by A. M. Mahler
“Who was that?”
“Danny McKenzie,” Ryan answered as he pulled out suitcases and trunks with more force than before. “And you need to stay far away from him. He’s got one foot out the door. Last year, he got busted for having pot on campus. He’s some Navy bigwig’s son. He and I don’t see eye to eye.”
“Oh, so there’s actually one person here who’s not looking to be your friend?”
Ryan stopped and looked over at her, a little surprised at the snark in her voice. Then he laughed. “Yeah, that one is definitely not clamoring to be my friend.”
Once all the bags were loaded onto the porter’s luggage cart, Ryan gave him their suite number. The porter raised his eyebrows at the posh location but said nothing. Ryan offered him a generous tip, then turned to Jackie and gestured ahead.
“Let’s go check in,” he said.
“Ryan, maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” she began. “I mean, maybe we should get separate rooms. If you’re the popular boy, I’m—I don’t know, but I won’t be the popular girl, that’s for sure, and I don’t want to be.”
“That’s a good thing, because that’s Brooke’s current role, and I think she’d be pretty put out at having to give it up.”
They headed up a stone walkway. Jackie was too nervous to notice her surroundings as she walked alongside Ryan.
“I like things quiet. My idea of a fun Friday night is staying in with a book and—”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “Just as long as you don’t expect me to do that.”
“What?”
“I get it, Jacks. You’re shy. But I’m not. You don’t have to be in the center of the action. There’s a place for you here, I’ll make sure of it. You want to be left alone? I’ll make that happen. Don’t feel as if you have to be chained to my side.”
“Oh, so you’re afraid I’m going to cramp your style?”
Ryan turned to her, mouth agape. “Which one is it, baby sister? Do you want to be by my side, or across the room? I’m happy as long as you’re happy, but for the love of Christ, don’t make me try to figure it out on my own!”
Jackie laughed and gave him a sideways hug, and they started walking again. “I guess we’ll wait and see what happens.”
He squeezed her tight, then shoved her away good-naturedly.
As they approached the main school building, there was a group of students hovering near the side of the entrance. All eyes were on them, Jackie realized, as she stepped a little closer to Ryan and kept her gaze averted. They were all clearly looking at her, wondering who she was.
Ryan knew it, too, and decided to draw the attention to himself instead.
“Ladies—and that salutation encompasses all of you—how are we all?”
“Hi Ry,” a sultry brunette cooed. She sidled up to his side but stopped just short of draping herself all over him. She gave Jackie a thorough once-over, judged her competition, and found her lacking. “I don’t think I heard from you all summer. I was awfully lonely. What were you up to?”
Ryan grinned as he watched Jackie arch a brow at Brooke. She could see right through the most popular girl in school, he knew. These two were so not going to be instant best friends.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Brooke.” Ryan slid an arm around Jackie’s shoulders and fed the fire. “That’s because I spent it with my best girl here. This is my sister.”
All the mouths around them fell open. Nobody even tried to hide their astonishment. “Jacks, this is Brooke, Sophie, Megan, Cooper, Mike, and Noah. Guys, this pretty girl—who I might mention is off-limits—is Jackie Reilly.”
Jackie smiled shyly at the group, then averted her eyes.
“Jimmy Reilly’s daughter?” one boy asked, stepping forward.
“Yes,” Jackie looked back, surprised.
“I’m really sorry about that accident,” the boy said. “He was my driver. I haven’t been able to watch a race since.”
“Oh, um, thanks,” Jackie replied with a slight squirm. The boy made her a bit uneasy, though she couldn’t say why. Maybe it was because she wasn’t real comfortable talking about her father yet.
“I forgot to mention Coop is a stock car racing fan,” Ryan replied. “The disloyal son of a bitch never roots for my dad.”
“Your dad doesn’t suck, Ry, but Jimmy Reilly was the best ever.”
“One more cup title and he would have been,” Jackie replied.
