Chapter 4 Scarlett
SCARLETT
“Come in, come in!” An older woman with crescent glasses perched on the tip of her nose places her hand on the small of my back to usher me into her office. “Take a seat, Scarlett.”
Once she is back in her chair, she quickly begins typing on her computer, and the next thing I hear is something being printed from behind her. She spins in her seat, pulls out the piece of paper, and smiles.
“Your schedule.” She slides it across her desk. “Very ambitious class choices, but given your background at Yale, I think you’ll do just fine.”
I smile and glance at the course load. It’s heavy but doable.
“Though, may I make a suggestion?”
I glance up at my academic advisor. Her expression is cautious at best.
“Sure?” My agreement comes out like a question.
“Tutoring.” She clasps her hands together on top of her desk, appearing pleased with herself.
“Tutoring?” I repeat.
Didn’t she just say that I’d do just fine with my course selections?
I clear my throat and try my best not to offend her. “I think I’ll be okay, but if I need help, I will look into tutoring.”
Not.
A wheezy laugh leaves her. “No.” She shakes her head. “I think you should tutor. With your test scores and impeccable GPA from an Ivy League like Yale? Some of our students could really benefit from having a tutoring session with you.”
I see myself in the reflection of the glass cabinets behind her desk. My smile looks painful, which is exactly what it’d feel like to tutor my peers at Shadow Valley.
“It would be a good way to meet some of the students, maybe make a friend or two? Your father said–”
I perk up at the mention of my dad. “My father?”
My body flushes. A rush of scorching heat washes over my skin like a warm summer’s rain.
What does she mean by my father? Is he blasting my business to anyone who will listen?
The next few minutes of the meeting are a blur. I nod and agree to things that I want no part of, yet somehow, I leave with my name listed with the others under student tutors for peers.
As soon as I’m around the corner and out of sight, I dial his number with a vengeance.
It rings once before he picks up. I don’t even take a breath before laying into him.
“Are you serious, Dad? Do you want everyone at Shadow Valley to know that I came home from Yale with my tail tucked between my legs? Not to mention telling my academic advisor that I’m friendless!”
That’s right. She said the word friendless.
I have friends! They’re just back at Yale.
My father sighs, waiting for a beat before speaking. I lean against the stone wall and stare out into the courtyard.
Shadow Valley is so much different than Yale, and I’m not just speaking about the architecture.
The air is fresher, the students less uppity.
I can’t say I feel at ease here, especially not at home with my new housemate, but I’m not looking over my shoulder every few seconds or hiding from a cluster of guys, wondering if he’ll be in the mix, so at least there’s that.
“Sweetheart.” My father sighs again, his breath loud inside my ear.
I can picture him now, squeezing the back of his neck where most of his tension settles.
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
He pauses.
“More importantly, what did you tell Cross?” I roll my eyes even though he can’t see me. “Why didn’t you tell me that we’d be housemates?”
“I didn’t think it mattered…” His sentence trails off.
Cross and I have an unspoken pact to put our differences aside when we’re with our parents, so of course my father doesn’t see the issue with it. In fact, he probably thinks I feel better with Cross there.
But I don’t.
“I didn’t tell Cross or your academic advisor anything other than you transferred to Shadow Valley to be closer to home.”
Which I suppose makes sense, considering he doesn’t actually know what happened at Yale.
I raise an eyebrow. “And…”
“And I asked Cross to watch out for you, maybe take you to a campus event if he happened to go to one.”
I scrunch my nose. “A campus event?”
“You know.” He chuckles. “Somewhere you can make a friend or two.”
I choke on a silent laugh. Cross does not want me to be friends with his friends and vice versa. I’d rather never see Cross ever again, thank you very much.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I know how to make friends,” I argue. “I don’t need my stepbrother’s help with that.” I lower my voice and mutter, “If anything, he needs my help.”
A faint laugh comes from around the corner, and I peek forward to see who’s listening. A girl with pretty auburn hair, holding a similar paper like the one in my hand, slaps her hand over her mouth. She lowers it to mouth the word sorry at me before rolling her lips together.
“I’m not worried,” my dad argues. “And what was that about helping Cross? I couldn’t quite hear you.”
