They Wish They Were Us(25)

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Twenty-four hours after the news about Graham broke, I’m lying in bed staring at my phone. I scroll through the texts, past Adam’s adios message before heading back to school and past Henry’s night, babe note, until I find Rachel’s unfamiliar number.

I wonder if she’s thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about her. She had to know that we would see the article in the Gazette, but did she know that no one would want to deal with it?

I type out what I want to say and stare at the letters dancing on the screen. I picture Shaila on the morning of initiation, sipping from a mug of coffee while she laughed, nervous energy coursing through her limbs. I can see her so clearly when I close my eyes. Her sunny face and long, thick lashes, daring me to betray her by responding to Rachel. But I also see the Players, and all of us promising just last night that we wouldn’t get involved. I hear Adam’s comforting voice. “Rachel is nuts,” he’d said at Diane’s.

But what if she’s not?

I bite my lip and close my eyes, shoving Shaila, my friends, and even Adam from my mind. I make a decision. I turn my back on them.

Let’s talk.

I hit send.





SEVEN





“I CALL THIS meeting of the Players to order!” Nikki announces, smacking a plastic gavel on the coffee table. The six of us are sprawled around Nikki’s living room for the first official tribunal of the year. Piles of bagels and schmear, courtesy of Nikki’s parents’ credit card, are stacked on the table. But no one’s ready to start just yet.

Henry sits between my legs on the floor and furiously scrolls through Twitter, reading some thread by his favorite New Yorker reporter, who just published a new investigation.

“Man, this dude is a legend,” Henry murmurs. “I’d kill to interview him about sourcing.”

I pat his head like a puppy.

“Dude, I can probably hook it up,” Robert says. “My dad knows all those writers.”

“Your dad knows all the writers at The New Yorker?” Quentin asks, skeptical.

“Uh, yeah. I grew up in the city, you know.”

“No! Really?” Nikki says, feigning shock. “None of us knew that!”

“Just remember who got you fakes this summer,” Robert says. “I’m the one with that connect.”

We all grumble and roll our eyes, shoving each other with elbows and pillows. I check my phone, more out of hope than necessity, but there’s nothing there. Waiting for Rachel to respond has been torture.

No one brings up Graham or the article in the Gazette. Instead we’re pretending like nothing happened, like we could still go about our normal Players’ rituals as usual. Glossing over things is a Gold Coast tradition and I am happy to follow suit. No one needs to know I texted the enemy.

I avert my attention to Marla, who stares intently at the screen in her lap, the Dartmouth admissions portal open in front of her. She applied there early with hopes of walking on the field hockey team.

“You know we won’t hear for a few months, right?” I whisper. Acceptances were still so far off, I had to force myself not to think about them.

Marla throws her head back against the couch. “Ugh, I know. I’m obsessive.”

Quentin grumbles next to us. “Don’t I know it.” He’s submitted his portfolio to Yale’s art program and is dying to hear back, too. “Cannot believe we have to wait eons for this.”

I rest my head on Quentin’s soft shoulder and try to push thoughts of being at Brown with Adam out of my head, of crushing that Women in Science and Engineering scholarship exam I’d only get to take if I got in. It’s too much to wrap my brain around. “Uh, hello!” Nikki yells before banging her gavel again. “The Toastmaster is talking here.” As president of the student council and Toastmaster of the Players, I think it’s safe to say the power has gone to her head just a little.

Quentin groans and tosses a pillow at her.

“It’s time. We gotta pick freshmen,” she continues.

Marla drops her phone and sits up straight.

Robert claps, throwing a fist in the air. “Fresh meat! Let’s do it!”

Nikki opens a frayed green binder and pulls out a stack of papers containing photos and bios of all the potential freshmen. The binder had been handed down from Toastmaster to Toastmaster for who knows how long. Hell, maybe Mr. Beaumont even saw it. It holds all the official Players rules—how to nominate freshmen, specific songs and chants we had to learn, guidelines for creating pops, and, of course, the initiation rules. Only seniors are allowed to see the binder, and when last year’s Toastmaster, Derek Garry, passed it to Nikki before he left for Yale, we spent hours poring over its contents. When we reached the initiation section, we scanned it desperately, seeking answers for what had happened, but there was nothing.

Today, we’re stuck on the nominations chapter. We’d heard the whole stupid process could take hours. I remember Adam told me it took them the entire weekend and they pulled two all-nighters in a row to pick our squad. But Derek used the same line last year.

“You guys ready for this?” Nikki says, a grin spreading across her face. She’d been memorizing the binder all summer, preparing to lead us into a new year. She was ready to finally control the Players. This year will be different.