The Viscount's Daughter - [A Treadwell Academy - 03] Read online

  I was getting nervous. There were a lot of rules to follow and remember, and I didn’t have such a stellar history with abiding by rules.

  “I know,” Melissa said, as if reading my mind. “It’s a lot to remember. Once you’re settled into your dormitory room, you can take a look at our interactive portal. School policies are always accessible there along with help lines for the administrative offices and the security desk.”

  Next, I was supposed to sit with my academic advisor, a woman named Renee, to fill out my class schedule. As Melissa punched some numbers into the keypad on the phone at her desk to tell Renee I was ready for her, I turned to Mom and in a low voice said, “You don’t have to stay for this. I’ll be fine.”

  “No, honey. I’d like to get a tour of the campus,” Mom insisted, even though I could tell from her expression that she was bored out of her mind.

  “Really, Mom,” I stated. “I’m fine. I want to do this on my own.”

  Danko said something under his breath that I couldn’t understand, and whatever it was, it was enough to convince Mom to stand and swing her leather handbag over her shoulder. She reached out to shake Melissa’s hand over the stacks of file folders on Melissa’s desk as Melissa hung up the phone with Renee.

  “My husband and I need to get back to the city,” Mom lied flawlessly. “It’s been very wonderful meeting you.”

  Melissa looked confused momentarily, but then hid her surprise well. Surely I couldn’t have been the only kid at Treadwell whose parents were too busy and unconcerned to stick around for the full orientation.

  “Yes, well, it was very lovely to have a chance to meet you, too,” Melissa said, standing to shake hands with Mom. Her bangles jingled. “We’ll take very good care of Betsey, here.”

  Danko waved stiffly, like a zombie, rather than offering to shake Melissa’s hand, and I realized I should probably demonstrate some kind of emotional interest their departure, so I stood to hug Mom. She kissed me on each cheek and waved goodbye. Danko was already lingering in the doorway of Melissa’s office, eager to leave. Thankfully he did not attempt to make any physical contact with me before leaving Treadwell. All of my admissions paperwork had been signed, and tuition bills had been paid. They were free to ditch me, if that was what they wanted to do.

  “Be good, dear,” Mom told me.

  I hated her for that.

  “You can leave all of Betsey’s suitcases with the front office. They’ll deliver her belongings to her room assignment so that you don’t have to carry anything,” Melissa instructed.

  And with that, Mom and Danko were on their way. I was elated, even though Melissa smiled at me with something that resembled pity after they left.

  “They’re really busy people,” I said cheerfully, feeling obligated to justify their apparent eagerness to dump me there.

  As I was led down the hall to Renee’s office, I felt like I was walking three feet above the ground. Danko and Mom were gone. I was free to live my life unencumbered by Danko’s intrusions and advances. I could barely pay attention to what Renee was saying as I was deposited in her office and warmly greeted. Her sunny office was filled with so many potted plants that it kind of looked like she was sitting in the middle of the jungle. She pulled up her academic registration software and began spewing generalities related to sophomore year curriculum requirements. A math, a foreign language, an earth science...

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for Algebra 3,” I interjected, suddenly coming back down to earth.

  “Nonsense,” Renee said, waving off my concern. “You scored so well on your admission test. We don’t want you to be bored, do we?”

  I held my tongue, but yes we did. Being bored and breezing through classes without having to worry about earning C’s and D’s was precisely what we wanted.

  “Foreign language,” she announced, looking up at me for input.

  I was on the spot. Memories of Herr Ehrlander back at Pershing flooded back toward me.

  Betsey, was ist die Antwort?

  I never had a clue what was going on in German class the previous year. To be fair, I had also probably never done a single homework assignment and had spent the majority of every single class playing Tetris on my phone beneath my desk. After one semester and a solid F, I had dropped the class, promising my guidance counselor at Pershing that I’d pick up Spanish the following year. Of course, I’d conveniently forgotten all about that when I’d registered for my sophomore year classes.

  “Uh,” I stammered. “I took a semester of German last year but I really didn’t enjoy it.”

