Georgetown Academy, Season One

by Schwartz, Alyssa Embree

  As he walked away, Ellie suddenly took notice of the two girls standing a few feet away, their eyes laser-focused on her. Nora Emison and Liesel Biermann, G.A.’s two biggest power groupies, plastered on smiles as soon as she made eye contact with them.

  “Hey, Ellie!” Nora called out on cue, rushing toward her with Liesel. They probably would have preferred she was Taryn Reyes or Jenny Lim, but with both of them being absent from the party, Ellie was their next best target.

  “Want to do a shot? I brought my dad’s 1800,” Liesel asked, holding up a bottle of the famously expensive tequila. Of course she had brought it. Anything she could use to get in with someone. Ellie’s dislike for the two girls had grown tremendously after she heard them talking about her behind her back after the photo scandal. But then again, it was a shame to waste perfectly good tequila…

  “Let’s do it,” Ellie said. Liesel readied the cups and the three of them quickly clinked shots. Ellie instantly felt the burn in her throat—and the bile threatening to rise back up it.

  “You and Weston are so cute together. And your moms must be so excited you’re hanging out,” Nora chattered. Her mother was, indeed, happy that Ellie and Weston were “becoming close” as she had called it when she discovered the two of them texting the day after that first dinner. Since Marilyn liked and politically supported Gail, Weston was already light years ahead of Gabe in the motherly approval department.

  “Super cute,” Liesel said, agreeing vigorously. “Seriously, who cares that everyone is saying you’re out of control now that you’re with him?”

  Was that what people were saying?

  “Right,” Ellie said, her annoyance swelling, the warmth of the tequila overheating her body. Of course everyone at G.A. would already be judging her after one night out with him. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in D.C. It was the same old thing.

  “You know, I think my dad mentioned he used to be friendly with Gail back when she was in the DOJ,” Nora added. “We should totally all grab dinner with our parents when we get back to town.”

  Suddenly, the door opened, but instead of it being Weston returning with an ice bucket, it was Gabe. With no Taryn in sight. Ellie felt a quick rush of attraction, as she watched him run a hand through his dark hair, followed by a rush of annoyance. This was Weston’s party. There was no reason for Gabe to be here. It was bad enough having to see him at school with Taryn. Couldn’t she have one night where she didn’t have to lay eyes on him? Unless he had come to the party alone, hoping to see her.

  “…so, do you want to, Ellie?” Liesel asked.

  “What?” she responded, clearly having missed the first part of the question.

  “We were saying our room is next door. So we’re going to go over there to pee since this one has a ten person line. Do you want to come with us?”

  “No, I’m fine,” she responded. Their disappointment was palpable.

  “Okay. But when you need to pee, you should let us know,” Nora said. “We’ll hook you up.”

  “Fantastic,” Ellie replied, hoping the sarcasm in her voice wasn’t as obvious as it was in her head.

  They scurried away just as Gabe was making his way through the crowd in her direction. Well, she wasn’t going to wait for him. She stood up, pausing for the tequila tipsiness to subside, before pushing toward him.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked in an indignant whisper, daring him to say it was because of her. But Gabe merely gave her a cool stare.

  “Ellie, relax. A few of my friends told me to come by.” He waved toward a small cluster of Sidwell sophomore guys near the balcony. The blood rushed to Ellie’s cheeks. How could she have forgotten? Gabe used to go to Sidwell before he moved away. She was an idiot for thinking it had anything to do with her. He was dating Taryn, extremely publicly. She needed to get over herself.

  “How is Taryn?” she asked brattily, before instantly regretting it. Why the hell had she played that last round of quarters? She sounded like she was still completely hung up on Gabe. Which she was trying very hard not to be anymore. Which was hard to remember when she was in this close of proximity to him.

  “She’s fine. She was tired from boarding all day, so I dropped her off in her room,” he answered, sounding vaguely annoyed and looking at her with an expression resembling pity. “How are you?”

  Even buzzed, she knew it was a loaded question.

