Diamonds are Forever

by Michelle Madow

  Her mom glared at him. “You can’t just say something like that without talking to me first.”

  “Yes, I can,” he said. “Because we already talked about this. The day after Thanksgiving—remember? Then Adrian told us about the girls finding out about Britney, and everything got put on hold, but we’ve all been keeping this secret for far too long. It’s going to come out, and it might as well be sooner rather than later.”

  “Really?” Madison asked, stunned.

  “Really,” he said. “I’ll call Adrian tomorrow.”

  www.campusbuzz.com

  High Schools > Nevada > Las Vegas > The Goodman School

  Is Oliver EVER coming back to school????

  Posted on Thursday 2/5 at 4:38 PM

  Ok so I don’t mean to be insensitive or anything, cause I know Oliver was in a bad car crash in December, but isn’t it about time he came back to school? It’s FEBRUARY, for crying out loud! People are saying he’s recovering, but if he were REALLY doing better, wouldn’t he be back? Something’s totally up that we don’t know about...

  1: Posted on Thursday 2/5 at 4:59 PM

  andddd now the rumors will start. What do you all think? Paralyzed? Disfigured? Brain damage? Would have died, but the Prescotts paid top dollar for an experimental process where they scan Oliver’s brain and put him into a robot body that looks human??? It would take time for him to get used to the new body, which could explain his extended absence!!

  2: Posted on Thursday 2/5 at 5:10 PM

  this is real life, not a science fiction novel!

  3: Posted on Thursday 2/5 at 5:27 PM

  obviously oliver isn’t a robot. but those other ideas arent impossible. it would explain why he hasn’t come back to school yet.

  4: Posted on Thursday 2/5 at 5:42 PM

  this is OLIVER PRESCOTT! Party king of Goodman!! I’m gonna guess the accident didn’t happen cause he was driving sober. Who knows what was in his system? My guess is that he’s in REHAB!!!

  5: Posted on Thursday 2/5 at 6:02 PM

  ohhhh it sounds like you’re onto something!

  chapter 9:

  “Nice scrimmage today, girls,” Tegan, the senior volleyball captain, said as the team headed back to the locker room. Volleyball season was in the fall, but they were practicing two days each week after school to give them a shot at winning regionals next year. Everyone was doing well—except for Savannah. All she was thinking about were the texts she’d exchanged with Perry earlier. They’d been talking about seeing each other again, and he’d asked her when she had spring break. It had distracted her all through practice.

  The moment she opened her bag, Savannah picked up her phone, her heart fluttering when she saw a new text from Perry.

  So...since your spring break is during my time off from tour, it would be a perfect time for us to see each other again, don’t you think? ;)

  Was he serious? Of course she wanted to hang out! She was in the middle of replying when Tegan jumped onto the bench, holding her phone in the air.

  “Harrison just texted me that his parents will be gone all weekend, so he’s having a party!” she said. “Who’s coming?”

  A bunch of girls chimed in that they were going—Jackie, Brooke and Alyssa included. At the sound of their voices, Savannah placed her phone down.

  “What about dinner at the Diamond?” she asked them. “We’ve had plans for days.”

  “Of course,” Brooke said. “We’ll get dinner, then head over to Harrison’s when we’re done. The party won’t get good until later, anyway.”

  “Can we sleep over your place afterward?” Alyssa asked Savannah.

  “And can your driver take us to the party?” Jackie—the only one of the four of them with her license—asked. “I don’t want to be stuck as the DD.”

  “Sure,” Savannah said, zipping her volleyball bag shut. “And we can definitely do a sleepover after the party.”

  “Are you sure?” Brooke asked. “You don’t need to check with your dad or Rebecca first?”

  “Are you kidding?” Savannah laughed. “My dad doesn’t care about three of my friends sleeping over, and all Rebecca thinks about is planning the wedding. Speaking of, the bridesmaids’ dresses are arriving this afternoon, and she’ll be so mad if I’m late to try them on. I’ll see you girls at eight for dinner at Adagio, okay?”

