It was during gym class that I finally laid eyes on the girl everyone on campus had been talking about for having gained weight. Strangely enough, I recognized her immediately and was annoyed with myself for not having made the connection earlier. Emma Jeffries was the cover model for Hunter Lodge clothing. Her picture in the Hunter Lodge ad had been in just about every major fashion magazine over the last twelve months, and the store’s fancy, high-quality catalog was a collector’s item in Japan. In person, she was almost six feet tall and so pretty it felt kind of weird to look at her, like it was hard to look away. Prior to arriving at Treadwell Academy, I hadn’t known that her father was the owner of the Hunter Lodge corporation, which was a pretty big deal. It was a publicly traded company and had a bunch of retail specialty offshoots.
The crazy thing was… Emma Jeffries was far from fat. If the rumors about her weight gain were any indication of just how vicious girls at Treadwell could be, I was in for a long year of minding my every move. In gym class, Emma only spoke to the girl I would find out later was her best friend. Paige Northrup was also very pretty with a raspy voice and a dirty mouth, with wild, dark, wavy hair. Chloe would tell me later in the day that Paige was Jenny’s older sister, the daughters of Larry Northrup, a famous guy who owned casinos. And strip clubs, according to Chloe. Emma and Paige peeled off from the rest of the class into the corner, where they monopolized one of the leg strength machines.
The seniors, I was finding, were untouchable. They acted as if underclassmen didn’t even exist.
At least one lucky break of the morning was that Treadwell was fancy enough that the locker rooms featured private showers. Each little stall had a bench and a sliding curtain, so we didn’t have to change out of sweaty gym clothes and shower together. That was a lucky, lucky thing, because my gym class at Treadwell was the first time I had ever perspired enough during a gym class at any school to feel like a shower was an absolute necessity before going to my next class. Even as I was running shampoo through my hair, I was annoyed that I had bothered with the flat iron that morning. I wouldn’t have time to restyle my hair and would have to endure the rest of the day with a giant puff of curls around my face.
French class was just a joke. Ms. Ziegler, the teacher, who wore what appeared to be a chestnut-colored wig cut in an old-fashioned shag style and a long paisley skirt that almost reached the floor, was a big believer in classroom immersion. The class was a mix of freshmen and sophomores, and within the first five minutes of the class, Ms. Ziegler summoned me from the sophomore side of the classroom where I had taken a seat next to Chloe, and reassigned me to the freshmen side of the room so that I’d be sitting with the other beginners. Chloe smiled apologetically at me from across the room and then immediately resumed chatting within her little conversation circle, clearly not the least bit concerned about my success in the class.
I was so lost in the cacophony of French around me that I hadn’t even really understood what Ms. Ziegler had said when she’d commanded me over to the freshmen side of the room. One of the younger girls had to translate for me that I needed to move desks. In our little circle, we were saying words like, “le camion” and “l’ouiseau” in response to flash cards with cartoon illustrations on them. Across the room in Chloe’s circle, it sounded like there was a conversation going on about the advantages of clean energy.
Why had I convinced myself that I could manage to learn French simply because I’d been to Paris a bunch of times? Not even my mother spoke French to her Parisian colleagues. She had once jokingly told me in a taxi in Paris after barking out complicated orders to the driver in American English, that when you’re wealthy, the world speaks your language. In Ms. Ziegler’s chaotic classroom, that seemed like perhaps some of the crappiest advice I’d received from my mother yet.
By eleven-fifteen when I got to study hall, I was yearning to crawl underneath the long table where I had sat down in the library, and go to sleep. There was simply no possible way I was ever going to pass my schedule of classes at Treadwell that semester, or any semester. My temples were throbbing and I stared at the pages of my French textbook as if I was really doing homework instead of epically spacing out. Failing out of Treadwell was going to require a Plan B. Other than somehow getting myself thrown in jail, which opened up the floodgates for a ton of things equal to, or worse than, having to face Danko, my mind was drawing a blank. What school would take me, if I got kicked out of Treadwell? I might seriously be looking at public school in Manhattan if it came to that.
