The It Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar Read Free Book Online Page A

room.
    Jenny walked over to what looked like the spare bed and sat down, bouncing a couple of times. “This is a great room. I love the view.”
    “Yeah, it’s okay.” Brett folded her arms across her chest.
    “Who are
you
?” came a loud voice behind them. Jenny turned and saw a tall, strikingly beautiful girl with enormous hazel eyes and dark blond hair that looked like it had just been blow-dried. Jenny thought she looked just like the Disney movie version of Cinderella. Once she had transformed into a princess, of course.
    “Hey. I’m Jenny. I’m—they assigned me to this room.”
    “They? Who’s ‘they’?” Cinderella demanded.
    “Well … Waverly,” Jenny stammered. “Are you Callie?”
    “Yes. Are you a junior or a sophomore?”
    “Sophomore. What are you guys?”
    “Juniors.” Callie pursed her pink-lipsticked lips and deposited an enormous Gucci makeup bag on top of her desk. “You’re taking that bed?” She pointed to the bed Jenny was sitting on.
    “I guess so. I mean, unless it’s not okay with you two.”
    “I suppose it’s fine.” Callie glanced at Brett. “I guess Tinsley’s really gone then.”
    Brett made a snorting noise through her nose. Jenny just stood there, not sure what to say.
    “What happened to … er … Tinsley?” she finally asked.
    “It’s complicated,” Brett responded quickly, unzipping a suitcase entirely full of shoes. Jenny checked the labels on a few. Jimmy Choo. Sigerson Morrison. Manolo Blahnik.
    “It was nothing,” Callie added. She stared out the window, away from both of them.
    Jenny wasn’t much of a smoker, but she wished she could have a cigarette right then, just to have something to do with her hands.
    Callie finally broke the silence. “Where’d you go to school before this?”
    “Constance Billard? It’s in—”
    “New York City. All girls,” Callie interrupted in a breathy voice, sliding a little closer to Jenny in the same way a cat might rub up against your calf. She turned to Brett. “Didn’t Tinsley go to Constance?”
    “No. She went to Trinity. Until fifth grade. Then she went somewhere in Switzerland, then here.”
    “Yeah, Tinsley definitely didn’t go to an all-girls’ school, now that I think about it.” Callie examined her cuticles. “I remember her saying that she had tons of boyfriends.”
    “Well, Tinsley’s beautiful,” Brett added offhandedly, taking T-shirts out of another suitcase.
    Jenny bristled. Was Brett saying that she wasn’t beautiful? Who was this Tinsley girl, anyway?
    “She could get any guy she wanted,” Brett continued. “Even guys with girlfriends.”
    “That’s not true,” Callie snapped, before turning back to Jenny.
    Jenny’s eyes darted back and forth between her roommates. What was up with them?
    “Tinsley had her eleventh birthday party at Chelsea Piers. Like, she rented out the whole thing and installed a trapeze school in the gym area. Did you go to that?”
    Jenny shrugged. “Sorry, no.” But she remembered that party, all right. Back when she was ten, Jenny’s father had ranted for days about an article in the
New York Times
Style section covering a party at the Chelsea Piers Sports Complex for a girl a year older than Jenny. Her dad had mocked it for being indulgent and piggishly bourgeois, but Jenny had thought the girl was the luckiest kid on the planet. And now she’d be sleeping in her bed! This
had
to be a good sign.
    Callie looked at Jenny like a Christie’s appraiser might examine a Ming vase and then smiled. “Well, welcome to Waverly. I think you’re going to like it here.”
    Jenny hugged herself.
I like it already
.

    Instant Message Inbox
    TeagueWilliams: What did you say the 99-cent girl looks like?
    HeathFerro: Brown curly hair, practically a midget, major knockers.
    TeagueWilliams: So lemme guess… . You taking her to the chapel?
    HeathFerro: Hells yeah!

    Instant Message Inbox
    CelineColista: So Callie and Brett are pissed at each