The Freshman (Kingmakers)

by Sophie Lark

  “My grades are better than his,” I hiss, without meaning to say it aloud.

  “I did just as well as him in marksmanship,” Bram says.

  “Was it the professors?” I ask Bram. “Who got final say?”

  I have the squirming, impotent feeling that the professors recommended Leo over me. Because he’s charming and persuasive, and because his family name means more than mine.

  Bram shrugs. “Maybe it came down to the class vote.”

  “A fucking popularity contest?” I say.

  I’m burning, seething with rage. Fucking Leo Gallo, the golden boy, gets EVERYTHING he wants. The professors don’t seem to care that he’s lazy and conceited; they fawn all over him anyway. Everywhere I go on this fucking campus people are calling out his name, trying to get him to sit with them or come talk to them. The girls would rip their own panties off if he’d just look at them. And the one girl, the one person I give a fuck about, the one I wish could see through his bullshit . . . she likes him better than anyone. Much better than me. She’s his best friend. While I’m sitting here moping with Bram fucking Van Der Berg.

  Leo has been ruining my life since before he was even born.

  He has everything, and I have nothing.

  Parents that love him. A beautiful, clean house. Friends and family—his cousins right here at the school. And the most beautiful, brilliant woman I’ve ever seen right by his side.

  Why does he have it all? Why does he deserve that, and I don’t?

  He doesn’t deserve it.

  He should lose everything, just like I did.

  “I’m not helping him win,” Bram says sullenly. “I’ll fucking sabotage him.”

  “If the Freshmen fail, we look stupid too,” I say.

  “I don’t care,” Bram rages. “Can you imagine how fucking unbearable he’ll be if he gets his name on the wall?”

  “Freshmen never win,” I say.

  I brush off the suggestion of sabotage, but in actuality, Bram might not have a bad idea . . .

  In the chaos of the competition, there could be plenty of opportunities to fuck over the would-be star of the school.

  If Leo is the Captain, he’s the one who will look the most foolish if all his plans crash and burn.

  “You coming to the party?” Bram says, in the tone of somebody trying to cheer himself up.

  “I dunno,” I say.

  I don’t mind the parties thrown at random when somebody steals, smuggles, or bribes a local into providing enough alcohol to get a bunch of us sloshed. Usually Miles Griffin is at the heart of it, since he seems to be able to get his hands on anything, and apparently could care less if he gets himself expelled. He almost seems to be trying to do it.

  But if Leo is there, I’m going to have to watch him riding the high of being chosen, pretending to be modest every time somebody congratulates him. I’ll fucking choke if I have to watch that all night.

  “I don’t know if I feel like going out,” I say to Bram.

  “Suit yourself,” he says, rolling off the bed and pulling his shirt over his head. Bram’s back is thick with muscle and he’s got several nasty scars to go along with the one on his face. I’ve heard him tell a lot of stories about how he got his scars, but none of them match up, so I doubt he’s ever told the truth.

  Bram leaves after changing his clothes. I read for another hour or two, then head down to the dining hall when I can’t ignore my stomach rumbling any longer.

  They’re serving roasted chickens, each one split in half and stuffed with rosemary and thyme out of the castle gardens. Next to that, potatoes so crispy and brown that they’re splitting out of their skins.

  I haven’t had food this good in . . . almost ever. I miss the odd thing I used to eat in Moscow. I love a good borscht. But in general, the food at Kingmakers is much better than anything I bought from corner stores and diners.

  I sit with Bodashka and Valon, who are avidly debating the merits of their favorite football teams—a pointless endeavor, since none of us have seen a game in two months. I’m not really listening to them, which is why I can easily hear the conversation of the two girls at the table behind mine.

  “Can I borrow your silky top—the one that looks like lingerie?”

  “If you want.”

  “It looks sexy on me, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah . . . but I don’t know if it will matter.”

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . he’s bringing her, isn’t he?”

  “Just because she’s coming doesn’t mean he’s bringing her, like a date. They’re not dating.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They’re cousins.”