  “I’m great,” she said defiantly. He raised an eyebrow as if to say he didn’t buy a word she said.

  “If this is you being happy, I’d hate to see you sad.”

  Anger pulsated through her and she couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth.

  “You did see it, Gabe. Both times we tried to be together it ended in me being sad. So sue me if I want to have a little fun now.”

  “Is that what you’re calling this?”

  But before she could respond, Weston approached, interrupting them.

  “Here you go, Elle,” Weston said, holding two fresh drinks, smiling casually as if oblivious to the tension between them. Or maybe he really was. It was hard to tell with him.

  “See you later, Ellie,” Gabe almost whispered, his mouth turned into a condescending smirk before he walked away. It didn’t matter that she had been happy five minutes ago with Weston. She still had to stop herself from going after him.

  “I steered clear of the vanilla vodka,” Weston said, as he thrust the drink in Ellie’s hand with a knowing wink. Ellie took it, but the second she put it to her lips she almost gagged. Between the conversation with Gabe and the disgusting tequila, she was suddenly experiencing a repeat of the nausea she had been feeling all day. She couldn’t get sick here. Not in front of this whole room of people. She’d never live it down.

  Luckily, the music had died, sending Weston crawling through the claustrophobic room to restart the playlist. She had to get out of there.

  “Hey, Ellie.” She turned to see Brinley’s good friend, Sarah Corliss.

  “Where’s Brinley?” Ellie rasped, desperate for her best friend to help her out of this clown car of a party.

  Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t go to dinner with her?”

  “No, she said she was too busy helping you to meet up with me.”

  Before Ellie could fully comprehend what that meant—that Brinley had lied to her for some reason—another wave of nausea hit her.

  “See you later, Sarah!” she said quickly, thrusting her drink on the closest nightstand and bolting for the door.

  She burst out into the hallway, where Liesel and Nora were emerging from their room next door.

  “Ellie!”

  “Is that your room?” she croaked, sweat prickling her hairline like a headband.

  “Yeah!” Liesel responded eagerly. “You want to come in?”

  “Please,” Ellie said, pushing past Nora as she held the door open. Luckily, they were keeping the room at temperatures that rivaled the North Pole. As soon as the cool blast of air hit Ellie’s face, the nausea subsided slightly. She took a few deep breaths.

  “Are you okay?” Nora asked.

  “I will be,” she said, wishing her own room wasn’t so far away. The idea of walking that far made the nausea creep back into her throat. “I need to lie down for a few minutes.” That’s what she’d do. Get her bearings and then head back.

  “Sure. No problem. Take my bed!” Liesel trilled. Ellie could swear she heard them high-fiving.

  She laid herself on the cool white sheets and shut her eyes tight. Suddenly none of this was seeming fun anymore.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Saturday, 11:09 a.m.

  Evan grabbed her phone as soon as Taryn left their room that morning to go snowboarding with Gabe. She had barely slept, her mind buzzing with ways to start off the conversation with Hunter, but when she realized there was no easy way to do it, she decided to bite the bullet and hope something brilliant would spontaneously come to her. As if that had e
ver worked.

  His phone went straight to voicemail.

  “Hey, Hunter. It’s me. I just…I wanted to talk to you about, um…” She blanked. She couldn’t leave an apology on his voicemail. This had to be done face-to-face. Oh god, she hadn’t said anything in ten full seconds. “Are you there? I mean, I know you’re not there, but... Just call me, okay?” She was about to press “end” when she suddenly thrust the phone back up to her ear. “Oh! It’s Evan. Harnett. Bye!”

  She clicked off, her face so red it was like it had been zapped in a microwave. Now what?

  She started picking up the massive piles of Taryn’s clothing that were strewn around the room, neatly folding each brightly colored item and wondering for a brief moment why anyone needed three different leopard-print scarves. She hoped Taryn wouldn’t be offended she was doing this, but she was grateful to have something to distract her hands from obsessively checking her phone.

