Boys And Their Toys: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Troubled Playthings Book 1)

by Tiffany Sala

  “Of course you are the sort of person who watches videos of phones being run over by cars,” I said. I stopped by the car. I’d left the door hanging open in my headlong race to stop any other drivers who happened to come by from finishing off my poor phone.

  “Trains, usually,” Lucas said. “Like I said, they’re usually fine. You must just have a crappy phone. Get in the car, we’re going to be late for school.”

  “I don’t want to get back in this car with you,” I said, and folded my arms—and then dropped the phone again when a ridge of the shattered corner slid against my finger.

  “I’m seriously not playing around this time,” said Lucas. “We’ve got to get out of the middle of the road before someone comes along. I’ll buy you a new fucking phone, just move.”

  “You are absolutely insane if you think I would ever—”

  Lucas pulled out his own phone, a type I’d never even seen before which left me in little doubt as to how much it had cost. “I’m really getting worried about you, Callie. I know you must be upset you dropped your phone out of the car, you can’t just afford to replace these things like I do, but going back to that old paranoid shit about how I’m doing you harm…” He shook his head. “Maybe I should call your parents, an ambulance…”

  Even my father was not going to be able to keep standing behind me if I seemed to be continually having these meltdowns. I sighed, scooped up my broken phone, and threw myself back into the car, slamming the door.

  “Seatbelt on,” Lucas said. I clipped the belt. Lucas started the car again and rolled it to a more appropriate parking spot, just as another car came too fast down the street. “Now. Are we good?”

  I kept my head pointed into my lap because I did not want to look at him. “What do you want, Lucas? What can I do that will make you just leave me alone?”

  “That’s the only thing I don’t want to do,” he said. “The only thing I want you to do for me. Just give me a chance, actually come hang out with me when I ask you to. I don’t want you to do anything other than that you wouldn’t normally do. I seriously just want that chance.”

  “Why should you be allowed to bully me into spending time with you?” I asked. “Isn’t that already too much?”

  “You have to spend time with me anyway,” Lucas said. “All of us, we’re stuck seeing one another five days a week until we can graduate high school forever and move on to some situation where we have a bit more choice.”

  He sounded completely serious about that, which made me look up at him to confirm he actually looked serious as well. It was not the sort of thing I would have expected to come out of Lucas Starling’s mouth. It wasn’t even the sort of thing I would say. I’d expect to hear it from one of the kids we’d grown up with who had been seriously bullied: the really smart ones, or those who otherwise hadn’t fit in well enough to get left alone. Hailing from Chigwell aside, I’d always fit in well enough to at least be seamless and invisible, so had most of my friends. Someone like Lucas? He got to decide the shape and size of the puzzle pieces.

  I wondered if school was genuinely the only thing in Lucas’s life where he didn’t get his own way, if that was what pissed him off so much about it.

  Well, I wasn’t going to just roll over because he found the notion of an authority higher than Lucas Starling offensive. But it was clear to me I wasn’t going to get myself out of this situation by getting into a fight with him while I was sitting in his car and he had plenty of plans for how to make me look like I was growing increasingly unhinged.

  “Okay,” I said. For now, I was going to go along with him. I would make my own plan later. “Let’s get to school, okay?”

  Lucas shot me that big smile, now perfectly seated in his face, and a shiver ran through me. Staying around him for even a minute longer was a dangerous plan when I found him that attractive. There was fear in it as well as excitement, but it wasn’t that I was afraid of him. I was afraid of what could happen to me because of him, but that was a very different thing to my head.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and dragged my scream from me again with the speed at which he rejoined the traffic.

  Chapter Six

  “What am I supposed to say?” I spoke up when Lucas pulled the car into a parking spot in front of the school. He’d been trying to engage me in conversation the whole several minutes it had taken to get to school, and I hadn’t ignored him, but I’d kept my contribution minimal. It hadn’t seemed to bother him, so at least he’d been honest about not caring about more than my presence.

  Now he was looking at me more suspiciously than I ever remembered before. “About what?”

  “To everyone who asks me why I came to school with you,” I said. “Someone is bound to have already noticed, it’s not like we’re travelling incognito. I guarantee everyone will be talking about it by the time we get to second period.”

  “Oh.” Lucas grimaced. “What’s that thing the celebs say when the media bug them about something they don’t want to talk about?”

  “Are you seriously suggesting I can respond with no comment when everyone asks me what I was doing in a car with you?”

  “Why not?” said Lucas, and climbed out of the car. He strode towards the school building leaving the doors locked with the top down. I was forced to climb over the side of the car in my school skirt. At least Lucas had already walked off without looking back, so I didn’t have to worry about him trying to catch a glimpse of something I didn’t want to show him.

  Following him through the gates into the Burgundy College grounds at a much slower pace, I knew exactly what was happening. I was being set aside for the day so Lucas could play with his other little school friends. That was exactly how he worked in these situations. That was what it had been like the first time, before I’d known better. When he was ready to play again, he would show up and it would be as if that cold little walk-off hadn’t even happened.

