Although now Brett wasn't coming up with anything. Her hands were shaking as Jeremiah whispered frantically in her ear and tried to calm her down. Apparently Jeremiah's revelation had come as a surprise to her too. And what was the deal between him and Free Tibet?
Tinsley's irritation had reached its peak. She stood up abruptly and practically shouted at Callie, “I never said I had sex, okay? Get over it.”
That pissed Easy off. “What about …” he started to ask, thinking of the time Tinsley had spent the night at some Columbia grad student's apartment and bragged about it all over campus the next day.
“What about we play the game?” Tinsley fiddled with her suspenders and straightened her skirt. “I'll go,” she said quickly, before anyone could say anything else. “I never took my ex-girlfriend out to dinner with my dad instead of my current girlfriend.”
Easy's stomach dropped. Everyone glanced around, totally confused and thinking that maybe stress had caused Tinsley to actually go insane. She was staring straight at Easy, her violet eyes flashing with anger. What did she have to be angry about, that bitch? He glared back at her.
“Why aren't you drinking, Easy?” she asked nastily. “You know the rules.”
If she weren't a girl, he would have thrown his drink in her face at that moment. But it wouldn't have mattered—she'd already accomplished what she'd intended. Namely, her scandal was no longer in the spotlight, and his was.
Heath chuckled, a deep “Ho ho ho,” like it was the funniest thing in the world.
Jenny's face slowly drained of color. She stood up to face him. “Is that … is that true?”
Easy could feel everyone watching him, and not all of their looks were kind. Not that he cared right now what anyone else thought. He just wanted to stop Jenny from hating him. “Well … uh … not really … but sort of …” Not his most eloquent response, but it didn't really matter as Jenny quickly backed away and ran out of the room.
The room buzzed with noise, and Easy pressed his hands to his head as if he could have any hope of blocking it out. Kara, the girl Jenny had waved to, jumped up from her seat and ran out after Jenny, not too fast to avoid giving Easy a nasty look on her way out. Brett stood up and rushed out of the room, with Jeremiah chasing after her.
Looked like the party was over.
Callie stood up, her voice brimming with fury. “Why would you do that?” she demanded, walking over to Tinsley and standing directly in front of her.
“Well … you can all talk about my secrets. Why shouldn't everyone know about his?“ She shot Easy a glare.
Callie shook her head, her little blond pigtails flapping. “You are a total bitch.”
Tinsley seemed at a loss for words for the first time in her life. Her mouth trembled a little, not like she was going to cry, but like she was trying to narrow in on the absolute perfect scathing comeback. But after a few seconds, she just tossed her hair and stalked out of the room.
About fucking time, Easy thought. Too bad she couldn't keep her mouth shut for the rest of her life.
26
A WAVERLY OWL KNOWS THAT A SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIP IS BUILT ON HONESTY.
After storming out of the party, the last place Brett wanted to be was her bedroom, where, an hour ago, she'd been on the verge of having sex for the very first time with the boyfriend she loved. She'd thought everything was perfect—but now it was clear that it had all been fake. She and Jeremiah couldn't make the grand, symbolic gesture of giving their virginity to each other because he'd already lost it—to that other girl. And it wasn't like it was something that had happened a long time ago. No, when she and Jeremiah were dating before, he was definitely a virgin. They break up, get back together two weeks later, and suddenly he's not a virgin anymore? What the fuck? The thought of going back to her room, to her Iron & Wine and her sandalwood incense and her drawn shades, made her ill. Not like stomping up the stairs to the roof was any better—she still felt ill. What she really wanted to do was run out the front door of Dumbarton, hop in a car, and drive somewhere fast, but she couldn't leave Dumbarton, so the roof was as far away as she could get.
She flung open the metal door and stepped out into the dark, cool night air. Her arms were immediately covered with goose bumps, but she didn't notice. It was a beautiful night, which just pissed Brett off even more. Each one of the ten billion stars in the sky seemed to be shining happily down on her, and she wanted to kill all of them.
