Sara Shepard - Twisted

“I know what you mean.” Aria swallowed bite of beet and turnip mash. “The high school I went to in Reykjavik only had about a hundred students. I knew everyone within a couple of weeks.”

Klaudia lowered her fork. “You did school in Reykjavik?”

“Yeah.” Didn’t Noel tell Klaudia anything about her? “I lived there for almost three years. I loved it.”

“I go there!” Klaudia’s smile broadened. “For the Iceland Airwaves festival!”

“I went to that, too!” The Iceland Airwaves festival was the first concert Aria had gone to. She’d felt so adult traipsing onto the grounds, passing the hippie tents selling temporary tattoos and dream catchers, and inhaling the smells of exotic vegetarian cuisine and hookah pipes. During one of the many Icelandic bands’ sets, she’d met three boys: Asbjorn, Gunnar, and Jonas, and Jonas had kissed her during the encore. That was when Aria knew moving to Iceland was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to her.

Klaudia nodded excitedly, her blond hair bouncing. “So much music! My favorite was Metric.”

“I saw them in Copenhagen!” Aria said. She would have never pegged Klaudia for a Metric girl. Music was one of those things Aria hadn’t been able to talk about with anyone here the way she had in Iceland—all the Typical Rosewoods, as she called them, never ventured to listened to anything not on the iTunes Most Downloaded list.

“I loved! So much— tanssi !” She squinted, trying to think of the English word, and then bobbed her head back and forth as though she were dancing.

Then, setting her paper plate on the windowsill, Klaudia pulled out her iPhone and flipped through pictures. “This is Tanja.” She pointed at a foxlike Sofia Coppola look-alike. “Best friends. We go to Reykjavik concert together. I miss so much. We text every night.”

Klaudia flipped through more photos of her friends, mostly blond girls; her family, a gaunt, makeup-free mother, a tall, rumpled father who she said was an engineer, and a younger brother who had messy hair; her house, a modern box that reminded Aria of the house they rented in Reykjavik; and her cat, Mika, which she cradled like a baby in the same way Aria cradled her own cat, Polo. “I miss my Mee-mee so much!” she cried, bringing the picture to her lips and giving the cat a kiss.

Aria giggled. In these pictures, Klaudia didn’t look slutty or conniving—she seemed normal. Cool, even. It was possible Aria had judged Klaudia unfairly. Maybe she was overly touchy-feely with Noel because she was uncomfortable in her new surroundings. And maybe she dressed sluttily because she thought all Americans did—if you went by American television, you’d certainly think so. Really, Aria and Klaudia had more in common than Aria originally thought—the Typical Rosewood Girls shunned Klaudia, just like they did Aria. They always blacklisted things they didn’t immediately understand.

Klaudia turned to the next photo in the stack, a shot of her friends in ski gear on top of a mountain. “Oh! This is Kalle!” She said it like Kah-lee. “We ski every weekend! Who will I ski with now?”

“I’ll ski with you,” Aria volunteered, surprising herself.

Klaudia’s eyes brightened. “You ski?”

“Well, no . . .” Aria forked the remaining goulash on her plate. “Actually, I’ve never skied in my life.”

“I teach you!” Klaudia bounced in her seat. “We go soon! So easy!”

“Okay.” Come to think of it, Noel had mentioned that his family was thinking about going on a ski trip for the long weekend at the end of the week. Surely Klaudia would be invited, too. “But I’d like to teach you something in return.”

“How about that?” Klaudia pointed at the pink mohair scarf wound around Aria’s neck. “Did you neuloa ?” She rotated her hands around, pantomiming knitting.

Aria inspected the scarf. “Oh, I knitted this years ago. It’s not very good.”

“No, is beautiful!” Klaudia exclaimed. “Teach me! I make presents for Tanja and Kalle!”

“You want to learn to knit?” Aria repeated. No one, not even Ali or the others, had asked Aria to teach them—it had always been Aria’s weird thing. But Klaudia didn’t seem to think it was weird.

They arranged to meet on Thursday at a ski supply store so Aria could get proper gear. As they rose to check out the desserts, Aria noticed Noel staring at her from across the room with a surprised smile on his face. Aria waved, and so did Klaudia. “He your boyfriend, right?” Klaudia asked.

“Yeah,” Aria answered. “For over a year.”

“Ooh, serious!” Klaudia’s eyes twinkled. But there was nothing envious about her demeanor.

Mr. Kahn appeared in the doorway. Aria hadn’t seen him in weeks. He was always traveling on important business. Now, he was decked out in a brown loincloth, what looked like a bearskin coat, black boots, and a massive horned hat. He looked like Fred Flintstone.

“I’m ready for the feast!” he bellowed, raising a club in his left hand.

Everyone cheered. The Rosewood Day girls in the corner tittered. Aria and Klaudia exchanged a horrified look. Was he serious ?

“Save me!” Klaudia whispered, hiding behind Aria.

Aria burst into giggles. “Those horns! And what’s with the club?”

“I don’t know!” Klaudia held her nose. “And Mrs. Kahn’s skirt smell just like hevonpaskaa !”

Aria didn’t exactly know what the word meant, but just the sound of it made her double over with giggles. She could feel the stares of the bitchy girls across the room, but she didn’t care. All at once, she felt so grateful Klaudia was here. For the first time in almost a year, Aria had someone to laugh with again. Someone who really understood her in a way that the Typical Rosewoods couldn’t.

For a moment, it even made her forget about A.

Spencer stood at the back of the Kahns’ smorgasbord line, eyeing the food spread. Some of this crap looked like cat vomit. And who in their right mind drank soured milk?

Two hands grabbed her shoulders. “Surprise,” Zach Pennythistle said, waving an uncorked amber-colored bottle in her face. Inside was a greenish liquid that smelled like nail polish remover.

Spencer raised an eyebrow. “What is that?”

“Traditional Finnish schnapps.” He poured a few slugs into two foam cups from the stack on the table. “I snuck it from the bar cart when no one was looking.”

“Bad boy!” Spencer shook her finger at him. “Are you always so deviant?”

“It’s why I’m the black sheep of my family,” Zach teased, lowering his dark eyes at her, which made Spencer’s insides whirl.

She was thrilled Zach had accepted her invitation to the smorgasbord party tonight. Ever since the dinner at The Goshen Inn on Sunday, she couldn’t stop thinking of their fun, flirty banter. Even after they’d sat down at the table with the rest of the family, they’d continued to shoot one another feisty looks and secret smiles.

They drifted through the living room and set up camp on the Kahns’ stairs. The party was getting raucous, with a bunch of Rosewood Day kids Irish-jigging to the polka music in the Kahns’ enormous living room and some of the adults already slurring their words. “I usually don’t peg Harvard boys as the black sheep of their families,” Spencer said to Zach, picking up on their previous conversation.

Zach sat back, frowning. “Where’d you hear I was going to Harvard?”

Spencer blinked. “Your dad said so at dinner. Before I found you at the bar.”

“Of course he did.” Zach took a long drink of his schnapps. “To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure Harvard and I are a match made in heaven. I have my eye on either Berkeley or Columbia. Not that he knows that, of course.”