“Digby told me to come get you.” And then Felix took off running down the hallway and up the stairs.
I said “To be continued” to Bill and followed Felix around the corner onto the second-floor landing, where we ran into a jam of people in the hallway outside one of the bedrooms. They were laughing, and from their body language it seemed like they were talking about whatever was happening behind the closed door.
“Excuse me, people, make a hole, make a hole.” Felix parted a path through the crowd for the two of us. He pounded on the bedroom door. “Digby! Hey, it’s Felix.”
Standing right up against the door, I could hear the sound of angry talking and scuffling. And then I heard a male voice whimper, “Ouch ouch ouch that hurts.”
I asked Felix, “What the hell is going on in there?”
Someone toward the back of the crowd yelled out, “Yeah! What’s going on in there?”
Someone else said, “Catfight.”
And that’s when people began pushing up against me to get within earshot, so I banged on the door and yelled, “Digby! Open the door.” By now, the pressure from the crowd was pinning me against the door. I checked that the door opened away from me and saw the lock looked reassuringly old. “Felix, do you have a bus pass? Or some kind of credit card?”
Felix handed me a museum membership pass. “You know how to do that?”
“How hard can it be?” It had looked easy enough when I’d watched Digby do it, so the sound of Felix’s card snapping in half surprised me. “Um, do you have another one?”
Felix grimaced but gave me his library card anyway.
I pushed at the person behind me to back up so I’d have room to work the card gently. Click.
“You did it,” Felix said.
My brain couldn’t make sense of the chaos we saw when the door opened, but eventually the flailing bodies untangled to reveal Digby and Henry standing back to back, trying to keep Sloane from killing Maisie, the sophomore I’d found curled up in an armchair with Henry earlier that night.
The crowd behind me whooped and cheered at the sight of Sloane going crazy. I saw people raising their phones to record, so I pulled Felix inside and slammed the door shut behind us. The crowd outside started booing and complaining.
“Sloane, ouch,” Henry said.
Sloane was climbing Henry, windmilling her arms to get at Maisie, who was trying to get around Digby to reach Sloane.
“Princeton. Help?” Digby said.
Neither Henry nor Digby was willing to actually put hands on either Sloane or Maisie, so I grabbed Sloane, wrestled her onto the bed, and sat on top of her. “Get Maisie out of here,” I said. After a weird no-hands dance, Digby finally managed to shuffle Maisie out the door.
Once it was just the five of us, I climbed off Sloane and sat next to her on the bed. “Damn it, Sloane, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
“It was me . . . my fault.” Henry flopped onto the bed next to me and said, “I guess Maisie thought—”
Sloane leaped over me and started hitting Henry.
“Wait, Sloane! Nothing happened,” Henry said. “Stop hitting me.”
“I know nothing happened. Of course nothing happened,” Sloane said. “Would you even be breathing if I actually thought something did happen?”
“Then why are you mad?” Henry said.
Sloane grabbed a pillow and hit Henry in the face. “Because you let her think something could’ve happened.”
“She jumped me. I was just sleeping it off in the chair . . .” Henry pointed at the recliner. “And when I woke up, she was on my lap kissing me.”
“Well, who told you to drink so much in the first place?” Sloane said.
Digby gasped. “Are you blaming the victim?”
“That’s not funny. Of course she wasn’t,” I said.
“You know, Sloane, girls need to get consent too,” Digby said.
Sloane kept ripping into Henry. “What’s wrong with you? Spring workouts start next week—”
“Hello?” Henry said. “I got Coach arrested . . . which basically means I personally canceled spring workouts. Actually, I pretty much got next season canceled too, because they’re going to check everyone for steroid use and I don’t know how many of the guys are using.” Henry flopped back on the bed. “And anyway, Coach is going to make Austin QB so, really, my whole life is canceled since if the college scouts don’t see me play . . . no college for Henry.”
“Number one,” Sloane said, “it doesn’t matter if he had decided to replace you with Austin, because as of this morning, Coach Fogle is a criminal. Number two: The season’s not over until they tell you it is and then we call my lawyers.” Henry picked up a random Solo cup from the nightstand. “And number three . . .” Henry lifted the cup to his lips for a drink but Sloane slapped it out of his hand before he could. “Stop drinking.”
Felix pointed at the now-beer-soaked wall. “Should we clean up?”
“This house is a gut job at this point,” Digby said. “We should just get out of here.”
“Yes. Definitely,” I said. “Party’s over.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Sloane said, and walked out of the room.
“So, is this true? You two now? Maya sent me this.” Felix handed me his phone, where the picture of my ugly kissing Digby was captioned with, Isn’t she your friend?
“Maya. The soccer captain?” I said. “So now all the sportos have it?”
“Oh, the Jabba pic?” Digby said.
Felix clapped his hands. “That is what she looks like.” He and Digby did the death rattle tongue waggle. “On the pleasure barge.”
“Ha-ha. Yeah, yeah, classic scene,” I said. And then I realized what was bothering me. “Wait. Where did Sloane go? There’s a bathroom right here.” I pointed at the en suite across the room from us. “Damn it.”
