She's Got a Way Page 7

  “Absolutely.” She smiled. “But when my charges aren’t driving me to drink, I actually almost love my job. I get to be substitute parent, guidance counselor, homework helper, crisis intervention officer, and midnight-snack sneaker, all in one.”

  “Sounds … busy.”

  “It’s twenty-four/seven. These girls don’t have parents on-site, obviously, and most of them don’t have families who are even reachable, half the time.”

  “So you’re it?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not the only it on campus, but I’m one of four houseparents. I’m responsible for the fifty kids in my dorm—making sure they’re fed, happy, and successful in all of their Briarwood endeavors.”

  Luke cocked one eyebrow. “That last part sounds straight from a job description.”

  “Totally is.” Gabi laughed.

  “So which part’s the hardest?”

  “The happy.” She said it without hesitation. “A lot of these girls have been tossed around to camps and boarding schools for most of their lives. And now the ones in my dorm, at least, are navigating their teen years, with all of the hormonal hell that comes with it. It’s a rocky path, even for the most grounded of kids.” She cringed. “And we don’t necessarily have a lot of those.”

  “Can I be blunt?” He raised that one eyebrow again. “Your job title doesn’t necessarily seem to do justice to the job—or jobs—you’re actually doing.”

  “You mean because it makes me sound like I sit by the fireplace and knit scarves while I wait for my students to come in for fresh cookies before tootling off to do whatever it is boarding school students do?”

  He laughed. “Exactly.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “I actually hate my title.”

  “You can’t change it?”

  “Have you met Priscilla Pritchard? Titles are power, and she likes to make sure all of her staff members know exactly where they sit in the pecking order … which is ten to twenty pecks below her.”

  “She sounds like a peach.”

  “Rotten peach, maybe.” Gabi pressed her lips together. “Sorry. Given the events of the past week, I have some rather strong feelings on the subject of Priscilla Pritchard.”

  “Hard to blame you.” He shrugged. “Seems to me, unless Briarwood is pandering to an audience of parents that long for the Dark Ages, Priscilla should want to show she’s got academic deans and counselors and the like—all of which are titles that seem like they’d be a better match for what you’re doing.”

  “You’d think.” Gabi looked back out at the lake. “But Priscilla’s first priority is Priscilla. She loves her own title, she loves the fact that super-rich families from all over the country kiss her proverbial boots in order to get their girls into Briarwood, and she loves that she gets to be the face of one of the best prep schools in America. What she doesn’t want is any of her staff members getting ideas about moving up any invisible ladders and taking her job.”

  “Do you want her job?”

  Gabi paused, thoughts spinning through her head. “No. And yes. No, because omigod, I’d absolutely die having to deal with the parents she handles. But yes.” She nodded. “I’d love the chance to make Briarwood into a different kind of school.”

  “Really.” He turned toward her, full attention on her, and it was both unnerving and zingy. “What would you do to it?”

  Oh, that question was easy. “Set aside a huge chunk of endowment money to fund scholarships for kids like Sam and Eve.”

  “Kids like…” He tipped his head, eyebrows scrunching together. “What do you mean?”

  Oops. Oh, hell.

  “Are the two of them on scholarship?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, but I never should have said that. The other girls don’t know. Please, please don’t … say anything.”

  Even as she asked, somehow she knew he’d never dream of it.

  He turned away, sitting back in his chair, hands folded behind his head again. “I’ll try not to be insulted that you felt you had to ask that.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t say—never mind. Sorry.”

  “How many scholarship kids do you have in a normal year?”

  She swallowed. Before this year? Zero. “We have … two.”

  He turned back toward her. “With an endowment like that? Two kids? Two?”

  “I know.” She put up her hands. “It’s sickening. And I had to fight for three years to get the board to even do a trial run of two students this year. And now look. Both of them got themselves in enough trouble that we’ve been sent to camp for the summer. Priscilla would have expelled them, if it had been up to her. Luckily, she has to answer to the board, and this time, I think that board actually saved the girls.”

