by Cecelia Gray
The Jane Austen Academy was a four-story building in the shape of a rectangle. Its grand entrance boasted the school’s motto, We Will Be Heard, in iron lettering over the front gates, and the maxim was emblazoned above each of the stained-glass doors to the main wings.
The two long edges of the building were student housing—the north side now reserved for boys and the south for girls. One short edge was academic classrooms. The other short edge contained the science labs, a music room, and a small auditorium that served for assemblies and theater productions. A central courtyard held several picnic tables underneath the cool shadow of the properties’ apple trees which dotted the neatly trimmed lawn.
Behind the academic classrooms was a short path. Lizzie silently fumed next to Anne as they marched down the path past the cafeteria, past the gym and sports fields, and past faculty housing. Despite her focus, Lizzie gave in to the small luxury of the sun’s warm rays caressing her cheeks and tracing down her arms. The property’s apple trees grew closer and closer together until they formed a dense wood, much like they probably had when the property had boasted an apple orchard. The path wound through the trees to a small, red-brick cottage that was the headmistress’s home and office.
As they reached the white front door of the cottage, Lizzie heard Anne’s sharp intake of breath. They slowed to a halt, and she realized Anne was staring at the gold plaque that had been bolted to the brick.
Katherine Berg
Headmistress.
Lizzie felt an unexpected pang of pity for Anne. This had been Anne’s mother’s home, and her grandmother’s before that, and it likely would have been her home, too, once she graduated from college with her teaching degree. Anne was known for sneaking away during lunch hour to eat alone in this house—something Lizzie had always found strange, although she never mocked Anne for it like some of the other students. There were so many other things to hate about Anne, that it had never made the list.
Now this cottage belonged to some stranger, to some trust, instead of to Anne and her family.
“We can wait to speak to Bergie after grand assembly,” Lizzie offered awkwardly. “We’ll catch her in the auditorium before she comes back.”
“No,” Anne said, steeling her gaze at the sign. “We may as well get this over with.”
Lizzie almost asked Anne if she was sure she wanted to go through with this, but before she could, Anne grabbed the doorknob and turned it.
The door opened with a soft click.
Headmistress Berg’s voice carried down the hall—she was clearly on the phone and speaking in a rush, clipped tone. “…can’t run a school with a name like the Jane Austen Academy. We’re not even a liberal arts school. I already had the English teachers take Jane Austen out of the curriculum.”
Lizzie swallowed a gasp of indignation. She glanced over to Anne, who had come to a stop as her hand fluttered to her chest.
“I’m serious—get a lawyer on it if you have to. I want the name gone by Christmas.”
“It’ll never happen,” Lizzie said reassuringly to Anne. She may not have liked Anne’s legacy, but she didn’t want the school changed any more than it already had. Besides, changing a headmistress was one thing. Renaming the entire school was another. The new owners, whoever they were, had to know they couldn’t take it that far.
But Anne didn’t respond. She continued forward instead, as if quelling her surprise.
Lizzie followed Anne past the foyer into the front office, where Headmistress Berg was seated behind a grand oak desk.
The woman looked up from behind a pair of mint-green glasses shaped like cat’s eyes. As usual, Bergie looked like something out of the New York fashion pages. She was tall, lithe, and always dressed in bright colors that draped her body like some deconstructionist wardrobe malfunction. Today she wore a pumpkin-orange asymmetrical dress with pointy triangle shoulders.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she drawled in a way that indicated seeing Lizzie wasn’t one.
“There seems to be a mix-up,” Lizzie said, “with the rooming assignments.”
“I’m not prone to mix-ups or mistakes, despite what our local press has been saying.” Headmistress Berg leaned back in her chair and steepled her long, limber fingers with an amused look.
“I requested Ellie and Ellie requested me, so there should be no reason for this.” Lizzie pointed between herself and Anne. She looked at Anne and raised her eyebrow, waiting for a supportive word.
“I’m sure you’ve realized by now that not every student request is granted,” Headmistress Berg said. “Anne, do you have something to say?”
