Reckless

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  “Who was that?” Kara asked, looking like she enjoyed the excitement. She'd changed into a white, romantic-looking silk blouse with an empire waist and a square neckline with a little trim of lace that managed to push her chest up and make her look like a Shakespearean heroine. The billowy sleeves were long and sheer, and Kara had paired them with a funky pair of tight black pants that hugged her thighs and flared out at the calves. Her scuffed Doc Martens peeked out from beneath. She still looked hot but way more comfortable than she had in the tight burnt-orange dress. This outfit was just so much more her.

  “I have no idea.” Jenny leaned against. Kara's bookcase, which was stacked with books vertically and horizontally, the only messy part of the otherwise immaculate room. “She did look pretty young to be a teacher.”

  “But why would someone just wander into a girls' dorm?” Kara wondered as she crouched down and filled two plastic cups from the keg under her bed. “Maybe she's just from a different dorm.”

  Jenny smiled and ran her eyes over the books. It was nice to see so many—most of the girls used their bookshelves as shoe racks. It reminded her of the hours she'd spend at the Strand Bookstore in Greenwich Village, tilting her head to read the titles on the thousands of shelves of books until her neck hurt. She recognized the spines of a couple of her favorites—Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth, Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Pride and Prejudice, before noticing two entire shelves of thin, colorful spines with small print. She pulled one out a little and saw that it was a vintage copy of an X-Men comic book from 1968. “Oh my God—are these all comics?”

  “Yeah, I have sort of an obsession… .” Kara blushed. “I know it's a total geek thing—I'm like the Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons.”

  “No!” Jenny protested, pulling out a copy of Ghost World, her all-time favorite graphic novel. She loved the seamless way art and words fit together. “I can't believe you have this!”

  There was a shuffling noise in the closet before the door suddenly burst open and Heath Ferro, a black chiffon scarf wrapped around his forehead like a sweatband, stepped out, holding an empty Waverly Owl mug and smelling like beer. His shaggy blond hair was in desperate need of a trim, and he looked a little dazed, as if he had just woken up. “Are you guys talking about comics?”

  “Is that my scarf?” Kara lunged for it, but Heath darted away. He crouched down in front of her bookshelves and pulled out about twenty comics.

  “Holy shit. You have the original X-Mens?” He glanced up at the girls, his green eyes lit up like he had just hit the mother lode. “I can't believe you're into comics!”

  “Because I'm a girl?” Kara placed a hand on her hip and stuck out her chin defiantly. Jenny took a step backward. Kara could be kind of scary when she was pissed.

  “Because you're a hot girl!” Heath stood up and held out his right hand in an uncharacteristically polite manner. Jenny remembered that when she'd first met Heath, he'd been unable to look at anything other than her chest. Here he was, trying to be a gentleman? It was unprecedented. “We haven't been properly introduced.”

  Kara glanced at his hand as if he'd just told her he had the bird flu. “Even though you're wearing my scarf on your head and were hiding in my closet. Funny.”

  Heath was undeterred. In fact, Kara's attitude just seemed to turn him on all the more. He draped his right arm on the top of the bookshelf as if that had been his plan all along. “I'm Heath.”

  Kara's look could have cut glass. “I know who you are.”

  Heath continued to be oblivious while pretending to stretch and scratch his stomach so that he could lift up his T-shirt and show off his chiseled abs. “See, all the new girls have a way of tracking me down. I'm really one of the few guys worth knowing at Waverly, if you like real guys, that is.”

  Kara was silent, and Jenny could sense that something was wrong, though she had no clue what it might be. There was something weird going on between Kara and Heath—the tension between them was electric, and it looked like Kara wanted to kill him. Either that or kiss him. Even though Heath could be kind of slimy, he wasn't truly offensive. And he was definitely handsome. But Kara kind of looked like a volcano about to blow its top.

  “You probably haven't gotten to see too much of the campus yet. At least, not the tunnels.” He raised his eyebrows provocatively at Kara, already having forgotten that Jenny was in the room. “We could go spelunking.”

