The Daughters Join the Party

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  To every daughter

  chapter 1

  Emma Conway stood up, looked carefully around, and stepped away from the clump of bushes in front of Flanner Hall. Nobody had followed them, thank God. The main quad was still, except for the night sounds of crickets and sputtering sprinklers, and the August sky was awash with stars. Emma felt a warm breeze caress her face and let her breath return to normal. In almost twelve months of living and studying at the Rutherford School, she’d never seen it look so beautiful. She wondered why she’d never snuck out of her dorm before.

  “Okay, guys, we’re cool,” she said.

  Behind her, Tiffany and Rachel stood up slowly from the bushes. Tiffany smoothed her perpetually messy blond ponytail and looked uneasily over her shoulder. “I thought I heard someone,” she said. “You sure no one’s following us?”

  “We’re fine, Tiffany,” Emma replied.

  There was a hooting sound, and Tiffany quickly squatted back down.

  “Oh my God, Tiffany,” Rachel said in her condescending voice. “That was an owl.” She flicked her glossy Brazilian blowout–treated hair out of her eyes and turned to Emma. “So, now what? You promised us a party. Where is it?” Rachel’s attitude could be a little much, even if she was the bravest girl at Rutherford—besides Emma, of course.

  “First I have to get inside,” Emma said, gesturing to Flanner Hall.

  “Wait. How?” Tiffany asked, wide-eyed.

  “I’ve got to climb in,” Emma said.

  “You’re going to climb in?” Tiffany asked. “How are you going to get up there?”

  Emma eyed Jeremy Dunn’s window. It was the one with the peeling Obama sticker, directly above the front door. She hadn’t remembered it looking that high before. Earlier that day, Flanner Hall had looked almost friendly, with its cheerful red bricks, its white windows, and the antique weather vane that spun in the wind. But now, in the moonlit darkness, the dorm looked as immense and forbidding as a Gothic castle. “It’s not that bad,” she bluffed. “I’ve climbed trees that were higher than that.”

  “And then what?” Tiffany said. “What do we do once we get in there? What if someone hears us?”

  “Calm down, Tiff. You’re summer students. I’m the one who actually goes to school here. I’m the one who could really get in trouble.” Yeah, right, Emma thought. The most that could possibly happen to her was another detention. And she’d done enough of those already that she didn’t care about another lost hour. “Okay, when I say ‘go,’ we run.”

  “Again?” Rachel asked. “I’m wearing platforms.”

  Tiffany just sighed heavily and nodded.

  Emma crouched down into ready position. “Get ready,” she said. “Get set… Go!”

  She took off in a sprint across the quad, her bare feet sinking into the dirt. She could almost see herself as if she were in a movie: her dark brown, shoulder-length hair waving in the wind, her heavy brows knit together, her dark blue eyes ringed, as usual, with a little too much purple eyeliner. Finally, she thought, freedom. For a solid year, she’d lived on the most regimented schedule imaginable. Seven hours of class, two hours of sports, then three hours of study time, then sleep—that was the Rutherford schedule, six days a week. There were fifteen minutes before dinner when people could socialize on the quad—if the weather was nice—and a half hour in between study time and lights-out for visiting people’s dorms, but other than that, students had to be busy and occupied. Sunday was the only free day, but there were usually hours of homework, and nowhere to go except for the sad excuse for a mall in town. She’d thought boarding school would be an escape from rules and chores and parental supervision—not to mention her painfully small and snobby private school in New York City. Instead, Rutherford had been anything but an escape. Except for this moment, right now.

  She stopped a few feet from the front of the building and leaned over her bare knees, panting. Her favorite denim cutoffs dug into the tops of her thighs. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck. It had felt so good to run, but now she hoped she didn’t smell. Discreetly she sniffed the armpit of her Cheap Trick T-shirt. No offensive odor. She was ready.

  “I think I twisted my ankle,” Tiffany said, hobbling to a stop.

  “Oh, please,” Rachel muttered.

