Bridgeport Academy #2 Page 6

  Crystal let Jade suffer for a moment before answering in her Georgia drawl, slowly and dramatically, “Eric. Dalton.”

  “You mean that’s for real?” Jade jumped off the bed. So the rumors were true. Naomi had snagged a teacher? A totally deliciously hot teacher. She would have imagined that she’d be the first one to hook up with a teacher, not Naomi. Though to be fair, Naomi was sort of the type a teacher would go for. With her radical red bob and multiple-pierced ear, Naomi looked way more worldly and jaded than she was. Total overcompensation for being a completely innocent V-I-R-G-I-N. Naomi claimed to have lost it in Sweden or Switzerland or something, but Jade saw right through that lie. “Are they sleeping together?”

  “Nah.” Crystal thought briefly about how she had been ready to sleep with Zane, how she had been practically begging him for it and he just wasn’t interested. But Naomi hadn’t come home last night and didn’t explain herself, so she must have been with Mr. Dalton. Crystal was sure she would have said something if they’d had sex, though. How could you keep quiet about that? “I don’t think they’ve done it yet.”

  “Well, it looks like I’ll get to check out her boyfriend up close tomorrow.” Jade leaned back on her pillow, looking extremely pleased with herself. “He’s my adviser.”

  “Lucky you.” Crystal could tell something was brewing inside Jade’s mind. It was kind of a relief that Jade was on her side. At least for now.

  EmilyJenkins: Hey, you in ur room?

  NaomiPeterson: Nope. Hiding out in library. What’s up?

  EmilyJenkins: U like your roomie Bree right?

  NaomiPeterson: Yeah, she’s cool.

  EmilyJenkins: So then u want her to stay alive?

  NaomiPeterson: What are you talking about now?

  EmilyJenkins: Well...Z just broke up with C and everyone heard her screaming about B.

  NaomiPeterson: Where’s Crystal now?

  EmilyJenkins: Back at Dumbarton I think.

  NaomiPeterson: I should tell Bree, huh?

  EmilyJenkins: That’s what I was getting at…

  NaomiPeterson: Fuck.

  NaomiPeterson: Hey Bree, where are you?

  BreeHargrove: Checking email in the lab. How r u? How was last night…?

  BretMesserschimdt: Good. Listen…Zane broke up with Crystal.

  BreeHargrove: Um…

  NaomiPeterson: Everyone’s saying it was for u. Crystal thinks so too.

  BreeHargrove: Jeepers.

  NaomiPeterson: Yeah. So you might want to, like, sneak in after curfew…

  BreeHargrove: Thanks for telling me. You avoiding the room too?

  NaomiPeterson: U could say that.

  10

  Thursday morning, Jade took her time walking to Stansfield Hall for her first meeting with her new adviser, the infamous Mr. Dalton. She hadn’t taken any special care getting dressed this morning—it was easy to appear effortless when half your clothes are made specifically for you—and had unconsciously chosen a fairly chaste outfit. Her flutter-sleeved white blouse and chocolate pencil skirt with embroidered daisies seemed, at first glance, quite proper. Until you noticed the slit that showed off most of her perfectly slender thigh and the distracting way the lines of her red bra could be seen through the delicate chiffon whenever she shifted a certain way, which she could be counted on to do. Even her purple peep-toe Miu Miu wedges implied repressed sexiness, which Jade knew was far more seductive than blatant sexiness.

  Her father was a globe-trotting businessman, always involved in dozens of multinational ventures and investing in companies that drew him to places like Cape Town and Beijing and Oslo. Jade’s mother was a photojournalist and former model, half Portuguese, half Danish, an ethnic combination that happened to be one of the world’s most aesthetically pleasing and to which Jade’s owed her unbelievable violet eyes. Her parents had treated her like an adult since she began to speak, so she’d always felt comfortable with an older crowd—they talked fast and moved faster, and that’s how she liked to feel like she was living, at the fastest speed possible. Chiedo, their translator and guide over the summer, must have been twenty-five, though it never occurred to her to ask him. Eric Dalton, if he had just graduated from Brown, couldn’t be much older than twenty-two. That was nothing.