  Gabi pictured the board members sitting in their seats at the huge oak table in the main conference room. To a person, she could predict exactly what their responses to the girls’ little escapade probably were. She imagined the expulsion votes divided evenly down the center of the table, and then she pictured Laura Beringer sitting in her spot at the end, nodding carefully. At eighty-something years old, she’d been the board chair for ten years now, and she showed no signs of leaving, much to one side of the table’s dismay.

  Gabi adored her, and she had a strong feeling that the only reason Sam and Eve weren’t packing for Boston right now was because of Laura’s deciding vote.

  “Did they deserve it?” His voice was quiet, but the question was honest.

  “It depends how you interpret the school policies, but I guarantee you, if it had been just Sam and Eve who’d snuck out, Priscilla would have pushed even harder to expel them. The fact that they did their crime with Madison and Waverly probably saved them, as ironic as that seems.”

  Gabi saw a look pass over Luke’s face—a mixture of emotions she couldn’t quite identify—before he set his jaw and nodded slowly.

  “What if it’d been the other two who’d snuck out?”

  “Then I can almost guarantee you and I would have never met. The incident would have been quietly swept under the rug.”

  “Shocking.”

  “They’re good kids, Luke. All four of them are. But they’re so locked into their patterns that you’d never know it. You’d certainly never know it, based on what you’ve seen the past few days.” She fisted her hands in her lap. “I’ve spent the entire year trying to figure out how to get through to them, but wow. Turtles have nothing on the shells these girls wear.”

  “And I imagine Sam’s and Eve’s are the toughest of all?”

  “Of course they are. They’ve both been shoved around their entire lives, house to house, family to family, hell to bigger hell. I interviewed fifty girls for these two scholarships, Luke. I would have taken them all, just to get them out of the lives they were trying to survive. It broke my heart.”

  He was silent for a long, long moment, just staring out at the lake. Then he turned to her. “I have to ask, then. Why would you stick the four of them together in a suite? Madison’s as bitchy as they come, and Waverly will do whatever Madison tells her. Why’d you sic them on two innocents?”

  Gabi looked down at her lap. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times, believe me.” Then she sighed. “Honestly? Beyond my bigger, lofty, impossible goals, I thought, given time, they’d figure out that they’re not nearly as different as they think. All four of them have essentially been abandoned by their parents—just in different ways. I thought that somehow, some way, maybe that would bind them.”

  “But no?”

  “God, no. I mean, there have been moments … weeks, even, when things were pretty okay. But then Madison will step up her game, or Sam will preempt her by stepping up hers, and Eve and Waverly end up caught in the middle choosing sides, and then…”

  “Chaos.”

  “Yup.”

  He was thoughtful for another long moment, and then he shifted in his chair, turning to look straight at her.

  “Hey, Gabi?” His voic
e was soft, almost tender, as he touched her shoulder. It was just the briefest touch, but it sent swirling, zappy zings straight to her toes. “Would you kill me if I said it sounds like maybe … maybe you’ve actually all ended up exactly where you need to be?”

  Chapter 8

  Hours later, Gabi lay awake on her cot, desperate for sleep, but unable to close her eyes as she replayed her conversation with Luke. It was almost dawn, and the girls were asleep, the usual scratches and snuffles filtering in from outside the tent as the coons and skunks made their rounds. Funny how after only a few days, the girls were learning to sleep through it.

  She didn’t dare move, since one squeak of her cot could wake them all up, and really, sleeping was the only cooperative thing they’d managed since they’d arrived.

  In her more delusional moments in the week before they’d left Briarwood, she’d tried to convince herself that maybe, like Luke had hinted, this summer could be an opportunity to finally draw the four teens together … to find some common ground that could bind them for the upcoming year … to find some way to make sure they wouldn’t do something to get themselves booted right out of Briarwood as soon as school opened again.

  But despite her best efforts over the past couple of days, the girls were more ornery than ever. She could understand hating the craft projects and the scavenger hunt that nobody had won, and she could totally buy the outhouse and mosquito hatred going on. But even swimming—which should have been easy and enjoyable—was fraught with screeches and whines as they complained about the water temperature, about the clams in the sand, about how their hair was never-ever-ever going to be clean again.

