“Because Burberry Prep is a hellhole dressed with money.” Miranda gives me a big, wide smile and then reaches out a hand. “Give me your schedule, and I’ll tell you which demons to avoid.” She pauses and gives me another critical look. “Mostly though, you’ll want to stay away from the devils.”
“The devils?” I ask, digging my wrinkled schedule out of my pocket and passing it over to Miranda. She scans it, chewing her full lower lip and smearing sparkly pink gloss. When she glances back up at me and reaches out to spin my nametag over, her mouth tightens into a thin line.
“The devils,” Miranda says with a sigh. “Nobody calls them that but me. Looks like you already met one this morning?” She’s looking at me with pity now, like she’s well-acquainted with Tristan and his bullshit.
“What does everyone else call them?” I ask, and she sighs, looping her arm through mine and pulling me down the long, wide hallway. It’s big enough to drive a truck through, small tables with lemon-cucumber water and cups placed every so often. Sometimes there’s fresh fruit or pastries, too.
“Oh, girl, you and I have a long talk ahead of us. Stick with me. We have Monday classes together. By the time we’re done, you’ll know everything you need to know about the Idols.”The Bluebloods of Burberry Prep
A list by Miranda CabotThe Idols (guys): Tristan Vanderbilt (year one), Zayd Kaiser (year one), and Creed Cabot (year one)The Idols (girls): Harper du Pont (year one), Becky Platter (year one), and Gena Whitley (year four)The Inner Circle: Andrew Payson, Anna Kirkpatrick, Myron Talbot, Ebony Peterson, Gregory Van Horn, Abigail Fanning, John Hannibal, Valentina Pitt, Sai Patel, Mayleen Zhang, Jalen Donner … and, I guess, me!Plebs: everyone else, sorry. XOXO“Why am I holding a list of names in my hand?” I ask as we walk down the hallway, pausing for coffee at one of the side tables. My old school never served coffee to students. Sometimes, kids would break into the teacher’s lounge and steal some, but that’s as close as we’d ever get.
“Memorize that list like your life depends on it,” Miranda says, lifting a mug of black coffee up to her lips.
“Miss Cabot,” a stern voice says, plucking the white cup from Miranda’s thin fingers. “You know that the coffee stands are for staff only.” I turn and find a tall, brunette woman in a skirt suit watching us with a raised brow and a wry half-smile. She looks like she’d be more at home in Washington D.C. than in a rural prep school in central California. “There’s a sign, after all. And I know you can read. Your mother promises she taught you herself.”
My mouth twitches as Miranda tosses her hair in a haughty gesture that doesn’t seem to quite fit her personality. And that’s a good thing. I’ve known a lot of hair-tossers in my life, and none of those girls were pleasant. They made my middle school years a living hell with the help of a guy named Zack Brooks. Zack … I’m not going to let myself think about him. This is my chance at a fresh start and new, better memories.
“Ms. Felton, I see the war against caffeine is still on,” Miranda grumbles, waiting for Ms. Felton to turn her back, so she can flip her off. “It’s a losing battle—like the war on drugs.”
“Why don’t you wait until tomorrow, and we can discuss politics in class?” Ms. Felton dumps the coffee into the drain of a water fountain as we turn the corner and Miranda rolls her blue eyes at me.
“Sorry, that’s Ms. Felton. She’s a bit of a rule Nazi. She can get away with it, too, since she was an Idol once upon a time. It’s like, that shit never fades.” Miranda pauses and then peeps around the corner, like she’s checking to see if Ms. Felton’s following us. She’s not. Miranda grins and then gestures at my belly with loose fingers. “Roll it, or be forever dubbed a Pleb.”
“A … what?” I ask as Miranda untucks her shirt, and then proceeds to roll the waistband of her red pleated skirt until it’s dangerously short, like can’t bend over or reach for too high of a shelf short. A light breeze is liable to blow it right off. “Pleb? Like … Plebeian?”
“Yep,” Miranda says with a sigh, tucking her shirt back in and then looking at me like I’m crazy. When I don’t move to copy her, she groans and steps forward, tugging the crisp white blouse from my waistband. I sort of just stand there and let her do her thing. It’s exhilarating, naughty but in an innocent sort of way. “It’s stupid, I know, but it’s how it is here.”
Once my skirt’s the appropriate level of, well, inappropriate, Miranda leans over and taps the piece of paper she wrote out for me. On the bottom, there’s the term Pleb with the words everyone else written after it.
