“But it’s really about the dress, right?” Kellen asked as a waitress roller-skated over with their drinks and fries.
“Okay, yes.” Kellen looked vindicated. “But it is more than that, too,” she added quickly. “Cotillion is a sisterhood that I’ve wanted to be part of since I was seven. My mom was a deb, my grandmother was a deb. I’ve looked forward to this day forever.” She bit her lip. “I never thought I’d have to do it alone.”
“Savannah and her friends can’t be the only ones doing it.” Kellen pulled a gooey fry from the plate.
“They’re not, but…” Mira was pretty sure she knew everyone in her cotillion class. It was usually the same girls year after year. There was no way Izzie could get in this late in the game, not that she would agree to doing it, either. “I just don’t want them to ruin it for me.”
“They can’t ruin it if you don’t let them,” Kellen said between bites.
But Kellen didn’t get it. Cotillion was supposed to be special. She wanted to try on dresses with her friends, and talk about escorts, and—escorts! Every deb needed an escort, and if Kellen was hers, then there was no way the evening would be a failure. She felt a tiny glimmer of hope. “I do know one way to keep the night from being a total disaster,” Mira said, picking at a fry. She tried not to sound eager. “I need to find an escort. You know, like a date. But I can’t ask anyone—they have to ask me.”
“You are not allowed to ask someone to your own dance?” Kellen looked confused.
“Technically no,” Mira said. She watched as he stopped chewing. “It’s tradition for escorts to be assigned a girl. But if a guy knows a girl is going to cotillion, he can ask her on his own, too. I just hope someone wants to ask me.” She pretended to stare at the jukebox.
Kellen took a long sip of his milk shake before saying anything. He seemed to be deep in thought. Maybe he had gotten her subtle hint and was going to ask her to cotillion right now!
“I wouldn’t worry about a date too much,” he finally said, chewing on another fry. “I’m sure they’ll assign you an escort if no one volunteers.”
Mira’s hands clenched tightly. Boys. Sometimes they were so clueless.
Six
The heated discussion the next day continued even after Hayden pulled into their driveway and everyone got out of the car. Izzie chose to walk behind him and Mira—out of the line of fire—which was a smart move because Hayden was about to say the one thing he knew would make his sister’s head explode.
“I forgot the world revolves around Mirabelle Monroe.”
“Excuse me?” Mira’s wavy hair bounced angrily as her head whipped around to look at Hayden. Izzie thankfully suppressed a smirk because two seconds later Mira gave Izzie a look that said, Can you believe he said that?
Izzie replied with her own look, the one she’d patented over the last few weeks to deal with problems of the Mira variety. Those included, but were not limited to, Mira asking whether her headband matched her outfit (Izzie didn’t have a clue), if Izzie knew where Mira had left her favorite pair of flip-flops (nope), and whether Izzie would choose Team Peeta or Team Gale if she was on a deserted island and could only pick one boy to spend the rest of her life with (Peeta, of course!). Mira didn’t really want an answer—she had already formed her own opinion—but Izzie noticed that if she just nodded and gave “the look,” Mira was satisfied.
“Izzie thinks you’re overreacting, too!” Mira took “the look” to mean that Izzie agreed. “Any girl in my situation would want to know the same thing!”
Hayden winked at Izzie. She knew he was trying to get Mira fired up on purpose. “You’re right. Of course, Kellen asked about you during cross-country practice. What else would he be doing? Trying to improve his time? No, all he wanted to talk about today was you,” Hayden said patronizingly. “Is that what you want to hear?”
Mira played with the strap on her messenger bag. “Well, it would be nice, but I guess he did have other things to think about.” Her face turned pink, and it looked like her cheeks might explode. “So, did he? Ask about me, I mean.”
Hayden gaped at her, and Izzie started to crack up. That made Hayden roar.
Mira stopped short and stared at them both as if they were nuts. “What? Hayden never answered my question!”
Hayden finally managed to stop laughing. “Sorry, but he didn’t ask me about you.” Mira’s face fell. “Don’t sweat it. I would never ask a guy about his sister if I liked her, either.”
