by S Doyle
Not the Snobs. Which was why it was futile to be upset about it.
“Let’s just forget it,” I said. “It’s over.”
“Friends again?”
“Whatevs,” I said. “But don’t expect me to be cheery company today. I’m still upset in general.”
“With good reason,” he allowed.
“Hey, do you know about the rumor that Wick and Gigi are dating?”
“I do.”
“And?”
“And what? Wick and Gigi are dating,” he said, as if that was the most normal thing in the world.
“Uh…does she know about the List?”
“She does,” he admitted. Then he looked around to make sure we couldn’t be overheard by anyone. “She was so outraged when she found out about it, she wanted to do something. See what she could learn about who might be behind the betting ring.”
My eyes narrowed as it finally made sense. “You sent your sister in as a spy.”
“I didn’t send my sister anywhere,” Fitz said. “Gi’s got a mind of her own and wanted to do this. She also knows how to protect herself if Wick gets a little too handsy. But for now, she’s got eyes and ears around Wick and every one of his acquaintances.”
“Has she learned anything?”
“Yes, that Wick is in fact a total bore. Oh, and that your new friend Locke is a drug dealer.”
“What?” It was stupid to be surprised but I was. “I mean he’s always vaping. I assumed something illegal. That’s different from dealing though.”
“Wick bought some E from him. Gigi was there.”
I bit my bottom lip. This was all getting more serious than I thought it should be. Gigi was a freshman. She didn’t need be around illegal drug deals.
“I don’t know, Fitz. If Wick finds out Gi’s just using him…you know what they did to me. What they did to Star. I can’t imagine the lengths they would go to humiliate her.”
He nodded somberly. “I know. After last night, I’ve already told her to start backing off. She’s stubborn but she’s not stupid. Are you worried about Kit and Lyd? That someone has plans for them, too?”
“Always. They’re so completely ignorant about how serious it all is,” I said. “Why does it have to be this serious? They’re just kids.”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. Then he leaned in a little closer. “Can we talk about something else?”
I raised my eyebrows intentionally. “There’s more beyond my sister’s humiliation, your sister’s participation in a drug deal, my plot for revenge and a virgin betting ring we’re trying to stop?”
“One more thing.” He smirked. “Chas’s parents are going to be out of town this weekend. Obviously, he’s having a party. I think we should go together.”
I blinked a few times while that translated in my head.
“Are you asking me out on a date?”
At this point there was nothing that could shock me about my life.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Bennet. It’s not a date at all. I’m going to be at the party, you’re going to be at the party. All we’re talking about is me picking you up in my car and taking you there.”
“Which sounds suspiciously like a date.”
He leaned in even closer as if there were ears all around us when the truth was we were basically alone in this corner of the library.
“It’s only a date if I kiss you at the end of it, which I have no intention of doing.”
I looked at his lips and felt something plunge in my stomach.
“You don’t want to kiss me?” I whispered, still looking at his lips.
“No. Not even remotely.”
He was so close our breath was touching if not our mouths.
“I guess that’s not a date then.”
“Exactly what I said,” he whispered back. His nose brushed against mine. “I’ll pick you up?”
I nodded because if I opened my mouth again, the words kiss me were going to escape and that would be absolutely tragic.
“Excellent,” he said, backing away and standing up from the table. He’d been brushing his nose against mine, his lips nearly touching me, and now he was standing and walking away as if we’d made a deal to swap class notes.
“See you around, Bennet.”
What the hell had just happened?
I made my way toward the cafeteria in a little bit of a daze. How was it, exactly, that Fitz had gone from my mortal enemy to something more? Something other. I felt like I was falling into a trap I wasn’t working very hard to get out of. Like my ankle was caught in a bear trap and I was like, oh well, do with me what you will large bear.
The cafeteria was its normal level of loud and chaotic. I searched for our spot and was pleased to find Reen and Janie already there. I needed to tell them about Locke. Reen needed to know what she was getting into with him.
I plopped down next to them and pulled my lunch bag from the satchel I used to carry around my laptop and notebooks.
“What’s the matter with you?” Janie asked. “You look like someone just knocked you on the head. OMG did you get pushed around again?”
I shook my head and closed my eyes as if that might remove the no doubt witless expression I was wearing.
Except when I opened them both Janie and Reen were still looking at me like I was a math problem that needed to be solved.
“I’m going to Chas’s party this weekend. With Fitz,” I blurted.
They both sat up straighter, while I was suddenly relaxed now that I’d thrown that bomb on the table.
“Go on. Say it,” I told them. “Tell me that this is some sort of game he’s playing with me. That I’m the mouse to his cat.”
Janie’s lips quirked. “Games are meant to be fun.”
I glared at her.
“How does this fit in for our plans for revenge?” Reen wanted to know.
I shrugged. “I’ll get my revenge on the Snobs by having the last laugh with one of the most popular guys in school? You know Anne will bust a nut when she sees me show up with Fitz. In fact, they all will. This is stupid. I don’t even like parties. They’re cramped and loud and everyone is drunk within seconds and slurring their words.”
