by Kerstin Gier
“I’d hoped so much that Grayson would get a new iPhone. Then we could have had his old one,” said Mia.
Today was the twins’ birthday, and Mia’s heavy sigh reminded me that I still didn’t know what to wear for this evening’s party, which was thankfully to be held at home and not at the Boker’s after all. Florence had had the “amusing” idea of sending a dress code out with the invitations. All guests related to Grayson and Florence were to come in blue; other students from our school in red; the people whom Florence knew from her charity work (a soup kitchen for the homeless) in green; white for all partners included in the guests’ invitations; and black for everyone who came into none of those categories.
Persephone was beside herself. She not only couldn’t wear her new blue Missoni skirt, she also thought that red didn’t suit her. Only when she thought of asking Gabriel to bring her as his partner (to which he had no objection) was she happy again.
My problem was different: I didn’t know which color would be right in my case. Apart from white and green, I could really have come in any of them. But Mia thought Florence would probably be furious if we wore anything blue. And for lack of anything red (Persephone had a point: red suits very few people, and I’m not one of them), I finally put on my black shirtdress, which did for almost any occasion, and jazzed it up a bit with tights in black and colored stripes. The last time I’d worn it was for a neighbor’s funeral in South Africa, and then it had been knee-length. Now it was a minidress, and a bit tighter, so presumably too sexy for a funeral but just right for this evening.
The best thing about the dress was the little pocket sewn to one side of it, which was the perfect size for a snuffbox from the rococo period.
The party was really meant to start at eight, but when I came downstairs at seven thirty, there were already a great many guests there. The soup-kitchen people in green had come early, many of them in the afternoon to help with clearing the living room and dining room. A lot of the furniture was now in the garage and the garden shed, leaving room for the small platform for the cover band that Ernest had provided as a surprise present for Florence and Grayson. The band was called the Chords, and Persephone claimed that they were known as a support band for Avec, but the fact was that neither name meant anything to me. However, they played well, and that was what mattered. The band had already arrived and gone through the mysterious and complicated ritual of tuning their instruments, which always makes musicians look as if human life were at stake.
Grayson and Florence were fully occupied welcoming the guests, who were now streaming in. Florence was smiling radiantly and looked beautiful in her new green dress, which I supposed she was wearing to show solidarity with her soup-kitchen colleagues. Grayson waved to me, and I was relieved to see him looking so relaxed. And glad that for the sake of a quiet life he’d put on a blue striped shirt instead of the white one he was wearing earlier. Florence had thrown a fit over the white shirt in the afternoon. “White! Are you trying to turn me into a nervous wreck? If you wear that, everyone will think you’re only one of the guests’ partners,” she had snapped at him, adding dramatically, “Can’t you do as I want just for once?”
Well, he obviously could. Although blue might not be the perfect color choice—on the other hand, of course he was related to Florence.
I strolled into the kitchen where the buffet delivered in the afternoon had been laid out. Mia heaped a large helping on a plate to take it upstairs with her in secret. I saw, to my relief, that it was normal party food and not jellified seaweed patties echoing the colors of the evening. I was ready to believe anything of Florence (and the Boker, who had paid for the catering as a present).
I looked around surreptitiously for Henry. In passing, a good-looking young guy in a blue T-shirt (a cousin of the Spencers?) pressed a glass of champagne into my hand. I passed it straight on to Persephone, who in her turn gave it to her elder sister, Pandora.
“How sensible of you to avoid alcohol,” said Emily, who had come up beside me unnoticed. “I’m sure you can manage to make an exhibition of yourself even stone-cold sober.” She was wearing a plain, high-necked but close-fitting red dress, and I had to admit that she was one of those few people who really looked good in that color.
“Wow,” I said. “You look super, Emily.”
“Am I supposed to feel flattered?” She favored me with a scornful look as she moved on, and I was already regretting my spontaneous compliment. On the other hand, I felt a little sorry for her—over the last week or so it had been obvious that she’d do anything to get Grayson back. But she hadn’t succeeded, even with the backing of Florence and Mrs. Spencer combined.
