Chapter Twenty-One Julia
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“It’s important to remember, whilst being insulted, that terrible people will eventually get theirs. Karma shows the hell up, thank God.”
—Remington
Julia
“This is not what I was expecting,” Liam said, looking around.
“Yeah, same,” I agreed, a little relieved.
There was a “living” room in front of us, so big you could probably land a plane in it. A string quartet was in the corner, playing classical music just like the party downstairs, and servers were walking around with the same refreshments.
There were luxe couches and artsy end tables, and a few kids our age were standing around in formalwear, talking.
It looked very elegant, calm, but a total snoozefest.
Thank God.
I didn’t see anyone I recognized from school, either, none of the Skins or Toms or the other labels that terrified me, so I breathed a huge sigh and relaxed. The kids who were there looked quiet and composed, not at all like the classmates who always appeared to be judging me.
“Schwab’s down the hall,” Liam said.
“What?” I glanced over at my brother, who was looking at his phone. “Who’s Schwab?”
“Beckett Schwab,” he said, as if that explained it.
I waited for another second, then said, “Okay, who is Beckett Schwab again?”
“He goes to our school,” he said as if I should know that. “Showed me around the first day. He’s cool. Come on.”
Right. Beckett. As rich-boy a name as Damion.
“But,” I said, trying to grab on to him as he Liamed his way down the hallway.
“Wait!” I scrambled in my heels to keep up with him as we walked past strange antiques, plate collections hanging on the walls (is that Revolution-era?), and oil paintings in gilded frames, illuminated by lighting better than I’d ever had in any bathroom.
Liam didn’t even pause before turning the knob and pushing open the door at the end of the hall. “LIAM!”
What are you doing????
I followed him into a room with only a few lamps illuminating what appeared to be an enormous office filled with people. And not just any people.
Oh God.
The room was packed full of people my age, standing around with drinks, talking and laughing as music—“Blame It on You”—boomed from somewhere in the dimly lit room.
Oh God, I see the Toms, I thought as those guys appeared to be playing some sort of drinking game on top of the massive office desk.
“Lowell!”
I turned away from the scene in front of me to see a smiling blond guy approaching us.
“Schwab,” my brother said with a grin. “Thank God you texted. I was getting a little scared when I came upstairs.”
“There’s always something happening in one of the back rooms at a Garden party,” the guy said with a laugh. “You just have to know how to find the room where it happens.”
“Nice reference,” I muttered without thinking as the Hamilton song settled into my brain.
“ ‘Click boom, then it happened,’ ” Beckett sang with a smile, “ ‘but no one else was in the room where it happened.’ ”
“This is my sister, Julia,” Liam said. “Julia, this is Beckett.”
“Can I just say you’re my hero for rocking a headband tonight?
” the guy said, crossing his arms over his purple tuxedo and giving me a big grin, like he was proud of me.
“I heard that you called Cassandra ‘Headband,’ and I honestly think that might’ve made my life.
Well, until now… seeing you wearing one. ”
My cheeks went hot. I was embarrassed and felt caught.
I gave my head a shake and said, “Let’s just say I, um, I… had a moment.”
“You should have more,” he said, his eyes squinting around his smile. “Makes things around here more interesting.”
“Not my goal,” I said with an eye roll, and then I immediately wanted to slap my hand over my mouth.
Shit.
“Maybe it should be,” he teased, and I was relieved he didn’t seem offended by my remark. “If you can’t—”
Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by someone yelling his name.
He turned around, and the Toms were demanding his return.
“Get your ass over here!” the red-haired guy—Corbin the jerk from lit—yelled from where he was perched upon the probably priceless desktop. He was literally on his knees on top of the huge piece of furniture as he shouted, “You’re up, Schwab!”
“Come on, Liam,” he said, and before I could register what was happening, my brother turned his back on me and went over to the game with Beckett.
Leaving me alone.
Noooooooooooooooooo!
I took one step to follow him, because even though the idea of getting closer to the Toms felt akin to moving closer to a starving family of grizzly baby mamas, I wasn’t the type of person emotionally equipped to traverse a party alone.
Hell, no.
But someone touched my arm, and when I turned around, it was one of the Skins.
The tall one with the red hair. Naomi.
“What are you doing here, New Money?” she said with a tight grin. “You don’t strike me as someone who’d be involved in the season.”
