Belles

by Jen Calonita

  “Oh, so that’s the field trip my brother was talking about that he thought was lame,” Mira said.

  Kellen smirked. “I’ve been on lamer. Ever suffered through a four-hour tour of the governor’s mansion with your mother?”

  Mira grinned. “I’ve actually always wanted to go there.”

  “Good, you can go with my mom next time she wants another tour,” Kellen said. They left the building and headed across the quad to the Monica Holbrook Arts Center. The sky had turned an ashen gray. “It looks like it’s going to pour any second.”

  “Fine by me,” Mira said. “I could use the afternoon off practice.” Her mind was racing with a million different thoughts. Would Savannah really blackmail Mira’s family?

  Mira and Kellen had been meeting up almost every afternoon to work on their projects in the art studio, and she was really starting to look forward to it. Some days Kellen brought her a latte or a lollipop. Today his hands were empty. She could have used some chocolate. Savannah’s threat was completely freaking her out.

  “You’re extra tense this afternoon, Ms. Monroe, even for you,” Kellen said as they heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. “Does this have anything to do with what went down at the country club last Friday?”

  “You know about that?” Mira said, surprised.

  “Everyone knows about that,” Kellen said drily.

  “It was a misunderstanding,” Mira said quickly. “Izzie was just pulling off a dare that went sour. We sorted it all out.”

  “That’s good.” Kellen bounded up the arts center steps ahead of her. “I’d hate to think your cousin did that stunt to try to fit in here. You know how EP is—people can’t handle anyone who isn’t cut from the same Oreo cookie mold as themselves.” He held open the door just as a giant raindrop plopped onto her nose. Several more came down before they made it inside. The rain started coming down so fast and hard that she could hear it on the roof.

  “Izzie isn’t like that. She can hold her own,” Mira said, slowly realizing that herself. She and Kellen had been talking a lot lately, but EP class wars had never been a topic before.

  “I heard Savannah Ingram is freaked out by her,” Kellen said.

  “Savannah’s not afraid of anyone.”

  Kellen shrugged. “You’d be surprised who people are threatened by.”

  When they walked into the art studio, the conversation was dropped. Several other students were already there working on paintings or sculptures, and someone had hooked up an iPod to speakers for background music. People said hi to Mira and Kellen as they sidestepped easels to get to open ones. Mira went straight to her art folder and pulled out her work. She had only about twenty minutes till she had to be at field hockey practice, if there was practice. The rain was still coming down really hard. Mira had just taken a seat and thrown her paint-splattered smock over her when she heard loud voices. She looked up and froze. Football players, looking like drowned rats, were filing past the art studio doors. Ryan Hodgkins peeked his head in before Mira could duck. He was one of Taylor’s teammates whom Mira couldn’t stand. The guy was a complete hothead.

  “What the heck is this place?” Ryan said loudly. “Hey, B! T! You got to look at this.”

  Brayden walked in and looked around. “It’s the art studio, you moron. You couldn’t figure that out?”

  “No, why would I know what this place is?” Ryan picked up a ruler and twirled it around.

  Mira tried to hide her head behind her easel as the conversation continued volleying back and forth. What were they even doing in the arts center, anyway? Weren’t they supposed to be jogging around campus to warm up at this hour? Another roar of thunder rumbled overhead. They apparently had been forced indoors.

  “Well, if we’re here, we might as well check this stuff out,” Mira heard Ryan say, and she cringed. He hovered over a girl’s shoulder. “Freaky stuff. What is that? A giraffe?”

  “It’s a skyscraper,” the girl said.

  “Doesn’t look like one,” Ryan said. “T! Come look at this giraffe!”

  “I have to run to the bathroom,” Mira told Kellen. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” If she hurried, she could still make it out the other exit before Ryan reached her. The rain started to sound like golf balls hitting the roof.

  “Hey! Mira, what are you doing here?” Ryan asked.

  Mira turned around and smiled brightly. “Hey, Ryan! How are you? Practice get rained out? Hey, Brayden.”