“I didn’t make any assignment requests,” Anne said, “But it seems fair that Lizzie and Ellie’s requests should be honored.”
“The changes to this school are a challenge enough,” Lizzie said. “Having the support of my friend would make the transition less difficult.”
Bergie narrowed her green eyes. “Is there something you specifically object to in Anne as a roommate?”
Lizzie recognized a trap when she saw one—she couldn’t object to Anne, not on any real grounds. “Of course not.”
“And you, Anne, do you object specifically to rooming with Elizabeth?”
“Not in principle,” Anne said forcefully.
Bergie tapped her fingers together. “Perhaps your fear—”
“I’m not afraid,” Lizzie interrupted, drawing her head high. She would not let Bergie think she was scared.
“Poor word choice then,” Bergie said, rising to walk around the desk in front of them. “Perhaps the challenge you two need is to become familiar with one another. I had believed that placing one of our most promising students—” She smiled at Lizzie. “—with one of our most cherished—” She smiled at Anne. “—would be an inspired pairing.”
Lizzie refused to be charmed by her blatantly false flattery. “I’m sure Anne and I are more than eager to further our acquaintance. However, being roommates—”
“I’m so happy to hear you say that,” Bergie said, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. Lizzie fought to shrug it away. “Because I have been racking my brain trying to pick the perfect candidates to help me usher our Academy into this new era.”
“Be that as it may—” Lizzie began.
“It would mean the managing editor position at the Gazette, of course. I’ve yet to appoint someone.”
Lizzie’s mouth went dry.
Managing editor? As a junior? She would be the first junior ever in the history of Jasta to make managing editor, and it made her a shoo-in for next year. She would then be the only person in Academy history to manage the Gazette two years in a row.
“I also need a candidate to chair this year’s Welcome Back dance,” Bergie finished.
Lizzie’s gaze went quickly to Anne, who seemed to be holding her composure by fisting her hands and pursing her lips. Hard. Anne had chaired the Welcome Back dance since freshman year, as appointed by her parents. Lizzie didn’t think Anne had the right to expect another appointment, but she couldn’t deny she felt a pang that Bergie had the nerve to take this tradition away.
“No, thank you,” Anne said with a tilt of her nose to the sky.
“Well…wait,” Lizzie said quickly. “Let’s talk this through.”
“Are you serious?” Anne whispered.
“Give us a moment,” Lizzie said. She grabbed Anne’s arm and led her back into the foyer. “Think about it—managing editor is nothing to scoff at. If we give up the newspaper and the Welcome Back dance, too, Bergie will appoint some crony with her sick agenda. We need to maintain what control we can to rally support against her.”
“Even if it means rooming together?” Anne asked with a puzzled frown.
Lizzie felt the tide of guilt rising, but she pushed it back down and nodded. “Even then.”
“And what will you tell Ellie?”
Another pang shot through Lizzie—but nothing as strong as what she’d felt when Bergie had sai
d she could have the Gazette. Managing editor! “She’ll understand.”
They walked back into the office, where Bergie was standing with folded arms, her long fingers impatiently tapping at her elbows. Protest boiled up again in Lizzie but she fought it down.
“We accept,” Lizzie said.
“Perfect.” A satisfied smile stretched Bergie’s blood-red lips. “I have your first assignment.”
“Since when does the headmistress assign the student paper?” Lizzie asked.
“Think of this as a joint assignment between the paper and the welcome committee.” Bergie sauntered to the front of her desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope. “You’ll find all the details in here.”
Lizzie snatched the envelope. Both her and Anne’s names were already scrawled in the corner. That was a bad sign. Had her acceptance been some foregone conclusion? Had Bergie been counting on her to take the Gazette?
No, she was overreacting. This was the right decision – Bergie underestimated her, and she had every intention of using that mistake to her advantage.
“This is my only request,” Bergie said. “Promise. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She waved them away with a flick of her fingers. “I need to prepare for this afternoon’s assembly and I’m sure you two have plenty to discuss.”
