“Don’t remind me. But that wasn’t physical danger, which is what Emily meant, right? It’s some kind of moral thing?”
I nodded. “I’m missing the connection between that and someone getting hurt, which is the part she won’t tell me. You’re probably right. So. When does the Coaching with Kaz show start?”
She glanced at the clock on her monitor. “Ten. I didn’t think he’d be awake, but that’s what he said.”
“Desperation will push a man to extremes.”
“Luckily we both have iChat, and I can point him to a research site while I talk him through it.”
“Can I talk to him when you’re done?”
“Sure.”
I got to work blocking out my paper—and blocking out the sound of two agonizing hours of physics coaching. When at last Gillian got up from her desk and waved me over, the first thing I saw on her screen was the top of Kaz’s shaggy head. He lay facedown on the desk.
“Yo, Kaz,” I said. “Are you alive?”
“Barely.” When he lifted his head, his eyes were bleary. “She hurt my brain.”
From the bathroom, Gillian snorted. “It’s good for you. Think how much less painful the exam will be.”
“I wish you were here,” he told me pathetically. “You could rub my head.”
“You can pay people for that, you know.”
“It’s not the same as when you do it.” He blinked and started to come back to life. “Whatcha up to?”
“English paper. Very fun. Comparing the expectations of the marriageable girl in Jane Austen versus Elizabeth Gaskell.”
“You call that fun?”
“Sure. Basically I get to write a paper about dating. It just doesn’t get better than that.”
“Right, because you’re the expert.”
“I’ve had some experience,” I said primly. Which he knew all about, the ratball. “What about you? Prom’s coming up, the weekend before ours. Who are you going to ask?”
“I probably won’t even go. What about you?”
“They call it Senior Cotillion here. It’s on June eighteenth. Danyel is coming to take Shani, so it’d be fun if you rode along.”
“Uh, did you just ask me to prom?”
“I guess so. If you didn’t have other plans that weekend.”
Chin in hand, Kaz gazed at me. “You really have a way of making a guy feel special.”
“What, did you want a bouquet of roses by FedEx?” I grinned at him.
“No.”
“Well, what then?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. Gotta go. Me and Danyel are gonna shake the cobwebs out at the beach.”
“Ride one for me.” I tried not to sound wistful as I signed off. “Hope you feel better.”
Why was everyone so cranky today? Was it something I said?
Chapter 5
ON SUNDAY, the pastor at the little clapboard church in Marin talked about waiting on God’s timing, which made Gillian and me glance at each other and smile. Okay, it was clear the Lord was listening to our nagging. It was just a matter of waiting for His answer.
I was still thinking about this as I walked down the corridor on Monday, on the way to horrible disgusting Chemistry. It was better to reflect on things that made my eternal soul happy because it was a fact that nothing I did would make the Chem instructor, Mr. Milsom, happy.
The long, wood-panelled corridors had terrible acoustics, which is why the unusual noise level finally penetrated my abstraction by the time I got to the sciences wing. Clumps of students whispered together, and I tuned in to snatches of conversation as I passed.
“… didn’t think I’d ever see…”
“… told me she was going to keep it.”
“… so good. She’s going down, baby, and I’m the first one to dance on her grave.”
Yikes. What was going on?
I dropped the glossy Kate Spade tote that held my books and laptop next to my lab stool, and nudged Jeremy, who was my lab partner. “Did something happen? What’s everybody talking about?”
He gazed at me blankly. “Huh?”
He was such a guy. I looked around for someone who might be better informed. Aha. Summer Liang was on the Cotillion Committee and they knew everything. I gave her a smile. “Hey, Summer. What’s up?”
To my surprise, she didn’t make me work for it. “Haven’t you heard?”
“A bunch of people are talking, but I haven’t gotten the details.”
“I can hardly believe it. In fact, I didn’t believe it, but Emily Overton says it’s true, and she would know.”
Patience. “Know what?”
“That Vanessa Talbot is going to have a—”
“Miss Liang!” Summer jumped about a foot as Mr. Milsom strode into the room. “I trust your remarks concern the formulae I have on the board? Pop quiz, people. Notebooks away, pencils out.”
“Urgghhh!” My frustration level spiked. Did the man not know better than to interrupt a conversation? Especially when it involved some kind of scandal starring none other than my nemesis?
As I copied down the formulas, my fingers gripped the pencil so hard I was sure I’d break it. How was I going to get the rest of that sentence out of Summer? Too bad my phone would get confiscated the moment I pulled it out to send her a discreet text. Could I pass her a note? No, that would get confiscated, too.
Why had I never learned Morse code? Or ASL?
I handed in my poor excuse for a quiz. Good thing my grades in my other classes were so good—they’d make up for this one. How could a person think of chemical formulas when something huge was going down?
Don’t think I’m a hound for being so anxious to lap up the gossip. But can you blame me? Between Emily’s dire hints and the level of tension in the air, something was wrong and I wanted to know what it was. After all, Emily had said someone was in danger, hadn’t she?
In the ten-minute break between Chem and Lab, my luck finally changed.
