I was tired of the shallowness in our relationship. I wanted something more, a connection with someone deeper than all the surface-level crap. But Gabby just wanted someone to look good on her arm and screw around with. She was satisfied living off of her family’s wealth, and her ambitions didn’t extend past high school. Used to getting by on her looks and popularity, she planned on marrying into money. But I had zero desire to be that guy. Instead, I wanted to forge a future on my own.
JT cackled. “Why does that girl even bother with makeup?” he asked. “There’s no hiding that level of ugly.”
Mikey spluttered with laughter while the girls acted all offended—which they really weren’t because comments like that only exacerbated their feelings of superiority. After he made yet another remark, I cut him with a glare. He’d been making fun of some poor freshman chick for the last twenty minutes and I about had it. “Dude, why do you have to be such a dick?”
“What?” JT smirked. “Like you don’t think so. You know everyone’s thinking it.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to say it, asshole.”
He held his hands up in mock surrender as Mikey guffawed beside him. “Dude, sorry. What crawled up your—”
“Just give it a rest, man.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I’m tired of hearing about it.”
“Okay, fine. I didn’t realize you had a soft spot for ugly chicks.”
When that didn’t earn a reaction from me, he kept at it. Snapping his fingers like he had an epiphany. “Wait a minute, didn’t you have your first tutoring session with Skunk today. Is that what this is about?”
Everything Penelope said came back to me in a rush. And I wondered . . . Could that be what this was really about? The reason for my sullen mood?
I clenched my jaw and the muscles in my arms tightened with restraint, but I said nothing. Any remark on my end would just result in him starting in on Ewe, and that was the last thing I wanted. Not with her words and her anger still fresh in my head.
After a minute, he turned back to the girls and said something stupid to make them laugh again.
“Hey,” Gabby brushed a hand down my arm. “He’s just kidding.”
“He needs to grow up,” I said, eyeing him as he did some sort of backflip in the water off the side of the wall.
“It’s just JT being JT.”
I sighed as she turned fully toward me on her side. Why was our popularity a free pass to be douchebags?
“You okay?” she asked.
I slid my arm underneath my head, thinking about the question, unsure of my answer because I didn’t feel okay. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
“Of what?”
“This . . . the us versus them mentality. All this Royal crap. Being rude to anyone who isn’t invited into our exclusive group.”
She lifted a shoulder. “No. I mean, it’s part of being popular, isn’t it?”
Was it? Again, was there some unwritten rule that to be popular you had to be an ass?
“Everyone wants to be us,” she continued with a coy smile as she reached over and boldly splayed a hand on my bare chest, “but only the lucky ones get to hang out with us. And from where I’m sitting, the view is pretty nice.” She bit her lower lip and tracked her gaze down my body in a gesture I supposed was meant to be sexy. But instead of turning me on, it only made me tense up.
Spine rigid, I stared at her a moment—Gabby Haines, Queen of Lakeview. The small nose, pouty lips, nearly platinum blond hair that probably took hours in a salon chair and a ridiculous amount of money. The most interesting thing about her was her appearance. And for the second time that day, a set of particularly dark, brooding eyes slid into my thoughts. Penelope Ewe. The girl called Skunk.
Something wrenched inside my chest.
She didn’t deserve to be treated like garbage any more than Gabby deserved to be put up on a pedestal. This afternoon, during our tutoring session, she said more to me in that hour together than I can recall in all her time at Lakeview. As it turned out, she was smart. Pretty in a way that came naturally, rather than trying so hard like half the girls I knew. And her analysis and argument of Romeo and Juliet was sexy as hell.
Too bad she didn’t know it.
But she wasn’t a Royal, and she wasn’t cool, which meant she was off-limits to someone like me. An unspoken rule that suddenly seemed dumb as hell.
Maybe I was tired of these boundaries we created. The division at our school. The haves and the have-nots. I didn’t want a label. I didn’t want to be just one thing.
“Why?” I asked, finally.
“Why what?” Gabby blinked, an amused smile spreading her lips.
“Why are we so special? What makes us any better?”
She stared at me a moment, her blue eyes searching mine, as if to decide whether I was serious or not.
When I held her gaze, jaw tight, her smile slowly faded. “I don’t like this version of you. Whatever’s going on, you need to snap out of it.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
She said nothing, so I curled my hand around hers—the one still firmly planted on my chest—and peeled it off, then stood, disgusted with the conversation.
“What’s gotten into you?” she snapped as she sat up, piercing me with a glare.
“I don’t know, Gabs. Maybe it’s that someone called me a jerk today, all of us, actually, and I’m starting to see she’s right.”
“Pfft.” Gabby rolled her eyes. “Of course they did. Let me guess, this person’s a loser? People say that because they’re jealous.”
I thought of Penelope and everything she said. The sincerity behind her words. And there was no doubt in my mind. She was far from jealous. She was accurate.
“Not this person,” I insisted.
“What do you want me to say, Toph?” she asked hotly. “That I’m sorry for being popular and pretty?”