  “I think I really did,” Tiffany said, limping a little on her Keds.

  “I’m sure you’ll be okay,” Emma said. She looked up. Every window in Flanner Hall was dark, including Jeremy’s, which was directly above her. For a moment she wondered if he’d forgotten about their plan.

  Suddenly the window jerked open a few inches, then a few more, until a head stuck out in the dark. “You coming up or not?” Jeremy whispered in his sexy, sarcastic voice.

  “Be right there,” she whispered back.

  Jeremy Dunn was the only thing that had made summer session tolerable. She’d noticed him that first day, at lunch, on line in the dining hall. Then again, she’d noticed lots of other guys that day, too—the freakishly tall guy with Taylor Lautner’s eyes in her World History class, and the boy with the floppy strawberry-blond hair who’d quietly sketched X-Men all through Art class. But the moment she’d seen Jeremy, as she walked over to the salad bar, there had been something fascinating about him. Maybe it was what he wore: green camouflage-patterned flip-flops and a T-shirt with a picture of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, designed to look like Starsky and Hutch. Or maybe it was his longish, straight, sandy-colored hair, which he tucked behind his ears. Or the focused way he used the salad tongs to drop falafel onto his plate one by one, as if he were conducting a science experiment.

  She made her move at the soup station. “Gross,” she said, looking at the cream of broccoli soup, which had formed a solid, congealed surface of oil and cream. “That’s, like, the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “I’ll eat a bowl if you will,” he dared. He turned to look at her. His eyes twinkled in a way that made her momentarily speechless.

  “You’re on,” she said. She reached for the ladle, dumped some in her bowl, and then handed it to him.

  “Hey, you didn’t get enough gelatinous surface in yours,” he said, dumping more soup into her bowl. “We have to make this fair, after all.”

  They sat down together at an empty table, which was fine with Emma. She didn’t really have a regular group of friends.

  “Okay, you ready?” he asked, his spoon poised.

  Emma looked at the green lumpy soup. “I think I might throw up.”

  “Come on,” he said with mock seriousness. “No pain, no gain.”

  Thirty minutes and the most disgusting bowl of soup in her life later, Emma was in love. Jeremy was the guy she had been waiting to meet at Rutherford—funny and reckless and genuinely smart. He lived in Boston and had come to Rutherford to pull up his grades. Like her, he’d been called an “underachiever” by more teachers than he could count. Also like her, he loved Led Zeppelin, thought Twitter was lame, and knew every line from Superbad. Starting that first day, they ate every meal together, hung out on the quad together before dinner, and used enlargers that were right next to each other in Photography 2. And Jeremy seemed to like
certain things about her, too. Or at least, he didn’t question them. He never asked her why she wore so much eyeliner, or what she thought of her senator dad, who everyone was already saying should run for president, or why she spent so much time alone, or why she sometimes wore tiny skull earrings instead of the hoops all the other girls wore. And for the half hour every night that the inmates of Rutherford were allowed to visit one another’s dorms, she and Jeremy would curl up on the sofa in their respective common rooms, cracking up over funnyordie.com.

  In short, they were practically going out, except for one thing: Jeremy hadn’t kissed her. Yet. And as the last week of summer session began, Emma knew that she needed to help things along.

  “So am I coming to you tonight?” she’d asked him earlier that day, as they lay on the quad before dinner. Even though their arms weren’t touching Emma could feel the warmth of his skin, just inches away.

  “This dorm-visiting thing is so lame,” Jeremy moaned, picking at a handful of grass. “Nine to nine thirty? Even on Saturday night? I just wish we could do our own thing,” he said, his hand edging closer to hers on the grass. “No signing in, no watching the clock.”

  Emma’s heart skipped a beat. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? Did he wish he could be alone with her? “What if I came over tonight?” she heard herself ask. “After lights-out?”

  “You mean, what if you snuck out?” he asked, sounding unsure.

