Chapter 6
six
SLOANE
I’ve spent two hours on this toga, and I haven’t even reached the party.
After YouTube tutorials, three safety pins, a belt I borrowed from Ivy, and a gold cuff from a girl down the hall, I’m done. The result is an ivory sheath belted at the waist, both shoulders covered, hem to the calf, plus the synthetic laurel wreath Luca delivered yesterday.
I look like I could be displayed in the Greek and Roman wing at the Met.
But when Ivy steps out of the bathroom, every decision I’ve made in the last two hours becomes wrong. Because while what she’s wearing is technically a toga, it’s a toga in the same way a napkin is technically clothing.
She’s arranged it so the slit is high on the left thigh. Up top, one shoulder is bare, and the other is doing structural work that one drink will undo. Her short bob is tucked behind her ears, and she’s done something with her eyeliner that makes her blue eyes slightly feral.
She catches my expression in the mirror and grins. “You like?” she says.
I squint. “Is that my bedsheet?”
“It was your bedsheet.” She tugs the strap back into place. “It’s a toga now.”
I want to say she can’t wear that, but I can’t, because she is and she looks incredible, which is the annoying part. She looks like she got dressed in forty seconds and landed in a much better place than the one I spent two hours trying to reach.
“You look great,” I say.
“I look like a centurion’s slutty girlfriend,” she says, pleased. “And you—”
“Don’t.”
“—look like the chaperone who makes sure the chaperones behave.”
I pretend I didn’t hear her and apply a coat of gloss to my lips, because after the night at the Lantern I’m going for demure, especially around Mason. Behind me in the mirror, Ivy adjusts the knot at her hip, which pulls the material away from her chest to offer me a lot of side-boob.
She catches my eye in the mirror, suddenly serious. “You good? You’re doing your face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you say you’re fine when I ask.”
“I am fine.”
She keeps looking at me, waiting me out.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“It’s something…”
“There’s a boy in my head. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s not happening.”
“Mason?” she says. “I thought that was happening?”
I hesitate for half a second, maybe less, but Ivy catches it and her face lights up.
“It’s not happening?”
“No, it is.” I hesitate again. “I just—”
She squeals, delighted. “You’re dating Mason, and there’s some other boy taking up room in your head. Sloane Avery. You little slut. I could cry. Spill it all.”
“There’s nothing to spill.”
“Who is he?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Sloane.”
And that’s the part I can’t give her. Of everyone at this school, Ivy is the one who could help me untangle it and the one person I can never tell, because the boy is her brother and I’m still not sure how she’d react to that.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say again.
She watches me a beat longer, her eyes boring into me, so I busy myself putting my makeup back on the shelf. But whatever she sees pulls the grin from her face, and she crosses the room and squeezes my wrist.
“Okay,” she says. “I won’t push. But whoever taught you that wanting something was dangerous is wrong. So, whoever he is, when you’re ready, I’ll help the magic happen.”
“Thanks, Ives,” I say.
“Sure,” she says. “Let’s go?”
I nod, and we leave Sterling House and walk to Ironwood House — known around campus as the Hockey House — with our arms linked. She spends the walk telling me about a boy from her art history seminar who keeps trying to explain Caravaggio to her.
As we walk, her sandals click against the sidewalk, gold and strappy and insane. I can feel her shivering through our linked arms, but she won’t acknowledge it, and I respect this about her even though I want to give her my coat.
Ironwood is already crazy when we get there — music pounding, light spilling from every floor, and people on the deep front porch holding cups and vapes. Somebody has draped a bedsheet banner over the porch railing that reads TOGA IN EXCELSIS in purple marker.
“Oh my God,” Ivy says, squeezing my arm. “He’s insane. I love it.”
Inside is better. Or worse, depending on how you feel about 150 people in bedsheets crammed into a Victorian rental house. But most importantly for Luca’s vision, there are bowls of actual grapes on every flat surface and plastic wreaths on every head.
Luca sees us through the crowd and approaches, both arms out. “My daughters,” he says, and then he sees Ivy. “Christ on a chariot.”
“Hi, Luca,” Ivy says, putting her hands on her hips and daring him to say something about her outfit… or the lack of much of one.
“You can’t wear that here.” He feigns outrage. “It’s scandalous for a member of the Halden community to dress like that at a tasteful party.”
“Here we go,” I say.
“I’m serious. You’ve taken the poor boy’s breath away.” He gestures behind him to Theo, who is holding his cup at an angle that says casual but lands closer to rehearsed.
