So this is love, p.19
So, This Is Love, page 19
Ayisha frowned. “I would’ve thought she’d have wanted to use her parents’ place.”
Before I could stop myself, I said, “That’s reserved for Arthur’s birthday party.”
Dark brown eyes zeroed in on me. “Arthur’s having a birthday party the same night as the Valentine’s Day Dance?” Ayisha asked, spotting the conflict with impressive speed.
I rolled my lips in on each other and bit down, wishing I hadn’t let that slip. I’d have told her eventually, of course, but only after I had determined what I was going to do.
Too late now, genius.
I nodded.
She shifted in her seat to nail me with a piercing look. “Finley, you’d better still be going to our dance. Which you are now cohead of.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“Finley.” Her tone was so firm I felt like I was back in preschool, when Ms. Cleveland caught me mixing all the Play-Doh colors together. “You’re planning to be there, right?”
I swallowed hard. What else could I say but “Right.”
* * *
“I have no idea how I’m going to be there and Arthur’s birthday party,” I whined, chewing on my left thumbnail as my right knee bobbed incessantly. I was seated on the edge of my dorm bed.
Petra didn’t bother to glance up from her latest novel. She’d gotten back to Barrington in the late afternoon, right before it got dark, and was seated in her favorite spot on her own bed.
“Who’s more important to you?” she asked plainly.
“They’re both important to me,” I insisted, briefly pausing from my disgusting anxiety chew to gesture. “Ayisha is my friend and has helped me so much, while Arthur is my—” I cut myself off. Then went back to chewing.
Now Petra glanced over the top of her book at me. “Friend?” she suggested in a way that said she clearly knew he was more. Or that I wanted him to be.
“Yes. Friend.” I tucked my left hand under my butt to stop myself. “I can’t choose between them. Ayisha’s going to need help to pull off the dance and I’m the one person here she can trust. We’ve already divided up the new stuff we have to do.” I wasn’t happy about having to go to do an on-site inspection of Nostos later this week. Mr. Mehdi had gone crazy with the homework! And I had yet to crack open On Love for Mr. Poisson’s class. I was doing better so far since I’d been back, and I wanted that to continue.
Still, I needed to pull my weight with the planning.
“It was her decision to take on that responsibility,” Petra said. “You didn’t want to be a part of that committee.”
“But I am.”
“Then go to the dance.”
“But it’s Arthur’s eighteenth birthday! And his family is coming in from out of the country, including his aunt Esha, who I really like.”
“Then go to Arthur’s birthday.”
“Ayisha will kill me!”
“This is why I stay away from people.” Petra turned a page in her book so she missed the look I gave her.
“Not helpful, Petra.”
“Maybe not for you, but it’s a great reminder for me,” she said, her eyes never leaving the page.
I reached across the divide between our two beds and laid an index finger in the interior spine of her book.
She looked up at me.
“Don’t think you can just go back to being my ghost roommate,” I told her. “You broke that barrier, so now we’re real roommates who talk to each other.”
She stared at me a long moment then she put a marker in her place and closed her book to pay direct attention to me with a patient sigh.
“What do you want me to say, Finley?”
“I don’t know. Maybe help me figure out a solution?”
“Don’t do either event. There. You have a solution. That’s what I would do.”
She started to reach for her book, but I put my hand over the cover.
“Okay,” I persisted. “Pretend for a moment that you like people. Or at least two people. And they’re both doing something important on the same day, and both want you there. What would you do?” She started to speak. “And don’t say you don’t like two people. This is pretend. In pretend, you do.”
She sighed.
After a moment’s consideration she said, “Start with one then go to another.”
“Which one first?”
“The dance. Once it gets going you won’t be needed as much.”
It was a logical option. Except, “I have to supervise cleanup.”
“Can you delegate that?”
I bit my lip. “I could ask Gaines . . .”
“Is he still part of the committee?” she asked in surprise.
“Possibly. He wasn’t at the meeting, but Ms. Martinez didn’t say he’d left with Bronwyn and Josie.”
Petra tipped her head to one side. Faintly, because this was Petra. But the look said she found this interesting. “Then ask him.”
That was a good idea.
I didn’t have his contact info.
Fortunately, I knew where he would be this evening: The same place as me. And Arthur.
