Raven: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 6)

by Ryan Schow

  He slowly peeled her hand off his face and said, “You’re everyone’s type minus one. No offense.”

  “The only offense I take,” she said, “is in you looking me in the eye while you’re lying to me.”

  Swirling off her was an energy that had its own gravitational pull. If she wasn’t so damn mean, he would want to ravage her porno-style right there in the hallway. But with friends like Cameron and Theresa and Blake, friends that left her stinking with that guilt-by-association sort of stench, he was having a hard time letting go. God, he thought, even her breath is minty fresh. He wanted to taste it at once, and never taste it at all.

  Maybe he could let go. She might be fun.

  “Let’s pick this up another time,” he said, coolly. “We’re both late for class.”

  With that said, he turned and left her to wonder what his type even was, and why he said he didn’t want her. He left her to guess what he meant when he said that he wanted to undo her. Getting her thinking of him, getting her tangled in the mystery and inconsistencies of him, that was his plan to stay on her mind long after he left.

  As he walked to class, he wondered if he could have sex with her. If he wanted it after hating her for so long. Yes, he thought. I could. He was a man, when it came down to it. He didn’t need a reason as much as he needed a place. But could he pull it off long enough to rile Abby? To drive her from Damien back to him? That was the question to which the answer was most likely no.

  Sex wasn’t enough. He had to date her.

  If this had any chance of working, if he was going to undo Julie to get to Abby, he’d need to date Julie, to tear her from her friends. This might not be possible considering their newfound friendship with Sabrina Baldridge, the actress who could do no wrong. In her show, Sabrina was both a student and an underage call girl. In America, apparently that made you popular. Sabrina single-handedly revived the popularity of the Bitch Brigade. And reputation, unfortunately, was what Julie Sanderson, a.k.a. Julie Satan, thrived on most.

  Brayden thought, this is going to be a lot trickier than I imagined, what with this rickety ass plan and all its flimsy pieces.

  Little did he know…

  2

  At lunch, she sat with the rest of her friends, plus one: Sabrina. Julie was tired from texting back and forth with Emery into the early hours of the morning. It left her feeling like a zombie, which had her moving throughout the day on autopilot. She was stuck on Emery. Last night while they were talking, he tried telling her how he found their baby, but after an hour and a few details that didn’t add up, she realized his story was bullshit. That he was lying. He never found their baby.

  The asshole.

  Sitting at lunch, fuming at the thought of him, she thought, this is the rest of your life. It won’t ever be better than this.

  Julie looked up and caught Sabrina Baldridge’s eye from across the table. She smiled at the actress, who smiled back, but inside, Sabrina was merely another tourist in her life. The girl didn’t matter. Sabrina, this queen bee wannabe, she was forgettable except for her looks and her job. And in this place, everyone looked amazing which made her like everyone else. At Astor, only the freaks stand out.

  “Hey,” Sabrina said.

  “Hey.”

  The way Julie sounded, it was like she just woke up from a long nap in the heat. That one word, those three letters, they didn’t mean she accepted the actress into their group. It only proved she wasn’t telling her to pound sand yet. She wanted to see what the real life girl was about. If she was worth the group’s consideration. Actresses to her were like music stars, and the last thing they needed in this group was another freaking drama queen.

  The last drama queen killed herself.

  “I can’t stand how you give that hobbit the time of day,” Cameron said, starting right in. Julie knew it was coming. And she knew Cameron was referring to Brayden. Looking at her, surprisingly irritated at the way Cameron was always stirring the pot first, it made her wonder if Brayden was right. That Julie had grown up over the summer. Maybe she was just growing out of her friends.

  It’s baby number three, she told herself. Baby number three now growing in her tummy, that little kidney bean of a mistake that was changing the way she saw her life.

  She wanted to abort it; she wanted to keep it.

  It infuriated her thinking there were so many things worth talking about, and whether or not she talked to Brayden James was not one of them.

  “What did he ever do to you?” Julie asked.

  “Um, he was born?” she replied, sarcastic.

  “Who are you talking about?” Sabrina said, chiming in.

  “Brayden,” Theresa said. She frowned, then nodded her head in Brayden’s direction and said, “The one who stands out, not the two hotties.” The two hotties being Damien and Caden.

  “The one with the ripped jeans and short sleeved plaid button up?” Sabrina asked.

  “Yeah,” Cameron said as if she were identifying not a human being but a lethal virus, “the hobbit.”

  “I think he’s cute,” Sabrina said. “I met him when I first got here. He’s got a bundle of swag, that one.”

  Inside, something in Julie woke up. Maybe this girl will be alright after all.

  “You met him,” Cameron said with frantic humor in her voice, “and you still think he’s cute? Are you smoking crack?”

  “No,” she answered calmly, like Cameron’s tone barely even mattered, “I’m not smoking crack. Where I’m from, all the pretty boys are fags and the guys like Brayden…they’re the ones with substance, with personality, with—I don’t know—that thing. You know what I mean. It’s that—” she looked over at Julie for help, reaching for the word.

