Oliver scowled. He pushed back his cowlick impatiently. "Fine. If that's how you feel, Pod Person." Invasion of the Body Snatchers was one of their favorite films. In the movie, conformist aliens replaced all the interesting people. Pod People was what they called their automaton-like peers, who fell into lock step with everything around them: Marc Jacobs handbags! Japanese-straightened hair! Jack Force!
Schuyler felt guilty of something she couldn't even understand. Was it so terrible of her to think Jack Force was a nice person? Okay, so he was a BMOC, the biggest - she had to admit - and yes, okay, so she used to curl her lip at all the Jack Force groupies at school who thought he walked on water. It was just so predictable to like Jack Force. He was smart, handsome, and athletic; he did everything effortlessly. But just because she'd decided to stop disliking him didn't make her some kind of brainless robot did it? Did it? It bothered her that she couldn't decide.
"You're just jealous," she accused.
"Of what?" Oliver's eyes widened, and his face paled.
"I don't know, but you are." She flailed, shrugging her shoulders in frustration. It was always a green-eyed monster issue, wasn't it? She assumed that at some level, Oliver wished he were more like Jack. Adored. Like Jack.
"Right," he said sarcastically. "I'm jealous of his ability to chase a ball with a stick," he sneered.
"Ollie, don't be like that. Please? I really want to talk to you about this, but I have a meeting right now - for The Committee and I ..."
"You got into The Committee?" Oliver asked incredulously. "You?" He looked as if he'd never heard anything so ridiculous in his life.
Was it so far-fetched? Schuyler reddened. So maybe she was nobody, but her family used to be somebodies, and wasn't that what the stupid thing was all about?
But even though she hated to admit it - he had a point. She herself had been mystified as to why she would be chosen for such an honor, although there was that satisfied look on her grandmother's face again - when she'd received the thick white envelope the other afternoon. Cordelia had given her the same appraising glance as when the marks on her arms first appeared. As if she were seeing her granddaughter for the first time. As if she were proud of her.
She hadn't even mentioned it to Oliver, since it was obvious he hadn't gotten one, because he would never keep something like that from her. It struck her as odd that he wasn't chosen to be in The Committee, since his family owned half of the Upper East Side and all of Dutchess County.
"Yeah, funny ha-ha, right?" she said.
His face tightened. The scowl came back. He shook his head. "And you didn't tell me?" he said. "I don't even know who you are anymore."
She watched him walk down the hall, away from her. Each step he took seemed to illustrate the huge gulf that now separated the two of them. He was her best friend. The person she trusted more than anyone in the world. How could he hold joining some dumb social group against her? But she knew why he was angry. Up until now, they had done everything together. But she was invited to The Committee and he was not. Their paths had suddenly diverged. Schuyler thought it was all so silly. She would go to one meeting, just because her grandmother wanted her to, and then drop out. There was certainly nothing about The Committee that was of any interest to her at all.
CHAPTER 19
It was so funny to see how scared the fresh blood looked. Mimi remembered sitting in that same room last year, thinking they would all start planning the yearly Four Hundred Ball (Theme? D��cor? Invites?) and that would be the end of it. Of course, Jack had known something was up, nothing really got past her brother - and apparently, some of them had more of an idea about what was happening to them than others.
Mimi had had the flashbacks too - the memories that would creep up on her without warning. Like the time she'd been in Martha's Vineyard, and instead of being outside the Black Dog, she was outside a farmhouse, wearing some hideous gingham dress - believe it or not. Or the time she was taking her French test and she hadn't studied at all but she aced it, finding that she was suddenly fluent in the language.
She smiled to herself at the memory, and watched as several members of the Senior Committee, her mother among them, entered the room, their Blahnik heels clicking softly on the rose marble floor. There was a hush. The well-coifed women nodded to one another and waved gaily to their children.
The Jefferson Room was the front entry room to the Flood mansion, in the style of Monticello, a tribute to the third president. There was a high, domed cathedral ceiling, several Gainsborough portraits, and in the middle a large round table, where the new members were sitting, looking alternately bored or scared. Mimi didn't recognize all of them, as some were from other schools. God, those Nightingale uniforms were ugly, she thought. The rest of the members of the Junior Committee were sitting on the study desks, or leaning on the windows, or standing with their arms folded, watching silently. She noticed that for once, her brother Jack had deigned to grace them with his presence.
So the Wardens had thought to include the Van Alen girl after all. That was odd. Mimi had no memory of her from her past, not even from Plymouth. She had to have been there somewhere; Mimi just had to dig deeper into her subconscious. When Mimi looked around the room, she could see glimmerings of who everyone else used to be. Katie Sheridan, for instance, had always been a friend - they had "come out" during the 1850 deb season together, and Lissy Harris had been an attendant at her wedding in Newport later that year. But that wasn't the case with Schuyler.
As for Jack, well, they had been together for longer than eternity. His was the only face she ever saw constantly, waiting for her in every incarnation of her past. If Mimi practiced her meditations, perhaps she would be able to access the deepest recesses of her history, back to their creation, in Egypt before the floods.
Mrs. Priscilla DuPont, a regular presence in the city's society pages, and the financial and social force behind many of New York's most august cultural institutions, stepped forward. Like the other women behind her, she was preternaturally slim, with a soft, buttery bob that framed her line-less face. She cut a severe figure in her sharp black Carolina Herrera suit. As committee chair and Chief Warden, she called the meeting to order.
"Welcome to the first meeting of the New York Blood Bank Committee of the season," she said, smiling graciously. "We are very proud to have all of you here."
Mimi zoned out for a bit, barely listening to the standard lecture concerning civil duty and noblesse oblige, enumerating the many services the committee provided their community. The yearly ball, for instance, raised a tremendous amount of money for blood research programs, which was dedicated to the eradication of blood-borne diseases like AIDS and hemophilia. The Committee had founded hospitals and research institutions, and had been instrumental in funding stem-cell research and other advances in medicine.
Then, after the standard spiel, Mrs. DuPont looked intently at the ten young people seated at the table.
"But helping others is not all that The Committee does." There was an expectant silence.
Mrs. DuPont looked at each student intently before speaking. "You have been gathered here today because you are very special." Her voice had a melodious, cultured quality, soothing and patrician at the same time.
Mimi saw Bliss Llewellyn look uncomfortable. She had given Bliss grief about Dylan, but it was her funeral. Bliss had even threatened to skip the meeting, but somehow Mimi had helped to change her mind.
"Some of you might have noticed certain changes in your bodies. How many have started to see the blue marks on your arms?" she asked.