by Smyth, R. A
At least that didn’t work in their favor. With the Barbies being social pariahs and Kurt off being a creepy loner, the only two one-percenters left standing are Preston and Barrett, and, well, they have more important things to worry about than who’s turn it is to host the next senior year party.
“So what’s going to happen to them?” I gesture my head towards where Alexis and her friends were gathered before this morning's events.
“Probably not much,” Barrett answers, shrugging his shoulders. “Their parents will most likely have them out by lunch, but it will be difficult—never mind expensive—to expunge the charges from their brand-new criminal records. But hey, it was fun watching them get dragged out of here in cuffs,” he laughs.
Ty barks out a laugh, high-fiving him. “Nice one, man.”
I roll my eyes at their antics but I’m secretly glad to see that some of the tension from the last few days has dispersed and they’re back to their usual antagonistic banter.
The bell rings then, interrupting the conversation, and the five of us head off to our first class of the day.
________
I’m walking alongside Barrett on our way to meet the others in the dining room for lunch.
“Give me a sec,” I say, pointing out the bathroom as we pass it before pushing open the door.
Looking back over my shoulder, I see Barrett leaning against the bank of lockers opposite the door, acting like a sentinel keeping watch.
As the door swings closed behind me, I duck into a stall and I’m just finishing up when I hear the door to the bathroom being pushed open.
“Did you see Barrett out there?” Lizzie whines, making me roll my eyes from my stall. “He won’t even look at me anymore. Did I tell you he actually shoved me off him last week?!”
My eyebrows rise in surprise at that little piece of information. Barrett hadn’t said anything about Lizzie harassing him. Damn, wish I could have seen the look on her face when he rejected her. Bet it was fucking priceless.
“Girl, you need to get over him already,” Cece responds on a sigh, sounding sick of hearing Lizzie rambling on about him. I’m tired of hearing her whining too. I’m just about to push open the stall door and make my presence known when Lizzie speaks up and damn, does curiosity get the better of me, keeping me still while I eavesdrop on their conversation.
“It’s okay for you,” Lizzie responds. “You were never that into Kurt. Besides, now you’ve got that new guy that you won’t even tell me anything about.”
A new guy? Interesting. Not that I give a shit about Cece’s love life. She could date a watermelon for all I care, but I wonder what idiot could find something to like about her, other than her plastic looks.
“I know,” Cece responds dreamily. “He’s wonderful.”
“Except that he won’t let you tell me who he is!” Lizzie gives off, clearly not happy at being left in the dark. Who is he and why doesn’t he want Cece telling anyone about him?
“You know if anyone found out about him he could lose everything. He’s putting plans in place for us, but he’s not ready for his wife or my dad to know about us yet.”
His wife? Seriously?! Really, what else did I expect? It’s not like these people give a shit about such mundane things as wedding vows.
“Once he’s got his own company up and running, he won’t be working for my dad anymore and he can leave his wife. Then we can tell everyone about us.” I can hear the excitement in Cece’s voice at the thought of that, not the slightest bit concerned that some poor woman’s life will be destroyed in the process.
“So how does it work until then?” Lizzie asks.
“We meet every Thursday evening, when my father thinks I’m at clarinet lessons and his wife thinks he’s working late. He’s organizing a weekend away for us next month.”
Thankfully, the girls must be done touching up their make-up or whatever they were doing as I hear the door being pushed open.
“Hi Barrett,” Lizzie says shyly to Barrett, making my teeth grind.
“Fuck off, Lizzie,” he responds bluntly as I come out of the stall, the bathroom door closing before I can hear any more.
A few minutes later, I leave the bathroom. Looking around, I see the girls are long gone. Barrett casts his eyes over me, like he was expecting them to have done something. “Everything okay?” He asks.
“Yeah,” I reassure him as we make our way down the hall towards the dining room. “Those idiots were just talking shit in there. I did learn something interesting, though.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Cece’s sleeping with a married guy that works for her dad.”
“Oh, the scandal!” Barrett laughs.
“Right,” I chuckle. “Totally mental.”
Chapter 12
The rest of the week drags, the initial excitement of getting out of the warehouse and coming back to school quickly fading. I’m so behind on homework it’s unreal. I should be taking advantage of this opportunity to obtain a high-quality education. A year ago, I’d have been ecstatic to have this chance. Now, it’s overshadowed by all the other shit going on.
I need to make a concentrated effort to keep on top of my classes, though. I’ve no idea what is going to happen with my father, or with the guys, but either way, I’m back to being as broke as I was when I showed up here, with no promising prospects for my future. Meaning, I’m back to needing good grades so I can get a scholarship and become something more than I’ve been my entire life.
We’re halfway through History class on Thursday when the door bangs open and a well-dressed hysterical woman stumbles in.
“Mom?” Lizzie’s voice is laced with confusion and shock, as bewildered as the rest of the class as to her mum's sudden appearance at school, or her less than stable emotional state.