  They said bye, and Savannah rushed to the parking lot, waiting for her bodyguard—Carl—to pull around the car. She reached into her bag to finish replying to Perry’s text, fumbling to find her phone. Where was it? It had to be in there somewhere. But as much as she dug through the mess of papers and random crap that had somehow ended up in there, she couldn’t find it.

  Courtney would tell her to think about when she’d seen it last. Which was easy—it was when she’d seen Perry’s text. She’d been in the middle of replying when she’d gotten distracted by her friends...and had put it down on the bench.

  “I have to run back inside and grab my phone,” she told Carl once he pulled up in the Range Rover. The car was technically hers, but since she only had her learner’s permit, she could only drive when an adult was with her. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  “All right,” he said. “But I would recommend hurrying—you know how Rebecca gets with this wedding stuff.”

  “Trust me, I know.” Savannah smiled and dashed back to the gym. She was wiped from volleyball practice—they’d gone hard that day, and the Vegas air was dry in the winter—so she stopped to grab a drink from the water fountain.

  As she was drinking, the door to the locker room slammed open, echoing through the hall.

  “I’m so sick of pretending that Savannah Diamond’s the most amazing person on the planet,” a loud voice that was unmistakably Jackie’s said. “She expects us to worship her just because of who her father is. It’s so annoying.”

  Savannah took a sharp breath, nearly choking on the water. She didn’t expect anyone to worship her. Especially not because of Adrian.

  “She’s such a joke,” Alyssa replied. “Thinking we’ll like her because she invites us to dinner at that restaurant at the Diamond? She’s been asking for so long that she pretty much forced us to say yes.”

  The footsteps came closer, and Savannah ducked around the corner into a nearby hall. She leaned against the wall, her palms pressed flat against it, keeping as still as she could. These girls were her teammates—they were supposed to be her friends. Where was this coming from? But as much as she wanted to ask, she couldn’t. It was too humiliating. So she stayed there, hidden, keeping quiet as they got closer.

  “Come on, you guys,” a soft voice—Brooke’s—said. “Savannah’s been nothing but nice to us. Maybe tonight will be fun.”

  “Nice?” Alyssa’s laugh filled the lobby. “She’s materialistic, obsessed with herself and judging from the classes I’ve had with her, she’s stupid, too. And her YouTube channel...what a joke.”

  “Omigod, I know!” Jackie joined in the laughter. “She makes the most ridiculous faces at the camera. Sometimes I’ll pause at certain spots and take screenshots, and it’s like, the funniest thing ever.”

  “The one you texted me yesterday was epic—let me find it,” Alyssa said, and they paused, presumably so she could bring it up on her phone. “Look at this!” She and Jackie burst out laughing again. “I would totally Instagram it, but she would see it was from my account.”

  “You could make a fake account,” Jackie suggested. “How funny would that be?

  “What would my username be?” Alyssa asked. “SavannahDiamondSucks?”

  “Something like that,” Jackie said. “You so have to do it.”

  “Don’t do that,” Brooke said, and Alyssa and Jackie stopped laughing.

  “Why not?” Jackie sounded genuinely confused. “No
one will know it’s us. And with all those people who follow her online, Savannah will never see it.”

  “When did you become Savannah’s best friend?” Alyssa said. “Last year, it was all about the three of us. No Savannah. I liked it better that way.”

  “But we were all friends with her last semester,” Brooke said. “What’d she do to make you hate her so much?”

  “She tries too hard,” Alyssa said. “It’s annoying. She’s only worth putting up with because her driver takes us anywhere, she gets us VIP passes and she’ll let us stay at the Diamond.”

  “And she talks about Perry Myles like he’s actually interested in her.” Jackie laughed. “Yeah, right. Did you see that picture of him with Serena Lopez? It’s all over the internet. They’re totally together... He only flirted with Savannah at her party because her dad paid him to.”

