Free Lucky by Cecily von Ziegesar Page A

bedroom at home in Atlanta, in the enormous stone governor’s mansion on Paces Ferry Road, with its pale pink rug and creepy canopy bed, gave Callie the shivers. So did the thought of having breakfast every morning with her overly coiffed mother. “How can you be sure?” Callie asked worriedly. She pressed her palms against the sides of her cup, enjoying the feel of heat seeping through her skin. “Marymount must have something on all of us if he’s calling us suspects.”
    “Could be a bluff,” Tinsley suggested confidently, smoothing a stray wisp of hair behind her left ear. “I’ve seen it a million times before.”
    Callie tried not to roll her hazel eyes. Just because Tinsley’s passport had been stamped by just about every country in the world, she acted like she was so much more worldly and wise than everyone else. Callie had a feeling that was why Tinsley hadn’t pressed her for details about what was going on with Easy—she didn’t really want to know. It had recently come to light in a game of I Never that Tinsley was a virgin, and Callie was sure she couldn’t stand the idea that Callie had done something that she hadn’t. “Oh, yeah? Like, where?”
    Tinsley narrowed her violet-colored eyes at her friend, her lips twitching at Callie’s challenge. “The movies.”
    Callie snickered, licked her pointer finger, and stuck it in the lumpy raw sugar granules she’d spilled on her saucer.
    Tinsley watched her. “That’s really gross, you know.” She removed the chopsticks from her dark hair and shook it out so it fell in waves over her shoulders. She raised her perfectly plucked left eyebrow, waiting for Callie to stop.
    “But this isn’t a movie.” Callie felt the hint of a whine starting to creep into her voice. If Tinsley got kicked out of school, what would happen? Nothing. She’d go to South fucking Africa with her dad and make an award-winning documentary and get to meet George Clooney and Brad Pitt and all the other do-gooder A-listers at Cannes and Sundance. Oh, wait. She’d pretty much already done that. Only Tinsley could get kicked out of Waverly for doing E and come back smelling like roses. “You know my mother will sentence me to death if I get kicked out, right?” She wasn’t even sure if Georgia had the death penalty, but even if it didn’t, her mom would sign it into law.
    Tinsley stared over Callie’s shoulder at the picture of downtown Rhinecliff from the 1920s—it looked about as exciting as it did today. “If it
was
a movie, who would play you?”
    “Grace Kelly,” Callie answered immediately, holding her head up in what she probably thought was a princess-of- Monaco-worthy pose. She straightened the neck on her Joie silk ruffle top and looked out the window, staring out at the clear blue sky. Her eyes were distant. “The thing is, the list seems so
random
. Why is someone like Brandon Buchanan on it and not a freaking pothead like Alan St. Girard?”
    Tinsley gulped her cooling cappuccino. She knew why Callie was on the list, and Easy—because she herself had blurted to the dean that they were in the barn. Not that she’d told Callie as much. She knew why Jenny and Julian were on the list, too. And of course, she knew why
she
was on the list. She was still mad at herself for fumbling her meeting with the dean.
    “I wish I had come with you to Dean Marymount’s office,” Callie sighed, as if reading her mind. She twirled one of her strawberry blond locks nervously with the same finger she’d been sticking in the sugar. She was probably getting grains of sugar in her hair. Maybe Easy would like that.
    “I wish you had, too.” Tinsley narrowed her eyes. She hoped she had achieved the right degree of chastisement in her tone. It served Callie right for ditching her. The disastrous scene in the dean’s office replayed in her head. Maybe if she hadn’t been so focused on Marymount’s gross unibrow, or her bizarre image of him as a hawk eating his students,