An awkward silence fell over the group, and Ryan tugged Jackie’s hand and pushed through them all.
“I’m going to show Jacks around,” he announced. “We’ll see you guys at dinner.”
They started to walk away, but a small, pretty, brown-haired girl popped up in front of them. “Jackie!” she said. “I’m Sophie, and I’m really sorry I just stood there and stared just now. I’m not usually so—well—classless.” She laughed awkwardly and then continued. “Anyway, welcome to our school. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Thank you,” Jackie said.
“Thanks, Dixie.” Ryan smiled at Sophie, using a nickname he’d assigned to her back when they were in grade school. He’d always been intrigued by Sophie’s soft Virginian accent and good manners, and started calling her Dixie as soon as he learned the name was associated with the South. At first, being a young boy, he’d meant to tease her. And he did, mercilessly. But over the years, it had turned into more of a term of endearment that annoyed Sophie’s cousin Brooke to no end.
“Sophie’s one of the real ones,” Ryan whispered as he held open a door for Jackie and left the others behind.
“And Brooke’s not?” Jackie asked slyly.
“Gee, what gave that away?”
“Tell me you were never a couple,” Jackie said. “Please tell me that you do not go for plastic girls like her.”
“I wish I could claim total innocence in that area, Jacks, but she and I have been known to be found in dark supply closets and under the bleachers. I will say, though, that I haven’t slept with her.”
“Yet.”
“I’m not interested in her for that reason,” Ryan confessed. “Yeah, she’s hot and certainly willing. She’s a hell of a kisser and her curves are sinful, but there isn’t much more to her. Admittedly, I’m not as picky on the circuit, but I spend ten months a year with these girls. If things crash and burn, there’s not many places to hide, you know?”
Ryan would have much preferred to pursue Sophie, but she was almost as shy as Jackie and tended to turn into a mute when he spoke to her. She seemed strangely indifferent to him, and Ryan could never really read her level of interest in him. He thought she was less than impressed with his popularity. She often sat by herself at meals and disappeared into the library. Ryan’s grades were all right, but a bookworm he was not.
“Uh-huh.”
“Hey, don’t judge,” Ryan laughed. He gestured around him to the front entrance of the school. The main hall was open all the way to the stained-glass ceiling.
Jackie gasped at the woodwork and artistry that had gone into the design and structure of the building itself.
“Trent was formed in the eighteen hundreds by the Trent Brothers, who won the Nobel Prize for science. The school has an observatory, a fine arts center, a huge library, several gymnasiums, a state-of-the-art theater, a movie theater, several fields, a boathouse, an Olympic-size pool, stables, a football stadium, tennis courts, and hiking trails. You name it, and it’s here. Apparently, Trent is steeped in history and is on the cutting edge of innovation. That’s what it says it on the website, anyway.”
He took her down a large marble staircase and they emerged into a nice-looking cafeteria. “This is the Grill and Student Center. It’s the main hangout. There’s an arcade in the corner, an Internet café, a lounge, and the campus store. The movie theater is down the hall through there. Grades one through eight are on the other end of the campus. We don’t see the younger kids often, though. They come up once a week for movies in the afternoon on the weekends, but there are facilities
down there for them, too. The covered walkway back there will take you to the library. Did I mention the observatory has a planetarium in it?
“There’s all sorts of classes you can take—astronomy, anthropology, a crate of histories and science, computers, and foreign languages. The average class size is about ten or twelve students. Some classes, you just sit around a big table. Makes it hard to fall asleep in class, you know? There’s nine stories to the library—”
“Nine?” Jackie gaped.
That sounded perfect. It would take her ages to fully explore the library, and she’d also have a place to disappear to.
“Yeah, they have over two hundred and fifty thousand books in there. There’s all the electronic stuff, too. There’s also a computer lab, but not too many people use it because everyone’s got their own laptops. I’m told there’s a pretty cool movie archive. Oscar winners went here. There’s a bunch of silent movies and stuff. The visual arts department is supposed to be pretty cool. Our suite is in this building. We’re above the administration offices.”
