Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [1]
My smile got weaker, and I smoothed out my long-sleeved white Oxford shirt and black, blue and green Scotch plaid skirt that mirrored her outfit.
“You tell me, how do I look?” I asked her.
“You look fine,” she chirped. “But why the long sleeves? It’s soooo hot out. It’s going to be like, seventy billion degrees today! Don’t you have any short slee—”
Ashley looked at the ground and blushed, her red cheeks now matching her flame-colored hair.
“Sorry, I forgot about the scar.”
The blazing scar from the car accident had made wearing short sleeves an impossibility. Thanks, Henry. You’re a champ.
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” I reassured her. “Don’t worry about it. Really!” I added when I saw the expression in her eyes.
She had always looked up to me, even though she lived in the city and I lived in the country, so to speak. Being two years older had its advantages.
And now the city mouse was taking the country mouse under its paw.
After Aunt Christine had slipped me a twenty-dollar bill “for emergencies” and sent us on our way, I drew in Ashley conspiratorially and asked, “So what’s the real deal on this school? I know the basic stuff, like how practically everyone goes Ivy League after graduation. But what’s this place really like?”
How I hoped, prayed, that it was like all those shows about rich, fashion-obsessed, drama-crazy New York teens who dressed like they were twenty-five. All the easier to stay in the background. I just wanted to get through the next two years and disappear to college. Preferably somewhere far away. Maybe Siberia.
“They like to say it’s exclusive but that’s just a nice word for it being expensive.” Ashley giggled, toying with her oversize hoop earring. “It’s the most expensive coed school in the city. There’s a few girls-only or boys-only schools that cost more. So we’re like our own little, I don’t know, island, in the middle of it all. Everyone at Vince A more or less stays together.”
“Oh.” I tried to not sound disappointed.
In my head, I began rehearsing what I would say about the reason behind my move. Ashley didn’t understand why I didn’t just say I moved from Keansburg, but then I told her how my high school paper insisted on doing a story on the dangers of drinking and driving, pegged to the incident with Henry. The editor was hoping to use her hard-hitting story as her one-way ticket into the journalism program at Columbia. I figured it doubled as her ticket to Hell. Those who hadn’t heard about Henry through the gossip mill read about it, front and center in the Keansburg Mirror.
Google me. Google Keansburg. Guess what your first hit is?
Alcohol Turns Home Life Tragic and Ride Home Dangerous for Sophomore Emma Connor.
So moving from Philly was the story.
Ashley gave me a cursory rundown of the school and some of the things I’d come to expect from high school. The principal wore horrible suits. The uniforms were itchy in warmer weather. The cafeteria food was comically terrible, but you were allowed out at lunchtime once you were a junior.
We crossed Eighty-fifth Street, racing against the yellow light and slowing our walk as we headed to the entrance.
“Here we are!” Ashley announced, throwing her arms open with a flourish.
I regarded the gray building in front of me. It was an old mansion that had been converted into a high school, and it sure looked the part, with cool stone walls and windows hugged by lavishly scrolled molding. Vincent Academy wasn’t too tall—just five floors, no taller than the stately, old-fashioned brick-and-marble buildings on either side—but to me, it seemed massive and imposing, like it was some bully crushing his way through a crowd of old ladies.
I was suddenly very, very nervous. Maybe the devil I knew was better than the