  “Our friend Cameron has no idea what you’re saying,” Julie said, picking up her fork to start in on her Cobb salad. “That one hottie over there, the one with the brown hair, his name’s Damien and she dated him for practically a year. He’s good looking, but he doesn’t have the It Factor. I think that’s the description you’re searching for. The It Factor.”

  “It is,” she said. “Guys like those two, they’re fun for a romp or two, but that Brayden guy, he blew me off earlier. Everyone is kissing my ass but him, which is why I think I might like him, or at least respect him. In fact, I’m going to go over and talk to him right now.”

  Without another word, or even a good-bye, Sabrina picked up her food and walked over to his and his friends’ table. If Julie was wondering about Sabrina before, she wasn’t now. She might not like the girl, but damn if she didn’t admire her.

  Her three stricken friends—Cameron, Theresa and Blake—they watched in disbelief as their new bestie who brought them so much favorable attention ditched them for Brayden and Abby, and Damien and Caden. Not to mention Cicely, Tempest and Georgia.

  “Well she can eat a dick,” Theresa snarled. The way she was wearing her hair these days, short and burgundy colored, it made her look exotic and sexy when she was smiling. When she was being mean, however, it made her look demonic.

  “She can eat a whole bag of dicks,” Cameron retorted.

  Cameron was the group’s one-upper. Always trying to outdo everyone else. Everyone assumed it was just because she was born mean, and she was, but she was a righteous bitch now more than ever. Her self-esteem was in the shitter. Her father the country music singer was hot in the press, and not for a hit single. He was suspected of having an ecstasy-induced romp with a younger man. Again. As if that wasn’t enough, you could see in her eyes how she was still sour over their break up on a school bus on the way to a cemetery. And since Sabrina entered the group, she slipped even further down the hotness ladder. Even though she was attractive, she was never the cutest girl amongst them, which Julie assumed fueled her friend’s inner bitch kitty.

  Poor Cameron, she had to be “the best” at something.

  The rude comments about Sabrina, the truth was, they needed to be said for the group’s sake. If not, the four of them woul
d silently wonder what was wrong with them that someone like Brayden could so quickly derail them, starting with stealing their new and former actress friend.

  Cameron changed subjects because that was required to save face, too. She started talking about Bruce Jenner and how he was creepy as a man, but so much sexier as a woman. The subject switch, it got traction. Before long, Sabrina was a mute point.

  Well, for everyone but Julie.

  About Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, Theresa said, “Chicks with dicks are never cool, I don’t care how much press he—or she—gets. And I don’t give two shits who his family is. If you’ve got a ball sack, you can’t have bitch tits as well.”

  “The Jenner’s are a slew of media whores,” Blake added. She was stuffing her face with the biggest do-it-yourself burger ever. Julie was ripe with envy. Her real mother once said, “A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”

  Now she hardly even ate.

  While her friends were talking tranny, Julie watched Sabrina approach Brayden’s table. Everyone looked up. They weren’t as snotty as her group, but it wasn’t looking like they were pillars of hospitality either. Sabrina began talking, though, and within a few minutes Brayden’s group carried the conversation and everyone started smiling. Julie knew Sabrina was about to sink her teeth into Brayden. Something sparked inside her. She was either pissed or jealous.

  No, she was pissed.

  Following Sabrina’s lead, she stood up, took her tray and abandoned her friends.

  “Where are you going?” Theresa asked after her. Julie headed for Brayden’s table. She was going into enemy territory and she knew it. When she got there, the reception she received from Brayden’s friends was every bit as icy as the reception he had received from hers.

  She was no Sabrina Baldridge, which tickled her insecurities.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” Georgia replied, her smile still on, but propped up on sheer will power alone.

  “Brayden, I was wondering if you wanted to eat lunch with me. If so, I’ll be at that table over there, eating by myself. If you want to stay with your friends, I’ll understand.”

  She turned and left, her entire body trembling inside. She felt dumb. Pathetic. God, she must have sounded like the world’s wettest douchebag just now. Whatever. Brayden or not, she was on her own. Still, as tough as she was trying to appear, the scariest thing in the world for her was being alone. Or being unpopular. Maybe it was both.

  Maybe it was one in the same.

  Either way, when she made that one terrifying walk to the last empty table and sat down, her stomach wiggled so far into her throat it threatened to balloon out of her mouth in front of everyone. Sitting down, she ignored the hateful looks from her group and the curious looks from Brayden’s group, and just went to work on her Cobb salad.

  This is the big red social self-destruct button, she thought to herself, and I’m punching it right now. A second later, the text came in. She dared not search the cafeteria to see who might be sending it, but when she checked, it was from Cameron. Naturally. She finished chewing her food, swallowed, then opened the text.

  It read: WHATEVER YOUR PROBLEM IS BITCH, YOU’D BETTER FIGURE IT OUT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE FRIENDS.

  Refusing to look up, Julie set the phone down, stabbed another forkful of salad and put it in her mouth. A minute later, she felt someone looming over her.

  She was terrified to look up. Afraid it was Cameron. Or worse, one of the ugly kids who always sat together. Was she at their table? If they kicked her out, if she was banished from her spot by the real hobbits, she’d simply die.

  Look up, she told herself.