  That makes my ears prick up. They’re talking about Leo and Anna, I know it. There’s not that many cousins at Kingmakers. Not many worth talking about, anyway.

  I glance back over my shoulder, quickly so that the girls won’t notice me looking. I see a black-haired girl and a redhead speaking to one another with their heads close together. The dark-haired girl is Gemma Rossi. She may look like a princess with her perfectly pressed blouse and her Alice-band, but Valon has an Artillery and Marksmanship class with her, and he said she’s a pretty damn good shot. I don’t know the other girl Gemma’s talking with. She sounds Irish.

  Gemma looks intense and determined, the redhead is wrinkling her nose and making a face like she knows her friend won’t like what she’s about to say.

  “I mean . . . it’s pretty obvious he likes her. Are they even actually cousins? Marina Voss told me—”

  “They’re not dating!” Gemma interrupts. “I’ve never seen them hold hands or anything. He likes me, I know he does. He said he’d come tonight as soon as I asked him . . .”

  I turn back to my chicken, taking a huge bite out of the thigh to stop myself telling Gemma that she’s fucking delusional. I don’t know what the deal is with Leo and Anna, but I know for sure that no guy with two eyes in his head would pick Gemma Rossi when he can see Anna Wilk standing right there.

  Still . . . knowing that Anna’s going to the party has an effect on me. It makes me want to go, too, even if it means seeing Leo smirking and accepting a hundred slaps on the back.

  Anna will dress up in her normal clothes, and probably wear her hair down and paint her face like the queen of the undead. And that’s something I want to see, even if it’s from a hundred feet away.

  Making a decision, I shove my plate away and stand up while Bodashka and Valon are mid-sentence.

  “Where you going?” Valon asks.

  “I’m gonna take a shower,” I say.

  The party is way down on Moon Beach, one of the only parts of the island that has a white-sand beach. The beach is tiny and shaped like a crescent moon, and you can’t actually swim there—not unless you want to be dragged away and drowned by the intense rip tides only a dozen yards out in the water. But it’s a popular place for students to walk or lay out and tan when the weather is nice.

  To combat the chill of the night, some of the kids have built a roaring bonfire that fills the air with crackling sparks, bathing the sand in shifting, orange-tinged light.

  I walked down here with Bram. He’s recovered his spirits enough that he immediately seizes a dusty bottle of wine from one of his Penose and chugs half of it down.

  “Where’s the fucking music?” he shouts.

  “I’ve got a speaker,” Chay Wagner says. I already knew of her before I ever came to campus—the Night Wolves have a sort of celebrity cache, thanks to their racing team and tattoo shops and highly publicized concerts. But I’d know exactly who she was either way, because she also rooms with Anna. She’s a pretty girl, petite but strong, dressed like a rockstar in tight leather pants and an artfully slashed Guns N’ Roses t-shirt.

  The speaker she sets up atop a pile of driftwood is the same one that Anna uses when she practices dancing.

  The music pours out, boisterous and loud, echoing off the limestone cliffs.

  Daisy —
Ashnikko

  Spotify → geni.us/freshman-spotify

  Apple Music → geni.us/freshman-apple

  I forgot how long it’s been since I watched a movie or a TV show, or listened to music on earbuds. Kingmakers is a castle frozen in time. With everyone wearing uniforms and spending all their time studying or punishing their bodies in the gym, it might be today, or twenty years ago, or a hundred.

  Anna’s roommate is here with her speaker, but not Anna herself. I hadn’t planned to drink, but as an hour passes with only the same classmates I talk to every day, and not the one person I actually wanted to see, I become irritated and angry, and I take the remaining half-bottle of wine from Bram and chug it down.

  “There you go,” he says approvingly.

  I don’t usually drink with him. I don’t drink much at all, or use drugs. I have a hard enough time controlling myself without taking the governor off. Who knows what I might do if I were completely uninhibited.