“And you end the night running from the police while your legs get torn up by bushes and branches and shit,” Reen added.
She’d had that happened to her freshman year when she’d escaped from the police at a Woods blowout that got a little out of control. Since then, she’d always mapped out an escape route any time she went to a high-school event where there would be drinking.
“Or, you know, you could just go and have fun,” Janie pointed out. “No agenda. No looking for the shoe to drop. You could talk to Fitz. Really talk to him.”
“Janie, are you high? What on earth do I have to talk to Fitz about other than how I’m going to crush him academically this year and leave him howling like a baby in the corner? That is not party conversation!”
I loved how I was covering up the fact I’d already shared with him my deepest secret, something even Reen and Janie didn’t know, with such righteous indignation.
Apparently, I was a much more competent liar than I realized.
Or maybe Janie had been right. Maybe I was too much of a coward to face what I was actually feeling, and I was suffering from self-delusion.
Wait. What was I actually feeling?
“So don’t talk to him.” Reen smiled and gave her sexy pout. “You could, you know, do other things with him.”
I wanted to slap her. I wanted her to take that sexy look off her face. I wanted to her to immediately retract any idea I might be sexually interested in Fitz.
Instead, I asked, “You think…you think Fitz is into me? Like that?”
“Duh!” Janie said, slapping a hand to her forehead to make a point about how thick I was being. “He’s been into you like that for a while. I think he’s finally figured it out and decided now is the time to make his move.”
“Shut up!” I said. �
��You’re making that up. Look where we sit in this room.” I reminded her. “He’s not crossing over to the right side of the popularity line for me. Trust me. No, he’s got some other agenda.”
Janie shook her head, but Reen at least understood where I was coming from.
“Well, the only way to find out what his agenda is is to go with him to the party,” Reen said. “And if you have to seduce him to get him to reveal his secrets, that’s just what you’re going to have to do. You can borrow some of my seduction clothes.”
“As if I would know how to seduce anyone. That’s your area of expertise.”
Reen wiggled her eyebrows as if confirm my statement. “That’s why I’m willing to lend you my clothes.”
I could not wrap my mind around seduction clothes. Fortunately, Reen presented me an opportunity to change the subject.
“Speaking of your latest conquest, you should know something about Locke.”
“Locke isn’t a conquest,” she protested then shrugged. “He’s just…Locke.”
“Yes, well apparently he’s not just a drug user, but he deals as well.”
“Oh, I know,” Reen said casually, as if it were no big deal.
“Really? Then you should stay away from him,” Janie said. “You don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“Not true. Locke is exactly the kind of trouble I like. He’s elusive, though. It took me days to realize he was dealing. In fact, I have suspicions he might be a narc.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Fits, doesn’t it? New student, completely bored with class, but also seems to know everything already. Hasn’t instantly fallen at my feet in worship. Maybe because he knows I’m not eighteen yet?”
Janie shook her head. “I don’t think narcs can actually deal drugs to catch people. It’s entrapment or something.”
“He can if they’re not really drugs,” Reen countered. “If they’re say…melatonin and they make you a little sleepy and that’s all.”
I laughed. “That would be hysterical. If Wick thought he was buying E, only to end up taking a nap.”
Just then my phone started vibrating in my back pocket, which would not have been unusual if there wasn’t a consistent binging sound across the entire table, the entire room. A simultaneous text was being sent to everyone.
“That’s me. I won!”
I twisted on the bench seat following the sound of the shout. Jeff, the football-playing, girl-pushing thug, was high fiving every guy at his table. He, of course, sat on the left side of the room. Second table.
Suddenly everyone was talking. Guys were chortling. Girls were whispering. I looked over to where Fitz typically sat, but he and Ed weren’t there. Only Heath, who seemed entirely unaffected by the current commotion.
“What is it?” I asked Janie, who was reading her phone.
“It went out through the school’s emergency announcement system. Somebody must have got into the principal’s office,” Janie muttered. “Or hacked her computer.”
“What?” I shouted, pulling out my own phone to see what was there.
That’s when I heard it. The scream from just outside the cafeteria.
High pitched. Horrible. I didn’t stop to think, just got up and ran through the cafeteria doors into the hallway with a sense of dread in my stomach.
I stopped when I saw her. Standing by a row of freshman lockers. Surrounded by her classmates who were pointing and laughing at her. Streaks of tears streaming down her face.
The guilt I felt was awful because, honestly, my first feeling upon seeing her was relief.
Relief it wasn’t Kit or Lyd or even Gigi.
No, it was Sarah Parker. Who I’d seen hanging around junior Todd Sheldon these past few weeks. Pushing through the crowd around her I pulled the phone out of her hand and immediately deleted the text. She didn’t need to see that again.