  She did.

  The sight of him either kicked her heart into high gear or tempered its merciless pace. At that moment, she wasn’t sure. What she did, however, was breathe a very short sigh of relief.

  “I thought I’d be eating lunch alone for the rest of my life,” she admitted.

  “Looking around, I was sure you would, too,” Brayden said. “That’s why I came over to sit with you.”

  “Because you feel bad for me?”

  “It’s kind of a sad sight,” Brayden said, sitting down across the table from her, his back to everyone they left behind. “What happened with your friends?”

  “My life is too complex to listen to their nonsensical bullshit,” she said. “And maybe you were right about me changing over the summer. Not that I’ll admit it, though.”

  He laughed, then said, “So now that you’re my charity case, tell me something interesting about yourself. Something none of those other horse’s dongs know about you.”

  “I’ve been screwing my step-brother for the last few years.” She couldn’t believe she just said that. It was too late to clap her hand over her mouth. Too late to pass it off as some joke. It was out of habit that she just came out with it. This was how the “Tell-all” game was played. At least, that’s how it was played with Emery. They had few secrets between them.

  Brayden’s reaction, however, wasn’t like Emery’s.

  Eyebrows flew up, nostrils inadvertently flared, and the gears of his brain were metal on metal and fissuring fast. Brayden’s eyes, they were wide open. Like a coke addict’s eyes. They had that look like his ears couldn’t have possibly heard her right, but they did. Without a word, he took a bite of his food, ate it plum-faced, then hard-gulped the last of it down. For a moment there, he looked at her like he was still trying to process what he heard. This had her feeling like she’d taken a shallow breath and was now setting the Guinness Book’s World Record for going longer than anyone without breathing before her lungs collapsed.

  Say something you goddamn moron!

  “I guess that’s a start,” he said, showing her his eyes for the first time since she made an absolute fool of herself.

  If she told him she was now pregnant with Emery’s child, she could practically guarantee he’d get up and leave the table and never talk to her again. Not to mention the rumors that would start, catch fire and then socially destroy her.

  “What about you?” she asked. She didn’t want to be embarrassed alone. This was how she first played the game with Emery. On their second go at it, Emery admitted to sneaking in to the ladies restroom and masturbating to a hot chick taking a dump. That was how the game with Emery worked, for better or worse. You just tell the truth.

  Brayden seemed to think about the question for a moment, then said, “I lost my virginity this summer to a married woman whose name I never got. She had to be thirty, thirty-five tops. When she was done practically raping me, she left me naked and spent on my hotel bed because she had to get back to her husband’s asshole dog. That’s what she called the insufferable mutt: her husband’s asshole dog.”

  She let out a freeing laugh, then said in an amused voice, “Mine is so much worse than yours.”

  “You definitely get the blue ribbon prize on that one,” he agreed.

  When he smiled, he had laugh lines that made him look older, more attractive. For a second she couldn’t stop staring at them. He seemed to sense this, and things got quiet in an almost uncomfortable way.

  “You must be thinking such horrible things about me right now,” she finally admitted.

  She was hoping even if he was, he’d try to convince her otherwise. When she admitted to Emery during one of these games that she had spit in his mother’s orange juice one morning because she was too freaking nice, he was quiet for a long time, too. When she said to Emery exactly what she just said to Brayden—about him thinking horrible thoughts of her—her step-brother convinced her everyone was screwed up, too, therefor what she did was normal.

  Nothing about her was normal.

  “The horrible things I’m thinking about you right now would liquefy your brain,” he admitted. Then slowly, a smile creeped onto his face and she knew the game was on.

  “Amuse me,” she said.

  “Not just yet. I have a question.”

&n
bsp; “Go ahead.”

  “Do you love him? Your step-brother?”

  The question sucked all the potential fun out of the air. The truth was, she’d been asking herself the same thing for years. If she didn’t have an answer for herself by now, how could she possibly have one for him?

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t even like him.”

  “Then why sleep with him?” he said, before shoveling half the plate of food in his mouth at once.

  “Because he’s hot, and I can.”

  “That’s a bunch of crap,” he said with long grain rice and green beans nearly falling out of his mouth.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, suddenly regretting playing this stupid game with a near stranger.

  “You’re right,” he said, swallowing half the food, wiping bean juice off his chin, and sucking down half his glass of water. “I don’t understand.”

  “If I don’t sleep with him, my step-sister will. His step-sister, too. Not blood sister. Not for either of us. Jesus, Brayden, it’s complicated.”

  “Sounds like it,” he said, drawing a deep breath. He looked like he barely got that food down, like maybe it was still stuck in a food ball somewhere in his esophagus.

  “So you’re in competition with your step-sister for your step-brother’s…attention. Is that it?” he asked.

  “I guess, but not really. We’re all sleeping together, vying for each other’s attention.”

  “Holy shit,” he fast-whispered, “you’re sleeping with your step-sister, too?”

  She put her head down and busied herself with her food. The only act worse than boning your step-brother is lady-boning your step-sister. With Emery, the name of the game is to come up with the juiciest secret. With Brayden, every secret that should deliver a delicious shock only seems to disappoint.