Gigi had never seen her dad so mad. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and the muscle at the corner of his jaw jumped up and down. He’d never hit her, but she’d never done anything this bad, and she thought he might want to.
He hadn’t said a word to her since they’d left the principal’s office. Part of her wanted him to start yelling, so they could get it over with, but the rest of her wanted to postpone it as long as possible. It wasn’t like she’d meant to break Chelsea’s wrist.
Just thinking about it made her stomach ache. Chelsea had been acting like a bitch all week, maybe because she’d been fighting with her mom, but that still hadn’t been any reason for her to say that Gigi had started acting all stuck up again because she was rich. Gigi’d finally gotten so mad that she’d told Chelsea she was getting fat, which was totally true. Chelsea had yelled back that she hated Gigi just like everybody else, and then Gigi had sort of pushed her, not to hurt her, just to push her a little, except the door to her locker was open, and Chels had fallen against it and broken her wrist. Now everybody was blaming her.
The piece of cafeteria pizza she’d had for lunch rose up in her throat. She kept hearing the sound Chelsea had made when her wrist broke, this choky little scream. Gigi swallowed hard to push the pizza back down.
When her dad had finally walked in the office, Gigi had been so scared about Chelsea’s mom saying she was going to file a police report that she wanted to throw herself in his arms and cry like she used to when she was little. But he hadn’t even looked at her, just like he wasn’t looking at her now.
Mrs. Whitestone had suspended Gigi for the rest of the week and sent her outside to wait on the office bench so the adults could talk. Chelsea’s mom had always liked Gigi’s dad. She’d even kind of flirted with him, which Gigi’d always thought was creepy, but was probably a good thing, because she’d finally stopped yelling. When he’d come out of the office, though, his face had looked like he wanted to kill somebody, and Gigi didn’t think it was Chelsea’s mom.
The other kids always told her she was lucky to have such young parents because they remembered what it was like to be a teenager, but her dad didn’t look like he remembered anything about being a teenager right now. Resentment gnawed at her. In high school, her dad had been named most popular boy. She’d seen it in his yearbook. And her mom never got into any trouble. Well, Gigi wasn’t like them.
She couldn’t stand the quiet in the car for another second, and she reached for the button on the radio.
“Leave it alone.” Usually, they listened to music together, but now he sounded like he wouldn’t ever listen to music with her again.
“Chelsea started it.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“I knew you’d be on her side.”
He shot her a cold look. “I suggest you keep your mouth shut.”
She tried to, but everything was so unfair, and she hated that he wouldn’t put his arm around her and give her one of his bear hugs and say everything was going to be all right. “This is all because I’m not perfect like you and Mom used to be!”
“This has nothing to do with your mother or me. This has to do with the fact that you’ve been acting like a brat for months now, and today you physically assaulted someone. You’re lucky her mother decided not to file charges against you. Actions bring consequences, Gigi, and, believe me, you’re going to face some serious ones.”
“You broke a guy’s collarbone once. You told me that.”
“It was a football game!”
“That didn’t make it right.”
“Not one more word!”
That night after her mom got home, they made her sit down in the living room. Her dad did most of the talking, going on about how disappointed they were in her, and how serious an offense this was. She kept waiting for him to say that, even though she’d done something wrong, he loved her anyway, but he didn’t.
“We’re taking away your telephone privileges for two weeks,” her mom finally said. “You can’t watch television, and you can’t leave the house unless one of us is with you.”
“That’s so unfair! You don’t even like Chelsea. You think she’s a bad influence. But you love Kelli Willman!”
Her dad ignored her outburst. “You’re also going to be doing a lot of studying to make up for the classes you’re missing while you’re suspended.”
As if she couldn’t catch up in about three seconds.
“And you have to apologize to Chelsea,” her mother said.
Gigi jumped up. “She has to apologize to me first! She started it.”
“This isn’t negotiable. You broke her wrist.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
But neither of them would listen. They just started in again, not understanding that Gigi already felt like shit, and she didn’t need to hear any more about how evil she was. Her parents totally forgot what it was like to be a teenager, but everybody hadn’t hated them the way the kids hated Gigi. Her parents had been perfect. Well, Gigi wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t like them. She was . . .
She was like her aunt.
The word rolled around in her head like a big shiny marble. Aunt. She didn’t have a lot of relatives: Grandma Sabrina and Nana Galantine, her Uncle Jeremy, but he was a lot older than her dad and wasn’t ever getting married. That left only one other person. Maybe Sugar Beth Carey was only a half aunt, but still . . .
The Seawillows talked about her a lot when they didn’t think Gigi was listening and how everybody had totally kissed her butt in high school. One time she’d heard Colin say that Sugar Beth had also been one of the smartest kids in her class, but the Seawillows hadn’t believed him, since she got crappy grades. Still, Colin had seen everybody’s test scores, so he should know, even though he wouldn’t tell any of them what their scores were.
Sugar Beth would totally understand what Gigi was going through. But Gigi’s dad had forbidden her to talk to her. He’d said if Gigi saw her someplace, she couldn’t even say hello because he knew how Gigi was, and she wouldn’t stop at hello, and nobody wanted old history dredged up again.
But this wasn’t old history. This was Gigi’s life. And she had to talk to somebody who’d understand. Even if she got grounded for the rest of her life.
“You now belong to me—body and soul.”
G
EORGETTE
H
EYER
,
These Old Shades
CHAPTER EIGHT
Colin’s voice slid over Sugar Beth like a trickle of cold water. “What are you doing in here?”
“I’m making your bed.”
“Well, make it somewhere else.”
“You forgot to put on your happy face again, didn’t you?” She stretched her legs, balancing her weight on the toe of one foot, cocking her other knee, and leaning far enough across the bed to make him appreciate her bottom-line assets. This was the only weapon she had left, and she’d been using it as frequently as possible in the nine days she’d been working for him. So what if her sexual shenanigans were also making her more aware of him than she wanted to be? He didn’t know that. Or did he? That was the thing about sexual games. You could never be completely sure who was getting to who.
To whom. It was a bitch living with your old English teacher, especially when your old English teacher wasn’t old at all, and he had exactly the kind of body that most appealed to her, tall and lean, broad in the shoulder, narrow at the hip. Then there was his brain. It had taken her a lot of years to find that particular part of a man appealing, but she’d finally gotten in the habit, and she couldn’t seem to give it up.
She took her time arranging the last pillow. His dinner party was scheduled for tomorrow night, and the rental company’s truck would be arriving soon. Although the dining room at Frenchman’s Bride was large, it wasn’t big enough to seat the thirty people he’d invited, and she’d rented smaller tables to set up throughout the downstairs. His agent and editor were flying in from New York, but he’d done a lot of research at Ole Miss, and most of the guests would be driving from Oxford.