  As soon as she finished that task (which took a while considering the extraordinary amount of clothing Taryn had packed), she stacked Taryn’s fifteen shades of sparkly eye shadow in a row on the bathroom counter and rearranged her plethora of hair products alphabetically. Just as she was about to organize Taryn’s impressive accessory collection by shape, size and color, her phone buzzed with a text.

  But it wasn’t from Hunter. It was from Brinley.

  Come to my room. Now.

  Brinley opened the door with a pained expression that worried Evan immediately. She usually appeared so enviously collected and poised that Evan wondered if anything ever flustered her.

  Evan tentatively stepped into the room and saw a pale Sarah Corliss lying on one of the beds, gulping down a bottle of water and looking like she’d had a seriously rough night. She only knew Sarah through reputation. Apparently, her mother was best friends with the First Lady and Evan had seen her mugging for the cameras a few weeks ago from her front row seat at the inauguration.

  “Where’s Ellie?” Evan asked nervously.

  “I just texted her. She passed out in Nora and Liesel’s room last night. She’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Evan looked between Sarah and Brinley, unsure of why she had been summoned. “So what’s going on?”

  “Tell her, Sarah,” Brinley said, situating herself next to her on the bed.

  It took Sarah a full minute to prop herself up to a half-sitting position, her limbs moving awkwardly like a broken marionette puppet. “I was at this party in Weston Morris’s room last night,” she began hoarsely and Evan knew her foresight had been correct. This was not going to be pretty. “The bar was basically tapped out. All that was left was Popov and I obviously was not going to drink that.”

  Evan wasn’t sure what Popov was, but she knew better than to interrupt.

  “So right before Ellie left, I saw her put her rum and Coke down on the nightstand. It was a full drink and it was better than eight-dollar vodka so I took it.”

  Brinley handed Sarah another bottle of water. She took a few sips then continued, “Next thing I knew, I was so light-headed I could barely stand. I got out of there as quick as I could. The last thing I remember is knocking on Brinley’s door—”

  “And she passed out cold the second she walked in,” Brinley finished. “I’m sure you can guess who poured Ellie the drink.”

  Weston. He had put something in Ellie’s drink and Sarah had consumed it by accident. She thought slipping a girl roofies only happened in Kellie Martin Lifetime movies. Weston had surpassed sketchy and moved on to scary territory.

  Evan sat down on the bed next to them, nervously tugging on the zipper of her fleece hoodie. She was debating what the best strategy would be to break the news to Ellie, when the door opened and Ellie walked in, sipping a large cup of coffee. She stopped in her tracks and narrowed her bloodshot, tired eyes at Evan.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I told her to come over,” Brinley answered quickly.

  Ellie shot her an accusatory look of betrayal. “Why?”

  “Because we have to tell you something.”

  Ellie looked between them, waiting for one of them to speak. Luckily, Brinley took the reins. “Weston tried to drug you last night.”

  Evan had to hand it to her. She didn’t mess around. It probably would have taken her a half hour before she finally got the courage to bring it up.

  The statement didn’t seem to register with Ellie, though. “What are you talking about? No, he didn’t.”

  “Yes, he did,” Sarah responded listlessly. “I took your drink off the nightstand and passed out, like, fifteen minutes later. I can’t remember anything after I drank it.”

  Ellie looked at her incredulously. “That’s ridiculous. Weston would never do something like that.”

  Brinley nodded toward Sarah. “How do you explain what happened to her then?”

  “It could have been anyone’s drink,” Ellie said. “How do you know it was mine?” “Because I saw you put it down,” Sarah responded.

  “You were probably already drunk, Sarah. Everyone was wasted last night.”

  “I only had one drink before yours,” Sarah said defensively. “I was fine.”

  Her words seem to stop Ellie in her tracks, but only for a brief second. “It’s a pretty big leap for you guys to make considering none of you know him the way I do.”

  “Elle, this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this,” Brinley said gently. “He drugged some girl at Sidwell last year. That’s why he transferred in the middle of the semester.”

