Bridgeport Academy #2 Read online

  BRIDGEPORT ACADEMY 2

  Copyright © 2016 by Ashley Valentine

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Based on the It Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar

  Table of Content

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  1

  Jade Carmichael glanced back at the sparkling Hudson River. The roar of her family’s orange seaplane lifting back into the azure sky announced her return to Bridgeport Academy, the exclusive upstate New York boarding school she’d been abruptly kicked out of last spring. The pop-pop of her pencil-thin heels on the steps of Dumbarton Hall reminded her of flashbulbs, and Jade felt her classmates’ eyes on her, peering out of the dorm room windows above her head. She shook out her mane of long, silky black hair and turned her head to give her fans her best side, anticipating their hungry questions: Ohmigod, where have you been? How come you’re back? Weren’t you kicked out? Were you in rehab? Is it true you threatened to burn down Stansfield Hall? And finally: How come Crystal and Naomi didn’t get into any trouble and you did?

  Jade would simultaneously deny everything and fan the flames of speculation. She’d especially enjoy encouraging the theory that she’d selflessly taken the rap for Crystal and Naomi after all three of them were caught on E last spring, the spring of their sophomore year. Her two best friends would be more than a little shocked to see her. She hadn’t spoken to either of them over the long summer, and she still had no clue why she was the only one actually expelled for the whole “incident,” unless one of them had ratted on her. But now that the summer was over—a phenomenal summer at that—and she’d been readmitted, she was feeling generous and willing to forgive and forget, as long as Crystal and Naomi provided the necessary profuse apologies and a healthy dose of ass-kissing.

  With its pristine, ivy-covered brick buildings and rolling green playing fields, Bridgeport Academy looked like the gingerbread-cookie version of Brown or Princeton. As Jade clicked her way down the hall to Dumbarton 303, she recognized the familiar smell of Crystal’s coconut-scented detangler and perfume mixed with the stale stench of cigarettes. She smiled as she pictured what would happen next: she’d waltz into their triple dorm room and throw herself across her old bed just like she used to do after a long, boring lecture in Hunter Hall or Mr. Farnsworth’s calc class. Crystal’s little pink mouth would drop open and she’d try to say something cool but choke on her words. Naomi would be amazed and astonished and totally speechless. Then both girls would begin squealing like baby piglets, flinging their slender limbs around Jade’s neck. Well, at least that’s how she imagined it.

  She flipped her white plastic aviators up on her head and readjusted the bleached-leather hobo bag Chiedo had made for her while they were on safari outside of Cape Town. The memory of summer in South Africa made her chest ache—the parties at CapeRave with Chiedo and his friends, watching the sun rise over Table Mountain, and Where I’ve Been I Would Not Go Back, the heartfelt documentary about the people of South Africa that she and her father had made over the course of the summer. She touched her shark-tooth necklace (Chiedo again, sweet Chiedo), flipped her long, shiny hair behind her shoulders, and flung open the dorm room door. Ta da!

  The silence she’d expected was of the stunned variety, not the where-the-fuck-is-everyone variety. But where the fuck was everyone? Jade surveyed the landscape: the view of the sparkling Hudson River through the wide casement windows, the litter of empty Diet Coke bottles on the floor next to Crystal’s bed, the ashtray full of cigarette butts on the windowsill. But no Crystal and no Naomi.

  She wrinkled her nose, detecting a scent she didn’t recognize—could it possibly be White Petals, a Chanel knockoff that stunk up Greenmarket Square in Cape Town? She sniffed, tracing the smell to a waterfall of unruly black curls hanging off the side of her old bed. There was a girl in her bed. The girl shifted in her sleep. Jade kicked the antique-oak bed frame with her well-heeled foot. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “I’m Bree.” The girl sat up abruptly, her eyes darting wildly around the room as her ridiculously huge boobs bounced. “Who are you?”

  Jade threw her bag down at the foot of the bed, her nose still wrinkled in distaste. Definitely White Petals. “Where are Crystal and Naomi?”