Well, perhaps she’d do it this evening. In that dress …
I hoped Grayson would stand firm.
Meanwhile the band had begun to play. I heard “Here Comes the Weekend” from the living room, and the singer sounded almost like P!nk. Persephone had found us two glasses of punch and gave me one of them before we made our way into the living room, where the first couples were already dancing. We leaned back against the bookshelves (from which Mom had removed her first editions of Oscar Wilde and Emily Dickinson, to be on the safe side), and Persephone smoothed down her white dress with a happy sigh.
“I bet Jasper is sorry he has to be in France right now,” I shouted against the music, smiling at her.
“Jasper who?” cried Persephone, but then she laughed. “I couldn’t care less about Jasper today. Just for once, life is good.”
In any case, it had certainly been much worse. And there was so much to be grateful for.
For instance, the fact that Grayson hadn’t been arrested for breaking and entering and grievous bodily harm, simply because Arthur hadn’t told anyone about the incident. But I was grateful all the same, because otherwise Grayson might have spent his eighteenth birthday in a police cell, or maybe in the nuthouse.
There was a heartrending story in the Tittle-Tattle blog about Arthur, and how he had tried to rescue a poor little puppy being tormented by four bad characters. In spite of being outnumbered, brave Arthur had finally saved the puppy—but he had suffered a broken nose, two black eyes, and a cut on his eyebrow (Grayson must really have been very angry).
Extraordinarily, everyone at Frognal Academy seemed to believe this sentimental story without reservations. Brave Arthur, the rescuer of little dogs, was the school’s new hero. And the girls in Mia’s class sighed louder than ever when they saw him in the corridors.
However, it would be some time before all traces of the fight had faded, and every time I saw Arthur, it gave me a certain satisfaction to see them still there. Even though I guessed that he was planning cruel revenge for every single bruise.
He had spoken to me only once, when we ran into each other by the chemistry lab, and I was turning to leave immediately when he took hold of my arm and held it firmly. “Don’t rejoice too soon, Liv Silver. I haven’t finished with you yet,” he had said, darting me glances of such hatred that his sighing fan club of girls would surely have lost faith in him. But there was no one else there to see Arthur’s real face.
What he said didn’t surprise me. I was only surprised that it left me cold. “I haven’t finished with you either,” I replied, and I meant it. I would never forgive him for what he’d tried to do to my sister. “And now let go of me, if you don’t want Secrecy to have another accident to report.”
In dreams, Arthur would have grinned viciously and tried turning me to stone, but this was real life, and in real life, I was the one who could do kung fu. Furthermore, a group of students was just coming around the corner. So he let go of me.
“We’ll meet again,” he snapped at me.
“Oh, Arthur?” I called after him. “What happened to that poor little puppy in the end?”
But there was even more that I had to be grateful for: Mia hadn’t walked in her sleep once since that night. And without asking too many questions, she’d promised to watch her personal possessions like
a hawk, particularly in school. I was also grateful that I could talk to Henry again without bursting into tears or shouting at him—in fact, we were getting on quite well. Maybe because we deliberately avoided all difficult subjects when we met.
Oh, and somehow I was glad that Charles and Lottie were on the dance floor together, looking amorously into each other’s eyes. They made a lovely couple. Well, Lottie was lovely, Charles was … just Charles. The main thing was that they were happy. I wasn’t quite sure that I could stand much more love in the household right now, because at the moment Ernest and Mom were going in for so much deep, soppy happiness that Mia was toying with the thought of moving out early. Today they’d offered to look after Buttercup and Spot in Lottie’s rooms up on the third floor, where they were probably making out on the sofa while Buttercup and Spot put their paws over their eyes.