  “Do you want to dance?” a curly-haired girl asks me nervously. I think she’s in my Combat class.

  “No,” I say.

  I don’t dance. I’d feel like a fool doing that publicly.

  “Okay. Sorry,” she mumbles, hurrying away with her face flaming.

  “What’s your problem?” Bram says. “She’s not bad looking.”

  “You fuck her, then,” I say.

  “I will if I can.” Bram grins. But he stays where he is, sipping a mixed drink out of a plastic cup. His wolf-like eyes are roaming the fifty or so students scattered around the fire. Like me, he doesn’t want just any girl. He wants the best he can get.

  Finally, I see what I was waiting for all this time: Anna Wilk.

  She strides across the sand, graceful as ever, while everyone else slips and stumbles on the uneven ground. Her long, silvery hair is loose, just like I hoped. It falls all the way down to her waist when she doesn’t have it twisted up in a bun or a ponytail.

  We’re not supposed to wear our normal clothes even on the weekend, but everybody does when they leave campus. Anna is wearing jeans that are more holes than material, her pale skin showing through the slashes, gleaming gold in the firelight. Her top is likewise a complicated assortment of straps and buckles. All I care about is how painfully tight it looks—how it shoves up her small, round breasts, and emphasizes the impossible circumference of her tiny waist.

  My cock is rock hard in my jeans and she’s only taken five steps across the sand.

  Bram follows my gaze. He lets out a low chuckle.

  “Ohhh . . .” he says. “That’s what you were waiting for.”

  I don’t answer him. Right behind Anna, following her as if they’re bound together by an invisible cord, is Leo fucking Gallo. He strides along behind her, tall like her, fit like her, glowing in the firelight like a golden lion.

  But he’s not made for her.

  I am.

  If Leo is the sun, then I’m the whole expanse of the night sky. And that’s where Anna belongs—wrapped up in my arms like the moon goddess she is.

  My need for her is so sharp and intense that I can taste it in my mouth like acid.

  Just as I expected, Leo’s lapdogs flock around him, alive with conversation about the upcoming challenges. They surround him, demanding his attention, distracting him from Anna.

  Anna doesn’t mind. She steps aside to let them speak to Leo. Spotting Chay by the fire, she joins her roommate instead and the two girls talk, giggling together about something I can’t hear. Chay picks up the speaker and Anna fiddles with it for a moment, turning up the volume and also changing to a different playlist.

  Daisy disappears, and Anna’s favorite song starts to play instead. I know it’s her favorite because she plays it over and over when she’s practicing in the empty cathedral.

  She doesn’t know how many times I’ve crept into the church to listen. I don’t watch her for long—I wouldn’t risk her catching me. But I always peek around the corner at her at least for a moment, so I’ll get an image of her burned in my brain, poised on tiptoe in the beams of multi-colored light, mid-pirouette or mid-leap, her long legs stretched out at the most outrageous angle.

  Love Chained — Cannons

  Spotify → geni.us/freshman-spotify

  Apple Music → geni.us/freshman-apple

  This song plays over and over in my head. It means Anna to me.

  I’m watching her talk to Chay. I’m seeing the emotions that pass over her face, subtle and fleeting like shadows on water. Anna is a mystery. I’ve only scratched the surface of what she keeps locked up inside of her.

  Feeling my eyes on her face, she glances up and our eyes meet.

  There’s no hiding the fact that I was watching her. I don’t want to hide it.

  I leave Bram standing alone and I stride over to her, shouldering my way through anyone that stands between us.

  “Hello,” Anna says cautiously.

  “I was waiting for you,” I say.

  Her face colors, and she shoots a quick glance at Chay who stands watching us, wide-eyed.

  I don’t give a fuck about her roommate.

  “Dance with me,” I say to Anna.

  I never dance. But that’s what comes out of my mouth, and I don’t take it back.

  Now it’s Leo she glances at—Leo talking and laughing with a dozen different friends. He doesn’t care that she’s over here. But she checks in with him anyway.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Anna says quietly.