  “Hey, Mira,” Brayden said, looking curiously at her easel. “Is this yours?”

  “No,” she said quickly, jumping in front of the half-done painting of the water lily.

  “It’s really good,” Brayden said, staring at it closely. “It kind of looks like your backyard.”

  “Mira!” Taylor said, coming straight toward her, practically knocking down another guy’s easel. “What are you doing in here?” He came in for a kiss and rain dripped off his jacket and onto her shirt. “Did you guys get trapped in the storm, too?” He looked at her paint smock. “What are you wearing?”

  “You mean you haven’t told him, either?” Kellen asked.

  “Told me what?” Taylor looked from Kellen to Mira and his face darkened. “Kevin, right?”

  “It’s Kellen,” he corrected him easily.

  “Whatever.” Taylor shouldered up next to him like he was still on the field. “Could you give me and my girl some space?”

  “Actually, you’re in my way,” Kellen said, surprising Mira. “Literally. I’ve got to finish working on this and get to cross-country.”

  Taylor pulled a paintbrush out of Mira’s tray, dipped it in orange paint, and ran a thin line across Kellen’s painting. “Now you’re done.”

  “Mature,” Kellen said, staring at the stripe. “But it works. Gives the painting some depth, don’t you think?”

  “I can’t believe you did that!” Mira snapped at Taylor.

  “You’re sticking up for this guy, Mira?” Taylor asked. “What are you doing in here with the art freaks, anyway?”

  “Hey,” Brayden warned Taylor. “Cut it out.”

  “No, I want to know why she’s in here.” He stared crossly at Mira. “Are you hanging out with this guy?”

  “No. I… had to drop something off for the Butterflies,” Mira lied. “It was raining, so I stuck around and painted something for fun.” How fake did she sound? Taylor had to know she was lying. She tried to get Kellen’s attention, but he stared at the ruined work on his easel.

  “I think you’ve had enough fun for one day, don’t you?” Taylor said, still staring down Kellen. He took Mira’s hand. “You can wait out the storm with the team instead. Let’s get you out of here.”

  But Mira didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay there with Kellen. That’s what she wished she’d said even as she let Taylor take her hand. She knew she was making a choice right then, and as she walked away with Kellen watching her, she had a feeling she was going to regret it.

  Eighteen

  Izzie felt like a spy sneaking behind enemy lines. She looked the part (EP school uniform—check!), she had backup (new friends, Violet and Nicole—check!), and she had secured the plans (Butterflies’ list of potential event vendors—check!). But whether she could survive her first mission on Main Street was another thing entirely.

  Izzie was learning very quickly that EC’s town square was much more of a shopping experience than Harborside ever was. Here, people got dressed up to spend nine dollars on a tiny gelato. (Better yet, they sent their nannies in to buy the gelato for them.) The street was crowded with hired help pushing strollers with screaming tots while serene-looking mommies walked a few paces behind them, chatting on their cell phones. Most clothing stores were boutiques rather than chains, sale signs were nonexistent, and parking your BMW or Range Rover for twenty minutes would set you back fifty cents. Any town that had an Apple Store on its main street knew it had money and wasn’t afraid to flaunt it. Izzie just hoped those stores were willin
g to part with some of their cash for a good cause.

  Mrs. Fitz had given Izzie till the following Friday to secure a list of vendors, and there wasn’t a second to waste. The hoedown needed to be a success. Correction: the Falling into You Fest had to be a success. (“Headmaster Heller is a bit concerned about having the word hoe on an official school invitation,” Mrs. Fitz had said in explaining the name change.) Whatever this party was called didn’t matter. It was Izzie’s chance to prove she was cut out for EC and she wasn’t going to fail.

  “It’s time to get people to pony up some free stuff,” she declared to Violet and Nicole, looking around the crowded street. “The question is: Where do we start?”

  “Where’s Mira?” Violet asked as she flipped through the folder looking for the vendor list Mira had given them. “I thought she’d volunteered to help us.”