  “They”—she started, rubbing her big brown eyes—“were here a minute ago. What time is it?”

  “Time for you to get out of my bed,” Jade announced coolly.

  Bree shook her head, trying to lift the sleepy haze from her brain. The stunning, tall girl standing in front of her was wearing a white-on-white camisole and no bra. Bree stared enviously at her browned shoulders and the outline of her round, perky breasts. What she wouldn’t give to be able to wear a shirt like that. The girl had long black hair and impossibly blue—almost violet—eyes...Wait a second, her bed?

  “You’re Jade!” she squealed a little too emphatically, bouncing up and down before remembering she was wearing the soft, super-thin white Willard T-shirt she liked to sleep in. She hoped her enormous breasts didn’t look too ridiculous as they bobbed and settled back into place.

  “I don’t remember you.” Jade folded her arms across her chest as if to imply that Bree had better put her boobs away before she hurt someone with them.

  “I’m new. I transferred from Emma Willard.” Bree pointed at the capital letters emblazoned across her T-shirt and then remembered her boobs again. “In New York City,” she added hopefully, as if the fact that she was from the city would lend her an air of credibility or at the very least a remote hint of cool.

  “I know where it is,” Jade snapped as her white aviators slipped down off her forehead, landing perfectly on the bridge of her tanned, pert little nose.

  Bree could feel her glaring intensely from behind her sunglasses. She’d worried about meeting Jade since Dean Marymount announced her return to Bridgeport last night. But now that she was here, Jade was even more intimidating than Bree had imagined. And she was supposed to live with this girl?

  “You mind?” Jade asked, opening her cool, beat-up-looking leather bag and pulling out a cigarette.

  Bree shook her head and offered up the Powerpuff Girl Zippo she’d bought in Chinatown that she used for lighting the apple cinnamon candle she kept by her bed. “Wake and bake, right?”

  “It’s not weed.” Jade pushed her sunglasses up again. “So what year are you anyway?”

  “Sophomore.”

  Jade blew a smoke ring like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland and Bree remembered what Chris, the boy on the train when she first came up from New York, said about Jade going to parties at Bard and the rumors she’d heard about Zane and Jade hooking up behind Crystal’s back last year. Bree imagined boys drooling over Jade’s exotic good looks and her wild violet eyes and girls h
ating her for the same reasons. Bree would have hated her too if she didn’t feel simultaneously scared and infatuated by her.

  “So you’re the new roommate, huh?” Jade examined Bree as if she were a vintage fifties dress from Goodwill that could either be an incredible find or, on closer inspection, just pit-stained and worthless.

  “Yeah. Crystal and Naomi are awesome,” she replied with a borderline squeak, hoping to let her new roommate know they were part of the same fold now. After all, she’d made friends easily with Crystal and Naomi. Well, sort of easily. Crystal had kind of bribed her into letting the Disciplinary Committee believe Zane Taylor was caught in their room on the second night of school visiting her rather than Crystal, his girlfriend. In the end Zane took all the blame, and part of Bree thought maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with her.

  She shot her feet out from under her scratchy baby-blue wool blanket and shuffled over to her antique oak bureau. She grabbed a bottle of Pantene de-frizzing serum and squirted a dollop into her palm. It made a little farting sound and Bree muffled a squeal of discomfort. Then she turned to the mirror as she smoothed out her long black tendrils, grateful that at least she didn’t have any embarrassing morning whiteheads around her nostril creases.

  “So—” She turned around, freshly de-frizzed.

  But all she saw was the door closing. It slammed angrily, and Bree couldn’t help but jump back a step. Hello, that was not a real fart!

  Outside the casement windows the first leaves were beginning to turn orange and red and the Hudson River rolled along, smooth and sparkling under the morning sun. A feeling of dread settled in Bree’s stomach. Was it just a bad first impression, or was the famous Jade Carmichael kind of...well...a bitch?

  SageFrancis: She’s baaaaaaack…

  CelineColista: What r u talking about?

