by Angel Lawson
My legs come to a sudden and jolting stop when I turn the corner.
Hamilton Bates is waiting outside the door. Those broad shoulders are rigid, eyes wild, and his hair is just a bit sloppier than the usual bedhead style he probably spends an hour in front of the mirror perfecting every morning. When he sees me, he straightens, throat bobbing with a swallow.
I hesitate. Is he waiting on me? What? Why?
Every nerve in my body stands on end as we hold a frenzied, extended gaze in the empty hallway.
I force my feet to move, because I sure as hell don’t want to add detention to the list of things going wrong in my life. I make it to the door just as the bell rings—eyes pointedly forward—and ignore him.
I pass Heston, who’s got a slimy grin plastered on his face, and slide swiftly into my seat. Reagan looks past me, eyes focused on her boyfriend who I know is merely a few steps behind. I can’t help but notice the purple bruise at the base of her throat—the Devil’s Mark. Seeing it—seeing her—makes my stomach flip. He has a girlfriend for god’s sake. That just makes what happened even worse.
Hamilton’s backpack makes a noise behind me as he drops it to the floor, but I barely hear it over the sound of my heartbeat echoing in my ears. I’d already been dealing with shame, regret, and guilt. Now add the humiliation of being late to class to the top of the list.
I wait for Dr. Ross to drop the hammer, but to my surprise, she jumps right into the lecture. Maybe the rumors are false. Maybe she’s not so strict after all. The urge to turn around and see what Hamilton is thinking is strong—but not strong enough to throw self-preservation out the window, not to mention whatever tattered shreds are left of my dignity.
At that thought, a memory of Hamilton flashes through my mind. His firm abs beneath my fingertips, the darkness of his hooded eyes, the way his brows were knitted tightly together when I opened mine, just for a moment, in the middle of our kiss. But the clearest part of the memory is definitely the heat of him, the anger thrumming beneath the sweaty surface of his skin, the way he surged into me, commanded me with his body and mouth...
I squirm in my seat, feeling both flushed and completely aghast at myself. Who am I even kidding? There’s no tattered shreds of dignity left. If there were a single thread left, I just blew that sucker away.
My stomach churns uncomfortably the whole class, and I don’t hear a word Dr. Ross says until the bell rings, finally allowing for escape—
“Ms. Adams, Mr. Bates? Please see me before you leave.”
I freeze in my path to the door, stomach plummeting. I don’t move until the rest of the class leaves. Only then do I dare a glance at Hamilton. His expression is downright murderous, so overwhelmingly severe that I actually get the feeling his day is going worse than mine. I may have betrayed my sister last night, but he betrayed something that, to him, is a lot bigger and far less forgiving; legacy and his own identity. He dared lower himself to kissing me, a nothing. Well, less than a nothing. A nothing is completely neutral nothingness. It’s not even there. But I’m the freak of Preston Prep. And he made out with me.
That’s gotta cut pretty deep.
Dr. Ross is a tiny African American woman with reddish hair and glasses twice the size of her face. With her size, it’d be easy to dismiss her. But that would be a mistake. She has a Ph.D. from Harvard, is credited in multiple published papers, and is frankly a huge feather in Preston Prep’s cap. She’s a total badass.
She levels us both with a look. “I know you’re both aware of my tardy policy.”
I fidget, answering, “Zero tolerance.”
Hamilton says nothing.
“My time is valuable. If I can get here on time, fighting through the traffic of this god-forsaken city—after getting my two children to school every day—then you two can roll your privileged behinds out of bed and walk the two blocks from the dormitory.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes flick to Hamilton. His jaw twitches but he finally relents, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Two weeks of detention,” she says, looking down to shuffle papers. “After school.”
My jaw drops.
Two weeks?!
Some of the anger on Hamilton’s face transforms into a similar sort of shock. He recovers quickly. “With all due respect, Dr. Ross, I have a standing physical therapy appointment, and swim starts next week.”
