The Viscount's Daughter - [A Treadwell Academy - 03]

by Caitlyn Duffy

  “Fall Fling?” Chloe asked me dubiously. She stabbed a steak fry with her fork and dunked it in a dollop of ketchup. “You do realize that’s bunch of totally immature boys standing around in suits that don’t fit, while some cheesy DJ plays songs by All or Nothing, and Mr. Ferris, the band leader, tries to get people to mingle and dance, like a big goober?”

  I cringed. I expected as much. Nicola had this notion that the Fall Fling was going to be the social event of the year. Like, as significant as the Expose Magazine Oscar after-party or something. In the brief amount of time I had spent with her, she had shared some sensationalized ideas about American culture. This dance on Friday night with the boys who attended St. John’s Academy, who would presumably be delivered to our campus via a big dorky yellow bus (not unlike prisoners being transported from one jail to another), had materialized in her head like some kind of wild night at a nightclub. Although I had seen on flyers promoting the dance around campus that indicated curfew would be extended until 11 P.M. on Friday, the extension hardly made the event qualify as a potential “wild” night, in my opinion.

  “It might be fun,” I said. “Aren’t you going?”

  “As if!” Chloe snorted, taking a giant swig of soda through her straw.

  That night, I actually caught a quick glimpse of Kristijan online, but urged him to text chat with me instead of video chat since it was becoming painfully obvious that Kate rarely left the room. I put headphones on and listened to him tell me all the latest, but typed my replies. He was settling into his first week at his own new school, where unlike my situation, his classes were easier than they’d been in Croatia, and he had his own private room. Seeing him made me strangely homesick, only not for home, obviously, but for something else I couldn’t really put my finger on. I was going to have to seriously find a place on campus where I could carve out a little privacy. Even though the library was open twenty-four hours and it was the one and only place a person could go after curfew, checking in with Lauren and then taking the campus security mini-van over there seemed like a heck of a lot of work just to be left alone with my thoughts for a few hours.

  Once again, I crawled into bed after making my best attempt at my homework, and my cell phone started vibrating like crazy. Knowing that I really just needed to go to sleep in order to be alert in the morning, I pulled my phone under my blankets and indulged in reading a few texts from Christie and my sister, who were both night owls. Christie was planning to spend the weekend in Upstate New York shooting the fashion spread she was overseeing with Seth for Franny. It was going to be based on fairy tales. She was getting on my nerves, with all of her Seth this, Seth that. Bijoux had sent me links to two different fashion magazine blogs that had recently photographed her out with Tobin, the two of them linked arm in arm, deliriously happy. Naturally the posts were describing her platform sandals and the fringed bag from her new line, but she seemed pretty convinced that paparazzi was paying more attention to her now that she was the girlfriend of a real star. Something seemed very different about Bijoux; usually in relationships she was all about herself, and it was odd to see her so caught up in a boy.

  My life at Treadwell settled into a strict routine by the end of the week. Seniors I contacted about tutoring me were all too eager to earn my mother’s money. On Wednesday night I hurried across campus to eat dinner with Taylor at the cafeteria for girls who lived in the cottage-style duplexes around the outskirts of the school property, and met her friends Ruth and Riddhi. Before arriving at Treadwell, I had erroneously assumed that Taylor was really popular, the kind of girl who was a cheerleader and had been elected to student government. There were no cheerleaders at Treadwell because, Taylor explained to me, it violated school principles that girls would cheer for boys’ teams (based on some feminist determination dating back to the early eighties). Whereas student government was basically a popularity contest at other high schools, at Treadwell it was monopolized by types like Kate Callahan who genuinely wanted to pursue careers in politics. Campus elections were coming up, and Taylor suggested that competition was expected to be fierce.

  So, Taylor was kind of a nerd. Not really a nerd, exactly, but not really considered to have any social significance by the other girls on campus. I was starting to understand how that approach was kind of a good survival tactic. At dinner, she was friendlier with me than she had been at the library, and at the urging of her friends, she confided to me that she had kind of a boyfriend who was in college. She had gone to Boston twice already that semester to hang out with him even though his school was in Connecticut, and had big plans to go to a Halloween party on his campus, which of course, she had not told her father. His name was Todd, and I gathered that somehow she knew him from growing up in Los Angeles.

