by Mae Doyle
Just when I thought that maybe Kaleb wasn’t so bad, he went and did something like this. Just when I thought that the rogues of Taylor Prep may have hearts, they proved me wrong.
The elevator took forever, but I finally made it to my floor and then down the hall to my room. Throwing myself on my bed, I didn’t even bother to look my door. Someone had a key, so it didn’t matter if I tried to keep myself safe or not.
My phone was on my pillow where I’d left it, the light blinking. Sighing, I swiped my thumb across the screen, unlocking it. My eyes widened when I saw that I had 400 messages.
400 messages.
What in the world?
Chapter 15
I scrolled through the messages for about an hour the other night before I sighed, shot one off to my mom telling her how much fun I was having, and turned off my phone. Every night since then was the same. I sighed, stretched out on my bed, and rested the phone next to me. I knew that the rogues and the harpies weren’t kidding about trying to drive me out of Taylor Prep, but I was still surprised that they would get everyone at school to text me.
Well, everyone except for Harper and Maggie. It was the thought of them that kept me feeling strong, even when people were catcalling me in the halls and when someone tripped me the other morning in homeroom. I have a sneaking suspicion that it was this girl named Joanna, who seemed nice, but was just as cruel as the rest of them.
The fact that I didn’t see my friends’ names anywhere in my inbox full of hate was the only thing that kept me from crying at night. Now, though, headed down to breakfast early so that I could try to beat the crowd, I wondered how all of the other students got my number.
The only people I’d given it to were my friends, right? Thinking hard, I peeked into the cafeteria to make sure that I was alone. There were a few people already eating, but they had their noses in books, so I was hopeful that I would be able to enjoy a quiet meal on my own. Since I got the flurry of text messages, I’d been coming to breakfast early on my own. It wasn’t that I liked not eating with my friends, but I wanted to try to save them as much embarrassment as possible from being seen with me. I didn’t want my treatment to extend to them, as well.
I trusted my friends, and it didn’t make sense that my friends would have given my number to my enemies. Sliding my tray down the line, I picked up fresh buckwheat pancakes with juicy blueberries and maple syrup as well as a bowl with cottage cheese and mint leaves on top. My mouth watered as I carried my tray to a table and sat down.
Picking up my fork, I prepared to dig in, but then I paused, thinking. No, I had had to give Mrs. McKearin my number so that she could text me about voice group practice times. Amelia probably took my phone number from the list and then spread it through the entire class, possibly when they were reading from my journal last night. Groaning, I mentally slapped my forehead. I couldn’t believe that it took me that long to figure out how everyone got my number, but it sure took me forever to realize that it had to be Amelia who handed it out.
My stomach twisted as I thought about the glee on everyone’s face the other night as Brett read my private thoughts. I never thought that I’d experience pain that was as bad as I had, but reliving the horror of the accident and staying in the hospital after I found out my dad was dead was even worse, especially because it was in front of my enemies.
My mom would tell me to pray for them, but she wasn’t living in the same hell I was. Angrily, I stabbed a bite of pancake, a blueberry bursting and shooting its juice onto my shirt as I did. “Dammit,” I muttered, wiping at it with my napkin. The bright blue dots feathered out into a stain, and I moaned. “Seriously? I can’t catch a break.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” I looked up and into the bright green eyes of Kaleb, who was standing on the other side of my table holding his tray, a book tucked under his arm. It surprised me to think of any of the popular kids coming to breakfast early to read, but here he was, in the flesh.
“Excuse me?” I stopped dabbing at my shirt to stare at him.
“You were asked to leave. Did you think that Brett would simply forget that?” He frowned a little while looking at me, like he was wondering if I may actually be stupid.
“No, I just didn’t believe that the administration would let things turn lord of the flies around here.” I glared at him, trying to ignore the part of my body that was remembering what it was like to have his arms around me the other night. Out of the three of the rogues, he was the one who didn’t really seem to fit in. I couldn’t figure out why the three of them were so close. “Why are you friends with them, anyway?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and Kaleb looked as surprised as I felt.
“Brett and Jackie? You’re new here, Rose, so you don’t understand, but when you go through bad things with people sometimes you don’t have a choice but to become close to them.” He shrugged and looked away like he was embarrassed.
“But you’re not like them. You’re…nice.” I was grasping, and I knew it, but I hoped that he didn’t know how desperate I was for a connection. To just…feel like maybe there was something good in one of them. Kaleb seemed the most likely one of them all to be friendly and to have a heart under his cold exterior, but when he turned his gaze back on me, I shivered.
Cold was right.
“Am I? That’s sweet that you think so, Rose. Since you think that I’m so nice, maybe you’ll listen to what I’m telling you. It’s not going to get better for you here. Once you’ve been told to get out, you have to get out. I don’t know what dirt you have on Brett, but it’s bad enough that people are willing to risk everything to make you leave.”
“People? You mean the students?”
He bared his teeth at me in a grin. “Sure, students. Rose, you’re not like us. Your family isn’t like ours. You got here on a hope and a prayer and a hell of a lot of insurance money, but most of us have had our places carved out for years. There was a dorm room here for me with my name on it from the moment I was conceived, and most of the other students are the same.”
