“Wait. How’d you hear about it already?”
A melodic, singsong voice said, “Me, of course.”
I looked up to find a tall, wispy girl standing in the doorway with a coffin-shaped hard case in her hand.
Jake jumped to his feet and took the guitar case as he ushered her in. I raised my hand in greeting. “Hi, Clover.”
“Hey, Talia. I didn’t think you’d be here.” She glanced at Jake and arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow at him.
I hugged my knees. “Bianca kind of flaked on me.”
“Let me guess,” Clover said as she flipped up the latches of her case. “To hang with her boyfriend?” She pulled out a blue guitar and began tuning it. “Lame.”
A part of me felt like I needed to defend my best friend, but as Clover voiced my own sentiments, I kept my expression neutral and didn’t say anything.
I’d met her at the start of winter break and had hung out with her a lot over the last couple of weeks, but I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Clover Davies. On paper, it was easy to hate her. Her dad was Malcolm Davies, three-time Grammy Award winner and founder of Damaged Records. Her mom was a retired supermodel. She didn’t go to Westgate but was homeschooled by half a dozen tutors instead. I thought her eyes were kind of wide set and her neck was a little long, but there was something about her that made people turn and stare. And she always looked like designers came to her house and picked out clothes for her to wear. That day, she was dressed in what my friend Ally would’ve called “Boho chic”: a floral dress, long cardigan, and suede granny boots over cream-colored tights. Dark corkscrew curls were in an artfully messy updo with wisps framing her sweetheart-shaped faced, drawing attention to her large gray eyes. By comparison, my sweatshirt and jeans made me look like a mess.
But appearances and pedigree aside, I kind of liked Clover, too. She exuded an enviable confidence and said the kinds of things I wished I had the courage to say. Plus we shared the same level of disdain for Zack, albeit for different reasons. I didn’t like him because he was the ultimate poster child for Guys I Avoided at All Costs. She didn’t like him because all he cared about was getting close to her dad.
“Keith and Zack are having an epic screamfest down there,” she said as she finished tuning her guitar. “Do I even need to ask?” Jake shook his head, and she sighed. “Zack needs to get used to rejection. It’s part of the business.” Then with a nod in my direction she said, “Who’s at Northwestern?”
“Huh?” I looked down at my sweatshirt and tugged at it. “Oh, my cousin, Pete.”
“He’s the only member of her family she actually likes,” Jake said with a grin.
Clover nodded. “I’m digging the magenta. Looks good against the black.”
“Thanks.” My hand flew to my hair, and I twirled the dyed streak. I had a weird birthmark on my scalp that turned a patch of hair white. After being called “skunk girl” all through middle school, my mom finally let me dye it the summer before freshman year. I liked experimenting with different colors.
“Too bad you can’t keep it, though,” she said. “I heard your school frowns upon colorful self-expression.”
Jake smiled. “Oh, not Talia. She’s special.”
I rolled my eyes. “My mom worked it out with the administration,” I said. It didn’t hurt that my grandfather was on the school’s board of directors, either, but people didn’t really need to know that.
The door swung open, and Keith strode into the room. He went straight to the refrigerator and popped the tab on a can of soda before he said, “Okay. We’re done.”
“‘Done’ like you’re finished talking?” I said. “Or ‘done’ like done?”
“Just done. Well, for now, anyway.” He lifted his chin toward Clover. “Still feel like jamming? We’re short a guitarist.”
She played a few chords in succession before she bobbed her head. “Sure. You can’t let little setbacks ruin a rehearsal. Sometimes you’ve got to play through it.”
“You make it sound like a football injury,” Keith said with a sardonic smirk.
“Music’s a team sport,” she replied as she put her guitar strap over her head. “Right, Jake?”
As Jake sat on the drum throne behind his set and grinned at her, a weird feeling I couldn’t place settled in my stomach. I looked at each of them and frowned.
Jake and Clover spent a lot of time together and had a lot in common, so I should’ve expected inside jokes between them, too.
So why did I suddenly want to smack her?
Chapter Two
I pulled my car into my assigned space in the school lot as the first bell rang the next morning. I’d had a restless night full of crazy dreams, and I didn’t even hear my phone ding with my daily wake-up text from Jake. If my mom hadn’t stood over my bed screaming at me, I probably wouldn’t have made it to school before lunch.
At least my school uniform made it easy to decide what to wear. Not that I ever would’ve admitted that aloud.
I hated where the sophomore section of the parking lot was. Westgate Prep was on a well-manicured, sprawling campus that took up about fourteen acres near the Santa Monica Mountains, and while it was a pretty school, it also took forever to walk from one end to the other. And, of course, the sophomore lot was at the bottom of the hill and about as far away from the main building — and my homeroom class — as it could’ve possibly been. I had five minutes to trek uphill through the rest of the parking lot to get there.
The final bell rang as I turned into the breezeway. People around me ducked into their rooms to avoid being tardy, and I silently cursed. I knew I was already late, but a trip to the front office for a tardy slip would’ve taken at least another five minutes, while I was just a few seconds from the door.
It probably wasn’t the best way to start the first week back from winter break, but I took a chance and opened the door to homeroom, striding into class with my head held high. Mr. Jorgensen, one of the school deans and my European history teacher, paused from asking everyone to settle down, and I felt his eyes on me as I walked to my seat at the back of the class.
“How lovely of you to join us, Miss Nicoletti,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.
“Glad to be here, sir.” I risked looking at him with a confident smile to hide my apprehension.
Jorgensen opened and closed his mouth a few times like a freshly caught mackerel. I sat straight in my seat and gave him my full attention, careful not to let my smile waver. He stared at me before he resumed speaking to the class.
From the seat in front of me, Bianca flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder and turned. “One of these days,” she whispered, her brown eyes wide with concern, “he’s going to explode. Or have a heart attack. Maybe even both.”
I shook my head. “He’s harmless.”
“If it was anyone else,” she said, “he would’ve sent them up to the office. I can’t believe how much you get away with.”
“I was, what? Forty seconds late?” I settled into my seat. “Besides, it’s totally bogus. I was in the building at final bell.”
She let out a sigh and faced forward. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Bianca Sullivan may have been my best friend, but she preferred to fly under the radar. It wasn’t like she’d never been known to break any rules or anything, but she wasn’t one to test boundaries. She liked playing it safe.
Mr. Jorgensen never reprimanded me for my behavior, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by my classmates. Bianca and Ally said he was scared of me, but the reality was he and the rest of the administration were probably afraid of my mom, though it could’ve been my grandfather’s money and position of power influencing their leniency, too. I didn’t only get to sport a streak of whatever color I wanted in my hair, but I’d also managed to get away with wearing whatever shoes and jewelry I wanted, regardless of the appearance guidelines. I’d even been known to hike up my green-and-blue plaid skirt an inch or two just to see if anyone would say anything, but no one ever did. So although Jorgensen probably would’ve kicked out anyone else for waltzing in without a tardy slip a few seconds after the bell, it didn’t surprise me that he barely acknowledged my ever-so-slightly late arrival.