BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY #1

by Ashley Valentine

  “You bring your weird girly cream with you this year?” Maurice teased.

  “It’s moisturizer,” Amir clarified.

  “It’s moisturizer,” Maurice echoed in a high-pitched voice.

  So what if Amir took good care of his skin? And liked nice clothes and shoes and liked his wavy hair to be just so? He was neurotic about his height—he was only five-eight—and shaved his chest because he hated the tiny little hairs that grew in the caved-in part of his breastbone. His less-clean friends busted on him to no end. But so what?

  “Who you think they’re gonna room us with?” Maurice asked.

  “Don’t know. Maybe Ryan. Unless he gets a single again.” Ryan Reynolds’s father had invented the soft contact lens and openly used his wealth as leverage to his son’s advantage. Lots of kids’ parents bribed the school, but usually it was kept a secret.

  Maurice snickered. “Maybe you’ll get paired up with Taylor.”

  “Nah, even the administration knows better than that,” Amir replied. Just the sound of that name—Taylor, as in Zane Taylor—made Amir’s blood curdle.

  “So, how’s Natasha?” Maurice recited her name with a bad Russian accent.

  Amir sighed. Last April he had started going out with Natasha Wood, who went to Millbrook Academy, after Zane stole his old girlfriend, Crystal Alexander, from him. “We broke up two weeks ago.”

  “No shit. You cheat?”

  “Nah.”

  “What, then?”

  Amir shrugged. They’d broken up because he was still sprung over Crystal. He and Natasha had been making out on the Harwich main beach in Cape Cod, and Amir had accidentally called Natasha Crystal by mistake. Oops. Natasha had climbed up the rickety wooden lifeguard stand and refused to come down until Amir went away. Forever.

  “Whose stuff is that?” Maurice looked across the room and kicked his feet up on the brown tweed couch. There was a whole pile of bright pink canvas bags that didn’t have an owner yet.

  Amir shrugged. “Don’t know.” He picked up one of the tags. “‘Brianna Hargrove.’”

  “There’s going to be a guy named Brianna Hargrove in this dorm? Weird.”

  “No, I’m Brianna.”

  A little curly-haired girl in a light purple Marc Jacobs knockoff skirt stood in the common-room doorway. Amir knew the skirt was a knockoff, because he’d bought Natasha the real deal this summer. This Brianna had a tiny upturned nose and round cheeks and wore little skinny-heeled pink shoes with tiny cut-outs at the front so he could just glimpse her toes peeking through.

  “Hi,” she said simply.

  “Uh,” Amir stammered. “You’re not...supposed to be—”

  “No...actually...I am.” She laughed a little. “I was assigned to this dorm.”

  “So you’re Mister Brianna Hargrove?” Maurice butted in, crossing one foot over the other.

  “Yeah. Bridgeport had me down as a guy.”

  Amir had a pretty good idea what Maurice was thinking right then: With tits like those, you certainly don’t look like a guy. God, his friends annoyed him sometimes. “I’m Amir.” He offered his hand politely, stepping in front of Maurice.

  Bree tugged at her skirt. “Hello.” She felt a little flustered. Of the seven boys who were milling around the lounge with their stuff, she’d picked out the two cutest. Amir was gorgeous, with his flawless beige skin, perfect wavy hair, and long, luxurious eyelashes, but he was prettier than she was! Bree liked boys who looked a bit rougher and messier, like the one sitting behind Amir, whose dreadlocks was slightly messy and whose green oxford shirt looked slept in. She stared at him again, realizing that he was the boy who’d given her the ride up the hill. The one who was having the party. Didn’t he recognize her?

  “I’m just supposed to wait here until they figure out what to do with me.” She looked directly behind Amir, trying to jog his cute friend’s memory. “Can I hang out with you?” She tried to keep her voice steady. New Bree does not squeak when inviting herself to hang out with fine boarding school boys! she silently scolded herself, digging her nails into her palms.

  “Sure,” the guy answered, staring directly at her chest.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Bree looked arfdound. “Does everyone have to hang out in the lobby before they get assigned rooms?”

  “Nah, we’re just screwups, so we’re stuck here until they tell us where we can go.” He grinned, whipping a white iPhone out of his khaki pants pocket.

