Diamonds in the Rough

by Michelle Madow

He was looking at her with so much admiration, and Savannah’s heart raced, her head dizzy. There were no words to get across how grateful she felt. She wanted more than anything to kiss him again, like she had over the summer, before everything had blown up with Madison. But despite their almost-kiss in the wine closet, she wasn’t sure Damien was interested in her as more than a friend. She was afraid of making the first move and getting rejected. Also, her family was nearby.

  So she wrapped her arms around his neck, her cheek brushing his. “Thank you,” she said softly, her lips close to his ear. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

  He took a sharp breath, and for a second, she dared to think that being close to her was having an effect on him. That the feelings he’d claimed to have for her that summer had been real.

  “Savannah!” Peyton yelled, interrupting the moment between her and Damien—if there had been at moment at all. “Ryder’s coming back on…. This might be it!”

  Savannah dragged Damien into her room, and like everyone had done multiple times, they paused whatever they were doing to listen.

  “This is Ryder with a Y, bringing you the Sirius XM Top Hits Weekend Top 40 Countdown. Now here’s your weekly Net Watchers! I was blown away by this fantastic cover on YouTube, and I wanted to share it with you all, so listen to this clip.”

  Savannah squealed and bounced on her bed as a few lines from the chorus of her recent cover played for the entire world to hear. Her heart beat faster, and her eyes filled with tears of happiness. People were sitting around at their homes, or driving in their cars, and they were listening to her. On the radio. This was un-freakin’-believable.

  “If you want to hear more from this talented new artist, go to YouTube.com/SavannahDiamond,” Ryder said. “And now, for the next song on the Weekend Top 40 Countdown. Up ten spots from last week, give it up for your five favorite boys from the UK, One Connection!”

  “Wow,” Savannah said for what felt like the millionth time this afternoon. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, you should, because we all just heard it!” Alyssa said. “You’re totally on your way to YouTube stardom.”

  The words sent chills down Savannah’s spine.

  “It is pretty incredible,” Peyton said. “I’ve always known you’re talented, but when you started putting your videos online I never thought this would happen.”

  “It’s amazing,” Courtney said. “Of course I’ve always believed in you, but stuff like this rarely happens. Even the most talented people sometimes never get discovered. But this…” She shook her head, running her fingers through her hair. “Wow is right. I’m so proud of you, Savannah.” From the tears in her eyes, Savannah could tell she meant it.

  “I’m proud of you, too,” their mom said, looking so healthy and radiant on the computer screen. “When you visit for Thanksgiving, we’ll do something special to celebrate.”

  “That would be great,” Savannah said. “I can’t wait to come back home and see you.”

  “And I can’t wait to see you,” she said. “But I don’t want to be late for my appointment, so I have to run. I’m so glad to have been there with you to hear that. I love you girls.”

  “Love you, too,” Savannah and Courtney chorused, at the same time as Peyton said, “See you soon.”

  Their mom’s face disappeared from the screen, and there was silence for a few seconds.

  “I’d say a celebration is in order,” Rebecca said. “Are you all up for ice cream? Serendipity has the best on the Strip, and this is the perfect excuse for a splurge.”

  Every one of them said yes, and they gathered to leave. Savannah couldn’t believe this was all happening. Her body thrummed with excitement, but she was nervous, too.

  She didn’t want to do anything to mess this up.

  Chapter 18: Courtney

  The rest of November slipped by in the routine of school, homework, tutoring, Habitat, SAT practice and a more-than-usual amount of reading for pleasure. The camera crew for My Fabulous Sweet Sixteen was also around sometimes, but Courtney did her best to avoid them. She’d had one interview, but that was it. Luckily, the show was focused on Savannah. Who, as much as Courtney hated to admit it, was a much better singer than actor. The director was pretty frustrated with her. But Rebecca had hired Savannah an acting tutor, which would hopefully pay off soon.

  At the end of school on the Monday before Thanksgiving, Courtney grabbed popped chips from the vending machine and headed to the student tutoring center, like she did every Monday and Wednesday after school. Madison was already there, sitting on the couch nibbling on apple slices, along with Dani and Lizzie, who tutored in history and French. Courtney sat at the opposite side of the room and checked her email and Facebook until Mrs. Ely came in to give them their tutoring assignments.

  “I have Dani in room one and Lizzie in room two,” Mrs. Ely said, glancing at her clipboard. “Madison and Courtney, I don’t have anyone for you today. Things usually get slow around here with a vacation approaching. If you like, the two of you can stay here and use this time to do your homework. I’ll count it toward your tutoring hours for the semester.”

  They both thanked her, and she went to her office, presumably to get work done herself.

  Courtney was glad to have the time to do homework, but not so happy to be stuck in the room with Madison. If Mrs. Ely hadn’t specifically told them to stay in the tutoring center, she would have beelined for the library so she wouldn’t have to be around the girl.

  She reached for her planner and read over her assignments, praying that Madison would ignore Mrs. Ely’s instructions and leave. Instead, she sat back and made herself more comfortable on the couch.

  “Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving break?” Madison asked casually.

