Inner Circle

by Kate Brian

  "Welcome, students, to a new year at Easton Academy. I am Headmaster Cromwell," he said, his voice low and commanding. "I am honored to have been chosen by the Easton Academy board of directors to take the helm and help usher you all into a new era. As of today, we put the past behind us. As of today, we are no longer a community torn by scandal and tragedy. We have all had our time to heal, and it is now that we must look to the future. A future that is bright with hope, with integrity, with knowledge, and with respect." Constance and I shared an impressed glance. "With this in mind, you should know that I will not accept anything other than the absolute best from the students of this academy. I will not brook insolence from my students. I will not tolerate indiscretion or immaturity. I will not allow any behavior whatsoever that could reflect negatively on this school. Hear me now, people, and hear me well. Things are going to change."

  He said these last few words slowly, deliberately, as if hammering them into each and every adolescent brain one by one. So much for impressed. Now I was a tad freaked. From the looks on the faces around me, everyone felt the same. "From this moment on, I expect each and every one of you to work toward a new Easton Academy," he said, his voice rising like a dictator's. "This school will hereafter be known as an institution that breeds character. That breeds decorum. And that turns out the very finest young men and women this country has to offer." Suddenly, a loud, long farting noise filled the chapel. All the senior guys cracked up and shifted in their seats. I heard a cackle that could only belong to one person: Gage Coolidge. The entire room tensed. My heart pounded as Headmaster Cromwell glowered toward the back of the chapel. He glanced right and nodded at a dark, shadowy figure in the corner behind him. "Mr. White, if you please?" the headmaster asked.

  A slim yet powerful-looking man with the sunken cheeks of a vampire and white -blond hair slipped down the side aisle and walked right over to Gage's pew. He leaned in and crooked a finger at Gage. It was all very grim reaper. No one moved. Gage ducked his head and wagged it, like there was no way he was going anywhere. All the man did was lean even farther over the guy at the end of the pew and crook his finger again. Gage was beet red by this point. He shoved himself up and followed the creature out. "Who. The hell. Is that?" Missy hissed behind me. "The new Easton Academy henchman?" I suggested under my breath. The chapel door slammed. I wasn't the only one who jumped. "Now. Where were we?" Headmaster Cromwell asked. He seemed more chipper now, somehow. "Ah. Yes. This year we will be instituting a mentoring program. Several returning Easton students have been selected to mentor transfer students and the members of the incoming freshman class. When you are excused from here, kindly check your mailboxes to see if you have been so honored."

  Missy and Lorna grumbled as many of my fellow students exchanged overwhelmed looks. This new headmaster was not messing around. The welcoming program lasted another thirty minutes, and for those thirty minutes, not a soul had the courage to move.

  * * *

  "Can you believe that guy? " Missy fumed on our way out into the quad. Her nostrils somehow seemed even larger when she was angry. Like they were getting ready to breathe fire. "I know. Like anything ever changes around here," Lorna added. Well, she sure had. Lorna Gross had not only grown her dark hair out so that the frizzy curls formed less of a triangle, but she'd had an obvious nose job. She was almost pretty. Too bad she had no personality whatsoever to help her cause. "I don't know. Everything just feels kind of different anyway. Doesn't it?" I asked, turning to Constance, Kiki, and Diana. I knew Missy and Lorna would answer me snidely, if at all.

  "What are you on, Brennan?" Diana asked with a laugh. "Same old, same old, if you ask me." "Maybe it just feels different because Noelle Lange isn't here casting her big bitch-slapping shadow over everyone," Missy said with a triumphant sneer. Like Missy Thurber was even remotely good enough to look down on someone like Noelle Lange. But I knew that if anyone was happy to have Noelle gone, it was her. Last year Noelle had pretty much told Missy she had zero shot of getting into Billings--even though her mother had been a Billings girl. Now Missy's chances were wide open again. Unless I had anything to say about it. "Did you ever hear from her this summer?" Constance asked me. "Or from any of them?" Everyone eyed me expectantly. I, after all, was the only one among us who had any connection to the four girls who used to run Billings. Who used to run Easton, really. They were all looking to me as the person in the know. Someone special. The girl who had actually brushed with greatness. So I felt like a heel when I had to say: "No. I haven't heard from any of them." It wasn't as if I didn't want to hear from them. Wasn't as if I hadn't tried to track them down. But Noelle, Kiran, and Taylor had all changed their e-mails and their cell phone numbers. Every time I tried, I got an error message in my in-box or heard a nasal voice telling me the number was no longer in service. After a while I had to grow some pride and accept the fact that they had moved on. Without me. Natasha maintained that I should be glad to be rid of them. And maybe I should have been on some level. But it still hurt to be so easily and callously cut out.

