"Wow!" says Roderick, reading the announcement. He noodges Molly. "Look at this."
Molly reads the announcement and shrugs. She's thinking about the second of the Six Bagatelles, Opus 126, the one in G Minor. She's working on the piece currently, and it's catchy.
"I wonder how they're going to figure out who sleeps with whom?"
Molly stops thinking about the bagatelle. She thinks it would be fine to sleep with Roderick or Natasha, but Megan might be problematic. Definitely not Donny Clapper.
On field trips, the faculty of Beauneville Latin do not closely supervise the students, because the youth of Beauneville are very responsible and do not drink alcoholic beverages or engage in premarital sex.
That's not entirely true. The youth of Beauneville are smart, and they know that open challenges to adult authority are fruitless and a waste of time. And so, the youth of Beauneville are discreet about drinking and sex.
The faculty, in turn, understand that tight supervision of teen behavior is exhausting and fruitless.
As a result, there is a social contract: students avoid open and flagrant violations of rules, and in turn the faculty do not closely examine what takes place after dark and behind closed doors.
To sign up for the field trip, students submit a form listing roommate preferences. There is a line at the bottom of the form, where students need to put something that looks like a parent signature.
Meanwhile, Betsy Flapper has heard some juicy gossip she can't wait to share. The members of her entourage are already "in the know". Betsy pulls Amanda Dennis aside and whispers something.
Amanda's eyes widen like dinner plates. Her jaw drops. She scribbles furously in her notebook, opens her laptop, logs in to Cries and Whispers and writes:
What pert and perky vixen has a dark secret?Betsy creeps across the room, whispering to each youth in turn. Reactions range from stunned silence to laughter to an astonished "No!" from Megan Cupcake, whose rumored loose bisexualism pales in salaciousness to this latest news.
Amanda knows all.
Katie Zeppelin arrives, and the room falls silent. She looks around. "What?" she asks.
Talk resumes, nervously, with furtive glances directed towards Katie. Betsy and her entourage giggle and cover their mouths.
Megan stands closest to Katie. "What's going on?", asks Katie.
"Oh, uh...nothing", says Megan, doing her best to appear nonchalant.
Katie turns to Amanda. "Did I miss something?"
"Oh!", says Amanda. "I certainly don't think so". Several students standing near Amanda crack up when they hear this.
Perplexed, Katie approaches Roderick, who is genuinely out of the loop -- he's on Betsy's D-list. "Hi, Roderick", says Katie, hopefully.
"Hi", says Roderick. He likes Katie, because she is pert and perky, and also because she does this cute thing with her hair where it's tied in one braid over her right shoulder.
"Do you know what's going on?" asks Katie.
"Um...no. I mean, I'm not sure, what do you mean?". Roderick is both out of the loop and unobservant of the chemistry in the room. Prior to Katie's entry he was looking at Megan and thinking it would be nice to see her naked again.
Molly noodges him. She knows, or thinks she knows; she heard the news from Mary, who heard it from a friend of a friend of a friend who knows the sister of a girl in Betsy's entourage. Something about how Katie is the biggest slut in the history of world sluttiness, the slut of all sluts, with hundreds of conquests under her belt, or under her pants, as the case may be.
After school, Molly and Roderick do homework together in Roderick's dining room. Molly shares what she heard about Katie.
"Katie Zeppelin?" Roderick is surprised to hear this news. Katie is so pert and perky, not the slutty type, like Betsy. Still, he's intrigued. Perhaps he should spend more time with Katie.
Meanwhile, at the Zeppelin home on Dogwood, Katie logs in to Facebook. Some interesting messages await.
