Read Online The It Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar - Free Book Online

thought wryly, watching him nervously pull his shirt collar away from his neck. “I’m fine,” she stated primly instead, perching on the edge of her chair.
    Dalton switched on the flat-screen Mac G5 sitting on top of his desk. “Okay. Brett. So they’re making me put all the old DC cases into a database. They gave me the grunt-work jobs because I’m new.” He flashed his perfect teeth nervously, and she wondered silently if he just had amazing dental genes or if these were veneers. It was a tough call, one she wouldn’t mind investigating more closely. With, say, her lips.
    He shuffled the papers. “So besides meeting all the DC appointees, I’m looking for someone to help me weed through all this DC stuff to get to the pertinent information and then help enter it into the computer. But it has to be someone who was on DC last year, because the material is confidential to non-DC students. Were you on DC last year?”
    Brett licked her lips. “Well, no,” she answered, wanting to lie.
    “Oh.” Mr. Dalton sounded disappointed. He let out a sigh. “That’s too bad.”
    “We wouldn’t have to tell anybody, though, would we?” Brett suggested slowly. “I mean, I want to help. It would … it would look good on my transcript.”
    Sure. That’s why I want to do it
, she thought.
My transcript.
    “I don’t know… . ” Mr. Dalton shook his head. He stared at her quizzically. Brett nervously brushed a hair off her cheek. “How old are you?” he finally said.
    “Seventeen.”
    “Huh.” He tilted his head and smiled with one side of his mouth.
    “What?”
    “Well. You don’t look seventeen. That’s all.”
    Guys said this to Brett all the time. They were always astounded she was still in high school. “How old are
you
?” He straightened up a little. “Twenty-three. I just finished Brown.” Brett unconsciously chewed the Hard Candy Vinyl polish off her pinkie.
    “I’m going to go to grad school, but since I went to Waverly, I thought I’d pay my dues and teach here for a couple years,” Mr. Dalton continued.
    “I want to go to Brown,” Brett blurted out.
    “I could imagine you there.” He nodded.
    She stared at her gorgeous twenty-three-year-old teacher and didn’t pull her eyes away for the second he stared back.
    “All right.” He finally broke the silence. “I think maybe we could figure out a way for you to help me—I mean, if you really want to.”
    I want to
, Brett wanted to say.
I really, really want to.
But she remained silent.
    “Maybe we could meet up again tomorrow morning, before class? Oh, and the name Mr. Dalton sounds really weird. Maybe I’ll be used to it when I’m fifty and running the family business. But for now …” He lowered his eyes and then looked back up at her from beneath his thick blond lashes. “Call me Eric?”
    “Sure,” Brett agreed, smiling. She could think of a lot of things she’d like to call him.
    Just then the papers that he’d removed from her chair started to slide off his desk toward Brett’s lap. He lunged forward, grabbing for them. At the same time, Brett leaned down to catch some papers that had landed on the floor. Their heads collided.
    Ouch. “Fuck!” Brett cried, seeing a brief flash of white. Then she clamped her mouth shut. Even though most Waverly kids had dirty mouths, you weren’t supposed to swear in front of the teachers. Waverly Owls must always have good manners, and bad language was a sign of indecency and bad breeding.
    He rubbed his forehead, wincing. “You okay?”
    Brett swallowed hard. What if Mr. Dalton thought she was uncouth and trashy? But then she noticed his concerned expression and decided he didn’t care.
    “I think I’ll live,” she replied finally.
    “Well, that’s good,” he laughed. “Because I’d definitely like to keep you alive.”

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