Jackie followed Ryan to a group of elevators as he continued to talk.
“Like I said, these suites are reserved for visiting professors, the Board of Trustees when they visit for their quarterly meetings, and some high-profile politicians’ kids. There’s two floors of suites. Students are on one floor, and adults on the other. Our floor is always locked down, so you’ll need a key card to get on it. I’ll give you yours. A few adults have one, as well as the security guards and the resident director of our floor. There’s a lounge, a small kitchenette, and a tiny, unstaffed clinic up there, too.”
Ryan opened the door to their suite. It was spacious enough and very utilitarian. The living room held a picture window overlooking the campus. There was also a gas fireplace bordered by built-in shelving, a big screen television, and a plush couch with lots of pillows. Two workstations faced each other along one wall. A large bathroom possessed a double vanity. Each bedroom had a large closet, dresser, double bed, window, and even more shelving.
Jackie wandered around the suite a bit, and Ryan watched her. He wasn’t sure how she was going to handle this transition. She had never really been separated from her father before. She didn’t have to live on her own now, though.
Over the summer, he’d discovered that she was actually pretty self-sufficient. She was a good cook and she could handle her own laundry. Until her father’s death, she’d never lacked for company. She had never really been alone before, but she would be here. She was right when she’d described herself as shy, and not a party girl. Ryan didn’t consider himself a party guy per se, but he usually always had weekend plans, and he liked to hang out with friends after dinner during the week.
Sophie was sort of a quiet person, too. Maybe he’d see if she would mind spending time with Jackie. He often wondered if Sophie only hung around their group because Brooke was her roommate and cousin. Perhaps the rest of them were a little rowdy for the usually quiet girl.
He watched as Jackie stopped her wanderings, leaned against the picture window, and hugged her arms around herself. He noted that the vacant expression her eyes had held since her father’s death was back. He often wondered what she thought about when she got that look in her eyes, but he didn’t pry. She had a right to her grief, and her private thoughts should be her own. But he’d keep watching her, just to make sure she was all right. He may have only recently discovered that they were related, but he’d fully embraced the relationship, and he took his big brother role seriously.
She would adjust, he decided with a nod to himself. It wouldn’t be easy, but she’d make the best of it. He hoped.
Four
AS DANNY McKENZIE walked away from Ryan Willis and the new girl, it took all his self-control not to turn back around and gawk. Who was she to come to his school out of the blue and knock his world off-kilter? It was all he could do to shake himself out of his stupor when she’d spoken—or more like whispered. Danny had never met a more timid girl in his seventeen years, and he knew a lot of girls.
Something about Jackie Reilly nagged at him, though. He remembered her name all right. Anyone who skimmed the Internet or turned on ESPN for five minutes over the summer knew of stock car racing’s tragic event. Jackie and Ryan’s pictures had been plastered everywhere, but none of the articles or captions had mentioned what their relationship was.
Danny walked into his dorm room and tossed his stuff onto his bed. His roommate, the same guy he’d lived with for the last four of his eleven years at this prison, wasn’t there yet. Doug wouldn’t arrive until the next day, which meant that Danny had to go down to storage, get all their stuff out, and haul it up. He tried to remember if they’d cleaned out their little cube refrigerator before they’d stored it for the summer. He sure as hell hoped so.
Danny had decided to change the setup of the room this year, and he was happy to see that the loft bed was already installed. He figured that if they moved one bed along the window wall and slid the loft bed next to it, they could set up the flat-screen TV, stereo, fridge, and illegal microwave underneath, and fit a futon on the opposite wall under the loft bed. He’d ditched the desks because they never used them. If one of them couldn’t concentrate because of noise in the room, the other one just went downstairs to the dorm’s common room or over to the library to get work done. It was the way they’d always functioned, and it worked for them. The futon would be a nice bonus—especially for Doug since he was the one with a steady girlfriend.