  I tried to recall if Taylor had ever mentioned studying a foreign language. If she had, I definitely couldn’t remember, and I desperately didn’t want to choose incorrectly. I childishly wanted to have as much in common with her as possible. Obviously, I didn’t want to ask Renee if she could look up Taylor’s course of studies so that I could copy her. Seeming like a stalker on my first day at a new school was probably not such a good idea.

  “How about French?” I suggested, realizing that Renee’s blank stare wasn’t going to provide me with any inspiration. Renee had long dreadlocks and tortoise-shell glasses. She didn’t look like the kind of school administrator I could ask for a frank opinion on which would be easier to pass: French or Spanish.

  By the end of our appointment, I’d been enrolled in French 1, Algebra 3, Biology, U.S. History Post World War II - Current Events, Physical Education, and Honors Creative Writing (at the request of Dean Fontana). A one-hour study hall daily was a requirement, and I had my choice of elective courses from which I could select a wide variety of classes. I lingered over options including jazz dancing, watercolor painting, drafting, computer programming and pottery before settling on martial arts. I figured I would have to actually try pretty hard to do poorly at that. Plus, the idea of training to become a ninja appealed to me even though I was pretty sure the class would be nothing like that.

  Renee printed out my schedule and assured me that if I lost it before I got to the campus book store later that afternoon to purchase my textbooks, I could access it at any time through the student portal. It was starting to freak me out that the school was so organized that anything I could possibly want could be downloaded from this mysterious portal. My mom or dad could log into it from home to add money to my ID card, which I could use to buy my books, meals, and snacks from any of the cafeterias on campus. This also meant that they could check my balance at any time, and keep tabs on how often I was doing laundry, and what I was eating. How annoying.

  Renee was going to lead me around the outside of the building to Dean Fontana’s office for my tour. She looked confused for a moment reviewing my file, as if she had forgotten my name after I stood to leave. Then I realized what the cause for confusion was.

  “You don’t have to call me Your Highness,” I said. “It’s just a dumb title.”

  “Thanks,” Renee said bashfully. “We’ve had royalty here before, but I never know what’s expected.”

  Outside, classes must have been changing again because the student square was swarming with girls. I studied each passing face, trying to get a sense of who in this sea of pretty faces and long hair I might befriend as I followed Renee down the paved path. Suddenly, I saw a familiar face emerge from the large academic building to the east of the administrative building we were exiting. It was, undoubtedly, Taylor, walking with a girl who looked Indian or Pakistani. Taylor was carrying a blue Coach shoulder bag and she looked like she had been maintaining her summer tan. Our eyes met over the hundred feet between us and I instinctively broke into a grin. I felt my hand rising up to wave at her but pushed it back down to my side when she continued talking to her friend as if she hadn’t even seen me.

  CHAPTER 8

  “And over there is the Chazen Library,” Dean Fontana told me an hour later, pointing across the campus’s second grassy square to a white building with a majestic staircase. “That’s the only facility open twenty-four hours, other th
an the dormitories, obviously.”

  After touring the whole campus and visiting all of the classrooms I would actually have to attend the next day, I was painfully aware that I was sticking out from the other students in my regular clothes. It was still hot out for September, and I could barely pay attention to all the detailed minutia the dean was telling me about campus history and the architecture of the buildings. She was slim and in her fifties or sixties, wearing a brocade jacket that must have been making her sweat, but she didn’t seem overheated at all. I always marvel at people who don’t sweat, like Christie. I take after my dad, and we sweat a lot.

  I was growing increasingly anxious about the moment when I would run into Taylor and have to say something. Our week together over the summer had resulted in kind of an ugly night in Virginia when Bijoux and I had gotten too trashed to drive back to the hotel, and Taylor had to drive even though she didn’t have a license yet. Dad said Taylor got grounded and he’d do the same to us—even worse—except we were due to fly to Croatia two days after it had happened and he didn’t to be angry with us during our last two days together for the whole summer. Since the first time it had occurred to me that I might try to get accepted at Treadwell I had been kind of hoping that maybe Taylor had forgotten about that, or that the grounding hadn’t been as severe as my dad had made it out to be.

