BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY #1

by Ashley Valentine

  “Breeee!” Celine squealed again.

  Bree looked at him questioningly a few moments more, and Amir realized he was kind of being a jackass. So Crystal was screwing with his emotions. So Bree didn’t like him. So what? She was still sweet and caring. And right now, she seemed so happy. “Seriously,” he ordered. “Go.”

  As Bree skipped over to the girls’ couch, a tall senior girl named Chandler grabbed her arm. “Cool cheer.”

  “Thank you!”

  Another girl standing next to Chandler who wore a slinky silver top, squinted at Bree. “Did you ever model? You look so familiar.”

  “I think she kind of looks like Jade,” Chandler added.

  “Actually, I modeled for a Les Best ad? But it was only once,” Bree beamed.

  “No, that’s it!” the girl cried. “I love that ad. You look so cute in it, all crazy on the beach. Who was your stylist?”

  “Bree!” Celine called from the couch again.

  “I gotta go,” Bree explained to Chandler and the other girl. “Nice meeting you!” As she was walking toward the couch again, it suddenly hit her. She didn’t feel compelled to make up some crazy story about a seminaked fashion show or a debauched night out with the Raves. Nope. Bree—not Old Bree or New Bree, but this Bree—was good enough for these girls just as she was. I love Bridgeport! she thought, with a momentary shiver of pleasure. God, she just couldn’t get kicked out. Not now!

  She joined the others on the couch. Celine immediately handed her a Grey-Goose-and-Red-Bull martini.

  “So you’re not pissed at us?” Celine asked. “About the cheer?”

  “Yeah.” Crystal shook her head. “I wanted to tell you...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bree assured them. Even though it had been kind of mean, she felt like she was a part of something now—a real, exclusive Bridgeport tradition. How awesome was that?

  “That cheer was amazing, though,” Celine commented. She was sucking on a cigarette and a pastel candy necklace at the same time.

  Bree moved over to Naomi, who was sitting on the far end of the couch and looked like she’d been up for 96 hours. “You disappeared after the game. You all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Naomi replied mechanically.

  “Is it—?” Bree started.

  Naomi put her finger to her lips but nodded miserably.

  “What happened?”

  Naomi shook her head. “Can’t talk about it,” she whispered between gulps.

  “Okay.”

  Crystal grabbed Naomi’s arm. “I saw Corey when I was coming in. He’s looking for you.”

  Naomi’s eyes widened in fear. “Did you tell him I was here?”

  “Uh, yeah. Why, is there a reason I wouldn’t?” she asked, obviously feigning obliviousness.

  “Shit,” Naomi muttered.

  “What’s the big deal? It’s not like you’re seeing anyone else, is it?”

  Naomi shook her head feverishly. “You shouldn’t have told him I was here.”

  “Well, sorry! How was I supposed to know that?” Crystal demanded. “It’s not like you tell me anything anymore.”

  “You just...shouldn’t have.”

  The other girls’ heads swiveled from Crystal to Naomi, as if watching a tennis match. Bree wondered if Crystal knew about Naomi and Mr. Dalton. Crystal put her cigarette out with the heel of her blue wedge sandals. “So why don’t you want to see Corey, anyway?”

  “I just...don’t. Just because.”

  “Is he not cool enough for you? Are we not cool enough for you?” Crystal demanded, rolling her tongue against her cheek.

  “Come on,” Naomi retorted. “I didn’t say—”

  “You looking for some older people to hang out with?”

  Bree froze.

  Naomi scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Crystal tilted her head. “Did you find your cell phone?”

  “Yeah.” Naomi lit a cigarette. “So?”

  “So...nothing. I found it. Just making sure you got it.”

  “Did you go through my messages?” Naomi’s voice rose sharply.

  “No!” Crystal sounded hurt. “I wouldn’t do that!”

  “Like hell you wouldn’t. Whatever. I have to get the fuck out of here.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Celine asked as Naomi stormed away.

  Crystal stared fumingly at Naomi’s receding figure and didn’t answer.

  “Sounds like she’s having boy problems—she didn’t even want to see Corey!” Celine added. “And he’s so fine!”

