All That Glitters Read online

  “Jade Moodswing?” my mom asked, cutting delicately into a slice of heirloom tomato pizza. “I just saw on TV that she was involved somehow with the president of Belgium.”

  “Purely speculation,” Feb said. “Jade has already said pas de comment to Le Figaro.” I bit back a laugh. Leave it to Feb to get involved in an international social scandal.

  As we polished off the rest of the Otto feast, I got a slew of parting words of wisdom from each of my family members.

  “Find your way to your classes first,” Feb said after a bite of olive oil ice cream. “Then find out where your friends hang between classes. Every girl in that school knows how crucial it is to mark territory. And you know what they say: location, location, location.”

  “One word,” Patch said, pointing his finger at me with a half-joking grin. “Upperclassmen.”

  “Study hard,” my mom said, unabashedly tearing up now and using her napkin to wipe her eyes. “And show the school your beautiful smile.”

  My father looked at me last. “Just be yourself, Flan. Follow that advice and a Flood has nothing to worry about.”

  I leaned back in my chair and breathed a sigh of relief. I could always count on my family for good, calming advice when I needed it.

  So why did Kennedy’s mocking face keep popping into my head?

  Chapter 3

  Weren’t Rules Made to be Broken?

  Bright and early the next morning, I clung for my life to the overhead bar on the beyond crowded uptown 4 train. Usually I took a cab to school, but since I was all about fresh starts these days, I figured I’d start by breaking in my Metrocard.

  Then again, maybe I should have known that expressing my independence via mass transit wasn’t such a good idea, given how my morning had started out. So far, Noodles had turned the brand-new Bendel’s cashmere socks Feb had given to me for Christmas into an argyle war zone on my bedroom floor. My flatiron had short-circuited the left side of our house, so I couldn’t even make coffee or pop in my usual multigrain toast for a quick peanut butter and banana sandwich. Not that I felt like eating much anyway. My stomach felt like it might be tied permanently in a knot the size of Feb’s green batik head scarf.

  Now I was squished up against about a hundred other commuters, probably wrinkling version 2.0 of my back-to-school outfit (the studded leggings hanging in my closet just didn’t look as appealing after I’d seen them in Kennedy’s shopping bag).

  Luckily Camille and SBB had been there to do conference call triage, and we’d come up with a pretty sweet alternative. I’d decided to go with the same notched blazer and white tank, but I paired them with gray leggings and a just-long-enough pleated schoolgirl skirt. The skirt had been my find of the season at Beacon’s Closet, the funkiest consignment store in all of Williamsburg.

  As the doors of the train thudded open, I clutched my Fendi messenger bag and made my way through the masses toward the exit at 86th Street.

  I hurried across Park Avenue, clutching my coat against the cold wind, and instinctively glanced up at my ex-boyfriend Adam’s apartment on East 88th Street. It’d been a couple weeks since our breakup, and we’d spoken only once or twice. Catching a glimpse of the football trophies lining his windowsill, I felt a tiny pang. Still, I had to admit, even as I waved shyly to his doorman, Adam—and my whole life back at Stuyvesant—felt pretty far away.

  With four minutes to spare, I found myself jogging up Thoney’s majestic front steps. This place looked more like the Met than a high school. I’d been here once before, but I guess I’d never paid close attention to the building’s haute aesthetics. Now there was just an ornate wrought iron gate between me and the five-story brick mansion where I’d be spending the bulk of the next three and a half years.

  Hordes of chic girls I didn’t know poured out of town cars and through the front doors. All of them looked chatty and exited, like there was an Intermix warehouse sale going on inside. My eyes searched for just one familiar face, but I couldn’t make out a single girl I knew under the barrage of the latest outerwear from Searle.

  Then, at my waist, I felt my iPhone buzz with a text from Camille. Thank God. Hopefully she’d just tell me where to meet her so I wouldn’t have to enter the lion’s den alone.

  SNAFU AT DEAN & DELUCA…. CUTE BARISTA STRUCK DOWN BY FLU. NEW GUY TOTALLY LAGGING ON FROTHED MILK FOR MY MOCHA. SO SORRY—SAVE ME A SEAT AT ASSEMBLY!!!