  After all, when she met him at Chapel, he had practically been drooling. Jade might have felt guilty if Naomi had actually told her what was going on between them, but if Naomi thought she didn’t know and had no plans to tell her, Jade had every right to flirt with Mr. Dalton as much as she wanted to. So there.

  She heard a Billie Holiday song playing from behind his closed office door. The very thought of you and I forget to do…those ordinary things…She pictured him flipping through his CDs, trying to decide what would make the best sound track for their first official meeting. Billie Holiday was a bold choice—because she was such a jazz classic, it couldn’t be construed as inappropriate in any way, yet her throaty, dramatic voice was so blatantly sexy, it had to reveal something about the inner workings of Mr. Dalton’s brain. She hadn’t even met him yet and she’d already read his mind.

  Mr. Dalton opened the door and Jade was startled again by how beautiful he was. His hair was damp, which instantly conjured up images of him stepping out of the shower and reaching for a very small towel. He smelled like Polo aftershave, and Jade found herself longing to touch his smooth, freshly shaven cheek. He actually looked like Michael B. Jordan—just taller, darker, and better.

  “Jade Carmichael. Very nice to see you again.” His voice was deep and very professional, but this was quite clearly the highlight of his day. Where did he go from here? Trying to teach bored freshmen to care about Thucydides and Herodotus and all those other impossibly ancient historians? An intimate meeting with his gorgeous advisee was clearly the perfect way to start off his day.

  “Hey, Mr. Dalton.” She stepped inside his cluttered office, loving everything about it and him.

  He groaned in mock anguish. “Eric, please.” He indicated the leather chair in front of his desk, and Jade took a seat, smoothing her skirt and crossing her legs in one unified, elegant gesture. Eric pretended not to notice the slit in her skirt and sat down behind his desk. He shuffled through a stack of folders before pulling one out and opening it. “I’ve always felt like students should be able to call teachers by their first names. It makes them seem more human. And it makes me feel less ancient.”

  Jade had no trouble thinking of Eric as anything but human—a very healthy, red-blooded man human. Maybe she would have taken a greater interest in ancient history if Eric had been her teacher.

  He smiled across the desk at her. “So, how have things been going for you since your return to Bridgeport?”

  Vague question, she thought. What things? Classes? Boys? Annoying roommates? “Fine. It’s nice to be back.” As exciting as it was to travel the world with her parents, there was something reassuring about being back on Bridgeport turf, back where she knew how to spin teachers and toss off A papers in under an hour and where the food wasn’t so exotic it bordered on inedible.

  He leaned toward her. “You know, as your adviser, I’m supposed to keep an eye on you, make sure things like the Ecstasy incident don’t happen again.” Eric looked stern for a moment, and Jade could tell he was getting a kick out of pretending to intimidate her.

  She nodded humbly, trying to look remorseful. “It won’t.”

  “Good,” Eric said, looking satisfied. “It’s part of my job to make sure you stay on the right track.”

  “The right track?” Jade asked. “It seems like there should be more than one.”

  “For you, I’m sure there are,” Eric said with a smile, revealing a toothpaste-white grin that reminded Jade of when she was eleven and used to practice kissing on an eight-by-ten photo of Morris Chestnut. “What about colleges? Any thoughts?”

  “Well, I’m looking into Columbia right now,” Jade lied, hating to even think abo
ut college. When pressed, she said Columbia, but really, Columbia and Princeton and Amherst and Williams all seemed like bigger versions of Bridgeport—filled with jaded spoiled kids exactly like her.

  “Columbia’s a good school. And what about after college?” Eric smoothed his tie against his chest and glanced down at the open folder on his desk. “I see your grades are solid in all subjects—A-minuses or B-pluses. But…I guess I don’t really get a good sense of where your interests lie.” He looked up from his folder and met Jade’s gaze for a little longer than appropriate. A chill ran down her spine—it felt like he was trying to peer inside her. “Besides varsity tennis since you were a freshman…” Eric raised his eyes from her folder to give Jade an appreciative eyebrow raise, as if to say he’d love to see her on the court sometime. “Your only extracurricular is Cinephiles, the film society.”

  “I actually founded the Cinephiles,” Jade replied, a bit defensively.

