Notorious (18 page)

Callie wrinkled her nose and slipped a pair of dangling jade earrings in her ears. “Ew. That’s awful.”

“Tell me about it.” Jenny decided on a black sleeveless Raves T-shirt with strategically placed cutouts designed to show skin in only the right places. With her short Juicy Couture jean skirt, she felt very punk rock.

“Are you guys almost ready?” Tinsley burst into the room wearing a turquoise tube dress, the kind Jenny always saw in Victoria’s Secret catalogs—the ultra-clingy, revealing kind that could only be worn by supermodels and girls lucky enough to have curves in exactly the right spots and not an ounce of fat in any of the wrong spots. Clearly Tinsley was one of those people. Her eyelids were covered in gold shimmer, hoop earrings as big as apples hung from her lobes, and she wore a pair of jeweled Giuseppe Zanotti flat sandals on her feet. Wow. Was she even
human?
Jenny looked at herself and Brett and Callie, all dressed in black, and then back to Tinsley’s bright blue dress.

“Nice dress, Tinsley,” she heard herself saying. She hadn’t said much to Tinsley since, well, she’d met her, but screw it. The spiked lemonade was going to her head, and she was feeling a little brave. So what if Tinsley was the queen of Waverly?
She’d
kissed Easy Walsh!

“Why, thank you.” Tinsley gave her a throwaway smile, barely looking at her as she walked over to the floor lamp and tossed a dark purple handkerchief over the light, bathing the room in violet.

“Knock knock.” Benny Cunningham pushed through the doorway with Sage Francis right behind her. “Are we late?” She was carrying two bottles of bordeaux in one hand and one of those rabbit-shaped corkscrews in the other. “Courtesy of Daddy Cunningham—he just sent these in a back-to-school care package.”

“My father just sends me newspaper clippings,” Jenny piped up, forgetting about her new Treo for a second.

Benny smiled at Jenny pityingly. “That sucks.” Benny’s brunette hair was French-braided down her back, and she was wearing what looked like a scarf wrapped around her chest, showing off her sleek stomach and tiny onyx belly button piercing. “Where should I open these?”

“When did you get that?” Tinsley demanded, pointing at the stomach jewelry, which Jenny thought looked like a tick had nestled into Benny’s stomach.

“Oh, this summer …”

“To impress a
boy,
” Sage said, wrapping her tan arms around Benny’s shoulders. Her platinum hair contrasted with Benny’s dark locks. “It didn’t work.” She kissed Benny on the cheek, leaving a mauve smudge.

“Bitch.” Benny shrugged Sage off. “Where’s the bar?”

“Over here.” Callie walked to the window seat that had been designated the beverage area and helped Benny open the wine bottle and pour the wine into the plastic cups Brett had stolen from the library bathroom. “These are for wine shots,” Callie joked, taking one of the filled cups and tossing the liquid down her throat.

“Slow down, girl.” Benny sipped at her own plastic cup. “Or you’re going to end up curled around the toilet tonight.”

Soon the other girls arrived, wearing the requisite short, tight outfits and bearing a six-pack of Diet Coke and a bottle of Bacardi Limón. Tinsley had switched the playlist to “party,” and the Black Eyed Peas came on. Jenny, Celine, and Brett kicked their shoes in the corner and started dancing. Jenny used to envy the girls who danced like they were practicing to be in someone’s music video, but then she realized she could do that too. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. The girls froze, but Tinsley, unafraid, turned the music down a notch and strode over to the door before they could even hide the rum bottle.

The door opened to a welcome sight: Angelo in a pair of well-worn Levi’s and a navy blue hooded sweatshirt, holding four boxes of sweet-smelling pizzas.
Hello!

“You sneak!” Callie cried out, thinking they’d been busted. “I didn’t even know you ordered it yet!”

“Thank you, Angelo, for bringing this all the way up here for us. That’s very sweet. Could you put them on that table, please?” Tinsley indicated one of the suitcases they had covered with tapestries, and when Angelo headed in that direction, she casually closed the door. Jenny took a deep breath. She had a feeling that in Tinsley’s mind, the party was just starting.

“Can I get you a glass of wine? A rum and Coke?” Celine leaned toward Angelo and stroked the neck of the wine bottle suggestively. Was she really trying to win that bet?

“Yeah, um, I don’t know if I can really stay.” Angelo’s eyes wandered around the room, and he shuffled his feet nervously. “I’ve never been in one of the girls’ dorm rooms before. This is pretty sweet.”

