by Rose, L. A.
I kick back, groping for my bathing suit bottoms. A second ago they were around my ankles. Now they’re…
Oh, God.
“James!” I hiss, and my panic wipes the smirk right off his face. “My suit bottoms. They’re gone.”
“I’ll find them,” he promises, and dives.
When he comes up? No bottoms.
Sigrid is on the beach now, cupping her hands around her mouth. “All right, girls! Don’t stay in too long. Hypothermia is a thing.”
Her eyes meet mine, and I have a sickening feeling she knows exactly what I was doing a moment ago.
Splashes echo in the night as most people paddle toward shore. Over on the sand, I spot Iris waving at me. I wave at her back, a little more frantically than normal to let her know something’s up, and she starts wading toward us.
James pops up out of the water for the third time. “I can’t find them,” he hisses. “The water must have moved them.”
“This is not happening.” I press my hands to my forehead. “This is not happening.”
“Maybe one of your friends has a spare bottom—”
“You don’t think people would wonder why my bathing suit bottoms suddenly went missing? It’s not like they were inconspicuous.” I dive, feeling blindly as the water blisters my forehead with cold. When I pop up again, Iris is there.
“My bathing suit bottoms are gone! They sunk.” I reach down, searching. No luck.
“Why the hell did you take them off in the first—oh, God. Are you kidding me right now?” Iris looks between me and James, then slaps a hand to her forehead. “This water is contaminated. I’m getting out.”
“Not until you find my bathing suit bottoms!”
“Come on, guys, Brooklyn told me to make sure no one spent too much time in the water drunk,” Sigrid calls, the picture of concern, but her fists are clenched in a way that speaks more of imminent violence than motherly caretaking.
“Found them!” Iris shouts, popping up out of the water and shoving my bathing suit bottoms into my hand beneath the water. Thank you, baby Jesus.
“Found what?” Sigrid yells.
“Sharks! Three whole sharks.”
And then everyone is shrieking, making madly for the shore as Iris cackles and James graciously helps me pull my bottoms on.
~17~
“Up,” an angry voice demands.
“That’s a good movie…a little too emotional for me. I prefer Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” I say hazily, still half-asleep. I crack my eyes open a little wider and, as it turns out, the person hovering above me is not Johnny Depp, who was asking me on a Pixar-movie date in my dream. It’s someone a lot less appealing.
“Come with us,” Sigrid says. “Now.”
Behind her, I make out the dim shape of Amber. I sigh heavily and bury my face in my pillow. “I am having a distinct sense of déjà vu. Can’t you go away and come back when you’re Johnny Depp?”
Instead of acquiescing to my perfectly reasonable request, she hauls me out of bed, my blanket falling to the floor. Iris isn’t in her bed. She went home for the weekend to visit her sister. Something tells me that’s the reason Sigrid waited a week after the beach party to come after me.
“While I’m flattered by your interest, I must say that I’m not really interested in your type—ow!”
She pushes me out the door, she and Amber each claiming one of my arms to steer me down the hall.
“This is getting really tiresome, guys,” I say as they bring me outside, to their car. “If you like me this much, can’t you just send me flowers or pull my pigtails in math class?”
They ignore me, shove me into their car, and take off.
A snake of fear is coiling up my ankles, toward my throat. Am I about to dumped naked six hours into the desert? Maybe they’ve graduated to straight-up serial killers and they’re about to skin me and drop my body in the ocean.
“Are you guys straight-up serial killers?” I inquire politely, but Sigrid merely sighs deeply, dramatically.
They take me to an off-campus house, one of the Phi Delta Chi houses. It’s a party house and a party has happened recently. There’s beer bottles on the floor, on the windowsills, lined by the kitchen door, thrown haphazardly on the couch. The carpet reeks of spilled booze. Throw pillows are tossed everywhere, one torn and bleeding feathers all over the floor. It looks like somebody tossed a full pizza box in the air and let the slices fall where they may. And—wonder of wonders—there’s a pile of vomit in the corner. I gag.
