CHAPTER 1
SAGE
There were cigarettes wedged in thecracks of my windowsill, and my mom noticed right away. “Those aren’t mine!” I blurted when she held up two of them, tips browned and singed. This was a given, because I’d lived in this room for all of ten minutes. My sheets weren’t even on the bed yet.
She frowned and shook her head. “Use an ashtray next time.”
“Maybe it’s in here,” my dad joked, pulling out one of my desk drawers. I was surprised the cleaning crew hadn’t caught the butts. My mom had opened the window because the smell of Clorox was so strong.
“Who lived here last year?” she asked.
“Schuyler Cole,” I said, and couldn’t help but laugh as she dug out another stub. I almost told her to stop, since I kind of wanted to show the girls later. Up on the third floor, my friend Reese had already texted us that her room’s last occupant left her prom dress hanging in the closet.
Not a night to remember?I’d written back.
“Schuyler Cole…” my mom mused. “Isn’t she…?”
“Yeah, Charlie’s ex.”
She nodded. “Will he be coming by to say hello later? And help, since we all know how much youloveunpacking?”
“We wish.” I smiled. “He’s still in rehearsal.” Charlie had gotten a weeklong head start here at Bexley, moving into school early for the musical’s “preseason.” This year’s show wasInto the Woods, and he was playing none other than Prince Charming.
My mom sighed. “What about Nicky?”
I shook my head. “Soccer.”
“Andrea,” my dad said, chuckling. “We don’t need the extra labor. This is Sage’s senior year. We’ve got this.”
I smiled. My parents were divorced, but I loved that they always moved me in together. “Oh, that’s a relief.” I faked a yawn. “Because I’m a little woozy from this smell.” I flopped down on my mattress and shut my eyes. “Please wake me when the people from Pottery Barn Teen arrive for the photo shoot.”
I went to boarding school, but I didn’t grow upthinkingI’d go to boarding school. When I was in third grade, I’d fantasized about someday wearing blue and white at Darien High School’s football games and maybe being voted homecoming queen. But all that had gone out the window in eighth grade. Holding court from the back of the bus, Charlie told me he couldn’t come over and binge on ice cream and Netflix because he needed to go home and work on his Bexley application. “Mom wants Nick and me to start them today,” he’d explained. “She doesn’t want us to get behind.”
“Wait, Bexley?” I’d said. “TheBexley School? Like where Kitsey went? You guys are going to go?”
“Well, yeah.” Charlie shrugged. “We all go. My grandfather, my dad, Kitsey… Of course, Nicky and I are gonna go.”
So naturally, I started my own application as soon as I’d gotten home and finished an episode ofGossip Girland a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked. If Charlie was going to Bexley, then I was too. I wasn’t going to let us be separated.
I smiled as I tacked a picture of us up over my bed. One of me wearing Charlie’s spare hockey jersey with black paint under my eyes and standing on his skates as he danced us around outside the locker room. It went next to a fifth-grade snapshot, taken after our school’s production ofCharlie and the Chocolate Factory. We both held huge flower bouquets.
My parents were gone, my mom en route back to Connecticut and my dad to New York, and the girls and I were about to head over to the Pearson Arts Center for Move-In Day’s school meeting. “Okay, enough pictures,” Reese said, and waved her phone around. “Jennie sent the scouting report.”
“Oh, yes!” Nina hopped up from my desk chair. “Anyone British?”
I laughed. “You’re not still hung up on Jamie, are you?”
Nina blushed. “Listen, he wasreallynice.”
“But he had thatposhgirlfriend back home, Miss Davies,” Reese reminded her, nodding her head toward my door. Nina and I followed her out of the room, down the hall and stairs, and once outside, we were swept up in the sea of students. Bexley had rolled out the welcome wagon: the auditorium had our black-and-blue school flags streaming down from the windows, and odds were,Headmaster Griswold, with his retro handlebar mustache, was greeting people as they passed through the front doors. It was the same way every year, and though I’d been so excited on the drive here, I suddenly felt something in me deflate, like I was secretly hoping that this time would be different.
But all signs pointed to same old, same old.
“Okay, Jennie’s list,” I prompted as we walked, arms linked. Jennie Chu was our fourth musketeer, and as student council president, she’d scored a lineup of this year’s postgraduate guys. They were the new kids in the senior class, and most of them came to Bexley for sports after graduating from their own high schools. They were known to everyone as the PGs. Nina’s beloved Jamie had been a soccer PG last year.
Reese scanned her phone. “No Brits,” she concluded. “But there’re two football guys, both from Texas, a lax bro from Long Island…” She glanced up and smirked at me. “Sage, you’resolucky.”
“Why?” I asked. “Is Shawn Mendes here this year?”