  “So, like, that’s exciting,” I said, surprised to hear that Taylor had a real boyfriend. “You didn’t mention him over the summer.”

  “We kind of fell out of touch over the summer, with my being on the road and all,” Taylor said, stirring spaghetti around on her plate dreamily. “Plus I kind of had this thing with this guy on the Pound tour… I’m sure you probably saw him around in Virginia. He had blond hair, drove a gold Saturn. He sold t-shirts at the shows.”

  I had no idea who Taylor was talking about. Bijoux and I had only been in Virginia Beach with the tour for a week over the summer, and Dad’s touring company was always a confusing blur of names and faces. If there had been any cute guys around the hotel that week, I definitely hadn’t noticed.

  When talk turned to the Fall Fling, Riddhi lit up with excitement, but Taylor and Ruth exchanged loaded glances.

  “Aren’t you guys going?” I asked, kind of hoping that Taylor would assure me she’d be there.

  “We kind of have other plans,” Taylor said, giving Ruth a sideways glance to suggest that she really shouldn’t disclose the details to me.

  “God, Taylor, it’s not that big of a secret,” Ruth exclaimed. “We’re sneaking off campus to go into Boston to hear the symphony orchestra. Yo-Yo Ma is doing a show. It’s completely retarded that we have to be sneaky about it, but the show isn’t until eight o’clock at night, so we’re not sure how we’re going to get back onto campus unless we spend the night in the city and take the train back in the morning. Have you ever heard of anything lamer than people breaking curfew to go hear classical music?”

  Taylor seemed highly uncomfortable that Ruth had told me they were intentionally planning on breaking curfew rules. I couldn’t understand why; I mean, certainly if Taylor wanted expertise in breaking rules, I was the perfect resource. Maybe it was because our dads were friends, I guessed. As if I would tell my dad anything about Taylor’s plans to sneak off campus to meet boys. Tattling was not my style.

  On Friday after classes, I was restless in the library during my first tutoring session with my French tutor. It had been brought to my attention that Renée Ricard had scored out of French II and was taking French III as a sophomore, but even she, a native speaker, hadn’t been able to score out of French III in order to advance to French IV. It was very annoying to me that she could earn credit simply by sitting in a classroom, speaking her native tongue, and it was terrifying to me that if she wasn’t considered qualified to take French IV, what chance did I have of ever making it that far?

  My tutor for French was a senior named Deirdre from Ireland, who was at Treadwell on some kind of prestigious scholarship from an Irish bank. She had new fewer than five million freckles and eyelashes that were almost white, which made her appear to be very innocent even though within minutes of our introduction she dropped some of the most creative strings of swear words I’d ever heard. Somehow, despite her thick Irish brogue, her French was flawless. I asked her if she’d ever been to France, and she replied wistfully, “Someday.”

  What a spoiled brat I was, I realized, because I actually found it difficult to believe that anyone could reach the age of eighteen without having been to Paris at least once.

  Friday nigh
t dinner in the Colgate cafeteria was remarkably different than other nights of the week. Chloe had told me that a lot of girls from the East Coast went home on weekends, but I hadn’t realized just how many went home. Unfortunately for me, Kate, who had suggested that she went home often, was still in the cafeteria, eating with Grace, Giovanna and Juliette. I guessed that she probably had no plans to go anywhere that weekend. Anyhow, the Colgate cafeteria staff tried to mix things up on Fridays with a make-your-own taco bar and a strawberry shortcake station where we could load bits of sponge cake up with as much aerosol whipped cream and as many strawberries as we wanted.

  During my first week at Treadwell, I had to set strict boundaries with Nicola about meals. Without anyone saying anything specifically to this effect, I had gathered that Chloe and Nicola were simply not going to mix well. So I got up early every morning to eat breakfast with Nicola, and the fear she instilled in me about being late was kind of like an extra-powerful alarm clock. During dinners, I sat with Chloe at the table of forgotten souls, as I liked to think of it, and Nicola never even looked over her shoulder at me while dining with her more popular friends. Lunches were mine to spend alone at the Rutherford dorm, closest to my Creative Writing workshop, which immediately followed my lunch hour. I spent that hour feverishly pouring over my biology textbook, preparing for the mid-term that was rumored to be brutal, and stuffing a tuna sandwich down my throat.