* * *
TEXT MESSAGE
To: BFFs
From: Carly Aragon
3rd floor girls bathroom, stat.
* * *
I was already halfway there. Gillian just beat me to the door, and we found Carly and Shani inside the wheelchair stall.
“Somebody please give me the scoop,” I begged. “I can’t stand it.”
“Stand what?” Gillian wanted to know. “This better be fast, Carly. I’ve got a rehearsal with the school orchestra in, like, four minutes.”
“So none of you have heard,” Carly whispered, looking from one of us to the next.
“No, and if you have, spit it out,” I begged.
Our gazes were all riveted on her face, with its huge brown eyes. “I heard it last period and I still can’t believe it.” She took a breath. “Vanessa Talbot is pregnant.”
“No,” Gillian breathed.
“Impossible,” Shani said.
I couldn’t speak. Shock had frozen every thought but one: What would happen to Vanessa now?
THE NEWS ROCKETED through the entire school with the velocity of a nuclear blast. By the end of the last period that morning, I think even the janitors and the laundry service had heard. Only the most benighted of the computer science geeks, who only talked among themselves in incomprehensible syllables anyway, went about their business as if they’d never heard of Vanessa Talbot.
Come to think of it, they probably hadn’t.
The only thing that got me through the Lab period that followed Chem was the sharp end of Jeremy’s elbow, which kept digging into my ribs every time I went off into a daze.
Vanessa. Having a baby. No wonder Emily didn’t know who to tell. Guess she doesn’t have to worry about that now. Moral problem. Wow. But what did she mean about danger to someone? The baby? Or someone else?
“Ow!”
“I asked you, how many grams of solution?”
I stared at the beaker he had ready for me. How could he possibly think of grams of solution at a time like th
is?
When I finally escaped and ran down to the dining room at lunch, I found the rest of the girls and Brett already there.
“I can’t believe she kept it a secret this long,” Shani said, digging into her risotto. “I mean, how many months along is she?”
Carly salted her own risotto and handed the shaker to Brett. “I heard it happened during Christmas vacation. In Italy.”
I leaned toward her. “Who’s the father?”
Brett answered me, much to my surprise. “Rumor says it was one of the gardeners.”
Shani’s eyes held doubt. “Vanessa and a gardener? I’m thinking not.” Then she inhaled, as if an idea had just slapped her upside the head. “You don’t think it was—it couldn’t have been—” She stopped.
Gillian shook her head so emphatically her hair swung. “No. No way. Not Rashid. They broke up in the middle of December, before vacation started.”
“What difference does a week or two make?”
“A big difference if you’re talking about the heir to the Lion Throne. Look at it this way.” Gillian pointed her fork at Shani. “If there was even a breath of suspicion it was Rashid’s, his parents would have sent the entire Yasiri Secret Service to extract the truth by any means necessary, two months ago.”
Shani sat back and let her breath out. “You’re right. If they could send their agents to hunt me down in Scotland about a viral video, they’d for sure send them here about a baby.”
“Not to mention Vanessa would make sure she had her hands well and truly on the Star of the Desert,” I pointed out. “The girl does like her bling.”
“That’s a high price to pay,” Brett said quietly. “Even for—”
The door opened and Vanessa walked in. I tried not to look. I really did. But as she took her plate of risotto and walked over to the juice bar to get a drink, it seemed like every eye in the dining room was fixed on her.
Or more precisely, on her stomach.
From the back, she looked the same as any of us. Plaid skirt, white blouse, blue cardigan. But were her feet in their Prada flats planted further apart than usual? Had her walk changed? When did a person’s hips start spreading? I tried to remember whether they’d covered that in freshman Life Sciences.
When she turned with her plate held protectively close to her stomach, her profile told it all. Even the cardigan couldn’t hide the little bump or the fact that she’d had to switch to a skirt with an elastic waistband, like the ones Emily wore.
I bet that galled her.
Five months pregnant. Wow.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before,” I breathed. “I mean, Apple Bottoms are one thing. But this?”
“I can’t either, with your obsession with her,” Gillian said.
“I’m not obsessed,” I protested for about the sixty-fifth time in two years. “It’s just self-preservation.”
Carrying her plate and her iced smoothie, Vanessa strolled toward the table in the window. Her body looked relaxed and her eyelids drooped in their usual “I’m bored out of my skull” expression. You had to hand it to her. If it had been me in that predicament—which it wouldn’t be, considering the promise I made to God—I’m sure I would have been slinking around, hoping no one would look at me. Or I’d have paid someone to collect a tray and bring it to my room. Or better yet, I’d have chosen to be home-schooled.
I’m sure she knew the news was out. But other people’s opinions had never been important to her before. Why should things be different now?
DeLayne Geary put her plate down on the table in the window, with her back to the sun. Before Vanessa could reach it herself, Christine Powell, Rory Stapleton, and three other people who had been hanging out with that group lately materialized with their trays and sat down. Vanessa walked over, skewered DeLayne with her gaze, and waited.
And waited.
“Excuse me, D. You know that’s my seat.”
