Reefer’s admonishing words rushed through her head. Do you really need a stupid club to tell you that you’re cool? But he’d probably said all that disparaging stuff about Ivy because he knew he’d never get into something so prestigious. Loser.
“Plates and silverware are that way.” Harper gestured to a table.
Spencer hovered over the food, amazed that every single item contained an illegal substance. She didn’t want to eat any of it. She muttered something about not being hungry and followed Harper into the parlor.
The room was packed with well-dressed boys in ties and khakis and girls in dresses. Classical music played in the background, and a waitress was wandering around with flutes of mimosa. Spencer overheard conversations about a composer she’d never heard of, nature versus nurture, foreign policy in Afghanistan, and vacationing on St. Barts. This was why she wanted to belong to Ivy—everyone spoke in such smart, informed, adult voices about sophisticated topics. Screw Reefer and his judgmental attitude.
Harper had joined Quinn and Jessie. The girls looked at Spencer with surprise, but then gave her a cautious smile and a cordial hello. Everyone sank into a leather couch and resumed their conversation about a girl named Patricia; apparently, her boyfriend had gotten her pregnant over the holiday break.
“Is she going to keep the baby?” Harper asked, forking a bite of macaroni salad.
Jessie shrugged. “I don’t know. But she’s terrified of telling her parents. She knows they’re going to freak.”
Quinn shook her head sympathetically. “Mine would, too.”
It was disconcerting that the girls were talking about an issue that was so close to Spencer’s heart. Looking at Emily’s situation objectively, it was crazy that Emily had hidden her pregnancy from almost everyone she knew. It was even crazier that she’d smuggled the baby out of the hospital and left it on someone’s doorstep. Even worse, A—Gayle—had figured out exactly what happened. Was Gayle going to tell? Not just about that, but about everything else they’d done?
She stared down at her empty plate, wishing she had something to do with her hands.
“Spencer, these are really good,” Harper said, pointing to a brownie she’d cut from one of Spencer’s pans. “Try.”
She shoved the brownie toward Spencer’s mouth, but Spencer recoiled. “That’s okay.”
“Why? They’re amazing!”
Quinn narrowed her eyes. “Unless you’re anti-sugar, too?”
The girls were all staring at her so quizzically that Spencer began to feel insecure. She wondered if it was a requirement to eat the food, like an Ivy rite of passage. Maybe she had no choice. “Thanks,” she said, accepting a bite. Harper was right: The brownie was gooey and delicious, and Spencer couldn’t even taste the baked-in pot. Her stomach rumbled in response; she hadn’t eaten since last night. One little brownie wouldn’t hurt, would it?
“Okay, you convinced me,” Spencer said, rising from her seat to get a brownie square for herself.
When she returned, having eaten almost the whole brownie by the time she sat down again, the girls were talking about how they wanted to make a film to enter into the Princeton Student Film contest. “I want to make one about toy tops, just like Charles and Ray Eames did,” Quinn said.
“I was thinking of making a movie about Bethany. Remember how I told you about her? The really fat girl who sits in front of me in Intro to Psych?” Jessie rolled her eyes. “It could be called Girl Who Eats Donuts.”
Spencer took a bite of brownie and wished she was brave enough to tell Jessie she wasn’t exactly a sylph. For some reason, the word sylph suddenly struck her as funny. The oversize freckles on Jessie’s cheeks were kind of funny, too. Jessie looked at her strangely. “What?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” Spencer said, taking another nibble of the brownie. A few crumbs fell onto her lap, reminding her of gerbil poops. She started laughing again.
Harper stood, giving Spencer a you’re hopelessly weird look. “I’m going to get another brownie. Girls, you in?”
“Grab me one,” Quinn said. Jessie nodded too.
The brownies. That was why Spencer found everything so funny. She’d only smoked pot twice before, both times at parties at Noel Kahn’s house, but the familiar sensations rushed back. Her pulse slowed. Her normally obsessive tendencies began to fade into the background. She leaned back and grinned at the beautiful kids around her, marveling at their brightly colored dresses and silk ties. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her limbs relaxed into the couch.
Suddenly, she roused herself. A couple was making out across the room, their hands all over each other, their tongues flailing. Another couple was kissing by the grand piano. They were so into it that they leaned on the keys, a tinkle of sounds ringing out. There was a clump of kids staring at a glass-paned china cabinet in the corner, remarking on how amazing the plate patterns were. Quinn was standing in the doorway, telling a story about how her housekeeper always said acrossed instead of across in a snotty, cleaning-people-are-such-lower-class-citizens voice. Jessie’s eyes were glassy and red, and she was wiggling her fingernails in front of her face like they were amazing.
Spencer rubbed her eyes. How long had she been out?
“Streaker!” someone yelled, and a guy in a Princeton beanie and nothing else ran through the parlor, a half-eaten brownie in his hand. A couple of kids stripped off their clothes and followed him down the hall.
Harper appeared above Spencer and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s join in, sleepyhead!”