Why I Loathe Sterling Lane

by Ingrid Paulson

  One eyebrow shot up, a solitary sign of life in an otherwise impassive face. “Rulebreaker? Are we in kindergarten?” Then he winked. “Don’t look so uptight. I’m not staying. I fly business class.” He motioned toward the far corner, to a solitary seat under the open window with an unobstructed view of the football field. Outside, a group of girls were prancing around, rehearsing some sort of gymnastics routine.

  Then he produced a money clip with a fat wad of cash. He pulled it right out of the tiny square shirt pocket that was intended for decoration only. He was carrying roughly a grand around like it was change for the parking meter. Money that would make a sizable dent in Cole’s problem.

  I stared as Sterling peeled off one crisp green bill after another, until I had to look away. Right down at the flash of his yellow shorts. He was dressed like he’d just blown in from a beach in Bermuda.

  “Yellow shorts don’t comply with the dress code,” I pointed out. “And boat shoes are definitely not dress shoes. Either way, shoes require socks.” I paused. “And you need a haircut.”

  He let his eyes search all over me in imitation. “Checking me out?”

  “Your infractions are impossible to miss.” I hated the flush creeping up my cheeks. “And I think you spend a lot of time making sure of that.”

  He laughed like I was making a joke. And a good one, at that. He even tipped back all the way in his chair, momentarily off-balance. Then he folded five crisp twenties in half and set them on my desk. They formed a little green pup tent pitched in the middle of the chipped faux-wood surface.

  “That should cover it,” he said.

  I stared at the bills—at this offering from the gods presented by the devil himself. “Cover what?”

  “Your time.” He was already rising out of his seat. “There’s a monthly bonus based on performance. Sliding scale. Double for an A—you can extrapolate the rest. Just learned I’ve got a literature paper due next week, apologies for the late notice, but I’m sure you’re up for the challenge.”

  Cheat? Me? He assumed I’d jeopardize my entire future for a few paltry pennies, so that he didn’t have to work?

  Every muscle in my body convulsed in conflicted horror. All at once. I had a Sterling Lane–induced seizure.

  I crumpled the bills and shoved them back into his hand.

  His mouth curled into a wicked grin that should have warned me this wasn’t over yet. “And to think I heard you were an absolute hag. I accept your generous offer of complimentary assistance.”

  “I’m not offering you anything,” I replied. “Except the chance to leave. Right now. Before I take this to the headmaster.” I turned, exiting that conversation before things got even worse. But an unmistakable odor demanded all of my attention.

  “Is that—that’s not just coffee,” I stammered, pointing to the Thermos. While I could definitely detect the rich aroma of an expensive Italian roast, there was an undercurrent of something else. Something that had no business being anywhere but the crystal decanter in my father’s study.

  He looked at the steaming liquid, appraising it. “I take my coffee Irish on a morning like this.”

  Shock rendered me momentarily speechless. I needed to shift my focus away from this black hole of vice and back to my notes, but he was such a train wreck I couldn’t turn away.

  “A morning like what? A morning with classes?” The last word turned into a shriek. Curious eyes flickered my way, so I slid lower in my seat.

  “How rude of me.” He switched back into charming mode. “I’m not the only one who has to sit through this BS. Allow me.” He pulled a second insulated silver coffee mug out of his bag and actually started filling it.

  All I could manage was a slight shake of the head. There were no words. No words to convey the shock and horror building inside me.

  “Oh, right,” he said, winking. “You should stay sharp. Knew my grades were safe in your hands. Four-point-oh and all that. I look forward to doing business with you.”

  “I think I’ve been more than clear. I want nothing to do with you. I will not help you cheat—now or ever.”

  Sterling circled me until he stood directly in front of me, then he placed his palms flat on the surface of my desk, leaning down so that he was practically at eye level. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  “No, we won’t. I’m not susceptible to your little games.”

  “Challenge accepted.” He gave me a condescending little smirk that made my temper flare.

