Diamonds in the Rough Read online

  At least, she hoped so.

  “Are the three of you looking forward to your first day of school?” Adrian removed the cover from his plate, and they all followed his lead.

  “Yeah.” Savannah poured syrup on her pancakes and took a bite. They were fluffy and delicious. “I’m excited to meet everyone.” Her knees also bounced with worry about Damien and Nick, but she couldn’t discuss her guy problems with Adrian.

  “I’m nervous about the classes.” Courtney cut her omelet, releasing the steam from inside. “I hope I’m not behind.”

  “Your tutor said you’re ready to begin Goodman,” Adrian said. “She was impressed by your work ethic.”

  “Thanks.” Courtney took a bite of her food, although she chewed so slowly it was like she was force-feeding herself.

  “What about you, Peyton?” Rebecca asked.

  “The only thing I’m excited about is how this will be the last first day of school I’ll ever have,” she said. “I can’t wait to be done with classes forever.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rebecca said. “You might change your mind about college.”

  “No, I won’t.” Peyton huffed and poured herself a cup of coffee. “I can barely sit through high school classes, and I’ve heard they’re short compared to college classes. No, thanks.”

  “You can make a decision about college when you find out which schools accept you,” Adrian said calmly. “No one is forcing you to go, but it can’t hurt to explore your options.”

  “Whatever.” Peyton shrugged and focused on her food.

  Once they finished eating, Adrian placed his napkin on the table and glanced at his watch. “Your ride will be waiting at the valet stand in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Peyton, you need to change your jeans before you leave.”

  Peyton crossed her arms and glared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “You have to change your jeans before you leave,” he repeated. “I assume you put those on to disregard the school dress code. Your point has been made—you dislike following arbitrary rules—and while I understand your stance, it would be selfish to make your sisters late because you insist on fighting a battle you can’t win.”

  Savannah couldn’t stop a laugh from escaping, and Peyton’s glare turned to her. She refocused on her food and took another bite of pancake, even though it was now cold and soggy, and she was full.

  “It’s almost time to leave,” Adrian said, his eyes on Peyton. “If you would like, Rebecca or I can assist you in choosing a more suitable pair of pants.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Peyton shoved her chair back, the metal shrieking against the marble floor. “I can dress myself.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Adrian said as she slammed her door. No one at the table said a word, and the hint of a smile crossed his face. “I used to be the same way when I was a teenager.”

  Savannah couldn’t imagine Adrian as a teenager, especially a teenager who was similar to Peyton. But his approach worked, because Peyton returned a few minutes later wearing black jeans with no rips or holes in them, her lips pressed into a pissed-off line. The jeans were so low-rise that a slit of skin showed between them and her shirt, but her belly button wasn’t showing, so she wasn’t breaking the dress code.

  “Much better.” Adrian nodded at Peyton’s choice. “I have somewhere I need to be now, but I’ve made a reservation for dinner tonight so that you can tell Rebecca and me about your first day at Goodman.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Rebecca stayed behind, making sure their bags were packed with everything they needed. Instead of Savannah’s ancient backpack, she had a new purple Longchamp tote—the same bag that many of the volleyball girls at Fairfield High had had and that she could never afford. Inside of it was her MacBook Pro. Apparently at Goodman, bringing a laptop to school wasn’t begging someone to steal or vandalize it.

  As Adrian promised, a limo was waiting for them at the valet stand. Savannah had been on many limo rides since arriving in Las Vegas, but it still didn’t feel normal. Courtney’s bodyguard, Teddy, drove them, and Savannah’s and Peyton’s bodyguards followed in a car behind. One of them would be on the Goodman campus at all times when they were at school. So awkward.

  “It’s dumb that Adrian won’t let me drive us,” Peyton said once they were seated. “What good are the Range Rovers he bought us if we can’t take them to school?”

  “He probably doesn’t want us getting lost,” Courtney said.