She pushes her glasses up her nose and looks at me. “And you?”
“After-school tutoring in the library and yeah,” I shuffle my feet, “also swim.”
“Fine. Weekend detention. Two hours every Saturday morning for five weeks.” She grins the grin of a woman who knows just how much this sucks for us, but also knows that we aren’t in a position to complain.
Clearly, she doesn’t know Hamilton very well.
“Five weeks of Saturday detention?!” He gapes at her. “Doing what?”
“You can meet with Mr. Dewey.” Mr. Dewey is the dean of discipline for the residents in the dorms. He’s here all weekend. “He’ll coordinate your punishment.”
“Like, together?” Hamilton blurts.
She blinks at him. “You walked in together late. You can do your punishment together.”
“But—” he starts.
“That was just a coincidence,” I say anxiously. “Totally by accident.”
“You’ll survive.” She stacks papers on her desk. “I’m not asking Mr. Dewey to implement two different punishments when I’m already accommodating your schedules.” She jerks her chin toward the door. “Go. Before you’re late to your next class, as well.”
It’s a dismissal and even Hamilton knows not to argue. With my hand clenched around my backpack strap, I follow him out the door. Any thought that I had about him waiting for me before class has vanished. There’s no chance. Not with the way he just reacted to spending time in detention with me.
The feeling is mutual.
Reagan, who’s waiting for him in the hall, immediately clings to his arm. She pulls him into an empty space next to the trophy case, just out of sight.
“Hey, you,” she says, “how bad was it?”
“Five weeks.” The anger in Hamilton’s voice is unmistakable. “Saturday mornings.”
“Ouch. With her?”
I stop, pressing my back against the wall just enough to see them through the trophy case.
His grin is tight and sarcastic. “Yep.”
“Damn, babe. That’s like double punishment.”
He thrusts his hand into his hair, and that ball of muscle tics at the back of his jaw. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I mean, because she’s always causing drama for you—”
“Reagan.” His voice is low and hard. “I said I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”
Hurt flickers across her face. “Geez, fine. I just thought you may want some commiseration for having to spend that much of your free time with a total bitch.”
“I spend time with you, don’t I?”
Damn.
The hurt vanishes as quickly as it’d come. She touches his chest. “Look, babe, you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. You’ve been all tense and distant. You even went to bed early on Halloween. I know I could make you feel so much better, if you’d just let me.”
His eyes drop down to hers and a strange feeling twists in my belly. Disgust? Revulsion? I don’t wait to explore it further, or risk finding out exactly what Reagan might do to help him “relax.”
To my surprise, Tyson is already at the lunch table when I arrive, halfway through a massive plate of spaghetti. “Oh my god, Gwen. That lunch lady? She’s the best. Said I needed some meat on my bones and gave me extra. Were I not already happily committed to another, I’d get down on a knee.”
I smile, some of the tension falling from my shoulder. “Yeah, Bev is good people. And FYI, if you’re nice to her, she’ll slip in extra dessert, too.”
He looks back at me, slac
k-mouthed. “Yes. Yes. I’m so completely all over that.”
I hook my backpack on my chair and glance across the room. The shiny blonde of Reagan’s hair catches my eye and I notice she and Hamilton are sitting close together, her hand resting on his thigh. I study his face and notice some of the harsh, tense lines from earlier are gone. Maybe she had helped him relax.
Ew.
“Who’s that?” Tyson asks.
“Who’s who?” I focus on my lunch.
“That girl you’re watching.” He nods in their direction, “Blondie.”
I give a weak scoff. “I wasn’t watching her.”
He gives me a face that says just how believable that isn’t. “Whatever, just humor me anyway. Who is that? Who are any of these people? Give me the dirt, Gwen.”
I grimace. “I’m not really much for the whole gossip thing.” That’s what happens when most of the gossip is about you and your family.
He rolls his eyes. “If gossip makes you uncomfortable, consider it my new student orientation. It’s just information to make my day a little easier. Who to admire. Who to avoid. Who’s dating who so I don’t get punched out for talking to another dude’s chick.”