  Bree sat down. “What did you do wrong?”

  “Don’t listen to Maurice.” Amir shook his head. “The Bridgeport teachers are just assholes.”

  Bree started discreetly wiping the mud off her pink shoes as best she could. “So I’m a little freaked out. Something totally attacked me on my way over here. It was like...a giant flying cat.”

  “Ohhh...That’s a great horned owl,” Amir explained. “They’re all over the campus. Someone donated a pair of them like a hundred years ago and they spawned. But even though they practically kill kids all the time, the horned owl is our mascot. I guess it’s, like, Bridgeport tradition to have them around.”

  “They crap all over the place,” Maurice added.

  “Oh, I like traditions,” Bree exclaimed quickly. “But the thing swooped for me like it didn’t want to miss!”

  “How could it miss?” Maurice muttered, typing on his iPhone. He looked straight at Bree’s boobs again. Old Bree would have been embarrassed, she thought, but not New Bree. She would call him out.

  “Is there something wrong?” she asked politely, folding her hands in her lap.

  Maurice smiled wryly, then cocked his head. “Wait a sec.” He stopped. “You said you were from the city? As in, New York?”

  “Yes. The Upper West Side.”

  Maurice’s eyes lit up like a slot machine. “Have you heard of a club called Hen Party?”

  Bree furrowed her eyebrows. “No...”

  “Maybe I’ll take you some time.”

  “Inappropriate,” Amir muttered. Hen Party was some strip club in Manhattan everyone was suddenly talking about. He looked from Maurice to the new girl. They seemed to be in some sort of force-field staring contest with each other. She looked smitten, but whatever. Maurice might be Amir’s friend, but he was the human version of a Monet—he only looked good from afar. Close up, once you got to know him, he was pretty...well, ridiculous. Just wait until you find out that he has a bad toenail-clipping habit, Amir thought, gritting his teeth. Just wait until you find out he gossips more than a female. Just wait until you find out the girls call him Pony behind his back, because everybody has taken a ride.

  The staring contest continued. Then a little high-pitched noise rang out, and Maurice’s attention quickly swerved back to his phone. “Mister Brianna Hargrove,” he muttered again, “from the Upper West Side.” He tapped out a few more lines and threw his iPhone back into his bag. Then he stripped off his T-shirt and rubbed his dark, summer-spent-in-Nantucket chiseled torso. “I’m going to take a shower. Wanna come?”

  Bree opened her mouth to respond, but Maurice wheeled around, found a fluffy white bath towel in his duffel bag, and sauntered off to the bathroom.

  Amir sighed and pulled out his own iPhone. He scrolled through a few e-mails—just some more welcome-back messages and speculative gossip about what had happened to Jade Carmichael. He could sense Bree watching him and couldn’t help but get all tingly.

  “Are we allowed phones?” Bree asked.

  “Well, no. We can’t talk on them. But everyone texts and IMs on their phones. You just log on to Owlnet and use your Bridgeport e-mail address, which is just your first and last name, no spaces. It’s a loophole the faculty hasn’t figured out yet.”

  “Shoot. I didn’t bring mine. The manual said no cell phones.”

  “‘Bridgeport Owls must not use cell phones on campus,’” Amir recited in a mock-serious voice.

  Bree giggled. “Yeah. I love all the Bridgeport Owls stuff.”

 
Amir smiled. “Apparently one of the old Bridgeport headmasters wrote the manual right after the Roaring Twenties, maybe during, like, Prohibition or something, when manners and good behavior were really important. I guess owls were the mascots back then, too. It’s been adapted for modern times, with cell phones and stuff.”

  “Funny.” Bree felt herself relax a little. Her cheeks hurt from smiling so much already today.

  “So there’s a party in this lounge tonight. Maybe you wanna come?”

  “A party?” Bree raised her eyebrows eagerly. “Sure.”

  “I mean, it’ll be pretty casual, but it’s tradition, you know?” Amir shrugged. He seemed less shy without Maurice around.

  Bree bit her lip, which Amir found irresistible. She was so fresh-faced and seemed so excited to be there, different from all the cookie-cutter, Calvin Klein sweater, Gucci sunglasses, Barbie-goes-to-boarding-school Bridgeport girls who took it all for granted. Now if only she could stay off the Pony ride before classes even got started...