  “And my car’s been good for learning how to drive,” Savannah pointed out. She couldn’t wait to get her license when she turned sixteen in December. Along with the summer tutoring sessions, she’d taken an online drivers’ ed class. Rebecca had been driving with her for the required fifty adult-­supervised hours.

  After fifteen minutes, the limo turned at a brick sign with The Goodman School engraved on it in block letters, and Savannah moved closer to the window. A long, scenic road led to sprawling stucco buildings that resembled a college campus. Where were the security guards, the threatening chain gates and the windowless, prisonlike buildings? The buildings here looked bright and airy, with large paned windows and groomed gardens surrounding them.

  “Here’s the Upper School.” Teddy stopped the limo at a pink domed building with a stone fountain in front. “I’ll be waiting here to pick you up at the end of the day.”

  Savannah stepped out of the limo and looked up at the building. Did people at Goodman actually say they were in “upper” school instead of high school? It sounded so strange.

  “Where to now?” she asked Courtney.

  Her sister glanced at her phone, where she kept notes about these details. “We have to go to the Upper School front desk, where we should find a lady named Betty. She’ll give us our locker assignments.”

  They walked to the entrance, the students nearby watching them and whispering. None of the girls were dressed up—they mostly wore designer jeans, fashionable tops and flats. Savannah’s hands shook, and she gripped the strap of her bag, focusing on not tripping in her three-inch Jimmy Choos. She should have worn her Tory Burch flats. Why had she worn such an over-the-top outfit, despite Courtney, Peyton and Evie’s advice?

  Oh, right—because she’d thought everyone at Goodman would dress up. And because she’d stupidly thought it would catch Damien and Nick’s attention. Seeing as no one else was as dressed up, she might catch their attention…but not in a positive way.

  Her throat constricted, and she wanted to run back to the limo and beg Teddy to drive her back to the Diamond so that she could change. But that wasn’t an option. She would have to suck it up.

  Betty at the front desk was an older woman with short gray hair—she looked like a grandma who baked cookies for her grandkids after school. She welcomed Savannah and her sisters and handed them their locker combinations.

  “Here’s the sheet you sign whenever you need to leave school, or if you arrive late,” she said, pointing to a clipboard on the desk. “Seniors have senior privileges and can leave whenever they want. Everyone else has to say why they’re leaving early.”

  “With a note from a parent?” Courtney asked.

  “You don’t need a note,” Betty said. “At Goodman, we trust students to leave only when necessary. You’re responsible for any missed material, so it’s understood that attendance is crucial to earn high marks.”

  Peyton laughed. “And no one takes advantage of how easy it is to skip?”

  Betty smiled. “The students here want to attend their classes so they can excel in their studies.”

  “It sounds nice.” Courtney looked around in wonder at the well-lit, airy, carpeted building.

  “What are senior privileges?” Savannah asked.

  “As a sophomore, you won’t have to worry about that for a while,” Betty said, turning to Peyton. “Since you�
�re a senior, you’re allowed to leave campus for free periods and lunch, as long as you’re back in time for class. There are a lot of restaurants nearby that students enjoy.”

  Savannah’s mouth dropped open, and she closed it so she wouldn’t look like a gaping fish. The seniors here went to restaurants for lunch? At Fairfield High, a good fraction of students were on subsidized lunches—including her and her sisters. They wouldn’t have dreamed of going out to eat, or had the time, as Fairfield’s lunch blocks were short and rushed. But with seventy-five minutes set aside for lunch, and credit cards connected to their parents’ bank accounts, students at Goodman had no reason not to go to restaurants.

  “What happens if we don’t get back in time?” Peyton asked.

  “If it happens more than three times, your senior privileges will be revoked,” Betty said. “But that’s rare, since students want to keep their privileges.”

  “You really trust the students here.”

  “It’s the Goodman philosophy that everyone is capable of rational self-discipline,” Betty explained. Then she told them to come to her if they had more questions, and they cleared out so that she could talk to the students in the line behind them.

  “I guess this is where we part ways,” Courtney said.