I shut my eyes and shake my head. “It’s nothing. Listen, I gotta go, Dad. I just got my schedule and–”
He interrupts me. “Right! Okay, well, just give me a call later. I, uh…installed some alarms at the house, by the way. Cross has all the information. I told him to pass it along to you.”
Lovely.
I’m mid-hang up when the eavesdropper places her hand over her heart.
“I am so sorry,” she blurts out. “I did not mean to overhear your conversation. I just walked out here from meeting with my academic advisor”—she points behind her to the same doors I exited from—“and couldn’t help but laugh at the dig about your stepbrother.”
I give her a half-smile. “It’s okay. I’m glad I could amuse someone.”
“I’m Sawyer,” she introduces herself, holding out her hand.
I shake it gently. “I’m Scarlett.”
She glances at my schedule. “So you’re a transfer too?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Where are you coming from?”
“A small college in a Podunk town.” She laughs sarcastically. “You?”
“Uh…” I’m hesitant to tell her the truth because when people find out I went to Yale, they automatically assume I’m a genius. I’m not. I’m just an excellent student who likes to excel in all aspects of life. “Yale.”
“Yale,” she repeats. “You’re far away from home, then?”
I shake my head. “Technically, this is home, so I’ve just moved back.”
To live with my stepbrother, apparently.
“Oh, darn.” She sighs. “I was hoping there was at least one other person here that was approachable, who could be clueless with me. I don’t even know where the coffee stand is.”
A laugh bubbles out of me. “Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t know where anything is.
It’s been a few years since I’ve lived in Shadow Valley, and I’ve never even been on this campus before.
” I glance around for a coffee stand and come up empty handed.
I turn back toward Sawyer. “If you want, we can go find coffee together. My first class doesn’t start until tomorrow, so I’m free. ”
Hope illuminates in her blue eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah, of course,” I say with more enthusiasm than I’ve had in a week.
Sawyer and I start walking down the stone steps. “Plus, my dad thinks I need my stepbrother’s help to make friends at Shadow Valley. I’d love nothing more than to prove him wrong.”
Sawyer grins. “I can definitely help you with that.”
We make our way through the center of campus, trading stories about our old schools. It makes me ache for the school I used to love. The familiarity of it. My friends. But no. One stupid decision ruined everything.
I swear, we circle the whole interior of the campus and come up blank.
“Maybe the dining hall has coffee,” she says. “I could eat something, anyway.”
I nod fast, my cheeks heating. “Told you I didn’t know my way around.”
“We could ask someone.” She tucks a lock of her red hair behind her ear. “Be extroverted and shit.”
“Pass.”
She laughs. “I’m glad I found you, Scarlett.”
Ditto.
The student center, at least, is easy to locate. A quick peek at my watch reveals we’re right in time for a late breakfast. The worker looks at both of us like we’re idiots when we don’t know what to hand her to get in, then she sighs heavily when Sawyer and I go digging for our student IDs.
At least I got that yesterday. Sheesh.
On the way in, we pass a corkboard covered in flyers.
“Uh, Scar”
I jerk. It’s been a minute since anyone has called me that–it was a thing at Yale, but I haven’t talked to those friends in…a while.
Sawyer taps my arm. “Is that you?”
I focus on where she’s pointing, and the color leeches out of my face.
There’s a flyer–no, there are at least seven–plastered to the board. A selfie from my Instagram is front and center, with red block lettering above and below it.
WANTED: in desperate search of new friends
Must be able to handle random fits of nonsense, unpleasant body odor, and barking
At the bottom, there are tear-away pieces that have my school email address on it.
What the actual fuck?
BARKING?
Unpleasant body odor?
This has Cross written all over it.
My face burns. Mortification screeches through me, and my nails scrape at the corkboard in my hurry to rip them all down. The papers tear and crumple, but it doesn’t seem like I’m moving fast enough.
Everyone is staring.
Sawyer is probably going to ditch me immediately–who wouldn’t?
When they’re finally all down, my chest heaves. I turn around and mentally brace for the horrified expression my new friend–new ex-friend, more like–must have.
But she’s not. She loops her arm in mine and tugs me deeper into the dining hall. She makes a beeline straight for the trash bin, where she takes the papers from my hand and stuffs them down.
“There,” she says. “Now, I can’t wait to hear the story behind that.”
“You’re not going to dump me?”
She laughs. “You kidding? Things just got interesting, girl. You’re stuck with me.”