Welcome to Bridgeport Academy, an elite boarding school in New York where glamorous rich kids don't let rules get in the way of a good time.
[ Based on the It Girl series by Cecily Von Ziegesar ]
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"What do you think the guys do in their club?" Robyn poured some vodka into her Bridgeport mug filled with lemonade and stirred it with a plastic spoon. She stood at the window where the makeshift bar was set up and stared out at the dark quad, still only half dressed in her black slip skirt and white lace corset. With no makeup on, she looked like a naughty French maid.
"Who knows." Alex flicked her cigarette at the teacup she was currently using as an ashtray. She missed, and gray ash crumbled onto the floor.
Kae was flipping through her drawers absentmindedly, occasionally taking a sip from her insulated cup, which was filled with spiked lemonade. Waverly 303 was, for the first time, as clean as it had been the day they all arrived. The girls had put away all their clothes and books, cleared off their desks, and pushed their beds back against the walls. They propped up pillows, vacuumed, and crisscrossed strings of red Chinese lanterns from the ceiling, purchased that morning from the art store in Rhinecliff. Jasmine's phone was playing through her "pre-party" playlist.
"I don't know if I have anything exactly heart-attack-inducing." Kae turned toward the other girls. This was what boarding school was supposed to be like—hanging out with her roommates, drinking spiked lemonade from plastic mugs and ordering pizzas, talking about boys and maybe dancing around a little. She tried to ignore the pit that was forming in her stomach, growing bigger and bigger every time she thought about how she'd lied to Robyn and Jasmine about Chris. "What should I wear?"
"Oh, come on," Robyn scoffed. "All you have to do is show a little cleavage."
"Please. I could have the greatest push-up bra in the world, but there's just not that much to push up." Kae decided on a black sleeveless T-shirt with strategically placed cutouts designed to show skin in only the right places. With her tight jean skirt, she felt very punk rock.
"Are you guys almost ready?" Jasmine burst into the room wearing a turquoise tube dress, the kind Kae always saw in Victoria's Secret catalogs—the ultra-clingy, revealing kind that could only be worn by supermodels and girls lucky enough to have curves in exactly the right spots and not an ounce of fat in any of the wrong spots. Clearly Jasmine was one of those people. Her eyelids were covered in gold shimmer, hoop earrings as big as apples hung from her lobes, and she wore a pair of jeweled flat sandals on her feet. Wow. Was she even human? Kae looked at herself and Alex and Robyn, all dressed in black, and then back to Jasmine's bright blue dress.
"Nice dress, Jasmine," she heard herself saying. She hadn't said much to Jasmine since, well, she'd met her, but screw it. The spiked lemonade was going to her head, and she was feeling a little brave. So what if Jasmine was the queen of Bridgeport? She'd kissed Chris Brown!
"Why, thank you." Jasmine gave her a throwaway smile, barely looking at her as she walked over to the floor lamp and tossed a dark purple handkerchief over the light, bathing the room in violet.
"Knock knock." Teyana pushed through the doorway with Keke right behind her. "Are we late?" She was carrying two bottles of wine in one hand and one of those rabbit-shaped corkscrews in the other. "Courtesy of Daddy Taylor. He just sent these in a back-to-school care package."
