After I had also completed the rest of my tasks for tomorrow, I peeled off my clothes and put on a swimsuit.
It was laced at the back and strapless.
Nevertheless, it sat excellently and showed off my bottom well.
In contrast to my small bosom, it was well proportioned.
I was glad about that, because a sagging bottom and an A-cup would have been a bit depressing.
When I dived into the pool with a dive, all thoughts of body proportions were blown away.
The water did not care if I looked like this or not. It nestled seamlessly to my limbs and made me feel weightless.
I swam for a good hour.
I spent the rest of the day helping Lu with a project she had to finish in six weeks.
"How's the new rowing trainer?" she asked and looked at me with a mischievous grin.
Lu was still in high school, but on the day of the college rowing competitions, the students always had the day off so they could participate in the spectacle.
I made sand trickle through a sieve.
"Asshole alert," I replied in an exaggeratedly high voice.
That I was excessively angry with him, I concealed from her
Otherwise she would want to know what I was doing about it.
Benji's plan would, as usual, defy all moral principles.
Unlike me, Lu abhorred almost all the comforts of P-Fiends.
She had no understanding for power games and unfair methods that gave us advantages over others.
At times, I envied my little sister her principles.
In such moments, I wondered how I had come to belong to such a group.
A group that our father would not have approved of at all.
"He's really hot," Lu remarked appreciatively as she glued a miniature water tower to the green cardboard.
"Goes like this," I murmured, thinking of how he had looked at me shortly after entering the lecture hall.
"Good looks aren't everything," I added, drizzling liquid glue onto the ground that was supposed to represent the meadow.
Lu lifted a brow and brushed her mocha-brown ponytail off her shoulder.
"Those are wise words for someone who is friends with the most attractive guys in Canada, who -" she paused and looked down at me from above, "... who, by the way, are the biggest assholes under the sun."
I sighed and turned back to the sand.
"They're not that bad," I defended Benji, Rash and Madox (except for Sky, because she liked Lu quite a bit).
But I knew she was right.
Yes, the P-Fiends weren't exactly son-in-law material and certainly not candidates for the heavenly gate.
On the other hand, there was one thing Lu and no one else outside our circle understood: we would do anything for each other.
Our loyalty to each other was boundless - no matter what the issue.
We would never abandon one of us.
"And whether they are bad," Lu rebuked.
I put the brush aside.
"Let's talk about something else, OK?"
I said this in a mild tone, because even if my mood was not the best today, I did not want Lu to suffer.
She was my anchor, my little sister, and still the dearest person in the world to me.
I reached for the water bottle next to me and took a sip.
Not five seconds passed when Lu suddenly asked: "Who was that with James today? Does he have a new girlfriend?"
I choked so hard she had to pat me on the back a couple of times to make it better.
"Are you okay?"
Lu looked at me compassionately while I was still coughing
"I'm all right," I croaked and gasped for breath.
I would make three crosses when this day was finally over!
***
The next morning we had literature in the first two hours.
Last night it had rained, so the air was now especially fresh.
I had read the paper on Tolstoy six times yesterday to make sure it was perfect.
A seventh time couldn't hurt, I thought as I slammed the door of my car.
Thinking back to the first few minutes of class, I rummaged through my oversized bag after the homework.
"Where are you?" I mumbled to myself as my freshly manicured hands dug deeper and deeper into the inside of my Versace bag.
I walked at a snail's pace toward the college building, my head still bowed down as I finally caught hold of the loose pieces of paper hidden in one of my college blocks.
"Watch it!" nagged a familiar voice.
A dull pain shot through my shoulder.
"Ouch!", I shouted, and saw the paper slipping from my hand in slow motion and falling into a puddle in the middle of a puddle - all six sheets!
I froze for a brief moment and gave in to the shock. This could not be true! As if stung by a tarantula, I rushed towards the mini pond and tried to save what could still be saved.
Full of horror I held up the soaking wet pieces of paper, which now resembled a wobbly noodle plate.
The sentences were blurred and no longer decipherable.
"No, no, no," I moaned and let the remains of my work sink.
I stood up and saw Chloe Clarice Bell, who eyed me with a triumphant grin.
A loud, "Oops!", with her flirtatiously holding her hand in front of her mouth, was all she produced as I stared at her angrily.
"You..." I couldn't find the words.
"Yes, Blaire?" she would say in an arrogant way.
"Beast," I snatched it from her as I foamed with rage.
The stupid bitch bumped into me on purpose!
"What louse has gotten into your head?" Rash asked when he saw me stomping up the stairs to our place.
He was already sitting in the lecture hall. Around his neck he wore light blue headphones that cost as much as a small car. Like most days in college, he had put on a hooded sweatshirt - now a dark blue one - and casual, not too tight-fitting dark jeans. His feet were in the latest Nike sneakers.
He wore his kicks in a special way by folding the trouser legs a few times so that they didn't cover the shoe.
It was excessive, for a non-gay man. But the look suited him, there was no denying it.