  Missy scoffed and rolled her eyes and kept walking, so Lorna did the same. I wanted to conk their heads together, but held my hands behind my back instead. "I heard Ariana's in some mental facility in, like, the Southwest or something," Diana said. "Total maximum security." I'd heard that one, too, but I'd heard it was in upstate New York. Every time I thought of Ariana, I pictured her in a straitjacket, her light blue eyes staring out some window as she contemplated her next move, Hannibal Lecter--style. Then I'd have to shake my head to clear the image and the awful tingling sensation it gave me down my spine. "Taylor Bell's living in Portugal," Lorna said.

  "No. It was Prague," Missy shot back. "Nuh-uh," Kiki said, speaking up for the first time--loudly since her iPod was blasting into her ears. "Rehab." "What? No. Taylor didn't even like to drink that much," I said. "Pills," Kiki said seriously. "It's always the quiet ones." Ironic, since she herself was among the taciturn. "Well, I know for a fact that Kiran's living in Paris and modeling," Diana said. "I saw her new CK billboard on the Champs-Elysees over the summer, and my mom knows the photographer. He said she's totally professional now. No partying. No late nights. No crazy diets. Just shows up for work and goes home to read." "Now I know that is a lie," I joked.

  "I just think it's weird that none of them came back," Constance said as we reached the break in the path between Billings and Pemberly, one of the junior and senior girls' dorms. "I mean, unless they're all in jail or something, why wouldn't they come back?" "Uh, because of the extreme personal humiliation?" Missy said sarcastically. She studied the end of her braid before flicking it over her shoulder. "They're a bunch of psychos anyway. We're better off without them." My fingers curled into a fist behind my back. "What's the matter with you?" "Problem?" Missy asked, flicking her eyes over me. "I'd think you of all people would want to see Noelle and her posse burn at the stake. They did murder your boyfriend." "No, they didn't. Ariana did. The rest of them made a mistake," I told her, barely holding back my fury. Even though some small part of me agreed with some small part of what she said, I felt that she was the last person who had any right saying it. "They were my friends."

  "Nice friends," Missy said derisively. "I guess that's why you never liked me? Because I'm not a sociopath?" "You little--" "Oh. My. God," Lorna interrupted me. "Speaking of coming back--" I whipped around, half- expecting to see Noelle or Taylor or Kiran. But no. The girl walking toward us had sharp features, milk-white skin, and very long, perfectly straight and glossy black hair. Her coal- black eyes looked us over as she walked by, as if studying a new and unattractive species. Her look was so cold I almost shivered under the blazing late-summer sun. No way this girl had been at Easton last year. I would have remembered her. "Hi, Ivy!" Diana said brightly. "How have you--" She didn't get to finish her question because three words in, the girl was already out of earshot, passing us by like she hadn't heard a thing. "Bitch," Missy said under her breath. "Whore," Lorna added. I stared af
ter the girl until she had disappeared through the back door of Pemberly, the tiff with Missy the Nostril Girl forgotten. Things had just gotten interesting.