  Actually, she’d give them that one. Thanks to the special lake-safe soap-slash-shampoo Luke had given them, her hair already resembled a frizzy dishrag, as did the girls’.

  There had to be a way to rig a shower of some sort. She tapped her fingers on the blanket, thinking. Maybe tomorrow they could figure something out. Surely the girls would work together for something like the promise of a hot shower, wouldn’t they?

  Just then, she heard something scratch loudly over by where Waverly’s and Madison’s cots met. She sat up, grabbing her flashlight. She’d grown accustomed to the usual scratching noises, and this was not them. Her pulse picked up speed as she listened. Was something bigger out there?

  Trying not to wake up the girls, she shined her flashlight toward the sound. For a few seconds, she saw nothing, but then she drew in a quick breath as she spotted dark fur and a thick white stripe.

  A skunk.

  In their tent.

  Two feet from Waverly and Madison’s heads.

  She sat stock-still, not wanting to startle it. Maybe it’d do its little investigation and be on its way. But thirty long seconds later, it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It snuffled and snorted its way around the underside of their cots, then stopped at a plastic bag someone must have stuffed in the corner of the tent.

  “What’s that noise?” Eve’s sleepy voice came from the other side of the tent.

  “Shh.” Gabi pointed her flashlight at the skunk.

  “Shit.” Eve dove into her sleeping bag, making just enough noise to startle the skunk, who turned around and arched his tail threateningly.

  Crap-crap-crap. Gabi cringed, bracing herself, not knowing what to do. Should she make a run for it? Would she get to the tent flaps in time to get out before he sprayed? Should she wake up the girls? Would that make it worse?

  She stayed silent and still, willing the stupid little critter to go away, but once he apparently decided he wasn’t in mortal danger, he turned around and went back to mauling the plastic bag.

  What was in that bag? Gabi narrowed her eyes at the other cots. And who had brought it in here?

  Just then, Madison stirred and sat up. Then she turned sleepy eyes toward the corner, and before Gabi could warn her not to move, she let out a screech that had Waverly and Sam popping up out of bed.

  Oh. Holy. Hell.

  Gabi had smelled skunk spray before. Who hadn’t? But ten seconds later, as the five of them stumbled out of the tent and gasped for air, she realized she’d never really smelled skunk before. There was nothing like ground-zero spray, expertly delivered by a panicked creature who’d just been looking for a little chocolate, dammit.

  As Gabi and the girls bent over, coughing and gagging, she saw Luke come sprinting over the hill. Then she saw him stop dead and hold his nose.

  Then she heard him laugh, and she thought she might just have to throttle him.

  “Ladies?” He tried to tamp down his smile. “What happened?”

  Gabi glared at him. “Pretty sure the smell gives that away, don’t you think?”

  “Who ticked off the skunk?”

  “Nobody! He got into our tent.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty odd. They don’t usually do that unless—uh-oh.” Luke tipped his head suspiciously, like he was about to ask a question he damn well already knew the answer to. “Wouldn’t happen to be any food in that tent, would there?”

  “I don’t know.” Gabi turned to the girls, picturing the skunk with his little skunky nose buried in the plastic bag in the corner. “Girls?”

  All four of them shook their heads, but no one did so harder than Sam, who was tops on Gabi’s suspect list. But there was no way any of them was going to admit it at this point, so asking was pretty much moot. Plus, the punishment the skunk had doled out on its own was way worse than anything she might have come up with.

  “You guys better get yourselves down to the lake. That stuff burns if it’s on your skin.” Again Gabi saw Luke trying not to smile, but he was pretty much failing.

  Gabi held her hands out to her sides. Good God, she stank. “Will it come off in the lake?”