  “Oh, it’s not Corey she’s having the problems with,” Crystal whispered. “It’s, you know—Mr. Dalton.”

  Bree’s mouth dropped open. Oh. My. God. Some friend Crystal was.

  “Dalton?” Celine echoed. The girls stared at her in stunned silence.

  “Yep. They’re really—” Crystal began smugly, but she was interrupted by Maurice Johnson. He wore a fake wooden Viking helmet, just like Flava Flav, on his head and had taken his shirt off to reveal a temporary symbol tattoo on his chest.

  “Hey, girls.” He slung his arms around Bree and Crystal. I guess he likes me again, Bree thought wryly. Not that she cared. “I’m horny.” He pointed to the horns.

  Celine giggled. “Ew!”

  “Course you are, Pony,” cried Benny, who’d come up behind them.

  “That’s right. So you want to play I Never?” Maurice grabbed a bottle of Cuervo from a nearby table.

  “Definitely,” Crystal agreed quickly, wrenching her eyes away from Naomi, who’d paused at the tent’s door, her whole body quivering.

  “Okay, but new rules: if you’ve never done it you have to take a shot and kiss someone,” Maurice announced, fondling one of the horns on his helmet.

  “You’re unbelievable.” Benny laughed.

  “Fine,” Crystal sighed. “Just no tongue.”

  Bree, Maurice, Sage, Teague Williams, and Benny arranged themselves on the dewy grass just outside the tent. The air was cool and wet, but Bree felt warm from her belly out. Her Red Bull martini was making her feel a little weird.

  “Who wants to go first?” Maurice asked, taking a long chug of Heineken.

  “I will.” Bree shot her hand up. She poured out shots into small plastic cups. “Okay. So. Um...I’ve never made out in a field.”

  Crystal, Celine, and Benny all shrugged. Bree, Maurice, and Teague each did a shot.

  “C’mere, Bree,” Maurice beckoned, crawling across the circle toward her. “Let’s see if we can remember how to do this.”

  Ew, ew, ew. Bree tipsily pecked Maurice’s mouth and then smacked him playfully in the stomach.

  “Jeepers!” she squealed. And instead of laughing at her, everyone cheered and did another shot, just for fun.

  30

  Zane inhaled deeply on the joint and handed it to Donovan St. Girard. They were sitting in a little alcove that separated them from the rest of the tent with those door beads that a grandmother might have in her pool house. “This party’s lame,” Zane managed to grumble, while trying to hold the pot smoke in his lungs.

  “Aren’t they always, though?” Donovan replied.

  They talked for a few minutes about which party had been the best, and decided that it was the one Jade Carmichael had thrown at her parents’ huge log cabin in Alaska a year and a half ago. It had been over spring break, and most kids had been with their parents in St. Barts or Monte Carlo, so not that many of them had gone to Alaska. The house was on the edge of an ice lake, next to a giant, purple mountain. They’d all drunk so much red wine, they’d been completely uninhibited. It was before Zane and Crystal got together, and he’d coaxed Jade into getting naked with him and sitting in her outdoor hot tub, where they’d talked all night. It had been the kind of party where everything is serene and perfect—nobody had gotten mad at anybody, and everybody had stayed on that fun, wild side of drunk without crossing over and vomiting all over the teak floors.

  The beads p
arted, and Naomi burst through. She was wearing all black and looked craggy and grumpy, like that wicked old witch with the apple in Snow White. “What’s up?” Zane asked, as she plopped down next to him.

  “Can I hide out in here with you?” She took the joint, which had burned down to a little knobby roach. She took a long drag on it and blew the smoke out her nose.

  “Sure.”

  “You guys make no sense,” she finally said after a long pause, running her hands through her insanely red hair.

  “What, me and Donovan?”

  “No.” Naomi turned to Zane, and Zane remembered why he liked her so much. She had a wide-jawed, wide-eyed, beautiful face. “I meant...why is it that when you guys want something, and when you get it, when we give it to you, you freak out?”

