normal year?”
She swallowed. Before this year? Zero. “We have … two.”
He turned back toward her. “With an endowment like that? Two kids? Two?”
“I know.” She put up her hands. “It’s sickening. And I had to fight for three years to get the board to even do a trial run of two students this year. And now look. Both of them got themselves in enough trouble that we’ve been sent to camp for the summer. Priscilla would have expelled them, if it had been up to her. Luckily, she has to answer to the board, and this time, I think that board actually saved the girls.”
Gabi pictured the board members sitting in their seats at the huge oak table in the main conference room. To a person, she could predict exactly what their responses to the girls’ little escapade probably were. She imagined the expulsion votes divided evenly down the center of the table, and then she pictured Laura Beringer sitting in her spot at the end, nodding carefully. At eighty-something years old, she’d been the board chair for ten years now, and she showed no signs of leaving, much to one side of the table’s dismay.
Gabi adored her, and she had a strong feeling that the only reason Sam and Eve weren’t packing for Boston right now was because of Laura’s deciding vote.
“Did they deserve it?” His voice was quiet, but the question was honest.
“It depends how you interpret the school policies, but I guarantee you, if it had been just Sam and Eve who’d snuck out, Priscilla would have pushed even harder to expel them. The fact that they did their crime with Madison and Waverly probably saved them, as ironic as that seems.”
Gabi saw a look pass over Luke’s face—a mixture of emotions she couldn’t quite identify—before he set his jaw and nodded slowly.
“What if it’d been the other two who’d snuck out?”
“Then I can almost guarantee you and I would have never met. The incident would have been quietly swept under the rug.”
“Shocking.”
“They’re good kids, Luke. All four of them are. But they’re so locked into their patterns that you’d never know it. You’d certainly never know it, based on what you’ve seen the past few days.” She fisted her hands in her lap. “I’ve spent the entire year trying to figure out how to get through to them, but wow. Turtles have nothing on the shells these girls wear.”
“And I imagine Sam’s and Eve’s are the toughest of all?”
“Of course they are. They’ve both been shoved around their entire lives, house to house, family to family, hell to bigger hell. I interviewed fifty girls for these two scholarships, Luke. I would have taken them all, just to get them out of the lives they were trying to survive. It broke my heart.”
He was silent for a long, long moment, just staring out at the lake. Then he turned to her. “I have to ask, then. Why would you stick the four of them together in a suite? Madison’s as bitchy as they come, and Waverly will do whatever Madison tells her. Why’d you sic them on two innocents?”
Gabi looked down at her lap. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times, believe me.” Then she sighed. “Honestly? Beyond my bigger, lofty, impossible goals, I thought, given time, they’d figure out that they’re not nearly as different as they think. All four of them have essentially been abandoned by their parents—just in different ways. I thought that somehow, some way, maybe that would bind them.”
“But no?”
“God, no. I mean, there have been moments … weeks, even, when things were pretty okay. But then Madison will step up her game, or Sam will preempt her by stepping up hers, and Eve and Waverly end up caught in the middle choosing sides, and then…”
“Chaos.”
“Yup.”
He was thoughtful for another long moment, and then he shifted in his chair, turning to look straight at her.
“Hey, Gabi?” His voice was soft, almost tender, as he touched her shoulder. It was just the briefest touch, but it sent swirling, zappy zings straight to her toes. “Would you kill me if I said it sounds like maybe … maybe you’ve actually all ended up exactly where you need to be?”
Chapter 8
Hours later, Gabi lay awake on her cot, desperate for sleep, but unable to close her eyes as she replayed her conversation with Luke. It was almost dawn, and the girls were asleep, the usual scratches and snuffles filtering in from outside the tent as