“You really have to stay for a drink or two.” Callie pressed a spare Waverly mug filled with rum and Coke into his hand. “Or else you’ll hurt our feelings.” He stared at her, transfixed, and took the mug. She grinned triumphantly at Celine, who stuck out her tongue. Jenny couldn’t help hoping that maybe Callie would fall madly in love with Angelo. Then she wouldn’t mind
who
Easy was with.

“Is this what all your Monday nights are like here?” Angelo sat down on the floor next to another tapestry-covered suitcase. He still looked a little uncomfortable, like he really wanted to call his buddies and have them join him to protect him from the pack of rabid teenage girls.

“Sometimes we order Chinese.” Tinsley sat down next to Angelo, holding a paper plate with a gooey slice of mushroom-and-cheese pizza. She leaned back against the bed, and he dragged his eyes away from her and focused on his drink. He took an enormous gulp, wiping his full lips with the back of his hand.

“And sometimes we play games.” Callie sat down on the other side of Angelo, leaning into him. “Wanna play a game?”

Poor guy. He was probably thinking,
Who the fuck are all these weird girls?
Jenny was reminded of the scene in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(one of her brother’s favorite movies, although he was too much of a snob to admit it in front of anyone) where Sir Galahad discovers the castle full of beautiful and lonely nuns, and they pull him inside and practically devour him before he’s rescued—to his dismay—by Lancelot. Angelo looked like he knew he was about to be devoured and seemed appropriately freaked out and turned on. He ran a hand through his black hair. “Uh, what kind of game?”

Benny plopped down to her knees in front of him, holding the empty bottle of wine. “Well, we have a bottle. ...”

“How’s that going to work with so many girls?” Alison nudged in next to Benny, sitting cross-legged in a pair of sleek red satin pants. The rest of the girls formed a little circle in the carpet. “I may be drunk, but I’m not making out with you, Benny.”

Benny smirked at her. “Why not? You’ve made out with everyone else.”

“How about this?” Tinsley spoke up, as if she’d just come up with a brilliant idea, but Jenny suspected she’d been planning this from the start. “We’ll spin the bottle, and whoever it lands on has to kiss Angelo.”

Shit,
Jenny thought, trying to meet Brett’s gaze. She didn’t want to kiss Angelo. Was there any way she could get out of here before things got too crazy? Maybe she could pretend to go to the bathroom and just stay there for the rest of the night. But maybe it wouldn’t come to that … She really didn’t want to be a party pooper, not when she was just starting to feel like she finally belonged here.

“I think I need another drink.” Angelo rubbed his hand over his eyes and chuckled to himself. Callie got up and poured him another, using a little more rum this time, and gulped down more wine. She walked carefully back to the circle, like she could already feel the room beginning to tilt.

“You do the honors and spin first, Angelo.” Tinsley placed the bottle in the middle of the small Oriental area rug that Callie’s mother had sent to school with her as a dorm-room-warming gift.

He spun. The fat bottle twirled around and around on the rug before wobbling to a stop, pointing directly at Benny. She gave a squeal of delight and crawled on her knees across the circle, pausing to sit up in front of Angelo, who was staring at her long neck, her hair pulled up into a calculatedly sloppy ponytail.

“Here goes nothing.” Benny leaned in and pressed her lips to Angelo’s full ones. He seemed shocked at the suddenness of her move, but then he quickly yielded, and all the girls watched as their lips moved together.

Guess Benny wasn’t as much of a prude as everyone seemed to think, Jenny thought, a little surprised. Benny finally pulled away and shimmied back to her place in the circle, her lips wet and curled in a huge grin.

“My turn,” Callie ordered, jealous that Benny got to kiss Angelo first. She turned the mouth of the bottle toward her this time, then grabbed Angelo and kissed him hard and passionately, like she thought they were on a soap opera. Brett nudged Jenny as the kiss stretched on and on. Angelo was about to reach up and touch Callie’s hair when Tinsley cleared her throat authoritatively.

“Sorry.” Callie pulled away, keeping her eyes glued to Angelo, who looked like he wished the game were over so he could kiss Callie exclusively. Next Brett spun the bottle sloppily, and Jenny’s heart dropped when it wobbled to a stop between her and Verena, but clearly closer to Jenny.

“So close!” Verena exclaimed in disappointment. “Go ahead, Jenny, it’s you.”