  “This isn’t a challenge,” I said. “It’s a non-negotiable, unilateral decree.”

  “Everything is negotiable.” He slipped the words out as he strolled away—the exact second class started, like he had it on good authority I never left my chair once class started. It was that important to him to secure the last word.

  I took out my notebook and documented every detail of Sterling Lane’s depravity, even though I’d never forget even the tiniest little tidbit. Not as long as I lived.

  Sterling Lane wasn’t just an annoyance—he was a public menace. And I had every intention of staying as far away from him as our tiny campus would allow.

  Reason 4:

  He's set his sights on corrupting my brother.

  And even if he won’t admit it,

  Cole needs my guidance to make the

  right decision. He’s too trusting and

  therefore vulnerable to the

  influence of Sterling Lane.

  I spent the afternoon studying, and in between history and physics homework, I slipped into the tiny kitchen on the lower level of the dorm. It had been all but deserted since the new microwave was installed in the upstairs lounge. No one but me did any real cooking—they just microwaved popcorn or heated up canned soup.

  The kitchen was only minimally equipped, so I kept my own baking supplies in my closet. Baking was a secret I shared only with Cole.

  Whenever life presented an insurmountable obstacle, here I could literally whip a solution together. The kitchen was where I did my best thinking.

  I always started by premeasuring all ingredients and arranging them in optimal order—designed for ease of integrating the powders with the liquids and solids. I melted the butter and stirred in the sugar and eggs. With each beat of the whisk as I blended in the cocoa, the tension in my shoulders uncoiled. By the time I put the batch of Cole’s favorite double-fudge brownies in the oven, even the worry line between my eyebrows had smoothed out into nothingness. I’d give half to Cole and take the rest to tomorrow’s tutoring session at the elementary school. At the start of the semester, I’d emailed the parents for permission to give the occasional treat. And to inquire about any food-related allergies.

  I’d let Sterling provoke me. I’d been mean and let all my flaws come out and hurl themselves right at him. Regardless of what he’d done, Mom would have wanted me to be kind. Cole would, too. Shame made my eyes brim with tears that I angrily blinked away. Because I wouldn’t let Sterling get the best of me like that again.

  Now all I needed was to see Cole. I didn’t have a solution for his problem—not yet. But I had been crafting a story we could tell Dad. Something that would loosen the chokehold on his purse strings. Nothing—not Cole’s problems, not Sterling Lane—could shatter my focused, Zen-like concentration.

  Tupperware of brownies in hand, I knocked on the door to room 412. A voice that was neither Cole’s nor his roommate’s called out, “Entrez.”

  I turned the doorknob slowly. Who other than Cole or his roommate, Aiden, would be in their room greeting visitors?

  The door swung open, away from me, taking my stomach with it.

  Sterling Lane was lounging in a worn but expensive-looking leather club chair that was definitely not Sablebrook standard issue. And therefore contraband.

  A mistake. I’d made a horrible, nightmarish mistake.

  I took a step back, grabbing the knob to pull the door closed behind myself, but like Pandora, I was too late to shove that evil back into
its box.

  “Room service?” Sterling said, shifting in his chair. “Hardly necessary if you want your job back. A simple apology would suffice.” The words were coated in a caliber of confidence that made my skin crawl. “Tell you what, I’m feeling generous today. Let’s say one-fifty per essay instead.” He pulled out his wallet.

  I had to get out of there fast or I was seriously in danger of hurling Cole’s lacrosse stick right at that smug face. I shook my head and clutched the Tupperware of brownies tighter against my chest. I wouldn’t put it past him to somehow convince me they were actually his.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” I said. “I’ll never do your schoolwork.”

  “Oh, did you want something else, then?” He shot me a filthy little smile that startled the air right out of my lungs.

  I blinked, once again frozen in place by the implications of his words. There was no way to respond to that. I took another step back, away. He couldn’t mean it that way. I was misreading social cues, as always. That was the only logical explanation.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My temples pounded with my racing pulse.

