Wrong About the Guy (24 page)

T
he front office wasn't as crazy as you'd expect on the first day of school, which seemed to confirm Coral Tree Prep's reputation as “a well-oiled machine.”

That was a direct quote from the Private School Confidential website I had stumbled across when I first Googled Coral Tree—right after my parents told me and my three sisters we'd be transferring there in the fall. Since it was on the other side of the country from where we'd been living—from where I'd lived my entire life—I couldn't exactly check it myself, and I was desperate for more information.

True to the school's reputation, the administrator in the office was brisk and efficient and had quickly printed up and handed me and Juliana each a class list and a map of the school.

“You okay?” I asked Juliana, as she stared at the map
like it was written in some foreign language. She started and looked up at me, slightly panicked. Juliana's a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger—mostly because she's the opposite of cynical and I'm the opposite of the opposite of cynical.

Because we're so close in age, people frequently ask if the two of us are twins. It's lucky for me we're not, because if we
were
, Juliana would be The Pretty One. She and I do look a lot alike, but there are infinitesimal differences—her eyes are just a touch wider apart, her hair a bit silkier, her lips fuller—and all these little changes add up to her being truly beautiful and my being reasonably cute. On a good day. When the light hits me right.

“It'll all be fine,” Juliana said faintly.

“Yeah,” I said, with no more conviction. “Anyway, I'd better run. My first class is on the other side of the building.” I squinted at the map. “I think.”

She squeezed my arm. “Good luck.”

“Find me at lunch, okay? I'll be the one sitting by herself.”

“You'll make friends, Elise,” she said. “I know you will.”

“Just
find
me.” I took a deep breath and plunged out of the office and into the hallway—and instantly hit someone with the door. “Sorry!” I said, cringing.

The girl I'd hit turned, rubbing her hip. She wore an incredibly short miniskirt, tight black boots that came
up almost to her knees, and a spaghetti-strap tank top. It was an outfit more suited for a nightclub than a day of classes, but I had to admit she had the right body for it. Her blond hair was beautifully cut, highlighted, and styled, and the makeup she wore really played up her pretty blue eyes and perfect little nose. Which was scrunched up now in disdain as she surveyed me and bleated out a loud and annoyed “FAIL!”

The girl standing with her said, “Oh my God, are you okay?” in pretty much the tone you'd use if someone you cared about had just been hit by a speeding pickup truck right in front of you.

It hadn't been
that
hard a bump, but I held my hands up apologetically. “Epic fail. I know. Sorry.”

The girl I'd hit raised an eyebrow. “At least you're honest.”

“At least,” I agreed. “Hey, do you happen to know where room twenty-three is? I have English there in, like, two minutes and I don't know my way around. I'm new here.”

The other girl said, “I'm in that class, too.” Her hair was brown instead of blond and her eyes hazel instead of blue, but the two girls' long, choppy manes and skinny bodies had been cast from the same basic mold. “You can follow me. See you later, Chels.”

“Yeah—wait, hold on a sec.” Chels—or whatever her name was—pulled her friend toward her and
whispered something in her ear. Her friend's eyes darted toward me briefly, but long enough to make me glance down at my old straight-leg jeans and my
THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE
T-shirt and feel like I shouldn't have worn either.

The two girls giggled and broke apart.

“I know, right?” the friend said. “See you,” she said to Chels and immediately headed down the hallway, calling brusquely over her shoulder, “Hurry up. It's on the other side of the building and you
don't
want to be late for Ms. Phillips's class.”

“She scary?” I asked, scuttling to keep up.

“She just gets off on handing out EMDs.”

“EMDs?” I repeated.

“Early morning detentions. You have to come in at, like, seven in the morning and help clean up and stuff like that. Sucks.”

“What's your name?” I asked, dodging a group of girls in cheerleader outfits.

“Gifford.”
Really? Gifford?
“And that was Chelsea you hit with the door. You really should be more careful.”

“I'm Elise,” I said, even though she hadn't asked. “You guys in eleventh grade, too?”

“Yeah. So you're new, huh? Where're you from?”

“Amherst, Mass.”

She actually showed some interest. “That near Harvard?”

“No. But Amherst College is there. And UMass.”

She dismissed that with an uninterested wave. “You get snow there?”

“It's Massachusetts,” I said. “Of course we do. Did.”

“So do you ski?”

“Not much.” My parents didn't, and the one time they tried to take us it was so expensive that they never repeated the experiment.

“We go to Park City every Christmas break,” Gifford said. “But this year my mother thought maybe we should try Vail. Or maybe Austria. Just for a change, you know?”

I didn't know. But I nodded like I did.

“You see the same people at Park City every year,” she said. “I get sick of it. It's like Maui at Christmas, you know?”

I wished she'd stop saying “You know?”

Fortunately, we had reached room 23. “In here,” said Gifford. She opened the door and went in, successfully communicating that her mentoring ended at the room's threshold.

Over the course of the next four hours, I discovered that:

   
1. Classes at Coral Tree Prep were really small. When we got to English, I was worried that half the class would get EMDs or whatever they were called because there were fewer than a dozen kids
in the room. But when Ms. Phillips came in, she said, “Good—everyone's here, let's get started,” and I realized that
was
the class.

   
2. The campus grounds were unbelievably green and seemed to stretch on for acres. I kept gazing out the window, wishing I could escape and go rolling down the grassy hills that lined the fields.

   
3. Teachers at Coral Tree Prep didn't like you to stare out the window and would tell you so in front of the entire class who would then all turn and stare at The New Girl Who Wasn't Paying Attention.

   
4. Everyone at Coral Tree Prep was good-looking. Really. Everyone. I didn't see a single fat or ugly kid all morning. Maybe they just locked them up at registration and didn't let them out again until graduation.

   
5. Girls here wore every kind of footwear imaginable, from flip-flops to spike-heeled mules to UGG boots (despite the sunny, 80-degree weather), EXCEPT for sneakers. I guess those marked you as fashion-impaired.

   
6. I was wearing sneakers.

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