As Lizzie turned to make the long walk back to the dorm past the sports field, Lizzie swallowed the sinking feeling that she was on a slippery slope.
“Well, are you going to look?” Anne asked with a nod to the envelope.
Lizzie stopped in front of the entrance to the dorms beneath the We Will Be Heard motto, ripped open the envelope, and pulled out a stack of papers. Anne leaned in to read over her shoulder.
Anne groaned. “A welcome series in the Gazette highlighting promising new male students?”
Lizzie flipped through a series of bios. She set her teeth. All a boy had to do to get a feature in the Gazette was show up on the first day of school, whereas she and her classmates had been toiling for years and hadn’t had a series of features on how awesome they were.
“What do we do?” Anne asked.
“We do just what she asked,” Lizzie said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “We welcome the new students.”
“Why do I get the feeling you don’t mean it when you say that?”
Lizzie shot her a mysterious smile. “Look at that—roommates for a minute and you’re already reading my mind.”
* * *
By the time Lizzie got back to the room, Ellie had drawn a heart over the i in Lizzie’s name on the sign. She hadn’t, however, unpacked. Her duffel bags were still piled on the floor between the beds.
“How did it go?” Ellie had set up her laptop on the desk and was in the middle of typing an email.
Seeing Ellie’s expectant expression, Lizzie finally felt the knot in the pit of her stomach balloon to full size. Had she really given in to Bergie? Had she given up her best friend as a roommate?
But managing editor! Ellie would have to understand…wouldn’t she?
“She wouldn’t go for it,” Lizzie said, unable to voice the absolute truth.
“Oh.” Ellie slouched in her chair. “So that’s it?”
Lizzie’s pulled at her suitcase handle. Was it?
All summer, she had dreamed of talking into the night with Ellie, helping each other with homework—she was hopeless at math without Ellie’s clear, simple logic to explain the problems—and sneaking off campus to catch movies at the Merrywood cinema.
But there was no reason they couldn’t still do some of those things. They’d always done them, roommates or not.
“Just for now,” Lizzie said. “Maybe we can request reassignment for next semester.”
Lizzie scrunched her nose. “But it wouldn’t be fair to make Emma or Anne move just because we want it.”
“They probably won’t want to room with us, anyway.”
“Hey!” Ellie sat up in her chair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Lizzie said, although she couldn’t imagine stylish, image-conscious Emma wanting to have anything to do with carefree, messy disaster Ellie.
“I guess you have to get to your room,” Ellie said with a shrug.
“Yeah, I guess,” Lizzie said. As she pulled her sundresses out of closet and draped them over her arm, , the queasy feeling got worse. She was choosing the paper over her friend. But wouldn’t Ellie want that? “So…the tree? Our first day back?”
“Maybe later,” Ellie said. “I have a lot of unpacking to do.”
Chapter Two
Lizzie scanned the auditorium and had to admit that a teensy, tiny part of her felt the excitement in the air. There was a buzz, a thrill—there were boys—everywhere. They moved in hordes—they couldn’t have become friends already? A cute one—a boy equivalent of a Labrador with mussy brown hair and big, brown eyes rimmed with impossibly long lashes—grinned at her, so friendly she found herself smiling back.
Mentally, she shook herself. No, they were the enemy. They were the competition.
Lizzie was pushed along like a little fish in a big current. She knew where she was headed—her usual seat in the front row. Bergie glanced at her from the stage as she adjusted a microphone and Lizzie flashed her a big, disingenuous smile. Let Bergie muse on what it meant.
When she reached the centermost seat of the front row, she stopped short. There was someone in her seat. A guy, to be precise. He sat tall. He was tall—she could tell—over six feet. Unlike the other students, he wasn’t smiling, he wasn’t talking to anyone, or even glancing around to watch people take their seats. It was like he didn’t care. Like he was above them. Even if he hadn’t been sitting in her seat, Lizzie disliked him on sight.