  “Oh? That blush tells me otherwise,” he replied. “It tells me quite a bit, actually.”

  He reached behind himself and cracked the window. A thin and very welcome breeze crept through the room, ruffling the loose papers on his desk. He pulled a small silver box out of his pocket. He was wearing a silk smoking jacket, like he’d just time-traveled here from the Roaring Twenties.

  “This is Cole’s room,” I said. “Why are you here?”

  But I knew. There was only one reason Sterling would be sitting there, in a chair that was so clearly his. It explained all too well why he knew so much about me. Knowing my gregarious, warmhearted brother, Sterling Lane was probably Cole’s new best friend and closest confidant. His new roomie.

  “Apparently, I live here.” He looked around the room with marked distaste, and I wondered for a minute what his other, fancier boarding schools had been like. Or where he lived the rest of the year. I vaguely remembered Cole saying that Sterling was from New York. My mind flashed from images of posh penthouses overlooking Park Avenue to sprawling mansions in the countryside, an easy commute to the city.

  Sterling turned the silver case over in his hands. It was antique, expensive-looking. Then he opened it. I had to be seeing things—a trick of the light. Because from where I stood, it almost looked like a cigarette case. And smoking was against about a dozen school rules.

  From inside the box, he produced two thin brown pencils. They were short, like the type of pencil bud used to record golf scores. I exhaled, relieved.

  Until he lifted one to his lips and let it dangle there precariously. He looked a little like James Dean, or some other heartthrob from an era when smoking was socially acceptable.

  “That’s—those are cigarettes,” I said.

  “You don’t miss a thing, do you?” He held out a cigarette, actually offering it to me. I managed to shake my head without letting it spin all the way around.

  “Cole already has a roommate.” I was clinging to that fact, wrapping it around myself like a blanket.

  The second flash of silver was the lighter, produced from a smaller pocket in the front of his weird silk coat. “Change of plans,” Sterling said. Then he did it. He lit that vile death stick.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” I hissed, careful lest anyone in the hallway hear me. After all, the door was wide open. And when it came to smoking, Sablebrook Academy had a guilt-by-association policy.

  But the only reply I received was three painfully symmetrical smoke rings. One after another.

  “This is Cole’s room, too,” I said. “And he hates cigarettes.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll only smoke in my half of it.” As if to illustrate how absurd his little compromise was, he turned his head toward Cole’s unmade bed and blew three more perfect rings.

  “Stop,” I said. “You can’t do that.” But I was getting nowhere. “Where’s Cole?” I wanted to charge across the room and shove that cigarette down his throat. I recited Rule 14: self-control is a virtue.

  “I’m standing right behind you,” Cole said, using a spooky ghost voice as he materialized at my back. “What’s with the shouting? I could hear you all the way down the hall.”

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I snapped. My anger was scrambling for an outlet.

  “Chill.” Cole reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “Sterling—I was hoping you’d be here when Harper came by. Really wanted the two of you to meet.”

  “As did I,” Sterling replied. “It’s a pleasure, Harper.”

  “I think we both know it’s anything but,” I told Sterling before turning to Cole. “He’s smoking in your room.”

  “Smoking?” Cole frowned and looked back at Sterling. His forehead furrowed. “In here? It does smell weird.”

  Sure enough, Sterling’s hands were empty. The silver cigarette case was gone, as were all traces of his weird brown cigarette. He lifted both eyebrows, making his eyes all wide and innocent. Then he shrugged and produced a thick candle ensconced in glass from the window ledge behind him.

  “Scented.” He was so proud of himself. I wanted to strangle him.

  “He was smoking a second ago,” I said. “He has a cigarette case in his pocket.”

  Cole laughed like I was making a joke, one that he didn’t get and was too polite to ask me to explain. Sterling slid his leg off the chair arm and sat up. He reached into all three of the pockets in his smoking jacket and emptied them, one by one. Pulling the fabric all the way out so that we could see the quality of the silk lining. “See—no cigarettes. You must have been seeing things.”