  As much as Courtney had no interest in befriending Madison after what she’d pulled on Savannah over the summer, she was clearly talking to her, and she had to reply.

  “My sisters and I are going to California to visit our mom and grandma,” she said. “What about you?” It was her natural instinct to ask in return.

  “Just hanging out here,” Madison said, as if “here” was the most boring place on Earth.

  “Cool.” Courtney took a textbook out of her backpack and opened it.

  “You and your sisters are all so close in age,” Madison continued on, either oblivious to Courtney’s desire to get to work or not caring. “What’s that like? I’ve never had any siblings. I imagine it’s fun having girls close to your age around all the time, who have to like you no matter what.”

  “We certainly don’t like each other all the time.” Courtney laughed. “But we do love each other, which is what matters.”

  “Really?” Madison asked. “You three seem to get along so well.”

  “I wouldn’t say we don’t get along,” she said. “But we’re all very different. We get in fights over stupid things, but at the end of the day, we’ll always be there for each other.”

  “It must be nice.” Madison’s eyes misted over. What was going on with her? She’d never wanted to be friends with Courtney—quite the opposite, actually.

  “Yes.” Courtney took out her calculator to get started on the math problems. “It is.”

  “How’s it going with Adrian?” Madison crossed her legs, apparently not planning on doing her homework. Or letting Courtney do hers. “You hadn’t spent much time with him until you moved here, right?”

  Courtney lowered her pencil. “I don’t mean to be rude, but why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “I was just trying to be nice,” she said. “Since we’re stuck here together for the next hour.”

  Courtney didn’t buy it. She hadn’t forgotten how Madison had hurt Savannah, and how she’d been so snide about what had happened between her and Brett that summer.
They had nothing in common and they were not friends. “We’re supposed to be doing homework.”

  “You’re starting with math?” Madison pulled out her textbook. They shared a lot of classes since they were both juniors and in advanced levels in nearly every subject, but they never sat anywhere near each other.

  Courtney nodded and focused on the first problem in the set of thirty due tomorrow.

  “Do you want to do the odd problems and I’ll do the even?” Madison asked. “Then we can trade answers when we’re done.”

  Courtney chewed on the eraser of her pencil. “Isn’t that cheating?”

  “No.” Madison laughed. “It’s being pragmatic. I understand the concept of what we’re doing, and I’m sure you do, too. If we do it this way, it’ll take half the time.”

  “And if our teacher notices that we got the exact same questions wrong…?”

  Madison raised an eyebrow. “We have unlimited time, and the instructions are in the pages beforehand. How often do you get homework questions wrong?”

  “Not often,” she said. If she struggled with a question, she worked on it until she got it right. She aced practically all of her math homework assignments.

  “I thought so.” Madison smiled. “So, what do you say? You take the odds and I’ll take the evens? Or the other way around. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  Courtney glanced at her planner. She had a lot of homework due tomorrow—blame it on teachers wanting to cram everything in before break. And the book she was reading for fun right now was amazing, and she was dying to know what would happen next, but she wouldn’t allow herself to read until her homework was completed. Plus, she understood the math unit, so it was practically all busywork. The logic in Madison’s plan was undeniable.

  “Fine,” she agreed. “I’ll take the odds, you take the evens.”

  They worked on their homework, and luckily, Madison stopped asking Courtney questions about her life as they completed the problems. They finished within five minutes of each other.

  “Now we take pictures of each other’s homework and copy it when we get home,” Madison said, picking up her notebook and joining Courtney on her sofa.

  “Okay.” Courtney took Madison’s notebook, her legs bouncing at the reminder of what they were doing. What if they got caught?

  “Don’t be so worried,” Madison reassured her. “We’re working together, not cheating. We didn’t need to do double what we did, anyway.”

  What they’d done wasn’t right, either. Still, Courtney handed her notebook to Madison and snapped a picture of Madison’s notebook with her iPhone.

  “So, how are things going between you and Brett?” Madison asked, handing Courtney’s notebook back to her. “You two hang out sometimes, right?”

  “Our parents are engaged, so, yes, we hang out sometimes.” Courtney wasn’t giving Madison more than that. “He told me about what happened between the two of you over the summer.”

  “Yeah, well, that was months ago.” Madison shrugged and flipped her hair. “I’m over it now. It was his loss, right?”

  “Sure,” Courtney said, although she thought staying clear of Madison was the right decision for Brett.

  “Anyway, you never answered my question about Adrian,” she said. “What’s it like having him as a father? He honestly never struck me as the paternal type…. No one even mentioned he had children until you and your sisters moved here.”

  Since when had Madison become so nosy? And why did she think any of this was her business? “He just didn’t want us growing up in the spotlight.” Courtney pulled out her history textbook, uncapped her highlighter and started reading the assigned chapter. Hopefully Madison would get the hint and let her complete her homework in peace.

  “Wow.” Madison’s eyes flashed with hurt. “You really don’t want to talk to me, do you?”

  Courtney threw her highlighter into the crease of her book. “You’ve been unwelcoming to me and my sisters since we got here. Do you blame me for not wanting to confide in you about my personal life?”