  Savannah knew the picture. She’d asked Perry about it... He’d said his publicist asked him to get dinner with Serena since she had a new album coming out, and her last album didn’t do well. They thought getting people talking about her would get them to buy her album. He’d even promised Savannah that while Serena was a good friend, she got crazy in relationships, so he would never date her.

  “Savannah’s just excited,” Brooke said. “Wouldn’t you be excited if Perry Myles was texting you?”

  “If he’s even texting her,” Alyssa said. “She’s probably making it up to get attention.”

  Heat rushed through Savannah’s body, and she clenched her fists so tightly that her fingernails broke through skin.

  “But we’ve seen the texts,” Brooke said. “And we’ve seen his Tweets to her, too.”

  “Whatever,” Jackie said. “He’s probably playing her. Who knows how many girls he’s saying the same exact shit to?”

  “And not only does Savannah try too hard, but she’s a self-absorbed bitch,” Alyssa added. “She had the attention of Damien Sanders and Nick Gordon, and she played them for months. She acted all innocent about it, but come on. She was totally doing it on purpose and gloating in the attention. I saw how much she loved it on the first day of school.”

  Savannah tried to breathe steadily, tears pooling in her eyes. Whatever she’d had with Nick had fizzled out because he was too busy with school, football and work to have time to hang out. They were friends now. And she hadn’t “played” anyone, especially not Damien. To do that, he would have had to have been interested in her as more than a Madison replacement. Now he saw her as only a friend—or worse, a little sister.

  “If you both hate Savannah, why are you even coming tonight?” Brooke asked. “Why not pre-game at Tegan’s and go to Harrison’s party with the rest of them?”

  “Because Tegan’s staying at Harrison’s, and if I stayed at Harrison’s and my mom found out, she would flip out and ground me for a month,” Alyssa said. “Savannah will charge our dinners on her dad’s credit card, her driver will take us to and from the party and we can stay over her place, which my mom is totally cool with. I’ll put up with her for all those perks.”

  “And she’s decently pretty, she has great clothes and she’s internet famous,” Jackie added. “I get more Instagram followers whenever she posts pictures with us and tags us.”

  “You’re talking about her like she’s an accessory,” Brooke said.

  “Whatever,” Alyssa said. “That’s what she gets for thinking that being Adrian Diamond’s daughter and a wannabe pop star is a good enough reason for people to want to be friends with her. If she wants to be used, then fine, I’ll use her.”

  They left the gym, their conversation cut off when the door slammed shut behind them.

  Once sure they were gone, Savannah crept out of her hiding spot and watched their backs as they walked to the parking lot. Her body shook as she replayed what she’d just heard. Why did they hate her so much? All she’d ever done was be nice to them, because they were on the volleyball team with her and they had some classes together. They sat together at lunch, went to Starbucks together after school and went to the same parties. Her Facebook cover photo was a picture of her, Alyssa, Brooke and Jackie with their arms around each other, smiling at her Sweet Sixteen party.

  She’d thought they were best friends. But this entire time, they’d hated her. How had she been so clueless?

  She hurried to the locker room and grabbed her phone. On her way back to the car, after letting Perry know that of course she wanted to see him over spring break, she opened a group text message to Alyssa, Brooke and Jackie.

  Family stuff came up—I have to cancel tonight. Have fun at the party!

  She pressed Send, shoved her phone into her bag and tossed it onto the back seat, not wanting to see their replies.

  * * *

  Savannah walked into the condo expecting to find her sisters, Rebecca and the wedding-planning entourage ready with the dresses. Her sisters were there—Courtney sitting on the couch with her laptop balanced on her thighs, and Peyton at the table eating a bowl of cereal—but there was no sign of Rebecca, or of the dresses.

  “What’s going on?” Savannah dropped her bag on the floor. “Aren’t we supposed to be trying on the bridesmaid dresses?”