  “Well, that’s impressive.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” Jade was modest now. “But there’s this state-of-the-art screening room in the basement of Hopkins Hall that only gets used when a teacher decides to show her class a film.” Jade shook her head. “Have you been down there yet?” The film room was one of the sexiest places on campus, with expensive leather reclining theater chairs, a fourteen-foot-wide screen, high-tech lighting, and surround sound. There were only about twenty seats, so it was intimate, like the kind of private screening room a Hollywood director might have in his Beverly Hills mansion.

  “No, I haven’t.” Eric looked intrigued. “I didn’t even know Bridgeport had something like that—they certainly didn’t in my day.”

  “You should definitely check it out.” She thought of how exciting it would be to sit in the dark with Eric, watching something sexy and dramatic on the big screen. Or not watching it. Out in the hall, some band geeks were discussing which songs they needed to perfect for homecoming. Losers.

  “You know what I think?” Eric asked, planting his elbows on the desk. She could imagine a few things he must be thinking. She shifted gracefully in her seat and refrained from playing with her hair, a gesture she thought girls overused when trying to get guys’ attention, and instead concentrated on holding his gaze, which was more difficult than she expected. His eyes seemed to bore into her. “I think you are one of those very rare people who have so many talents, they have a hard time deciding on the right ones to use.”

  That was cryptic. What did that mean, the right ones? “I’m not sure I know what that means,” she said coolly, tugging her skirt down over her knees.

  “Nothing bad,” he quickly assured her, flashing her an intimate smile. “Just that you’re smart and good at everything you do. I’m just trying to find out what turns you on.”

  Jade was suddenly encouraged. Without any prompting, she spent the next ten minutes elaborating on her experience in Cape Town and Johannesburg and the thrill of making a documentary in a country with such a shocking contrast of opulent wealth and desperate poverty living right on top of each other while it was still in the process of defining its segregated identity. The excitement of watching an entire nation try to figure itself out inspired her and made her wish she could make more documentaries, maybe even one about this messed-up country of her own. It had been a high-intensity summer. She could feel her cheeks glow as she spoke, and she felt comfortable and excited. The words just tumbled out of her.

  Eric nodded and jotted a few notes down on his pad. She noticed he had a few very faint freckles on the planes of his cheekbones.

  Jade stopped talking abruptly. “Am I boring you?”

  “Not a bit.” Jade could imagine the two of them in a café in France, sipping their third espressos and unable to end their conversation. “Have you read the Fitzgerald story ‘The Offshore Pirate’?”

  Jade shook her head, her black hair gently swishing back and forth against her blouse.

  “You remind me of the main character.” His dark eyes glimmered, as if there was something else he wanted to say. Jade waited, but he didn’t say it.

  “Well, I hope that’s a compliment.” She laughed, already planning to head to the library between classes to check out the story. Being compared to a Fitzgerald heroine could be an insult, but she had a pretty good feeling that it wasn’t. “Listen, I hate to leave, but I think I should be getting to class.” She stood reluctantly.

  “Anytime you need anything.” Eric looked like he was trying hard to keep his face neutral. “You know where I am.” He stood and moved toward the door, glancing at his Cartier tank watch on his right wrist. Next to it was a platinum-engraved gate-link bracelet. Without thinking, Jade reached out to touch it. Dalton seemed a little surprised by her sudden movement, but he didn’t pull away.

  “This is gorgeous,” she said breathlessly, her fingertips tracing the delicate link design. “My father had one exactly like this that was stolen. Is it Victorian?” She looked up at him and realized his face was only about six inches from hers. She quickly turned back to the bracelet, fingering the latch and enjoying the closeness of his skin on her fingers. If she moved them a centimeter to the right, she’d be touching his arm. Her heart raced.

  “I guess you know your antiques too.” Eric gave her a quick smile and made no effort to step away. “Yes, um, it’s Victorian. It was my great-grandfather’s, actually, my great-great-grandfather’s. It was a gift from the royal family for…I’m not sure what, actually.” His chest rose and fell beneath his perfectly pressed shirt and tie. It was clear he was in agony, but Jade wasn’t ready to let him get away yet. She looked up to find his cheeks flushed. She opened her violet eyes wider, knowing that from his angle, looking down at them through her thick black lashes, they were irresistible.