  “You are unbelievable.” Kara shook her head, her full lips trembling a little. Jenny took a step forward, wondering if she should tell Heath to get out of there before Kara lost it. She was clearly having some sort of allergic reaction to him. “You don't even recognize me, do you?”

  Heath looked completely floored. “Recognize you?” He closed the X-Men comic he was still holding, set it back on the shelf, and patted the back pockets of his 7 For All Mankind jeans, as if his pack of Camels could help him now. “We didn't already …uh … hook up, did we?” Jenny could see that all of his “intimate moments” with girls were equally meaningless.

  “Not in this lifetime,” Kara snapped back. Her cheekbones were flushed and she was clearly one of those people who anger happens to make prettier. She took a deep breath and held her shoulders back straighter. “I was in your English seminar with Miss Dubinsky freshman year? I sat behind you?” Heath's face remained blank. Kara continued. “Kara Whalen? But you had a nickname for me …”

  “You mean …” Heath staggered backward, and Jenny could tell that he was genuinely shocked and not just putting on one of his shows. “You're the Whale?” He puffed his cheeks out like a chipmunk.

  Jenny's jaw dropped. It was a thing of beauty, what happened next, and Jenny watched it all as if it was happening in slow motion. Kara, enormous eyes flashing with fury and maybe a teensy bit of satisfaction, picked up her maroon-and-white Waverly mug half filled with warmish beer and, without thinking twice about it, flung it into Heath's handsome face. It was like something that girls do in movies or books but not in real life. And if there weren't a shocked, sopping-wet Heath Ferro standing in front of her, his royal blue Lacoste polo shirt with the alligator torn off dripping little beer droplets onto the perfectly clean hardwood floor, she might not have believed it.

  A giggle escaped Jenny's lips—she couldn't help it.

  “Once an asshole, always an asshole.” Kara glared at Heath. “I had to leave school because of people like you, you know. You got everyone to call me that. You thought you were so clever and so popular and so charming that making my life a living hell didn't matter at all!”

  “That doesn't mean you had to throw your fucking beer at me!” Heath pulled his shirt away from his chest and it made a suction sound. “I mean …” He looked pissed, but his eyes ran up and down Kara's body, as if he was trying to figure out how this could be the same person he tormented. “I'm sorry I was mean to you, all right? I don't even really remember it.”

  “Well, I do.” Kara gave a small shudder and suddenly she didn't look angry anymore. She looked tired and maybe a little embarrassed. She glanced at Jenny nervously.

  “There are paper towels in the bathroom, Heath.” Jenny put her hands on her hips and nodded toward the hallway, as if to say, Get the hell out of here. The thought of Heath, or anyone, being such a jerk to someone as nice as Kara gave her the shivers. She didn't understand what some people got out of being mean—it was why Tinsley was such a mystery to her.

  “You girls are fucked up, you know that?” Heath tried to force a laugh as he flung open the door and stepped into the hallway. “If you wanted me to take off my shirt, you just had to ask.” He started to pull it off, but Kara quickly kicked the door shut with her foot.

  There was a moment of silence. “Do you think I'm crazy?” Kara asked quietly as she pulled her bath towel from the hook on the back of the door and dropped it on the puddle of beer.

  “Are you kidding?” Jenny grabbed a tissue from the box on Kara's desk and wiped at the splattered beer on the wall. �
�I've been wanting to do that to Heath since I got back here. I'm jealous. Although to be honest, I think it kind of turned him on.”

  “Gross.” Kara's face wrinkled in disgust, but then she smiled. “You're really cool, you know?” She sighed. “I wish you'd been around … before.”

  Jenny wasn't going to press her. “Well, I'm around now.” Had Kara really had to leave school because everyone was so nasty to her? Suddenly Jenny's own experience leaving Constance Billard—after a series of highly visible mistakes—seemed much less dramatic. And besides, she'd sort of wanted them all to happen.

