BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY #1

by Ashley Valentine

  “Thanks,” she replied, regaining her composure. Then she noticed an enormous tray of cheese, caviar, olives, smoked salmon, crackers and tea cakes teetering on the edge of the sideboad. It was exactly the kind of opulent array of gourmet goodies her father’s clients sent to her parents’ house in a basket as thanks for their lipo tune-ups.

  “You like cheese? Manchego? Coach Triple Cream?”

  As if she could actually eat. “Sure. All of it.”

  “Olives, too?” He pointed. “I like having little picnics.”

  Naomi demurely took a tiny sliver of cheese and popped it between her plump lips. The salt coated her mouth and she swallowed noisily.

  “I got into eating this way from my family.” Eric scratched the side of his slender, clean-shaven neck. “My family, man. They’re crazy about cheese.”

  “Yeah,” Naomi agreed, mesmerized by his classic New England accent. She didn’t have any idea where he was from, but it had to be somewhere on the East Coast. Boston, maybe, but he most definitely did not speak with a townie accent. “What do your parents do?” she finally managed to say.

  He paused. “Uh, well, my dad works in magazine publishing. My mom...she has her little projects, I guess. Yours?”

  Talk about vague. “My dad’s a doctor.” Naomi shrugged. She wasn’t about to tell Dalton a doctor of what. “And my mom...yeah. She has her little projects too.” One of those projects being buying designer sweaters for the seven family Chihuahuas.

  “So, my sources say you’ve been to Italy,” Eric said, spreading Brie onto a cracker and sitting back down in his chair.

  Naomi looked up at him. “Yeah. How’d you know that?”

  He ducked his head a little shyly. “Well, I mean, I saw it in your file.”

  She felt the heat rising to her cheeks. Duh. Of course he’d looked at her file. That was how he’d recognized her in first place. Did that mean he knew about her parents?

  “I’m sorry,” he added quickly. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No!” she said. “God. I don’t care. I went to Europe through school. I spent some time in South America, too, with family.” She didn’t add that her family had bought the biggest, tackiest house in Buzios, Brazil, and flown all the Chihuahuas first class to spend the summer with them.

  He looked at her seriously. “You’re modest. You went to France with the advanced French students—mostly seniors—when you were a sophomore—and you went to Crete with the honors program when you were a freshman.”

  She shrugged. It was weird having someone repeat your achievements back to you. But kind of cool, too. Corey probably had no idea where Crete even was.

  “You’re smart.” He smiled. “I need a smart woman around helping me get through this first year.”

  “Well, that’s me,” she said sheepishly, feeling a little funny that he’d called her a woman instead of a girl. She watched as he gracefully deposited an olive pit on the edge of the Italian-looking blue ceramic tray. Corey would’ve spit it out in his hand.

  “So, let’s get started.” He flipped his manila folder open and revealed a big stack of papers. “I want to show you this—these are some of the case files. They’re like nine thousand pages long. And seriously, keep this quiet. Remember, you’re not technically supposed to be doing this kind of work, since you weren’t on DC last year. Everything in these files is confidential. Think you can handle that?”

  “Absolutely,” Naomi assured him. She laughed lightly. “I’m good with secrets.”

  “Yeah?” He looked up at her and broke into a slow smile. Naomi felt her insides melt. He handed her a pile of papers, his fingers brushing the back of her hand. Naomi nearly choked on her cheese. He didn’t pull away very fast, either. Time slowed down. Naomi counted: One Mississippi, two Mississippi...

  Three seconds. Their hands were still touching. Tingles ran the whole way up her back and her hand hummed as if she were touching an electric fence.

  “I was hoping you might be,” he murmured, finally breaking the silence.

  Naomi looked down, willing her lips not to break into an enormous grin.

  17

  Amir spied Bree in the distance, coming over the dewy green hill from Hunter Hall, the English building. She’d carefully arranged her long curly hair into two perky braids and was wearing a pink and white button-down shirt, her Bridgeport jacket, and a cute little khaki skirt. Amir could almost imagine her as a farm girl, on her way to milk a cow or sing on a hilltop.

