Wicked Lies

by Mae Doyle

  “You don’t belong here, Rose, and you know it. Your mother is a whore, your dad is dead, and you used his death money to get in. What’s it going to take for you to realize that the best thing for you to do is leave?” He turned and started to walk away, following his friends, but I reached out and grabbed his hand.

  There was no reason for me to reach for him, and the look on his face told me exactly what he thought about me touching him, but I linked our fingers together so that he couldn’t easily pull away and then stood up. My body was just inches from his, but I could feel the heat coming off of his torso. He had his jacket stuffed in his backpack, and the bright white of his uniform shirt seemed to glow in contrast to his deep brown skin.

  “Brett,” I said, digging deep for the feelings and friendship that we used to share when we were younger. “Please.” I knew that I should say more, but my words failed me. I had to tilt my head up to look at him, and I realized that I probably looked like a girl waiting on a kiss, but it didn’t matter. I had to try to get through to him, and this was the only way that I knew how.

  “Let go of me.” He yanked his hand away from mine, dropping my hand by my side. As I reached out for him again, he sidestepped out of the way. “You’re not welcome here, Rose. I told you that you needed to leave, and you didn’t, so now you’ll have to live with the consequences.”

  “What consequences? You going to pay my mom another visit at her job? Or which of my loved ones are you going to come after next?” My voice got higher and louder, but I didn’t care. I just had to make him see how badly I needed this. If that meant that I had to practically beg him then…well, let’s just say that it was nothing new for our relationship.

  “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you, Rose?” He grinned, his teeth bared a little. They were perfectly white and straight, a testament to his parent’s devotion and willingness to do everything they could for their son to improve his life.

  I watched, my mouth half-open, as he strolled away from me. He stopped a few feet from the table and glanced back over his shoulder. “Don’t be late to homeroom, Rose. I have a feeling that the day is going to get very exciting.”

  My blood ran cold. It’s cliché as hell but I swore that that’s what happened. I felt ice in my veins as I watched him turn and walk away. The entire cafeteria was silent until he left the room, the big double doors shutting quietly behind him.

  “Rose?” Maggie sounded terrified, and I turned to look at her. “Rose, you can’t let them hurt you.”

  “What are you going to do?” Harper sounded just as scared, but I didn’t need to look at her to know that she had the same expression on her face as my other friend.

  It was a good question, though. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, I only knew that I had a few minutes to think of a plan. All I knew is that I wasn’t going to let anyone drive me out of Taylor Prep. I deserved to be here, no matter what Brett, the other rogues, and the harpies thought.

  I wasn’t sure how to prove it to them, but I’d figure it out. “Let’s get to class.” I stood, and my friends followed, the three of us leaving our dishes on the table. Normally I liked to carry them and put them away, but the staff swooped in as soon as we walked away to handle it for us.

  Today I needed to do everything I could to focus on how I was going to avoid the rogues and stay at Taylor Prep. Brett may have thought that he could easily drive me out of school, but he didn’t know how much I’d been through since he moved away.

  Life can easily burn you out and drag you down if you let it, but one thing that my mom made sure of was that I was strong. Sure, I walked with a limp and I may not ever get rid of that. And, yes, I had the face of my dead father seared into my brain, but that didn’t mean that I was weak.

  I was strong. My backpack thumped on my back as we walked down the hall. I refused to let Harper or Maggie offer me an arm. I was going to do this on my own, and there wasn’t a damn thing that anyone could do to stop me.

  That’s what I kept telling myself as I walked with my friends to homeroom. Mr. Staton was leaning on the doorframe, waiting on us, which was a little strange, but I ignored it. I had to focus on what may be waiting for me inside.

  The funny thing is that no matter how prepared I thought I may be, there wasn’t any way that I could get ready for what waited on me. I turned the corner into the classroom, my friends right behind me, and my jaw dropped open for the second time that morning.