I look at him in disapproval. “Did you just say ‘chick’?”
“I did and I stand by it.”
Tyson is different. Funny. We don’t have a lot of funny moments around here—just cruelty and intimidation. At Preston Prep, jokes are made to humiliate, not entertain. And statistically, if one is being made here, then I’m probably the butt of it. I weigh what my new friend is asking of me and decide that it would be nice to have a few guidelines as a new student, if I were in his shoes.
“Okay.” I survey the room. “The kids at Preston Prep aren’t defined by one thing; academics, jocks, or nerds, for example. Everyone here is smart. Everyone has money. A few are gifted academically, musically, or athletically. A few are genetically superior when it comes to looks. But, of course, that can be paid for as well.”
Tyson nods knowingly. “Plastic surgery.”
“Yep. It’s pretty common for someone to go off for winter break and come back with a new nose.” I glance around the room at my attractive classmates. “The biggest currency here is power.”
Tyson repeats the word. “Power.”
“These kids… they’re obsessed with it. Their parents are politicians, CEOs, college presidents, Fortune 500 board members, partners at the biggest law firms, lobbyists, and don’t forget the secret societies. They’re part of a machine that’s been running since the invention of language, and it only commodifies one thing.” I twirl the spaghetti around my fork. “Legacy. Pedigree. Bloodline. That’s what matters most here.”
He leans back and studies me. “And you’re not a part of that, for some reason.”
I shrug. “My parents are, but I’m not.”
His eyebrows pull together. “Wait, how does that work?”
I shrug, opting to be completely honest. “I’m adopted. So are all my siblings. We live in the right home. We have the right parents who have the right careers. We have money and privilege. But we don’t share the same blood.”
“Damn.” He looks bewildered. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“Well these people are going to hate me,” he decides, looking around. “I have two moms.”
I let out a surprised laugh. “Really?”
He nods. “One’s a teacher, the other’s a psychologist. So I’m poor, I’m a bastard, and I have gay moms.”
“Yikes, that is a pretty bad draw.” I bump his knees with mine to let him know I’m joking. “Guess we’ll have to stick together.”
He takes a bite of garlic bread and chews slowly. “So back to Blondie. Where does she fit in?”
I roll my eyes. “Her father is a Senator. Her mother was Ms. South Carolina. She got those tits naturally, by the way. No plastic surgery for her—at least not yet.” I take a sly look in her direction. “Otherwise, she’s just like any other girl in that group. I like to call them ‘the Devils' playthings’.”
He chokes on his bread and laughs. “Like the mascot! I like it. Out of curiosity, how exactly does one attain the status of Devil’s plaything?”
I think of Reagan promising to help Hamilton relax earlier. “Okay, this is total gossip… but it’s pretty well known that each Devil has a test they put their potential girlfriends or, you know, playthings through.”
He leans forward, interested. “A test?”
“Most of it’s sexual. Threesomes or whatever. But a few sound a little less deviant.”
A memory flashes in my mind.
Sky was in the kitchen, the hand mixer she was holding dripping with batter. It was two weeks before the party.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked, taking in the state of the kitchen.
“Making cupcakes for Xavier.” She looked down at the mess on the counter, cheeks pink. “Either that, or damning myself to a whole night of doing dishes. Time will tell?”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Cupcakes?”
“Well,” she explained as she spooned batter into a muffin tin, “Caitlyn Rogers told me that sweets are Xavier’s favorite. It’s kind of mandatory if you’re his girlfriend.”
“What kind of test did Blondie pass?”
I blink, back in the cafeteria, and feel my mood darken. “Ah, yeah, her Devil is notorious for the blow-job test.”
He gapes at me for a moment before gesturing. “Continue.”
“They say that any girl interested in him has to get on their knees and service him. If he likes it, I guess you can stick around. If not...” I shrug.