  Madison jerked backward—apparently she hadn’t expected Courtney to be so blunt. Courtney hadn’t expected it, either. It just sort of came out.

  But she wasn’t sorry.

  “You’re right.” Madison bit her lower lip, in a rare moment of what appeared to be self-doubt. “I guess I’m trying to apologize.”

  “Seriously?” Courtney couldn’t hide the suspicion in her tone. But she leaned forward, curious about where this would go.

  “Yeah,” she said. “As the only girl besides you and your sisters who goes to Goodman and lives in the Diamond, I should have reached out when you moved here. But I didn’t, and I feel bad about it, so I was hoping we could start over.”

  It was a decent start. But it didn’t begin to cover the main reason Courtney hadn’t trusted Madison since week one. “Thanks,” she said. “But the person you need to apologize to isn’t me—it’s Savannah. You weren’t interested in Damien, but you knew she was, so what you did to her at Luxe was downright cruel.”

  “How do you know about all that?”

  “Because Savannah’s my sister,” Courtney said, amazed that Madison could be so clueless. “Of course she comes to her sisters when she needs to talk. And she’s friends with Damien now, so she knows all about the way you treated him.”

  Madison paled—this conversation must not have been going the way she imagined. “You’re right,” she finally said. “I should apologize to Savannah.”

  “Yeah.” Courtney nodded, although if Madison followed through with that, it would shock her. She readjusted her textbook in her lap to return to her work but couldn’t stop herself from saying, “If you don’t mind me asking, what brought on this change of heart?”

  Madison looked at Courtney intensely, like she was about to tell her something serious. “It’s been a rough few weeks for me,” she said, her voice wavering. “Some stuff happened with my family that I didn’t expect, and I learned that people I thought were my friends aren’t truly there for me, after all. And it just really….ell, it sucks pretty badly.” Her eyes glazed over, as if she were about to cry, which was the last thing Courtney expected from Madison.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Courtney tried to remain diplomatic, although she didn’t feel too bad for Madison, since she’d brought it on herself. But it sounded like she needed a sister right now, and since she was an only child, she had no one.

  Madison brightened. “So you accept my apology?”

  “If you apologize to Savannah, and if Savannah accepts your apology, then I will, too.”

  “I’ll do my best.” She smiled and walked back over to her couch. “And, Courtney?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for listening.”

  “No problem,” Courtney said, giving her a small smile in return.

  But even if Madison apologized to Savannah, and if Savannah accepted it, it didn’t mean Courtney thought they would ever be friends.

  Chapter 19: Peyton

  Peyton walked down the emptying hall to drop off a paper before Thanksgiving break, unable to believe she’d made it through three months at Goodman. When she’d made the deal with Adrian last summer that she could leave after two months if she hated it and go to public school instead, that was what she’d planned on doing. But if she ignored the entitled attitudes of most of the students at Goodman, the actual school part wasn’t so bad.

  At Fairfield High, they crammed thirty or more students into each room, and the teachers lectured in monotones, just as bored as the kids they were teaching. Peyton had only paid attention to the clock, which moved so slowly that it might as well have been moving backward. It had been prison, and being trapped behind a tiny desk made her feel like she could explode.

  But at Goodman the classes were
small, with an average of eleven kids, and instead of rows of cramped desks, they had tables in a semicircle. The teachers enjoyed their jobs and led classes in a discussion format instead of lecturing. A bunch of them even went by their first names, to create an environment of equality and positive energy.

  When Peyton had started at Goodman, it all had sounded bogus. But now—and she’d never admit it to anyone—she enjoyed some of her classes. There would always be some she hated—like math—but English, history and even science weren’t torturous anymore. Which was why, when the two-month mark passed, she’d said nothing to Adrian about switching to public school. He never asked, so they both acted like the deal they’d made in the summer didn’t exist.

  Since it was the day before break, it was a half day, and most everyone had bolted out of the building the moment the clock hit twelve-fifteen. If Peyton hadn’t needed an extension on her English paper—just because she didn’t hate school as much anymore didn’t mean she was now the best at getting assignments completed on time—she would have been out of there, but she had to drop the paper off at Hunter’s office.

  She turned the corner to the teachers’ hall and ran straight into Oliver Prescott.

  “Hey,” she said casually, not wanting to give him a chance to scurry away without talking to her.

  His eyes darkened—apparently she wasn’t on the top of his list of favorite people right now. “Shouldn’t you be on your way to California?”

  “We’re leaving in a few hours,” she said. “Just have to drop off this paper first. What’re you doing in the teachers’ hall?”

  “Had to talk with a teacher.” He stepped away from her. “But I’m on my way out—I’ll see you around.”

  “Wait.” She wasn’t letting him get away that easily. “How’s it going with that task I gave you? It’s been over a month. I thought you’d have completed it by now.”

  “These things take time,” Oliver said, smooth and confident. “But don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

  “Do you?” Peyton raised an eyebrow. “Because I’m starting to feel like you’re stalling.”