  Chapter 12

  “What’s going on?” Harper hissed in my ear as I paused in the door to our homeroom. Behind us in the hall students rushed past us on the way to get to their classes, but everyone in our homeroom was already sitting. Watching the door. Waiting on me.

  “It’s fine.” Taking a deep breath, I walked into the room, down the aisle to my desk, ignoring all of the faces turned toward me. I knew that Harper and Maggie followed me into the room to their desks, but I couldn’t pay attention to them right now. As soon as I sat down, all of my attention was on the giant pull-down screen at the front of the room.

  My mom was on it. The sound was off, or there was no sound on the video, but she was walking around in the strip club, barely clad. Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard, but when I opened them, she was still there. The phone panned back and forth as it watched her, then suddenly the screen went black. Giant words, written in white, appeared.

  ROSE’S MOM IS A WHORE.

  There was a collective gasp from my two friends, but I still couldn’t meet their eyes. Jackie slowly turned around, resting his arm on my desk. I focused on it, how he’d rolled up his sleeve, how his muscles twisted and bunched as he leaned to talk to me.

  “Your mom is pretty hot, Rosita. Word on the street is that she’s single now, so do you think that you could introduce me? I know that she knows Brett, but honestly, I think I’m more equipped to handle her, if you know what I mean.”

  I snapped. Standing up, I swung for him, my palm open and headed straight for his cheek, but his reflexes were too fast and he reached up, grabbing my hand out of the air. I gasped as he squeezed my wrist, rubbing my bones together.

  I mean, you could look at him and tell that he was strong, but I still wasn’t expecting him to be able to yank my arm out of the air like that. I didn’t think that he’d be able to twist my arm and sit me back down in my chair without breaking a sweat or raising an eyebrow.

  “I hate you.” The words were hisses from my mouth, but he just laughed and shrugged.

  “You may, but I bet that your mom wouldn’t. You look for a stepfather since good old daddy died, Rosita?” His eyes searched mine, but I refused to give him any satisfaction of knowing that he was breaking my heart. The heat from his fingers wrapped around my wrist was almost too much for me to bear, but I managed to pull my hand back and push it into my lap.

  My other fingers encircled my wrist, caressing it while it throbbed, and I thought about what it felt like to have Jackie’s hand on me.

  Amelia leaned over. “It’s no wonder that your mommy wanted to send you here, Rose. It’ll give her so much more time to focus on her clients. Tell me, do you think that she offers dance lessons, or does she only give private ones?”

  “Eat shit, Amelia.” The words were out of my mouth before I can stop them, and while I got the satisfaction of her widening her eyes, they quickly narrowed back into slits.

  “Alright, class!” Mr. Steton walked in, ignoring the screen behind him. The white words still blazed on it even though I tried to tear my eyes away, but he didn’t pay it any attention. “Settle down for announcements. Now that classes are really in full swing here, I’m sure that Mr. Taylor will have some wisdom that he wants to impart with us.” He leaned on his desk, his eyes sweeping over the class.

  How could he sit there and know that this was going on right under his nose? Without any thought to what I was doing, I raised my hand. “Mr. Steton, can we please talk about what’s going on?”

  He looked at me, raising one eyebr
ow. “Miss. Bennett, it’s almost time for announcements. If you have grievances, then they can wait until they are over.”

  “But they can’t.” I stood up, pushing my chair back with a loud scraping noise that made everyone look at me. “You need to know what was going on in the room right before you got here. You were right outside! Did you not see?” I was grasping at straws, and I knew that, but I couldn’t stop the tumble of words from my mouth. “How can you stand by and be okay with this?”

  He sighed. There was a lock of hair in his face that had slipped out of his bun, and he pushed it out of the way, tucking it behind his ear. I knew that he was speaking, but I couldn’t focus on what he said. My eyes fell to his wrist when he reached up and his shirt pulled away from his hand.

  It wasn’t possible, but I saw it with my own two eyes.