  “Well,” Bree interrupted his interior monologue. “If it’s a tradition, then I’ll have to come. Maurice will be there too?”

  Maurice slunk through the lounge doorway. His shaggy, shoulder-length dreads were dripping water down his bare chest, and the white bathtowel was tied right under his chiseled hipbones. He wasn’t holding anything except for his white iPhone, and he smiled at it as he spoke. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  MauriceJohnson: I already met stripper girl. Twice.

  RyanReynolds: ???

  MauriceJohnson: Dad gave her a ride to the front office. Then me and Amir were sitting in Richards and she came in. She plays it cool, though. Real innocent. But you can tell she’s naughty.

  RyanReynolds: She snuck into a boys’ dorm already? Did she show you her thong?

  MauriceJohnson: Not yet...

  5

  “Mom, can you please tell Raoul that he doesn’t have to come into the dorm with me? This is embarrassing.” Naomi Peterson tried to balance a cream-colored Chanel purse and a black laptop bag in one hand and a giant Hermès shopping bag in the other while cradling her cell phone against her shoulder. Her parents’ personal assistant, Raoul, who was two hundred sixty pounds and bald, struggled to lift some of her seemingly endless luggage without ripping his black suit. Finally he gave up and took off his jacket, revealing a perspiration-stained white shirt and a mountain of muscles.

  “Honey, you need his help,” her mother cooed in her thick New Jersey accent on the other end of the line. “You can’t carry those heavy suitcases all by yourself!”

  Naomi groaned and slammed her phone shut. Everyone else carried their own stuff—no matter how loaded they were. Drivers just left their bags on the curb in front of the dorm. It wasn’t as if anybody was going to walk off with your shit. But her parents, Stuart and Tomika Peterson of Rumson, New Jersey, babied her as though she were one of their shivering Teacup Chihuahuas.

  Her parents—shudder. Her father, the most prominent plastic surgeon in the tri-state area, was known for bragging about the highest percentage of fat he could lipo out of a patient in a single sitting. And the only time Naomi’s mom had accompanied her to Bridgeport, when Naomi was an eighth grader and touring the school, Mrs. Peterson had told a particularly sophisticated-looking mother that her chin was just perfect and had asked who she used. The woman had stared at Mrs. Peterson blankly before finally getting it and storming away.

  Ever since she’d started Bridgeport, Naomi had straight up lied about her parents. She claimed they lived on an East Hampton organic farm but summered in Newfoundland, that her father was a cardiologist and her mom threw small-scale charity events. She had no idea why that was the story she’d come up with, but anything was better than the real story, which was that her parents were nouveau riche and the tackiest people Naomi had ever met. Everyone at Bridgeport bought it, except for Jade, who last year had answered Naomi’s cell phone when she wasn’t in the room and had a lengthy conversation about leopard versus tiger prints with Mrs. Peterson, who was of course calling from her Rumson, New Jersey—not East Hampton—home. That was one good thing about Jade not coming back: at least her embarrassing parents would remain a secret.

  “You really don’t have to help me, after driving all this way.” Naomi smiled apologetically at Raoul. She’d have to remember to send him some Kiehl’s All-Sport Muscle Rub for when he got home.

  “It’s fine,” Raoul replied in his baritone voice, but Naomi thought she detected a slight groan when he dropped her bags and headed back to get the next round from the car.

  When she unlocked her dorm room door, her best friend, Crystal, who had a perfect, untacky pedigree—her mother was the governor of Georgia, for God’s sake—smirked as Raoul fussed over exactly where Naomi’s oversize Louis Vuitton trunk would go.

  “Oh, wherever’s fine!” Naomi said quickly. Then she turned back to Crystal. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself.” Crystal leaned against the window and crossed her arms. She looked like she’d spent the whole summer getting twisted and prodded by her Pilates instructor, Claude, and eating nothing but Trident gum. Her hair was shoved into a messy low ponytail, and she had that slightly dazed, you’d-think-she-was-ditzy-if-you-didn’t-know-better look in her hazel eyes. A yellow skirt and white top lay in a rumpled pile on the floor, and now she was wearing a faded blue T-shirt, mini boy shorts, and socks with little pink flowers on them.