I left the room just as Digby worked it out and said, “Uh-oh . . .”
I ran down the halls, alternating between asking “Seen Maisie?” and “Did Sloane come through here?” Finally, I found Sloane standing in the living room, holding a beer and looking weirdly calm.
“Oh, hi, Zoe,” Sloane said.
“‘Oh, hi, Zoe’?” I said. “Did you even need the bathroom? What are you up to?”
“She’s talking about me,” Sloane said.
I watched Maisie huddled with her friends across the room, being aggressively obvious about mocking us.
“Probably because you’re standing here staring at her like a psycho. Let’s go, Sloane, you’re just driving yourself nuts,” I said.
“Fine,” Sloane said.
I’d already started for the front door when I realized Sloane wasn’t walking with me. I went back through the crowd to find her. “Sloane, what the hell? Get back here.”
And then—I swear—I saw her hand moving upward with her cup of beer, so I rushed over to stop her from dumping it all over Maisie. I got in grabbing range just as Sloane yelled Maisie’s name and Maisie turned around. I almost had Sloane by the arm but then my left heel got caught in the tassels of the living room carpet while my right foot kept on going. I dove forward and I reached out to break my fall but all I got was a handful of Sloane’s hair. Both Sloane and I went down screaming, and I watched her cup of beer arc through the air and hit Maisie in the face.
Still crouched on the floor next to me, Sloane said, “What did you do that for?”
“To stop you from attacking her with your beer,” I said.
“You mean like the way you just did? I was only going to cuss her out,” Sloane said.
The chorus of OMGs and sympathetic faces gathered around Maisie morphed into angry sneers as people looked at us.
“They’re turning on us, Sloane,” I said. Sloane and I helped each other get up. “Go say sorry.”
�
��Why?” Sloane said. “You did it.”
Maisie pointed at us, with black eyeliner dripping down her cheeks. “You bitches.” She picked up a random cup and flung the contents toward me but Sloane yanked me backward and took the soaking in my place.
The room burst into celebration. Maisie was coming at me with another cup, so I grabbed Sloane’s hand and we ran out the front door and straight to Sloane’s SUV.
Hince, her driver, started the engine even before we’d fully gotten in.
“I’ll text Digby and the guys to come out here,” I said.
Maisie stomped out the front door with a stream of people behind her.
“Uh, Miss Bloom?” Hince said.
“The angry villagers,” Sloane said. She locked her door. “We can’t wait for the guys. Go, Hince. Go.”
We lurched away, with Hince periodically slamming on the brakes to avoid killing the morons who thought it’d be funny to jump in our path or climb onto our moving car. When we finally shook off the last faux rioter and got under way, I handed Sloane the box of Kleenex she kept in the car and helped her wipe off some of the beer.
“Thanks for the save, Sloane. I didn’t need a public beer shower on top of the crummy night I’m already having.” And then I noticed her eyes flick down to my legs and I realized what was really going on. “It was your leather pants, wasn’t it? You didn’t want beer on your pants.”
“Those are brand-new. And speaking of . . .” Sloane reached down and straightened my legs. “Knees.”
THREE
I wasn’t in the mood for one of Sloane’s lectures about a poor little rich girl growing up alone in a castle on a hill, so I told her she could spend the night at my place. I put her in the guest bedroom, said good night, and brushed my teeth. But when I got back to my room, Sloane was sitting on my bed, reading one of my books.
“Something wrong with the guest room?” I said.
“Those sheets don’t look clean,” Sloane said.
“They’re clean. No one’s slept in them,” I said. “I changed them myself after Digby moved out.”
“Digby slept on that bed?” Sloane said. “Wait, did you ever . . . with him on that bed?”
I shook my head.
“What about elsewhere? Like, in the dirt outside Kyle Mesmer’s summer house?” Sloane said.
“I can see those pictures are going to be so annoying,” I said. “No, we did not.” I dove into my closet. “There’s a sleeping bag in here you can have.”
“Is it clean?” she said.
“No, Sloane, I’m going to stuff you into a dirty sleeping bag and make you spend the night as a filthy proletariat Hot Pocket,” I said. “It’s clean.”
“Ha-ha,” she said. “By the way, thanks for lending me your clothes, but . . .”
I threw Sloane a set of my pajamas.
She caught them and said, “Are they—”
“Yes, Sloane, they are clean,” I said.
“Also, I’m thirsty,” she said.
After a while, I realized that she was staring at me because she expected me to do something about it.
“Go to the bathroom and get a drink,” I said.
“Like a dog?” she said.
“Did I say drink from the toilet?” I said. “I don’t know how it is in your house, but we have a sink in our bathroom.”
“Is the water filtered?” she said.
“Then just go get a bottle from the fridge already, okay?” I said. “My God, you are exhausting.”
Finally alone, I exchanged a few awkward messages with Digby in which I avoided saying what I really wanted to say—please come over—before I figured out that he didn’t think Henry was in any shape to be left alone.
“What’s this?” Sloane came back in the room holding a white envelope.
“Mail? I don’t know.” I didn’t recognize the crest on the envelope at first, but when I finally did, my entire being flooded with dread.