“Brett, too?”
He laughed. “Brett got his ticket punched when his mom remarried, but I think that you know that, don’t you? His real dad was trash, but his stepdad?” Kaleb shrugged, a movement that made him look more fluid and athletic than I’d seen before. “Well, Brett wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” The way that Kaleb was talking made it feel like there was something more going on at Taylor Prep. I lucked into it, but to have your entire life planned out from the time that you were a baby seems a little extreme. “I mean, is going here really such an amazing thing that people are willing to put up with the drama?”
The drama was putting it lightly. I felt like I had only just begun to see how cutthroat everything was at Taylor Prep. Students all wanted to be the best, and I didn’t see any sign of it slowing down.
“Even if it weren’t worth it, most of us don’t have a choice. This is our destiny, Rose. We have to make the most of what’s been promised to us.” He looked at me again, but this time his gaze didn’t seem angry. He almost looked sad, and honestly, that scared me a little more than pure hatred.
“What do you mean?” I wanted more from him, but the cafeteria doors swung open right then and Brett and Jackie strolled through, followed by the harpies. I saw them look at Kaleb, and a frown crossed Brett’s face.
He probably was wondering what Kaleb was doing talking to me.
Without missing a beat, Kaleb picked up the glass of juice from his tray and leaned over the table, pouring it onto my pancakes. It was cranberry juice, and bright red, and it splashed all over my food, turning my fluffy pancakes into a soggy mess while splattering on my shirt.
Pushing back my chair, I swore, and at the same time heard laughter from behind me.
“Why?” My voice was quiet enough that only Kaleb could hear me, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he smashed his empty cup in
to my mushy pancakes and walked off, but not before I saw something on his face.
I wouldn’t put money on it, but it almost looked like compassion.
Unfortunately, that was the only compassion I got that morning. Luckily, I had my friends with me through homeroom, history, and lunch, but my smarty-pants math class meant that I was all alone. Peeking in the door, I saw that Mr. Gessler wasn’t at his desk, which wasn’t totally abnormal.
An older man, I’d noticed that he was often puttering around the halls talking to other teachers when the bell rang, which meant that the students all had a chance to talk before class got going. Not that anyone wanted to talk to me, but that was fine. I liked the time to study and look over notes before we got going.
Walking in, I kept my head down, trying to make it to my desk without problems. Kelly looked up as soon as I walked in, though. “Hey, if it’s not our little resident writer. You know, Rose, we really wanted you to get up on the fountain last week and read to us. Why won’t you come join us this week for another reading? I think that Brett managed to save some of the juicier bits from your journal.”
The class giggled and I felt my face burn as I walked to my desk, but when I got to its location, something was wrong.
Not moved. My desk was still there. Kinda.
The legs of the chair and the desk had been sawed off, which meant that I was going to be sitting on the seat of the chair directly on the floor. My desk was also on the floor, a flat slab of wood that was only a few inches off of the ground. There was no way that I could easily sit on the floor and work, and I was sure that they all knew this.
The entire class was twisted around in their chairs, watching me, and waiting to see what I would do. My first response was to cry, but I couldn’t let that happen. Tears had already pricked my eyes this morning in homeroom when I got written up for having stains on my shirt. Kaleb had made eye contact with me when I started to argue, which shut me up.
I may have been pissed, but I wasn’t stupid.
Taking a deep breath, I turned around and faced the front of the room. There weren’t any extra desks or chairs in the classroom, and I wasn’t sure that I could easily move one to the back on my own, even if there were. There was a bookshelf in the back, and I cleared off a space for me to put my books while I thought.
If I had hoped for any sympathy from my classmates, I wasn’t going to get any. Once they saw that I wasn’t going to react, most of them turned back around, but Kaleb kept his gaze on me.
Was it just his turn to mess with me, or something?
Ignoring his intense green eyes, I angled my body to the front so when Mr. Gessler came in, I would be able to see what was going on. Keeping my eyes locked on the board was the only way that I could stop myself from looking at Kaleb.
Not like searching his face was going to tell me anything. He hated me, just like the rest of the class here.
The only thing that kept me going during math was the fact that I had voice directly after, and although I would have to deal with Amelia and her harpies, I loved singing so much that I wasn’t going to let them ruin it for me.
Chapter 16
Dinner was the worst part of the day anymore. Not only because I couldn’t seem to get away from the stares of the harpies and the rogues, but because everyone in the class was all there. They’d all heard my private thoughts written in my journal last week, and now they took great joy in quoting it back to me.
“I just don’t know how I can ever live with myself, knowing that I was with my dad when he died.” Instead of turning around to see who was talking, I just gritted my teeth and stabbed my roasted pepper. It didn’t matter who quoted my journal to me, they were all doing it to get a response, and I didn’t want to give them one.
Harper and Maggie didn’t say anything, but I could read the compassion in their eyes. “You know,” said Harper, delicately pushing her food around on her plate, “I think that I can get us passes this weekend to go shopping for the dance. Let’s go to your room and talk about it.”
