“I went to that, too!” The Iceland Airwaves festival was the first concert Aria had gone to. She’d felt so adult traipsing onto the grounds, passing the hippie tents selling temporary tattoos and dream catchers, and inhaling the smells of exotic vegetarian cuisine and hookah pipes. During one of the many Icelandic bands’ sets, she’d met three boys: Asbjorn, Gunnar, and Jonas, and Jonas had kissed her during the encore. That was when Aria knew moving to Iceland was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to her.
Klaudia nodded excitedly, her blond hair bouncing. “So much music! My favorite was Metric.”
“I saw them in Copenhagen!” Aria said. She would have never pegged Klaudia for a Metric girl. Music was one of those things Aria hadn’t been able to talk about with anyone here the way she had in Iceland—all the Typical Rosewoods, as she called them, never ventured to listened to anything not on the iTunes Most Downloaded list.
“I loved! So much—tanssi!” She squinted, trying to think of the English word, and then bobbed her head back and forth as though she were dancing.
Then, setting her paper plate on the windowsill, Klaudia pulled out her iPhone and flipped through pictures. “This is Tanja.” She pointed at a foxlike Sofia Coppola look-alike. “Best friends. We go to Reykjavik concert together. I miss so much. We text every night.”
Klaudia flipped through more photos of her friends, mostly blond girls; her family, a gaunt, makeup-free mother, a tall, rumpled father who she said was an engineer, and a younger brother who had messy hair; her house, a modern box that reminded Aria of the house they rented in Reykjavik; and her cat, Mika, which she cradled like a baby in the same way Aria cradled her own cat, Polo. “I miss my Mee-mee so much!” she cried, bringing the picture to her lips and giving the cat a kiss.
Aria giggled. In these pictures, Klaudia didn’t look slutty or conniving—she seemed normal. Cool, even. It was possible Aria had judged Klaudia unfairly. Maybe she was overly touchy-feely with Noel because she was uncomfortable in her new surroundings. And maybe she dressed sluttily because she thought all Americans did—if you went by American television, you’d certainly think so. Really, Aria and Klaudia had more in common than Aria originally thought—the Typical Rosewood Girls shunned Klaudia, just like they did Aria. They always blacklisted things they didn’t immediately understand.
Klaudia turned to the next photo in the stack, a shot of her friends in ski gear on top of a mountain. “Oh! This is Kalle!” She said it like Kah-lee. “We ski every weekend! Who will I ski with now?”
“I’ll ski with you,” Aria volunteered, surprising herself.
Klaudia’s eyes brightened. “You ski?”
“Well, no . . .” Aria forked the remaining goulash on her plate. “Actually, I’ve never skied in my life.”
“I teach you!” Klaudia bounced in her seat. “We go soon! So easy!”
“Okay.” Come to think of it, Noel had mentioned that his family was thinking about going on a ski trip for the long weekend at the end of the week. Surely Klaudia would be invited, too. “But I’d like to teach you something in return.”
“How about that?” Klaudia pointed at the pink mohair scarf wound around Aria’s neck. “Did you neuloa?” She rotated her hands around, pantomiming knitting.
Aria inspected the scarf. “Oh, I knitted this years ago. It’s not very good.”
“No, is beautiful!” Klaudia exclaimed. “Teach me! I make presents for Tanja and Kalle!”
“You want to learn to knit?” Aria repeated. No one, not even Ali or the others, had asked Aria to teach them—it had always been Aria’s weird thing. But Klaudia didn’t seem to think it was weird.
They arranged to meet on Thursday at a ski supply store so Aria could get proper gear. As they rose to check out the desserts, Aria noticed Noel staring at her from across the room with a surprised smile on his face. Aria waved, and so did Klaudia. “He your boyfriend, right?” Klaudia asked.
“Yeah,” Aria answered. “For over a year.”
“Ooh, serious!” Klaudia’s eyes twinkled. But there was nothing envious about her demeanor.
Mr. Kahn appeared in the doorway. Aria hadn’t seen him in weeks. He was always traveling on important business. Now, he was decked out in a brown loincloth, what looked like a bearskin coat, black boots, and a massive horned hat. He looked like Fred Flintstone.
“I’m ready for the feast!” he bellowed, raising a club in his left hand.
Everyone cheered. The Rosewood Day girls in the corner tittered. Aria and Klaudia exchanged a horrified look. Was he serious?
“Save me!” Klaudia whispered, hiding behind Aria.
Aria burst into giggles. “Those horns! And what’s with the club?”
“I don’t know!” Klaudia held her nose. “And Mrs. Kahn’s skirt smell just like hevonpaskaa!”
Aria didn’t exactly know what the word meant, but just the sound of it made her double over with giggles. She could feel the stares of the bitchy girls across the room, but she didn’t care. All at once, she felt so grateful Klaudia was here. For the first time in almost a year, Aria had someone to laugh with again. Someone who really understood her in a way that the Typical Rosewoods couldn’t.
For a moment, it even made her forget about A.
Chapter 13
Seduction and Secrets
Spencer stood at the back of the Kahns’ smorgasbord line, eyeing the food spread. Some of this crap looked like cat vomit. And who in their right mind drank soured milk?