The Boker still hadn’t recovered from her elder son’s engagement and probably never would. At every possible opportunity, she pointed out what a drop in social status his second marriage would mean for Ernest—after all, his first wife had been 201st in line for the British throne. But of course that wasn’t the reason why she’d decided to stay home today. “This is a party for the young, and I don’t want to be in the way,” she had said modestly when Florence invited her, but I was sure the real reason she wasn’t here was that blue didn’t suit her. If family members had been told to come in beige, she’d have been the first to show up.
“Here comes Henry!” Persephone dug her elbow into my ribs. “Amazing—he looks good even in a lumberjack shirt.”
“It’s not a lumberjack shirt; it’s just a check pattern,” Henry put her right. “I don’t like it. But it was the only red thing in my wardrobe except for a Norwegian sweater with reindeer knitted into it. Anyway, I could never outdo your dress, Persephone.”
“I know! Looks super, don’t you think? And see how the skirt swings out!” She turned on her own axis and blew us a kiss. “I’m going to look for Gabriel!”
Henry took her place beside me leaning on the bookshelves and watched her go. “Amazing similarity to a coconut meringue pie. A coconut meringue pie that’s had a bit of an accident.”
“So much for the quality of your compliments.” I sighed.
“I suppose that means if I said you’re looking wonderful this evening, you wouldn’t believe me?” He smiled at me, and in my present good mood, I smiled back. Over the last few days, he’d seemed much more relaxed than for weeks before, and as if he’d been sleeping better.
People were crowding into the living room now. Someone had opened the door to the terrace, and pleasantly cold night air came in from outside. The band went over to “Narcotic” by Liquido, and I took Henry’s arm and drew him out into the corridor, where we sat down on the stairs, a vantage point from which we could watch the party.
“You look somehow … happy,” I said after a while. And terribly attractive. (Of course I didn’t say that, I just thought it.)
“I am.” His eyes lingered very briefly on my mouth. “Well, not necessarily happy. But anyway, I have one thing less to worry about.”
I cautiously felt the snuffbox in my pocket. “Really?”
He nodded. “At the moment things at home…” He stopped. “Well, I told you I’d been having trouble with my father. To put it mildly. About the trust fund.”
Yes. He’d mentioned it.
“But all that has come to nothing.”
“What, the trust fund?” I asked, although of course I knew better.
“No, the trouble. My father has given up that stupid idea of investing it. At least for now.”
“That sounds very sensible,” I said, avoiding a green elbow going upstairs past us on the way to the bathroom. A few guests were still arriving, and I wondered how many Florence had invited. And how many people could do charitable work in a single soup kitchen.
“To be honest, I never expected my father to think better of it.” Henry leaned back. “He wouldn’t listen to anything I said.”
“Maybe he just needed someone to appeal to his conscience,” I said, and I handed Henry the snuffbox. “Here. I think this belongs to your family.”
I’d known Henry for some time now, but I’d never seen him so taken aback. I’d never known him to stammer either.
“Is … is … is … th-that by any chance…?”
“The snuffbox that Milo borrowed from your father, yes,” I said, enjoying the look on his face. “I’d have kept it, only I don’t take snuff.”
Henry’s mouth was still slightly open. He looked from the snuffbox to me and back again. “You were the … How did you…?”
I allowed myself a mysterious smile. “Well, it’s not as if I’d learned nothing from you. And like I said, your father only needed to have a few basic principles explained to him. It was easy.”
Easy, ha-ha! It had taken me days just to find his father’s dream door. Unfortunately it wasn’t, as I’d assumed, anywhere close to B’s door (why not, I wondered?) but in a drafty corridor off to one side of it. And I’d really found it only because it had his initials carved in the wood: R.H. for Ronald Harper.