After Danny pushed the one bed up against the wall, he looked out the window. He studied the campus and the activity below and saw Willis with his new sister in front of the main hall. The girl’s shoulders were rounded and her arms were crossed. She didn’t appear to be looking at anyone in particular, but Willis still had his arm around her. It sent a pretty clear message to the other guys in Willis’s entourage: His sister was not on the market. Was that because she wanted it that way, or did Willis just not trust his friends?
Unlike the douchebags in Willis’s flock, Danny wasn’t afraid of Ryan. Jackie Reilly intrigued him. She seemed shy, almost scared of the world around her. But why was that? Had her father been abusive? Is that why she hadn’t met his eyes when they met? Had she led a sheltered life? Maybe she thought she was just too good for a guy like Danny. His father was a naval commander, sure, but he didn’t make much money. Danny had been left his mother’s fortune when she died, shortly after he was born.
His father was a cold man. Danny didn’t know if it was because he was so affected by his wife’s death and blamed Danny for it, or if he was just emotionally unavailable by nature. They didn’t speak to each other at all. The commander had hired a full-time caretaker for his son, and that man had basically raised him until he was six years old.
When Danny had turned seven, he’d been enrolled in Trent Academy. During summer breaks, he spent the entire time at camp. He didn’t go home for the holidays, and he rarely saw his old man. They didn’t speak on the telephone. They only emailed if it was absolutely necessary to communicate.
Danny resented the hell out of his father. How could he treat his own son this way? His mother’s family hadn’t shown any particular interest in him, either. They disapproved of her relationship with a man with a distasteful military job. As far as Danny knew, his father didn’t have any family to speak of. He was also frequently deployed. Danny assumed his father worked it that way so that he would not have to be available to his son in any way.
Danny had learned to live with it. He was smart. He was an A student. He also had a trust fund larger than nearly all the other kids at this hellish place. So, he usually was able to get whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. He didn’t dip into the money too often. He had to go through a trustee to get it, which was why when he did want money for something, he usually got it hassle-free.
Danny hated Trent. He didn’t know where he’d go instead, but he didn’t want to be here. He frequently pushed the barrier
s of the rules just to try and get kicked out. Maybe if he was expelled from a school as prestigious as Trent, the old man would finally be forced to deal with him.
But no matter what he did to break the rules, here he remained. He’d thought that the weed was a sure thing last year. He hadn’t smoked it. He just wanted to get caught with it. What resulted instead was a month of detention served watching tortuous videos about the dangers of drugs, not to mention an uncomfortable afternoon with a criminal judge, who spent the time going over all the harshest drug penalties the legal system could dole out.
But now, for the first time in longer than he could remember, he wasn’t interested in getting kicked out. He thought it might be good to stick around this year and see what the new girl was like. She had gorgeous blue eyes. She wasn’t the biggest-busted girl around, but what she had matched her frame nicely. But it was those eyes…those beautiful, haunted eyes. They were what drew him in the most. He wanted to know her story.
JACKIE WALKED INTO the library with her eyes down, as was her habit wherever she went. She wasn’t interested in looking for anyone she knew—or more accurately, anyone Ryan knew. Her transition at Trent wasn’t going as smoothly as Ryan had hoped. She knew that. But that was probably due to her reluctance to engage in conversation with anyone at all. She liked to sit alone at meals, stay in on the weekends, or hide in the library. She knew it was frustrating since he spent a lot of time with her. But he was outgoing by nature, so he needed to be around people. She didn’t.
Jackie stopped short at the reference desk. Danny McKenzie was arguing with the librarian on duty. What was he doing here? He seemed so out of place, but he had a pile of books in front of him that the librarian was checking out while they continued in their heavy debate.
“The guy’s a total tool,” Danny laughed.
“Do not ever call Mr. Darcy a tool in my presence, Daniel McKenzie. And you might do well to watch how you speak to an adult,” the librarian huffed.