“Everyone knows,” she whispered. “Everyone…”
“It’s okay.” Only it wasn’t. It was sick and twisted and I wanted to scream at the people behind it. “Everyone get to class. Now!”
There must have been enough force in my voice, because it worked. Students scattered leaving me with Sarah.
I knew she didn’t have older siblings who went to the school here, which meant there was no one she could turn to to help her. Really help her. I didn’t trust any friends she might have not to snicker behind her back.
She looked up at me, her face desperate.
“Are my parents going to know?”
I didn’t know how to answer that without knowing what kind of relationship she had with her parents. All I knew is that I had to get her out of this school. Now. At least for today.
“I’m taking you to the nurse. You’re going to say you have really bad cramps and you need to go home.”
She nodded, understanding quickly my intention.
“What about Todd?” she whispered as we walked through the now empty hallways as class was in session.
“What about him?”
“He’s my boyfriend. He’ll help me, right?”
I didn’t know how to answer that question, either. Todd was pretty clueless about most things, and I would have thought a fairly decent guy. Except Sarah was only fourteen and, just looking at her ashen white face, I knew she hadn’t been ready for any of this to happen to her.
Would he still date her? Or had he gotten what he wanted? Leaving Sarah alone with her humiliation and now a tarnished reputation.
“You’ll need to talk to him yourself,” I said. “But Sarah, know this. You don’t have to let this define you, okay? You don’t let anyone tell you who you are. You make that choice. You’re in control of what you do from here on out. Not what they say about you. Got it?”
She nodded, but I don’t know if it meant anything to her. I only knew I was on a new crusade. I was going to stop this stupid betting ring, not just for Kit and Lyd and Gigi. But for every freshman girl in this school, now and yet to come.
Now I was in it for the sisterhood.
13
Fitz
“And everyone knew. The whole school knew in an instant,” Beth said even as she buckled her seatbelt.
I don’t know why it was, but she looked good in my car. Like she fit. Like she was always meant to be in the passenger seat.
“I know,” I told her. “Ed and I were in the gym lifting weights when we got the text.”
This was the first time Beth and I had a chance to really discuss what had happened on Monday. Between her work schedule and my football practice schedule we hadn’t been able to see much of each other.
So when I picked her up for the party, her greeting was about how we had to put an end to the betting ring now.
“It was awful,” she said. “You should have seen Sarah’s face.”
I was just as pissed as she was but there was nothing I could do about it. That only pissed me off more, that I had no direction for my anger. Not feeling like I could trust Locke anymore, I was doing everything I could to poke around and ask questions myself.
But everyone knew Gigi was on that list, so everyone knew my thoughts about it. No one was telling me anything because I might have been the one person with enough clout to put an end to it.
And the money was real. Word was Jeff had been paid out over a thousand dollars for his bet.
“The money,” I said.
“What?”
I turned to her. “Maybe that’s the angle we should be following. The money. Who needs it the most?”
“The Havenots,” Beth said instantly. Then she huffed out a laugh. “And me. I’m not behind it in case you were wondering.”
“I didn’t think so. But what if there are more people like you. People we think have money but are really broke and struggling. If you were a sick and depraved person, you might sink to such depths to save for your family. Wouldn’t you?”
She lifted her hands. “I don’t know, Fitz, I’m not a sick and depraved person.”
“I thought we decided we don’t trust him,” she said.
I loved the way she was using the word we.
“We don’t. But we need to be more like him. We need to look deeper. Harder.”
“I know. One time in class I watched him watch everyone else in the room. When you looked, really looked, you could see people’s secrets. He saw me doing it and asked me if I was having fun. It rattled me.”
“Then we have a plan. On Monday we start watching every one of our classmates more closely. Any changes in patters, behaviors. Anything that might lend itself to a sense of desperation.”
“Why wait until Monday? We should start tonight. We can use this party as an opportunity, especially when everyone will be drunk. Who knows what secrets we could get them to spill?”
I frowned. Really? That’s what she wanted to do on our first not date?
“I had other plans for this evening,” I said with a low voice. Geezus, I sounded like a serial killer.
“Like what? Because you said this wasn’t a date.”
“I said that? Oh, that’s right. I said that.”
“Yes. You said you didn’t want to kiss me. That you just wanted to drive me to this party. Which, really Fitz, now that I think about it, doesn’t make any sense at all. Why me? Wick basically alluded to it when he asked you if you were fucking me now. I’m not popular. I’m not that pretty. Now you know I’m basically poor. What is your agenda? Why have you been nice to me? Or have you been? Was it really just a trap to get me to do the fashion show with you? And if it was, then what is your ultimate plan? Because I’m telling you right now—”
Mid rant, I unbuckled my seat belt and turned to her, wrapping my hand around the back of her neck and shutting her up the only way I knew how. With my mouth.
I sucked in her gasp of air and waited. That precious second when you know you’ve crossed a line, but you don’t know how it will be received. I had a sense of what Beth felt for me, even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself. Now it was time to find out if I was right.