I can’t help but smile. “Thank you, Ivy.”
“Not a problem.” Ivy throws an arm around my shoulders, which is somewhat awkward considering she’s half a head shorter than me. But the comfort works. “I’ll also track down Darren. He’s the custodian around here. We are definitely gonna need some gloves.”
“And maybe some bleach.”
I lean into her shoulder. Despite the knowledge that the rest of my afternoon will be knee-deep in garbage, I don’t feel so alone.
“That’s the last of it,” Ivy says, lowering the hose from the drawers.
Darren ended up being super helpful and provided us with goggles, forearm-length cleaning gloves, disinfectant, and directed us to the attached hose to wash down the furniture.
We also made three trips to Ivy’s dorm with the rolling luggage caddy like you see at hotels, my suitcases dripping unidentifiable goo onto the walkway as we traveled, and we took over three washers and two industrial-sized dryers to try and salvage my clothes.
Evening has fallen, and I take one glove off and swipe the back of my hand against my forehead. “Good, because I think I’ve gone nose blind.”
“Consider that a gift,” Ivy says, then drops the hose to the ground and checks her watch. “My stomach’s grown a giant hunger-monster. You ready for dinner?”
I glance down at my clothes, the front of my mom’s old shirt dampened with water and … brown liquid. My jeans haven’t fared much better, either. “Does this place have room service?”
Ivy laughs. “That’s where the luxury ends. We all have to eat at the dining hall regardless of status. We’ll shower in my dorm, and I can lend you some clothes until yours are dry. If we hurry, we’ll catch the last bell.”
“Bell, huh?” I say as we begin our trek from Thorne House to Richardson House.
“Not a cowbell, if that’s where your peasant mind is going.” She says it as a joke, then points to the east. “See the bell tower? It’ll ring at seven PM.”
I pause and stare at the brick laid tower, at least five stories high, with an open, white-beamed cube at the top and a large brass bell in the middle.
“Is there an actual person that goes up there and rings it?” I ask.
“Ha, no. Briarcliff isn’t hiding a hunchback. They’ve embraced the technology to build an electronic lever up there that moves the bell at specified times.”
“Wow. Cool,” I say, then rush to catch up when Ivy starts walking again.
“While I’m your tour guide, I might as well point out the line of trees over there. See?”
I do. It’s sort of like a manmade forest at the end of our flattened landscape on the west, lining the school grounds for privacy rather than promoting nature. But it’s thick, and I can’t see through it.
As if she reads my thoughts, Ivy continues, “There’s a huge cliff on the other side, called Lovers’ Leap. We aren’t supposed to go anywhere near it, but schoolkids are always hopping the gate. Certain people are known to go there. Those of us who haven’t made use of it call it Fuckboys’ Leap.”
I find myself staring long and hard through the trees. Chase comes unbidden into my thoughts, his haughty, handsome face like a physical alarm for my body. “People like Chase?”
“How astute of you.” Ivy elbows me as we dawdle. “Him and his crew, yeah. And Piper and hers. There’s plenty of intermingling, if you know what I mean.”
I remember the group of guys that were with Chase on the upper balcony when I entered Briarcliff.
“I can point them out to you in the dining hall,” Ivy says with a secret smile, and this time I elbow her.
“I have zero interest in that clique,” I say, and I’m half-honest, at least. I want nothing to do with Piper and her band of merry thieves. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
We’re drawing close to Richardson Place, so I make it quick. “Has anyone ever stood up to those assholes and won?”
Ivy’s step slow. “Those people are bad for you. I hope you know that. They’re alluring and have a ton of charm, but none of it is real.”
I frown. “Did something happen to you? With them?”
Her throat bobs. “Something happens to everyone who comes across that group.”
I whisper, “Like what?”
But Ivy blinks out of whatever memory she fell into. “My advice … don’t think too hard on it. Piper and her followers, they’re drawn to shiny new things. But just like fickle, overly-groomed house cats, they’ll get bored and move on to the next sparkly object.”
