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because Callie had wanted Brandon for herself. And last year, Benny Cunningham, their well-bred, beautiful brunette friend from Philadelphia, had wanted to go out with Erik Olssen, a pale, hot Swedish import, but he’d liked skanky Tricia Rieken—who’d had a boob job and wore the sluttiest, most dominatrixlike clothes from Dolce & Gabbana. Somehow Callie had managed to persuade Tricia to like Lon Baruzza, who was on scholarship but gorgeous and allegedly very good at sex, leaving Erik open for Benny.
    Clearly Callie was good at getting people to do whatever she wanted, especially when she had something to gain personally. And in this case, maybe Callie was better off without Tinsley around: last spring, Tinsley and Callie’s boyfriend, Easy Walsh, had been spotted by the girls’ soccer team behind the row houses at night—alone. Both Tinsley and Easy had denied that anything had happened, but Callie could get pretty territorial when it came to boyfriends. It seemed crazy that Callie would get Tinsley kicked out of school for possibly hooking up with Easy, but, well, Callie was a little insane.
    Callie squinted. “Did your hair get redder?”
    “Kind of,” Brett mumbled. Her colorist, Jacques, had fucked up and used a blue red on her instead of a yellow red. She’d gone to Bergdorf’s to get it fixed but had managed to get the salon’s most punk rock stylist, who had told her it was perfect and that it would go against his artistic sensibilities to change it. Brett worried that she looked too much like Kate Winslet in that
Eternal Sunshine
movie, which was
not
a good look.
    “I like it,” Callie declared. “It looks awesome.”
    Liar!
Brett knew what Callie thought of fake-looking dyed hair. Brett slammed her bag down on the floor. “So what, you don’t call me all summer?”
    “I … I called you,” Callie stammered, widening her eyes.
    “No, you didn’t. You sent me one text message. In June.”
    Callie stood up. “Well, you didn’t respond!”
    “I …” Brett trailed off. Callie was right. She hadn’t responded. “So, did you hear from Tinsley?”
    “Of course.”
    Brett felt a stab of jealousy. “Me too,” she lied. She hadn’t heard from her glamorous best friend since she’d been expelled last May.
    They both stared at Tinsley’s bare bed. Would it be empty all year? Maybe they’d use it for extra storage or cover it with an Indian batik bedspread and embroidered pillows from one of the hippie Rhinecliff stores. Or would Waverly stick them with some weirdo no one wanted to room with?
    “Tinsley called me a whole bunch of times,” Callie continued, a little aggressively.
    “Me too,” Brett lied again, removing some of her blouses from her cream-colored leather suitcase. “So, how’s Easy?” She changed the subject. “Did you see him this summer?”
    “Um … yeah,” Callie replied quietly, a twinge of hurt in her voice. “Did you see Jeremiah?”
    “Yeah, some,” Brett mumbled back.
    “Still hate the way he says
car
?” Callie asked as she examined her clear lip gloss in a tiny black lacquered Chanel compact.
    “Yes,” Brett groaned. Her boyfriend, Jeremiah, was the star lineman for St. Lucius and even though he was from an old-money family in Newton, a well-to-do suburb of Boston, he spoke with a Boston townie accent, omitting his
r
‘s like Matt Damon in
Good Will Hunting
.
    “Did you visit him or did he visit you?”
    “Well, I spent a week with his family on Martha’s Vineyard. That was really nice.” Brett liked Jeremiah, but she really loved his family. They were textbook New England wealthy—so understated and tasteful and the exact opposite of her trashy parents. It didn’t hurt either that Jeremiah was gorgeous, with an angular, square jaw, floppy reddish-brown hair to his shoulders, and blue-green eyes that drank her in.
    Brett had promised that, as soon as she got to school, she’d call him up and they’d have phone sex. Jeremiah had wanted to have