  Cole was still watching me, puzzled, so he didn’t see the way Sterling was maintaining perfect eye contact with me. Challenging me. And this time, I knew ignoring him simply wouldn’t be possible. If he was Cole’s roommate, it was now or never. I couldn’t back down.

  “Hallucinating a cigarette. That sounds just like me. Excellent explanation,” I replied. “He’s lying.”

  “Harper, calm down.” Normally, Cole’s soothing voice might do just that, but we were way beyond the meditation tricks he’d taught me.

  “Why are you suddenly living with the Marlboro man?” My voice was getting loud enough to draw outside attention, so I took a deep, calming breath. I was here to help Cole—not to argue with Sterling. “Where’s your real roommate? Where’s Aiden?”

  “He moved,” Cole said. “His dad was transferred to their Buenos Aires office last minute.”

  “Lucky for me,” Sterling said, flashing a sunny smile. It was as out of place on his face as it would have been on that of any other dangerous predator. “I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate.”

  It was too much—picking on Cole when Cole needed help. “I’ve had enough of your snide comments for one day, thank you,” I said.

  Cole’s jaw clenched. It took a lot to make my brother angry. But I’d just crossed that line. “He wasn’t being snide. Seriously, what is wrong with you, Harper?”

  “He knows what I’m talking about, and that’s all that matters.”

  “No, it’s not,” Cole said. “Remember our conversation about overreacting?”

  I aimed my index finger at Sterling. “He was completely inconsiderate in history. You know how hard I work. You of all people know how important that history AP exam is to me. The entire class had to sit there for fifteen minutes and forty-eight seconds, waiting, while he regaled us with his idiotic health conditions.”

  Cole’s eyes narrowed. “Idiotic health conditions? Empathy, Harper. Fifteen minutes is nothing in the grand scheme of things.”

  I could feel Cole slipping away from me, just as surely as if he were dangling at the edge of a precipice, with only my spindly arms to haul him back up to safety.

  “Save your little treatise on empathy for Mr. Lane,” I said. Inexplicably, a lump formed in my throa
t, turning my voice weak and mealy. “He humiliated me in Mrs. Stevens’s class. He claimed I’d take notes for him because of his carpal tunnel syndrome. Just one more ridiculous lie.”

  Sterling parried with his most sadistic smile yet, white teeth flashing like lightning. But Cole didn’t catch it. He was too busy shaking his head in utter disappointment.

  “What do you mean claimed? Why wouldn’t you want to help him? You’ve got the grades for it. Remember that conversation we had—when you asked me how a person converts an acquaintance into a friend? Well, this is the kind of opportunity I was talking about. And I practically threw it at your feet. Sterling’s new. He doesn’t have any friends here, either.”

  Sterling swallowed his chuckle seconds before Cole would have seen. Waves of humiliation washed over me. And hurt—that Cole would bring up our private conversation, baring my insecurities to the boy who was rapidly transitioning from a nuisance to a nemesis. Standing squarely between Cole and me when Cole was desperately in need of my help.

  “Ordinarily, I’d consider it,” I said. Sure, I tutored my second graders every Tuesday, but that was different. The school was understaffed and those kids needed my help—last month, one of my students told me he’d doubled his scores on mad-minute math tests. And he’d thanked me for it. Me. I’d been the one to figure out that Sabrina needed glasses, and that was why she struggled with reading. My kids depended on me and I’d do anything for them. While Sterling was just trying to fob his homework off on someone. And after my adventures with the basketball captain, there was no way I was getting tangled up with another struggling athlete’s academic drama. With my luck, Sterling would rally the team to state and then flunk out of school before a big game, leaving me to blame. My classmates would happily throw me off the roof next time. But that wasn’t the point. “He’s lying. Just like he lied about smoking. Every time you turn around, he does something provocative that only I manage to see.”

  At that, Cole whirled around, and Sterling lifted both hands in a shrug.