  EVERY LAST INCH

  "Her name's Ivy Slade," Josh told me, slipping his fingers between mine. "She used to go here, but last year she never showed. Now she's back. She and Taylor Bell used to room together back in the day." Okay. Now I was definitely intrigued. "How do you know all this, exactly? " I asked. He, after all, had only been at Easton a year. Just like me. I tried to work the combination on my mailbox with my left hand, since he was holding my right. It wasn't entirely working. "Gage gossips like a girl," he replied. He held up my hand and kissed the back of each finger, one by one. "He said they used to have a thing. Like, a serious thing." "She and Gage," I said dubiously. "I don't see him in a serious relationship." "Did I say relationship? I meant sex. They had serious sex," Josh clarified. "All over campus. Or so he says." I shuddered. Well, that explained Lorna's "whore" remark. "Okay. Too much information. Moving on." I didn't need to hear any details of Gage and Ivy's Easton Sex Tour, but I filed the info about her and Taylor away for future reference. Maybe they had been good friends. Maybe they still were. Maybe this Ivy person even knew where Taylor had ended up. After everything we'd been through together, I was curious to know what the Billings Girls were doing with themselves. Even if they, as evidenced by their total silence, had zero interest in me. "Okay." Josh dropped my right hand, took my left, and started kissing those fingers as well. "What are you doing?" I asked him with a laugh. "I have this whole plan to kiss all your body parts before the end of the first week," Josh said matter-of-factly. "All of them? " I said, a blush working its way up my neck. The Josh I knew wasn't normally so forward. Josh smiled playfully. "Well, whichever ones you'll allow me to." "Ah." That was more like Josh. I leaned toward him and touched my lips to his. "You two are so making my first gallery show!" a booming voice announced. We sprang away from each other. Tiffany Goulbourne raced over, her ubiquitous camera in hand, all smiles.

  "Did you just take our picture?" I asked her. "Yes. And it's one you're going to want to show the grandkids one day." She gave Josh and me the double air kiss she gave everyone, then leaned back to inspect me head-to-toe. "Reed, my friend. You just got even more photogenic this summer. That hair! That skin!" "Look who's talking," I replied. Tiffany was a resident of Billings House whom I'd gotten to know much better during the second semester of last year, after all the insanity had died down. She was tall and lithe, with ebony skin and short cropped hair. Could have been a model herself, no doubt, but she preferred to be behind the camera. All the time. No matter where she was or what she was doing, she had a lens on her, whether it was an old-school 35-millimeter or a teeny, tiny digital. One was never safe from her keen eye. She was like our very own paparazzo. Except everyone loved her.

  "Yeah, right," she said, blushing. "You have to let me photograph you this year. You have to." "We'll see," I told her, amused. Tiff had spent half the spring semester trying to coax everyone we knew to pose in various lights for her final art project. As much as I enjoyed the girl's positive energy, I'd had enough attention for one year and had found various hiding places in the house to avoid her. Cheyenne had, of course, ended up being the star of her pictorial. For which Tiffany had inevitably received an A. "Oh. There's London and Vienna. First Twin Cities pic of the year!" And just like that, Tiffany was off again, dodging through the hordes of freshmen checking out their mailboxes for the first time, ready to snap London Simmons and Vienna Clark--the bodacious Twin Cities--in all their freshly tanned glory.

  "Well? Let's see what you've got," Josh said, nodding at my post office box. I quickly opened it and pulled out the folded slip of blue paper inside. I'd seen a few other people with them, groaning over their contents, so I already knew I'd been pegged. The short typewritten note read: Congratulations, Ms. Brennan. You have been selected as an Easton Academy Mentor. Your Advisee is: Sabine Du Lac, Junior (transfer); Residence, Billings House If you should have any questions, please contact Mrs. Naylor, Head of Guidance. "That can't be right," I said. "What? Don't think you're trustworthy enough to take a young fledgling under your wing?" Josh asked as I slammed the mailbox door. Josh had not been saddled with a newbie, even though he was one of Easton's best and brightest. My guess was the administration decided to give him a pass, considering how stressful his junior year had been. When your roommate and best friend gets murdered and you're mistakenly jailed for the crime, a pass is wholeheartedly deserved. Although, it seemed, there was no such amnesty for the victim's girlfriend. But then, Cromwell was all business, and a roommate has an official Easton connection whereas a girlfriend does not. At least this year Josh was rooming with Trey. That guy was the epitome of the all-American boy, jogging around campus every morning, leading the soccer team in goals scored, being recruited by every school in the country. He wouldn't be dealing drugs, coming home drunk, and inspiring people to hurt him.

  Not that I blamed Thomas for what had happened to him, but let's just say that a year's worth of perspective had opened my eyes to the fact that he wasn't a person who was easy to get along with. "No, it just says she lives in Billings," I told Josh, holding up the slip. "We haven't even chosen new housemates. At least I don't think we have. Unless they did it without me or something. "Which, considering my experiences with the Billings Girls, wouldn't actually have shocked me all that much. Josh shrugged and grabbed my hand again. "They probably just made a mistake." He kissed my pinkie, then my ring finger, and a skittering surge of attraction rushed right through me. Huh. Sensitive ring finger. "You're going to have to stop that," I said under my breath. "I'm a mentor now. I have an image to uphold." I looked into his eyes, all flirtatious.

