Be Strong & Curvaceous (2 page)

I hardly heard her.

Because not only had the redhead cut into line ahead of Vanessa Talbot, Dani Lavigne, and Emily Overton, she’d also invaded their prime real estate. No one sat at that table unless they’d sacrificed a freshman at midnight, or whatever it was that people had to do to be friends with them.

When Vanessa turned with her plate, I swear I could hear the collective intake of breath as her gaze locked on the stunning interloper sitting with her back to the window, calmly cutting her ravioli with the edge of her fork.

“Uh oh,” Gillian murmured. “Let the games begin.”

Chapter 2

V
ANESSA, DANI, AND EMILY formed a fighting V and strolled to the table with their plates.

“Excuse me, do we know you?” Dani asked politely.

“Poor thing,” Mac said. “I’m so sorry about the short-term memory loss. No, we haven’t met.”

Dani’s mouth worked while she tried to figure out whether or not she’d just been insulted.

Vanessa stepped in front of her. “My name is Vanessa Talbot.”

“Pleasure. Mac.”

“Mac?” Emily repeated. “What kind of a name is that?”

Vanessa ignored her. “And you’re sitting in my seat.”

Mac looked at the empty table, which could seat eight. “Really?”

“Really. I suggest you move. My friends and I sit here. Everyone knows that except clueless noobs.”

Mac’s face dimpled with laughter, as if Vanessa had told her a real knee-slapper. “I’d say you were the clueless one, if you think
that’s
any reason to move. Sit where you like, darling. Do enjoy the ravioli. It’s marvelous.” And she went back to her pasta.

Vanessa’s face set into a porcelain mask. “This is the last time I’ll ask you nicely. After that . . .”

Mac glanced at her. “What? You’ll turn me into a ferret?”

Even from where I stood, I could see the color burn its way into Vanessa’s cheeks. When was the last time anyone had stood up to her? Certainly not this year. Well, except for Gillian and Lissa, first term.

“You wish,” Vanessa said. “Try a social outcast.”

“From your society?” Mac drawled. “What a terrible loss.”

“Do you have any idea who she is?” Dani hissed. “You big, redheaded loser.”

“Vanessa Talbot. Hmm.” Mac consulted an imaginary PDA in her head. “Daughter of a former U.N. Secretary and Eurotrash.” She rolled her eyes. “Such a bore.”

“At least you’ve done your research,” Vanessa snapped. “Unfortunately, you don’t seem to be anyone.”

“No one you’d know, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.” Mac looked the three of them over. “Are you staying or going?”

I tried to keep my grin under control as a ripple of something that was almost laughter sighed through the room. This was the best thing that had happened since the infamous food fight last term, but nobody dared to laugh outright. The truth was, Vanessa was stuck. If she stalked off to another table, she and her posse would lose their territory. If she didn’t, she’d have to let Mac sit with them—and that might imply she’d accepted her.

Can you say
lose/lose
?

Mac smiled—not a victorious or malicious smile, but the sweet kind. Like frosting that comes in a can—close enough to fool you into thinking it’s the real thing. With a huff of impatience, as though she didn’t have any more time to waste on Mac while her food got cold, Vanessa slid into a seat.

I finally got my feet moving and took my blueberries back to our table, where Gillian and Lissa telegraphed “Did you see that?” and “What’s going to happen now?” to me with their eyes.

It didn’t take long for us to find out. Vanessa was not the kind of girl who let anything go unresolved—especially a power struggle. I’d only been here a week or two when I’d learned that. She was so used to winning that it never occurred to her there could be any other outcome.

She made a show of picking at her lunch, then reached for her drink. Dani said something to her, and, whoops! Her soda went flying . . . all over Mac’s lime-green Chanel dress.

I would have screamed and burst into tears. Mac stood slowly, looking down at her lap, where a brown stain spread. Coke dripped slowly from the hem to the floor.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Vanessa said, while Dani made
tsk
ing noises and Emily offered a handful of napkins. “I hope it’s washable.”

Every female in the room knew it wasn’t. Every one of us knew Vanessa had just done the equivalent of painting a mustache on the
Mona Lisa
.

“Eurotrash.” Mac finally sighed. Lifting her head, she gave it a slow, regretful shake. “What a pity a person can’t overcome her DNA.”

And she floated out of the room as effortlessly as she’d come in, leaving Vanessa fuming behind her.

