“By then, you won’t want to go back to New York. This life is addictive,” she predicted with a knowing look.
“What do you do in the summer?” He was curious about her.
“I work at a boot camp for women in Baja California.” She grinned at him. “They’re tough, already in great shape, and expect to be pushed hard. It challenges me too. It’s fun working with adults for a change. A lot of them are actresses from L.A.”
“You are a glutton for punishment.” They had finished their dinner then, and she wanted to get back to the freshman dorm and see how her charges were settling in. So far neither of them had noticed any particular mixing between boys and girls. Each sex seemed to be staying among their own. The returning boys stuck with their friends.
Gillian had noticed Vivienne Walker come in, Chase and Jamie had invited her to join them, but she had declined politely and gone to sit with a group of senior girls. They were all at one table in the back, getting to know each other. The dynamics were fascinating, and, contrary to what Larry Gray had predicted, it hadn’t yet become Sodom and Gomorrah. There was no sign of it. The boys and girls were paying almost no attention to each other, except for an occasional glance.
Simon went to his male freshman dorm then, and Gillian went back to her brand-new dorm, where several of the girls complained that there was no hot water. Gillian reported it to maintenance. Lights out was at ten P.M., they had to be in the dorm by nine. They were going to be introduced to the wonders of their state-of-the-art library the next day. By ten-thirty, Gillian was fast asleep, and the next thing she knew, her alarm went off at four A.M. She took an icy cold shower, since there was still no hot water, and she left a message for maintenance again. Then she headed across campus to get to her office at five and start her day. She made herself a cup of coffee, heated up oatmeal in her office microwave, went over the list of students who had signed up for tryouts. When they started to wander in at six o’clock she was ready for them. She had freshmen swim tryouts first. She could hardly wait to start working with them. And the one thing she was sure of was that she had the best job in the world.
Chapter 2
Vivienne Walker stayed up until midnight on her first night, texting and FaceTiming her friends in L.A. She had broken up with her boyfriend that summer when she left L.A., because neither of them felt they could handle the responsibility and burden of a long distance relationship, with college looming in a year. It seemed too complicated to both of them, and they hadn’t contacted each other since she’d left. But she missed her girlfriends. Her two best friends, Lana and Zoe, had gone to school with her since second grade and it seemed strange to be without them now. They called themselves the Three Musketeers. Lana’s parents were TV producers and had gotten divorced when she was ten. She had been supportive of Vivienne when her parents split up and assured her she’d be fine. Zoe’s parents were still together. Her father was an attorney like Vivienne’s mother, and her mother was an actors’ agent. The three girls were inseparable in L.A., and Vivienne felt lost without them. She had met the other seven senior girls at Saint Ambrose, and they were okay, but seemed stuck up to her. She liked her L.A. friends better. The girls at her new school seemed to be there due to force of circumstances. Three of them had divorced parents who couldn’t agree on the custody arrangements, so boarding school was the simplest solution for their parents. Another one had begged to go to boarding school because she hated her new stepfather and wanted to get away. She said her mother acted like an idiot around him and agreed with everything he said. They were having a baby at Christmas, and she didn’t want to be around for that, so she had opted for boarding school.
Two of the senior girls were new to the area, one with parents in Boston, the other in New York, and since they had to go to a new school anyway, they had agreed to try Saint Ambrose. One of them said she fought with her parents constantly about her boyfriend, and he got along just as badly with his parents, and they had sent him to boarding school nearby, so she agreed to go away too. She and her boyfriend were going to apply to the same colleges and hoped they would get in, so they could be back together again. They were nice to Vivienne but she didn’t feel close to any of them yet.
And none of the boys interested her particularly. Her mother had wanted her to come to New York with her and go to boarding school. Vivienne had wanted to stay with her father in L.A., but he had reluctantly agreed to let Vivienne go east for a year, for the experience. Her mother had convinced him that if she did well, the strong reputation of the school might help her get into a better college, so he had given in. But all Vivienne wanted was to go back to L.A. She was going to apply to UCLA, USC, UC Santa Barbara, and nothing further away from L.A. than San Francisco. She had no intention of staying in the East after this year. At least when she visited her father, she would see Zoe and Lana. She could hardly wait for Christmas vacation to see them and her dad.
Her parents hadn’t told her the reason for the divorce, but the separation had been sudden and it was obvious that her mother hated her father now. Vivienne knew he must have done something big for her to react so vehemently. She had filed for divorce, quit her job at the law firm, found a position in New York, and they had moved away. Vivienne was disappointed that her father hadn’t fought to make them stay. He called her every night, and she had told him she liked the school. She didn’t hate it, but a lot of the kids seemed cold and snobbish to her. Most of them were from the East Coast, and all the senior boys she had talked to so far had been there for three years. The girls were new like her, so at least she didn’t have to fight her way in to a clique of girls who had been through high school together. Her mother had pointed that out as an advantage.
She had seen two boys she thought were cute the first day, Jamie Watts and Chase Morgan. They had invited her to sit with them at lunch, but she didn’t want them to think she was panting after them. One of the girls had told her that Chase’s parents were movie stars, but Vivienne didn’t really care. There were lots of famous actors’ kids at her old school. And she had met several stars at Zoe’s house, since her mother was an agent. So she wasn’t as impressed as the other girls about Chase’s parents.
She thought Jamie was nice. He was in her first class that day, which was social studies. He sat down next to her, and walked her to her math class afterward. She liked him, and thought he was handsome, but she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. She had just gotten out of a relationship and wanted some time to breathe before she got involved again. She missed having a car, but there was nowhere to go here anyway. The school was in the middle of nowhere from what she could see.
“Where are you from in California?” Jamie asked her. She liked his blue eyes and loose curly blond hair. He was warmer and friendlier than Chase, who seemed more aloof.
“L.A.,” she said. He was easy to talk to, and she noticed others watching them as they walked along.