Twenty-Six
Part of our coursework in Dr. Oswald’s Astronomy class was a night class trip to Barrington’s planetarium.
Having a campus as big as Barrington, which was close to a state park near Avon, meant there was less light pollution here.
This was also the only spot on the campus opened to the public from time to time.
Or it had been until Oswald had them close it down. As the head teacher of Astronomy for the school, part of her responsibilities included supervision of the planetarium.
The previous teachers had all opened the building up to outside visitors for special events. Oswald thought it was too much of a hassle.
That meant no more public visits, other than school-recruitment private tours.
The private class visits, however, were one of the opportunities that had most appealed to me when I first read the brochure on the school. There had been a four-page photo spread with the space for pics dedicated to the telescope and main dome room for 360-degree viewing.
I’d been entranced.
While I may not have the gift of knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life by the age of sixteen, I did know that I loved astronomy.
It was something Dad and I used to do together when I was younger. Go outside town where it could be unbelievably dark and set up his telescope to gaze up at the heavens above. His scope was pretty basic six-inch aperture, so we looked at the nearest planets or the moon or the occasional fuzzy gray shape of a nebula.
I loved it.
We hadn’t done it in a while. Not for a couple years, maybe longer. I’d gotten busy and he stopped asking. Now, though, he would have the chance to do it again with the new baby, once they weren’t a baby anymore, of course. It made me happy for him. I also wished I could bring Dad here to the planetarium. Maybe I could convince Oswald to open it up when he and Mom came to get me at the end of the semester.
It’s a testament to how much stuff was going on in my life that I’d forgotten about this night visit. When Oswald had announced the reminder earlier today in class, I’d felt a surge of excitement that caught Arthur’s eye. He laughed at my little jump.
“I gather you’re pleased?” he’d said to me in a low voice from across the aisle.
I nodded enthusiastically and whispered back, “My calendar is marked!”
He grinned at me. “Shall we meet there?”
The sarcastic part of me would have replied, Well, duh. We’re both going. But my heart wouldn’t allow me to be snarky to Arthur. Not now, when we were still tentatively trying to find our way together, and his voice held the slightest tremor of uncertainty that melted me.
I smiled and nodded. “Front doors by seven forty-five?”
He drew in a breath to respond when Oswald’s sharp voice stopped him:
“Mr. Chakrabarti Watercress and Ms. Brown.”
We both quickly turned to find Oswald only a few steps away in the desk aisle, staring sternly at us through her thick glasses. While some teachers couldn’t intimidate a kitten (I pictured Mr. Poisson), I was certain Oswald could make a charging cougar reconsider.
“This is a classroom, not a dating app!” she reminded, earning giggles from the other students.
A chastened Arthur and I spun to face forward.
“Socialize on your own time,” she added for good measure before pivoting to walk back to the long table at the front of the room.
My cheeks were on fire. A quick glance told me Arthur’s were too.
But a part of me was also giddy. We were going to meet up!
As friends, of course.
Whatever.
It was a good thing. It meant we were seeing each other again, albeit with the shhhh-ing Dr. Oswald supervising, and the rest of our classmates.
But I would get to be with him.
I’d spent the hours after my last class counting down to when I could leave for the tour without being embarrassingly early. Also changing my clothes three times—searching for the balance between looking like I’d put in an effort and not looking like I put in any effort—until an annoyed Petra rolled her eyes and told me to “just go already.”
It was one of our more authentically roommate-ish exchanges.
A part of me hoped to run into Arthur as I exited Charity House to start the walk along the concrete pathway that wound across the campus from the dorms to the planetarium itself. However, when I spotted two figures ahead of me on the path, neither was Arthur.
They were Bronwyn and Gaines.
Having a pretty heated argument, by the looks of it. Though as I neared, I realized it was more Bronwyn berating him, complete with jabbing finger and a wicked scowl, while Gaines appeared to be taking it.
Guess she hadn’t dropped out of school after all.
Too bad.
I was surprised to see them together again after our lunch at Embers. Then for a moment I had an uncomfortable thought: what if the only reason Gaines had been acting as my friend was because of Bronwyn’s orders, like he was a spy for her. That had been what she said at the Bu cabin, after all, when she’d been in her fiery snit.