“I may not be here by choice, but now that I am, it’s to get into a good college, that’s all. Not get caught up in a bunch of drama.”
“That’s a great attitude to have,” Ivy says with a wide smile. But her lips are too stretched, and it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I hope you can keep it going.”
8
Ivy’s dorm, Richardson Place, is a one-story brick building stretched wide to hold about ten apartments.
Ivy unlocks door 5, smack in the middle, and she mutters about neighbors against both walls as she strolls inside.
I follow suit, and I can’t say I’m shocked, but…
“Whoa,” I say.
Ivy tosses her backpack onto her bed. “What?”
“This place is nice.” And I mean it.
While not the opulence of Piper’s dorm (which I refuse to call mine, too) with Persian carpeting, high ceilings, and an en suite bathroom, Ivy’s apartment is still way better than any of the places my mom and I rented before she found a stable career.
Two twin beds have headboards with built-in shelving measuring all the way to the ceiling. Two nightstands with drawers are also attached and nestled between both beds. A pair of desks stand against the opposite wall.
“You think Briarcliff gets their furniture custom made?” I ask as my finger drifts across Ivy’s desk. It seems to fit perfectly in its spot.
Ivy snorts. “I wouldn’t put it past some alumni putting in funds for it. You know, Piper’s family owns the furniture conglomerate Comfy-At-Home. I bet it’s them.”
“Huh,” I muse. “How nice for them, helping out the less fortunate.”
Ivy snorts again. “Communal bathrooms are through that door there, and down the back hallway at the end. You can borrow a towel and some clothes until your stuff is dry.”
“Thanks. I appreciate you helping me out.”
“Have you found another orphan, Ivy?”
Said door widens to reveal a girl with long, damp hair, ample bosom wrapped into a towel, and a scowl.
“Callie, meet my roommate, Eden.” With her back turned to Eden, Ivy adds an eye roll.
“So, you’re the fresh blood, huh?” Eden looks me up and down.
“I guess,” I say. “I had no idea I was this interesting.”
“You’re not,” Eden says. “The bobbleheads around here are simply bored.”
“Bobbleheads?”
“You know, the yes-men. And women,” Eden says. She pulls on a drawer and starts rifling through. “That’s all anyone is around here. I assume you’re no different. Just like Ivy Dearest, over here.”
I raise a brow. “You’ve known me for two seconds.”
Eden raises her eyes from her underwear to meet mine. “I’m great at what I do. Watch out for Ivy. She may seem like an outsider, but she’s not.”
“Anyway,” Ivy says, coming up beside me and holding a folded towel with some clothes on top. “You remember where I said the bathrooms are?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I take the stack from Ivy.
“It’s just a plain T-shirt and leggings. Hope you don’t mind. We have to wear our uniforms for breakfast and lunch. The one restriction at dinner is no jeans or flip-flops.”
“Am I going to my school dining hall, or a formal restaurant?” I say with a smile.
“You’re going into the wolves’ den.” Eden says it without cracking a smile, and my stomach flutters with the kismet of using the sa
me comparison Chase did.
“I thought it was referred to as the Wolf’s Den,” I say.
“Off you go, Callie,” Ivy says to me. “I’ll put Eden back on her leash to keep her from biting.”
Eden bares her teeth at Ivy but manages to do it without moving any other muscle on her face.
While it looks like so much fun having Eden as a roommate—about as enjoyable as being paired with Piper—I do what Ivy suggests and step into the hallway.
I find the showers, pleased they’re deserted, and I clean and change within fifteen minutes. Ivy eventually joins me in the bathroom, and we make some friendly talk as we get ready and Ivy applies some fresh make-up. Asking Ivy to borrow some is overkill, since we just met, so I resign myself to going barefaced and wet-haired to my first dining hall experience.
I’m glad for the spare hair tie I always keep around my wrist, and finger-comb my brown strands until they’re so fed up, they surrender into a top knot.
Ivy and I venture to the central building but use a side door. I admire the ease in which she floats from building to building, using side doors and shortcuts, and I hope to emulate it soon. They look like easy escape routes.