Theo’s eyes are locked onto Ivy, soaking in every scandalous detail. And when he realizes we’re all looking at him, Theo straightens up and takes a sip of his drink, totally oblivious to the fact he’s now flushed red.
“The one pretending he wasn’t staring?” Ivy snorts.
“They’re all pretending they weren’t staring,” I offer.
“He’s worse at it,” Luca says.
I laugh, because Luca and Ivy together are the kind of people who fill a room just by standing in it. Already, Luca is conducting the night like it’s his orchestra, and Ivy is radiating confidence you can’t engineer.
They’re two people I admire, and two people I desperately wish I could afford to be like.
And then there’s Theo, trying so hard to look like he belongs that there’s practically a neon sign saying so. It’s a look and a vibe I recognize, because I’ve been the same for months, just with more practice. So I offer him a smile, and he goes even more red than before.
Before Luca can say anything else, a girl from Ivy’s class screams her name across the living room. Ivy gives me a small two-finger salute and is gone, and I’m standing in the entryway, watching the party happen without me.
I take a breath and step into the noise.
For the next half hour, I work the room. I find a girl from my communications class near the stairs and ask about our group project. She introduces me to her roommate, I laugh at a joke, and I compliment her on her wreath.
The Halden Girl is operating at full capacity and the returns are good.
That’s when I see him.
Rowan is by the kitchen with Niko, the Russian, wearing the laziest possible costume — a length of plain white fabric thrown over his torso, jeans underneath, and sneakers. No shirt. No wreath. He looks like someone who got handed a bedsheet at the door.
But the fabric has slipped, or maybe it was never secured properly, so one shoulder and most of his chest are bare. The white cotton cuts a diagonal from his collarbone to his right hip, and everything above that line is just…
Wow.
I’m looking. I know I’m looking. I try to make myself stop and I can’t, not entirely, because something is happening that’s happened before. It’s the thing that doesn’t happen when I’m with Mason.
The thing Mason’s mouth on mine is supposed to start and doesn’t, the warmth his hand on my thigh is supposed to create and can’t — it’s here, uninvited, because a boy I’m not dating is wearing a bedsheet badly.
But before I can think too hard about it, a hand finds my hip from behind.
“Found you,” Mason says, into my hair.
I let him kiss my temple. “Hi.”
“You look—” He pulls back to take me in, eyes a touch too slow.
He doesn’t finish the sentence, because I can tell he’s disappointed. It’s like whatever he was expecting from me tonight hasn’t been delivered, although he hasn’t gone to much trouble either. His “toga” is an oversized white T-shirt that somehow still works on him.
Because most things work on Mason.
I get only a moment of his attention, and then he flashes a grin at someone across the room and steers me into a conversation with two of his Pi Sigma brothers, a tall blond named Whit and a shorter guy whose name I immediately forget.
“This is Sloane Avery,” Mason announces.
“Hi, Sloane,” Whit says.
“Hi,” I say.
Whit is doing the math. “Wait. Avery. Like Owen Avery?”
“That’s the one,” I say, forcing a smile, and knowing where this is going.
“He worked on my dad’s Senate run,” Whit smirks. “Has he still got that dorky haircut?”
“You bet.”
Whit laughs and produces three more follow-ups about my brother that I have answered before in the exact same order, because every Halden boy with a father in finance or politics — and that’s most of them — has met Owen at some point and wants me to know all about it.
As Mason’s hand settles at my waist, the boys move on and talk about the upcoming game and whether the new defensive pairing will hold. Mason holds court, and I contribute where I can, doing the small pleased tilt of the head that my mom drilled into me.
The one that says I’m warm and attentive and please continue.
While the boys talk, I sip a wine that Mason puts into my hand. It is not the Barolo, it is not anything with a name, and it was probably poured from a box. I barely touch it, but Mason gets drunker than he should be this early.
And when his eyes lock onto something, I follow his gaze.
“Uh oh,” I say.
Across the room, Ivy is climbing onto the coffee table. She’s still mostly clothed, which is something, but when she raises both arms and starts making a speech, her slit starts doing what it was always going to do.
But before there’s a scandal, she wobbles, and Seb reaches up with one big hand and lifts her down. Ivy spills half her drink down the front of his toga in the process, and he doesn’t flinch — he just sets her on her feet and turns back to his conversation.
For once, it’s Ivy who gets flustered, which is new.
Because Ivy doesn’t do flustered.