  “Do you think I could borrow it?” This, she thought, was the ultimate test. If he gave it to her, it meant he was ready to forget all about Naomi and take his chances with her. “I’d love to know what it feels like to wear it, just for a while.”

  Eric blinked his eyes. Without speaking or moving them from Jade’s face, he unlatched the bracelet with his left hand and held it out to her. Instead of taking it, she thrust her right arm out, palm up, so that Eric could put it on himself.

  “Be very, very careful with this,” he told her solemnly as he fumbled with the latch, his fingers grazing her arm. “Your wrist is much smaller than mine, so keep your eye on it.” Jade watched as his gaze progressed up her slender arm to her body.

  “I will guard it with my life,” she vowed, her lips unable to suppress a flirtatious victory smile. “And I’ll give it back the next time I see you. I promise.” Impulsively, she stood up on tiptoe, planning to kiss him on the cheek. He smelled like Ivory soap and Crest toothpaste. But just as her lips were about to touch his cheek, Eric turned his head, and her mouth landed halfway on his lips.

  Oops, Jade thought happily. She kept her mouth where it was for a moment before finally pulling away. They stared at each other.

  Eric spoke first, quietly, as if his voice were trying to hide some emotion. “Then I hope I’ll see you again soon.” He opened the door for her, keeping his eyes on her face the entire time. There were other students in the hall, hurrying off to class. Jade lingered outside his office as she fingered the bracelet.

  “Don’t worry, you will.”

  ZaneTaylor: Hey, how r u?

  BreeHargrove: Booooored. In a research seminar at the library.

  ZaneTaylor: Bummer…Did you hear that it’s, uh, official with Crystal now?

  BreeHargrove: Yeah, I did…You okay?

  ZaneTaylor: Yup.

  BreeHargrove: That’s good.

  ZaneTaylor: I really hope this doesn’t sound sleazy, but do you want to meet up in the woods today for the art project we were talking about yesterday?

  BreeHargrove: OK.

  ZaneTaylor: I’ll give you directions at lunch.

  BreeHargrove: Good. I’m…

&n
bsp; ZaneTaylor: Yeah…I think I know what you mean.

  NaomiPeterson: Can I see you later?

  NaomiPeterson: I’ve been thinking about you…

  [EricDalton has signed off Thursday, September 12, 10:37 A.M.]

  11

  Bree could barely concentrate in English class on Wednesday, even though it was normally one of her favorites. She loved the way the classroom was set up as if it were a conference room—one giant oval table with fifteen chairs around it, filled with cashmere-sweater-wearing students and the ultra-petite Miss Rose, who wore bubble-gum-pink lipstick. It was a discussion class, which meant Miss Rose would talk for about ten minutes and then open the conversation up to the students. At first Bree had been shocked at the intimacy and sophistication of it all. There was no hand-raising or wrong answers, just how she imagined classes would be in college. They were already a third of the way through Madame Bovary, and Bree was completely enthralled with Emma and her struggles living with a man she didn’t love. It made her wonder what it would be like to never find love or to be forced to settle for something inferior just because that’s what people did. What would it be like to be stuck with a Charles Bovary when she knew there was an Zane Taylor out there?

  “Bree,” Miss Rose said as the other students packed their bags and filed out of the classroom. “Is everything okay? You were awfully quiet today.” Her hair was pulled back in a bun, making her look a little more severe than usual, but she still looked beautiful, like a china doll dressed in a black Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit. Whenever someone made some observation that was way off base, like maybe Emma Bovary was a lesbian, she’d say, “All right. What support for that can you find in the text?” instead of telling the student off. Bree felt like she’d learned more from the way Miss Rose taught than the actual assignments in class.

  “Oh, yes, I’m fine!” Bree stuffed her notebook into her suede bag. It was packed with art supplies for her outing with Zane. The sight of her brand-new pastels and box of Prismacolor pencils sharpened and ready to go reminded her again that in twenty minutes, she’d be alone with the newly single Zane. “I’m just a little…distracted today.”