Vanessa, 1. Mac, 2.

I wondered when Round Two would begin—and what kind of fallout there would be. At the moment I couldn’t see any positives about being Mac’s roommate.

None at all.

AFTER DINNER, Lissa and Gillian came back to my room to talk over the excitement.

“It’s like the Slayer,” Lissa said. “In every generation there can be only one, you know?”

“You are such a dork. What’d you do, watch all your
Buffy
DVDs over break?” Gillian flopped down on my bed. “But you’re right. I can’t see this going on for very long. One of them is going to kill the other, or get her expelled by the end of the week. And it’s only Tuesday.” She blinked. “Is all this stuff hers?”

“Yep.” I sank into my desk chair, leaving the other end of my bed for Lissa. “I left all my Vuittons at home.” Not.

“Wow. And I thought I had a lot of stuff.”

“I just don’t know where she—”

The door opened and Mac stepped in. “Company?” she inquired pleasantly. “Lovely.”

Turning her back on us, she shrugged off the black sweater and unzipped the dress, tossing it in a corner. She kicked off her shoes and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

“Will—will you be able to do something about the dress?” I asked, hoping I sounded concerned. There was no hope of being friends, of course, but a catastrophe like this deserved some mourning over the body, at least.

She glanced at it. “Oh, I don’t know. Haven’t the faintest idea where to get it seen to. I’ll probably just order another one.”

From Chanel Couture. In Paris.
Sure, I’ll take two
.

“It’s still a shame. Vanessa is such a—” Gillian stopped herself, then crossed the carpet and held out a hand. “I’m Gillian Chang. Carly says you’re called Mac. Is that short for something?”

Mac ran a glance over her—tennies, jeans, cashmere sweater, face—and shook hands. “Hello. It’s short for MacPhail.”

Lissa got up, too. “I’m Lissa Mansfield. It’s a pleasure to meet anyone with the spine to stand up to Vanessa. What’s your first name?”

She got the same once-over before Mac spoke. “I prefer Mac.”

O-o-kay. I took a tiny bit of comfort from the fact that she was an equal-opportunity snubber.

But unlike me, Lissa didn’t go away quietly. “You know, I could swear we’ve met before. Your face is familiar, for some reason.”

“I don’t see how.” Mac picked up a brush and ran it through her unruly curls. “I’ve never been to California in my life.”

“What about New York? Montreal? Vancouver?”

Mac shook her head, twisting her hair up and securing it with a clip.

“MacPhail. Are you from the U.K.? Scotland?”

“Originally. I go to school in London, of course. We have to do one term of cultural exchange. That’s how I ended up here.” She made it sound like she was researching pygmies in Borneo—against her will.

“What was your first choice?” I meant it as a joke, but she didn’t take it that way.

“New Zealand.”

Oh. Never mind. Was it possible to have thirty seconds of conversation with this girl without being flattened?

“Well, I’m glad you came here,” Gillian said. “Vanessa could use a little humility.”

“Oh? What have you got against her?”

Whoa. Was she switching sides? Did money and European connections stick together, no matter what?

“Me? Nothing. Except that she tried to steal my boyfriend last term. And she set Lissa up—”

“I don’t think Mac would be very interested in that,” Lissa interrupted. “Come on, Gillian. Carly, are you coming to prayer circle? It’s Tuesday.”

“Absolutely. Just let me change my blouse. I got pesto on this one.”

Mac looked from them, waiting by the door, to me, tearing off the babydoll top I had on and reaching for a tailored blouse that made my waist look half an inch smaller. “Prayer circle?” she said, in the same tone some people would say, “Head lice?”

“Sure.” Gillian smiled at her. “Tuesday nights, seven o’clock. Everyone’s welcome.”

“Term always starts on a Wednesday,” Lissa put in. “It kicks it off on a good note, I think.”

“Is that a Christian thing?” Mac asked.

Lissa nodded. I finished buttoning up the blouse and gave it a final tug.
Jump right in
. “Want to come?”

Mac actually shuddered. “I’m going out. Where do you lot party ’round here?”

We exchanged a look. “You’d have to ask someone like Vanessa about that. She probably knows where the underage clubs are.”

“The what?”

“Underage clubs,” I repeated. “You’re sixteen, right?”

“Do you seriously think I’d waste my time with children?”