Two hands grabbed her shoulders. “Surprise,” Zach Pennythistle said, waving an uncorked amber-colored bottle in her face. Inside was a greenish liquid that smelled like nail polish remover.
Spencer raised an eyebrow. “What is that?”
“Traditional Finnish schnapps.” He poured a few slugs into two foam cups from the stack on the table. “I snuck it from the bar cart when no one was looking.”
“Bad boy!” Spencer shook her finger at him. “Are you always so deviant?”
“It’s why I’m the black sheep of my family,” Zach teased, lowering his dark eyes at her, which made Spencer’s insides whirl.
She was thrilled Zach had accepted her invitation to the smorgasbord party tonight. Ever since the dinner at The Goshen Inn on Sunday, she couldn’t stop thinking of their fun, flirty banter. Even after they’d sat down at the table with the rest of the family, they’d continued to shoot one another feisty looks and secret smiles.
They drifted through the living room and set up camp on the Kahns’ stairs. The party was getting raucous, with a bunch of Rosewood Day kids Irish-jigging to the polka music in the Kahns’ enormous living room and some of the adults already slurring their words. “I usually don’t peg Harvard boys as the black sheep of their families,” Spencer said to Zach, picking up on their previous conversation.
Zach sat back, frowning. “Where’d you hear I was going to Harvard?”
Spencer blinked. “Your dad said so at dinner. Before I found you at the bar.”
“Of course he did.” Zach took a long drink of his schnapps. “To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure Harvard and I are a match made in heaven. I have my eye on either Berkeley or Columbia. Not that he knows that, of course.”
Spencer raised her glass. “Well, here’s to getting what you want.”
Zach smiled. “I always get what I want,” he said meaningfully, which sent more tingles up her spine. Something was going to happen between them tonight. Spencer could just feel it.
“Is that booze?” cried an outraged voice. Zach’s sister, Amelia, emerged from around the corner with a plate full of food.
Spencer sighed and shut her eyes. Her mother had been thrilled that she’d invited Zach to the smorgasbord—it would be a good way for the two of them to get to know each other, she said. “In fact, why doesn’t Amelia join you, too?” she’d chirped a millisecond later. Before Spencer could protest, Mrs. Hastings was on the phone with Nicholas, extending the invitation to Zach’s pinched-faced sister.
Did Amelia even want to be here? A hideous scowl had settled over her features as soon as she’d stepped through the Kahns’ door. When Mrs. Kahn put on a traditional Finnish folk dance song, Amelia had actually winced and covered her ears.
“Want some?” Zach pushed his cup toward Amelia. “It tastes like peppermint patties, your favorite!”
Amelia moved away, making a face. “No thanks.” Her idea of party wear was a striped Brooks Brothers button-down tucked very tightly into a denim pencil skirt that fell to her knees. She looked exactly like Mrs. Ulster, Spencer’s substitute Calc II teacher.
Amelia leaned against the banister and glowered at the Rosewood residents. “So are these people your friends?” She said friends like she might have said bedbug-infested mattresses.
Spencer surveyed the crowd. Most of the Rosewood Day senior class had been invited, as well as a smattering of the Kahns’ society friends. “Well, they all go to my school.”
Amelia made a dismissive uch. “They seem really lame. Especially the girls.”
Spencer flinched. Other than Kelsey, she hadn’t hung out with St. Agnes girls in ages. But she had been to a couple of their parties back in middle school; each clique named themselves after a European princess or queen—there were the Queen Sofias of Spain, the Princess Olgas of Greece, and the Charlottes of Monaco, daughter of Princess Carolina. Hello, lameness?
Zach drained the rest of his drink and set his cup on the stairs. “Oh, these girls look like they might have some dirty little secrets up their sleeves.”
“How can you tell?” Spencer teased.
“It’s all about watching people, noticing what they do. Like when I met you at the restaurant on Sunday—I knew you were in the bar area because you were escaping from someone. Taking a breather.”
Spencer gave him a playful slap. “You’re such a liar.”
Zach crossed his arms over his chest. “Wanna bet? There’s this game I sometimes play called She’s Not What She Seems. I bet I can suss out more secrets than you can.”
Spencer flinched for a moment at the name of the game. For some reason, it reminded her of the postcard they’d received last night. Even though Spencer pretended it didn’t matter, flickers of anxiety threatened to ignite inside of her. Could someone know about Jamaica? A lot of people had been staying at the resort—Noel, Mike, that group of kids from California they’d gone surfing with, some party-crazy boys from England, and of course the staff—but Spencer and the others looked up and down the dark beach after everything had happened and hadn’t seen a soul. It was like they were the last people on earth. Unless . . .
She shut her eyes and swept the thoughts away. There was no unless. And there was no new A. The postcard was just a big coincidence, a lucky guess.
A bunch of girls on the Rosewood Day newspaper staff flitted into the living room with plates of meatballs, potatoes, and sardines. Spencer turned back to Zach. “I’ll play your little secrets game. But you realize I know these people, right? I have a home-court advantage.”