Classic (20 page)

“Molly!” he cried in a voice Jenny barely recognized. Did he sound… nervous?

She stood up, too, frowning at the girl. Molly was slender with chocolate brown hair to her shoulders and bright, quizzical
brown eyes. She wore jeans and an emerald green sweater with a puffy black parka unzipped and hanging open and a thermos in
her hands. She looked from Isaac to Jenny and then back again, her brows knitted in confusion.

“What are you doing here?” Isaac asked, stepping closer to the other girl and farther away from Jenny. A shiver went down
her spine, but she ignored it.

“I couldn’t not see you on Valentine’s Day,” Molly said. Her worried brown eyes shifted to Jenny, who felt more and more exposed
and uncomfortable the longer the moment dragged out. The girl’s eyes flicked back to Isaac. “I know you hate being sick, so
I brought you some of your favorite chicken soup.” She indicated the thermos she clutched between her hands. “But you’re…
um… all dressed up. At a dance.”

She didn’t say
with this girl
, but Jenny was pretty sure they all heard it anyway.

“Isaac,” Jenny said, choking a little bit on his name, “what’s going on?”

She knew. She just didn’t
want
to know. She didn’t want to believe it—but it was literally standing right in front of her. It was the way the other girl
was looking at him, the expectation and confusion and hurt in her brown eyes. Jenny could think of only one reason a girl
would show up at a ball, dressed so casually, bearing chicken soup for a guy who wasn’t even sick.

Her stomach hurt.

“Um, this is Jenny…” Isaac said, gesturing toward Jenny. His words trailed off.

“I’m Molly,” the other girl said, cocking her head slightly as she looked at Jenny. Her eyes traveled over Jenny’s curls,
her large chest, down the sleek front of her dress to her shoes and right back up again. Her gaze darkened. Jenny knew what
she was going to say next in the same way she knew that the sun was going to come up in the morning. “Isaac’s girlfriend.”

“You have a girlfriend.” Jenny couldn’t get the words to make sense. She felt tears threaten her eyes. “I can’t believe you!”
She could hardly breathe. “Is this the ‘thing you had to take care of’? Which you obviously
didn’t
. It was a total lie.”

“And you’re definitely not sick, Isaac,” Molly said, her voice sharpening. “You told me you thought you were dying. You said
you were stuck in bed and probably would be for the rest of the week, and that’s why you couldn’t come visit!”

“No, no,” Isaac said hurriedly. “Wait, you don’t understand!”

Jenny took a step away from him and suddenly everything made a horrible kind of sense. Isaac’s noticeable weirdness when she’d
mentioned the Valentine’s Day Ball in the first place. Had he been worried about his girlfriend then? When had he told Molly
he wasn’t going to go see her? She was willing to bet it was right around the time he started acting normal, sweet, and attentive
again.

Jenny shut her eyes for a moment, afraid the room might start spinning in time with her head. Why was she so consistently,
repeatedly wrong about guys? Epically, tragically wrong?

“I didn’t want to tell you I was feeling better,” Isaac was telling Molly. “I didn’t think I could drive all the way there….”

He was still lying. Was there anything he
hadn’t
lied about? Jenny backed away from the two of them, her stomach twisting, tears pricking the backs of her eyes. How could
she be so blind, over and over again? So completely clueless?

Her eyes scanned the party, desperate to find a shoulder to cry on. Her gaze landed on Brett’s distinctive hair in the crowd.
Brett was standing almost inside the plants near the windows, all alone. They met each other’s gaze across the sea of pink-lit
ferns. She started to move toward her friend.

But then something occurred to her. Brett’s strange reaction to Jenny’s use of the word
boyfriend.
Her deflating words at the Three-Legged Race. She’d seemed so wary, even concerned… almost as if she’d known the truth about
Isaac.

It hit Jenny like a tidal wave: she’d known. There was no
almost
about it. Her supposed friend had known Isaac was two-timing her, and she’d lied right to Jenny’s face.

Which meant that Jenny hadn’t just lost a boyfriend—she’d lost a friend. Isaac was a liar, but maybe her entire life at Waverly
was a lie, too.

She glared at Brett and then ran away before all the liars and cheaters and backstabbers could see her cry.

