If there’s one matter where I will trust Victoria completely, it’s this.
I do as she says, and she pours me into the blue dress. It hugs every single inch of me until it stops mid-thigh. The dress is tight, but it doesn’t make me look like a wrapped sausage. Instead, the lines accentuate curves I didn’t even know existed, and the low sweetheart neckline makes my boobs look three times bigger.
Not only do I look like Sadie White and not at all like Teddy Price, I look like Sadie in a glamour magazine ad. I never had the faintest hope that I could look like the reflection that’s staring back at me. It’s not possible, and yet … there I am. I kind of look like a Barbie myself. I cannot wrap my head around it.
I don’t even know if I … like it … yet. It’s too foreign.
“There now! We just need to do something with your hair! A loose braid. Yes. That’s just the thing. Show off your shoulders a bit.” She fusses with my hair for a minute, and before I know it, I have a hairdo somewhere between casual and classy, elegant and romantic.
If all else fails, Victoria could have a very promising career in cosmetology. Not that I’d ever tell her that.
“You’re ready!” Victoria squeals. She’s on the verge of popping fireworks out of her head, she’s so elated. She touches up her makeup and then takes a selfie of us in her mirror. “Alisha and Laura are going to be so jealous.”
She grins evilly, and glances up from her phone. “Speaking of … what’s your social media so I can tag you?”
The dress is so tight, it feels like my heart cannot beat hard enough.
“Uh … I don’t have one,” I say, quickly. “I’m too private for all that.”
“That’s why I love you. You’re so weird.” Victoria makes a little circle in the air, her eyes still glued to her phone. “In the good way.”
A couple seconds later, she hands me her phone to show me the photo she posted to her own account. The first photo is one of the both of us, me in the blue dress and her in a slinky peach colored dress in a matching style. Of course … she looks a world better than I do, but I still can’t stop staring.
In that photo, we really are a pair. A stunning, sexy, model-looking pair.
For a second, I think, I might really be starting to fit in. For real, this time.
Chapter 13
We head down a se
ldom used hallway to avoid any teachers who might be all too interested in where we’re going. She leads me through an old door I never noticed before and down several flights of stairs. I have a hell of a time on the stairs in the high heels she loaned me, but I’m just able to make it with a death grip on the railing. I fall behind her as she sails down them like a pro. Now I totally understand why Cinderella lost a shoe.
We make it down to the belly of the school after what feels like a century. It’s dark and dank, and it smells like it. I can hear water dripping here and there, and I’m not sure but I might have seen a rat scurrying past. It’s too dark to really tell for certain. I wonder what these rich kids can be thinking, having a party in a place like this, but then my doubts are shredded.
Victoria knocks the ‘shave and a haircut’ rhythm on a big metal door, and when it opens I’m stunned by what’s inside. There’s a large room that is part wine cellar, part tasting area, complete with multitudes of crystal stemware. There are comfortable chairs, tables, and soft glowing lights all along the walls and down the rows upon rows of wine that stretch off a short distance from the tasting area. It’s pristine, it’s warm, it’s designed exquisitely. This is the lap of luxury.
“How is a place like this in the school?” I ask in awe.
Victoria laughs. “This school is rooted in money, and money loves fine wine. Do you think the professors here drink the koolaid they try to serve all of us?” She adds as an afterthought, “Astor has the keys. Maybe it’s a perk of being a Hawthorne.”
Alisha and Laura are here, along with the holy trinity’s henchmen; Drake and Chris who were passing out burgers in the forest that night. Victoria takes a minute to look over the bottles of open wine on the counter and selects one.
“Oh, this one’s nice. It’s older than my grandmother.” She giggles and pours herself and me a glass. She turns to toast me, clinks her glass against mine, and then swallows most of what she poured for herself. She refills her glass and heads off to chat with the others while I gape at the surroundings.
Most everyone is in the tasting room at the front where we are right now, but there are more rooms leading off of this main one, and she heads into one of those and I follow. I don’t really know anyone out here that well, and since it’s basically impossible to hold a conversation with either Alisha or Laura, and Chris keeps looking at me like he’d enjoy kicking me in the shins, I follow.
She heads into a kitchen area laid out with food that pairs well with wine; meats, cheeses, crackers, and chocolates. Every part of my old self is screaming for me to find a plastic doggy bag for later. This is what you get when you party with the children of millionaires or better.
Victoria gets distracted talking to someone about herself, and I nibble on a few things and then decide to take a look at the rest of the place on my own. I finish my wine, refill my glass from another random bottle pulled from the wall, and drink that too. I shouldn’t drink so much and so fast, but it’s the best wine I’ve ever tasted; not that I’ve tasted much of it in my life. I take glass number three and go for a walk.
I wander through a hazy smoking room lined with students puffing on cigars pulled from the humidor on the wall. The next room is a small library with plush sofas and a beautiful old wooden desk. There are more soft lights glowing here and there, and the walls are lined with dark wooden bookshelves filled with books. Once again the street rat in me wants to bet that some of these books are worth quite a bit of money … and no one would even notice they’re gone.
I’m just about to turn and leave before the worst part of me starts looking up what kind of prices I could get for them online when I hear Astor’s voice. “Leaving so soon?”
I didn’t see him when I looked around the room the first time. He’s sitting on one of the sofas with Blair, and each of them is drinking their own bottle of wine. No glasses for them. My heart launches into my throat as Astor stands up. He’s taller than me of course, but here in the low-ceilinged cellars he practically towers over me.
“Hey, Astor,” I answer back. I try to draw in a breath, though it’s shaky, and I take a few steps toward him. “I … I want to thank you for before, in Dr. Baxter’s office. You didn’t have to lie and say that it was you who took the lamp.” The unspoken question hangs between us.