  Where Crystal was cute and pretty in a preppy way—she was captain of the girls’ field hockey team, after all—Naomi was more unique-looking. She had deep Hershey-chocolate skin and very red bob-length hair. Her brown eyes were almond-shaped and both her nose and chin came to mischievous-looking points.

  It was weird suddenly seeing Crystal and comparing herself to her again. Last year, Naomi, Crystal, and Jade had been three peas in a pod. But then the E thing had happened and everything had changed. No one knew why Jade was the only one who’d been kicked out, but Crystal had always had a particular talent for persuasion—freshman year, she’d convinced Tiana Mitchell to go out with Baylor Kenyon instead of Amir Phillips, all because Crystal had wanted Amir for herself. And last year, Benny Cunningham, their well-bred, beautiful friend from Philadelphia, had wanted to go out with Damian Sanchez, a fine Venezulan import, but he’d liked skanky Tricia Rieken—who’d had a boob job and wore the sluttiest, most dominatrixlike clothes from Dolce & Gabbana. Somehow Crystal had managed to persuade Tricia to like Lon Baruzza, who was on scholarship but gorgeous and allegedly very good at sex, leaving Damian open for Benny.

  Clearly Crystal was good at getting people to do whatever she wanted, especially when she had something to gain personally. And in this case, maybe Crystal was better off without Jade around: last spring, Jade and Crystal’s boyfriend, Zane Taylor, had been spotted by the girls’ soccer team behind the row houses at night—alone. Both Jade and Zane had denied that anything had happened, but Crystal could get pretty territorial when it came to boyfriends. It seemed crazy that Crystal would get Jade kicked out of school for possibly hooking up with Zane, but, well, Crystal was a little insane.

  Crystal squinted. “Did your hair get redder?”

  “Kind of,” Naomi mumbled. Her colorist, Jacques, had fucked up and used a blue red on her instead of a yellow red. She’d gone to Bergdorf’s to get it fixed but had managed to get the salon’s most punk rock stylist, who had told her it was perfect and that it would go against his artistic sensibilities to change it. Naomi worried that she looked too much like one of those ratchet black girls with neon-colored hair, which was not a good look.

  “I like it,” Crystal declared. “It looks cute.”

  Liar! Naomi knew what Crystal thought of fake-looking dyed hair. Naomi slammed her bag down on the floor. “So what, you don’t call me all summer?”

  “I...I called you,” Crystal stammered, widening her eyes.

  “No, you didn’t. You sent me one text message. In June.”

  Crystal st
ood up. “Well, you didn’t respond!”

  “I...” Naomi trailed off. Crystal was right. She hadn’t responded. “So, did you hear from Jade?”

  “Of course.”

  Naomi felt a stab of jealousy. “Me too,” she lied. She really hadn’t heard from her glamorous best friend since she’d been expelled last May.

  They both stared at Jade’s bare bed. Would it be empty all year? Maybe they’d use it for extra storage or cover it with an Indian flannel bedspread and embroidered pillows from one of the hippie Rhinecliff stores. Or would Bridgeport stick them with some weirdo no one wanted to room with?

  “Jade called me a whole bunch of times,” Crystal continued, a little aggressively.

  “Me too,” Naomi lied again, removing some of her blouses from her cream-colored leather suitcase. “So, how’s Zane?” She changed the subject. “Did you see him this summer?”

  “Um...yeah,” Crystal replied quietly, a twinge of hurt in her voice. “Did you see Corey?”

  “Yeah, some,” Naomi mumbled back.

  “Still hate the way he says car?” Crystal asked as she examined her clear lip gloss in a tiny black Chanel compact.

  “Yes,” Naomi groaned. Her boyfriend, Corey, was the star lineman for St. Lucius and even though he was from an old-money family in Newton, a well-to-do suburb of Boston, he spoke with a Boston townie accent, omitting his r’s like Johnny Depp in Blow.

  “Did you visit him or did he visit you?”

  “Well, I spent a week with his family on Martha’s Vineyard. That was really nice.” Naomi liked Corey, but she really loved his family. They were textbook New England wealthy—so understated and tasteful and the exact opposite of her trashy parents. It didn’t hurt either that Corey was gorgeous, with an angular, square jaw, skin the color of peanut butter, and deep brown eyes that drank her in.