T
insley didn’t exactly
retreat
into the bathroom. She wasn’t one for slinking off. But she couldn’t deny that when she did go to the bathroom, at an unhurried
pace that would not have looked out of place on a catwalk, it was a relief to get a break from the collective evil eye that
was trained on her.

Oh, well.
All publicity is good publicity,
her father always said. Better that everyone should be talking about her than failing to notice her, she told herself, and
she tried to make herself believe it. She really did.

She looked at herself in the mirror as she washed her hands. Truth be told, she would rather be adored, but she’d make do
with what she had.
Not like you have much choice,
an inner voice whispered. Tinsley slapped off the faucet and reached for a paper towel.

A stall door opened behind her, and Isla walked out. For a moment, they just stared at each other through the bank of mirrors.

Isla recovered first. She raised her brows and walked toward Tinsley, stopping at the next sink over.

“I guess we’re even,” she said, but she didn’t sound triumphant. She sounded resigned.

Tinsley smiled wanly. Were they even? Isla had sold Tinsley out, consigned her to a month of hard labor, and then captured
the attention of all the guys at Waverly. And she hadn’t even done it by being cute and bubbly and genuine, like Jenny Humphrey
had. She’d done it by beating Tinsley at her own manipulative, backstabbing game. What had Tinsley done except expose Isla’s
past—which, if the reaction was anything to go by, was only going to make her more beloved and adored? Tinsley didn’t think
they were anything close to even.

But she also had no real interest in taking the game to another level. No wonder she felt so strange. Resignation wasn’t a
feeling she’d ever encountered before.

“I shouldn’t have done that to you,” Isla continued in a low voice. She didn’t look at Tinsley as she washed her hands. “I
kind of took the whole bad-girl thing too far. I just really wanted to start over, and I was trying way too hard.”

Tinsley opened her mouth to say something suitably cutting but shrugged instead. “If it’s any consolation, I never would have
suspected,” she said. “Your transformation is pretty stunning.”

“Thanks,” Isla said. She looked at Tinsley then, her expression wry. “I think.”

“Sure.” Tinsley flipped her hair back from her face. “I fully believed you were a devious, manipulative, scheming party girl,
and had been since birth.”

She didn’t say
like me.
But Isla smiled anyway. “That’s the nicest thing you could have said to me.”

Tinsley laughed softly and then nodded toward the door, motioning for Isla to walk in front of her.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,
she thought, keeping an eye on Isla’s back as they walked into the party. And maybe it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility
that dork-turned-schemer Isla Dresden, Tinsley’s biggest challenge yet, might be both.

“Ladies,” Heath said as they emerged, stepping forward with a glass of punch in each hand, “I hope you didn’t get into a catfight
in there. And if you did, I certainly hope you filmed it.”

Isla winked at Tinsley before gliding off toward a group of Owls from the jazz ensemble who were gazing at her in open adoration.
They
actually did erupt into spontaneous applause when she approached, but then, Isla’s transformation was probably their communal
wet dream.

“Cheers,” Heath said, handing Tinsley a glass of punch and redirecting her attention to his wicked cheekbones and Armani-clad
body. “Drink up. You look seriously sober.”

“I thought I’d be on your shit list after my slideshow,” Tinsley said, staring at the glass in her hand. “Is this drink spiked?”

“Of course the drink is spiked,” Heath replied, his green eyes twinkling. “But why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?”
He clanked their glasses together. “And I thought that slideshow
rocked. Who knew such hotness could come from such tragic origins? I might have to pay closer attention to the loser contingent
around here. Who knows what’s lurking under all that bad hair and all those baggy clothes?”

Tinsley considered him for a moment. “You thought it was funny?”

“Of course I thought it was funny. Please. She looked heinous,” he said.

“But she’s your precious little Isla,” Tinsley said, her bitterness more apparent than she’d intended. “You
rushed
over to ask her if she still had her stupid costume!”

Heath gazed at Tinsley, his handsome face amused. “Imagine how hot that costume would be on her
now
,” he said. “The tutu, particularly, especially if she wasn’t wearing any—”

Tinsley rolled her eyes and started to turn away, but Heath reached over and touched her arm. She stopped and looked at him.
The music was blaring, and a pack of drunken seniors had their arms flung around one another’s shoulders as they sang along—but
all Tinsley could see was Heath.