  “You’ll need to pick up your Student ID card at Samuel Hall tomorrow morning in order to check out books. Your ID will be your pass to the entire campus. However, the ID office closes at 2 P.M. on Tuesdays, so you’ll need to report there at 8 A.M. tomorrow to have your picture taken.”

  Dean Fontana looked me up and down with a disapproving expression that suggested she highly doubted that I, Betsey Norfleet, could wake up early enough to have my picture taken. Fair enough, I reasoned. I had my own doubts.

  “What else would you like to see?” she asked patiently. She had gone out of her way to make me feel like everything on campus was mine, all mine, to enjoy so that I wouldn’t be intimidated exploring later, on my own. But despite her praise of my writing abilities, I was definitely getting the sense from Dean Fontana that she was aware of my lengthy history as a troublemaker. While I was welcome at Treadwell, I knew I was also going to have to seriously toe the line in this joint. There would be no second chances in this environment if I messed up.

  “I’d like to see the gym,” I said. I sucked at everything athletic but I figured maybe this school might offer me a chance to change everything about myself.

  Dean Fontana motioned for me to follow her along the south perimeter of the grassy square. It was almost noon and classes were breaking for the first of what I had been told were two lunch periods, early and late. My schedule included the late lunch break (because Algebra 3 was at noon), so the following afternoon I would be eating at one o’clock. Girls in blue and white plaid skirts were starting to filter into the square. Some girls sat down on benches beneath trees and pulled Saran-wrapped sandwiches out of neat white paper bags, which I would find out later could be ordered from the cafeteria the night before, and picked up at lunchtime to-go. Others rushed toward what I had been told were the dormitories, all of which had cafeterias where lunch was served, seven days a week.

  I guess it was kind of easy to get why Dean Fontana thought I would be a potential source of mischief on campus. My track record wasn’t too impressive. I had been thrown out of Hastings in seventh grade for smoking not once, not twice, but three times. OK, and maybe the third time, on a dare from Christie, I had actually stolen a pack of Newports from the pocket of my English teacher’s cashmere cardigan sweater from where it hung on the back of her chair. Then I had to transfer to Chapin, another fancy school in Manhattan, for the rest of seventh grade and eighth grade. I failed geometry in eighth grade, and after receiving detention five times in one month (a school record) for being late, talking in class, and having a can of beer in my locker (long story), and also getting into a hair-pulling fist fight with a girl named Chelsea Harrison who had called me a water buffalo, the school very politely suggested to my mother that she make another arrangement for my high school education. This was a little annoying because Bijoux had gone to Chapin until she’d dropped out her junior year after going to Tokyo for a modeling job and just… never returned to classes. I had kind of wanted to follow in her footsteps, except for the dropping out part.

  Of all those schools, Pershing had been OK. Even walking around the splendor of the Treadwell campus, I was a little sad to have left Pershing behind. There had been a film club there where a super cool teacher, Miss Harper, showed tons of avant garde, edgy stuff. Even Ms. Kumar and her ogling of the firemen on the day of the safety shower accident had been kind of cool. But I was so relieved to be hours away from home that I was blindly ecstatic to be following Dean Fontana around.

  “… an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, with a diving center. The pool facilities are open from 7 A.M. until 7 P.M. and students must book a swim test with the director of the gym in order to gain pool privileges, otherwise there’s a mandatory night swim class. I have actually taken the swim class myself, and found it to be quite rewarding.”

  We were standing in the pool section of the enormous gymnasium, where a class full of juniors was swimming laps. All of the girls wore matronly matching navy blue one-piece bathing suits. I was sure my sister would have gagged at the site of it all. The humidity was making my curly hair frizz up and the chlorine in the air was tickling my sinuses. It was spectacularly nerdish and something inside my chest just clicked. I could swim in that pool and never worry that someone might be waiting at the edge to drag me away and punish me. No one here would single me out for torment.