“Lizzie,” her mum cries when she spots her daughter sitting at a desk on the far side of the classroom.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
Her mum falls to her knees on the floor, in front of the whole room, the teacher, Mrs Sackrider—yes that is her actual name, unfortunately for her—remaining frozen by the whiteboard, unsure what to do with this unexpected interruption.
Lizzie scurries out of her chair, rushing towards her mum, her eyes wide with concern. Her mum collapses into her daughter’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably and mumbling something none of us can make out.
“What? Mom, I don’t understand.”
The woman continues to mutter incoherently against her daughter's shoulder. ‘Your father’ are the only words I catch. Needing all the ammunition we can get against the one-percenter families, I lean in to listen, hoping I might hear something useful.
“Mom!” Lizzie snaps, roughly grabbing her mum by the shoulders and pushing her backwards so she can look her in the face. Her mum has mascara running down her face. Her hair is dishevelled and she looks like a complete wreck. Whatever happened must be terrible.
“Your dad,” she sobs again, fresh tears making tracks over her cheeks. “He...he...they took him away.” The last word comes out as a wail before she collapses back against her daughter, her statement only raising more questions. Who took him away? Why?
I turn to look at Aiden and Ty, noticing a small smirk at the corner of Ty’s mouth. He’s clearly enjoying watching Lizzie’s life fall apart in front of us. Moving my gaze to Preston, his face is its usual unreadable mask, similar to Aiden’s, not giving me any insight into whether he knows what’s going on. Finally looking at Barrett, I see a small smirk at the corner of his lips. Catching me looking, he winks at me before returning his focus to the front of the room.
Mrs. Sackrider, finally realizing she needs to regain control of the class, jumps into action, moving over to Lizzie and her mum and helping to get the woman to her feet.
“This is hardly the time or place, Mrs. Hawthorne,” the teacher insists. “Why don’t you and your daughter take this somewhere private.” Lizzie wraps her arm around her mum’s waist, supporting mo
st of her weight, while the teacher ushers them out of the room.
She closes the door behind them; the room erupting into hushed whispers as the students gossip and speculate.
“What the hell was that?” I whisper to Aiden, who’s sitting beside me.
“No idea,” he shrugs unhelpfully.
“Settle down, class!” Mrs. Sackrider barks authoritatively, trying to regain order. It’s futile though, as students continue to discuss what just happened.
Mrs. Sackrider gives up after another few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to get our attention, and everyone spends the rest of the period speculating about what could have happened to Mr. Hawthorne.
________
“So, do any of you know what that was all about in History?” I ask the guys, setting my tray down and taking my seat at our usual lunch table.
“What what was?” Barrett asks, playing dumb.
“Yeah, what are you going on about? History was the same old boring crap as usual,” Ty adds, playing along.
Rolling my eyes at their antics, I scowl at them both, unimpressed. They all know what that was about and none of them will tell me. The lot of them are a bunch of wankers.
Taking pity on me, Aiden pulls out his phone, taping on it for a few seconds before passing it to me. “It might have something to do with this,” he says, a knowing look in his eyes.
Taking the phone from him, I look down at the screen, seeing the website for the local news. The heading at the top of the page immediately grabs my attention.
‘ICE Senior Officer Arrested after Accusations of Child Sexual Assault’
Ehh, what?
Glancing up from the screen, I look at the guys in confusion. “Is this for real?” It’s fucking sick if it is.
“Apparently so.”
Reading the rest of the article, it appears several girls have come forward claiming they were drawn in by Mr. Hawthorne’s so-called charms, but when he got them alone, he raped them then threatened them to keep them silent.
There’s a picture accompanying the article of who I’m assuming is Mr. Hawthorne, being escorted out of the back of a police car in cuffs. He’s handsome, in an older gentleman kind of way. I can understand how a young girl could be enticed with a warm smile and some attention, then forced into silence given his prominent position in this society.
According to the article, he preyed on girls from broken homes and those with immigration issues. Those without the money, resources or nerve to fight back. God, he might even have used his connections at work to find some of these kids. I push my tray away, thoroughly sickened at the thought. They would never have had a chance. Who would believe them, even if they did come forward? I wonder what changed.
“I don’t understand,” I say, looking back at my guys. I know they had something to do with this, but I can’t work out how.
“Preston’s PI found out what the sick fuck was doing,” Barrett explains, his face scrunched up in revulsion. All of them look just as disgusted as I feel, all of us having abandoned our lunches, no longer having any sort of appetite. “He also found out the guy liked to keep trinkets from his...victims. More specifically, he discovered where he stores his fucked up keepsakes.”
“So Barrett and I paid a visit to some of those girls,” Preston takes over, surprising me. They went to see them? When? God, I can’t imagine how difficult a conversation that must have been. Those poor girls. Preston isn’t exactly the warmest of people and given the fact he looks like a less-green version of the Hulk, well, lets just say it’s an intimidating combination. At least Barrett was there to put them at ease a bit. “We managed to encourage them to come forward with their story. Their testimony, along with a well-timed anonymous call revealing the location of this box of trinkets—that resulted in the police uncovering said box—was enough to have him arrested this morning.”