  Savannah’s stomach flipped. Goodman might as well have been in a different universe than Fairfield, she was dressed all wrong, and she had a terrible feeling that despite her summer tutoring, she would still be behind in her classes. Girls in a nearby clump were looking her over, smirking and whispering what Savannah imagined were mean comments. She pulled her miniskirt down to cover as much of her legs as possible (which wasn’t very much), not wanting to leave her sisters’ sides.

  But they had no classes together, so she didn’t have a choice.

  * * *

  Savannah arrived at first period early and situated herself in a seat in the middle of the U-shaped table configuration, then browsed YouTube on her phone to look busy. After putting her first video online—the one Nick had bought for her of her singing karaoke at Imperial Palace—she’d dreamed it would go viral and she would become an internet sensation. Instead, it had reached around three hundred views and plateaued off. She’d posted a few more videos since then, but despite her best efforts, she still hadn’t cracked a thousand views on any of them.

  Maybe she just wasn’t that great and should stop trying.

  “This is European History, right?” a short girl with long, dark hair asked from the door. She wore designer jeans and a fitted green T-shirt that looked like a Michael Stars, and the raised triangle label on her black tote was distinctly Prada.

  The bag made Savannah regret her Longchamp. The girls at Goodman seemed to favor higher-end bags by Prada, Chanel and Givenchy, to name a few. After school, she had to go shopping for a new bag. She could use the Longchamp when she went to the pool.

  “Yeah.” Savannah placed her phone on the table and smiled, hoping to look friendly and approachable. “At least, I hope so. It’s my first day. I’m Savannah.” She moved her bag off the seat next to her so that the girl could sit there.

  “I’m Alyssa.” Instead of taking the seat next to Savannah, she left one between them.

  Savannah’s cheeks burned. Why did this girl not want to sit next to her? Was she really that overdressed? Or maybe Alyssa had heard rumors about her and already didn’t want to be friends? Savannah knew people talked about her online, but she’d hoped her new status as Adrian Diamond’s daughter would make people want to be friends with her—not avoid sitting next to her.

  “Sorry.” Alyssa shrugged. “My two best friends are in this class, and I promised to save them seats.”

  “No problem.” Savannah forced a smile. If she’d had a class with Evie and Evie had asked her to save her a seat, she would have done the same thing. She shouldn’t take it personally. But that didn’t stop her throat from feeling tight, as if Alyssa had purposefully insulted her.

  “Did you go out last night and not have time to take off your makeup this morning?”

  Savannah jerked at the question. “Um, no,” she said. “Why?”

  “You just seem really…done up for eight-thirty in the morning.” Alyssa motioned to her own natural makeup, which was opposite from Savannah’s purple metallic shadow and gold glitter liner. “I don’t mean it in a mean way,” she said. “I just guess Goodman is different from whatever school you transferred from.”

  “It’s definitely different.” Savannah sighed, not wanting to describe Fairfield High. It would probably make this girl judge her even more.

  Then Alyssa pulled out her iPad, and Savannah saw something on the back of it that made her brighten—a sticker of a volleyball.

  “You play volleyball?” she asked.

  “Yep,” Alyssa said. “I’m on the team here. Do you play, too?”

  “I was on JV at my old school.”

  “Ohhh, okay.” She nodded condescendingly. “Since Goodman’s so small, we only have varsity.”

  “I was one of the best players on JV, and they subbed me in for varsity sometimes,” Savannah said. “Maybe I’ll have a chance.”

  All right, they’d subbed her in only once, when a stomach bug had made its way around school and a lot of the varsity players had gotten sick. And they’d lost that game. But Savannah was one of the better players on JV, and she would have been a serious contender for varsity this year at Fairfield.

  “Maybe,” Alyssa said, although she didn’t sound like she believed it. Then other students filed in—including the girls Alyssa was saving seats for, Brooke and Jackie. The three of them gossiped like they hadn’t seen each other in years, and Savannah brought out her laptop, pretending she was busy on it.