  “Dean Fontana,” I blurted. “I, you know… I just want to say thank you. I’m really happy to be here.”

  Dean Fontana studied me with a pleasantly surprised smile. “I know your academic record has been a bit spotty, Betsey. But I hope you’re going to give us a chance. If you have any difficulties acclimating to your classes or to dorm life, please be sure to let me know.”

  Having the common sense to realize that if I were to be seen eating lunch with the dean of the school on my first day, my social life would be doomed, Dean Fontana left me in the care of Lauren Glover, a towering blond senior, outside the Rutherford dorm. Lauren was the resident assistant at my own dorm, Colgate, but Dean Fontana thought it would be fun for me to see the freshman dorm since most of the sophomores at Treadwell had already spent a year residing in that building.

  “Nice to meet you,” Lauren said with a big, genuine grin.

  “Lauren is one of our star students,” Dean Fontana bragged, making Lauren blush. “She can answer any questions you might have about student life here.”

  Lauren turned out to be a rarity among high school girls; someone who seemed older than her actual age and completely uninterested in gossip or social strata. Even though she looked like she could have been on the Olympic swim team or something, she didn’t seem to realize it. Over soggy tuna fish sandwiches from the Rutherford cafeteria, we sat outside on a bench and she told me that she was from Indiana, attending Treadwell on a merit scholarship.

  “My dad is the principal at the public high school in my hometown, so it’s kind of weird, I guess, that I go to boarding school,” she confessed. “But it’s important to my mom that I try to get into the best college I can, so… boarding school it is.”

  “What does your mom do?” I asked without swallowing the food in my mouth first.

  “She sells makeup,” Lauren said. “At the Darlene cosmetics counter in a department store in Indianapolis.”

  “Mine, too!” I exclaimed. “Only, not at a department store in Indianapolis.”

  I left out that my mom sold Darlene cosmetics basically at the highest possible level. Without even asking around, I could tell that Lauren was definitely in the minority in having working class parents. For the first time ever in my whole life I was ashamed that my parents were so weal
thy. It was highly probable that Lauren knew that my dad was in a world famous rock band and my mom was the heiress to the Darlene Cosmetics fortune, so I didn’t sense any obligation to announce either of those facts.

  Looking around at all the other students cruising the grassy square and sitting on park benches, I began to get a little intimidated. It’s a given that at most private schools, a lot of girls’ moms are socialites, former models, or actresses, so good genes are abundant. Girls who don’t have genetics on their side usually have a good plastic surgeon. It’s a rarity to see a girl in ninth grade or higher who would benefit from a nose job or chin implant, because by high school, her parents would have taken care of any abnormal facial features. The same goes for acne and bad teeth; money solves those problems, and it’s such a shock to see a girl with zits or an overbite in a private school classroom that you have to seriously wonder if her parents are sadists for making her endure the public humiliation.

  But the girls at Treadwell were like, some other level of perfection. Complexions were flawless, hair was impeccably styled. Even though the campus uniform was adhered to strictly, every girl was obviously going out of her way to infuse her presence with indications of her parents’ wealth. Diamond stud earrings were deflecting sunlight in every direction. Navy and white knee socks (mandatory) were paired with platform sandals and high-heeled oxfords. Most of the handbags being carried around were obscenely expensive, although a few girls did seem to be trying to pull off some kind of artsy look with canvas bags on which they’d drawn doodles with Sharpie markers.

  I already had a ridiculous assortment of purses, earrings, bottles of perfume, imported jeans, cashmere sweaters, and cool sneakers. But physical beauty was another thing entirely. My hair tended to curl up when it was hot out, and I’ve already shared my fat camp shame. With horror, I realized as Lauren was absent-mindedly telling me all about where the laundry facilities could be located and how the machines only accepted tokens purchased in the book store, I had always tried to make up for my lack of prettiness with my daring behavior. So maybe I was never going to walk down runways or win any beauty contests. I could always make people laugh, or say, I can’t believe Betsey did that.