be rooming together. But they were on different floors, Rose on two, Bel on three. Darcy ordered another girl to help Rose, while she hauled Bel’s box up the extra flight of stairs to show Bel to her room.
“Thanks for the help,” Bel said.
“No worries, we always do it,” Darcy said, huffing. “You’re in a double. All sophomores are. It can be grim or it can be fun, depending on who your roommate is.”
“Who’s my roommate?” Bel asked.
“Some dork, probably. C’mon, let’s go see.”
They walked down a long hallway, lined with closed doors on either side. It was dingier than Bel had expected given the beautifully manicured grounds, with old carpeting, dark wainscoting, and a stale, musty smell. Cards were pinned to each door with the occupants’ names carefully written in calligraphy. Darcy stopped in front of Room 305.
“This is you. Looks like you’re with Emma Kim,” Darcy said. She braced the box on her knee and flung the door open.
The room was empty, and extremely tidy. Light streamed through the enormous bay window opposite the door. Bunk beds were crammed in along the wall where they entered, so the open door smacked up against them. Emma had moved in already, claiming a bunk, a dresser and a desk. Her things were neatly laid out, and the bottom bunk was made up with a pretty duvet and pillows. A poster for a boy band hung over her desk.
“Emma’s probably out on the Quad. There’s a welcome reception you need to get to,” Darcy said.
“What’s Emma like?” Bel asked dubiously. From her stuff, she was a neat freak with awful taste in music.
“Kind of a nerd. Not much money. Plays the violin. But she’s pretty, and not a narc. Anyway, if you don’t like her, you’re welcome to hang with me and the seniors.”
The offer gave Bel a warm buzz. This cool, older girl liked her. Maybe it wasn’t so bad here.
“Really? I might take you up on that,” Bel said.
“People’ll tell you we’re a bad influence, but don’t get scared off.”
“It’s not true?” Bel asked.
“Oh, no. It is true.”
Bel laughed, and Darcy smiled at her approvingly.
“You know,” Darcy said, “when I heard we were getting twins from California, I thought, This could be cool. Then when I heard you were Enrights, I got really excited.”
“You know my family?”
“Oh, yeah. My mom and your dad practically grew up together. They belonged to the same country club in Connecticut, and were at Odell at the same time. They even dated. Your dad was a hottie, and something of a wild man, apparently. Then he ran off with this gorgeous Mexican girl he met in college, and my mom was devastated.”
“That ended up being my mom. She’s from California, but yeah, she was beautiful.”
“I can tell that by looking at you. Your sister, though? Kind of a dweeb, no?”
“Rose is all right. She’s just quiet,” Bel said, feeling defensive on her sister’s behalf. Though she couldn’t resist adding, “We’re pretty different.”
“Family. Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em. My fam’s cool, though. Mom lived in Moreland back in the day, not long after the school went coed. This dorm always had the raddest girls. But now they’re trying to break our spirit.”
“Who is?”
“The brass. The headmaster and the trustees. They brought in these new dorm heads to straighten us out, which, trust me, is an impossible task. Besides—”
Darcy looked at Bel meaningfully, and laughed.
“What?” Bel asked.
“They screwed up royally, and they don’t even know it,” Darcy announced, stepping over to the bay window. “C’mere. See that guy in the blue blazer?”
Bel looked down onto a wide, rectangular lawn, surrounded on all sides by graceful brick buildings. Tables and chairs had been set out in the shade cast by Moreland’s walls. Students and their families were gathered around, listening to an extravagantly good-looking man, who stood a little apart, talking to the crowd, gesturing gracefully with his hands. Bel couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Who is he?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Heath Donovan, the new dorm head, well, cohead, along with his mousy math teacher wife,” Darcy said. “He teaches English, too. Is he the bangin’est thing you ever laid eyes on? All the girls want him. I swear I get tongue-tied around him, and normally I don’t shut up.”
“He’s gorgeous. Why do you say it was a screwup to make him the dorm head?”
“A guy like that, in a dorm like this? Come on. By tradition, the Moreland seniors like to cause trouble. It’s practically a graduation requirement. We’re like the biggest beasts, and we have the best pranks planned. Want to hear our crazy idea, inspired by Heath the Hottie?”
“Of course.”
“You have to promise not to tell.”
“I would never,” Bel said.
“It’s a contest. Which senior girl can bed Donovan first.”
It took a second for Darcy’s meaning to sink in. A contest to hook up with the dorm head? Bel hoped she wasn’t serious. Yet, when Darcy laughed uproariously, Bel joined in. Who was she to judge? She’d made a cool, new friend. She ought to go with the flow.
Classes didn’t start until tomorrow, and they already had homework. How was that even possible? Rose only found out because her roommate came back from dinner and started FaceTiming with some boy on her laptop, complaining about the reading for English.
“Wait, what? There’s homework already?” Rose said, panicking mildly.
Rose’s roommate was Skyler Stone from New Jersey. Skyler had long brown hair and wore a lot of makeup to cover her iffy complexion. Other than her skin, she was pretty and well-dressed enough to make Rose feel like a frump by comparison. Then again, most of the Odell girls made Rose feel like a frump. Skyler had been a freshman last year, and acted put-upon to be rooming with a newbie.
“If you want to see your homework,” Skyler said, in a snippy tone, “log on to campus net. It’s posted there in your academic module.”
Rose had no idea what any of that meant, but she was hesitant to annoy Skyler by asking another question. Instead, she grabbed her laptop and headed up the stairs to the third floor to find her sister. There was virtually no chance that Bel knew how to look up homework assignments on campus net already. But Skyler’s sharp tone had stung, and made Rose homesick for her sister.
Rose was