We cut through the foyer, and, as if my eyes are tugged on by an unseen force, I glance up. This time, no boys peer over the balcony’s railing and into my soul.
“Is the Wolf’s Den for all students?” I ask Ivy as we pass under it. “Or just the popular kids?”
“Technically, it’s a lounge area for seniors, but the only seniors that tend to use it have connections to either Chase or Piper.”
I snort. “You’re telling me Chase calls dibs like a school bully on a playground?”
Ivy chuckles. “Still got a mind toward Chase, huh?”
“Ew. No,” I say. “I saw him up there when I came in with Headmaster Marron and Piper.”
I deliberately fail to mention how his stare bolted through me like lightning, so much so that my heart was singed upon contact.
I rationalize that this was before I truly met him and saw him with Piper. I can’t help how my body reacts to a gorgeous guy, but I can certainly have my mind rein in my hormones once he proves what a jackoff he is.
Ivy pulls one side of large, mahogany double doors, saying, “You’ll come to learn that Chase gets ample privileges compared to the rest of us seniors.”
“Why?” I ask, but either Ivy doesn’t hear me or chooses not to answer, because the moment we step into the dining hall, she gestures to the left. “There they are.”
Across the multitude of tables, some seating six, others four, and the ones around the edges two, I find who Ivy’s talking about. Four guys are clustered around a far table, the ones from the Wolf’s Den, but an invisible magnet pulls me to the one in the center.
Damn it. Chase.
“From left to right, you have Riordan Hughes, Tempest Callahan, the infamous Chase Stone, and James Windsor. Commit those names to memory so you can avoid them at all costs.”
“Ah, you lost me at Tempest.”
Ivy gets my joke, because she laughs. “And you thought your name was extra. Let’s go.”
Ivy draws me to the side where a trussed-up buffet with a bunch of silver platters awaits us.
The dining hall is decorated with pure, unadulterated church-like excess. Four chandeliers hang in a row, centered in the arched, two-story high ceiling. Massive stone columns frame the stained glass-windows, but I don’t linger on the details for too long, because people keep looking at me funny as we pass.
Maybe it’s my sensitivity and hyperawareness at being the new girl. I suppose it’s interesting to these people when a stranger walks onto territory they’ve been trampling since they were in diapers.
I’m ogling the table-side pasta bar containing noodles I’ve never even heard of when I hear my name whispered behind me. I throw a look over my shoulder just in time to see a girl turn back to her plate, with her five friends dipping their heads low to hear her better.
Hesitating, I swivel to the pasta bar and ask the chef for spaghetti Bolognese. He nods and gets to work.
“Ivy,” I mutter. She’s deciding between a Caesar or garden salad beside me. “Is something going on?”
“Other than Spaghetti Monday, my favorite dinner day?” Ivy picks up a premade Caesar and places it on her tray. “No, why?”
“Because … people keep staring at me.”
My instincts whisper their caution, and I lift my chin, searching for the source of that warning.
Chase.
He stares back, draped across a chair angled to see me better. His tie’s askew, but that’s because Piper is twisting it around her hand as she leans her hip against the table and tries to win his attention. His friends blur in my periphery, but I take note that Piper’s entourage has also joined the table and made it a party of eight.
“Yep,” Ivy says once she follows where my attention’s landed. “And there we have the four witches of Briarcliff. Piper, Falyn Clemonte, Violet Tobias-Hayes, and Willow Reyes.”
I purse my lips. “It’s fitting there’s four of them, you know, to round out the evil coupling.”
Ivy smiles, then nudges me to accept the plate of hot pasta the chef’s holding out. “You’re not wrong. Emma Loughrey used to make it five, but she left a few years ago.”
“Left … as in dropped out?” I ask as I rebalance my tray, laden with too many fancy food items I couldn’t resist. “Why?”
“You’re always asking that question as if I have some kind of dark and stormy response,” Ivy says, laughing.
Chase won’t take his eyes off me, and curiously, the others stare me down, too.
“Can you blame me?” I say as we navigate to the scholarship table.