  He had on one of the same braided leather bracelets as the entire student body. My eyes flicked up to his face. He was still talking, but he looked bored. A loud beep interrupted him as the intercom clicked on for our daily announcements.

  I tuned them out.

  I tuned out all of the rest of homeroom. Maggie tried to pass me a note, but Kaleb intercepted it and ripped it into shreds before passing it on. By the time the confetti was handed to me, half of it was on the floor, and there was no way of knowing what it said.

  I felt like I was in a daze. The bell rang for class change and I stood like everyone else, preparing to go to Spanish. Normally, Jackie walked me, but I brushed by him, ignoring when he called out my name. I was halfway down the hall to my room when I realized that everyone was staring at me.

  Harper and Maggie had to go the other direction to get to their class, and it was only my footsteps echoing in the hall. The students all stood, books clutched to their chests, their backs against the lockers, watching me go.

  “What? You guys want to take a picture so that it’ll last longer?” I spun in a circle, looking at them. My hips and legs screamed out in pain at the movement, but I didn’t care. Nothing mattered right now except for getting to the bottom of this.

  “A picture sounds good, but a video sounds even better.” The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up at Jackie’s voice. He strolled up behind me, reaching out for my shoulder to turn me around. Even though I flinched at his touch, warmth coursed through his fingers. “You think that you could maybe let me take a video? Your mom was more than happy to oblige.”

  “It was you?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Not me, Rosita, but it may have well been. Have you not figured it out yet? We don’t want you here. You’re not welcome here. You need to go, and things are only going to get worse for you. I know that Brett gave you until today, but you’re still here, so what’s your play?”

  “My play?”

  “Your plan, Rosita. How this is all going to go down. Pretty sure that there’s an easy way – that’s where you leave today, and there’s a harder way – and that’s where we encourage you to leave.”

  “Is that what you call filming my mom at work and then showing it to everyone in school? Encouraging me to leave?” He shrugged, an infuriating move that only made me angrier. “Because maybe Brett didn’t tell you that I don’t back down easily. I’m not one to just give up, and I need Taylor Prep. More than you do, trust fund boy.”

  His eyes widened. “Trust fund boy? I don’t think that you know who you’re dealing with here, Rosita. And, yeah, Brett told us a lot about what you were like when you were younger, but not a lot of it showed that you had backbone.” Reaching out, he ran his fingers lightly up my ribcage. It tickled and burned at the same time, and I had to stop myself from flinching away from his touch. “Or did you get titanium put in your spine as well as in your ribs?”

  How did everyone here know everything about me? They all seemed to know about the accident, my dad, and then my mom. It felt like I couldn’t have anything private at Taylor Prep. “My spine was strong enough without it, Jackie.” It was a terrible comeback, and I already knew that I’d be thinking up a better one in the shower later that night, but it was all I could think of at the moment. Spinning away from him, I headed down the hall to Spanish.

  The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. If that was how the students at Taylor Prep thought they were going to drive me out, then they would have to try harder. I could easily handle mean stares in the hallway and silence in the classroom.

  Getting together with Maggie and Harper in class and at lunch broke up the day, but even they said that students in their classes had been acting weird. I hated that not only were they attacking my mom, but also my friends, but I didn’t know what I could do about it to stop it, if anything.

  I wasn’t sure that anything would get them to leave me alone unless I left the school, and that simply wasn’t an option. Just like the rest of them, I saw Taylor Prep as a springboard to help me obtain the best future possible, but unlike a lot of them, I wasn’t thinking about just myself. I had to take care of my mom. I had to do whatever I could to make sure that she never had to work in a strip club again.

  It didn’t feel fair that my dad had left me the insurance money from his death as long as I promised to use it for schooling here. My mom could have used it to pay for a house or make sure that she didn’t have to work again.

  Now it was up to me, and I was going to be damned before I let a bunch of snotty rich kids ruin my life plans.