  “Why not?” I demand.

  Her blue eyes meet mine, clear and blunt. “You know why,” she says.

  “Because of him?” I sneer.

  “I don’t want any trouble between you two.”

  “He has nothing to do with this,” I say, and my hand closes around her wrist. It’s the first time I’ve touched her since we collided in the changing room. Her skin is burning-hot from her proximity to the fire.

  Anna hesitates. Then she twists her wrist quickly, slipping it from my grasp before my fingers have even finished closing around it.

  “No,” she says firmly.

  She turns and walks away from me, back toward Leo.

  My teeth grind together so hard I think they might break.

  The rage I feel toward Leo Gallo is a hundred times hotter than this fire. I could set him aflame if he so much as looked at me.

  Chay regards me with open curiosity, hands stuffed in the pockets of her leather pants.

  “You’re full of surprises,” she says.

  Biting back what I’d like to say to her, I skulk back over to Bram instead.

  “No luck, huh?” Bram says, with an infuriating mixture of pity and smugness.

  My fists clench at my sides. I’m so angry I could hit him right in the face. Before I can do anything, he says, “Here,” and he presses something into my palm. It’s small and hard. A pill—round, yellow, smaller than my pinky nail.

  “There’s other ways,” Bram says, his eyes gleaming in the firelight.

  “What the fuck is this?” I say.

  “Drop it in her drink. She won’t turn you down after that.”

  A fucking roofie.

  I don’t want Anna passed out and helpless. I want her riding on top of me, her long hair like a curtain around us, her gorgeous face wild with the sensation of my cock sliding in and out of her.

  I’m about to drop the pill in the sand.

  Then I look over at Leo and Anna, and a different idea strikes me.

  “Thanks,” I say to Bram.

  I find the makeshift drink station on the edge of the sand and I mix up a cocktail—light on liquor, heavy on fruit punch. I drop the pill inside and swirl the cup to help it dissolve.

  Then I look for my quarry.

  I see her standing next to her redheaded friend, wearing a silky camisole top, her hair and makeup done with a pathetic level of care. All for nothing—I doubt Leo has glanced over at her once.

  I sidle up to them, holding the drink ca
sually as if it’s mine.

  “Enjoying the party?” I ask them.

  Gemma looks surprised that I’m talking to her. “I guess,” she says hesitantly.

  “How about you?” I say to her friend.

  “Aye,” the redhead says, with a little more enthusiasm.

  “Hey, didn’t you ace the last shooting match?” I say to Gemma.

  “Yes . . .” she says, frowning. “But how did you—”

  “Leo mentioned it,” I say. A lie—it was Valon who told me. But she’s too stupid to realize that Leo and I don’t talk about anything, let alone about her.

  “Oh!” she says, almost clapping her hands together with happiness. “He did?”

  Gemma throws a triumphant look at her friend. The redhead is frowning slightly, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “Speaking of Leo,” I say to Gemma, “have you congratulated him yet?

  “No . . .” she says hesitantly.

  “You should.” I thrust the drink into her hand. “Give him that—it’s his favorite. See if he wants to toast with you.”

  “Okay,” Gemma says eagerly.

  She hurries off across the sand, carrying her drink and the one I laced. I watch closely to make sure she gives Leo the right one. Sure enough, she puts it right in his hand, babbling something up at him. Leo listens with a bemused expression, then grins and shrugs and holds the drink aloft for a toast. His tight little group of friends cheers him, and then they all raise their glasses to their lips. Leo swallows his drink down in one draft.

  The redhead watches all this just like I do. Then she turns to me, her pale green eyes fixed on my face and her scowl deeper than ever.

  “Leo didn’t tell you that,” she says.

  “How would you know?” I say coldly.

  I turn and walk away from her.

  As I pass Anna’s speaker, I knock it with my elbow, as if by accident, and I kick a little sand over it with my heel as I keep on walking.

  12

  Anna

  You want to go to the party together?” Chay asks me.