  “Thank goodness.” Kara thumbed the books on her shelf. “I've been sort of hiding out this year. And I never wanted something like that little scene to happen. But now I'm kind of glad that it did.”

  “I've never seen Heath look uncomfortable before, so you definitely scored points there.” Jenny glanced down at her shoes, suddenly remembering Easy, waiting for her up in her room. But she didn't want to rush back right away—it was fun hanging out with Kara.

  “Although he's probably going to be walking around without a shirt on for the rest of the night.”

  “I guess there's a price to pay for everything.” Jenny took a big swallow of beer. “Was everyone really mean to you?”

  “Not everyone.” Kara's eyes looked sad. “Some were nice. But most people just ignored me. God forbid there are Waverly Owls who don't fit into a size six.”

  “I would have been nice to you,” Jenny said, wondering if that was really true. She certainly wouldn't have been mean—but she thought back to her first day at Waverly, when nerdy

  Yvonne Stidder was showing her around and trying to get her to join the jazz ensemble. The girl was nice enough, but Jenny couldn't wait to get away from her and meet the cool kids. And since she'd made friends with Brett and Easy and Brandon and all the others, she hadn't given Yvonne a second thought.

  I'm a bitch, she thought. I'm one of them.

  21

  A WAVERLY OWL IS NOT AFRAID OF SKELETONS—LIVING OR OTHERWISE—IN HER CLOSET.

  “So, what's it like sharing a room with the girl who stole your boyfriend?” Benny Cunningham asked as she pushed open the door to Dumbatton 303. She made a beeline for Jenny's dresser and snooped through the things on the top of it. She opened a porcelain butterfly-shaped box and picked out a silver chandelier earring disinterestedly, then took the cap off Jenny's bottle of Euphoria by Calvin Klein and spritzed the air.

  Callie rolled her eyes and closed the door behind her. Benny could be a bit of a rubbernecker—she loved details about everyone else's problems, which she'd listen to pityingly before offering some completely unwelcome and unhelpful advice. Callie had been having an excellent time alone on the roof, feeling sorry for herself and smoking cloves from the pack she kept in her pajama drawer for special occasions only. She loved the way they made her lips tingle and made her feel all light-headed, but her asthma kept her from smoking them too often.

  But then Benny had snuck up to join her, with a “special” cigarette that Alan St. Girard had rolled for her (courtesy of his parents' “herb” farm in Vermont). Now her mind was all loos ened up and wandering and she could feel her emotions rising up inside her and threatening to spill out her mouth.

  “It's not that bad.” Callie lay down on her own bed and closed her eyes, wishing everyone in the entire world would disappear. That she could be all alone, sprawled out on a sandy tropical beach, the sun beating down on her bare skin, with the sound of waves crashing in her ears instead of Benny Cunningham's insinuating remarks.

  “Oh, no?” Benny asked innocently, checking her image in the mirror. She was wearing a Fresh floral thermal top with a multicolored hummingbird emblazoned on the chest and a short white denim miniskirt, borrowed from the closet of some senior girl on the second floor. Her perfectly parted brown hair was pulled into two low Heidi braids, and Callie knew she was going for the whole girl-next-door look. “It certainly looked that way.”

  “Give me a fucking break.” Callie leaned up on her elbows, liking the way the waist of her slim-fitting jeans didn't even touch her stomach. “People don't get stolen away. That's just a convenient myth so that people don't have to blame themselves for problems in their relationships.”

  Benny turned to check out her ass in the mirror and smiled at her own reflection. “Come on—everyone saw the way she threw herself all over him.”

  “That's not true.”

  “Sure, it is. She was after him from day one.”

  “I asked them to flirt with each other … so that I wouldn't get in trouble.” That had to be one of the stupidest things she'd ever done. Right up there with making out with Heath Ferro. Twice.

  “So what? You asked them to flirt, not fall in love.” Benny grabbed Callie's bottle of DuWop lip venom and, without asking, spread it across her plum-colored lips.

  Callie shook her head and realized she meant every word she was saying. “You don't get it. Someone can't just come between two people if their relationship is solid.” She rubbed her hands over her eyes. “Things weren't right between Easy and me. That's all there is to it.”

