The It Girl

Chapter 3

          .A WAVERLY OWL SHOULD KEEP HER GRANNY BRAS HIDDEN AT ALL TIMES.

“Right here is fine,” Jenny told the cabdriver as soon as she spied the discreet maroon sign reading WAVERLY ACADEMY hanging from a tree next to a tiny, one-story brick building. Waverly wasn’t far from the train station, but Jenny hadn’t been able to get here fast enough.

“You sure?” The cabdriver turned around, revealing a thin beaky noseand a faded light blue Yankees cap. “Because the front office is—”

“I’m a student here,” Jenny interrupted, feeling a thrill ripple through her chest as she spoke. “I know where the front office is.”

The cabdriver threw up his hands in defeat. “You’re the boss.” Jenny handed him a twenty, stepped out of the cab, and looked around.

She was here. Waverly. The grass seemed greener, the trees taller, and the sky cleaner and bluer than anywhere she’d ever been before. There were lush evergreens on all sides, and on her right was a wide, cobblestone path snaking up a hill. A green field spread out to her left, and in the distance a few boys in Abercrombie fatigue shorts were kicking around a soccer ball. The whole place smelled of boarding school. Like the deep woods, which she’d only been in a few times, before she knew better than to accompany her dad and his kooky anarchist buddies on camping trips in southern Vermont.

A cream-colored Mercedes convertible swept past her. She heard a stately clock tower bong out one o’clock.

“Yes,” she whispered, hugging herself. She had definitely arrived.

The truth was, she’d wanted to get out of the cab because she couldn’t wait a second longer to plant her feet on Waverly ground, not because she knew exactly where she was going. Staring at the little brick building beside her, she realized that ivy had grown over the windows and the door was rusted shut. This definitely wasn’t the front office, where she needed to check in. Another car, this one a battleship-gray Bentley, passed her. Jenny decided to follow the parade of luxury cars.

She dragged her bags up the freshly mowed hill, her kitten heels sinking into the slightly wet, springy lawn. A running track circled off to her right, flanked by tall white bleachers. A few girls were running briskly around the track, their ponytails bouncing. At the top of the hill, above the dark green trees, she could see a white church spire and the slate roofs of some more redbrick buildings. The boys with the soccer ball had stopped playing and were now standing together, staring in her direction. Were they staring at her?

“D’you need a ride?” a male voice interrupted her thoughts. Jenny looked over, and saw a tan, middle-aged man with dazzling white teeth hanging out the driver-side window of a silver Cadillac Escalade. She could see her reflection in his Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. She looked awkward and silly wearing a too-tight Lacoste cotton polo shirt and dragging her luggage up the hill in a pair of pointy pink kitten-heel sandals. She’d bought the shirt at Bloomingdale’s because she’d been sure it would make her feel like she absolutely belonged at boarding school, and she had gone back to visit the sandals several times before they finally went on sale so she could buy them.

“Um, sure. I’m going to the front office.” She slid into the backseat of the SUV, which smelled like new car. A dirty-blond boy with chiseled features was sitting in the passenger seat looking sulky, but he didn’t twist around to speak to her.

“I don’t know, Heath,” the man told the boy quietly. “You may not be able to have the party—your mother and I might need the Woodstock house that weekend.”

“Motherfucker,” the boy hissed under is breath. His father sighed.

Jenny barely acknowledged the boy’s rudeness. She only had ears for one word: party.