“Yeah, but it’s in the middle.” Cute as Angelo was, the idea of making out with anyone besides Easy made Jenny feel sick. There was no way she could do what Callie had done now that she’d kissed Easy. It just seemed gross to kiss any other guy.

“What’s the matter, Jenny? Don’t you want to play?” Tinsley smiled. “Verena will get her turn, don’t worry.”

Jenny could feel everyone watching her. And all of a sudden the dim purplish light in the room seemed kind of freaky. Callie’s eyes seemed to be piercing through her. Shit. Shit.
Shit.
Callie was going to know something was up if she refused to play along.

With her heart in her throat, Jenny crawled over to Angelo, her bare knees getting rug burn. She paused in front of him. He still looked a little bewildered but had clearly decided to just go with it. Quickly she pressed her lips to his cheek and scooted back.

“Don’t insult us. Real kisses only, please.” Tinsley leaned forward, her hair falling around her face like a curtain, her violet eyes like lasers. “It’s not like there’s someone else, right?”

As always, Tinsley’s voice was light and seemingly carefree, but Jenny knew enough to realize that this was a test—if she didn’t do it right, she might as well kiss her dreams of belonging to the intimate world of the Waverly elite goodbye. And that was all she ever wanted, wasn’t it? To be one of the pretty, popular girls, friends with someone like Tinsley Carmichael. That was priceless—surely she could trade off one small, teeny-tiny kiss on the lips for that?

Without saying anything, Jenny abruptly turned to Angelo again, and, before she could stop herself, kissed him full on the mouth. She’d intended to just hold her lips there for a sufficient amount of time, but Angelo was clearly getting into the game, and she felt his tongue pry open her lips and find its way into her mouth. She forced herself to count to three before pulling away and retreating back to her spot in the circle, barely resisting the urge to grab Brett’s jumbo bottle of Scope from her dresser to gargle.

Jenny glanced at Tinsley, hoping to see some sign of acceptance in her eyes, but they didn’t look any different than they had thirty seconds ago.

“Don’t forget to spin,” Tinsley said coolly, leaning against the bed with her arms crossed in front of her chest, looking like a queen who had just seen a mediocre performance by one of her underlings and was now ready for the next thing. She nudged the bottle toward Jenny with her toe.

Suddenly Jenny realized with a horrible sinking feeling, as if the elevator she was in had just dropped twenty floors, that gaining Tinsley’s approval wasn’t going to be as simple as making out with the pizza boy.

Jenny spun the bottle blindly, and as the game continued, she had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep herself from spilling tears like the big baby she was. What had she done? She was disgusted with herself—how could she let Tinsley push her around like that? And how could she do this to Easy? She couldn’t wait to brush her teeth and get the horrible taste of another guy out of her mouth.

“Who’s up for a game of strip poker?” Callie staggered to her feet, the heel of her satin Kate Spade pump piercing a half-eaten piece of pizza lying on the floor. “Fuck.” She slid her foot out of the shoe, leaving it where it was.

“Will you stay and play with us, Angelo?” Sage sat down next to him and draped her arm around his shoulders, bitter that she hadn’t gotten a chance to kiss him but willing to trade for the opportunity to see him strip.

“I guess I could stay a while longer.”

“Hey.” Brett nudged Jenny, looking concerned. “Wanna get out of here? We can watch TV in the lounge or something.”

Jenny clutched Brett’s arm gratefully, feeling drunk and depressed and badly in need of some downtime. “God, please. Let’s go.” Brett stood up and pulled Jenny to her feet.

“Where are you going?” Callie demanded, rummaging through her desk drawer for the pack of cards she kept there.

Brett stretched her back and yawned. “We’re going to head down to the lounge and watch a movie. I’m really drunk. If I have any more, I’ll be sick. I’m not much of a card player anyway.” She picked up a paper plate and loaded a few slices of pizza on it before scooting out the door behind Jenny, who looked like she was about to cry. “See ya.”

Callie slammed the drawer shut and narrowed her eyes. Brett didn’t look drunk, though Jenny certainly did. What were they thinking, leaving the Café Society meeting before anything really good had happened?

“Brett has gotten
so
boring.” Tinsley shuffled the cards like a pro. Tinsley handed the cards to Celine, who dealt them, giggling the whole time and nudging Angelo, who was looking quite drunk. Sage took the tortoiseshell clip from Celine’s hair and stuck it in Angelo’s head. They all collapsed into drunken giggles.