Yet, deep down, I found that hard to believe. It was so . . . extra, of her and him. And while both had shown they knew how to play with drama—and for Bronwyn it was a comfortable headspace—Gaines didn’t feel the same. I’d seen the conflict in him. At Embers he’d been genuine, I’d bet on it.
They heard my footsteps and turned and despite the poor lighting of the spot where they were standing, the loathing in Bronwyn’s blue eyes was breathtaking.
I almost rocked back, but recovered swiftly, and did my best to be cool. Still, it wasn’t easy to be on the receiving end of that much venom.
Luckily, she didn’t come after me.
Much like she had when our paths crossed at the ski lodge, Bronwyn spun away from Gaines—and me—and stalked away in the opposite direction without a word.
Huh. Not what I expected when I imagined the moment of our first post—ski trip encounter.
“Hey,” Gaines said, having waited for me, his hands jammed in his long coat’s pockets, his breath visible. His energy was more mellow than usual.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I told him, nodding after Bronwyn’s retreating figure, already enveloped by shadows.
“It’s fine.” He scratched the stubble on his square chin. “She was just giving me more shit because she found out that I had lunch with ‘the Christmas Girls’ and Petra back at Lancaster.”
I grinned. “I’m guessing Ayisha and I are the Christmas Girls.”
He smiled in return. “It’s my own personal nickname. What do you think?” His eyes twinkled then.
“Not bad.”
We fell in step. Hopefully Bronwyn would already be inside by the time we reached the planetarium, and, if I was going to make impossible wishes, that she would stay away from me for the whole field trip. Or forever.
“Are you the one who came up with hashtag ‘PunchBowl’?” I asked, pulling the ends of my red beanie down around my already freezing ears.
He lowered his voice to be safe. “Not if the Bron is the one asking. She’s not keen on it, so let’s keep that origin story on the down-low.”
I raised my gloved hand. “I promise not to tell her.”
“Much appreciated.”
We walked a little farther in silence until I remembered to ask him to help out at the end of the dance and he agreed with a self-deprecating smile.
“It’s not like I’ll be going with a girl,” he added.
That surprised me. He was cute and could be personable when he wanted, though sometimes he was goofy or foolish. I assumed girls would have lined up for him. And now that I thought about it, I recalled seeing him chatting with a variety of girls. I’d viewed it as flirtation, but now I wasn’t so sure.
To test the waters I suggested, “Why don’t you ask Petra to go with you?”
His eyes became hooded and he shook his head. “Bron-Bron would have me eviscerated.”
I frowned, not expecting that. “Why?”
“You may be resting comfortably in the number one position on her Enemies List for now,” he said, raising his hand over his head, “but Petra had held the spot for a lot longer.”
That startled me. “Really? Why?” I hadn’t even been aware the two knew each other until Scotty’s party when Bronwyn had snapped at Petra in a way that spoke to familiarity.
His lips pursed. “That’s high drama from our younger years.”
“I’m listening.”
“You already know we all grew up together out in Edge Hill. It’s a super-tight community, not just the kids but our parents too. Sometimes it gets a little too tight, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I grew up in a town about half that size.”
“Right. Then you get it. Everybody grows up with each other. In the case of Petra and Bronwyn, their moms were super close. BFFs since they were little. Petra and Bronwyn grew up together since they were babies.”
“I can’t think of two people less likely to interact. Except maybe me and Bronwyn.”
“They were practically sisters. Then Petra’s parents got divorced about five years ago, and that’s when everything started changing, not just with the adults, but with all of us too.”
“Just because someone’s parents got divorced?” I queried, perplexed.
“It’s why they got divorced,” he clarified. “Petra’s mom had an affair with Bronwyn’s dad.”
“Ohhhhh . . .” I cringed. Yikes. I may not like Bronwyn—at all—but that sounded brutal. Heck, just having my parents separate over the holidays had been enough to throw me off, and that was without any infidelity! But to have it be with someone close to the family?
Yeah. That sucked. For her and for Petra.
Gaines continued, “Bron took it way hard. She’d always acted like her dad was a god.”