“Anyway,” he said more quietly. His gaze was warm. “She’s not
my
precious anything.”

“Uh-huh.” Tinsley took a careful sip of her drink, savoring the fruity punch and the kick of rum beneath, a Ferro specialty.
“You’ve been slobbering all over her like a rabid dog.”

“I slobber all over everyone,” he said matter-of-factly with a shrug. “I don’t like her or anything.” He smiled. “But you
thought I did, didn’t you? Finally, after all these years, I got your attention.”

Tinsley shook her head at him dismissively. But she was secretly more pleased than she wanted to admit. “How old are you?”
she asked, pretending to scoff. “You were mean to me to get me to notice you? What’s next, throwing sand at me in the sandbox?
Stealing my crayons?”

“Give me a break, Tinsley,” Heath retorted. He smirked. “Besides, it worked, didn’t it?”

“Not at all,” she lied. They both smiled. Tinsley tossed her hair back. “It just made me wonder what was wrong with you that
you thought that wannabe was so captivating. After all,” she said loftily, “I know who you lie awake at night and fantasize
about.” She moved closer and let their shoulders brush before drawing back. “You always have, and you always will.”

Heath leaned in and traced a finger down Tinsley’s bare arm. She shivered involuntarily. “We can take that out of the fantasy
realm any time you like, babe. Just say the word.”

“The word is
no,
you idiot,” Tinsley said with a laugh.

But she didn’t feel the need to walk away just yet, either.

B
rett pushed through the heavy glass doors and out into the cold night, leaving the noise of the dance behind her. She didn’t
think she could possibly feel worse after Sebastian had walked away, leaving her standing by herself. Until she saw the way
Jenny looked at her.

Jenny had taken off before Brett could do more than stare at her, leaving Brett to try to piece together what had happened.
Searching the crowd, she’d spotted Isaac with another girl and instantly figured it out. Clearly, Isaac hadn’t broken things
off with his girlfriend, and the whole thing must have come crashing down pretty quickly. Jenny obviously blamed Brett, and
how could Brett even argue with that? Look what
she had done! So she did the only thing she could—she went after Jenny. She ran all the way across campus, trying to catch
up with her.

Brett threw open the front doors of Dumbarton and ran inside, only a few steps behind.

“Wait!” she cried. Jenny obviously heard her. Her shoulders tensed. She didn’t turn around, but she stopped a few feet in
front of the common room.

“I’m so sorry,” Brett began, hurrying to Jenny’s side.

“How did you know?” Jenny refused to look at Brett. She stared straight ahead as if searching for answers on the common room
walls. “Did he tell you?”

“No.” Brett suddenly felt deeply ashamed of herself. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t even remember how she’d justified
looking at Isaac’s texts. She couldn’t justify any of her behavior lately. “I, um, saw a message on his phone.”

Jenny turned to look at her then, hurt and confusion making her brown eyes seem bigger and brighter than usual. She gave Brett
a questioning sort of look.

“I don’t know….” Brett said. She felt shaky. “I just… I never meant to lie to you, Jenny. I swear. He said that he was going
to break it off with her and tell you the truth. He promised!”

“Yeah, well…” Jenny swallowed, fighting back tears. “It turns out that Isaac is actually a big liar, so…”

“I never meant for you to find out like this,” Brett swore fervently. “I really thought he would tell you. I mean, he knew
I knew. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen.
I certainly didn’t think something like this…” Her voice trailed away.

Jenny let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a sob and walked into the common room. Brett followed. Jenny sat
down on one of the cozy navy blue couches and hugged herself.

“Her name is Molly,” she said. She looked at the thick carpet beneath her feet. Her voice was thick with misery. “She seemed
nice. He told her he was sick. She’s really mad at him, too. He lied to her.”

“Jenny…” Brett wanted to reach over and hug her, but Jenny’s arms were crossed, and Brett wasn’t sure how she would react.
Maybe she didn’t consider Brett a friend anymore. The very thought made Brett’s stomach ache. But there was nothing to do
but sit there, and wait.