"Everything's fine," I growled as I pushed past Dean and Peter to get to my seat.
Benji entered the auditorium just seconds after me.
Before he even sat down, I leaned in his direction and said softly, "Do you remember your proposal before the semester break?"
A sinister smile spread across his even-faced face.
"Have you changed your mind?" he asked in a dark voice.
"I returned to Chloe with my teeth clenched and my eyes fixed on her.
Like me, Benji couldn't stand Chloe Clarice Bell.
I would even go so far as to say that he really hated her.
Why exactly, I didn't quite understand (apart from the fact that she was a know-it-all and obtrusive rules advocate).
All I knew about Benji's deep-seated aversion to her was that his and her parents had once gone golfing together.
The kids - that is, little Chloe and little Benji - had taken her with them.
So both spent a lot of time together during the summer.
But that was before Chloe's father divorced her mother.
That's right - Vancouver was a place full of broken hearts!
Two seconds before the doorbell rang, Sky also managed to enter the room.
Right behind her, Professor Edwards came in.
He walked with long steps towards his desk. As he slammed his leather bag on it, I winced.
What was wrong with me?
"Good morning," he said emotionlessly, gazing across the rows of seats.
When he arrived at ours, it seemed to me as if his eyes had stayed on me a little longer.
Nervously I slid up a bit to sit straighter and above all more confident.
After he had finished examining our faces, Sky gave me a conspiratorial look that was supposed to mea
n as much as: "See, he was staring at you like that again!"
The professor pulled a textbook and several whiteboard pens from his pocket.
I took a deep breath, then I spoke up.
"Yes, Ms Spencer?" Edwards asked without looking, which was almost a little bit creepy.
"The task you gave us yesterday," I hesitantly began. Don't lose your nerve, Blaire. Make it quick and painless - like ripping off a Band-Aid!
Edwards looked up and gave me an intense look.
"let me guess - you couldn't do it because you broke a fingernail?"
He laughed bitterly; his icy eyes now rested upon me.
"I made them," I replied more impudently than I'd intended.
Then I squinted over to Chloe, who was whispering something in her friend Melissa's ear.
"I've just been jostled, which is why my work fell in the puddle."
Silence.
After I made my statement, I realized how incredible she sounded.
That's why I kept pushing, "Ask Chloe, she was the one who bumped into me."
I gave Chloe an angry look.
"You ran into me!" she hissed.
"That's not true at all!" I countered, trying to reconstruct in my mind which direction she had come from.
The slips of paper had flown to the right while I had gone straight ahead.
Chloe must have been walking straight ahead as well, so it was very, very unlikely that she had accidentally bumped into me (or that I had run into her). After all, she had been behind me.
"You saw that my work was flying out of my hands," I said, to get to the heart of the discussion.
Chloe pursed her lips and flipped her flowing mane off her shoulder.
"I didn't see anything. Hmm, wait ...," she replied, tapping her lower lip with her finger. "Except you had tomatoes on your eyes!"
"Was that all?" Edwards interfered in an authoritative voice.
"No, that wasn't it!" I thumped even before I could stop myself.
Professor Edwards' face was inscrutable when he said: "Ms Spencer, come to lecture hall six at sixteen-thirty on Monday afternoon."
I swallowed and put my hands on my hips
"And then?"
Logan Edwards looked at me searchingly as he declared in a silky voice, "Oral examination! "If you interrupt my class a third time, this class is over for you."
My mouth remained open.
It took me a moment to recover my composure.
I remembered that Benji had a plan for the new professor.
A plan to make him compliant.
I took a deep breath, then I put on an innocent air and said in a lovely tone, "Very well, Professor Edwards."
As I sat down, I gave Chloe a withering look.
...and she returned it, her fingers dancing in a waving motion.
Well, you wait, you bitch, I thought, looking forward to getting back at her.
If there was one thing we privileged devils could do, it was bring our adversaries to their knees.
At first, I thought Benji's suggestion about Chloe was a bit much.
Especially since it involved involving another person - though not entirely innocent.
But now the situation looked different!
Chloe and Edwards had to be cut down, there was no doubt about that.
With a pinched expression on my face I sat down again.
Rash stroked my back amicably, while Sky looked at me with a compressed mouth and a sympathetic look.
Benji, on the other hand, winked at me with a roguish grin.
I nodded and defiantly pushed my chin forward while my eyes stuck like lasers to Edward's muscular chest.
Purgatory
Kloack.
Kloack.
Kloack.
Sky's square block heels hammered loudly on the asphalt as she flanked by Rash and Madox headed for the Bells' front door.
Benji and I were left behind.
It's hard to say which one of us felt the greater reluctance to go to the party.
The biannual celebration of the start of the new semester was the Who's Who of Vancouver's young adults.
An event that not even we P-Fiends would have wanted to miss for one of our sabotage plans.
Not even when suddenly Chloe Clarice Bell was the host.