“Let me rephrase. You’d have to ask Vanessa about that. She probably knows where you can get a fake I.D.”

“What has that got to do with clubbing? Do you know or not?”

I gave up. “I don’t. Sorry.” I grabbed Lissa and Carly by the arms and hustled them out the door. “Have fun.”

We were halfway to Room 216 before anyone spoke. “I know what I’m praying about tonight,” Lissa said.

“No kidding.” My voice sounded grim, even to me. “And while you’re at it, pray that Tobin finds her another room.”

GILLIAN HADN’T HAD TIME to put up her usual neon-colored prayer-circle posters, so I didn’t expect many people to show. Which, as it turned out, was a good thing. Because ever since I started school here and started hanging around with her and Lissa, it had slowly sunk in that they were different. I mean, I try to be as nice as possible to everyone. I’d rather make a friend than an enemy, you know? Especially at Spencer, where friendships seem to extend to college and beyond, creating this network of alumni that are all wealthy, famous, and connected.

But like I said, there was something . . . more . . . about Gillian and Lissa. Something that I wanted to be a part of with them, even though it scared me. I’d tried to talk with Shani about it last term, but she just got weirded out and changed the subject. So while I’d been in Mexico, I’d had plenty of time on my own to think. To locate the family Bible in my
abuelita
’s room and dip into it. To realize that, since September, I’d been circling around a choice and I couldn’t see yet what lay beyond it.

And now here we were, heading for the very first prayer circle of the term, where something told me I was going to stop circling and start facing that choice head-on.

Room 216, as usual, had gotten filled up with junk over the break. If everyone goes away, where does the stuff come from? It’s a mystery. Anyway, we spent about ten minutes locating the chairs and piling cardboard boxes out in the hall for the maintenance staff to take away. The unofficial art exhibit had gone from odd sculptures and oils to a collection of graphic art mounted on foam core and tacked up along the wall, above the Edwardian wainscoting.

One of the pictures caught my eye. A lithe female figure was caught in mid-kick, taking out an evil-looking cloud with yellow eyes. Lettered neatly in the bottom left corner was a name:
G. Chang.

“Gillian, is this yours?”

My loudmouth friend, who has never backed down from anything, that I know of—well, except during that whole episode with Lucas Hayes last term—actually blushed. “I told them not to put that in here,” she mumbled. “It’s not very good.”

“I think it’s really good. I didn’t even know you could draw. That graphic arts class must really kick.” I glanced at the panel again. “No pun intended.”

“Kaz thinks it’s good,” Lissa put in, moving the chairs into a tight circle. “And he should know. Some New York editor asked for his whole book during break.”

“Wow.” I didn’t know a thing about graphic novels or publishing, but this sounded pretty impressive to me. “Did you guys see a lot of each other when you were down there?”

Lissa nodded and sat, stretching her long legs out and crossing her ankles. “Sure. He’s my best friend.”

Personally, I had my own ideas about that. I’d seen the expression on Kaz’s face that night at the Benefactors’ Day Ball, when he’d saved Lissa on the dance floor. I don’t have the biggest pile of ex-files in the world, but even I can tell when a guy is
apasionado
for a girl. But probably if I said anything, she’d get all uneasy about it, and it would mess up what they had going.

Better to mind my own business.

And what was I doing thinking about art and boys, anyway, when I was supposed to be thinking about prayer circle?

I sat next to Lissa just as the door opened and Shani Hanna came in, with Jeremy right behind her.

“Hey!” Gillian grabbed her in a hug, and hugged Jeremy, too, for good measure. Not that I noticed him complaining. “Did you just get here?”

“Yeah. There was so much traffic coming north from the airport that I thought I’d miss it. How are you guys?” Shani hugged each of us in turn. Today her hair was french-braided in a circle like a crown around her head. It suited her perfectly.

“Great, now that you’re here.” I grinned at her. “Are you sure you don’t keep a personal stylist in your closet?”

“No kidding,” Lissa said. “No human female can be this good with her own hair. You have a different ’do every time I look at you.”

“Ease up,” Shani said, pretending to hide behind her hands. “I told Gillian when I was at her place. I spent, like, thousands of hours on my own when I was a kid. The housemaids used to hang out with me, and we had this mini-salon going in my bedroom. We’d spend hours learning how to do hair and makeup and reading
Essence
and
Cosmo
by the inch.”