PRIDE & PRINCESSES: A Pride and Prejudice (type) of teen story (Sunrise High #1)

Perfume (chapter seventeen)

Chapter 17

Perfume    

    We’d all arranged to gather the day after we received Teegan’s note. The Princesses waited for us in the park next to the mall near the picnic alcove opposite Sunrise High. It was as good a place as any, with a picturesque view of the town, not far from the lakes. In the distance you could see the gated community where Jet and Mark and the Princesses lived. The house of Mark’s relatives (he resided with his aunt and uncle) was famous for its secluded opulence; it’s tall, winding security fence. Instead of a duck pond, it was rumored his uncle, who was a wealthy businessman, had even installed a moat.

     “A moat, like in one of those old fairy tales?” Brooke asked Jet.

    “I guess,” Jet told Brooke who told Teegan who told me.

    “I heard there are two swans that swim around in it all day and sometimes they disappear for minutes at a time under the drawbridge!”

     “The drawbridge?”

     “It hides the dark and eerie swampland that inhabits the backyard! It’s even rumoured that the actual house is haunted,” Brooke said.

    “I bet it’s for security purposes,” Freya added.

    “The rumor?”

    “No, the moat.”

    The house (“more like a mansion”, Mouche commented, the first time she  saw it) was quite the most opulent in Sunrise. It was built high in the Sunrise Hills, about a half-hour drive from the cul-de-sac Mouche and I inhabited. Of course, Jet lived next door to Mark but his house wasn’t quite as lavish. Jet only had a pool and a tennis court but it was huge and grand and garish because his mother was a fashion designer and his dad a major shareholder of Sunrise Bank.

     This possibly accounted for Jet’s elevated status in his own mind, according to Teegan.

     The first meeting had begun.

     It was the second last day of the week and we didn’t  have rehearsals for Rocco and Julie so nobody was actively squabbling. Mouche arrived with the hem of a costume hanging out of her tote; Teegan was not far behind, talking on her cell with her notes jutting out of her antique jeans. Freya paused by the gate to check her lip gloss. Brooke turned up a few minutes later painting her fingernails and Tory arrived...help us...with an open guide: the one we had discarded, the one Mouche and I loathed, The Good Girl’s Guide: Behave Like A Man and Get What You Want

     Mouche looked worried, “Tory is not supposed to be seeking out her own subversive dating literature,” she whispered to me under her breath.

     Tory just smiled pleasantly and said, “I’m re-educating myself. I’ve  seen what’s  happening with you two and I want to be knowledgeable as well...”

    Mouche leaned over and said, “Well, there’s no need for that, Tory. We’ve done the reading and we can tell you everything you need to know about our system...”

    Teegan and Freya and Brooke and Tory all smiled and looked very relieved as we nibbled the delicious food in front of us.

     A truce had been grudgingly entered into and we were all acting sisterly.

Freya even offered to help with the costumes and passed a skirt to Brooke who was attempting to gather a ruffle. Brooke held the hem and waited with baited breath on every word Mouche said. Mouche really had a way with monologues. When she  spoke, people listened.