“So you do think he likes me?” Mira asked.
“I…” Hayden looked at Izzie wearily. “A little help here?”
Izzie backed away, swinging her army-green messenger bag. “Don’t ask me. I’ve got my own boy issues.”
“No, you don’t.” Mira pouted. “Brayden likes you. Everyone at school is talking about it.” Izzie had a feeling that the latter half of that statement bothered Mira more.
“Everyone,” Hayden agreed, trying to keep a straight face, even as Mira gave him the stink eye. “Face it, Mira. Izzie is more popular than you are now.” He hurried ahead of Mira down the path to avoid being hit.
“Thanks. Rub it in! Mono is more popular than me these days,” Mira griped, and stomped inside. The three of them filed into the foyer.
Izzie still couldn’t get used to the size of the house even after living there for the past few months. Every square inch of it looked like it belonged in an expensive furniture showroom. The Monroes’ taste was definitely more traditional than Grams’s shabby-chic place, but the vibe was still homey. Well, it had been. With all the bickering and silent treatments going on, the place felt a little frosty now.
“Don’t be depressed.” Izzie flung her bag on the entry room bench. “Savannah still talks about you,” she said encouragingly. “Well, if you count all the negative stuff she says.” Mira’s scowl deepened.
“Don’t worry, Mira,” Hayden told her. “Give it two weeks. By that point some unfortunate girl in the sophomore class will look twice at Lea Price’s boyfriend, and they’ll have someone new to hate.” Hayden dropped his backpack in his designated cubby. “By then, I’m sure you’ll have a new group of girls to boss around.”
“Thanks.” Mira sniffed. That seemed to please her a bit.
The new-friend topic gave Izzie a thought. “Speaking of new people, have either of you ever met Brayden’s sister, Dylan?” Hayden and Mira looked at each other warily.
“Of course we’ve met her,” Mira said. “Have you?” By Mira’s expression, Izzie figured it was best to shake her head no. “She’s nothing like Brayden,” Mira told her. “I’m not one to talk”—Hayden coughed—“but when Dylan lived in EC, she had major mommy/daddy drama going on, and not for lame reasons like my-mom-won’t-let-me-put-red-streaks-in-my-hair-for-the-swim-meet.”
“Well, it was unreasonable.” Izzie thought of the week before. “I told your mom it would wash out.”
“Dylan has done everything you can think of to make her family’s life more scandalous than an episode of Real Housewives.” Mira began to tick off the indiscretions on her fingers. “Wearing an off-white dress to cotillion, getting several tattoos, showing up tipsy at one of her mother’s dazzling self-thrown birthday parties. Dating a guy from out of town who worked at a tattoo parlor in Harborside.” Mira’s eyes widened. “I’m sure he was really nice,” she added quickly, “but it was still a scandal.”
“Forget I brought her up.” Izzie wasn’t about to get into an argument with Mira about Dylan. Personally, none of the supposedly scandalous things Dylan had done sounded that bad. They sounded like things a person would do to forget they lived somewhere like Emerald Cove. And that was a feeling Izzie understood completely. She kept waiting for the day that she woke up and finally felt like she belonged there, but she wasn’t sure that day would ever come.
Aunt Maureen’s laugh brought her back to the present. It was coming from the kitchen and it was followed quickly by their father’s. The last time Izzie heard him laugh lik
e that was when Connor painted his face like Darth Maul with her aunt’s lipstick.
“What are they doing home?” Mira’s voice was anxious, just like Izzie’s stomach felt when she heard Bill’s voice. “I thought they were at a fund-raising rally in Raleigh.”
Hayden shrugged and headed toward the kitchen. “I guess it ended early.”
Izzie used to find Emerald Prep the most stressful part of her day. She looked forward to hurrying back to the Monroes’, where she could sit and watch whatever Kaitlin Burke movie was on ABC Family in peace. But now it was the opposite. She dreaded coming home and finding him there.
Hayden looked at them strangely. “Aren’t you guys coming? I thought you wanted something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” Izzie said quickly.
“I had a big lunch,” Mira seconded.