  On Friday night, as soon as Nicola finished eating her strange dinner of hard-boiled eggs, chicken teriyaki and beets, she waved to me from her table, indicating that it was time to start getting ready in her room for the Fall Fling. I hadn’t asked previously if any of the girls from Nicola’s dinner table would be included in the preparations for the dance, if they were even planning on attending. I guessed it was going to be my own unpleasant surprise when I arrived at Nicola and Nala’s room if I would just be a tag-along with the popular girls for the night.

  “Have fun,” Chloe told me in a taunting voice.

  I felt kind of lousy that Chloe wasn’t coming with us. As much as she was opposed to the entire idea of the dance, I imagined she would have had a reasonably good time lurking in the shadows and making wicked observations about both the Treadwell girls and the St. John’s boys. Just five days into my life at Treadwell, I already felt very torn between allegiance to Chloe and loyalty to Nicola because it was kind of cool being known as Nicola’s friend, since she was so famous around campus for being pretty and rich. I knew it was shallow of me, but knowing that wasn’t nice didn’t change how I felt. Meanwhile, Chloe had introduced me to a whole new world of punk rock bands and strange underground magazines to which she subscribed. I knew on some level, Chloe was significantly cooler than Nicola, but in a way that simply didn’t matter within the confines of Treadwell.

  The dance turned out to be as ridiculously boring as Chloe had promised, and at first, worse. I had borrowed Nicola’s silver beaded dress and was lingering in a dark corner of the Gaffin Center basement with a cup of fruit punch in my hands. Nicola was standing next to me, bopping her head along to the music slightly. She was wearing a body-clinging, fire engine red strapless gown that looked completely out of place at a high school dance. With her full makeup and black patent leather high heels, it would have been easy for anyone who didn’t know better to assume that Nicola was older than Ms. DiMico, our art teacher, who was one of the chaperones for the event.

  While Nicola and I had gotten ready together in her room, Nala had gone to Ameerah’s room to prepare. Renée and Ameerah had found the nerve to cross the room to strike up conversations with guys who had brought a hacky sack with them and were, unbeknownst to them, attracting the attention of several of the evening’s chaperones from both schools. A very weak smoke machine had been brought by the DJ, and he activated it with what looked like a foot pedal during slow songs, filling the Gaffin Center with a dry stench and a thin layer of fog around our ankles. The overall atmosphere of the dance was one that suggested zombies were about to attack, rather than a night of romance.

  Just as Chloe had predicted, two big yellow school buses from St. John’s Academy in nearby August, Massachusetts had delivered about one hundred gangly, acne-faced teenage boys wearing dark suits and striped ties to our recreation center. A handful of boys were really good-looking, and they seemed to already have girlfriends among the girls of Treadwell. Emma Jeffries, for example, who looked stunning in a white eyelet strapless gown, had her arms draped around the neck of a really handsome guy, and they were staring into each other’s eyes as if it was their wedding night. For those of us who hadn’t made prior arrangements to reconnect with a boy from the partner private school, the dance was little more than an opportunity to stand around tapping our feet to All or Nothing remixes as an over-zealous DJ wearing sunglasses indoors tried to rally us onto the dance floor.

  “Are you guys ready to get this party started?” the DJ barked at us from his turntables.

  He had asked the same question at least five times, and always received the same tepid shrugs and bored frowns in response. No one really felt like getting the party started. This time, however, he cranked up some old school beats from a classic hip hop jam, and one especially daring St. John’s kid strutted out into the middle of the sparsely populated dance floor, rolled up the sleeves of his ill-fitting gray suit, and started busting out shockingly impressive break dancing moves.

  “No way!” Nicola roared, delighted. She rushed forward for a better look, and I followed her.