  SageFrancis: JC! She’s returned from exile in Africa or wherever the hell she was. I heard her father had to promise Bridgeport a new performing arts center to get back in.

  CelineColista: No waaaaaaaay...Do you think they’ll kick Bree out of 303?

  SageFrancis: I heard they’re ALL staying. Do you think she’ll clash with Jade?

  CelineColista: Who knows, but if they do, I want popcorn and a front-row seat!

  2

  Crystal Alexander dragged the narrow heels of her new black-and-white Louboutin mules through the dewy grass toward Chapel, the fuzz of sleep still thick in her brain. It had been three days since the Black Saturday party, but she still couldn’t shake the image of Bree and Zane staring into each other’s eyes by the reflecting pool at Maurice’s Woodstock estate. Was that even true? Maurice had sent everyone a gossipy email after the party suggesting it, but she still didn’t know for sure. Either way, the fact that Crystal had set it up—she’d actually asked Zane and Bree to flirt in order to make it look more realistic that Zane had been visiting Bree and not her when he was caught in their room by their freaky dorm mistress Angelica Pardee—threatened to reduce her to a MAC-mascara-streaked mess. And if that wasn’t enough, had she really gotten so drunk that she made out with Maurice Johnson—gross!—and begged her old boyfriend Amir to hook up with her? And had he really turned her down?

  “That you, Crys?”

  Crystal felt wobbly already, but when she spotted Jade in the chapel doorway, she was sure she’d lost her mind. She stopped and tilted her head to the side, expecting the violet-eyed heavenly ghost to float back into the atmosphere. Her old roommate’s appearance at the top of the stone steps was as much a dream as Dean Marymount and Mrs. Pardee measuring room 303 for a fourth bed last night, their voices the unintelligible murmur of angels. Their announcement that Jade had been suspended and not expelled for their raucous night out on the playing field last spring was too fantastic to be true—yet here she was.

  Crystal wanted to run and jump into her arms. She wanted to explain to Jade about Zane and Bree and the Disciplinary Committee and the distance between her and Naomi and how Naomi was secretly doing it with Mr. Dalton, the new theoretically doable history teacher, who was actually kind of gross to imagine Naomi doing it with. Things had been so weird with Naomi that she’d actually found out about Mr. Dalton by answering Naomi’s cell and talking to her sister. She’d pretended not to know until Naomi told her about the affair last night, but she’d actually been the one to slip the secret and get the whole school talking about it. Oops. Now Jade, the only person Crystal had ever met who could vanquish even the most serious problems with little more than a smoldering wink, was back. But a hazy corona settled around Crystal’s head, and all she could do was stare.

  “Hello?” Jade demanded loudly, interrupting her daze.

  Her voice sent Crystal galloping up the chapel steps. She wrapped her arms around her old best friend, whose thin body fell limp under the pressure, and felt their classmates staring.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” Crystal blurted uncoolly, but she honestly couldn’t help it. After everything that had happened—the E fiasco last spring, Zane coming to visit her in Barcelona over the summer and telling him she loved him, the fact that he hadn’t said it back and now might be into her midget-slut roommate—it was hard to stand in front of Jade and maintain composure. Everything about her was so effortless and cool. And no matter how confident Crystal was normally, she felt like her roommate’s ugly, lame-ass step-cousin when they stood side by side. While she was scarred all over from field hockey, Jade’s skin was buttery smooth and naturally bronzed; while Crystal’s thick hair was flyawayed and unmanageable, Jade’s silky hair fell down her back like a heavy sheath. While Crystal cared about the gauge of her cashmere sweaters and owning whatever bag Kim Kardashian was carrying in that month’s Vogue, Jade looked incredible in whatever she picked up off the floor. And now, here she was. A million questions ran through Crystal’s mind: Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you called me? Is that really a giant shark tooth on your neck? Finally she whispered a simple: “What happened?”

  Jade glared at a group of sophomores straining their ears to hear from the stone walkway. She took Crystal by the arm and walked around to the east side of the chapel.