  “Yeah.” She’d been wondering what his room looked like for weeks. She could just picture his desk spread with books, his clothes hanging out of the dresser drawers, his bedspread and sheets in a ball on his bed…

  “Well, you’d have to come in through the window,” he said, sounding more excited about the idea. “Vince’s room is right next to the door.”

  Vince Truffardi was the head prefect of Flanner and a notorious discipline freak. The rumor was that he’d deferred college for a year so he could stick around Rutherford and continue busting kids for minor infractions.

  Emma turned over onto her stomach. “You’re the Obama sticker, right?” she asked, pretending she didn’t know which window was his.

  Jeremy turned over onto his stomach, too. Now their fingers were practically touching. “Yup. Second floor.”

  Emma stared at the window, thinking of all the times she’d imagined climbing through it. “No problem. I used to climb trees all the time at our old house upstate.”

  “You want to bring friends?” he asked. “And I’ll have some of the guys there?”

  Her heart sank a little. A party hadn’t been what she’d had in mind. “Sure,” she said.

  “Cool.” He stood up and held out his hand to help her. “Come at eleven,” he said.

  “Eleven fifteen,” she said, standing up and wiping the back of her shorts. “And you better be there to let me in.”

  “Absolutely,” Jeremy said, grinning.

  Emma’s heart skipped again. She’d been right all along: He definitely liked her.

  Except now, standing under his window, she wasn’t exactly sure if this was going to work out.

  “Just climb that,” Rachel said, gesturing to the drainpipe that shot up the wall toward the roof, through a patch of ivy. It ran alongside Jeremy’s window. “And pull yourself up with those.” She pointed to a metal hook that curved around the pipe, bolting it to the building. There seemed to be a hook every three feet.

  “And we’re supposed to do that, too?” Tiffany asked.

  Emma ignored her. “Okay, I’m going,” she whispered, grabbing hold of the first-floor windowsill. She climbed onto it, saying a prayer that this wasn’t Vince’s room.

  “Shhh!” Tiffany hissed.

  Standing on the windowsill, Emma reached for the metal hook. Then she swung herself over the pipe and hugged it with her legs. She pulled one foot up the wall and then the other, so that she was in rock-climbing position. The metal piece groaned under her weight. With one tentative arm she reached up for the next hook and grabbed it.

  “Good job,” she heard Jeremy whisper in the dark, just as she felt the hook come loose in her hand. With a creak, one end of the drainpipe swung away from the wall.

  Tiffany screamed. Emma realized that she was falling.

  Pain shot up her spine as she landed on her butt. The ground beneath her felt wet. “Ow!” she exclaimed, a little too loudly.

  Lights blinked on in some of the windows. Including Vince Truffardi’s. Emma heard Vince scramble to his feet out of bed. Tiffany and Rachel turned and ran, just as the door to Flanner flew open. “Who’s out here?” Vince’s voice was loud and strident.

  She stood up and brushed herself off. “Over here,” she said. There was no use trying to hide.

  The beam of Vince’s flashlight hit her square in the face. “Hi, Vince,” she said cheerfully. “What’s up?”

  His flashlight traveled up and down her body. “Whose room were you trying to climb into?”

  “Nobody’s.”

  The flashlight shone straight into her face again, making her squint. “Nobody’s?”

  “I have a problem with sleepwalking.”

  He clicked off the flashlight. In the moonlight, Emma could just make him out. Vince was short, with chicken legs and overdeveloped arms, and his hair was already thinning. It was no surprise that he seemed irritated all the time.

  “You’re in violation of code five-two-four,” he barked. “Trying to gain unauthorized access to another student’s room.”

  “Vince, do you really think I can climb a building?”

  “At this point, Emma, I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Let’s go. Time to see Dean Ward.”

  “Awesome,” Emma said. “I can’t wait.”

  He grabbed her arm and with a sharp yank pulled her across the wet grass. Emma thought about Jeremy at his window, watching all of this. She knew what he was probably thinking: Yeah, that’s Emma. Not afraid of anything. Getting busted and keeping her cool.

