Page 1 of Come As You Are

Chapter One

THERE SHOULD BE A RULEthat if your parents name you something like Everett Owen Riley, they should have to double—nay,triple—check things like, say, whether your new boarding school has put you in the correct dorm.

Right about now is where mine would be hearing from my lawyer.

“But you’re agirl,” Archibald Buchanan says for the millionth time since I showed up with a duffel of extremely scary bras.

“Well, I’m glad to see Camden’s education is as stellar as promised.”

He blinks at me. And I blink back. And it’s a good old-fashioned standoff, except that I’m on the wrong side of the door, and he’s on the side where I’m supposed to be, and somehow not one person has come to address this situation.

I try again. “Look, Archie.”

He winces.

“Do you not go by Archie?”

“I do, it just sounds so… ugh coming from you.”

“Now I see why they paired us up. They must’ve known that we were soulmates.”

Lookscan’tkill, right? I know “If looks could kill” has been a saying for a long time, and the implication is that they can’t, but Archie looks like he has a whole lot of money, and I don’t know if quirky little sayings apply to people like him.

The ability to pinpoint the exact moment when the light goes out of his cold green eyes and he gives up entirely is what makes me an excellent poker player, and it’s because I see this happen that I manage to wedge my foot in the door before he can close it in my face completely. “Look. I obviously don’t want to be sharing a room with you either, and given they don’t have coed dorms in this place, I’m not really worried about that happening. But Iwouldlike to put my stuff down while we wait for someone to come fix this mess. So can you please let me in, and then you can call the cops or whatever rich people do when they catch a glimpse of the poors?”

I’m definitely getting “Let’s be friends” vibes from his scowl. Or, at least, it’s enough to get him to let me all the way inside.

Once I’m in, though, he’s out. “I’m going to find the dorm head,” he barks, as if I have intentionally put us in this position because I was justdyingto be surrounded by boys, when in fact most of the drive for coming to Camden was to get a fresh start away from thelastboy and everything wrapped upin him. “If he can’t straighten this out right now, my parents are going to have awordwith the administration when they get back from the parents’ breakfast.”

Of course his parents are here. Of course they’ll fight for him. Of course he didn’t have to drag his duffel bag on a bus and then a cab to get here because his dad couldn’t take off work and his mom had fifty excuses, all of which sucked.

The thing is, IknowI didn’t screw this up; I reread every single page of my transfer application to Camden Academy so many times I started seeing it on the insides of my eyelids while I slept. I meticulously researched the dorms, making sure I wasn’t accidentally checking off anything for freshmen, seniors, boys, or millionaires (seriously,whydoes Hillman House have suites with fireplaces and claw-foot tubs?) when I put down Lockwood Hall as my first choice and Ewing Hall as my backup. As pissed as my parents were about my begging to go to boarding school when I was already at a perfectly fine public school, I wasn’t taking a single chance on mistakes.

So how the hell did I end up in Rumson?

It doesn’t matter; Lockwood is so close by, the two dorms literally share a patio, and I already see Archie returning with a ginger-goateed gym teacher type with a smooth white head and a navy-blue Camden polo straining around his biceps. I’m sure this will be resolved in minutes.

“You there,” Ginger says to me in a thick Boston accent, motioning for me to come back into the hallway. “You’re in the wrong place.”

“I’m aware,” I say as nicely as I can, “but no one’s been able to tell me yet where therightplace is.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“This is my room.” I hold up my assignment. “This is also clearlynotmeant to be my room, and so I need a new room. And a new dorm. And a new dorm head.”

He squints. “That assignment says Everett Owen Riley.”

“Yes.”

He looks at me, and I can see it’s not computing.

“My name is Everett Owen Riley. This is my assignment. It is wrong. See right here where it says Rumson Hall? Clearly, I should not be in Rumson Hall.”

“It also says your roommate is Archibald Buchanan,” Archie adds with a scowl. “You didn’t notice that?”

“Obviously not.” And it’s true, I didn’t, because I barely glanced at my assignment before now; I didn’t even know it listed a roommate. Given I didn’t know anyone here, I didn’t really carewhereI ended up. I’d picked Lockwood over Ewing with a rousing game of eenie meeny miney mo, not because it mattered where I slept, or whether my roommate’s name was Chloe or Padma or Talia.

Even Camden Academy itself was a relatively meaningless choice within all the in-state options. I mean, yes, I researched to make sure it had decent academics and extracurriculars, but there was only one criterion I really cared about: it wasn’t Greentree High, which meant I was nowhere near any of the people who’d broken my heart and sent me running for a fresh start where no one knew me and vice versa.

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