  So much for a familiar face. Hmm. Even under my peacoat, shearling hat, and Moschino all-weather boots, I found myself shivering. But wait. I could do this. This was what I’d wanted. All I had to do was take a deep breath and open the doors. The rest of my life was calling—and so was the tardy bell.

  I pulled open the giant heavy door and stepped inside. Thoney was way nicer than stuffy, tapestry-laden Miss Mallard’s, which I used to think was pretty ritzy. Dark purple drapes tumbled from the high ceilings down to the iridescent marble floors of the foyer. Large, framed composites showcased classes of Thoney alums over the years. A quick scan of the faces showed women from all walks of life—from four state senators to the current chair of Lincoln Center, all the way to the socialites of my generation, whose romps around town dotted Page Six of the New York Post on a daily basis. I couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride when I saw my own mother’s senior shot. Her black off-the-shoulder shell was so classic that not only was it still hanging in her closet, I’d worn it to the Bergdorf Christmas gala with SBB as well.

  When I turned away from the photos, trying to mimic the confident smile my mom wore in her picture, I accidentally caught the eye of a girl wearing an iPod and a green headband in her curly mop of blond hair. She returned my grin.

  “Love your blazer,” she said, before disappearing into the horde of girls heading into the North Wing assembly room.

  “Thanks,” I said, fingering the buttons of my jacket. It didn’t matter that she was already gone. I’d just had my first girly moment at Thoney. As I joined the stampede of girls funneling into the assembly, my boots clunked on the marble floor a little bit more happily than they had a minute before.

  The auditorium was abuzz with post–winter break chatter. I could barely hear the bell ring over the chorus of all the “Omigod, I love your—” ringing out, and suddenly my “I’m confident” smile faltered. Even though Stuy had about a million more students than Thoney, the vibe there had always felt so much more diverse and mellow than this. There was something about so many of the same type of girls having the same type of conversation all in one room that was a tiny bit overwhelming. Almost dizzily, I sank into an open seat on a bench at the back of the room.

  No sooner had I loosened my cranberry-colored Benetton scarf from around my neck than I felt a sharp pinch on my elbow. I spun around to see Camille’s grimace as she practically yanked me off the bench.

  “We don’t sit here,” she hissed. “Upperclassmen do.”

  For a second, I thought there might have been a tinge of real exasperation in her voice, but then she winked at me and tossed her long brown hair playfully as she pulled me onto a more permissible bench in the third row.

  “I’ve never been so glad to see you in my life,” I whispered to her. “Was I about to get thrown to the upper-class wolves?”

  Camille nodded. “That’s the senior bench. It’s incredibly bad luck to sit there till you are one. You have no idea how insane the Thoney superstitions are.”

  “I guess not,” I said, tucking my scarf into my bag.

  “But you’ll learn,” Camille said happily and produced two Dean & Deluca coffee cups from her tote. “Hazelnut latte, no whip, right? Be stealthy”—she nodded toward a hovering teacher—“they don’t call her Professor Daggers for nothing.”

  Before I could thank Camille for reading my caffeine-deprived mind, she nudged the girl to her left.

  “Flan Flood,” she said, gesturing toward me. “Meet your new crew. This is Harper Alden,” she said, pointing to the wholesome, blond girl unbuttoning her black Searle coat
to her left. “Watch out for this one. She’s the captain of the debate team and she takes no prisoners.”

  “Omigod, don’t scare her, Camille,” Harper said, laughing and giving me a friendly wink. “Don’t worry, Flan, I only bring out the claws at the podium.”

  Next to Harper was a gorgeous Filipino girl with amber-colored eyes and long black hair. “This is Amory Wilx, drama buff extraordinaire,” Camille said as Amory curtsied dramatically in her seat.

  Finally, Camille pointed to the same curly haired girl who’d complimented me in the foyer a few minutes ago. “And this is Morgan Burnette, resident DJ.”

  As Morgan turned off her iPod, I noticed that she was listening to the new Cat Power cover album that I’d been playing on repeat since I’d bought it the week before.