  “Yeah, I think what actually happened was she hiccuped and it came out like a ‘me, too’. There is no way Mira would face the wrath of Savannah to help us. Besides, she’s been out sick.” She’d been out the last two days, actually, and as far as Izzie could tell, she hadn’t left her bedroom. Izzie was going to check in on her, but then she thought better of it. Why be fake like Mira?

  “I heard Mira’s been out sick to keep Taylor from dumping her,” Nicole said, as she sent a lightning-fast text message. “They had some sort of fight after practice the other day. They were yelling at each other in the pouring rain outside the arts center.”

  “What were they fighting about?” Violet asked.

  Nicole shrugged. “No one actually heard them fighting. They could just see them making crazy arm gestures between lighting flashes.”

  “You must have heard wrong, then,” Izzie told Nicole. “There is no way that guy would dump Mira. He’s always all over her and calling her babe. Or she calls him babe.” Izzie made a face. “It’s kind of nauseating.”

  “Well, whatever is going on with her, at least she remembered to give you the vendor list,” Violet said, and pulled it out of the folder. They huddled around the paper to read it. “Crystal Coast Catering always helps us. Then we can move on to Pick a Petal for flowers and hit a few dessert shops. Most of these stores have worked with the Butterflies before, so we shouldn’t have any problem getting this done in an hour.”

  “And they’re going to believe we’re booking this huge party for EP and need free stuff?” This part of the equation still left Izzie incredulous. Where she came from, people tried to pull fast ones like this all the time. And they never would have signed a contract with a teenager.

  Violet laughed. “Yes! EP students ask for stuff all the time, and when they don’t, the parents are the ones who work the charity angle. I know it sounds crazy, but there isn’t a day that goes by at EP that my mom doesn’t have to open her checkbook. This week she paid two hundred dollars to buy one ticket to the spring booster dinner. And then she has to pay five hundred to put our family name in the program. It sounds insane, I know, but this is EP. You either give, give, give, or we take, take, take.”

  Izzie broke out laughing. “This place is insane!” she yelled at the heavens, startling a mother on a phone call walking by. “But fine. I’ll go with it. Let’s get this party started”—she frowned—“even if I’ve never planned one before. Come to think of it, I’ve never even had an actual birthday party.”

  Nicole’s eyes widened. “Never? That’s tragic. I had one every year till I was twelve, and we always had a pony.” She frowned. “Actually every party I went to back then had a pony.”

  “No ponies for me,” Izzie said, twisting a piece of her damp hair around her finger. The group had just come from swim practice. “It was cupcakes with my mom and grandparents and one or two presents. No one I knew really had parties, and the ones who did probably wouldn’t qualify as Butterfly-worthy. Savannah had to have known this when she picked me. Did the Gazette article mention my lack of party skills?” she joked.

  “No, and even if it did, who cares what Savannah thinks?” Violet told her. “You got this gig because you’re the first one to come up with something different for the Butterflies to do for a change. I don’t think we’ve worked on anything not carnival- or formal-dance-related the whole year I’ve been a Butterfly.” She pulled her long hair up off her neck into a ponytail. “And as far as charities go, we never picked anything meaningful and mainstream like you did.” She gave the girls a look. “The Butterflies donate to causes supported by George Clooney or the stars of The Vampire Diaries.”

  Nicole sighed sadly. “Last year we came thisclose to winning a group guest spot on the show, but then those prisses at St. Elizabeth’s did a bikini calendar and won.”

  Violet raised her eyebrows. “See? The Butterflies need you and so does your grandmother.” She put her hands on Izzie’s shoulders and looked into her eyes like she was performing hypnotism. “Being a Butterfly is distinguished, and you need something like that to keep that creep off your back.”

  Izzie felt she had to tell someone about how Lucas had threatened her, and she knew she could trust Violet and Nicole not to spread the story like wildfire. Violet was right. Being a Butterfly—especially one who was in charge of the Falling into You Fest—would help things continue to work for Grams. Izzie had spoken to her night nurse yesterday, and Grams was doing better at the home than she could have hoped. She couldn’t let her down. Armed with the Butterflies, maybe she could also help Harborside in the process.

