“No,” I cut him off, my voice rising a little too high. I clear my throat, get my voice back under control. All the while, my mother’s warning echoes in my head. Pretend you’re one of them. I can see why she told me to, if this is how people who aren’t rich get treated here. Asked to act like bellboys in a hotel lobby escorting the wealthy students home. “Thank you, Jason. I was just curious. But I don’t need the… help.”
“Of course,” he replies, though I notice him do a quick little side-eye to check out my bags before he turns to descend the stairs again.
Judgy, much? I want to bark after him. I hold my tongue, though. I know better than to piss off anyone on my first day. If the people here are as stuck up as Mom warned me, then I have a feeling I might need all the allies I can get.
With a sigh, I finish hauling my second bag into the room and toss it onto my bed. Then I pull open the closet and stick my head inside. It’s almost half the size of the room itself. The whole thing is way bigger than my bedroom at home, which I shared with Jake until he turned 9 and decided he wanted to build himself a makeshift bed in the upstairs hallway instead.
He still sleeps there, behind a sheet and a curtain of fairy lights. Though, now that I’ve moved out, I wonder if he’ll claim my bedroom for himself.
The thought makes me smile, in spite of myself. I miss him. And Mom. And my friends back at Noland. What I wouldn’t give for just one—any kind of friend right now.
At that moment, someone raps lightly on my door. I jump, startled by the sound, and whirl around to find an impeccably dressed girl leaning against my door, surveying the room. She’s wearing a pressed shirt, and jeans that look like they must have been custom tailored to fit her curves—which, I have to admit, are just as perfect as her outfit.
Next to her, I feel like a scrawny, wrinkled frump.
“I wondered who they were going to put in here.” She catches me staring and smiles, without offering a hand. Do rich people not shake hands, I wonder? “Bette Kross,” she says. “And you are?”
Something about her last name sounds familiar, although I can’t figure out why.
“Missy.” I smile at her, no teeth. Let her wonder about my own last name. If I don’t share it, maybe she’ll just assume I’m from some wealthy, mysterious family. “Pleasure to meet you,” I add, after a moment, when it becomes clear she isn’t about to speak again.
Am I doing this right? I’ve never actually tried to act wealthy, whatever that even means. I’ve served plenty of bougie customers at the bar—a lot of Boston’s elite enjoys slumming it after hours, once they restaurants they frequent close. But that’s one thing. Pretending to be one of them is quite another.
“Going for the Marie Kondo approach, I see?” Bette nods at my bags.
I draw myself straighter and look her dead in the eye. “I figure why lug everything I own all over the place?” I shrug one shoulder, let it fall. “If I forgot anything important, I can just buy something new.”
Bette grins. Maybe I’m better at this than I thought. “You know, you’re so right. I’ll have to remember that next time I’m packing—I’m the worst, Keanen always says.”
When I don’t react, she tilts her head to the side, as if I’ve made another social misstep, although I can’t imagine what.
“But you do know Keanen, of course. Keanen Kross, my older brother… The quarterback of the Jaguars.”
Oh, of course. As if I should have memorized the entire roster of every sports team on campus before I arrived for my first day of classes. Still, I did think her name was familiar. And at least she’s being nice to me about all this. I don’t want to put her off. So I force a broad smile. “Right. Wow, he’s your brother? That’s so cool.”
She tosses her long hair over one shoulder and shrugs. “I suppose.” She side-eyes me again, a little more closely this time, and I resist the urge to cringe. I picked out my outfit so carefully. A nice top—though not too nice, don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard. Just a preppy silk-blend blouse, mixed with artfully torn jeans—I did the tearing myself, since for some reason it costs extra to buy them that way. As long as she doesn’t notice my ratty Converse, I should be able to pass for at least middle class.
Still, my stomach tightens at the way Bette stares. What’s she thinking? Can she tell? Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should have just admitted to my blue-collar background and come to school owning it. Maybe…
My thought breaks off as Bette shrugs again. “Well, I’ll see you around, then, Missy. By the way, I like your Converse.” Damn it. “So retro.” She vanishes before I can manage a thank you in response.
The moment my door swings shut behind her, I let out a sigh of relief. That went… okay. Right? At least she didn’t seem to completely despise me straight off the bat. Maybe I can pull this off after all. Blending in, pretending I belong here.
Maybe Mom was right.
I glance into my floor-length mirror and flash myself a smile. “You’ve got this, Missy,” I tell myself. Then I cross over to my desk and pull out my computer. Because if I want to keep up these appearances, then I have one more order of business to sort out before classes begin.
The bar is a dingy hole in the wall. It takes me three times passing the spot where it’s marked on Google maps before I find the actual door, hidden behind a row of communal dumpsters that serve what looks like half the block.
But that makes it absolutely perfect for what I need. The kind of crappy dive bar that nobody from Tanglewood University would even think about frequenting.
It’s already 7pm—my bar back in Boston would’ve been open for hours already, to catch the happy hour crowd. But this town’s a lot smaller, and further inland than the big city. The crowd here doesn’t seem like the happy hour type. More like the post-shitty shift at the kind of job where you get whole-body tired instead, and where the work doesn’t finish until well into the evening.
There are no posted hours on the door, no sign to indicate whether it’s open or not. The only thing in the window is a BARTENDER WANTED sign, yellowing with age. But when I try the knob, it turns all right. Inside the greasy windows, the bar looks dim enough that I have to squint, even though it’s early fall and still daylight outside.
“Hello?” I call into the dim.
“We’re closed!” comes a gruff voice from the rear. A guy, from the sound of it, and older, too. “Come back at 8.”
“Actually, I wanted to ask about the sign. You’re looking for help?”
There’s a long pause, followed by a series of crashes and bangs. Finally, a gray head of hair emerges from the rear. The owner looks exactly as I would expect: like the kind of guy who grew up on the docks down in Boston, or in a more rural part of the state. He’s got that weathered, sea-battered, sun-beaten look. But a friendly smile, all the same.
He squints, giving me the once-over, just like Bette did. But unlike her, I don’t feel nervous when this guy does it. Because I know we’re on the level.
“I’ve got references.” I slap my résumé—freshly printed at the library on campus, but only after I made sure I was seated at a far corner where no other students could look over my shoulder and see it. “You can call, if you want, but I’ve worked in pubs before. I know all the basic drinks off top of my head; and I’m not shy about hard work. I’m willing to barback or clean if you need that instead of a front of house person.”