I was tempted to point out that Petra had gone through the same thing with her mother and that couldn’t have been easy for her, either.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The Bergeracs split up. The Campbells didn’t. Though I personally think they should have. The tension’s so bad, I don’t go over there anymore.” He shuddered and grimaced. “Mr. Bergerac moved to Boston and a couple years later, Mrs. Bergerac married Scotty’s dad.”
“That’s intense. But what does that have to do with you and Petra?”
I was surprised when I saw a blush creeping up his neck when we passed under a pool of lamplight along the path. “Bronwyn basically took out all of her mom’s anger on Petra and made it so no one in her circle would talk with her.”
“Including you?” I guessed, feeling a surge of hurt on my roommate’s behalf.
He nodded. “Look, I’m not proud of it,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “But she basically said we all had to choose.”
“And you chose Bronwyn.”
“Petra’s not the easiest person,” he said.
My look was incredulous. “Compared to Bronwyn?”
“Yeah, I get it.” He ducked his head, embarrassed. “But you’re seeing everyone now, not then. The Bron can be a lotta fun when she wants to be.” He paused as if many other moments danced across his memory. He shook his head. “Anyway, Petra retreated into her room and books and became harder and harder to talk to. Last year at Barrington, she didn’t even have a roommate the whole time. And she took most of her classes online.”
“Wait, she takes online classes at a prep school?”
“Her mom and dad travel all the time. They worked out some kind of deal with Barrington. I’m pretty sure it involved a major donation.”
“That’s so wild . . .” Then a thought occurred to me. “I wonder why she got a roommate this semester.”
“That, young Fin, I do not know. We haven’t talked in a long time. I used to like her better than the Bron. But . . .”
“Are you going to be friends now?”
I wasn’t sure that was even possible, given Petra’s reactions whenever Gaines’s name was brought up in conversation.
He lifted his shoulders. “Another thing I have no idea about.”
“Do you want to be?” I pressed.
I wished I could’ve seen his expression but we were in one of the shadowy parts of the walk. “Honestly, I don’t know.” His voice was tighter than usual for him. “Maybe. It was cool hanging out with her at Embers. But I think she only accepted me because I was with you and Ayisha. I’m not sure she’d let me hang out with her if you two weren’t there. Plus, there’s the Bron to consider.”
“She wouldn’t like it.”
His laugh was short. “My status on her shit list would become permanent.”
Before I could stop myself, I said, “That’s reserved for Arthur’s birthday party.”
Dark brown eyes zeroed in on me. “Arthur’s having a birthday party the same night as the Valentine’s Day Dance?” Ayisha asked, spotting the conflict with impressive speed.
I rolled my lips in on each other and bit down, wishing I hadn’t let that slip. I’d have told her eventually, of course, but only after I had determined what I was going to do.
Too late now, genius.
I nodded.
She shifted in her seat to nail me with a piercing look. “Finley, you’d better still be going to our dance. Which you are now cohead of.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“Finley.” Her tone was so firm I felt like I was back in preschool, when Ms. Cleveland caught me mixing all the Play-Doh colors together. “You’re planning to be there, right?”
I swallowed hard. What else could I say but “Right.”
* * *
“I have no idea how I’m going to be there and Arthur’s birthday party,” I whined, chewing on my left thumbnail as my right knee bobbed incessantly. I was seated on the edge of my dorm bed.
Petra didn’t bother to glance up from her latest novel. She’d gotten back to Barrington in the late afternoon, right before it got dark, and was seated in her favorite spot on her own bed.
“Who’s more important to you?” she asked plainly.
“They’re both important to me,” I insisted, briefly pausing from my disgusting anxiety chew to gesture. “Ayisha is my friend and has helped me so much, while Arthur is my—” I cut myself off. Then went back to chewing.
Now Petra glanced over the top of her book at me. “Friend?” she suggested in a way that said she clearly knew he was more. Or that I wanted him to be.
“Yes. Friend.” I tucked my left hand under my butt to stop myself. “I can’t choose between them. Ayisha’s going to need help to pull off the dance and I’m the one person here she can trust. We’ve already divided up the new stuff we have to do.” I wasn’t happy about having to go to do an on-site inspection of Nostos later this week. Mr. Mehdi had gone crazy with the homework! And I had yet to crack open On Love for Mr. Poisson’s class. I was doing better so far since I’d been back, and I wanted that to continue.
Still, I needed to pull my weight with the planning.