I sighed noisily as Benji and I stopped in front of the white archway that marked the entrance to the property.
"Ready?" Benji asked in a rough voice.
He was wearing an ivory pinstriped suit, with a grey pinstripe handkerchief and a matching hat.
A cigar was stuck in the corner of his mouth.
When I asked him what he represented, he had answered "Myself".
"Let the games begin", I said with a confident smile, which was totally contrary to my feelings.
I promised myself I'd get back at Chloe for her internship and her speeding tickets. But from a distance, I would have preferred an attack like that. I didn't want to see her or lose my nerve in front of the entire crew again.
But since the rest of my friends were going (Benji included), I would have endured the few hours.
"That's how I like my girl," Liam roared behind us and gave me a pat on the bottom.
He was the quarterback of our college team and he was almost every cliché.
I would have preferred him not to have shot himself down with his teammates in a pre-party pre-party glow before the party.
But since I was an advocate of free will (without rules and subliminal constraints) in a relationship, I had accepted his plan without comment.
I would later call him a taxi and slip the driver an extra fifty dollars if he made sure that Sunnyboy found his way back to bed safely.
"Why are we still here and not at Josh's?" Sky wanted to know from Rash as she strutted across the lawn with flares in front of us.
Rash shoved his hands into his pockets and explained: "The clean-up operation after the last party at Josh's was probably quite expensive. Plus, someone threw up on the bed in the master bedroom."
I stared at Rash's oversized red horns, which were part of his Elton John costume. "Wouldn't have been the thing in itself, you know about the buzz. They just didn't realize how rampant they really were," Rash continued. "Heard they got back from the Hamptons a day earlier than planned and were shocked by the scale of the destruction."
He laughed.
"And that's when Chloe immediately offered herself as a replacement," Sky asked suspiciously.
"She has the biggest paddling pool far and wide," Madox noticed and nodded in the direction of the monstrous infinity pool, which was right in front of the mansion.
"You don't get anything," teased Sky as she hooked up with Madox, disguised as Captain Sparrow.
Madox emitted a cloud of smoke, then flicked the rest of his joint into the grass.
"Maybe I just don't understand your silly feud with the bride," he explained.
"She took the internship away from Blaire," Sky defended my grudge against Chloe. "Plus, she's a bitch."
Benji applauded out loud.
"An ode to truth!" he announced as we walked up the stairs to Chloe Clarice Bell's villa.
Inside, we were already met by the thumping sound of bass.
"Are you coming?" Liam asked as I stayed behind everyone else on the doorstep.
No, actually I would rather turn around, drive back home and watch one of their gooey horse movies with Lu.
But that was not possible.
I had to stay until we played. So the rules demanded it.
"Come in, come in!" Josh greeted us with a deafeningly loud microphone in the hallway, which even drowned out the music.
He was wearing a Joker costume. I thought it was really original, unlike the other disguises I had seen before.
"Make yourself at home", he sounded as if these were his own four walls.
Rash saluted and then patted him on the shoulder.
"What about Edwards now?" I hissed at Benji.
&
nbsp; "Just wait," he replied with a wry grin.
"Don't you dare," I said seriously and pulled the sleeve of his jacket.
In response, he patted my head as if I were a small child.
I was about to tell him that he could forget about it if he wanted to go through with it that way, when my eyes fell on Chloe.
She was wearing a bee costume that was about as short as my mom's clothes when she went to hook up with my friends.
"All that was missing was the sting," Liam commented in a tone I couldn't interpret.
"Stop staring at her ass!"
I hit him in the chest with the clutch.
Another thing that annoyed me about Liam: when he had alcohol in him, he mutated into a cock-controlled monster!
He just stared, but when I was around him in that state, it upset me.
"We'll be off," I said to him and pointed to Rash, Madox, Sky and Benji, who were making their way upstairs.
We always finished our game first when everyone was still sober and sane.
"All right, babe," Liam replied and gave me a wet, beer-smelling kiss on the mouth.
I stroked his upper arm. Then I followed the others.
***
The house of the Bells was clearly more beautiful than I had imagined.
I had expected an old-fashioned and yet meaningless interior that Chloe's parents had bought at auction.
Whoever gave his child such a name had to have one on the waffle!
Chloe herself always looked as if she had come out of a Disney movie.
I'm sure she left nothing but unicorns, rainbows and fairy dust in the bathroom...
It might have been because I detested her - at least I hadn't expected such beautiful furniture and photographs on the walls.
Maybe Chloe was adopted, my inner voice whispered as I walked past a bright sunflower whose background the photographer had kept in black and white.
"Well, that looks good," I heard Rash say a few meters in front of me after he had opened the door to a deserted room.
We all went inside, I closed the door.
After we sat down on the floor in a circle, Benji was the first to speak.
"Sky, my dear," he began, grinning.
Sky shook her head and raised a hand defensively.
"Pass."
My stomach rebelled.
Vicious Bet: Don't fall in love! (Sinners and Saints Book 1) Page 6