“I thought you guys said you skipped lunch.” Hayden sounded suspicious. He pointed to Izzie. “You said you had a meeting with Mrs. Fitz.”
Mira forgot for a moment about needing a cover. “You had a private meeting with Mrs. Fitz? Why? What are you talking about? Tell me,” she said excitedly.
“Nothing.” Izzie looked at her feet. “I just had a few questions about the club.”
“Like what?” Mira pressed. “I gave you a Social Butterflies orientation kit, right?” Her face crumpled. “You’re not quitting, are you?”
“No,” Izzie said. “I like it.” As much as it killed her to admit it, the stuffy, prestigious Emerald Prep Social Butterflies club she had joined by default was growing on her. Some of the girls may have been in the group for the status, but there was no denying the group’s commitment to charity work. That’s why she had stopped in to see Mrs. Fitz. Izzie had half a dozen ideas for events clogging her brain, and she wanted to run them by their club director in private. She wasn’t ready to share them in front of the group yet. “I wanted to know what the final number was that we raised for the community center,” she lied. “We raised close to nine thousand dollars.”
“That’s amazing,” Mira said. “The center must be thrilled.”
Izzie could still feel Hayden’s eyes on them. “I thought you were going to the kitchen for a snack.”
Hayden loosened his EP tie and shook his head. “You guys can’t avoid him forever.”
Yes, I can, Izzie wanted to say. But she didn’t. Instead she watched as Hayden swung open the door between the dining room and the kitchen. She could just make out Bill’s navy pin-striped suit as the door swung closed.
“This isn’t fair!” Mira complained when Hayden was out of earshot. “I’ve been dreaming of that chocolate cream pie in the fridge since third period.”
“Since when do you eat pie?” Izzie asked.
Mira shrugged. “Since I have no one to look good for.”
“Please.” Izzie wasn’t playing into her pity act. “Look good for yourself.”
“Mira? Izzie?” Aunt Maureen called out. “Are you two home?”
Aunt Maureen knew they were, but this was her polite way of getting them to show their faces rather than run upstairs.
“We might as well face the fire and get a cookie out of it,” Izzie said.
Seeing her uncle/dad/liar didn’t get any easier. No matter how big he smiled, or how nicely he asked about her day, Izzie still couldn’t stop thinking about how he had let her down. He had given her a roof over her head and new clothes to call her own, but he hadn’t given her what she’d needed the most: a sense of family. Aunt Maureen had done that, which was why even though she had been in the know, Izzie couldn’t be mad at her.
“Hi, girls,” Bill said cheerfully. He took off his reading glasses, the ones Izzie always thought made him look intimidating, which was probably why he never wore them on television or for photos. “Did you have a good day?”
Mira was too busy staring at the chocolate cream pie on the kitchen counter to look at her dad. There was only one slice left. Izzie took an M&M cookie. She did not want to face Mira’s wrath over that piece of pie.
“Mom, did the mail come yet?” Mira asked.
“Not yet,” Callista told her. “We’ve been waiting for it ourselves. O is supposed to send us an advance copy of the article they did on your father.”
“Haven’t they heard of e-mail? It’s quicker,” Izzie said, and Bill chuckled. Izzie didn’t look at him.
“They said something about not wanting the layout to be misconstrued.” Callista leaned her long arms on the counter. She had a yellow legal pad in front of her, and it looked like she had been taking notes. “How was school?”
“Super as always,” Hayden smirked. “Well, unless you’re Mira or Izzie.”
Callista’s face clouded over. “Are you still having a hard time? God, I hate high school! What do you two have to do with any of these politics?”
“Mira’s former best friend is Holden Ingram’s daughter,” Bill explained.
Callista groaned. “No wonder school is miserable. If that girl is anywhere near the snake her father is…” Callista glanced down at her dessert plate, embarrassed. “That was wrong. Sorry. I just get so mad sometimes!” She looked at Bill. “The Ingrams are trying to ruin a super candidate like your dad by backing that one-trick pony Steven Fray. It makes me sick to think about the money they’re throwing at him.”