“It was her decision to take on that responsibility,” Petra said. “You didn’t want to be a part of that committee.”
“But I am.”
“Then go to the dance.”
“But it’s Arthur’s eighteenth birthday! And his family is coming in from out of the country, including his aunt Esha, who I really like.”
“Then go to Arthur’s birthday.”
“Ayisha will kill me!”
“This is why I stay away from people.” Petra turned a page in her book so she missed the look I gave her.
“Not helpful, Petra.”
“Maybe not for you, but it’s a great reminder for me,” she said, her eyes never leaving the page.
I reached across the divide between our two beds and laid an index finger in the interior spine of her book.
She looked up at me.
“Don’t think you can just go back to being my ghost roommate,” I told her. “You broke that barrier, so now we’re real roommates who talk to each other.”
She stared at me a long moment then she put a marker in her place and closed her book to pay direct attention to me with a patient sigh.
“What do you want me to say, Finley?”
“I don’t know. Maybe help me figure out a solution?”
“Don’t do either event. There. You have a solution. That’s what I would do.”
She started to reach for her book, but I put my hand over the cover.
“Okay,” I persisted. “Pretend for a moment that you like people. Or at least two people. And they’re both doing something important on the same day, and both want you there. What would you do?” She started to speak. “And don’t say you don’t like two people. This is pretend. In pretend, you do.”
She sighed.
After a moment’s consideration she said, “Start with one then go to another.”
“Which one first?”
“The dance. Once it gets going you won’t be needed as much.”
It was a logical option. Except, “I have to supervise cleanup.”
“Can you delegate that?”
I bit my lip. “I could ask Gaines . . .”
“Is he still part of the committee?” she asked in surprise.
“Possibly. He wasn’t at the meeting, but Ms. Martinez didn’t say he’d left with Bronwyn and Josie.”
Petra tipped her head to one side. Faintly, because this was Petra. But the look said she found this interesting. “Then ask him.”
That was a good idea.
I didn’t have his contact info.
Fortunately, I knew where he would be this evening: The same place as me. And Arthur.
Twenty-Six
Part of our coursework in Dr. Oswald’s Astronomy class was a night class trip to Barrington’s planetarium.
Having a campus as big as Barrington, which was close to a state park near Avon, meant there was less light pollution here.
This was also the only spot on the campus opened to the public from time to time.
Or it had been until Oswald had them close it down. As the head teacher of Astronomy for the school, part of her responsibilities included supervision of the planetarium.
The previous teachers had all opened the building up to outside visitors for special events. Oswald thought it was too much of a hassle.
That meant no more public visits, other than school-recruitment private tours.
The private class visits, however, were one of the opportunities that had most appealed to me when I first read the brochure on the school. There had been a four-page photo spread with the space for pics dedicated to the telescope and main dome room for 360-degree viewing.
I’d been entranced.
While I may not have the gift of knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life by the age of sixteen, I did know that I loved astronomy.
It was something Dad and I used to do together when I was younger. Go outside town where it could be unbelievably dark and set up his telescope to gaze up at the heavens above. His scope was pretty basic six-inch aperture, so we looked at the nearest planets or the moon or the occasional fuzzy gray shape of a nebula.
I loved it.
We hadn’t done it in a while. Not for a couple years, maybe longer. I’d gotten busy and he stopped asking. Now, though, he would have the chance to do it again with the new baby, once they weren’t a baby anymore, of course. It made me happy for him. I also wished I could bring Dad here to the planetarium. Maybe I could convince Oswald to open it up when he and Mom came to get me at the end of the semester.
It’s a testament to how much stuff was going on in my life that I’d forgotten about this night visit. When Oswald had announced the reminder earlier today in class, I’d felt a surge of excitement that caught Arthur’s eye. He laughed at my little jump.
“I gather you’re pleased?” he’d said to me in a low voice from across the aisle.
I nodded enthusiastically and whispered back, “My calendar is marked!”
He grinned at me. “Shall we meet there?”
The sarcastic part of me would have replied, Well, duh. We’re both going. But my heart wouldn’t allow me to be snarky to Arthur. Not now, when we were still tentatively trying to find our way together, and his voice held the slightest tremor of uncertainty that melted me.
I smiled and nodded. “Front doors by seven forty-five?”