  Benny was unimpressed. “That's awfully mature of you.”

  She sighed. It had taken a lot for her to get to this point. For so long, she'd been furious with Jenny. It was easy to blame Jenny's perky boobs or sweet personality, but now it just seemed silly. If Easy had still been in love with Callie, no one would have been able to tear him away. And that was the hardest thing to accept. “Whatever. It's hard.” She felt her throat filling up with tears. “I miss him.”

  “Aw, sweetie.” Benny spun around. “Do you need a hug?”

  Callie moved away from her toward the half-opened window. “Some other time.” Benny was really starting to get on her nerves. She needed some new friends. “Why don't you go downstairs? I'll be down in a minute.”

  “You need to do some more soul-searching?”

  “Fuck you!” Callie almost laughed. Benny had a hard time taking things seriously sometimes, especially after smoking. “I've got to change my shoes.”

  “I'll save you some beer,” Benny trilled, then shut the door.

  Callie frowned—it was one of those days. Talking about Easy—thinking about Easy—did not make anything easier. She wanted to get over him, she really did. But after dinner on Friday, after the way Easy had been looking at her, she couldn't stop thinking that maybe her second chance was coming? And then his IM—it made her feel like she wasn't imagining things, that maybe Easy didn't exactly have his mind made up either.

  She wasn't sure if she was looking forward to seeing him or not. It was all too weird.

  But she did know that her feet were already killing her, and no one can be happy with sore feet. She stood up, stumbled over to her closet, and pulled open the door.

  “Aieee!” she shrieked, jumping back when a light shot out at her. What the hell?

  On the floor of her closet, crouched on top of her jumble of shoes and clothing that had slid off the hangers and her bag of dirty laundry, was a person—a person with a yellow plastic helmet on with a blinding flashlight strapped to it. Easy Walsh.

  “Easy!” she gasped. “What the fuck are you doing in here?” Her mind raced back to all the things she'd been saying to Benny. Not like it was anything to be very embarrassed about now. Still, she felt her face flush.

  His ears stuck out a little from beneath his helmet. “Hiding,” he whispered. All crouched on the floor like that, with his ridiculous hat perched on his head, he looked like a little kid. Like a five-year-old who'd found the best spot in hide-and-seek and was waiting patiently for someone to discover him.

  It wasn't the isolated beach she'd been hoping for, but suddenly there was no place she wanted to be other than the bottom of her own messy closet, with Easy Walsh.

  She slid off her towering gold sandals and stepped, barefoot, into the closet, her knees trembling a little. She pulled the door closed behind her, giggling. Easy pu
shed some clothes away, doing his best to clear a spot for her on the floor. She eased herself down next to him.

  “You are such a goof-ass,” Callie said as Easy flipped the bird with his hands and his flashlight projected its shadow onto the closed closet door. She laughed, a full, deep laugh from the pit of her stomach. All it took was five seconds with Easy, and she was as happy as she'd ever been.

  Easy sniffed the air. “It smells like mothballs in here.”

  Callie held her hand up to her eyes. “Can you shut that light off? It's kind of blinding.”

  Easy fumbled around with the helmet for a minute before they were suddenly plunged into darkness. It felt quieter, as if somehow the darkness blanketed out any other noise, too. Callie couldn't even hear the sounds of the party downstairs anymore—just the sound of her own breathing.

  And Easy's.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” she whispered. Then she laughed, and he laughed too. It was all so absurd. Callie felt the hem of a dress tickle her forehead, making her giggle even more. She wanted to pause time and stay in here in the closet with Easy forever, just the two of them, with no one else to get in the way. It was perfect, just like this.

  And then they were kissing, and it was even more perfect.

  BennyCunningham:Where the hell'd the party go?

  RyanReynolds:Thought a teacher came in? Lon and I are underneath some crazy chick's bed, waiting to be rescued.

  BennyCunningham:How cozy … can you take a pic?