  “Please tell me. What the fuck happened?” Crystal couldn’t help asking again.

  Jade leaned her weight against the stone building. “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know.” Crystal’s hands flapped stupidly.

  “You didn’t set me up?” Jade demanded.

  Crystal shook her head emphatically.

  “Did Naomi?”

  For a split second, Crystal considered blaming Naomi for everything. That’d serve her right for keeping her teacher lover a secret. But things were getting better between them. Sort of. “It wasn’t us.”

  “Swear?”

  “Swear.” She stupidly raised her right hand with its chipped polished nails. She’d made a mess of them while playing a totally-out-of-character midnight game of Frisbee with some of the dorkier Dumbarton girls last night, hoping to get her mind off Bree and Zane.

  Jade looked at her doubtfully, and Crystal’s lip started to quiver. She wanted everything to be like it was before, when she and Naomi and Jade were the kind of threesome who finished each other’s thoughts and laughed before anyone ever said anything. The kind who trusted each other no matter what. That seemed so long ago now.

  “When Marymount asked me about the E, I assumed we were going to share the blame equally,” Jade finally offered, squinting at her friend. Crystal looked like she’d aged five years since the spring. “So I confessed.”

  Crystal gasped, raising her hand to her mouth. “But I denied everything...I thought we all would.”

  Jade noticed her roommate’s chewed fingernails and chipped light-pink polish and felt sorry for her even though the situation should have been reversed. “Marymount kicked me out on the spot. Finito.”

  “Then why did they let you back in?” Crystal asked as the last stragglers headed into Chapel for mo
rning meeting, their I-just-rolled-out-of-bed ponytails bobbing as they hurried up the steps.

  “They found out I spent break making a documentary with my dad in South Africa and changed my expulsion to a suspension.” Jade ran her fingers through her glossy dark mane. She wanted to spill all the details about her mind-blowing summer, but not just yet. Crystal needed to feel how angry she’d been about being the only one expelled. How unfair it was that they hadn’t confessed too and how much it hurt that neither of them had even tried to get in touch with her over the summer. Then, once Crystal felt totally incapacitated by guilt, she’d say she was sorry, really sorry, and she’d offer to do anything to make it up to her. Anything.

  A strange, high-pitched whinnying sound broke the silence. “Nei-ei-ei-ei-gh.”

  .They both turned their heads to see Maurice Johnson whinnying like a horse, white iPhone in hand. He dragged his foot through the dirt like a disgruntled mule as his thumbs worked the tiny keypad. Crystal dug her fingertips into her palms, wincing at the idea that Maurice’s idiotic party had brought Zane and Bree even closer.

  “What’s up, good-looking?” Jade beckoned teasingly. “Miss me?”

  Maurice looked up from under his shaggy dreadlocks and froze. “Wow. You back?” He grinned devilishly, his almond-shaped eyes sparkling, and pocketed his phone.

  Crystal rolled her eyes. Maurice, like every other boy at Bridgeport and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, had always had a massive crush on Jade, and Crystal knew it.

  “Yeah, I’m back,” Jade continued. “For now.”

  Maurice clutched his pocket as his iPhone started to vibrate.

  “Who’s that?” Crystal asked.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Maurice replied, pulling out his phone as a devious smile spread across his face. He shuffled toward the chapel steps, again punching at the tiny keypad. Organ music drifted through the chapel windows and floated out over the soccer field. The quiet muffle of forced singing soon filled the tension-heavy air.

  “I just wish...” Crystal’s voice trailed off as she spotted Zane Taylor loping up the walkway, his eyes fixed on a pair of fat owls flying overhead. Crystal noticed the splotch of yellow paint on the cuff of his faded Levi’s and knew he’d probably been up since dawn, painting in his secret spot in the woods. He’d never told Crystal exactly where it was, but she liked to think it was a sunny field of wildflowers in the middle of the forest, where he imagined her lying naked in the grass with dandelions braided into her long black hair, innocent yet totally ravishable. Now she was afraid that Bree’s face was superimposed where hers had been.