  “We’ve heard so much about you from Camille,” Harper said.

  “All good things,” Amory said, nodding enthusiastically. “We’ve basically been dying to meet you.”

  “Still loving your blazer,” Morgan said, bobbing her head to some unheard beat, as if she hadn’t just turned off her headphones.

  These girls were so immediately likable that I quickly felt at ease. And when I glanced across the aisle, I was happy to see that I recognized my friend Olivia from Miss Mallards sitting next to two of her friends, Dara and Veronica, whom I’d met when Olivia and I bumped into each other while shopping this past fall. I waved at them and all three waved back with big smiles and fingerless gloves.

  When the doors at the front of the auditorium opened and a group of stern women in navy blazers walked in, a hush fell over the crowd. I had never seen so much gossip evaporate so quickly. Camille had mentioned that the faculty at Thoney could be severe, but this bunch looked like it was their mission to leave a sea of anxious, quaking girls in their wake.

  A silver-haired woman with a loosely swept French twist and porcelain skin took the podium.

  “Welcome back, girls,” she said with perfectly polished Manhattan enunciation. “I trust you all had relaxing and enjoyable winter holidays.”

  “Yes, Headmistress Winters,” the room sang back collectively.

  “Many of you are returning students, but for those of you who are new, it may do you well to hear some ground rules—rules that are taken quite seriously here at Thoney. Starting with the dress code …”

  Winters didn’t mince words. I was pretty sure that the dress code at Thoney was going to be a whole lot stricter than at Stuy, where basically anything went except bandannas and gang colors. But just as she was getting to the details of Thoney’s sartorial protocol (which basically amounted to nothing overly provocative and she’d “be the judge of that”), Camille lightly touched my arm.

  “Our dress code is what matters,” she said in a low whisper. “A group of us started Theme Day Thursdays. An e-mail blast goes out Wednesday night with the details. It’s so fun—you’ll totally love it. During finals last semester we did Bad Christmas Sweater Day. It was hilarious. Oh, and Fridays we always wear jeans.”

  I nodded, wondering half-jokingly if I should be taking notes. Because it seemed like for every official rule the headmistress had to offer to the group, Camille overruled it with a social rule of her own.

  “Cafeteria commandments,” Camille went on, as the headmistress gave her honor code spiel. “Never get anything but the salad bar. Or the mac and cheese. Or the fries. Basically, all lunchroom meat and dairy products are frowned upon.”

  “And we always sit at the third table in any room we go into,” Harper leaned over to whisper, her curtain of blond hair hiding her moving lips from Winters. “It’s easier to remember that way. Third bench in the auditorium, third table by the windows in the cafeteria, third study cluster in the library. You’ll start to see that all the groups sit in similar places, so you’ll always know where to find the various cliques—and there are a lot.”

  I squinted at them. “Is it really that divided?”

  Camille shrugged. “You’ll see. It’s not that bad. For the most part, everyone gets along. It just, you know, makes it easier to keep organized.”

  Just then Headmistress Winters bellowed out, “Organization is the key to your success at Thoney,” and Camille, Harper, and I had to bite our lips to keep from laughing.

  “Okay,” Camille went on, sneaking out her BlackBerry. “I made you a list of the clubs that are cool to join and those that are kinda off-limits. I’ll e-mail it to you before the Activities Fair this afternoon. Now, I’ll just have to give you the bare-bones basics about who’s social suicide to talk to.”

  I think Camille may have noticed my wide eyes—social suicide? Just from talking to someone? She put her hand on my knee.

  “I know, I know, it sounds completely ridiculous even to say it out loud, but I’ll just throw it all out there so you won’t say I didn’t warn you. This is Thoney, after all.”

  I nodded. It certainly was. Had I been stupid to think that I’d be busy enough keeping track of my new locker combination and what room my French class was in? Obviously there would be a social protocol to follow here, just like there had been at Miss Mallards, and even at Stuy.

  I took a covert swig of my latte and squeezed Camille’s hand for her to go on.