  Two ponytailed girls hugged their books to their chests and smiled at him as they passed. “Hey, Amir,” Sage Francis, a brown-skinned girl in an ultrashort gray pleated skirt and silver sandals, cooed. Amir smiled distractedly. “Saw you eating dinner last night with that Bree girl. Did she really sleep with that actor from Breakfast at Fred's?”

  “What?” Amir asked, scratching an artfully tweezed eyebrow.

  “I heard she slept with the lead singer from the Raves, Thaddeus Smith, and Zane Taylor—all in one week!”

  “And don’t forget, she was ponied!” shrieked Sage’s friend, a girl named Helena who was well known for starring in school plays and making out with the student director at the cast parties. Amir was a little tired of the term pony. All the girls were throwing it around and acting completely ridiculous about it. Worse, Maurice loved that they’d made up a sex term just for him. Last night, before heading to dinner, Maurice had poked Amir in his yoga-toned abs and boasted, “You wanna bet I can pony someone between first and second courses?”

  “She didn’t say anything happened between her and Zane,” Amir replied evenly, trying to sound calm.

  “She’s worse than Jade!” Sage and Helena giggled, then linked hands and walked off.

  “No she—” Amir started. But they were already gone. Personally, Amir felt nauseated over all the rumors about Bree. He’d heard she’d been caught having loud sex with Zane Taylor last night wearing nothing but a lacy push-up bra on the roof of her dorm—the rumors were all over Bridgeport. Not that he believed Bree had done it—she was way too sweet to do something like that. Especially with a dog like Zane.

  Bree was still walking toward him, looking even more innocent and wide-eyed than when Amir had first met her. He reached out and caught her arm as she passed. “Hey.”

  Bree stopped, deep in a daze. “Oh!” she exclaimed. Now that she was looking at him, he could see the dark circles under her eyes. He wished he could gently pat some eye balm onto her delicate skin. “Hey.”

  “You okay?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “I got you this.” He searched through his tan suede satchel and found a turkey-and-cheese sandwich wrapped in a dining hall napkin. “I didn’t see you at lunch, and I thought you might be hungry.”

  “Yeah, I was e-mailing my dad.” Bree pressed her lips together, not looking him in the eye. “It’s just...I’m kind of ready to crack under the pressure,” she admitted, her lips trembling. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “What happened?”

  “Never mind.” Bree shook her head, her chin quivering. “I’m all right. I just have to think about things for a while, you know?”

  Amir wondered what she meant. Did this mean she had been with Zane after all? Or that someone was just spreading vicious unfounded rumors about her? Zane, probably. God, he hated Zane.

  “Don’t let him get to you,” Amir said, trying to look into Bree’s big brown eyes.

  “Who?”

  “You know. Zane.”

  “Zane? This really isn’t Zane’s fault.” Bree kicked at the perfectly manicured green.

  “No? Then is it the pony stuff? Because you know, practically every girl at Bridgeport has made the mistake of hooking up with Maurice.” Amir smiled a little. “Seriously. They’ll find someone else to talk about soon.”

  Bree shook her head and looked up at him through her think black eyelashes. “I didn’t even know he was called Pony,” she confessed dejectedly. “But at least I know what those draw
ings mean now. Anyway, no, it’s not only Maurice. That was just the start of it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I feel like...” Bree swallowed hard. She was sort of embarrassed to admit this to someone she hardly knew, but she felt like she could trust Amir. “I feel like Zane and I could have a real connection. It’s weird. I can’t explain it.”

  Amir felt his throat close up. What. The. Fuck. “So,” he finally got out. “You... like him?”

  “Well, I...” Her voice trailed off.

  Amir shook his head vigorously. “You can’t like Zane.”

  Bree shrugged. “Well, yeah. I know. He’s my roommate’s boyfriend.”

  Yes, he was well aware of that, thank you very much. But no, you shouldn’t like him because he’s fucking bad news. After all, Zane had stolen Crystal from him last year and nothing had been the same since. One minute, she was standing next to him at the party at the library, asking for a Grey Goose and tonic. The next, she was ascending the library stairs, with Zane’s tongue practically down her throat in public.