The door flew open. Jeremiah, practically panting, stepped toward her, but Brett backed away. She hoped his body was in even more pain now after running up three flights of stairs. “How could you? How could you … do that … and not say anything to me?” she shouted, not caring who heard.
“Brett, please. Calm down, okay?”
“I told you I was a virgin. I told you I was ready to do it. Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”
“Yes! Of course.” Jeremiah shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans, his face looking like his dog had just died. Good, Brett thought meanly. He deserves to feel bad. “It just wasn't … the right time.”
“So when would be the right time?” Brett couldn't keep the venom out of her voice. She just felt so betrayed. Jeremiah was supposed to be one of the good guys. He was one of the anti—Eric Daltons, the kind of guy who doesn't sleep around or ditch you for the next hot thing that walks into the room. He wasn't supposed to do this to her. “After we'd done it? Because if Brandon and …” Brett could not bring herself to say Elizabeth's name. “If Brandon and Bitchface hadn't interrupted when they did …”
“I would have told you,” Jeremiah insisted, pulling a Camel Light from a crushed package and sticking it between his lips. He fumbled in his pockets for a lighter. “But you know, you were lying to me for months. Why'd you lie about being a virgin?”
“Because … because …” Brett sputtered. “I don't know. It was none of anyone else's business.” And what difference would it have made, anyway? If he'd known she was virgin, did that mean he wouldn't have jumped on Bitchface?
“None of anyone's business,” Jeremiah repeated, inhaling deeply from his cigarette. “So why are you so pissed now if virginity is none of anyone else's business?”
“Don't twist my words around!” Brett felt so … helpless. She had never been so furious before, and she was angry at everything. Jeremiah. Herself. Elizabeth. She could have strangled her. All her thoughts were a complete jumble, churning through her brain at breakneck speed.
“We weren't even together when it happened,” Jeremiah pointed out quietly. “It's not like I was the one who cheated… .”
“What?” That was so unfair of him to remind her of Mr. Dalton. She'd already apologized a million times for that. “I never slept with Eric.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” Jeremiah suddenly looked more angry than sad. His floppy red hair fluttered in the wind. “You dump me—in a voice mail—with no explanation, you don't answer my calls or emails or texts, and then two days later I hear you're spending the night at this skeezy older guy's house. What was I supposed to think?”
Brett hated hearing about how she'd acted. It was pretty awful. “I know—I know I was a shitty person about it. How many times can I apologize?” Apparently not enough. “But did you have to go out and sleep with someone else? Jesus, Jeremiah.” A hot tear slid down Brett's cheek, and she swiped at it angrily with the back of her hand. She turned away from him and walked over to the stone wall at the edge of the roof. The campus was quiet—patchworks of lights in the other dorms shone through the trees, and somewhere, at the other end of campus, the trustees were getting drunk off Dean Marymount's wine and having a grand old time. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms to keep warm.
She heard Jeremiah clear his throat. “You broke my heart, Brett.” It sounded like he was going to cry, but then he took a puff of his cigarette and his voice steadied. “I was completely crushed. I didn't get it—I thought, you know, that you loved me.”
<
br /> “I did love you!” she cried. As soon as she said it, she realized how funny it felt to hear herself say it in the past tense—loved. As in, loved once, but not now. Two enormous owls took off from one of the huge oak trees and chased each other around campus. Brett wondered if the male owl ever messed around with other female owls and if the female owl was able to forgive him.
“Well, you had a fucking funny way of showing it.”
“Don't you dare blame this on me.” Brett whirled around to face him again. “You're the one who was clearly dying to get with someone else. How long did you wait? Like, a day? Two?”
Jeremiah flung his half-smoked cigarette down and ground it out with the toe of his booger green Pumas. Brett had always hated those shoes. “I had to talk about it—to people, to help me understand it. Elizabeth was a friend. She was there for me. And it just … happened. I wasn't thinking—I was too crushed to think anything.”