“No, but . . .” I raked a hand through my hair. What did I want from her? I wasn’t even sure anymore.
“The truth is, there’s always going to be someone on top,” Gabby said, squaring her shoulders. “It may as well be us.”
There it was, in that one statement, the dog-eat-dog of high school.
My mouth parted, wondering how I got to this place. One where I kept my foot firmly planted on the heads of others just to keep them down.
I glanced behind me, allowing my gaze to flicker over our friends in the pool. Did I even like JT, Mikey, and Luca anymore? I used to. We shared a bond, a kind of brotherhood only athletes and teammates understood, but beneath that thin veneer of friendship, what were we left with?
When it came down to it, I wasn’t sure I had anything more in common with the people in that pool than I did with anyone else at the school. But we’d started out as friends, and then we became Royals—something bigger than ourselves—and somehow that became the basis for everything. A label and social status dictated my friendships and my love life.
It has served me well all these years. They were my safety net.
Just toe the line. Do what’s expected. Date the cool girl, and everything is easy.
But my time at Lakeview was almost over, and it’s true what they say. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Suddenly, I saw clearly. I was tired of falling in line with what was expected of me. Tired of being the person everyone else wanted me to be.
Maybe it was time to take a risk. Step out of my comfort zone.
Which brought me to the question. Who was Topher Elliot without them?
I drove home, thinking about everything that had happened today—Penelope, the time at the pool with my friends, and the anonymous text.
When I parked in the long winding driveway in front of our house, I sat there a moment before I picked up my phone and re-read the text I’d received, taking it in with fresh eyes. The text had “chick” written all over it. There was no way a dude would send something like this. We were more direct. Instead, a guy would just come out and call me a prick to m
y face and be done with it. Which meant it was either some girl I’d rebuffed at school, a prank, or one of the girls I met over the summer from another school.
Regardless of who it was, I opened a new text and debated what to write back. Unless it was a prank, they clearly hated my guts. But what if I could change their mind?
I said I wanted to be different. This was the perfect chance to prove it—a chance to put my money where my mouth was—so I began to type.
Chapter 9
PENELOPE
After we got home from Sara’s practice, Dad and I fixed spaghetti for dinner. While I browned the meat and heated the sauce, he boiled the pasta, and Sara set the table. It was one of the only meals we prepared together because, well, it was hard to mess up noodles.
By the time I headed up to my room and got a shower, I flopped down on my bed, sinking into the tattered quilt that belonged to my mother when she was a girl. A glance at the clock above my desk told me I had approximately one hour before Sara finished watching TV with my dad and headed to our room where she’d inevitably launch into her evening ritual of recounting every minute detail of her day for me as she fell asleep.
A text on my phone pinged from its perch on my nightstand. I lay there a moment, staring at it as fatigue from the long day set in before I remembered the text I sent.
Maybe it was Topher.
My stomach dropped as I snatched it up and saw his name on the screen. Or at least, the code name I saved for him—Jerkwad.
I dropped my gaze and chewed on my lip a moment before debating simply erasing it and forgetting about the whole thing. For all my bravado earlier, the introvert in me had returned. I wasn’t sure I could handle a scathing response. Even though Topher didn’t know it was me, I did, and for a person who made it their life’s mission to avoid confrontation, that was a problem.
But after a moment, curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the text. Besides, I was being ridiculous. No one knew it was me, so there was no harm in reading his response.
Jerkwad: LOL Who is this?
Of course he’d get a nasty text and laugh it off. He probably thought it was some big joke.
People think I’m a jerk. Har har har.
It probably only deepened his feelings of superiority. Like as long as he had haters, he was winning in life.
I couldn’t help myself as I typed, Who do you think it is?
Jerkwad: Hmmm . . .
Jerkwad: Is it someone from my school?
I typed Yes, then quickly erased it. I had no reason to be paranoid that he might suspect it was me, but still. It felt too risky to say yes because all he’d think about is trying to figure out who I really was.
Instead, I typed No and hit send.
Jerkwad: Okay . . . give me a hint. How do I know you and what school do you go to?
Panic swelled in my chest and my fingers froze on the keyboard. I had no clue what to say, mostly because when I texted him, I never thought he’d text back wanting an actual conversation. I figured he’d either blow me off or tell me off. Not this . . . whatever this was.
Unsure of myself, I typed out a response.
Me: Shouldn’t we address the proverbial elephant in the room first?
Jerkwad: Which is?
Me: That I obviously don’t like you.
Jerkward: What if I can change your mind?
What? Why? That’s not what this text was supposed to be about.
Me: And why would you wanna do that?
Jerkwad: Let’s just say you’re the second person to express what I jerk I am today, and I’d like to do something about it. Maybe I like proving people wrong.
My brows rose to my hairline. I sat up in my bed, crisscrossed my legs while I leaned back against the headboard, and debated how to respond when a lightbulb went off. A golden opportunity just landed in my lap. Topher Elliot wanted to change my mind about him? What would happen if I let him try, and in the end, I’d show him how wrong he was? Because if I knew one thing for sure, it was that Topher Elliot was exactly the boy I thought he was.