  But just before they turned left on the path, Emma glanced back over her shoulder. To her surprise, Jeremy wasn’t in the window. It was dark. And someone had even drawn the curtain.

  chapter 2

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” said Mr. Moyers, tapping his meaty fingers on his desk blotter. With his pale face, hangdog eyes, and rainbow-striped necktie, the headmaster of Rutherford looked like a very sad clown. “Who were you trying to see in Flanner Hall last night? And be honest, Emma. For both our sakes.”

  Emma shifted in the leather wing chair across from his desk. She could easily just tell him. Jeremy Dunn hadn’t shown up for breakfast, and when she’d passed by him on the quad on the way to first period, he’d actually looked right past her. But she wasn’t a tattletale. “Nobody. I was having trouble sleeping, so I just felt like taking a walk.”

  “A walk,” Mr. Moyers repeated doubtfully. The afternoon sun poured in through the tall window behind him. Through it Emma could see two girls walking to the Art Building past the massive elm trees. She wished she were with them.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Emma said. “Doesn’t that ever happen to you?”

  “Emma, do you like being in this office?” Mr. Moyers asked, leaning forward. “At this point, I feel I have to ask.”

  She took in the framed degrees in education from Yale and Columbia, and the cheesy poster of a rainbow with a quote that read: There is nothing impossible to him who will try.—Alexander the Great. And of course the electric guitar leaning against the wall, which Mr. Moyers supposedly used for “jam sessions” with some of the faculty members. Just thinking about that made her cringe. “I guess it’s kind of cozy,” she said. “Though you might want to think about redecorating soon.”

  “Emma.” Mr. Moyers sighed. “We’re going to have to discuss your future here at Rutherford.”

  “My future?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said soberly. “Your future.”

  Those ominous words still hung in the air when a brisk knock o
n the door made her jump. “Yes?” Mr. Moyers called out.

  His assistant, Kathy, stuck her gray, permed head into the room. Emma always got the impression that Kathy was secretly listening on speaker to everything that went on in Mr. Moyers’s office. “Senator Conway is here,” she announced. “And his wife.”

  “My parents?” Emma exclaimed, sitting straight up in her chair. “But they’re on vacation. At Lake George. Nuclear fallout wouldn’t get them to leave.”

  Mr. Moyers coolly flapped his rainbow necktie. “They didn’t seem to have a problem coming in. Especially when I told them the gravity of the situation.”

  A shiver ran through her as she gripped the chair’s armrests. She wasn’t going to just be getting detention. That much was clear. “Can I speak to them first?” she asked, getting to her feet.

  Mr. Moyers blinked, surprised.

  “They’re my parents. Isn’t that my constitutional right?”

  “Go ahead,” he said with a resigned shrug.

  She opened the door. Her dad was talking to Kathy. He held a miniature bronzed football that he’d picked up from her desk, and his large green eyes were lit up, the way they always were when he talked to a voter. “You said your husband’s a Giants fan?” he asked her, a faint New York accent curling around his words. “Well, you tell him from me that I think they’re going to have a terrific season. And if they don’t, I will personally—”

  “Dad?” she interrupted.

  His expression went from folksy to furious. “Hello, Emma,” he said soberly. He put down the football and crossed his arms over his barrel chest. Adam Conway was just over six feet, but he could suddenly appear several inches taller if he wanted to, especially if he was annoyed. “I take it you’re here to plead your case?” he asked.

  Kathy stood up from her chair. “I’ll just leave you two alone,” she said, and ducked out the door.

  “Where’s Mom?” Emma asked, looking around. Mr. Moyers’s waiting room was permanently dim, even in the middle of the day.

  “She’s in the ladies room,” her father said. He cocked his head to the side. His thick, wavy brown hair had yet to go gray, but it seemed to be getting lighter at the temples. And it was always strange to see him out of a suit, and in a blue polo and khakis.