I want to be Ivy. I want to be on a coffee table laughing with my hands in the air, not caring that the slit has gone past where it should go. But I’m not, because a boy named Harrison nearly ruined my life, and now I’m Sloane Avery, the Halden Girl.
As Whit changes the topic to his uncle’s Porsche, I let my eyes scan the room.
And see that Rowan is watching me.
He’s alone now, leaning a shoulder against the kitchen doorway, drink loose in his hand. He sees me see him, and his mouth tilts, barely. The pull is immediate and unwelcome, and I look away fast. Then my gaze shifts right onto Mason’s face, and I can tell he saw.
Because the smile is still there, but his eyes have gone ice cold.
“Friend of yours?” Mason says.
I take a sip of the wine. “Who?”
“Hale.”
“He’s on your team, Mason.”
“Yeah.” He lifts his drink. “Tell me about your school — Hotchkiss — again.”
“What about it?”
“Senior year.” His thumb is doing circles. “I keep trying to figure out who you ran with.”
“Nobody you’ve heard of.”
“Try me.”
I give him five names — three girls, two boys, all from families that would operate in the same circles as his. He nods through them all. Then, easy, like an aside, he responds.
“Small world, that crowd. I probably know half the people you went to school with.”
I keep my glass steady, because I have practiced this. “Probably,” I say.
“I’m good with names.” He smiles. “Yours has come up once or twice.”
“Mm,” I say, giving him nothing.
He takes a sip, easy and satisfied, and the conversation moves on without us. Then he steers me into the next pocket of it with a firm hand at my lower back, and I let myself be guided.
The party gets thicker. Someone breaks something in the kitchen and a cheer goes up. Someone asks whether Gavin showed and nobody answers. And through it all, Luca conducts and the music gets louder.
At some point, Ivy catches my eye from across the room and mouths you good, and I flash her a thumbs-up with a grin that must be convincing, because she goes right back to her conversation.
Mason’s drinking stops hiding. The easy charm sharpens into something louder and less calibrated, and the more he drinks, the bigger he gets. Bigger gestures, longer stories, and an edge under the polish that wasn’t there an hour ago.
Then he acquires a second wreath from somewhere and stacks them both on his head, and it gets a big laugh, and the laugh feeds him. His arm goes from my waist to my shoulder to the back of my neck, pulling me in close to underscore a point.
By this point, my smile starts arriving late every time it’s called upon.
I catch Rowan in my peripheral vision. He’s talking to Seb and Niko near the kitchen, leaning against the wall. Then Theo says something that makes Rowan smile, and I can’t look away.
Mason notices where my eyes went, and — this time — he retaliates.
It starts with Ivy. She’s back on the coffee table, both hands in the air, and this time nobody pulls her down. The slit in her toga is doing overtime, and she’s laughing and spinning and looking like the most alive person in the room.
Whit tips his head toward her and whistles low. “Your boy’s sister knows how to throw down.”
Mason grins. The setup is in the way his eyes slide from Ivy to me, then — just a flicker — to Rowan at the kitchen doorway. Then he runs his gaze down my body, slow, public, making sure the circle is looking at me before he speaks.
“That’s a toga,” he says, gesturing at Ivy with his cup. “Sister Sloane, on the other hand, do I need to consult the convent before touching you?”
The laughter starts before he finishes. His hand slides from my hip down to my ass, and then he squeezes. Whit howls, a shorter Pi Sigma boy barks out a laugh, and the rest of the circle obliges.
What I want in this moment is to take my wine and pour it over his head in front of the room and say something smart and threatening. But I don’t, because I know what happens if I do.
It’d be Harrison all over again — the spectacle, the whisper chain, the texts, the social media videos, and the inevitability that my parents and their friends will hear about it by Sunday morning — and the version of me I’ve spent a lot of effort becoming will be wasted.
Because I’ve done the math on this.
The thing that ruins you is not the act, it’s your reaction. If I push his hand off, I’m the uptight girl who can’t take it. If I cry — and there’s a hot pressure behind my eyes that says that’s close — then the story follows me through every dining hall and seminar room.
So I do the worst thing I can do, which is the thing I came here to do.
I let the smile hold.
I don’t react.
I don’t give the fire oxygen.
Across the room, from the corner of my eye, I see Rowan. His neutral expression is gone. His face has gone hard in a way I haven’t seen on him before, and his hand has tightened around his glass.
He’s watching Mason’s hand on me.