  “Yep,” Peyton said in between bites of cereal. “But Rebecca texted us saying something came up, and that we can’t do the dresses today, but to wait at the condo because she and Adrian wanted to talk with us. Didn’t you see it? I thought you were permanently attached to your phone.”

  At the mention of her phone, which she was avoiding so she wouldn’t have to talk to Alyssa, Jackie and Brooke, Savannah stomped to the fridge and pulled out a Coke. It fizzed when she opened it, and she took a long, satisfying gulp.

  “I thought you and your friends swore off non-diet soda for the New Year?” Peyton asked. “That lasted all of...five weeks. Not bad, actually. I thought you would have given in earlier.”

  “Screw my friends.” Savannah slammed the refrigerator shut and took another delicious sip of regular soda.

  “Whoa.” Courtney moved her laptop off her legs. “What happened? Did you all get into a fight?”

  “No. Not really a fight.” Savannah’s voice wavered, and she took another sip of her drink. Courtney motioned for her to join her on the couch, and she did, pulling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Peyton was sitting with them a second later, her cereal bowl balanced on her lap. “But I heard them talking about me in the gym after they thought I left.”

  She recounted everything up to the text she’d sent them to cancel their plans. Courtney listened quietly, while Peyton threw in occasional comments like “What a bitch” and “If I was there, I would have punched her in the face.” By the end of the story, Savannah had cried so much that she’d gone through half a box of tissues, and judging from the black smudges on them, she had mascara all over her face.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do when I see them at school on Monday.” She sniffed, blew her nose and dropped the tissue on the couch next to her. “How am I supposed to act like nothing’s changed? But if I don’t sit with them in class and at lunch, they’ll know something’s up.” She slumped against the couch, pressed her palms into her forehead and groaned. “This is awful.”

  “Back up a second.” Peyton slammed her empty cereal bowl onto the coffee table. “You’re not going to pretend this never happened and stay friends with them, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said softly, not meeting her sister’s eyes. “If I stop being friends with them, they’ll ask why. What am I supposed to say?”

  “The truth?” Peyton looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

  “That I was listening to their conversation?” Savannah shook her head. “No way. Then they’ll make fun of me for that, and turn more people against me. You didn’t hear them, but they were so...cruel.”

 
“I believe it,” Peyton said. “But you can’t keep being friends with those bitches.”

  “Without them, who am I supposed to hang out with at school, or sit with during lunch?” She could barely choke each word out. “I have no one.”

  “Not true,” Peyton said. “You have me and Courtney. Sit with us at lunch. Or with Damien or Nick... Didn’t you sit with them last semester?”

  “Nick’s always at the library doing homework, and Damien’s barely spoken to me since we got back from break.” Savannah’s throat tightened, and she blew her nose again. Did other people have this much trouble fitting in, or was it just her?

  “Then you’ll sit with me and Courtney.” Peyton looked at Courtney, who hadn’t gotten much of a word in yet. “Right?”

  “You’re always welcome to sit with me,” Courtney said. “And I agree with Peyton that Alyssa and Jackie are not your friends. But what about Brooke? It sounds like she was trying to stand up for you.”

  “They didn’t listen to her,” Savannah said. “And then they all left together, discussing what they wanted to wear to the party tonight, as if they hadn’t been talking about me seconds before.”

  “What bitches,” Peyton said.

  “Yeah,” Savannah agreed. “If it had been Evie there instead, she wouldn’t have let them get away with that.”

  “I thought you weren’t talking to Evie after your fight at the party?” Courtney asked.

  “Right.” Savannah shrugged and looked down at her hands. “I guess I have no friends left.”

  “Yes, you do.” Courtney scooted closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You have us. Never forget that, all right?”

  “Thanks,” Savannah said. “I love you guys.”

  “We love you, too.”

  They all hugged, and Savannah smiled, grateful that no matter what, they always had each other. How did people get through life without sisters?

  Then the doorbell rang. Savannah wiped the tears off her cheeks, although she knew she was probably hopeless-­looking by this point.