  “Okay,” she whispered, “the obvious first person to steer clear of …”

  Just then, from across the room, I felt a pair of icy green eyes settle on mine. Kennedy. I knew I was bound to see her today, but whatever Camille was saying washed right over my head as Kennedy flipped her wavy black hair from side to side. How could she make such an innocent gesture look so deadly? How long had she been staring at me? And who was that bombshell sitting next to her with the similarly bitchy look on her face?

  “Hold up,” I asked Camille. “Who’s the satanic model over there?”

  Camille followed my eyes. “Oh, Kennedy’s friend? That’s Willa Rubenstein. One word: rhinoplasty. Four additional words: Don’t mess with her. Her father owns the Rubenstein Fund, and she’s not afraid to play the daddy trump card in a pinch.”

  Just then Willa’s blond hair spun around, and she looked down her perfect nose at us. She pressed a finger dramatically to her lips and narrowed her blue eyes with an exaggerated shushing sound.

  Suddenly I felt the whole room turn to stare at me. There was a rustling and a murmuring and even the headmistress looked up from her rule book.

  “I trust there’s no problem, girls, so early in the semester. Am I correct?”

  I bit my pinky nail. It sounded less like a question and more like an icy command.

  “No problem, Headmistress Winters,” answered a sing-songy chorus of voices. Well, at least there seemed to be one front that the Thoney girls were united on.

  Camille shrugged and rolled her eyes at me conspiratorially. I wanted to roll mine back, but I felt Kennedy still staring me down. I tried to avoid looking back, but her glare was like a magnet. Just before the bell rang to dismiss the assembly, we locked eyes once more and Kennedy’s arched eyebrows and snarky wink could only mean one thing.

  What happened in Nevis wasn’t going to stay in Nevis. I was on her territory now … and this was war.

  Chapter 4

  Wherefore art Thou, Brain?

  “Okay, take these stairs to the third floor and hang a left,” Camille was saying minutes later in the hallway as she sketched a rough map on the back of her Dean & Deluca napkin. “Avoid the temptation to write on the Welcome Back Wall”—she drew an X over its location in the east wing—“it’s controlled by the Student Senate, and who cares about them? And never use the bathroom at the end of the hall.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Amory said with a shudder. “Jenna Davidson used to Nair her mustache in there last year, and let’s just say the scent has lingered.”

  I laughed, remembering how poor Jenna had had that mustache problem since the fourth grade at Miss Mallards. It was cool how quickly I was bonding with Camille’s friends—but it also made me a little nervous to realiz
e that as soon as Camille was done with her napkin mapmaking, she and Amory would scoot off to gym together, and I’d be left to roam the halls on the way to first period English all by myself.

  Camille put the finishing touches on the map, sticking her tongue out as she drew, just like she’d done ever since we were swapping Bratz coloring books back in the day.

  “Voilà!” she said, handing over her masterpiece, which had dotted lines to take me through my classes and which showed me where to meet her and the other girls in the gym after school for the Activities Fair.

  “Thanks again,” I said, giving both girls air-kisses. “Wish me luck!”

  “Naturals like you don’t need luck,” Camille said as the two of them disappeared around the corner.

  I followed the route to my first class, breathing through my mouth as I walked past the bathroom, and stepped inside a brightly lit room looking out over Madison Avenue. The first thing I noticed was that, unlike every classroom back at Stuy, these walls were not plastered with posters of cheesy motivational quotes set against snowy mountaintops. Here the walls were tastefully decorated with framed quotations from famous works of literature—some of which I recognized, many more of which I didn’t.

  There was no “third table” to sit at, just a cluster of desks, and I wanted to sit somewhere not too close to the front. I spotted an open seat in the middle of the room and moved toward it. I had just plopped down when I noticed Mattie Hendricks taking out her notebook to my left.

  The last time I’d seen Mattie was in Nevis, and I remembered being happy to watch her let loose at a couple of the parties. I’d always liked Mattie, even though some of the girls called her “The Barker” behind her back. So what if she had a slightly awkward and badly timed laugh? She was sweet. Today she was wearing her standard issue Mattie uniform: a white Gap T-shirt and the same straight leg jeans she’d had since middle school.