“Betsey,” a female voice said, stirring me out of my frantic reverie.
I looked up from my French textbook to see Taylor plunking herself into the chair across from mine at the table.
“Hi,” I said, suddenly somehow completely nervous and unprepared for this moment. Taylor was undoubtedly going to think that I was stalking her, since I had shown up randomly on her campus without warning. Seeing her when I hadn’t had a few minutes of preparation time, having her bored forest green eyes upon me, demanding some kind of an explanation, I felt completely exposed. Trying to think fast, I conjured up explanations for my presence at Treadwell. I could claim that I had been thrown out of school and my mom had decided on Treadwell for the next chapter in my academic career through her own, independent research. A claim that my mother had sought out boarding school advice from my dad, who had asked Chase, Taylor’s dad, might also have been a plausible reason for my being there. But I was stumped. So I proactively offered no explanation for my presence and just sat there like an imbecile.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, not sounding particularly angry about my being there, but seeming suspicious nonetheless.
“I, um,” I stammered. This was my big chance, the chance I’d been planning for a month, to become best friends with Taylor, and I was blowing it. I had to pull it together. Existing on this tiny campus never more than a mile away from Taylor was going to be agony if she decided during this encounter that I was a weird stalker who had connived my way into her world. “I got into trouble at my old school and your dad told my dad this was a good place.”
Taylor thought about that for a moment before saying, “Interesting. I didn’t think my dad knew anything about this school at all. What kind of trouble did you get into?”
The librarian seated behind a counter nearby sent us a stern SHHH and Taylor motioned for me to follow her. I gathered my books and we ascended a staircase to the second floor of the grand library, where there were leather arm chairs arranged in a little lounge area. The library at Treadwell was downright majestic; it included six floors of musty books, with balconies on each floor overlooking the study tables on the main floor where I had originally been sitting. Ms. Ziegler had mentioned something about a laboratoire for language somewhere in the library, which was presumably a room with computers and headphones where you could listen to audio exercises. The library’s ceiling was mostly glass, filling the entire structure with natural sunlight.
“Everyone comes up to the higher floors for study hall,” Taylor informed me. “If you go all the way up to the sixth floor, there’s a door everyone uses to go to the roof and smoke. I mean, not that I smoke. But if that’s your thing, you know.”
We sat down and both leaned forward in our leather arm chairs so that we could hear each other without having to speak too loudly. I told Taylor about the chemistry lab incident, claiming it was all a huge accident. She listened with an expression of doubt on her face, as if surely I wouldn’t have been kicked out of school for such a mundane reason. She asked if I was enjoying classes so far.
“I guess. They’re a lot harder than the classes at my old school,” I admitted.
Taylor shifted in her seat, folding one leg beneath her and twirling a lock of her long, wavy chestnut-colored hair around one finger at her shoulder. “Yeah, look, Betsey,” she said, leveling with me. “This school is no joke. When I was researching boarding schools, admittance rate from graduates into Ivy League schools was
one of my top criteria. Treadwell is up there. This isn’t going to be easy for you, and if you don’t get at least C’s, they put you on academic probation. And then, if you don’t pull up your grades the following semester, they will kick you out. People get kicked out every year.”
She was stating all of this matter-of-factly, as if I should just keep my bags packed because it was only a matter of time for me. It had never occurred to me that Taylor had chosen this school on her own accord. Her blasé attitude about my probable failure at Treadwell was making my chest ache like I was going to start crying. I could feel my secret about Danko rising in my throat. It would have been so easy to confide in her and tell her why it was adamant that I not flunk out of Treadwell. Somehow I had a feeling that I could tell Taylor, that I could trust her because we had our dads’ band in common, but still… the words would not form. Instead, a voice escaped my throat that was hoarse and foreign. It didn’t sound like my own.
“I’m scared,” I confided. “I don’t want to fail.”