  Chapter 13

  The next day passed without incident, too, and I was starting to let my guard down, at least until dinner. The chef had really outdone themselves with grilled trout, steamed kale, and an incredible granola for dessert. I dug right in, but Harper and Maggie pushed their plates away, looking worried.

  “Rose, we need to talk to you.” Harper’s faced was strained and she chewed her lower lip while she waited for me to respond. I couldn’t answer, since my mouth was full of fish, so I just nodded. “Maggie and I found something in our bedrooms.” She lifted her hand up from her lap and held it out to me. Coiled on her palm was a leather braided bracelet.

  I choked and reached for my water, downing half of it before I could breathe again. “You both had one of these?” My hand hovered near hers. I wanted to reach out and touch it, but I was almost afraid of it, like it were a snake or something else that could hurt me. Ridiculous. Closing my fingers around it, I lifted it by the bead and let it spin in the air between us.

  Maggie nodded. “We both got the bracelets and letters that we needed to start wearing them. We, uh, haven’t, obviously, but I don’t know that we have much of a choice.” She looked terrified, but I scoffed, dropping the bracelet onto the table.

  “Why don’t you think you have a choice?”

  Harper swallowed hard. “They said that we had to, or we’d lose our scholarships.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You and I both know that they can’t do that. What, do the rogues think that they run the school or something?” I popped another bite of flaky trout into my mouth and sighed. This place may have been a hellhole, but at least the food was heavenly. If nothing else, I wanted to stay just so I could keep eating what the chef came up with.

  “Actually, Rose, we were called in to see Mr. Taylor after class today.” Maggie couldn’t meet my eyes, but Harper was staring at me, nodding. “He told us that the bracelet was a part of the dress code and we needed to wear it or we’d be in noncompliance and would have marks against us.”

  “Marks? For a bracelet? They do see how the rogues and the harpies dress, right?” Glancing over at their table, I saw that they were all quiet, watching us. It was eerie, but even though I was a little scared of them, it didn’t detract from the fact that there were, undoubtedly, the most attractive people I’d ever met.

  Maybe gorgeous people really did run the world.

  “Yeah, and if we have too many marks we’d get expelled.”

  “Okay,” I said, thinking fast. “How many marks will they give you for not wearing it? And how many does it take to
get expelled? It really seems like the dress code doesn’t matter as much as maybe we think it does.”

  Harper shook her head. “We would get the maximum number of marks on the first day that we’re not wearing the bracelets. He told us that he’d give us a pass for today since we didn’t understand the dress code change. I’m so sorry.” Her voice got quieter and quieter as she spoke, making it hard for me to hear her.

  This was enough. Standing, I snatched the bracelet from the table and marched across the cafeteria to the rogues and the harpies. Brett, Jackie, and Kaleb were all sitting next to each other, watching me come towards them. Their faces were dark as they frowned at me. The harpies, on the other hand, didn’t look like they could contain their glee. They were grinning and Amelia even giggled as I stalked up to their table.

  “What the hell is this about?” I slammed the bracelet down on the table in front of the boys. They all looked at it, slow smiles breaking out across their faces, then looked back up at me. “How did you make this happen? What kind of twisted control do you have here?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Rosita.” Jackie reached out to finger the bracelet before picking it up and handing it back to me. Without thinking, I took it, my fingers burning at his touch. “Why do you think that we’re the ones in control?”

  “Because you’re the only jackasses here who hate me this much.”

  “We don’t hate you.” Kaleb leaned forward, catching my eye. I chewed my lower lip as I looked into his green eyes. I should hate them, all of them, but there was something about them that drew me to them. Something dangerous. Something I should avoid, but I wasn’t sure how.

  “Then why do this?”

  “Because you don’t belong. I don’t know how many times I need to explain that to you, Rosa.” Brett pointed back at my friends. “But you better get that bracelet back to your girls so they can put it on. You’d hate to accidentally take them down with you, wouldn’t you?”