Spoiled (14 page)

They ambled off as the bell rang. Molly took a deep breath and struggled to open her locker. This was going to be a long day.

Brooke sauntered into homeroom and drank in the chalky-smelling, white-walled classroom with proprietary satisfaction. Brooke
wasn’t crazy about lessons, but school was her domain. Students who’d been gossiping wildly in their chairs, trading stories
with people in every direction, either stopped to wave or burbled enthusiastically upon seeing Brooke in their presence. A
handful cowered and pretended to be fascinated with their binders.
Just the way the Lord intended
. Some people had It, and some didn’t. Brooke knew which one she was, and it righted her ship significantly to see that despite
recent events at home, everyone who counted still knew, too.

She dropped into her seat and surveyed the group, half of which was staring in open curiosity. Brooke was used to this treatment,
even if this year she knew there was another reason for the analysis.

“God, Jen, I’m
so
exhausted,” she announced loudly. “You Know Who snores like a farmhand.”

Jennifer turned full around, without letting go of her boyfriend’s enormous hand. “She looks like one, too,” she said. “I
just saw her in the hall.”

“Is that who that was?” Jake said. “She seems nice.”

“Oh, Jake, you’re so
naive
.” Jennifer withdrew her hand long enough to smack him on his shoulder.

“Settle down, everyone.”

Brooke looked up at the front of the class and groaned.

“Perkins?” she whispered. “No way. She wears Crocs. I can’t start my day with Crocs.”

“And speaking of horrors…” Jennifer nudged her.

Brooke looked up to see Molly walk in and hand Ms. Perkins a piece of paper.

“Class, this is Molly Dix, she just moved here from Indiana, please be nice to her, take out your schedules, come to me with
questions, and Mavis Moore, if you don’t spit out that gum right now I’m going to make you chew the whole pack at once,” Ms.
Perkins said, putting her feet up on her desk and pulling out a copy of
Eat, Pray, Love
.

The room seemed to hold its breath as Molly scanned the rows for an empty desk.

“If you’re looking for Hay Baling 101, it’s on the East Lawn,” Brooke said loudly.

“Is that an actual class here?” Jake furrowed his brow.

Jennifer patted him on the back as if to say, “Isn’t he
adorable
?”

“Pipe down, Ms. Berlin,” said Ms. Perkins from behind the book. “I’ll have you know, California is the nation’s foremost agricultural
state and Indiana isn’t even in the top five.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Molly said gamely, sliding into a front-row seat.

A couple of kids giggled. Brooke raised an eyebrow and most of them clammed up; a few others ignored her and gazed at Molly
with mild interest. And a girl she recog
nized as one of Shelby Kendall’s known associates appeared to be texting someone.

The TV set flicked on, showing Headmistress McCormack sitting at the campus news station’s anchor desk, as she did every year
on the first day of school.

“Good morning, Colby-Randall, and welcome to the start of what I’m sure will be another excellent and rewarding school year.
Football tryouts are after school tomorrow and Wednesday….”

Jake pumped his fist and high-fived Magnus Mitchell.

“Bring the thunder, QB!” Magnus crowed.

“
Boo-ya!
” Jake shouted, and they stood up to chest-bump as Jennifer applauded with starry eyes. Brooke wanted to gag. Jocks were
so
two years ago.

“… So please report it if you see anyone handling food without a hairnet,” droned Headmistress McCormack. “And rehearsals
for
My Fair Lady
begin Friday in the brand-new Brick Berlin Theater for Serious Emotional Artistry. Casting took place last May, but any new
or returning students who wish to audition for walk-on roles should contact Brooke Berlin via the Drama Club mailbox.”

“I’ll be your Drama Club mailbox,” Magnus said huskily, waggling his tongue at Brooke as if this was supposed to entice her
to put it in her mouth.

“Gross, Magnus,” Jennifer frowned.

Next, Shelby’s face filled the screen of the CR-One broadcast, pretty as ever and in newscaster mode. Brooke’s reaction was
so visceral she almost gagged.

“I’d be her mailbox, too,” Magnus muttered under his breath.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brooke recovered. “Actual mailboxes are so passé. Like Shelby’s original nose.”

“I’d like to put out a call for any students willing to participate in a CR-One exclusive on neglected children,” Shelby was
saying. “If you’re having a hard time with your parent, or you just met him, or he leaves you at home with a vacuous sibling
with whom you have nothing in common, we want to know about it. But more important”—and here, Shelby leaned toward the camera,
the better to give the student body a closer look at her poreless, peerless, very expensive face—“we want to
help
.”

The bell tolled, marking the mad dash to first period. Brooke swept her satchel over her shoulder so hard it thwacked Jennifer
in the shoulder. Seeing Shelby reminded her what a stressful semester this was shaping up to be.
My Fair Lady
was Brooke’s best chance to make Brick sit up and take notice, but it was also a lot of work. She barely had time for
one
nemesis, much less two. It was clear that despite their father’s idiotic attachment to making this work, Molly still had
to go. Immediately.

Molly barreled through a door and stopped dead when she realized she’d not only landed in a supply closet but that
the couple who’d been at her locker that morning was making out in it.

“Dude! Don’t they knock in Indiana?” spat the girl.

“God, sorry,” Molly sputtered, spinning around and swiping at the door handle to try to get out.