Taylor rolled her eyes at me so dramatically, it was like she was embarrassed by how desperate I seemed. “Then you have to get tutors, Betsey. Don’t wait until after mid-terms. Start now so that you can catch up.”
Tutors! At Pershing I would have recoiled in disgust at the suggestion. Only total nerds and brainiacs would have tutors help them do their homework. But at Treadwell, I was willing to do absolutely anything Taylor suggested that I try. “What about you? Can you help me with any of my classes?” I asked, casually tapping a tear away from the corner of my eye that I was hoping had escaped her attention.
“Me? Oh god, no. You don’t want me as a tutor,” Taylor scoffed. “I’m way too busy with junior symphony anyway. What you want is to find people here on merit-based scholarships. They want to make money tutoring, and they’re legitimately getting good grades, so really they’re in the best position to help you.”
I tried to stifle a sniffle and failed. Taylor could probably tell that I was crying just a tiny bit at that point. She didn’t make it worse by telling me everything was going to be OK; she was kind enough to ignore it.
“Girls willing to tutor usually put up signs at the Gaffin Center,” Taylor suggested. “That’s the building where student groups can request meeting space, and where the Treadwell Daily News offices and the television studio are located. There’s a big bulletin board in the student lounge in the basement.”
I nodded, and tried to get a grip on myself. I was going to have to find this Gaffin Center, wherever it was, and get myself to its basement that afternoon. If I didn’t, I knew that after a few more days of hard classes, I’d be ready to admit defeat and just sink into my usual mode of not caring about grades.
“Look, Betsey,” Taylor said softly, trying to tactfully position what she was about to say. “This is a place where people really love to spread rumors. All that stuff we did over the summer… I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself. And I would strongly caution you to think carefully about what you do while you’re enrolled here. Girls here are just not… nice.”
Taylor told me she had to go study for her Ancient Civilizations class with her friends, and I was a little miffed that she didn’t offer to introduce me to them. But she did write down her phone number and told me I could eat dinner with her at Hartford Hall the following night if I wanted.
I nestled back into my leather arm chair by myself, cracking open my French textbook again. But all I could think about was how badly I wanted to tell Taylor about my real reason for being at Treadwell. Then dread washed over me as I imagined how I’d feel if she ever found out the truth. It was highly likely that Taylor thought I was really frivolous, possibly even kind of a lush who had a lot of experience with boys based on the way my sister and I had acted around her over the summer. Maybe it was true... I had always had access to drinks because Bijoux was older than me, and wherever Bijoux went, male attention always followed. But none of that had anything to do with what Danko had done... did it? Maybe there was something I had unintentionally done to encourage him. I couldn’t shake the sense that Taylor would think what Danko had done to me was at least partially my own fault.
Since it was a Tuesday, I had my martial arts class at four fifteen. The school day at Treadwell was almost unbearably long; at Pershing I’d been free as a bird by 2:35 P.M every afternoon. By the time I changed into the white robe I was issued by Tova, the martial arts teacher, and was seated on a blue mat in the gym along with the other girls in this class, I was smothering yawns into the back of my hand.
Tova welcomed me to the class and the heads of the other six girls turned to look me over as if I was an infiltrator.
“Our class focuses on Aikido,” she told me, “the Japanese art of fighting using energy, rather than physical strength, to defend ourselves.”
I liked the idea of using energy. It made me think about Star Wars, the Force, and extracting untapped magical powers from within myself. But when Tova began leading us through a series of strange standing positions, I started wondering if I had wasted my one elective on something kind of boring. I didn’t want to squat on mats. I wanted to be able to coldcock grown men and lay them out on the sidewalk like Jackie Chan. Childishly, I also wanted to climb buildings and fly from tree branches, like fancy stuff I’d seen in karate movies.
“So, what do you think so far?” Tova asked me as she circled the seven of us, barefoot, as we stood in a single file line, backs straight, legs slightly bent at the knees.