  And he wondered that I wasn’t interested in that. Were there girls in our class who did go in for that kind of arrangement? I couldn’t actually think who Lucas had been going out with in the past couple of years. I hadn’t been paying much attention. I didn’t care that much, but also at some point I had realised that the meaningless ‘going-out’ relationships being formed and broken at will by ten-year-olds had turned into teenage relationships where the participants were probably having sex, and I really didn’t want to think about people I’d known as kids having sex. It was actually worse than thinking about my parents having sex, because I’d had to accept that was a thing that happened since I knew what sex was, and I doubted they were having much of it now anyway.

  Well, the main point was I was probably going to have to start paying attention to Lucas again.

  Tamara and Aileen joined me outside our first class for the day. Obviously both of them already knew how I’d made it to school, and crowded in asking so many questions I couldn’t actually focus on any one of them.

  I waved my hands in front of their faces. “No comment. No comment, okay?”

  Aileen fell over laughing. “Is that what you have to say when you start dating a school celebrity?”

  I winced at the thought of dating Lucas. The guy didn’t even want to hang out with me at school. I’d have a boyfriend who spent more time with Ashleigh than with me.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “That’s all I’m going to say.” I definitely wasn’t going to tell them it was Lucas who had said I should no comment everything, or they’d never let me forget it.

  “Friends with benefits, yes,” said Aileen. “You sly dog.”

  “Callie and Lucas were practically dating before, years ago,” Tamara said.

  I shot her a filthy glare. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t say anything about that situation. Aileen hadn’t joined us until our high school years at Sands, long after the Lucas situation was forgotten, so there was no reason for her to know. “It was in primary school, it was just one stupid school dance, and we never even wen
t to the dance together, in the end. So none of that is really relevant.”

  “Wooo,” said Aileen, “someone’s still sensitive.”

  “I—”

  Before I could say anything more Fiona, who was also in our class that morning, came right up to me and asked if that pink car I’d come to school in was mine. If Lucas had bought it for me.

  At first, I thought that was a really clever, sneaky way of asking me if the two of us were together, but then I realised that of course that was what people would naturally think. It certainly didn’t look like me getting a ride in Lucas’s car, and it was just a bit of an upgrade from the last car they’d all seen me driving.

  “It’s his sister’s car,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Fiona, “how is Lucy going these days?”

  “Fine, I think.” I didn’t want to admit I was riding in her car but couldn’t remember if I’d ever actually spoken to her. I hadn’t even been able to remember her name.

  “That’s great to hear,” Fiona said. “Let her know I said hi, okay?”

  It had been a weird conversation, but at least Fiona hadn’t pressed me for details on Lucas in the end. I didn’t have any time to think about Lucas’s sister, either. I had to focus on how I was going to manage the whole rest of this day until I probably had to deal with Lucas again.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket without thinking, to check the time, and Tamara squeaked. “Callie, what happened to your phone?”

  I scowled at the ruined corner. “Dropped the fucking thing out of Lucas’s sister’s stupid car, didn’t I?”

  “Clearly not a convertible fan,” Aileen muttered. I was grateful to both of them for dropping it then in favour of other topics as we moved on to class.

  Even though I actually felt nervous going into the bathroom all by myself after everything that had happened, as if Lucas might follow me in there and harass me further, I couldn’t help myself. I excused myself from first period social science, pretending I didn’t see my friends’ curious looks as I hurried out, and locked myself in a stall in the toilet block with my phone and earbuds to try to listen to that recording I’d gotten.

  The damn thing was too low-quality to hear much of anything, and what I could hear was making me sound like the psychopath all right, Lucas trying everything he could to reason with me after I started screaming about not wanting to get in a car with him. Maybe if I took it to the police they’d be able to have their experts get some more details out of it… but no, that was the sort of made-up stuff you saw on TV crime dramas, wasn’t it? And even if they did get more out of it there was no guarantee it would make me look any better. The mere fact of that scene was as likely to make me seem even crazier as anything.

  It was not really likely I would be able to defeat Lucas with that sort of tactic anyway. It was too much like the sort of thing he would do: twisting the facts to their best advantage, trying to get people in the surrounding area on side. I didn’t really want anyone else involved in our standoff, I wanted to have the freedom to deal with Lucas in my own way and have the issue drop. The last thing I wanted was to get into another mess like the one when we were ten, and have people bringing this up whenever they pleased for the rest of my life.

  So I was going to have to find a way of dealing with this situation that was more authentically Callie. And Lucas might not realise it because he’d never paid attention to me most of the time, but I was more than up to the challenge.

  I didn’t have to wait out in the front carpark for as long as I had worried I might, but two people I barely even recognised still had their opportunities to approach me and ask what the deal was with me and Lucas and the car.

  I was more than a little tense by the time Lucas strolled out and started heading for me, hands stuffed in his pockets, thankfully alone at least. “Job today?” he said.

  I shook my head. “I cashed in on a bit of leave for the next few days.” I hadn’t wanted to be in the office and jumping at every car that pulled in right next to the window I worked at. And I definitely hadn’t wanted Lucas hanging around.