As we turn, I catch Piper’s snake-like smile. She holds up her phone, waving it like she has a carrot on a stick. She gestures with her chin for Ivy to check hers.
“Maybe not,” Ivy answers me, then, while balancing her tray with one arm, she cautiously pulls out her phone. “Emma … left. There was drama. Nothing I should tell you on your first day, though. But … oh, yikes.”
Ivy’s eyes pop wide as she stares at her phone’s screen.
“What?” I ask, and when I get no immediate answer, I twist so I can see the screen, too.
“Fuck,” I whisper-yell.
It’s a picture of me plundering Thorne House’s dump, my lower legs encased in two trash bags and tied with shoelaces so I wouldn’t ruin my sneakers. My hair’s in a messy top-knot. I’m wearing protective goggles and blue sanitary gloves, and there are streaks of … glop … on my exposed arms and chest as I’m stepping up to the dumpster to look inside.
Did I mention I’m also holding up a thong? My panties, found at the top of the pile.
It doesn’t end there. I’ve been made into a meme, and underneath my beautifully stinky self are the words, TRASH BITCH.
Ivy swipes left to a .gif of an opossum screaming and baring its teeth inside a dumpster. Blinking scroll text reads, MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME, TRASH BITCH.
9
“Good Lord, she’s lame,” Ivy says as she blacks out her screen. Likely for my benefit.
I rub my lips together and look up. Phones that aren’t switched to vibrate start going off. After reading their phones, heads pop up like groundhogs and beady eyes stare at me before students start laughing.
“Oh, God,” I say, my stomach swinging dangerously.
“Forget it.” Ivy presses her hand to my back and pushes me forward. “Just a stupid prank.”
Ivy may be able to direct my feet, but she can’t force my head forward. I glance back at Piper, who’s got a hand to her chest and laughing. Chase, however, is unfazed, almost bored.
“Sit,” Ivy says, and when I don’t, she plants a hand on my shoulder and shoves. I land in my seat with a smack.
Ivy sits beside me, and though I feel like I’m as red as the spaghetti sauce I’m staring at, I can tell she’s landed warning looks on each a
nd every person at this table.
“The only trash bitch in this room is her,” I hear someone mutter across from me.
It’s Eden, Ivy’s roommate.
“Eat your food,” Ivy says, patting my hand. My arms have gone limp around my tray. “You win by ignoring it.”
I blink. Swallow. Straighten my spine. If I can get through my mom’s death, I can get through this shit, shit, shit of a first day. I just have to turn my luck around.
I say to Ivy while attempting a smile, “There’s no way I can leave without eating the five-star cuisine in front of me.”
Ivy raises her fork in salute. “That’s the spirit!”
Smiling, I cheers my fork with hers and dig in, refusing to look behind me and at that table ever again. Like Ivy keeps reminding, no good can come from gaining their interest.
But Ivy isn’t done talking. “Callie, meet the rest of my crew. You’ve met Eden, but this is Paul, Luke, Mercy, and—”
Someone’s tray, filled with dirty dishes and smeared food, lands on our table.
I jump back at the sound, and Ivy flies against her chair.
“Seriously, dude?” she says to the student who did it. He just smirks and keeps walking.
Blinking rapidly, Ivy says to me, “What the heck was th—”
Bang.
A second tray lands on the original, used silverware and flat soda spilling onto our plates.
Mercy, a cute blonde with ringlets, jolts to a stand, hands raised as cola drips from her skirt. “Callie, what did you do to them?”
My mouth opens and closes. “Who? Chase? Piper? I’ve been here half a day—!”
Crash. More trays. More plates. More glasses.
This time, they’re coming from a line of students, some cutting in and throwing their tray at us before scampering away.
“Screw this, I’m out,” Paul says, and Luke throws his napkin down and follows suit.
“Thanks, guys,” Ivy calls after them, but says to me, “They have the right idea. We need to leave.”
I glance furtively at the table, noticing Eden is already long gone. During Ivy’s and my brief exchange, Mercy and the girl I never got the name of left as well.
Rival (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 1) Page 4