He drew in a breath to respond when Oswald’s sharp voice stopped him:
“Mr. Chakrabarti Watercress and Ms. Brown.”
We both quickly turned to find Oswald only a few steps away in the desk aisle, staring sternly at us through her thick glasses. While some teachers couldn’t intimidate a kitten (I pictured Mr. Poisson), I was certain Oswald could make a charging cougar reconsider.
“This is a classroom, not a dating app!” she reminded, earning giggles from the other students.
A chastened Arthur and I spun to face forward.
“Socialize on your own time,” she added for good measure before pivoting to walk back to the long table at the front of the room.
My cheeks were on fire. A quick glance told me Arthur’s were too.
But a part of me was also giddy. We were going to meet up!
As friends, of course.
Whatever.
It was a good thing. It meant we were seeing each other again, albeit with the shhhh-ing Dr. Oswald supervising, and the rest of our classmates.
But I would get to be with him.
I’d spent the hours after my last class counting down to when I could leave for the tour without being embarrassingly early. Also changing my clothes three times—searching for the balance between looking like I’d put in an effort and not looking like I put in any effort—until an annoyed Petra rolled her eyes and told me to “just go already.”
It was one of our more authentically roommate-ish exchanges.
A part of me hoped to run into Arthur as I exited Charity House to start the walk along the concrete pathway that wound across the campus from the dorms to the planetarium itself. However, when I spotted two figures ahead of me on the path, neither was Arthur.
They were Bronwyn and Gaines.
Having a pretty heated argument, by the looks of it. Though as I neared, I realized it was more Bronwyn berating him, complete with jabbing finger and a wicked scowl, while Gaines appeared to be taking it.
Guess she hadn’t dropped out of school after all.
Too bad.
I was surprised to see them together again after our lunch at Embers. Then for a moment I had an uncomfortable thought: what if the only reason Gaines had been acting as my friend was because of Bronwyn’s orders, like he was a spy for her. That had been what she said at the Bu cabin, after all, when she’d been in her fiery snit.
Yet, deep down, I found that hard to believe. It was so . . . extra, of her and him. And while both had shown they knew how to play with drama—and for Bronwyn it was a comfortable headspace—Gaines didn’t feel the same. I’d seen the conflict in him. At Embers he’d been genuine, I’d bet on it.
They heard my footsteps and turned and despite the poor lighting of the spot where they were standing, the loathing in Bronwyn’s blue eyes was breathtaking.
I almost rocked back, but recovered swiftly, and did my best to be cool. Still, it wasn’t easy to be on the receiving end of that much venom.
Luckily, she didn’t come after me.
Much like she had when our paths crossed at the ski lodge, Bronwyn spun away from Gaines—and me—and stalked away in the opposite direction without a word.
Huh. Not what I expected when I imagined the moment of our first post—ski trip encounter.
“Hey,” Gaines said, having waited for me, his hands jammed in his long coat’s pockets, his breath visible. His energy was more mellow than usual.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I told him, nodding after Bronwyn’s retreating figure, already enveloped by shadows.
“It’s fine.” He scratched the stubble on his square chin. “She was just giving me more shit because she found out that I had lunch with ‘the Christmas Girls’ and Petra back at Lancaster.”
I grinned. “I’m guessing Ayisha and I are the Christmas Girls.”
He smiled in return. “It’s my own personal nickname. What do you think?” His eyes twinkled then.
“Not bad.”
We fell in step. Hopefully Bronwyn would already be inside by the time we reached the planetarium, and, if I was going to make impossible wishes, that she would stay away from me for the whole field trip. Or forever.
“Are you the one who came up with hashtag ‘PunchBowl’?” I asked, pulling the ends of my red beanie down around my already freezing ears.
He lowered his voice to be safe. “Not if the Bron is the one asking. She’s not keen on it, so let’s keep that origin story on the down-low.”
I raised my gloved hand. “I promise not to tell her.”
“Much appreciated.”
We walked a little farther in silence until I remembered to ask him to help out at the end of the dance and he agreed with a self-deprecating smile.
“It’s not like I’ll be going with a girl,” he added.