  Now Bree had some sort of connection with him? Puh-lease.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway.” She stared down at her shoes and squeezed her eyes shut. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No...” Amir offered lamely. “I’m glad you did.”

  “I have to go,” she said, still pouting at the ground. “I hope your day goes okay.” Her voice quivered again, as if she were about to cry.

  For maybe the second time in his life, Amir wanted to punch a hole in something. Why did Zane steal every cool girl? And did this mean something had happened between them?

  Amir’s next class was molecular and cell biology, and he was two minutes late. He slid into his seat and glared viciously at the girl with long black hair sitting in front of him. She wore a sparkly diamond ring on her right hand and smelled vaguely of cigarettes and perfume. She turned and twisted the corners of her pretty, pouty, MAC-glossed mouth up into a half-smile.

  “Hey, Amir,” Crystal chirped. “Meet any nice girls this summer?”

  Amir shrugged, averting his eyes to watch a flock of geese flap by the classroom’s picture window on their way south, honking their heads off. He hadn’t met any nice girls over the summer, but he’d met one on his first day back at school. How could he prevent Bridgeport from ruining Bree the way it had ruined Crystal?

  BennyCunningham: So they’re not even speaking to each other anymore.

  CelineColista: Did you see the SAVE JADE! on their board?

  BennyCunningham: I think they both wanted her gone—you know Zane was into Jade.

  CelineColista: Now Crystal's being nice to that slutty Bree girl, even though she practically had sex with her BF. It’s just to piss Naomi off.

  BennyCunningham: God, those bitches are crazy!

  SageFrancis: So Angelica Pardee’s marker board got ponied! Do you think?

  BennyCunningham: She’s married. And old.

  SageFrancis: Maybe she’s secretly wild for Maurice....

  BennyCunningham: Do you dare me to ask her about it at tonight’s check-in?

  SageFrancis: OMG, do it!

  18

  Crystal sat in biology class and felt eyes on her that were definitely not welcome. Not the vacant stares of the emaciated dead cats that lay on the metal dissection trays at their lab stations. Amir Phillips wouldn’t stop staring at her.

  It had been almost a year since they’d broken up. She’d gone to a party for Bridgeport’s literary magazine, Absinthe, at the library, not intending to break up at all. But the party had been classically romantic—they’d turned the lights down at the library and covered the walls in thick gauzy netting. Old twenties flapper music lilted lightly through the speakers, and everyone had been instructed to wear creative black tie. Zane had been there. She’d known Zane, of course—the eclectic circle of Bridgeport’s elite was small—but not well. She’d always found him sexy and mysterious in a sensitive-artist way, and she’d caught him checking her out a couple of times at chapel. When Amir went off to get them some drinks, she made eye contact, thinking she’d innocently flirt with Zane from across the room. But then he’d walked up to her. And it had been like those nature shows on PBS, with a lion striking a gazelle. It had happened so fast, she hadn’t even known what hit her.

  She would’ve pleaded that Zane had slipped something into her glass, but she hadn’t even had a drink yet. Only a few seconds later, they sneaked off into the Bridgeport ancient-books room. Sinking into one of the worn leather smoking chairs, they’d kissed for hours, communicating by telepathy as their tongues twisted together. The next day, Amir knew—everybody knew—and Crystal and Amir were broken up by lunch.

  “By the end of the semester, you will have examined the cat’s various bodily systems and identified every organ.” Their handsomely weathered teacher, Mr. Shea, paced the room. “In December you will be given a final oral exam during which you must correctly identify all of the organs.”

  From the back of the room, Maurice Johnson snickered at the words oral exam. Mr. Shea switched on the overhead projector and started to point at a line-drawn diagram of a cat. Crystal peeked at Amir again. His eyes remained fixed on her, and she quickly jerked her head away. She doodled, Stop staring at me, perv, in elaborate cursive on a fresh piece of notebook paper. As soon as she finished the letters, she scribbled over them in broad black strokes.

  Suddenly her cell phone vibrated in her back pocket. She slowly took it out, and discreetly slid it onto her lap so that it was obscured by the tabletop. It was a text message from Benny, who was sitting only three rows over.

