9. Friday Night Lights #4
Charley confronted her mother, who had the gall to say that Beatrix just loved drama, she was blowing things out of proportion like she always does. Joey had told Fran about his chat with Beatrix; he was making an effort to know Charley’s friends since Charley wouldn’t give him the time of day.
“Joey would never be inappropriate with one of your friends,” Fran Hicks said.
Was her mother living under a rock? Just because Joey wore a T-shirt to bed that said YOU KNOW I LIKE MY GIRLS A LITTLE BIT OLDER didn’t mean he wasn’t a total creeper.
He had been scheming Beatrix in their own house !
Using the transitive property, it followed that Joey might also look at Charley this way.
And sorry, but Charley didn’t need a better reason to go away to school than that.
She applied to sixteen boarding schools, from the Cate School in California to the Madeira School in Virginia.
They all said sorry, she was too late for admission in the fall.
Except for Tiffin.
At that instant, a pebble hits Charley’s window, scaring the shit out of her. She checks her phone. The text is from East, not her mother. Hey, I have good news.
The previous week, East asked Charley to Intervis and she agreed, assuming he was finally going to capitulate and ask for help with history.
But instead he took her hand (again, holding hands!) and led her down the back stairs, outside to the cellar door and into the tunnel from the north side.
Charley was appalled at herself for so flagrantly breaking the rules on a school night, but East assured her they wouldn’t stay long, no one would miss them, he just wanted to see it again.
He held her hand while they were in the tunnel and by the time they reached the bomb shelter, Charley had memorized the feel of East’s warm, strong fingers intertwined with hers.
When he let her hand go to yank on the string of the overhead light, she was crushed.
He started talking about building a bar—mahogany with a granite countertop, with Persian rugs and Tiffany lamps.
Charley nodded along, affirming every design decision, though in her head she thought: Granite countertops?
Tiffany lamps? Part of her was relieved his ideas were so grandiose.
If he’d just been talking about a beer pong table and folding chairs, she would have been worried.
That could conceivably become a reality.
But a speakeasy with Persian rugs? Never going to happen.
Another pebble. Charley peers behind the shade and there he is, pointing at the door.
Charley wraps up her sandwich, closes her book, checks her teeth in the mirror while reminding herself that she doesn’t care, she’s not obsessed with him.
She goes to the front door to let him in, then stands there like a store mannequin while he walks down the hall toward her room.
She’s pretty sure they’re breaking the rules yet again—visits during Intervis are okay as long as they’re documented and the door stays cracked.
East walks right into her room, helps himself to an Oreo from her hanging baskets of snacks, and flops onto her bed. “Close the door,” he says.
“But…”
“Everyone’s at the game.”
Right, she thinks, so why do they need to close the door? But she does it anyway.
East seems different. He seems… happy. As in ready-to-explode-in-a-burst-of-pinata-candy happy. “I found a hookup for the alcohol,” he says.
Charley can’t believe anyone would be stupid or desperate enough to provide alcohol for a speakeasy at a boarding school. “Who is it?”
“I can’t tell you,” he says. “But Priorities is happening.”
“Priorities?” she says. “That’s the name?”
He nods. “We should have it up and running by spring.”
His use of the word “we” is both delicious and deeply unsettling. He must notice the expression on her face because he says, “Don’t bail on me now, Charles. You want this. Remember the literary salon? The Algonquin Round Table?”
“Is that what it’s going to be like?” Charley asks.
“Or is it going to be”—what comes to mind is a scene pulled straight out of Euphoria: Gunna thumping, the Olivias and Madisons throwing back shots of tequila and snorting bumps of cocaine off the base of their thumbs while Hakeem and Taylor fuck each other silly out in the hallway—“a place to rage?”
“I bet you”—East snaps an Oreo between his teeth, then brushes chocolate crumbs off the front of his T-shirt onto her duvet cover—“that the reason Dorothy Parker was so witty was because she’d had a martini or two.”
Charley deadpans him. “A woman can’t be witty when she’s sober?”
“They met at a hotel bar,” East says. “Because they were drinking. ”
“What if we get caught?” Charley says. She tries to imagine how over her life will be if she gets… Honor Boarded. No college for her, or not the colleges she dreams of attending. And what if she gets sent home to live with her mother and Joey?