  A crowd formed around the expert pop and locker. He had dark skin, and looked like he might be Latino, although it was hard to get a good glimpse of him since all of the lights in the Gaffin Center had been covered with paper Chinese lanterns in shades of yellow, orange and red to simulate the colors of changing leaves. He did some bouncing skip moves to the beat, and then dropped to the floor, where he did the caterpillar to the delight of the crowd. He then hoisted himself back up on his feet as if his arms and legs were made of rubber, skipped around a little more in a classic C-walk, and then dropped backward to the floor and began doing a six-step spin that he then expertly morphed into a windmill, rolling around on the dirty Gaffin Center tile on his shoulders, flashing his outstretched legs in the air. He finally spun to a rest on one side, propped up on one elbow with his head resting on one hand, and everyone started clapping. We were all hooting and whistling as if the space shuttle had just taken off. As if we had never seen anyone break dance before.

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” the DJ commended the break dancer from his microphone. We all rolled our eyes, because those dance moves were so not what the DJ had been talking about; it had just been his incredible good luck that this St. John’s kid had miraculously known how to dance.

  Then the St. John’s kid did the unthinkable: he hopped back up onto his feet, did some robotic motions, and waved his arms in the direction of Stacy Davidson.

  It was one of the greatest sensations of relief I had felt all week that this guy hadn’t pointed at me instead of Stacy Davidson. There was a moment during which it looked like Stacy was going to pass on her opportunity to rule the dance circle, but then at the urging of Renée, Ameerah, and Nala, she stepped into the circle and began doing some pretty impressive robot dance moves of her own. Stacy Davidson could move. All of the Treadwell girls standing around in the dance circle, egging her on, looked pleasantly shocked.

  The St. John’s guy who had kicked the party into high gear joined the perimeter of the dance circle and cozied up to Nicola. He whispered something in her ear that I couldn’t hear, but she nodded enthusiastically, never taking her eyes off Stacy. Stacy moved through what was probably the full extent of her breakin’ repertoire and other St. John’s guys joined her in the circle. The song that had saved the party from certain doom ended, and the DJ cranked up more hip hop to keep people dancing.

  “Betsey, this is Sam,” Nicola said, introducing me to the newly famous break dancer from St. John’s.
Up close, Sam was pretty cute, with big brown eyes, long lashes and a dimple in his left cheek that showed when he smiled even just a little bit.

  “Hi Sam,” I waved. “You saved this party from going down in history books as the worst school dance, ever.”

  “Nah,” he shrugged shyly. “I just lit it on fire a little bit. That’s what I am. A catalyst.”

  We were lingering near the punch bowl, where I was refilling my clear plastic cup with more sickeningly sweet red liquid. A stocky blond guy about my height, wearing glasses, approached us and slapped Sam on the back. “Nice moves, Sam,” he congratulated his friend.

  “Nicola, Betsey, this is my main man, Alex,” Sam said, putting one arm around the chunky blond guy, who had a friendly smile.

  “Alisdair Heffernan Campbell Pryce the Third,” Alex corrected him, winking at me as he reached out to shake my hand.

  I was floored by this kid; no one my own age had ever attempted to shake my hand! He even had a silk pocket square tucked into the pocket of his blazer. Without examining it closely, I guessed it to be Hermès.

  Sam and Alex were on a mission to score cigarettes to smoke, they announced after a few more minutes of routine introductory conversation about how they were enjoying the dance and if they would attend the Winter Ball, which would be held at their campus. Presumably Sam had sought Nicola out of the crowd of cute girls because she looked like the kind of cute girl who would likely know where to find a pack of smokes and an out-of-the-way section within the Gaffin Center where we could light up inconspicuously. Naturally, Sam’s powers of deduction were accurate, because Nicola encouraged us to follow her through the double swinging doors of the Gaffin Center into the hallway which led to the bathrooms.

  There were chaperones guarding the stairs leading up to the main entrance of the center. Treadwell girls were allowed to leave, but their names were crossed off of an attendance list. Once girls left the dance, they weren’t permitted to re-enter. There were also stodgier, male teachers from St. John’s Academy guarding the stairs. Boys from St. John’s weren’t allowed to leave the Gaffin Center until eleven, when they would form their single-file lines and check back onto the buses. Several clusters of boys who had thrown in the towel on prospective romance and on dancing, in general, sat in the hallway playing cards and games on their cell phones beneath the bright fluorescent lights. They all looked up at Nicola as we emerged through the double doors as if a super model had just been beamed down from a space craft.