Brett kicked at a piece of gravel with her toe, and it skidded across the roof. “I wanted you to be my first. That's why I couldn't sleep with Eric—it just wasn't right. I wanted it to be you.” Clearly he hadn't felt that strongly about her if he could go and have sex with the first girl who tried to make him feel better. She'd waited seventeen years to lose her virginity—not that she'd been thinking about it for the first thirteen or fourteen. And when she finally figured out who it was that she loved, who she wanted to share it with … he'd already gone and done it with Elizabeth. Didn't that girl know any other ways to cheer a guy up? She suddenly remembered what it was like to play musical chairs and the music stopped and you were the one left standing like an idiot. It's what this felt like, times a billion.
“You gotta understand,” Jeremiah pleaded. “You've never been heartbroken.”
Brett swallowed the lump in her throat. “I have now.”
“Brett …”
“So what was it like?” Brett couldn't help picturing Elizabeth and Jeremiah, naked, rolling around on his bed. Kissing. She wondered where they'd done it—his room? Hers? Out in a field? A cheap motel? What had Elizabeth been wearing? Did he tell her how beautiful she looked? Did he call her babe? “Was it good?”
Jeremiah didn't say anything for a long time. He just stared at her with his big blue-green eyes. “It wasn't you.”
“We've been back together for over two weeks now,” Brett said quietly, staring at the toe of her cream-colored moccasin. There was a black spot from where she'd kicked the gravel. “There wasn't a right time anywhere in there?”
“I didn't want you to break up with me. Again.”
Brett stared at the stars, wishing they would just crash down on her right now and end it all. It was like she was being punished for so stupidly falling for Eric Dalton. Or even more than that, like she was being punished for lying about not being a virgin. Maybe if Jeremiah had known the truth about that, he wouldn't have been so quick to jump into Elizabeth's bed. A pessimistic little Dorothy Parker poem popped into her head:
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying,
Lady, make a note of this
—One of you is lying.
It was true—they'd both lied to each other, and now they were in this ugly mess of their own creation. She felt all clammy, like she had the flu, and her knees were all wobbly. It was true that Jeremiah had been understanding enough to forgive her about her own indiscretion with Dalton. She had thought that meant he loved her. But if he loved her, how could he have slept with someone else? Brett took a deep breath.
“I think you should leave.”
YvonneStidder:Yikes, was it my sex question that killed the party?
KaraWhalen:Sort of, but it's not your fault everyone lies about everything.
YvonneStidder:Right. Who would've thought T's never done it? It gives me hope… .
KaraWhalen:Honey, if you want to lose it, all you have to do is ask. Guys here are all horndogs.
YvonneStidder:Heath Ferro did look pretty cute tonight in his girl shirt.
KaraWhalen:You could do better than him if you closed your eyes and pulled a name out of the phone book.
YvonneStidder:You threw the beer at him, didn't you??
KaraWhalen:Guilty as charged.
27
A RESPONSIBLE OWL STANDS UP FOR HERSELF—EVEN IN THE FACE OF A VERY HOT GUY.
Callie wandered around the empty Dumbarton common room in a daze, still not quite believing what had just happened. She'd always known party games were dangerous—that's what made them fun—but usually dangerous meant she tended to do stupid things, like get drunk and make out with Heath Ferro. This time, it was sort of worse. She felt really, really bad—and for once, not for herself. For Jenny. It was kind of strange to suddenly feel sorry for the girl she'd been resenting for so long, but Jenny was nice. Jenny hadn't mentioned the fact that all of her hair bands had mysteriously disappeared, even though she must have noticed. Or the fact that Easy's sweet little drawing had also vanished. If their situations had been reversed, Callie would have certainly bitched about it. But Jenny was too nice to do anything.
She was still sort of a kid and so clearly in love with Easy Walsh. Who, right now, was the only other person in the room, collapsed on the couch, nursing the beer he had just poured half a bottle of Jack Daniels into.