“Um, are we going to do any actual fighting?” I asked at the obvious risk of making her angry. I needed to know, because if the answer was no then I was going to switch into a pottery class at my earliest convenience.
Her hands repositioned my hips slightly and she told me to hold the pose and focus on remaining very strong. Then, shockingly, she took a few steps back and rammed right into me.
“What the…” I said, stupefied.
But the amazing thing was, I hadn’t budged. I had remained completely immobile, locked in my weird posture, despite the impact with which she had hit me.
“We’re doing actual fighting,” Tova assured me. “Aikido is an ideal martial art for girls your age because you don’t have to be physically strong to be powerful. In this class we learn how to defend ourselves from attackers by using their own force against them. First, we learn how to lock joints and maintain balance. Next, I’ll teach you how to throw me over your shoulder when I charge at you like that.”
I liked the sound of that.
That night, after forcing myself to cross campus and venture into the basement of the Gaffin Center to write down email addresses of girls willing to save my hide in biology, French, and algebra, I called my mom from the little outdoor area with benches outside the front doors of Colgate, not particularly wanting Kate to overhear my conversation.
“Are you making friends? Are the girls there nice?” Mom asked. How typical of my mom, to be primarily concerned with my popularity. She’d never be one to ask if my classes were difficult or if I considered my teachers to be qualified.
“It’s fine, Mom. The usual cutthroat evil rich girls,” I said, and then quickly covered my tracks, not wanting her to think maybe she’d made a mistake in enrolling me at Treadwell even for a second. “I made two friends. One girl’s mom is that lady on cable who’s always making casseroles. The other girl’s dad owns a soccer team in England. She let me borrow a pair of her diamond earrings.”
“Betsey,” my mother said, sounding horrified. “You don’t need to borrow anyone else’s earrings. That’s not very hygienic. I hope you at least rubbed them down with alcohol.”
I kicked the leg of the wooden bench on which I sat lightly in frustration. Instinctively, I reached up to my earlobe and fiddled with the huge gem. “Mom, come on. That’s what friends do. They loan and borrow stuff. Just go with it.”
Mom seemed genuinely surprised when I asked if she could put money in my checking account to cover the hourl
y rates of tutors. She praised me for taking my studies more seriously. I lingered on my laptop until after Kate had crawled into bed, hoping desperately that Kristijan would log on. I didn’t know yet if he was at school in Spain, or still in Croatia. But I could tell by the way Kate was breathing that she wasn’t sleeping, and finally I gave up and closed my laptop, at that point not wanting to talk to him if she was going to be eavesdropping from beneath her blankets.
Later that night, Bijoux sent me a long run-on text message that took up eight screens on my cell phone. The buzzing of my cell phone on my nightstand woke me up, and I read her note under my comforter, the blue glow of the screen illuminating my hands as I read. My sister was blabbing on and on about how happy she and Tobin were, and how they were going to Hawaii for a week together because she was being paid an exorbitant rate to host a party to launch a new surfboard line for girls (even though she couldn’t surf if her life depended on it). It felt so unfair that Bijoux was having such a wonderful time in her life when my own life was almost unbearably confusing.
CHAPTER 10
“So, about the Fall Fling.”
Nicola stood at the end of our dining hall table at Colgate on Tuesday night, and the conversation I was having with Chloe came to an abrupt halt as we both turned our heads toward her. She held her tray of food and stared directly at me, completely ignoring Chloe as if she wasn’t even sitting right there.
“I think you’ll wear the beaded gown. You’ll come to my room after dinner on Friday and we’ll walk over to the Gaffin Center together,” Nicola informed me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Chloe raising an eyebrow at me, humored by Nicola’s bossy tone.
“Sounds good,” I told Nicola.
She nodded, and left us to continue our dinner. Having spent more than twenty-four hours on campus at that point, it was already abundantly clear that the social rules of dinner time were unique to that meal. During breakfast and lunch, the cafeteria had been far less crowded, and the rules defining who sat at which tables were nonexistent.
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