“The Prentiss School? Is this . . . ?” Sloane said.
“The decision letter. It’s so late,” I said. “I just assumed . . .”
Sloane ran her finger along the envelope’s flap. “Open it.”
“Ugh. This on top of everything else tonight,” I said. “Man, I wish I hadn’t let you talk me into going to that party.”
“Don’t look at me like I made you go,” Sloane said.
“Literally, that is what you did,” I said.
“Wait. Did you tell Austin you were applying?” Sloane said. “When you sent in the application, I mean?”
“I didn’t tell anyone I applied,” I said. “Not even my parents.”
Sloane said, “So, besides the admissions people and yourself . . .”
“You’re the only other person who knows,” I said. “Yes.”
Sloane laughed. “You’re mad at Austin and Allie for ‘stabbing you in the back,’”—Sloane made air quotes—“but really, you were making plans to leave town behind his back the entire time you guys were together?”
“To be honest, I only applied out of spite because my father said I wouldn’t get in. I didn’t actually contemplate what I’d do if I did,” I said. “And look, I didn’t get in.”
“You don’t know for sure you didn’t get in,” Sloane said.
“It’s the skinny envelope, Sloane,” I said.
“But until you open it, you don’t know,” she said.
“You just want me to read the letter so you can watch me get rejected,” I said.
“Wow. I’m glad you have such a high opinion of me,” Sloane said.
Even for Sloane and me, it was a low blow. I resigned myself to taking a major hit to the self-esteem and tore open the envelope. “Happy now?”
It took me another minute to register what the letter actually said.
“What?” I said. “What the hell?”
“What is it?” Sloane said.
I couldn’t think of what else to say, so I just spat out every filthy combination of swear words my exhausted brain came up with.
“I have to see this.” Sloane took the letter from me. “Wait . . . you got in. Zoe? You got in . . .”
I took the letter back from Sloane and reread it. A few times. “Dear Ms. Webster, we are happy to inform you that we have a vacancy at the Prentiss School starting this fall . . .”
“You got in,” Sloane said.
It finally sunk in. “You bet your sweet ass I did.”
Sloane was silent. Something weird went on with her face.
Eventually, I just had to ask. “What’s your deal? Are you fighting a sneeze?”
Sloane held up a finger to buy herself time and then, when she was more composed, she said, “I’m doing my exercises.”
“Exercises?” I said. “Exercises for what?”
“They’re like this.” She breathed in and said, “Zoe has more.” She breathed out. “But I don’t have less. I am not less.” She pointed at me, and said, “You.” She drew an invisible perimeter around herself. “Me.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s weird. Why would you be less?”
“What? You don’t feel bad when other people get something you wanted for yourself?” she said.
“But, Sloane, you could easily get in anywhere,” I said. “Prentiss . . . wherever. Why would you feel bad?”
“I can’t go to a private school,” Sloane said. “My family’s Democrat and my father wants to be the president of the United States.”
“Then what’s the point of feeling bad?” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course it doesn’t make any sense. I’m competitive. It doesn’t have to make sense. Oh, please. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t get competitive like that.” When I couldn’t deny it, Sloane said, “Exactly. It started to be an OCD thing with me, so I got
help. What do you do about it?”
“Well, I don’t have eleventy thousand dollars to spend on grooming my feelings . . .” I said. “So I just eat my heart out like a regular person.”
Sloane said, “Well, this feels much better.” She redrew the invisible perimeter around herself over and over.
“And—bonus—it doesn’t at all look insane,” I said. “Oh, God, I feel kinda good. I think I need to dance.” And so I did. “How you like me now, Dad?”
“And that doesn’t at all look insane,” Sloane said. “So, that’s who you’re telling first? Your father? Are you telling Digby? How will he take it?” She paused. “So that means you’re going to accept your spot?”
Each question left me feeling crummier than the one before. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided if I’m going yet.”
“Of course you’re going,” Sloane said.
I glanced at my phone and saw more posted images of me. Ugly reality beckoned me off my cloud. “Great.” Sloane had gotten back on my bed, so I sat down on the floor. “Do you think a lot of people have seen these? The pictures of Digby and me?”
“Sure. They’re everywhere.” When I groaned, Sloane said, “Sorry.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “It’s so humiliating. I look so . . .”
“Are you and Digby together now?” Sloane said.
“No idea,” I said. “Everything happened so fast.”
“Although . . . what would ‘being together’ even mean for a guy like him?” she said.
“I get to carry the bail money?” I said. “I’m his steady alibi?”
I spotted the sleeping bag under a pile of shoes at the bottom of my closet and yanked it out.
“I guess before I worry about whom to tell, I need to figure out what I want to do about Prentiss. I’d better do it soon, though. It says here the deposit’s due,” I said. “I don’t know. I mean, is it worth it to go for just one year? What will I even have time to learn in a year?”
“‘Learn’? How the real world works, for one,” Sloane said. “People don’t go to places like Prentiss to learn. Stay home and read a book if you want to learn. People go to places like Prentiss for access. Colleges reserve places for Prentiss graduates.”
Trouble Never Sleeps Page 2