The way she said it, like there was no way I would ever land a date, was intended to insult and… well, it did. I didn’t want to do the season, but the implication that I wouldn’t be able to if I had wanted to stung.
Because it was a hundred percent accurate.
Bella, the Skin with the superlong hair, suddenly appeared by Naomi’s side and said to me, “Ooh, I like your dress. Salvatore Sutfan, right?”
That was, in fact, the name I’d seen on my dress’s label, so I said, “Right.”
“Yeah, I think my grandmother has that exact dress,” she said, smiling.
The Skins knew how to make smiles feel like slaps. They grinned, their perfect teeth and glossed lips doing all the right choreography, yet the final pose was somehow a jump-scare.
“Oh, right, she wore it to the Press Club dinner last year,” Naomi said, nodding and smiling like this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “I remember the ruffle.”
“Yeah, it’s quite a ruffle,” Bella agreed, also nodding. “Lovely ruffle.”
I stood there, the butt of their joke, and I was overwhelmed with homesickness. I missed being in a place where I knew how everything worked, who everyone was, and where every social situation didn’t feel like a toxic trap that would likely end in my demise.
“I’m surprised to see you up here at all, to be honest,” Bella said, tilting her head. “It doesn’t seem like your kind of place.”
“That’s what I said,” Naomi said with a laugh. They looked at me like they were a pair of velociraptors out hunting together.
I searched the vicinity for escape as I stammered, “Um, my, uh, my mom is on the—”
“Oh my God, your mom is on the committee?” Bella asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Yeah, she is,” I responded, trying to see my brother.
God, save me, Liam.
“But why?” she scoffed. “Why would she—”
“Because of New Money’s brother,” Naomi said definitively, nodding as if it made sense. “Liam.”
“Well, at least one of the New Money twins has potential.”
And that. THAT hurt worse than a slap to the face.
God, please let me disappear right now.
My cheeks were on fire as they laughed at me, as they stood in front of me and mocked me to my face.
Dammit, I couldn’t let them win.
Couldn’t let them see the tears that were suddenly blurring my vision.
Screw that.
I turned to defiantly join my brother and the Toms at the drinking-game desk, but joining Liam and watching him effortlessly blend in was also the last thing I wanted to do. And as I scanned the room, I wondered where the hell I was and what I was doing here.
There was a couple lying on the couch, a girl in a stunning red gown on top of a guy in a charcoal tux, and they were hardcore going at it.
So hardcore it wouldn’t have surprised me if their clothes started coming off at any moment.
A group of girls in their finest eveningwear, looking like they belonged in Vogue with their necklaces dangling and ties askew, crowded around a table, leaning down and doing something that looked illegal.
Are they snorting something?
I couldn’t tell for sure, but it didn’t matter because I seriously had no idea what things were even available to snort.
Maybe there’s something snortable that isn’t an illegal substance, right?
I’d never felt more like I knew nothing about anything.
Suddenly the Toms, shouting about something related to their drinking game, were all I could hear as this montage of sophisticated things I knew nothing about played out before me.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like my heart was beating too fast and my lungs were too shallow and—what the hell—the tingly numbness in my hands made me wonder if my circulation was in jeopardy.
My hands were freezing but my body was on fire.
I shook out my hands and tried breathing through my nose, but I needed to get away.
As infantile as it sounded, I wanted my parents.
I turned and very nearly ran from the room, not stopping until I was at the top of the staircase.
“ ‘It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. It is the east, and Juliet is the sun,’ ” I said under my breath, praying the old trick would work.
There was something about reciting the iambic pentameter out loud (thank you, Dr. Allison) that got my breathing back on track whenever this happened.
I took a deep breath through my nose, ran a hand over the front of my dress, and descended the stairs.
“It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. It is the east, and Juliet is the sun,” I whispered to myself because—thank God—it was starting to work.
Be cool, Jules, I thought as I carefully went down the steps. Act like you’ve been here before.
Downstairs, I found my mom right away, but as I approached and looked at the woman she was talking to, I instantly knew who she must be.
“Julia,” my mom said with a smile. “This is Chantel Chattingham; her daughter, Coco, is a senior. Do you know her?”
“Um, I think maybe…?” I said, feeling scared for some reason as the woman’s pale blue eyes, so similar to her daughter’s, bore so deeply into me that I almost felt them digging into my skin.
“Oh hey, Whitney!” my mom said to someone who was apparently behind me.