“You’ll be cleaning this up for us, Fiona,” says Sigrid sweetly. “It was so nice of you to volunteer, especially so early in the morning. I’ll be sure to mention it to Brooklyn.”
“I’m not doing this. You can’t seriously expect me to do this?”
“I do expect you to do this.” Steel slices through Sigrid’s voice as Amber smirks behind her. “If you don’t, I’ll kick you out of Phi Delta Chi. If you don’t, I’ll have to get someone else to clean this up. Maybe your sweet little friend—what’s her name? Mags.”
“Leave her alone,” I hiss.
She hands me a cloth and a Windex bottle. “Make sure you take care of the bathroom. There’s a lot of stuff up there.”
She links arms with Amber and the two of them skip out the door.
I should follow them out. I should confront them. I should stick up for myself.
But what if this is the last time? I’ll just let them get their stupid revenge in, and maybe then they’ll leave me alone and they won’t go after Mags or do anything else. It’s not cowardice. I’m not afraid of them. It’s not like they would attack me like Damien did.
I’m just being the mature person. Absorbing a hit that means nothing in the end. That’s all it is.
I clean until the sunlight turns from pale yellow in the windows, to bright yellow, to hot midmorning sun. I bag bottles, wipe up vastly unpleasant bodily fluids, and straighten furniture. In the harsh light of day, the leftovers of a party seem so bare and stupid. A few dumb kids making a mess because they can. Destroying things because they can, because they’re finally old enough to, and calling it a celebration.
When I’m done, I expect to feel proud of myself. I sucked it up. I was mature. But all I feel is sad and frustrated. Silence isn’t going to win this battle for me.
But after Damien, maybe I’m afraid of fighting.
I get a cab back to campus, even though it’s just a ten-minute walk. I’m still in my nightie and I don’t want anyone assuming I’m pulling some sort of Thursday walk of shame.
When I get to my room, there are noises coming from behind the door. Sniffling and a quiet, angry voice. Iris.
The sight inside stops me short. Mags is sitting cross-legged on the floor, her face in her hands, shoulders trembling. Iris is beside her, stroking her back comfortingly, but her face is hard.
I drop my keys. “What happened?”
“They pulled the tree trick on her,” Iris says coldly. “Stole her inhaler and forced her up there in the middle of the night. Public safety found her and got her down.”
“I almost had an asthma attack halfway up. I got to my inhaler just in time,” she says tearily. “It was Sigrid and Amber. I hate them, I really do.”
Iris shoots me a look. A look that says—if you’d told, none of this would have happened.
Anger builds in my stomach and bleeds into the rest of me. They went after Mags anyway. Poor, defenseless Mags.
“Tell her what they told you, Mags.” Iris is ruthless.
Mags looks down at her hands. “I don’t know if…”
“Tell her.”
“They said…” Her lower lip trembles. “‘This is what you get for hanging around that scheming bitch.’”
“Oh, God.” My stomach twists up into a tiny knot that dissolves in a pool of acid. “I am so so sorry, Mags. This is all my fault—”
“Damn straight it is.” Iris stands up. “Deal with this, Fiona.”
�
�I will,” I promise, tossing my back on the floor and heading straight out the door, propelled by anger. Sigrid’s first period class gets out in ten minutes and she always stops to get a coffee at the library café. She won’t know what hit her. It’s time to face this.
The faster I walk, the angrier I get. It’s one thing to have her come after me. I get that. I can handle that. But to have her torment my friends is a new level of low. A low that I wouldn’t let pass, even if her dad was the president of the United States.
I get to the café before Sigrid does. All around me, students are half-asleep, tossing back cups of coffee like shots on a Friday night. I buy myself a pomegranate juice and settle into the table nearest the front. Everyone here is about to get a wake-up call that’s a hell of a lot more effective than an espresso and an alarm clock.
Several minutes later, Sigrid walks in, sunglasses on and posse in tow. She’s wearing a white chiffon blouse and a silk skirt. Perfect.