It’s one reason I’m suspicious of Hamilton’s involvement with Sky that night. Blow jobs? I know it’s not unique to him—he is a guy, after all—but it’s his signature brand of power play. It’s meant to be demeaning and degrading. I also suspect he favors this particular act because he’s lazy as hell and completely uninterested in showing another person any actual pleasure. Probably too much effort.
“I’m assuming the guy she’s literally clinging onto for dear life is the Devil?” He casts a dubious glance down at the cross pendant around his neck. “That’s probably not sacrilege or anything.”
“Well, there are a few.” I nod at the table. “The main ones stick together like a club. Ansel Davenport, baseball player. Emory Hall, football. He’s a junior, but tight with those guys. His best friend Reynolds got sent away a few years ago and they kind of adopted him. It doesn’t hurt that Campbell is into him.” I look around the room and my eyes land on a pretty blond girl two years younger. “That’s his sister, Vandy. She was in a bad accident a few years ago—caused by Reynolds—and is like, the most protected girl in school. Don’t mess with her.”
“Why would I mess with her?” He asks, forehead furrowed.
I shrug. Why would any of these guys do any of the things they do? “Just a warning.”
“Noted.”
“The guy next to him? That’s Xavier Ward.” I swallow over the name, still bitter about his brief ‘interest’ in Sky. “He also plays football. Then there’s Heston—”
“Did you just say Heston?” Tyson laughs. “Oh my god, I know that guy from swim. At first, I thought his name was a joke, because like... wow, pretentious much?”
“Right? Most pretentious name ever.” I laugh along, feeling heard and seen for the first time in a long while. “But yeah, Heston Wilcox is an incredible swimmer.”
“I saw him.” Tyson concedes, “He’s good. Same with Bates.”
My eyes jump to Hamilton when he says his name. Unfortunately, he happens to be looking my way when I do, and we make eye contact. Whatever “relaxation” method Reagan used earlier has lost its effectiveness. His scowl is firmly back in place, jaw tight, eyes narrowed.
Heat prickles the back of my neck, and I glance down at my food, shoveling in a mouthful of pasta to give myself a moment to re-orient. On the long, long list of reasons
I hate Hamilton Bates—and it could probably cover an entire CVS receipt—that one is definitely up there. How one look from him is enough to tangle me up in anger, distraction, or just downright agitation is beyond my comprehension, but here I am.
All tangled up.
“Okay, that look…” Tyson stops just short of visibly gesturing between me and Hamilton. “That look means something. What’s going on between you two?”
I force myself to swallow the spaghetti. Then I force myself not to bring it all back up. “That’s nothing.”
He scoffs. “Yeah right.”
“I hate him,” I say simply. “And he hates me. We’re always somehow forced to compete with each other, either in the classroom or on the swim team. We’re both hoping for captain this year.”
Tyson leans back in his seat, crosses his arms and watches me.
I stare back at him. “What?”
“Look, Gwen, I know competition. Really well, actually. I’m on the diving Olympic Development team. It’s about as cut-throat as it can get. That look he gave you?” He cuts his eyes sideways, toward Hamilton. “That’s not about competition. Real competitors take the emotion out of it. It’s based purely on drive, motivation, and success.”
Oh Tyson, too insightful. It’s going to get him into some serious trouble.
“Fine,” I relent, crossing my arms in a mirror pose. “He hates me because of my background. He thinks my whole family, and me especially, are trash. He—" I pause here, reluctant to bring it all up, but ultimately decide that the wide berth I’ve been given means no one is around to hear me. “We have a history. Something really, really bad happened to my sister last year and it was his fault. He let his idiot bootlickers get out of control.”
Tyson must sense the ugliness and pain beneath the surface of my words because he doesn’t ask for details. Instead, he pries open his carton of milk and offers, “The good news is that he’s a swimmer and I’m a diver. We aren’t competing against each other. I’m perfectly happy to take on some of that hate for you.”
I look at him skeptically but can’t hide my grin. “I don’t think it works that way, but thank you.”