  Donovan took a hit and leaned back, running his hand along his freshly-cut fade. “That’s way too deep for me, man.”

  Naomi pulled out her cigarettes and lit one. “Never mind,” she scoffed, standing up again. She squinted at Zane. “Are you still with Crystal?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She smirked. “That’s what I thought. I’m outta here. Have a good party, boys.”

  “She’s so weird,” Donovan muttered. “You know what I just heard? I heard she’s fucking one of the teachers. That new guy.”

  “Naomi?” Zane asked, looking after her. “Nah.”

  “I don’t know, man. Look at her. She’s a mess.”

  Zane grunted and rolled one of the beige marble door beads between his fingers. His weed-addled brain tried to process what had gone down with Crystal. Were they still together or not?

  He stood up and parted the beads with his hand, feeling totally messed up. He expected love to feel like something stupendous, maybe a little painful. Like the sore, used-up way his back and legs felt after riding Credo all day. Or the feeling he got when he was in Paris, standing on the Seine, watching people walk by, and suddenly realized he was right there in the moment and not stuck somewhere in the past or the future. But he wasn’t sure if he felt that way about Crystal. Where was she, anyway?

  And that’s when he saw them.

  Maurice Johnson kissing Crystal all over her face. She’d pulled down Maurice’s jeans so low that they’d slid below his hips. He could see a strip of his ass. As usual, Maurice was going commando.

  Zane turned into the alcove again. Well, there was his answer.

  31

  “I feel all loose and wiggly.” Bree shook her arms around. She’d moved to the surprisingly quiet lawn behind the tent. There was a tiny little Japanese rock garden, a mossy stone bench, and a jade-tile-lined pond. A giant orange goldfish swam slowly in the pond’s circle. After a few rounds of I Never, Amir had tapped her on the shoulder and asked her if she wanted to get some air.

  “You were looking a little green back there,” Amir said.

  “I’m all right. But thanks for getting me out of that. It was getting a little strange.” She wasn’t really keen on seeing Maurice Johnson’s butt crack, which kept making major appearances.

  “No problem.”

  “How come you didn’t play with us? You got something against kissing games?”

  “I...” He hesitated. “It’s complicated.”

  Bree rolled her head around on her neck. “Okay,” she replied. She was happy that Amir felt okay just sitting her with her quietly, not explaining anything. Friends sat quietly together, after all, and even though she was having a blast at this party, something in it seemed empty now that she was drunk. How many of these kids did she actually connect with? Amir was a real friend, and they could be honest with each other. She leaned her head on his shoulder and stared at their reflection in the pond.

  “You never told me you went out with Crystal last year.” She glanced at him.

  He looked down. “Yeah.”

  “Is that why you hate Zane so much?”

  He nodded.

  “Well. That makes sense.”

  “It’s so messed up, though,” Amir began slowly. “I still really like her. I tried to not like her but...I can’t help it.”

  “I totally understand,” she said, thinking of Zane.

  Another reflection appeared in the pond. It was of a messy-haired, irresistibly handsome boy who, despite being at a party, still had paint smudges on his neck. Bree drew in her breath. It was as if she had conjured Zane up by thinking about him.

  Or maybe she was just a little tipsy.

  “Hey,” he greeted her softly.

  Bree squinted. He wore a black faded T-shirt and grubby, paint-stained jeans. His thick, glossy hair, badly in need of cutting, curled at the back of his neck. Amir creased his face in frustration, then squeezed her hand. “I should be going,” he announced. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Good luck.”

  Amir brushed past Zane without saying hello, then slowly strode away. Zane sat down next to Bree. “What are you doing out here? There’s all sorts of crazy shit going on in this place.”

  “Yeah, I was part of the crazy shit, but I decided to come out and look at the pond.”

  “Pretty,” Zane murmured.

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “I mean you, not the pond,” he whispered.

  Bree’s words got stuck in her throat. She was too, too drunk. But suddenly she felt too, too sober. Zane lit a cigarette and smoked it silently, letting a thin stream of gray smoke drift over the gardens and make a halo over the origami trees.

  “I saw your cheer at the game today.” Zane broke the silence. “That was...something.”