And then the real challenge began: Harper wasn’t the type of man to listen to other people telling him how to run his business projects, and he’d had no intention of changing his mind about investing his children’s trust in a high-risk hedge fund run by dubious private bankers. I’d had to pull out all the stops, four nights running. Only when I haunted him as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come did he crack. I’d rather have tried a version of the late Henry Harper Senior, but that wasn’t going to work because I knew nothing about the appearance and character of Henry’s grandfather. Instead I had to use the ghost out of A Christmas Carol, and I was prepared for it because I’d taken that part in a Christmas play three years ago in Berkeley. Apart from a small slipup—literally, because I nearly fell over the hem of my long, scary, hooded gray cloak—I thought I played it very well. And thanks to Charles Dickens, there’s nothing like showing a man his own gravestone to convince him that his life is on the wrong track.
I felt really proud now that my trouble had been worthwhile. Don’t let anyone say dreams can never alter reality.
Henry slipped the snuffbox into the pocket of his jeans and gave me that very special Henry smile that was kept only for me—and made me go weak at the knees. “I swear I’ll get you to tell me the whole story sometime,” he said, standing up and putting out his hand to me. “But for now it will be enough if you’ll dance with me.”
I laid my hand in his and smiled. The band played “Dream On” by Aerosmith. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
TITTLE-TATTLE BLOG
The Frognal Academy Tittle-Tattle Blog, with all the latest gossip, the best rumors, and the hottest scandals from our school.
ABOUT ME:
My name is Secrecy—I’m right here among you, and I know all your secrets.
18 February
Eleven minutes! Jasper Grant’s relationship status on Facebook had been “single” for exactly eleven minutes when Persephone dumped Gabriel. She’s a fast worker.
A little too fast, unfortunately, as it turned out. Because after twelve minutes Jasper’s profile said “In a relationship” again.
Good-bye, Lily, hi there, Louise. An excellent choice, judging by the bikini-clad photos in Louise’s profile. And if the villa, the pool, and the palm trees visible beyond the bikini belong to Louise’s parents, then Jasper is to be congratulated. He’s using his time abroad to make friends forever with a holiday home on the Côte d’Azur—so much more important than a good grade in French, don’t you think?
So now Persephone will have to spend the time until Easter knocking her head against the wall. And, Gabriel, you stand firm—you really do deserve something better.
However, now for our breaking news: I’ve only just heard that Anabel Scott came out of the psychiatric hospital on Friday. Obviously acute polymorphic psychotic disorder can be cured, and the
schizophrenia must have been a wrong diagnosis. One way or another, Anabel is back! She’s been discharged, and she’ll probably spend a little while convalescing at home before returning to her studies. At the moment we can only speculate on whether she and Arthur will pick up their relationship again—they were certainly the best-looking couple that Frognal ever had. What am I saying? The best-looking couple the world had ever seen, and I wouldn’t grudge it to them. But after so long, I guess getting back together isn’t easy.
We’ll have to wait and see.
See you soon!
Love from Secrecy
PS—In case you’re waiting to hear the latest scandals from Florence and Grayson Spencer’s birthday party: Sorry to disappoint you. The party was a scandal-free zone. Delicious food, super band, fantastic atmosphere—like Florence, the party was just perfect.
ON THAT SAME NIGHT …
ANABEL WAS WEARING a short black dress and looked more beautiful than ever as she walked toward us in the corridor. The faint light played around her slender body, and all we needed was the right background music to put the finishing touch to her appearance in the part of a fallen angel.
“How was the party?” She put her head on one side and smiled at us. “So stupid that I got left off the invitation list.”
What an idiot I was. What a silly idiot! The evening so far had been perfect, and I’d just wanted it to go on a little longer. So after a moment’s hesitation, I’d gone out through my green door, officially to look in on Mia and make sure she was all right. Henry, Grayson, and I had made it our business to do that these last few weeks. But who did I think I was kidding?
Not Henry for one—he was already waiting for me.
“How about a little visit to Amy?” He’d smiled when he saw me. “And then you can tell me, at your leisure, how you fixed everything with my father.”
I wasn’t about to do that, for sure. But anything seemed possible in Amy’s brightly colored, peaceful dream world. Even that Henry and I might … “Okay,” I said quickly.