He was good-looking in a royal European way, with his close-cropped, dark blond hair and ice-blue eyes. His gaze flickered to her for a moment, swept her from head to toe, and glanced back to the stage.
Lizzie felt a drop in the pit of her stomach at the dismissive look, the kind she got so easily from her parents. Then it sparked into outrage. Who did he think he was, coming into her school and sitting in her auditorium seat and dismissing her?
“That’s Dante Braxton,” said a voice behind her.
Lizzie whirled—ugh, Emma. Chic, blond, Manhattanite Emma, who thought she knew everything about everyone and was better than everyone else because she was not only from Manhattan, she was from the Upper East Side—you know, the side that mattered.
Emma wore a pencil skirt and tottered along on chunky spiked heels and her hoop earrings were so large they brushed her shoulders—completely impractical for the school assembly. It was like Emma couldn’t accept she wasn’t in Manhattan any longer.
“I know who he is,” Lizzie lied, although she recognized the name now that Emma had said it. Dante was one of the names in the envelope Bergie had handed her—people she was supposed to interview later today. One of Bergie’s pet projects. Which meant he came from money. Lots of money. Bergie wouldn’t waste precious Gazette space unless it meant bolstering school donations. That probably explained why he thought he was above everyone.
Ellie showed up behind Emma, with a cool look at Lizzie. Was Ellie mad at her? Did she know Lizzie had maybe lied about not being able to get the rooms changed? Technically, Lizzie hadn’t lied. Maybe she had saved them all a bunch of grief. Now at least they had a chance at transferring next semester. Who knew whether she’d have been successful if they’d pushed the issue with Bergie?
But you didn’t push the issue, her conscience said. You took the managing editor position and ran with it. Even Anne had more nerve than you.
“Hey,” Ellie said finally, nodding at her.
“Isn’t this so fun?” Emma said, wrapping her arm around Ellie’s elbow. “I thought you guys would be roommates, but it’s so much more fun to mix things up a bit, don’t you think?”
Lizzie gave a noncommittal mutter and marched past Dante, who didn’t even look u
p so she could grace him with a scowl, and headed to the next cluster of empty seats. As she sat down and Ellie sat next to her, she realized that Emma had followed and plopped down right next to Ellie. She hoped this was just first-day politeness and not a sign of things to come. She wasn’t sure she could handle a whole year of Emma in their crew of two.
“—even though Headmistress Berg is wearing that dress like it’s high fashion, it’s so two seasons ago,” Emma was saying. “I remember seeing it come down the runway. And she’s too statuesque to pull off those shoulders and too pale to do orange.”
Lizzie couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard anything so pointlessly ridiculous.
She rolled her eyes at Ellie, but instead of rolling her eyes back, Ellie just squirmed in her seat, looked down, and studied her fingernails.
“Is everything okay?” Lizzie bent her head to ask.
“Yeah, just tired,” Ellie said.
“Yeah, figures. Emma is exhausting,” Lizzie agreed, relieved Ellie wasn’t mad at her.
“She’s okay.”
Lizzie’s eyebrows shot up, but before she could retort, Ellie was speaking again.
“How’s Anne?”
Lizzie began to make a witty remark about how Anne had pulled off and ironed the bedsheets, but then she remembered the look on Anne’s face when she’d seen her mom’s cottage with Bergie’s name on it, and how she’d held herself like steel at a time when Lizzie would have freaked out. “Not bad. I’ll live.”
Ellie’s blue eyes flew open in surprise.
“What?” Lizzie said defensively. “Let’s just say I have bigger problems than Anne this year.” She looked up at Bergie, who was performing the mic check.
Lizzie glanced down the aisle of seats to her right and to her left. She hated to admit that having boys around changed everything. Changed the way her classmates were behaving.
They were still running up to each other, hugging and kissing each other’s cheeks. But then they sat in tight groups, furtively glancing around, giving coy smiles instead of gabbing about what they’d done over the summer. It was like the end of an era that she hadn’t even known was around the corner. Everything, everyone, had changed and she hadn’t even had time to savor how things had been before.