress-eating her way through a box of Wheat Thins. Gabe was back and there was nothing she could do about it. She was just going to have to suck it up and try to stay as far away from him as possible.

She stared up at the impressive wardrobe she had amassed over the past two years. Her closet walls were no longer sparsely lined with only plain tees and sweaters, her old uniform from the days when she and Evan would have never gone to a rookie party. Now her collection of dresses, tops, and jeans stared menacingly back at her as if daring her to choose the wrong one for tonight. She needed Brinley.

But they hadn’t spoken since Brinley snapped at her that morning , and Ellie, not a huge fan of confrontation, certainly wasn’t going to be the first to call. No matter how badly she needed Brinley’s help right now.

Help… The cheat sheet! She jumped to her laptop and opened the Google spreadsheet Brinley had begun almost two years ago to help her match up each item of clothing in her closet. She remembered how considerate it was that Brinley had done this for her after befriending her only a few weeks before. It hadn’t been updated in a while, but it was color-coded, easy to follow, and it sure beat continuing this face-off with her wardrobe.

She scanned down the sheet until she found the “Black Pants” section: Rag & Bone Black Skinnies, Tan Helmut Lang Asymmetrical Tank, Black Alexander Wang Booties, Milly Metallic Clutch. There was even an asterisk at the bottom, suggesting a brown smoky eye shadow to enhance the color of the tank. She smiled at the little detail, but it quickly faded. She hated fighting with her friends.

Her phone buzzed on the desk next to her, the screen springing to life with a Google news update. She had set it up so she would know whenever there was a news story about her mom. She clutched the purple jelly cover and scrolled through the story. It was just a recap of tonight’s Today in Politics show, which had apparently rehashed the contentious history between her mother and Senator Mills. Ellie deleted the alert, refusing to turn the show on right now. It was Hunter’s favorite show, fueling his passion for politics, but by the end of every day, Ellie was so sick of D.C. she could barely make it through The Daily Show. Sometimes it was enough to make her want to escape to a small town in Nebraska. She couldn’t even bring herself to go with Hunter last week to an exclusive invite-only speaking engagement with the secretary of state. Instead, she spent the whole day roaming the halls of the National Gallery, losing herself for hours in seventeenth-century French paintings, almost forgetting she was in the city at all.

“Ellie, I’m home!” She was startled by her mother’s voice. She looked at her watch—8:45. Her mom was rarely home before ten.

“Be right down!”

She quickly dressed and padded down the mahogany hardwood staircase that spiraled into the entryway of their colonial-style home. She found her mother in the office and was disappointed to see her hovered over a stack of papers with her chief-of-staff, Jasmine Beck, by her side. Jasmine was listening intently to something on her Blackberry. They both looked up when Ellie entered.

“You look cute, sweetie. What’s the occasion?” her mother asked. Even after a fourteen-hour day, Marilyn Walker looked put-together. Her dark brown hair gleamed thanks to the Brazilian Blowouts she’d been getting and her makeup was somehow still intact. However, no amount of concealer could hide the bags under her eyes, which had gotten worse in the past few days, no doubt thanks to Richard Mills’s impending arrival.

“Tonight’s the rookie party,” Ellie said, plopping down in the massive leather chair by her mother’s desk. By now, the chair was practically molded to her body as it was the one spot in the house where she could have conversations with her mom.