  “Sort of. Not really. Gonna need to make yourselves a big ole tomato bath. Luckily, I know a girl whose family specializes in tomatoes.” He finally lost his battle not to laugh. “I’ll give Piper a call and see if she can score some from the restaurant. Maybe she can bring them when she comes out to make breakfast. Till then, you seriously better go take a swim, all of you.”

  Waverly sobbed, “I. Hate. This. Place.” She headed toward the path, Madison close behind … and oddly silent. Sam and Eve brought up the rear, and Luke stepped off the path as they passed, his hand over his nose.

  Once they’d gone over the hill and down toward the lake, he turned to Gabi. “You okay?”

  “Oh, I’m just fabulous, yes. Thanks for asking.”

  “They had food, didn’t they?”

  “Yup.”

  “So my voice of doom apparently wasn’t as effective as I thought? Hard lesson. Sorry you had to be a victim.”

  “Luke?” Gabi clenched her teeth together. “You’d sound a lot more sympathetic if you could stop laughing.”

  * * *

  Four hours later, Gabi and the girls had slopped some sort of tomato-based concoction all over their skin and done their best to rinse it off in the lake, but they all still reeked. Gabi was pretty sure the skunk scent was locked into her scalp, as every time a breeze caught her hair, all she could smell was that sickening, horrible scent.

  They’d taken down the tent, washed their sleeping bags in the same pungent mixture of tomatoes and who-knew-what-else, and everything was currently laid out in the sun to dry. Whether that would happen before dark was anyone’s guess.

  Eve pointed at Sam. “I can’t believe you had food in the tent.”

  “It wasn’t mine.” Sam shook her head. “Swear.”

  “It’s always you.” Madison glared. “You’re like a squirrel, for God’s sake. You always hide your food. Jesus, it’s like you think we’re going to steal it or something.”

  “It wasn’t me this time.” She sent a pleading look at Gabi. “It wasn’t.”

  Only Gabi knew about Sam’s locked cupboard in the kitchen—not the other girls—and if it hadn’t been for that knowledge, she totally would have pinned this on Sam, too.

&
nbsp; “Honestly, girls, it doesn’t matter who it was at this point. The damage is done, we smell like a bunch of skunks, and our tent is probably ruined.”

  “So can we go home now?” Waverly’s eyes were wide.

  “No. Now we just have to be more miserable—and smelly. Thank you, whoever did leave food in that tent last night.” She let her eyes land on each of their faces. “I assume this won’t be an issue again?”

  They all shook their heads, and for a moment she was struck by the humor of the scene, from anyone else’s perspective.

  Just then, Sam snorted. “Pritch-bitch would love to hear about this.”

  Eve smiled. “Yeah, she would.”

  “Girls.” Gabi rolled her eyes. “You have to stop calling her that.”

  Sam raised her eyebrows. “You really want to argue right now about whether or not it fits?”

  After a long pause, Gabi sighed. “No.”

  “So what do we do now?” Madison pulled at her long blond strands of hair, frowning as she lifted them to her nose. “We can’t possibly stay here under these conditions, Gabi.”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do.” Gabi stood up from the grass. “You four are going to go find another tent in the shed, you’re going to put it up, on a different platform, and you are not going to kill each other doing so. We’ll figure the rest out later. Clear?”

  “Clear as glass,” Sam muttered, then put up her hands in mock surrender as Gabi sent a scorching glare her way.

  After they’d disappeared inside the equipment shed, Gabi put her fingers to her eyes, trying to stop the frustrated tears that were wanting so badly to break free. She wished she could believe the rest of the summer was going to get better, but her confidence was fading fast.

  Oliver’s words echoed in her head, and she blew out a long breath, picturing Luke sitting beside her at the lake last night.

  Maybe it was time to ask for help.

  She watched the girls jostle each other out of the shed, carrying poles and canvas, then dropping the whole pile in a noisy clatter and squawking about who’d let go first.

  She put her hands to her ears, closing her eyes as she turned toward the lake and counted ten deep breaths. Once they put up the tent—if they put up the tent—she was going to march them up to the garden area and give them each a hoe, a shovel, and a quadrant of dirt to turn into plantable soil.