  Ellie sank to the bed. “What girl? Who did you hear that from?”

  It was time for Evan to step up no matter how much Ellie didn’t want to hear from her. “My friend, Jana. She goes there.”

  “And she told you Weston drugged her?” Ellie asked sharply.

  “Not her. Someone else. But she was at the party where it happened.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes, any trace of worry or doubt now erased from her face as she stood up. “So this is something you randomly heard from a girl who was at a party with another girl who said Weston drugged her? And why didn’t he get in trouble for it?”

  Ellie would make an excellent lawyer. On paper their case did seem pretty thin. But Evan knew in her gut it was rock solid once you broke it down. Especially after this incident with Sarah Corliss.

  Brinley stood up, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’ve been wasted since the second you got here. That doesn’t really make you a great judge of character.”

  The muscles in Ellie’s face tightened and she turned to Brinley, fire in her eyes. “This is all because I’m having a little fun with a guy you don’t approve of. You never liked Weston the second you met him because he didn’t care that you were Brinley freaking Madison and it pissed you off.”

  Brinley’s eyes widened and the insult seemed to momentarily shut her up. After everything Ellie had been through with the photo scandal, it was the wrong tactic to attack her behavior this weekend. Evan didn’t need to be on speaking terms with her to know seeing Gabe and Taryn together was eating her up inside. Weston was momentarily filling the void and from Ellie’s perspective, she and Brinley were trying to take that away from her.

  “He’s not a good guy,” Evan said quietly. “We’re both trying to help you. That’s all.”

  “Well, hearing it from you, Evan, makes all the difference. Since you’ve been such a great friend lately.”

  Evan leaned into the punch like a professional boxer. She deserved it, but that didn’t change the situation. “We’re telling you the truth.”

  “Why would we lie about this?” Brinley added, finding her voice once again.

  Another wave of anger shot across Ellie’s face. “That’s a great question, Brinley. But lying seems to be your thing lately, so you tell me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Brinley responded indignantly. Evan was unsure of what territory this conversation had suddenly veered into, but her eyes darted quickl
y between them like she was watching a tennis match.

  Ellie scoffed. “You told me last night you were having dinner with Sarah, but Sarah showed up at Weston’s party and said she hadn’t even seen you.”

  Sarah’s languid eyes sprang to life and peered toward Brinley curiously. Evan resisted the urge to shoot her own questioning look in Brinley’s direction.

  When it became clear Brinley wasn’t going to provide any more information, Ellie gave her one last disapproving look and said, “That’s what I thought. Leave me alone. Both of you.”

  She turned on her heels and slammed the door behind her.

  ***

  Brinley entered the elevator on a mission to get some Gatorade for Sarah Corliss, who was still feeling light-headed, even after an hour-long afternoon powernap once Evan and Ellie had left. Between Sarah and Ellie, Brinley had spent most of her time in Vermont nursing people back to health. Luckily, Sarah’s daze had kept her from asking Brinley any follow-up questions about where she’d been the night before, though she knew she’d have to come up with something eventually to appease both her and Ellie.

  The doors opened and Brinley stepped out, veering around the wooden column so that Shane, who was pointing something out on a map to a clueless NCS girl at the front desk, could have a clear line of vision to her as she made her way to the gift shop. She had changed into a wool and lace blend black Miu Miu sweater and charcoal Helmut Lang skinny leather pants before coming downstairs—just because she was procuring a sticky, neon sports beverage was no reason to look bedraggled. When Shane finally looked up and caught a glance at her, he raised an eyebrow appreciatively and she allowed herself to give him a nanosecond smile before turning away.

  She walked past the groups of D.C. students lounging in the lobby, grateful she didn’t see Ellie. After the blow-out they had, it was better if she cooled down, but hopefully she was holed up in Nora and Liesel’s room and not Weston’s. After both Sarah and Evan’s stories, there was no doubt in Brinley’s mind that Weston was bad news.