“And hopefully he’ll rot in prison for the rest of his pathetic life,” Ty adds on.
Holy crap. I don’t even know what to say.
“How did you convince the girls to come forward? There’s no way they would have easily agreed to that.”
“Yeah, no. It took a lot of convincing. Barrett and I have offered to pay for their lawyers and promised them we would have their backs against anyone who stood by the Hawthorne’s. After discovering they weren’t alone, that there were others in the same position; and I think finally having someone who believed them, they agreed to go to the police.”
“Wow. I can’t believe you were able to do all that.”
“Believe it, baby. One down, two more to go,” Barrett smiles darkly just as my phone goes off in my bag. Pulling it out, the caller ID flashes with Mia’s name.
“Hey,” I greet, answering the call.
“Guess what?!” She squeals down the phone, not even waiting for a response before continuing. “I won some community award thingy and I’m getting my rent paid for me, for the next year!” The words rush out of her in her excitement.
“That’s amazing!” I gush, happy for her. She’s been so stressed about money and possibly having to close the shop. This will make such a significant difference for her.
“I know!!” She practically yells at me, her high pitched shrill audible even without the phone pressed to my ear.
“I told you something would come up! I’m so happy for you!”
“I can’t believe it. Apparently the town is looking to entice more small business owners to the area and encourage people to shop local, so they set up this social engagement award and I friggin’ won it!”
“Wow! Out of the entire town? That’s seriously impressive!”
“Right? Anyway, I won’t keep you. I just had to share my good news with someone.”
“Congratulations! I’ll try to stop by soon,” I say before hanging up, knowing soon could still be awhile away. I won’t put Mia’s life at risk just to see her. Life is finally going well for her, I’m not about to bulldoze my way into it and screw it up.
Later that night I’m sitting at the kitchen table, trying to get through as much homework as I can before the weekend begins, but what Mia said on the phone earlier keeps circling around in my head.
The people of Crescentwood are self-centred narcissists, why would they be looking to drum up more business. Everyone in this town already has a small fortune in their name. Most of the shops and businesses in town are just there, so the bored, rich housewives don’t have to travel for miles to the next town to get their designer handbags or go to the yoga studio. While others like Mia might run the stores, I’m pretty sure most of them are owned by the arrogant millionaires that run this town. Mia’s store is one of the few that is owned by an outsider, which is why she’s been having such difficulty drumming up business. So, why then would the community offer her financial aid? Something just isn’t making sense.
Abandoning my homework, I get up and head over to the living space where Barrett’s deep in concentration, all of his energy focused on killing what looks like zombies on the TV screen.
“A social engagement award?” I ask, giving him a look as I drop onto the sofa beside him.
“A what?” He asks, his attention still glued to the TV, but I catch him glancing my way out of the corner of his eye.
“It’s awfully nice of the residents of Crescentwood to care about mundane things, such as the livelihood of the people that work and own small businesses in this town.”
“It is,” he agrees, still side-eyeing me with a guarded look.
“Except the people of Crescentwood couldn’t give two shits about anyone other than themselves.”
“True,” he agrees again, nodding his head. “But you do.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have enough money to pay rent on a commercial property in this overpriced town for an entire year.”
“You don’t.”
“But you do,” I say, repeating his words from only a moment ago, giving him a scrutinizing look. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s ri
ght, I’m the only one who would give a damn about Mia or others in her position, but I don’t—unfortunately—have the money to bail her out. There’s only one person I’ve told who does have that much cash just lying around.
Pausing his game, he turns to look at me. Seeing that I’ve already put all the pieces together, he sighs in defeat.
“Yeah, okay, I may have asked the family lawyer to reach out to her and say she won some social prosperity award. Honestly, I left the details up to him, so long as he made it clear to her that her rent was covered for the year. Once the year is up, I can offer to sell the shop to her or something.”
“Sell her the shop? Do you own it?”
“Uh, I do now,” he says sheepishly. “But real estate isn’t exactly my thing and I can’t say I’ve ever had a dying urge to own a female clothing store, so Mia can have it all. I just figured she wouldn’t have the money now to pay for it, and something told me she wouldn’t accept the free handout, which is why I set it up as though she won something.”
“I can’t believe you’d do that,” I murmur, trying to wrap my head around it. Barrett has always been the sweetest, most thoughtful of my guys, but to do this? It just shows what a good person he is at heart. He wears his flirty persona well and, yeah, it was obvious from the moment I met him that he’s a softie at heart, but he’s so much more considerate than he lets on.
“She’s your friend, and although I don’t know her well, she seems like a genuine person, a lot like you. So yeah, when you said she was having difficulties, I wanted to help. I’ve got all this money that I don’t know what to do with, or even really want. The least I can do is use it to help people like Mia.”
My lips are on his before he’s finished speaking, the need to show him how much I appreciate him, how thankful I am to have him in my life, driving my actions.
Not one to miss an opportunity, he drops the gaming controller, wrapping his arms around me and dragging me into his lap until I’m straddling him. Our lips continue to glide over one another, our tongues clashing in a passion filled duel.