  “Oh,” she managed to utter, looking down, embarrassed. The drunker Bree had gotten, the more she had wondered if she really belonged here. So she’d turned the cheer around today, but what if she couldn’t keep up that kind of quick thinking all the time? She kept trying not to think about it, but heavy thoughts about the Disciplinary Committee hearing kept sneaking up on her. Sure, she was popular tonight, but what did that matter if she was kicked out of Bridgeport come Monday? Then again, she could tell on Crystal, but everyone would definitely hate her if she got Crystal kicked out. There was no way to win.

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Actually... it’s too weird to explain.”

  “Huh,” Zane responded. “So, you know how I told you about those owls in that note?”

  “Yeah.” Bree was looking at his profile out of the corner of her eye. The night was getting colder, and she could see dew forming on the grass around them. She wondered what time it was.

  “Did you think that was really stupid?”

  Bree crossed her legs. “What? No. Why?”

  “Because...I told you that I thought they talked.”

  “No. Actually, I thought it was really sweet.”

  “You did?” He smiled shyly at the ground.

  “Yeah.” She smiled too, looking at him now.

  Zane slid slightly closer to her. “Why?”

  Bree thought about why. Because you’re sexy? Because you’re beautiful? Because I can’t stop thinking about how perfect you are for me?

  Bree sat back. “Zane? Are you flirting with me because Crystal told you to?”

  He took a drag off his cigarette. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “Oh,” she said, confused. She stared at her reflection in the pond. “Well, are you?”

  “No,” he finally answered. Bree noticed that his hand was trembling. “Are you?”

  “No,” Bree replied quickly. “I’m definitely not.”

  “What are you going to do about DC?” he asked after a few seconds, stubbing his cigarette out on a rock. “Are you going to say it was Crystal’s fault?”

  “I still haven’t decided.” Bree felt her face squinch up. She didn’t want to ruin Crystal’s life, but she also didn’t want to get kicked out of Bridgeport. What if she walked out of DC and never saw Zane again?

  “Look,” Zane sighed. “I don’t think any of this is right, and I don’t think y
ou should be in trouble. And besides, I’m not even together with Crystal anymore.”

  Bree held her breath.

  “It’s weird that she’s manipulating us, you know?”

  She nodded imperceptibly.

  “And more than that...things don’t feel right,” he whispered, as if he were talking to himself.

  “What do you mean?” Bree asked, willing him to meet her gaze and then, maybe...her lips.

  “Well...” Zane leaned back in the grass and stared up at the sky. Bree remembered how he’d pointed out the Seven Sisters on their ceiling and wondered where that constellation was tonight. “You know how those diamond commercials show love as like this...this really sparkly, crazy thing?”

  “Okay,” Bree said, lying down on her back as well.

  “Well, I want that,” Zane explained, talking straight ahead. “I don’t have that now, but I want it. Not in a stupid way, but I want all of that.”

  Bree’s insides shimmered. She understood what he meant completely. And as they stared up at the sky, the stars above them twinkled, shiny and sparkly. Kind of like diamonds.

  To: “partygoers” (27 members on list)

  From: MauriceJohnson@bridgeport.edu

  Date: Sunday, September 8, 11:40 A.M.

  Subject: Awesome, awesome, awesome

  Guys. The Black Saturday party was white-hot. Some interesting numbers:

  6: Number of girls I made out with last night. (That’s the number I can remember, anyway.)

  11: Bottles of Cuervo we went through. Hells yeah!

  1: Weirdly well-groomed guy standing on the sidelines of the I Never game, looking longingly at a certain hazel-eyed goddess from Atlanta.

  2: Left-behind pairs of girls’ shoes. One pair of Manolos, one pair of Jimmy Choos. Who got so messed up she went home barefoot?

  2: People sitting by my goldfish pond, looking longingly into each other’s eyes. But I’m not gonna tell you who. That’s only for my goldfish, Stanley, to know for sure.

  Later, party people,

  Maurice

  P.S. Can’t wait for the next blowout.

  P.P.S. It’s only three weeks away. Rest up!