I stay where I am, sipping my drink until she, Amber, and Ellie have all ordered their soy-milk double-espresso no-whipped-cream lattes. Then I wave them over.
“Hey, guys! Fancy seeing you here. I saved us a table.”
Ellie bounces toward me with the clear intention of sitting down, but one cough from Sigrid and she stops in her place.
“Thanks, Fiona,” my arch-nemesis sneers. “But we’re not staying. We have places, you know, to be.”
“Really? Because I thought it would be a great opportunity for some older-sister younger-sister bonding. I know you guys come here so I showed up early so we could sit together.” I pout, but I’m so mad it comes appears as more of a grimace.
Ellie doesn’t notice. She resumes her bounce, plopping down beside me. I’m starting to suspect that she has little to no idea what her best friends get up to. She happens to be the daughter of the major clothing designer whose label is sticking out the back of Sigrid’s blouse, so I guess that explains it. “Come on, guys,” she says cheerfully. “I thought we were going to sit here anyway.”
“I’d love to have a chat.” I smile pleasantly.
Amber sits down. “What the fuck kind of game are you playing?”
“No, wait.” Sigrid pulls out a chair and folds her legs, calmly sipping her drink. “I’d love to hear what she has to say.”
“To be honest, it’s the nonverbal kind of chat.” I stand up and, still smiling sweetly, throw my pomegranate juice all over Sigrid. She screams and jerks back so hard that her chair tips over and she goes ass over teakettle, and if the juice and the scream didn’t capture everyone’s attention, the resounding crash definitely does.
There is a long moment of pure silence as everyone stares, whether they’re halfway to the door or sitting with their coffee cups halfway to their mouths. Then Ellie bursts out laughing. She claps her hand over her mouth a second later. “Sorry. Sorry.”
I walk calmly to the trash area, drop my empty bottle in the recycling bin, and walk back. Amber has produced a wad of napkins from nowhere and is scrubbing furiously at Sigrid’s clothes. Sigrid’s eyes are so wide that I can practically see her brain behind the sockets, working to figure out if anyone’s ever stood up to her before. Eventually she restarts and shrieks again, holding her dripping clothes away from her body.
“You fucking psycho bitch! Look what you did to my clothes? What the hell is wrong with you?”
I lean forward and place both my hands flat on the table. “Stay away from my friends.”
Her lip curls. She’s so angry she’s shaking. “You didn’t listen to me when I told you to stay away from James. What is your particular mental disorder that makes you think I’d listen to you when it comes to your stupid little friends?”
“That’s a poor comparison,” I say. Everyone in the café area is tuning in. Even the person making the lattes is straining to hear over the sound of the cup she was filling overflowing onto the floor. “Because you and James aren’t friends.”
“You have no idea what James and I are.” She’s livid, the tone of her skin approaching the exact red of the pomegranate juice.
“Why don’t you tell me, then?” I tilt my head to the side. “Because I’m curious. I know the Games were your idea. I know you’ve been using them as a ploy to keep everyone else from getting too close to him. Has it occurred to you that he’s a human being who deserves to have people close to him?”
“Like you?” she snorts. “You think you’re the right person to be close to him? A nothing little slut from a nowhere town who hadn’t even heard of him before coming here? I’ve read every article about him, watched every episode, every interview, since I was fourteen.”
“But you never actually tried to get to know him,” I say. “You were too scared. Instead you built this elaborate game where you could try to get to him without having to talk to him first. But all you did was isolate him more. And the funny thing is? If you’d just talked to him, it would have gone fine. He’s a really kind person.”
Amber is leaning over and pouring a stream of whispered encouragements into Sigrid’s ear, but Sigrid ignores them. Her eyes flash. “I never bought that charade you two had. He’s a good actor, but you’re not. Not even an idiot would have believed you were fighting for real. You’ve been breaking the first rule of the Games since the beginning.”