  "Let me see this," he said, taking the slip out of my hands. "Sabine Du Lac? Sounds like French royalty or something. Probably not too easily shocked." He was just leaning in to kiss me when London and Vienna, the Twin Cities themselves, rushed by. They had matching tans, matching highlights, and their matching mega-breasts were spilling over the necklines of very similar sundresses. "Reed! We have to go! We have a house meeting before first period, and we're already late. Cheyenne's gonna be so pissed." All our classes had been delayed and shortened for the day so we could get settled. But leave it to Cheyenne to commandeer our time for her own purposes instead. I sighed. Probably best that I leave now anyway, before Josh and I started something entirely inappropriate in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded post office. I had a feeling Cromwell wasn't the type to turn the other cheek when it came to PDA. "I guess I have to go," I told him, lifting a shoulder. I gave him a quick kiss on the lips, forced myself to pull away, and turned to follow my housemates. Josh grabbed my wrist and stopped me. He pulled me to him and turned me around so that my back was to the mailboxes. "Josh. What if a teacher--"

  He cut me off with his lips, pressing up against me and kissing me so urgently, I forgot all about the faculty and the potential ramifications . Even stopped feeling all the tiny little metal knobs pressing into my back. I felt that kiss everywhere. In every last inch of my body. "Okay. Now you can go," Josh said, backing up with a semicocky smile. I blinked at him, my eyelids heavy. "Which way again?" Josh laughed and turned me by the shoulders toward the door, where London and Vienna waited, smirking at me. "Guess you're happy to be back, huh?" London teased as I tottered toward her. "Yeah." She had no idea. "Definitely."

  * * *

  "Welcome back, everyone!"

  Cheyenne stood at the head of a long, polished wood table that had taken over the entire parlor on the first floor of Billings House, her manicured fingertips pressed into its surface. All the comfy chairs and couches were gone, and the flat-screen TV had been pushed into the back corner. In the center of the table were six small pink jewelry boxes, stacked into a pyramid. At each of the ten chairs around the table--one at each head and four per side--was another pink jewelry box, a white pad of paper, a silver pen, and a place card. I saw my name r
ight away, at the last seat on the right side--as far away from Cheyenne as I could get without being directly across from her. My name, just like the others, was written in pink calligraphy.

  "Find your seats! We have a lot to cover in not a lot of time!" Cheyenne announced, waving us in. The other girls, who had been chatting in little groups around the room, took their chairs. I slid into mine, and Rose Sakowitz, Cheyenne's diminutive, red-haired roommate from last year, took the chair at the end of the table. She had a bit more meat on her bones than she had last year. Comforting, since she had always looked as if she could blow away in a stiff wind. But she was still probably rocking a size zero. Her yellow skirt was so tiny, I could have used it as a headband. "Hi, Reed," she whispered with a smile and a quick wave. "Hi," I whispered back. "Good to see you." "You, too. How was your summer?" Rose asked. "Ladies! If you don't mind?" Cheyenne snapped. Oh. So that was how this was going to go. Ever since last spring when Cheyenne had taken the whole sorority thing and really run with it, she had been on a power trip from hell. She had run for president unopposed and created a cabinet that included London and Vienna as co-social chairs, Rose as philanthropy chair, and Tiffany as historian (which basically meant Tiff was a glorified scrapbooker). With her new regime in place, Cheyenne had made sure that no moment of free time was left unoccupied. There had been teas and parties and fundraisers and day trips. Whenever we weren't studying, we were bonding. And it had been fun. Most of the time. Except for when Cheyenne was cracking her whip. What was that saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely? Cheyenne could have that stamped across her forehead. Sometimes I missed the old semisweet Cheyenne from last Christmas, but the more we hung out, the more I realized that these were Cheyenne's true colors. At the end of the fall semester she'd merely put on a happy face in her effort to overthrow Noelle. Now that Noelle was truly gone, she was back to her bitchy self, and only every once in a while did Cool Cheyenne come shining through.