DeLayne glanced at Christine as the buzz of chatter at the tables around them dropped a couple of notches. People tuned into the drama as avidly as if it were a reality show. “There’s no room here for skanks.”
The words dropped like a stone and silence spread out in rings of shock and breathless anticipation.
Vanessa didn’t even blink. “In that case, I’ll ask Christine and Rory to move. I know what the two of you were up to in the boys’ shower after soccer practice.”
Ewww. Don’t make me look at that image. As Carly would say, it makes my eyes bleed.
“At least I wasn’t stupid enough to get knocked up,” Christine retorted, her mouth curled with scorn.
“We don’t hang out with stupid people,” DeLayne said. “So you’ll have to find somewhere else to sit.”
“Don’t make me destroy you,” Vanessa said quietly. “You know what I know.”
DeLayne’s jaw hardened and she narrowed her eyes. “What? That there were two people there and one is just as guilty as the other?”
“But one doesn’t have the proof the other does.”
“Maybe one has more cred than the other. Now.” She raked Vanessa from top to bottom with a scornful gaze. “So go ahead, skank. Tell your little story. See who comes out looking the worst.”
For a moment neither one backed down, and animosity crackled in the air between them. But possession is nine-tenths of the law, and DeLayne wasn’t moving her rear from that chair for anything. I had no idea what secret they were holding over each other’s heads, but DeLayne clearly had a handle on the concept of “moral superiority,” and wasn’t afraid to wield it the way Kaz’s avatars use their swords when he plays World of Warcraft. Totally without mercy.
“PeeGee,” I heard someone whisper at the next table. “PeeGee Princess!”
The whole table took up the chant. “PeeGee Princess! PeeGee Princess!”
Now the whole dining room got into the beat. “PeeGee Princess!” Some guy used his fork against his tray, the table, and his plate to work out a backbeat. “PeeGee Princess, she’s a skank!”
Vanessa pursed her flawlessly glossed lips and rolled her eyes as if she were surrounded by a room full of unruly kindergarteners. Then she turned lazily on her heel and walked out the door with her plate and her rapidly melting smoothie, leaving the dining room in an uproar of laughter and jeers.
Our table was one of the few that were still quiet. We glanced at each other, unsure of what to say. Brett shook his head and shoveled food into his mouth.
Shani took a bite of her risotto, watching as some fool across the room mimed walking with a pregnant stomach, knees bent and spine arched, repeating “PeeGee Princess” as if he’d just that moment thought of it, and sitting down in a gale of laughter.
“I always wondered if Vanessa started that little rumor about me in the fall,” she said quietly. “That’s what they called me, you know, all those nasties in her group.”
The irony was not lost on any of us.
Gillian leaned back and caught my eye over Jeremy’s shoulder. “How low the mighty are fallen,” she said.
“It’s not over yet,” I told her. “Not even close.”
Most of the time I enjoy being right. But not then.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: May 10, 2010
Re: Question
Hi Rashid,
I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to get up the courage to ask you this. Carly thinks I’m researching a paper, but I can’t think or talk or function until I know, and you’re the only person I can ask.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a big scandal broke today. Vanessa Talbot is pregnant—about five months along. And now that I’ve said that, I guess I’d better say the rest of it.
Is there any chance the baby could be yours? I know it’s none of my business. You have every right to be angry that I would even ask this. But I hope that once you get over my rudeness, you’ll remember we’re good friends. I want to respect and think the best of my
friends.
Love, Shani
Chapter 6
MOST SCHOOL SCANDALS are a nine-day wonder, gaped at and then forgotten because the person gets expelled. But this… it was more like a nine-month wonder. You couldn’t exactly expel a person for expecting a baby, could you? I mean, technically it’s not a crime.
It’s a whole lot of other things, but not a crime.
That evening at dinner, Vanessa didn’t show up, so DeLayne and Christine and Emily—she must have thought it was safe to come out of the bushes—sat at the table in the window, pretending it had been theirs all along. Emily even came over and invited me to sit with them.
“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about on the weekend?” I asked her in a low voice. “About Vanessa?”
She nodded. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“But you said there was danger. Did you mean to the baby?”
“Sure.” She glanced behind me, as if to make sure Gillian and Carly were out of earshot. “If she gets an abortion.”
My stomach turned over. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” My knowledge on that subject was about the same as my knowledge of astronomy: minimal. But now that it had come up, Vanessa certainly could have taken a step like that the second she’d seen the pink line on the pregnancy test. I am totally against such a step, mind you. Just the thought of it makes me ill. But Vanessa? How could anyone know what was in that girl’s heart?
“Not the way she’s talking.”
That didn’t sound good. “Emily, did you break the story?”
She blinked innocent eyes at me. “It would have broken anyway. It’s not like you can hide something like that. Sure you don’t want to eat with us? I’m saving you a chair.”
“That’s okay. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Whatever.”
I sat next to Carly and exhaled as if I’d been holding my breath. “Weirdness.”
“Of course she broke the story,” Carly said. “Vanessa treats her like last week’s trash. I’m only surprised it didn’t happen a month ago. Or the week we started school.”
The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth Page 4