“So what if I have?” I shrug. “You know what I think? You’re the only one who gives a shit about that. Everyone else plays the Games because they’re fun and they make Phi Delta Chi popular. You’re only one who would really care if someone else got close to him. And I’ve recently come to the realization that I don’t care what you think.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she hisses. “All you do is make stupid decisions without thinking—”
“No.” I shake my head. “That’s not true. I was that way until recently. I’ve been more cautious ever since you forced me to go to that party naked. That’s not all, either. I used to want to just have sex for the fun of it, because I figured that was the most fun I could have. But I realized that there’s something even more fun than that.”
“What’s that?” Ellie, who seems genuinely interested, supplies.
“Caring about someone,” I say simply.
And then I turn and walk out into the sun. As soon as I’m out of earshot and I’m positive I’m not being followed Sigrid or any of her spies, I call Brooklyn and explain everything.
It takes a while. When I’m done, there’s a long silence from the other end. I hold my breath.
“Sigrid was my first friend at UCSD,” she says finally. “We were assigned roommates our freshman year.”
My stomach drops.
“But we do not accept hazing at Phi Delta Chi,” she continues. Her voice is heavy with sadness. “What she did was dangerous and cruel. Sigrid’s a complicated person, and I’ve always tried my best to be a friend to her despite her faults, but I have a responsibility to you girls. I’ll speak you her.”
“You can’t just speak to her.” I force steadiness into my voice. “That’s not gong to do anything. She’s insane, and—”
“Speak to her was a euphemism. I’m kicking her out of Phi Delta Chi.”
It’s everything I hoped for, but it still brings me up short. “Aren’t you…aren’t you worried about her dad?”
“I’ve been a model student at this school for four years. I stayed with them for an entire summer once. Had dinner with them every night. He loves me and Sigrid could never dream up a good enough story to get me in trouble.” She hesitates. “What’s more, I don’t think she would. Sigrid has no qualms whatsoever hurting people she dislikes, but I’ve never seen her do anything to harm someone she counted as a friend.”
“Oh, wow. What a fabulous character trait. There are like two and a half human beings in the universe she wouldn’t screw over. How nice.”
Brooklyn manages a laugh. “Thank you for telling me about this, Fiona.”
“Thanks for listening.”
&n
bsp; ~18~
It’s the sunniest of sunny California days, I’m currently boarding a ship for a 24-hour booze cruise, and I’m a nervous wreck. The latter is not a natural result of the former two. I suspect alien intervention.
“Sigrid’s out of the picture,” Iris tells me as I hoist my backpack full of spare clothes, a bikini, and two bottles of sunscreen up a boat ramp. The ship is big and glittering—it looks like the kind of boat that takes you to the Caribbean, not just around the bay for the night. The fee we each had to pay also makes me feel like I should be headed for the Caribbean, also I recognize that it most of it probably went toward booze. “So what are you so worried about?”
“I’m not worried. What do you mean, worried? Do I look worried? Should I get drunk? Do you think they serve alcohol at ten in the morning?” I say rapid-fire, holding up my phone to use the front camera as a zit-checking mirror and nearly tripping over the side of the ramp. Grace and beauty.
Iris sighs. “This is about James.”
“This is not about James! Why would anything be about James.”
“What’s about James?”
I shriek and lurch away from the owner of the very James-like voice who just materialized behind me, like the world’s sexiest ghost. I grab the railing. “You shouldn’t sneak up on someone like that.”
“I wasn’t sneaking up on you. I’ve been walking behind you all the way up this ramp.” James looks especially surfer-model-actor-Greek-god today, with the sun glinting off his hair. He has a few very faint freckles above his left eyebrow. I never noticed them before. If I connected them with a marker, they’d make a star.
“That counts as sneaking up.”
There are thirty girls in Phi Delta Chi. Thirty guys, handpicked by the seniors and approved by Brooklyn, have been invited to come along on the weekend cruise. It’s like a sex mill. James is always invited, but according to the seniors, he never comes.
Except for this year.
As soon as we drop off our stuff in our little seashell-themed rooms with little seashell-shaped beds, which will be full of sex come nightfall, I ask him about that.