My thumbs hovered over my phone, hesitating a moment before I made up my mind.
You met me at JT’s party, I typed vaguely, remembering their mutterings in the hall the first day of school. Besides, it was a safe bet. JT was famous for having huge parties when his parents went on their constant yacht trips. Surely, Topher met tons of girls at them.
Jerkwad: Shoot. Julie?
Jackpot.
Me: Yup, that’s me.
Jerkwad: We seemed to really hit it off. So why are you mad at me again?
Uh . . .
Me: Because you stood me up.
Jerkwad: What? When?
I was officially the worst liar in the world.
Me: You don’t even remember asking me out?!
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to the pulsating tension in my forehead. Why was I having a conversation with him again?
Resolving myself to quit, I set my phone on my nightstand even as it pinged with an incoming text. Then I grabbed the abused copy of Wuthering Heights and opened it to where I left off last night and began to read.
Only, I couldn’t focus, and after rereading the same passage five times, I growled and threw it back down.
My gaze flickered to my phone. Curiosity burned a hole through my annoyance until I snatched it back up.
Jerkwad: Crap. I must’ve been wasted. Which is strange. I only remember having one beer that night. Anyway, I’m sorry I did that. Truly. I had no idea, but I’m glad you texted.
I feel a spike of irritation, despite my small win at covering my tracks. Doesn’t he care that I essentially called him a narcissist and told him I hate his guts?
Me: Even though I think you’re a total douche?
Jerkwad: Ha! I’m going to change your mind, remember?
Me: And if you can’t?
Jerkwad: If I can’t, I’ll quit water polo.
Whoa. He must be serious.
Jerkwad: But if I can . . . you have to be my date for homecoming.
What? He must’ve gone insane. Like he had any trouble getting a date.
Me: I’m not really into the meathead type. Muscles are nice, but brains are nicer, and I find most of the jocks in my school are nothing more than walking balls of testosterone.
Jerkwad: I get it. Some of the guys can be that way at my school too. But I have a brain, I promise.
I rolled my eyes. Some of the guys. Like he wasn’t one of them.
He was either lying about himself to look good or completely delusional. I loved how he threw his friends under the bus though.
Me: And I should believe that, why?
Jerkwad: If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
I blinked at the text. Once. Twice. Until I was sure I was reading it correctly.
I knew that quote. It was Virginia Woolf and just so happened to be one my father quoted often.
Reluctantly, I typed back and hit send.
Me: Wow. Virginia Woolf. I’m impressed.
Jerkwad: I aim to please.
I snorted. Dork.
Jerkwad: So is it a deal?
I’d rather choke on my own spit than go to a dance with him. And though I had zero intentions of following through on the bet if I lost, I also had nothing to worry about. Because there was no way he’d change my mind.
Me: Fine. Deal.
Jerkwad: Let the games begin. So ask me something, anything.
Me: Okay. You say you’re not like all the other jocks at my school, or your school for that matter. If that’s true, then what’s the most interesting thing about yourself?
Jerkwad: Honestly?
Me: Yes.
I laid there, practically giddy for his response, I was so sure it would be a doozy. Something simple and arrogant. I could see him texting back in reply, Everything, and leaving it at that.
I waited as the little gray dots appeared and disappeared as if he kep
t typing, then erasing his reply again, until a text finally came through.
Jerkwad: I don’t know, actually. Maybe I’m not so special, just a guy trying to get through high school.
My mouth parted and a wheezy breath escaped.
What? That was . . . not what I expected. He had to be kidding.
Me: Really? You’re just another guy?
Then, trying to goad him into a more expected response, I added, I heard all the girls at your school are practically in love with you.
Jerkwad: All they like is my face and the fact that I’m captain of the water polo team. But none of them really know me.
Me: So who really is Topher Elliot, then?
Jerkwad: Do any of us really know who we are at our age? Aren’t we all kind of figuring it out as we go?
I shook my head.
Me: No. I know who I am.
Jerkwad: And who are you?
Me: I’m a sister, a daughter, and a friend. I love literature and old movies. I don’t care about clothes or shoes, and I loathe pop music. I’d rather listen to indie rock any day than the latest Justin Bieber. I hate sports. I’d much prefer to read outside on a beautiful day in the summer than go swimming at the pool with friends. I’m comfortable in silence. It gives my mind room to breathe. And I’d rather be myself than pretend to be something I’m not just to fit in.
I hit send before I realized my mistake, that I was supposed to be pretending, not telling the truth.
No! I tapped on my screen as if I could take it back. With my luck, I just said something incriminating. Or not entirely. He still wouldn’t know it was me, but I had no idea how well he had gotten to know this Julie person at the party. Maybe she talked incessantly about how she had five brothers and hated books. She could be on the swim team or known for her loud mouth.
So when his reply came through, I tensed as I read.
Hate Notes: A Sweet Enemies to Lovers Young Adult Romance (Lakeview Prep Book 1) Page 6