“Holden Ingram has come out publicly to support your father’s new opponent for the ticket,” Aunt Maureen explained, her face grim. “He’s a rookie district attorney who is riding the family-values wave. As if marrying the secretary you got pregnant is family values!” Aunt Maureen’s voice had a hard edge Izzie hadn’t heard before. She seemed so stressed these days. “The Ingrams are determined to get Fray nominated instead of your father.” She looked at Izzie worriedly. “Fray also supports Holden Ingram’s coastal revitalization project and wants to start by tearing down half of Harborside Pier, including the community center.”
Izzie felt like she had just been sucker punched. Her former community center was always in jeopardy of not having enough funding, but now someone was trying to take a wrecking ball to it.
“I don’t want you to worry, Isabelle,” Bill told her. “I’m going to do all I can to make sure no one touches the community center unless they’re renovating it.” She knew he had withdrawn his support of Mr. Ingram’s project.
“Thanks, Unc—” Izzie paused. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to call you anymore, and I can’t keep pretending not to call you anything or say ‘hey, you.’ ”
He took a sip of coffee. “What do you want to call me?”
“Dad feels weird.” Izzie felt her cheeks burn. That sounded mean. “Uncle doesn’t work, either, though, right? Since that’s clearly a lie?” She had noticed sometimes it was harder being angry at Bill than just letting things go.
“If calling me Uncle makes you comfortable, then do that,” he said thoughtfully. “Or just call me Bill.”
“But not in public,” Callista said hastily, and everyone looked at her. “It’s so forward—well, for down here. I don’t know how that would go over in the polls.”
“I’m more worried about what Izzie wants,” Bill said, looking directly at her. “If you want to call me Bill, call me Bill.”
Izzie thought for a moment. Did she really want to get used to calling him something else when she was just getting used to Uncle? “I think I’ll stick with Uncle Bill for now.” He nodded.
The rest of the room was so quiet, Izzie could hear the sound of the dishwasher running in the background. Mira broke the ice with a strange new topic.
“So, Callista, I was wondering…” Mira twirled a lock of her hair around her finger. “Any chance Teen Vogue might want to interview me and Izzie?”
“Why would we want to do that?” Izzie looked ready to have a heart attack.
Callista munched on an M&M cookie. “I think that’s a super idea! I’m sure they’d love to have you. I’ll make some calls. I know the editor at Justine personally.”
&nbs
p; Mira squealed, and now everyone was looking at her. “What? I want to help the campaign.” She stared at them innocently.
“Yeah, that’s the reason you want to be in a magazine,” Hayden said wryly.
Izzie didn’t have time to wonder what Mira’s real reason was, because two seconds later, the front door slammed so hard, their coffee mugs shook, and Connor bounded in. He dropped a pile of mail on the table. “Cookies!”
Aunt Maureen handed him one and started sorting through the mail. When she came to an oversize, thick cream envelope, she stopped. Before Izzie could figure out what the invite was for (an invitation for a spinning-class-for-asthma-relief fund-raiser had come the day before), Mira snatched the envelope from her mom. The two of them ran their fingers along the calligraphy that spelled out her name. Then Mira carefully broke the seal, pulled out an invitation, and shrieked.
“I’ve officially been invited to cotillion!” She let herself collapse on the island in relief.
“Was there really any doubt?” Hayden asked.
Mira didn’t answer him. Instead, she waved the invite in Izzie’s face. “Look!”
Izzie took the invitation and read it herself.
Mirabelle Monroe is cordially invited, after three years of service and hard work, to participate in this year’s cotillion class and make her debut at Emerald Cove Castle on the Cliffs on Saturday, December 13, at 7 pm. All cotillion members are expected to participate in this fall’s classes, which consist of both etiquette and dance….
Izzie stopped reading. “This is what you’re excited about? Another dance? Doesn’t this town get tired of parties?” It never ceased to amaze her how many bashes EC had and for such silly reasons. Last week, they attended a garden party to celebrate the new park playground.
“Cotillion is a big deal.” Mira took the invitation back before Izzie could get chocolate on it. “Why does no one get that?”
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