  “You’re right,” Izzie said, feeling energized. “Let’s do this. We’ll split the list by category. We can tackle it faster that way. Vi, you go to the caterers. We need them the most. Nic, you go to the florists, and I’ll wrangle us some desserts.” She took the page with the addresses of all the dessert shops. In Emerald Cove there were four. “We can meet back here in an hour. Sound good?”

  “See? You sound like a Butterfly already,” Violet said. She and Nicole headed in opposite directions. “This will be a piece of cake!”

  Turned out, it wasn’t. Not even close.

  “If you could just let me speak to your boss, I could explain everything,” Izzie pleaded with a bored, obnoxious girl behind the cookie counter at Baked with Love. She’d been arguing with the girl for ten minutes and was growing tired of explaining herself. “I’m with the Social Butterflies. We work with your bakery all the time.”

  The girl placed a pink, girlie-scripted sign on the counter that said Be Back in 10! and glared at Izzie. “You are not a Butterfly, and if I’m wrong, then that group has seriously lowered their standards.”

  Izzie’s jaw dropped before she could stop it. What was that comment about? Before she could come back at her, the worker smiled at a dad holding a toddler who was pointing frantically at the cookies. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an actual customer.”

  I Scream for Ice Cream (clever name, Izzie had to admit) wasn’t any better.

  “We’re not interested,” the man behind the counter said. Izzie had barely stepped onto their ice-cream-cone-shaped welcome mat.

  She let the folder in her hand drop. “I haven’t even asked you anything yet.”

  The guy was wearing a blue shirt and a tie with a dizzying amount of ice-cream cones on it. He wouldn’t make eye contact, but that could have been because he was making ice-cream flowers on a big sheet cake. “You don’t have to. We don’t do solicitations.”

  “But you must, because you work with my group all the time,” Izzie said, feeling self-conscious. What had she done wrong? “I’m a student at Emerald Prep, and my group, the Social Butterflies, usually—”

  He cut her off. “I’m. Not. Interested. I don’t care whose niece you are. Try someplace else.” A couple eating ice cream by the window looked up in surprise.

  God, how could she have been so stupid? Of course the shopkeepers knew who she was! Everyone knew Bill Monroe in this town, which meant everyone knew Izzie’s rags-to-riches story, too.

  But this was no time to be embarrassed. I’ll win him o
ver anyway, Izzie thought.

  “We love your store! It’s got such great…” She hadn’t had his ice cream yet, but she could fudge a bit. “Such great flavors that would be a perfect addition to our party. If you’d just let me explain…”

  “I’m not interested,” he repeated. “Do I have to repeat myself twenty times?”

  This is ridiculous! Izzie thought as she stormed out of the store and headed in the opposite direction, not sure where she was going. She hoped Violet and Nicole were having better luck. They’d probably booked the whole party while she couldn’t even get past “Hi, I’m Isabelle” without someone realizing who she was and showing her the door.

  When Izzie looked up, she saw she was standing outside the third stop on her list: Butter Me Up. She took deep breaths before opening the shop door. She fixed a huge, fake smile on her face and even pinched her cheeks, like her aunt had hilariously suggested she do to add color before her school picture last week. A slight improvement, she thought as she looked at her reflection in a window. You’ve got this, Izzie. Don’t take no for an answer. She opened the door as quietly as she could so that they wouldn’t know she was coming, and walked inside.

  Butter Me Up looked more like a department store than a bakery. There was music playing, and couches sat in front of an electric fireplace. Cupcakes of every color were arranged artfully on cake plates behind a glass counter. A young woman in a yellow apron with a tiny embroidered cupcake on her chest was the only person there.

  “Hi! My school club at Emerald Prep is planning our first event, the Falling into You Fest.” God, that sounded dorky. “It’s sort of like a hoedown, and we’re looking for food donations.” Having not been interrupted, she kept talking. “The money raised is going to a great cause this year, the renovation of a community center.”