That surprised me. He was cute and could be personable when he wanted, though sometimes he was goofy or foolish. I assumed girls would have lined up for him. And now that I thought about it, I recalled seeing him chatting with a variety of girls. I’d viewed it as flirtation, but now I wasn’t so sure.
To test the waters I suggested, “Why don’t you ask Petra to go with you?”
His eyes became hooded and he shook his head. “Bron-Bron would have me eviscerated.”
I frowned, not expecting that. “Why?”
“You may be resting comfortably in the number one position on her Enemies List for now,” he said, raising his hand over his head, “but Petra had held the spot for a lot longer.”
That startled me. “Really? Why?” I hadn’t even been aware the two knew each other until Scotty’s party when Bronwyn had snapped at Petra in a way that spoke to familiarity.
His lips pursed. “That’s high drama from our younger years.”
“I’m listening.”
“You already know we all grew up together out in Edge Hill. It’s a super-tight community, not just the kids but our parents too. Sometimes it gets a little too tight, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I grew up in a town about half that size.”
“Right. Then you get it. Everybody grows up with each other. In the case of Petra and Bronwyn, their moms were super close. BFFs since they were little. Petra and Bronwyn grew up together since they were babies.”
“I can’t think of two people less likely to interact. Except maybe me and Bronwyn.”
“They were practically sisters. Then Petra’s parents got divorced about five years ago, and that’s when everything started changing, not just with the adults, but with all of us too.”
“Just because someone’s parents got divorced?” I queried, perplexed.
“It’s why they got divorced,” he clarified. “Petra’s mom had an affair with Bronwyn’s dad.”
“Ohhhhh . . .” I cringed. Yikes. I may not like Bronwyn—at all—but that sounded brutal. Heck, just having my parents separate over the holidays had been enough to throw me off, and that was without any infidelity! But to have it be with someone close to the family?
Yeah. That sucked. For her and for Petra.
Gaines continued, “Bron took it way hard. She’d always acted like her dad was a god.”
I was tempted to point out that Petra had gone through the same thing with her mother and that couldn’t have been easy for her, either.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The Bergeracs split up. The Campbells didn’t. Though I personally think they should have. The tension’s so bad, I don’t go over there anymore.” He shuddered and grimaced. “Mr. Bergerac moved to Boston and a couple years later, Mrs. Bergerac married Scotty’s dad.”
“That’s intense. But what does that have to do with you and Petra?”
I was surprised when I saw a blush creeping up his neck when we passed under a pool of lamplight along the path. “Bronwyn basically took out all of her mom’s anger on Petra and made it so no one in her circle would talk with her.”
“Including you?” I guessed, feeling a surge of hurt on my roommate’s behalf.
He nodded. “Look, I’m not proud of it,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “But she basically said we all had to choose.”
“And you chose Bronwyn.”
“Petra’s not the easiest person,” he said.
My look was incredulous. “Compared to Bronwyn?”
“Yeah, I get it.” He ducked his head, embarrassed. “But you’re seeing everyone now, not then. The Bron can be a lotta fun when she wants to be.” He paused as if many other moments danced across his memory. He shook his head. “Anyway, Petra retreated into her room and books and became harder and harder to talk to. Last year at Barrington, she didn’t even have a roommate the whole time. And she took most of her classes online.”
“Wait, she takes online classes at a prep school?”
“Her mom and dad travel all the time. They worked out some kind of deal with Barrington. I’m pretty sure it involved a major donation.”
“That’s so wild . . .” Then a thought occurred to me. “I wonder why she got a roommate this semester.”
“That, young Fin, I do not know. We haven’t talked in a long time. I used to like her better than the Bron. But . . .”
“Are you going to be friends now?”
I wasn’t sure that was even possible, given Petra’s reactions whenever Gaines’s name was brought up in conversation.
He lifted his shoulders. “Another thing I have no idea about.”
“Do you want to be?” I pressed.
I wished I could’ve seen his expression but we were in one of the shadowy parts of the walk. “Honestly, I don’t know.” His voice was tighter than usual for him. “Maybe. It was cool hanging out with her at Embers. But I think she only accepted me because I was with you and Ayisha. I’m not sure she’d let me hang out with her if you two weren’t there. Plus, there’s the Bron to consider.”
“She wouldn’t like it.”
His laugh was short. “My status on her shit list would become permanent.”