  Being new and knowing no one in her grade really, really sucked.

  She didn’t fair better in her next class, so when it was time for lunch, she was on her own. Everyone else joined up with their friends, but Savannah hurried into the nearest restroom, waited for the door to shut, and burst into tears. Why did no one want to be friends with her? She ripped the stupid crystal headband that she’d thought was so cute this morning off her head and tossed it into her bag, along with the sparkly, dangly earrings. If only she could be like Superman and change her outfit, too.

  She sniffed, grabbed a paper towel and fixed her makeup, trying to remove the glitter without making it look like more of a wreck. Then the toilet in the end stall flushed, and she froze, her hands propped on the sink. How had she missed that someone else was in the bathroom?

  She wanted to dive into the nearest stall, but before she could, the girl opened the door and met her eyes. Luckily, this girl didn’t look like the gossiping type. Her coarse brown hair was pulled back into a boyish bun. She wore thick-rimmed glasses and baggy cargo pants, and her fraying backpack had Japanese cartoon characters stitched into it.

  She must be the school weirdo.

  “Are you okay?” the girl asked as she washed her hands.

  Savannah stared at her blankly. Of course she wasn’t okay. But she wasn’t about to confess her problems to this random girl, either.

  “I’ll take that as a no.” She took a deep breath. “You’re new here, right?”

  “Yeah,” she somehow managed. “Savannah.”

  “I’m Wendy,” she said. “I was about to go eat with my friends, if you want to come with?”

  Savannah’s first day of school, and the only person who had reached out to her was the school weirdo. But she didn’t want to be alone at lunch on her first day. And it was kind of Wendy to offer, especially since she knew nothing about her other than that she’d been crying by herself in the bathroom.

  “Um, sure.” She glanced at the mirror to make sure the mascara was off her cheeks, picked her Longchamp up off the floor and attempted a smile. “Thanks.”

&nbs
p; * * *

  Goodman’s cafeteria wasn’t inside the upper school—they had a separate building just for eating. And they didn’t call it the cafeteria, either. They called it the “dining hall,” and everyone bought lunch. Not one person carried a bag from home.

  “Upstairs are the normal daily foods—pizza, pasta, sushi, Chinese, salad bar and the hot meal special of the day,” Wendy told Savannah as they entered the dining hall, which looked more like a restaurant than a high school cafeteria. The tables had chairs instead of attached benches, and the walls were covered with giant windows that had views of the swimming pool and the lake. “Downstairs is the deli bar where you can get made-to-order subs and sandwiches, and the grill where you can get hamburgers, hot dogs and fries and stuff.”

  “What do you normally get?” Savannah asked, still trying to process that they had sushi and made-to-order subs. That was nothing like the mystery mush at Fairfield High. Why did the seniors need to go to restaurants when they had all these choices at their school? Not that it mattered—she was glad the seniors went to restaurants, since it meant she wouldn’t run into Damien.

  “I get sushi almost every day,” Wendy said. “Make sure to stay away from the pizza—it makes the frozen stuff from the grocery store taste like a delicacy. And Thursday is waffle fries day. They’re the best, but you have to get to the grill early or the line will take forever. Anyway, I’m going to grab some sushi—want to come with?”

  “I’m actually not a sushi fan,” Savannah said. Well, she’d never tried it—the thought of eating raw fish weirded her out. “I’ll just get a sandwich.”

  “The deli’s downstairs.” Wendy pointed at the steps. “I eat down there with my friends from anime club, and sushi is faster than sandwiches, so I’ll save you a seat.”

  “Thanks,” Savannah said. Her sisters were nowhere to be found, and sitting with Wendy would be better than sitting by herself. At least she seemed nonjudgmental and kind. But anime club? That was just…not Savannah’s thing.

  The line for sandwiches was long, and the last person in it was Alyssa from first period, who didn’t acknowledge Savannah as she stepped into line behind her. Hopefully the line would move quickly, and Savannah could get away from her as fast as possible.