A dance? This weekend? I’d heard about it, and I’d already made up my mind that I’d be hiding in my room while the festivities were going on but the looks on my friends’ faces made me pause.
“Come on, Rose. Let’s go to your room.” Maggie grabbed the cookie off of her plate and reached for my hand. Sighing, I took it, and allowed her to pull me to my feet.
We were quiet on the way up the elevator and down the hall to my room. I wasn’t sure how to tell my friends that I didn’t want to go to the dance, especially when they both looked so hopeful about the three of us getting to spend time together. Even though I wanted to be gentle and kind about it, as soon as my door shut, I swung around to face the two of them.
“There’s no way that I’m going to the dance,” I told them, locking them with my stare. “Are you kidding? After the past few weeks? I’ve had my private journal read out loud, someone filmed my mom at work and showed everyone, shit has been dumped on my food, I get terrible texts, my desk disappeared in math, someone stole my sheet music for voice and replaced it with copies of my journal, I’ve been tripped, had juice poured on my food, someone cut off the end of my ponytail during class,” I took a deep breath to keep going, and held up the end of my sad ponytail to show my friends, but Harper held up her hand.
“It has sucked, Rose, there’s no denying that. But this is your chance to get out and live a little. Besides, you said yourself that you needed a trim.” Harper grinned at me and I couldn’t help but dip my head and smile. Thank goodness I’d realized what was going on in time or they surely would have scalped me.
“Are both of you going?”
Maggie grinned. “You think that there’s a chance we’d miss this? Harper’s mom has agreed to take us shopping and let us stay the night there this Friday. The dance is Saturday, so we have plenty of time to get ready. Please go with us, Rose. It really wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“You guys don’t have dates?” I found it very hard to believe that my two gorgeous friends would rather spend time at the dance with me rather than with hot guys, and I’d noticed more than one of our classmates checking them out.
“I think that Woods is going to ask me.” Harper shrugged. “He’s a nice guy, and you said yourself that he hasn’t been involved in any of the bullying, so…”
“Woods is a great guy.” I did my best to sound thrilled for my friend, even though I was secretly hoping to be asked first. The way things were going, however, I was a social pariah, so I doubted that anyone would want to risk showing up with me, and I didn’t blame them. “What about you, Mags?”
Maggie blushed. “I’m going to ask Everett.”
“Another solid choice.” I grinned at my friends. “You guys sure you don’t mind me tagging along as a fifth wheel? And are they okay with hanging out with someone like me?”
“You mean someone like you who’s being unfairly targeted? Yeah, they’re both against it, but they don’t know what they can do.” Harper sounded apologetic, and I leaned over, resting my head on her shoulder.
“Just being my friend is enough.” It sounded stupid, but it was true. Just knowing that I had friends who were on my side during all of this made it much easier for me to make it through everything.
“So it’s settled then?” Harper grabbed her phone. “I’ll text my mom now and she’ll get the passes lined up for us. We’ll have to leave right after class so we have time to make it to the stores before they close, but there’s no way Mr. Taylor will let us skip out of class to shop for dresses.”
Maggie giggled. “Can you imagine? The whole class would leave!”
Pretty much everything sucked, but right when I was about to let myself get drug down in all of it, my friends picked me back up and showed me that things were going to be okay. I laughed as the three of us got into a pillow fight, feathers flying everywhere.
By the time we were finished, my room was covered in a light layer of down. “I’m go
nna have to leave out a treat for the cleaning crew,” I told them, looking around the space.
“We’ll get them something on our trip. I promise.” Harper stretched and hopped off of my bed. “But now it’s time to sleep. Get ready for tomorrow, Rose, my mom can’t wait to see you and I can’t wait to go shopping!” She squealed, pulling Maggie from the bed and running out of my room.
I hopped up and locked it behind them, hearing the thud of the deadbolt slide into place. Shopping with my friends. Like a normal teenager. Turning, I caught a glance of myself in the mirror. Thankfully, my hair wasn’t too short. I could still pull it up for the dance. And, in the right dress – I turned, smiling at myself – well, maybe I wouldn’t stick out too much.
◆◆◆
“I had no idea how much fun shopping could be.” Kicking off my sneakers, I sighed, wiggling my toes in the air. “Seriously. We always shopped at the local mall, and I didn’t even know that stores like that existed.”
Harper and Maggie laughed, kicking off their shoes to join me. The three of us had spent all afternoon running through the most amazing shopping complex, trying on dresses that cost more than a mortgage, and cramming our feet into strappy shoes.
By the time we had to meet Harper’s mom back in the parking lot, each of us carried a long dress bag and a pair of shoes. Harper and Maggie both chose red dresses that popped on their pale skin and made them look like fiery devils, but I chose something a little more understated.
Glancing over, I could see the bottom of my dress peeking out from the bag. The hem was cut at an angle, which meant that the dress wasn’t as traditional as some of the others we saw. It was fitted to me, the entire thing shimmering with sequins and sparkly thread, and had straps that criss-crossed in the back. As soon as I’d slipped it on my head, both of my friends sighed.