Juggling a lunch tray and the crumpled map in her fist, Molly tried to figure out where she’d gone wrong. It had been like
this all day, from when she’d shown up in the chem wing when she was supposed to be at PE, to stumbling into the TV station’s
offices when she was due in math. She should have gone to New Student Orientation. Brooke had sworn it was unnecessary and
promised that
she
would make sure Molly was sufficiently oriented, but that was before she started acting like Molly was contagious.

Correcting her course, Molly found the ladies’ room. Two toilets flushed in unison.

“I mean, did you
see
how red she got?” giggled a voice from behind one stall door. “I thought she was going to have a coronary. Who’d confuse
Willis Hall with the gym, anyway?”

“Clearly, they don’t value literacy back where she comes from,” the other snarked.

Molly scurried down to the handicapped stall and locked the door behind her before anyone noticed she was there. She dumped
her stuff on the floor, closed the toilet lid, and sat down to eat her lunch. She’d seen Lindsay Lohan’s character do this
in
Mean Girls
. It seemed tragic at the
time, but today Molly understood that it was wise (well, if she didn’t think about how unsanitary it was). Overhearing nasty
comments was one thing; having to endure them while the naysayers watched her eat a cheeseburger and wondered loudly whether
it was one of her own cows was another story.

It would have been worse if she hadn’t had her phone. Her lunch break luckily lined up with the end of the day back at Mellencamp,
so as soon as the door banged behind those two girls, Molly grabbed her cell and dialed.

“How’s it going?” Charmaine asked when she picked up the call.

Molly groaned, bent down to check the stalls for any signs of life, and then sighed. “I’ve never seen so many blondes,” she
said. “And everyone just looks through me. It’s so weird.”

Charmaine made sympathetic noises. “I wish I were there.”

“Me, too. Do you think it’s possible that Brick Berlin is also
your
father?”

“That would explain my movie-star charisma,” Charmaine said. “I’m sorry everyone is still being so unfriendly. I thought Californians
were supposed to be really nice.”

“Right?” Molly peeled off a piece of her burger and popped it in her mouth. “They shouldn’t have time to be mean. They should
be out surfing.”

“You might have to reach out to
them
,” Charmaine suggested.

Molly had imagined Laurel chirping something similar, but when she’d glanced out at the open-air cafeteria where most upperclassmen
ate lunch, she simply couldn’t make herself do it. Everyone—especially Brooke, at her central table—seemed to be having a
blast. Whenever she pictured walking out there, she knew the noise would stop, each group would hold its breath until she
passed it by, and whichever one she picked would inevitably tell her there was no room, as when she’d sat down in math and
was told every empty seat was reserved.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Molly finally said. “You haven’t seen these people. They’re like mini Brookes.”

“All of them?”

“Most of them. The rest seem to flock to this black-haired girl who runs the TV station and is class president or something,
but she keeps staring at me like she’s waiting for me to apologize to her. I have no idea why.”

“Well, maybe you
should
apologize,” Charmaine said. “Just to make conversation. Look, I have to run—my mom needs me to babysit Eric—but remember
that you’re awesome. You might just need to start going up to people and beating them over the head with your awesomeness,
that’s all.”

“You might be biased,” Molly said. “But I promise I’ll get on that as soon as I’m done befriending the fixtures in the bathroom.”

“Call me later, okay?”

Molly recognized Charmaine’s concerned tone. It was
last employed the day of Laurel’s funeral, when Molly had insisted on going to Chick-fil-A on the way to the cemetery.

I have to get a grip
.
Things aren’t that bad. I just need a better attitude.

Laurel had been fond of telling Molly, whenever she was complaining about something, that all things came to an end eventually.
Molly repeated that mantra to herself the rest of the day until finally it came true and the last bell rang. She was proud
of keeping her composure, but she couldn’t pretend that her first day had gone well. For a student body of no doubt wealthy
and well-traveled kids, her classmates seemed remarkably horrified by proof that there was human life outside the Los Angeles
metro area. She felt completely isolated. And she dreaded doing it all over again tomorrow.

Molly deliberately lingered at her locker, calling Danny and leaving him a message when he didn’t answer, then shuffling out
to her car once the parking lot and the halls were as devoid as possible of people who wanted to stare and heckle. She had
to wait for Brooke to finish some Drama Club something-or-other. Brick, who had eaten breakfast with them—aka four giant multivitamins
washed down with a smoothie—greeted this scheduling problem with typical enthusiasm, waxing poetic about all the muscle-building
extracurriculars Molly could explore in her free time. But there was no way Molly was going to spend an extra minute inside
that school. She just wanted to turn up her iPod and sit in the Lexus, which had such aggres
sively tinted windows that it was the one place she could be sure absolutely no one was eyeballing her.

She dug around in her backpack for her car keys, but her hand couldn’t find them.

Of course
. So close, yet so far. Molly plopped her bag down on top of the Lexus and started taking things out of it with increasing
hysteria—her cell phone, her notebook, her history textbook—until it was empty. Completely empty. No keys.

Molly glared at the contents of her bag, now splayed across the hood of her car and on the dark asphalt, and burst into tears.

“Looking for these?”

Molly jumped and met the eyes of a tall, dark-haired boy wearing a T-shirt that read
PANTS
, and holding out the Lexus key chain.

“Oh, my God, thank you,” she said, trying to hide the fact that she was wiping tears off her cheeks. “Where did you find those?”