“We’re not going to get caught,” East says. He bounces off the bed and, without any warning, takes her face in his hands. She holds her breath, which she fears smells like Buffalo sauce and/or Caesar dressing. “I have impunity.”
Charley can’t help but smile. “That’s a pretty big word for someone who’s failing history.”
East brings her in for a hug. Charley instinctively wraps her arms around him. He rests his chin on top of her head and she closes her eyes. This, she thinks, is why people write romance novels.
“Just stick with me on this, Charles,” East says. He pulls away so he can look her in the eye. “It’s gonna be legendary.”
After East leaves her room, Charley sits on her bed amid the chocolate crumbs and tries to steady her breathing.
East is the antagonist to her protagonist: He’s leading her down a wayward path.
He’s opening a speakeasy called Priorities in the basement of their dorm, and for some reason he wants her as his partner.
Not Davi, not Tilly Benbow, not one of the Madisons or Olivias.
He’s chosen her. Just stick with me on this, Charles.
The nickname would annoy her coming from anyone else, but now Charley can’t help grinning.
Almost involuntarily, almost as if she’s being manipulated by the hand of some unseen force, Charley sends East a text: I’m in.
There it is, she thinks. Her ruin, floating in a blue bubble.
There will be no more reading tonight. Charley carries the remains of her milkshake to the bathroom, where she immediately realizes she’s not alone. Someone is in one of the stalls, retching.
Charley pours her milkshake down the drain and runs the water for a while, making sure there’s no Milky Way residue in the sink, and then she rinses out the plastic cup.
The person in the stall is probably waiting for Charley to leave, and Charley can’t blame her.
Doesn’t everyone want privacy while they puke?
Charley shuts off the water and is about to leave when she hears more retching. She stops and thinks, What do you care? But tonight has taken such a bizarre turn already that Charley says, “Are you okay?”
There’s no response. She should leave. But instead, she crouches down to peek under the stall. She sees a pair of lavender Adidas Gazelles. It’s Davi.
Whoa, Charley thinks. Not who she expected. She has, of course, heard about girls at boarding school who develop eating disorders, but she assumed Davi Banerjee would be above all that. Isn’t Davi celebrated in the Paddock for her appetite? Isn’t she Chef’s favorite?
“Davi?” Charley says.
There’s a rustling, then the toilet flushes, then the stall door opens and Davi stands before her, eyes shining, strands of hair caught in her mouth.
“The barbacoa from the food truck was bad, I think,” she says. “I felt sick right away.” As she washes her hands, Charley holds her gaze in the mirror.
“What?” Davi says. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have to pretend to be worried, ” Davi says. She scoops water into her mouth, rinses, spits. “I know what you think of me.”
Charley blinks. “What do I think of you?”
“You think I’m shallow. You think I whore myself out for clicks and follows.”
“Maybe that’s what you think about yourself.”
Davi turns to her. “She was my best friend, you know. My best fucking friend—and I didn’t know there was anything wrong. She was engaged in life, she played the guitar and sang, she was with Dub. Did she have moments? Yeah, but we all have moments.”
Charley nods. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d known her.” Everything Charley has heard about Cinnamon Peters makes Charley believe she would have liked Cinnamon better than anyone else in the school.
“Paradox,” Davi says. “There’s no way you would have known her. If she were alive, you wouldn’t be here.”
“You’re right.”
Davi pulls a pack of mints out of her pocket and crunches one between her teeth. “I just really want to know why you think you’re superior to the rest of us.”
Charley tilts her head. “You have over a million followers on TikTok, Davi. Your parents own a fashion label. You live in London and have an accent that I’m sure everyone in this dorm tries to imitate when they’re alone.
People at this school worship you.” Charley pitches her rinsed plastic cup into the recycling bin a little harder than she means to. “I do not think I’m superior.”
“You don’t have to be weird, is the thing,” Davi says. “I can help you with your clothes, your hair, your makeup. I can turn you into a total smokeshow.”
Charley nearly laughs. Becoming a “total smokeshow,” which she understands to mean looking like a clone of Davi and her minions, is the last thing she wants. Does this make her superior?
“I’m good, thanks,” Charley says. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Davi turns back to the mirror and wipes under each eye. “Never better.” She sighs. “If you could just not…”