  “Great,” Lucas said. “I’m going to take you shopping for a new phone.”

  “What?” I said. “No, I can’t afford—”

  “You don’t need to afford anything,” said Lucas. He stepped into the car and gestured for me to join him. “Just come pick something out you think suits, and it’s covered.”

  “No,” I said, “I can keep using the one I’ve already got for the moment.”

  “You are not going to keep using some old broken piece of shit out of some sense of pride,” Lucas said, but I had already stopped talking because I’d just concluded the same thing myself.

  Why should I go on using a phone he had broken, that could stop working at any time now, and have him get away without any sort of recourse? The only reason I’d said those words was because of some stupid sense of pride. A dumb old-fashioned thing where a girl couldn’t accept anything from a boy and still be considered virtuous.

  Well, there was nothing virtuous about the situation between the two of us, and Lucas was not going to leave me alone just because I played by those old rules of virtue. That was the game I’d started out with, appealing to authority and the rules, and he was far more skilled than me at playing that game in a way that made the world work how he wanted.

  Maybe I should be a little more shameless.

  “Are we clear that you’re buying this for me as an apology?” I asked. “I don’t owe you anything after this. You aren’t earning the right to do anything to me or have me do anything for you. Right?”

  “Thought I made it clear I only wanted your company,” Lucas said.

  “Just checking,” I said. “Oh… and I want something actually good. Don’t go trying to dump some horrid shit on me that no normal person would want.”

  I was pretty sure he hadn’t been planning to give me that big smile of his this time around. I’d surprised it right out of him, and I liked realising that far too much. He was going to find I wasn’t anything like that confused little girl he’d managed to steamroll over years ago.

  “I am going to buy you something fucking amazing,” he said. “Now get in.”

  “Are you going to actually open the door for me?” I prompted.

  Lucas shook his head, and leaned back. “I’m going to sit here and watch you try not to flash your panties while you climb in.”

  “I am fairly sure that what I wear under this skirt isn’t entitled to be referred to as ‘panties’,” I said.

  “Oh,” Lucas said, “that’s tantalising.”

  And I managed to hold onto the mystery while entering with strategic use of my school backpack. Lucas might be an average eighteen-year-old who wanted more, but he was going to learn before I was done with him that he couldn’t just have it through being a bit of a sleaze.

  I hadn’t even been in a store to buy my last two phones. My dad had just asked me what colour I was interested in, and then he went in and selected something that wasn’t even close to what I’d said I liked. Underneath the purple phone case I’d gotten for my birthday one year, my current (well, current until that morning) phone had been this awful lipstick-pink. Just peeking at its real colour made me queasy.

  I winced as I spotted a whole row of garish colours two steps into the store. But Lucas grabbed my elbow and steered me past those, towards the back of the store. The phones there were all behind cases, in muted and metallic colours, and a shop assistant in a very neat blouse and skirt patrolled up and down. I felt a bit dizzy when I focused on some of the price tags: I didn’t see anything under four figures in front of me.

  “I assume based on what you’ve currently got you’re not an Apple girl,” Lucas said. He put his hand out as the girl watching the displays started to approach, halting her in her tracks. It seemed a bit rude, but I had to admit I liked the strategy. No need to awkwardly explain you were just browsing.

  “No, I don’t buy Apple,” I said. “Ca
n’t afford to.”

  “That’s not really an issue right now,” Lucas said. “But, we will stick with what you know. The phone brand you choose is a very personal matter, and it’s not for me to push you into making a change.”

  I stared at him. He wasn’t smiling at all, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a joke somewhere buried in the remark.

  “Why are you looking like that?” he asked, with an actual squirm as if it made him uncomfortable.

  “I just don’t get the joke.”

  “I’m serious,” Lucas said. “You don’t fuck with someone’s choice of device. It’s meant to say something about them.”

  “All mine usually says about me is I’m too poor to purchase from the top shelf,” I cracked, but even that didn’t get a laugh.

  “Yes,” Lucas said, “and that’s a statement in itself. Isn’t it?”

  “Hate to admit it,” said the blouse-and-skirt girl, who had come up behind us, “but he’s right. This is the modern world we live in. We’ve all just got to get used to it.”

  She’d smiled at me when I first looked at her, but most of her eye contact was for Lucas—whether that was because she’d realised he was the guy with the bank account or because he was just the nicest to look at, I couldn’t say. All I knew was it was very strange thinking of Lucas as someone who could go into shops and have attendants see him as a man with a bank balance instead of some kid who might smash something and try to run. In his bloody school uniform, too. I just felt like I should pull my skirt down or tidy my hair or something.

  “You’re very keen to make a sale,” was all Lucas said, to which she busted out a smile that made me realise she was not actually that much older than either of us. Lucas was a perfect match for her, the way he balanced that confident energy with an occasional big-kid smile. Me… I just looked like a big kid.

  “Isn’t making sales what it’s all about?” the salesgirl said to Lucas now. She was completely ignoring me, and I didn’t actually think it was like that thing you read about where a girl would freeze out another girl to assert her authority over her. I was pretty sure she had just completely forgotten I was there.