Callie stopped and surveyed the room. It definitely looked like there had just been a party here. And it smelled like it too. Waverly mugs and abandoned plastic cups partly filled with beer were scattered around the room. Great. All Pardee had to do was walk in early, she'd shit a brick, and the Dumbarton girls would probably be locked down for another month. Where had everyone gone? Just because Tinsley had to ruin the party didn't mean they didn't have to clean up after themselves. She wrinkled her nose and picked up a plastic cup. “The least you can do, you know, is help me out?”
Easy could barely lift his eyes in her direction. “Huh?”
“Would you stop thinking about yourself for, like, five minutes?” Callie disappeared down the hall into the kitchenette, which consisted of a refrigerator, crammed with leftover Chinese takeout cartons and moldy pizza, a sink, and a microwave that always burned everyone's popcorn. She poured the beer down the sink and rinsed out the cup before tossing it in the recycling bin. When she came back into the living room, Easy hadn't moved, which made her furious.
“What?” he said, noticing her glare. “What do you want me to do?”
She picked up two mugs off the coffee table and shoved Easy's feet onto the floor. “You can stop feeling sorry for yourself and start thinking about the other people involved.”
“Maybe I already am.”
“Maybe,” Callie countered, stacking the mugs on top of each other and staring down at Easy, still loafing. “But you really should have been thinking about them before, when it mattered. It was really insensitive, what you did.”
Easy groaned and rubbed his eyes with his fists, his drink teetering on his knee. “I know. I feel like a total jerk about it… .”
Callie could tell it was true that Easy felt horrible, but what about her? And what about Jenny? Easy was the one holding all the cards. It was him they both wanted, and he had abused that. “Well, good. ‘Cause you've been a total jerk about it.”
Easy didn't say anything, like he knew she was right. And Callie knew she was too. Suddenly it felt good to stand up to him. He couldn't just sit there and wallow in his own half-drunken stupor, feeling sorry for himself and wishing he were living in Paris already and didn't have to deal with all these crazy chicks. No, Easy needed to accept responsibility for the mess he had made.
Callie made another trip to the kitchen sink and dropped off the mugs, then picked up a crushed pizza box on her way back into the living room. A few half-eaten crusts rolled around inside. “Look, Easy. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's unfair of you to think you can have things both ways. If you have feelings fo
r Jenny, you can't have feelings for me anymore.”
Which would be kind of sad … But still. Callie meant it. She didn't want to be one of Easy's girlfriends—she was either The One or nothing at all. No matter how great it had been to kiss him again—and it had been pretty freaking great—no guy was worth making a fool of herself over.
Easy stood up. “But it's not working that way.”
“Well, it kind of has to. You need to figure out what you want.” Callie stuffed some crinkled-up greasy napkins (gross!) into the pizza box and stood up, feeling somehow proud of herself. “And until you do, I kind of doubt either of us will want anything to do with you.”
AlanStGirard:You hear what happened in the living room?
AlisonQuentin:What, that T and Brett are virgins? That Kara threw beer in HF's face? That Easy's fucking around on J with C?
AlanStGirard:Uh, yeah … how'd you know all that already?
AlisonQuentin:Baby, news travels fast when we've been locked up all day.
AlanStGirard:Feeling antsy? Wanna run around naked in the tunnels?
AlisonQuentin:Not a chance. Haven't you realized that secrets don't stay secrets here?
AlanStGirard:What about in your room? Do secrets stay secret there???;)
Alison Quentin:A responsible Owl never invites boys to her room … (but she doesn't turn them away, either!)
28
A WAVERLY OWL IS NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK—AND SOMETIMES EMBRACES IT.
“That was a bit of a disaster, don't you think?” Elizabeth said lightly as she leaned with Brandon against the basement stairwell banister, holding a full plastic cup of beer in her hand. Her leather jacket was tied around her waist, and her T-shirt, with its hippie Free Tibet slogan, fit snugly around the chest. He wondered if she was one of those people who was always signing petitions to save whales and send famine relief to far-off countries. Because that was totally sexy. Maybe he needed a girl who wasn't self-absorbed, like Callie. And Tinsley.