  U think about the cheer yet?

  No, Crystal texted back.

  Every year on Black Saturday, the upperclassmen of the varsity girls’ field hockey team performed a cheer. First the whole team would do a really standard and boring cheer. Then it was tradition for the older girls to pick one new younger varsity girl to do another, crazier, sort of embarrassing cheer, having led her to believe that all the girls were doing it together, not just her. Understandably, the girl became completely mortified when she found herself doing the cheer all on her own. Sometimes she wouldn’t talk to the other players for weeks. But as the season went on, she eventually laughed about it later, glad to have bonded with the cool older girls. It was a hazing ritual that had started in the fifties, and as co-captain this year, Crystal was responsible for it.

  Her phone buzzed again. I think we should make yr new roomie do it, Benny texted.

  Crystal froze, her heart leaping in to her throat. No way. Hazing Bree might make her mad, and Crystal had to keep Bree happy. I don’t think so, she wrote back. Is she even varsity?

  Benny buzzed back quickly. Yup, the list was posted today. Have u seen her play yet? She’s kind of all over the place but good.

  Not her, Crystal quickly replied.

  Crystal watched as Benny furiously typed into her phone. But aren’t u mad at her b/c of Zane? We can totally embarrass her.

  Crystal sat back. The whole school was talking about Bree and Zane and whispering about Crystal as they passed her on the stone pathways around campus. She hadn’t told anyone the truth about Zane and Bree—it was too risky. Embarrassing Bree was the last thing Crystal needed. I don’t know, she texted back.

  Sage and Celine and I all think she’s the one to do it. What does Naomi think?

  As if she and Naomi had discussed it. Or anything for that matter. She sighed and dropped her phone into her pale yellow Hermès bag, indicating that the conversation was over.

  The bell finally rang. Crystal jumped up to her feet and grabbed her notebook, hoping that her hair didn’t smell like formaldehyde. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned. It was Amir, dressed in neatly pressed olive green trousers and Prada loafers without socks. His wavy hair was flecked with gold and she wondered if he’d used an at-home highlighting kit last night or something. “Hey,” she greeted him.

  “So, easy come,
easy go, huh?” Amir’s dark eyes looked cold.

  “Pardon?” she asked cautiously.

  “How does it feel to have someone steal the one you love out from under you?”

  Crystal stared at him for a moment and smirked inside. Good boy, Zane! He must have already started flirting in public with Bree. Even before she’d had a chance to tell Bree about it.

  “Well?” Amir coaxed.

  “Yeah, it sucks,” Crystal swallowed hard, trying to look heartbroken.

  “You don’t believe me.” Amir shrugged. “But I know something you don’t know,” he singsonged.

  “What are we, second graders?” she scoffed, suddenly hating how perfectly plucked Amir’s eyebrows were. “I have to go.”

  Shoving past a gaggle of extremely young-looking freshman girls, Crystal stopped on the second-floor landing.

  Students streamed past her as she pressed herself up against the brick stairwell wall. Was Amir still hoping to get back together with her? Fat chance. That was about as likely as Zane actually falling for little Bree Hargrove. As if that would ever happen.

  RyanReynolds: So, you hear anything on where the Black Saturday party’s gonna be? I heard Jade’s throwing it...

  CelineColista: Really? I heard she was having a secret love getaway in Lake Como with that guy from Empire.

  RyanReynolds: God, I hope not. I’d die for that girl, she’s so fine.

  CelineColista: You and every other boy at this school.

  RyanReynolds: Try planet.

  19

  “Hey!” Corey yelled, loping up the long hill from Bridgeport’s practice fields to the main green. Naomi squinted. He wore a faded black T-shirt, scruffy jeans and booger-green Pumas. He was smiling so big that Naomi could see his crooked row of bottom teeth. Corey probably looked delicious to every other girl on campus, but to Naomi, he looked immature and sloppy.

  “Hey,” she called, noting the undeniable shakiness in her voice. Corey broke into a run, his floppy shirt flying behind him. He smacked into her and wrapped his strong arms around her waist.