Yelena said something in Spanish that had his name in it and he demanded, “What did she say now?”
“That you weren't one of his daughter's students, dude. Chill.”
It had sounded way too long to be just that and Nick eyed the two of them suspiciously. “So?”
“So Yelena is going to ask her daughter if she would talk to my school's principal about starting a volunteer reading program where high school students read to little kids.”
Yelena beamed at Jay like she was just the fucking best.
“That's dumb,” said Nick. “Who would want to read to a bunch of dumb little kids? Sounds like a waste of time to me. Anyway, did you even ask my dad for permission first?”
Jay's face fell. Without looking any less annoyed, she now looked upset. “Why would I need to ask your dad for permission? How would this even affect him?”
“Everything affects him,” said Nick, feeling superior. “He knows people. He knows everyone. You might embarrass him. You're a Beaucroft,” he added. “And a girl. You aren't supposed to work. Someone might talk to him about it and then he'd be mad.”
Jay gave him a cold look. “I'm a Varens, dude. Not a Beaucroft. And if volunteer work embarrasses your asshole dad, that says more about him than me.”
“Whatever,” Nick said. “Don't say I didn't warn you, blue jay.”
He complained about the incident to his friends in detail the next day while they were playing James Bond: Nightfire. Jay had ignored him for the rest of the day and when he had tried to go into her room, he'd found that she'd anticipated that and placed a chair beneath the knob to keep it from turning.
They were playing the Fort Knox level and Jake had demanded to be Bond since it was his house. Aaron was Jaws and Nick was Renard. He wasn't enjoying himself much, though, even if he was the cool guy with the bullet stuck in his brain. “Jay is so fucking annoying.”
“She's always annoying you,” Aaron said, rolling his eyes. “What did she do this time?”
“Thinking that she's so much better than me,” Nick fumed. “Thinking she's so great. If she doesn't like living in the house with the rest of us, she can leave.”
“God,” said Aaron. “Try living with my siblings for a day.”
“You're only defending her because you like her,” said Nick coldly.
Aaron turned red. “Shut up, Nick.”
“I think you're a little obsessed with your stepsister, dude,” said Jake. “You never shut up about her. You used to be so cool, and now it's Jay this, Jay that. It's super lame.”
“I'm not obsessed,” Nick shot back. “I can't help that she lives in my house and is ruining my life.”
“Well, I wish she lived in my house,” said Jake, leering. “I'll take her if you don't want her. She's hot. Don't you agree, Aaron? Isn't Nick's stepsister pretty hot?”
Aaron glanced at Nick and went pale. “I don't know.”
“I mean, it's not the kind of thing you have to think about, dude. She's—ow.”
“Shut up,” Nick snarled.
“Shit, bro.” Jake touched his reddened cheek. “I think you broke my fucking molar.”
“Good. Choke on it.” Nick picked up the controller. “Now stop being dickweeds and play.”
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
When Nick went home, his anger went with him, following him like a dog on a leash. A distance had opened up between him and Jay, and now sometimes he was aware of her watching him in a way that he really didn't like. Almost as if she was judging him.
A few weeks after the incident where he yelled at her and Yelena, he was dragged to some dumb awards ceremony at the high school to congratulate Jay and her fellow nerds for their volunteer work with the dumb kids from Yelena's daughter's stupid dumb school.
Jay was wearing a slip dress with a little bolero sweater and when one of the dumb little kids toddled on stage to hug her, he wanted to barf. She's not so great, he wanted to say, leaning back and folding his arms. He knew he was wrinkling his suit and he didn't care.
Bored and annoyed, he glanced over at his parents. Danielle looked just as bored as he felt, alternating between fiddling with her necklace and her phone, but his father was watching Jay.
Despite what Nick had said, his father hadn't seemed embarrassed by Jay at all. He'd given her another stupid bracelet after telling her that it was “becoming” for ladies to be involved in charity work, and then he called her a “good girl.” Nick saw the flash of the bracelet when she patted the kid on the head, sparking silver under the stage lights.
Nick could have told his father not to bother. The step-witch was just going to steal it. He'd seen the covetous look on her face when his father fastened the clasp around Jay's wrist.
I'm bored, he thought crankily. I hate this. Jay is so boring. He wished he'd been allowed to bring his GameBoy but his father had made him leave it in the Mercedes.
“What a beautiful, selfless girl,” the woman next to him said, and Nick groaned loudly, earning himself a look from his father.
When they all got home, they went into their respective rooms to chage out of their formal clothes. Nick deleted her game file on Animal Crossing and left his door open a crack to wait. When he heard her come down, he braced himself, waiting for the screeched, “Nick, you little asshole, you deleted my game!” with his response at the ready—well, maybe you shouldn't take up so much space.
He was proud of himself for coming up with it. He'd thought it up in the car.
Nick heard her come down the stairs and listened, hardly daring to breathe, filled with something too dark and too bleak to be merely anticipatory as the game booted up. There was a long pause, followed by silence. The silence was terrible; it made him nervous.
After a while, he ventured out. The TV was off. She'd just . . . left.
Jay said nothing to him about deleting her game, even though he knew how much she'd enjoyed it, even though he spent the next couple weeks bracing for retaliation. She'd acted like everything was completely normal between them but it wasn't—something had disappeared, and Nick couldn't put his finger on what it was exactly, but the absence of it was like a physical pain in his chest, fracturing that fragile barrier he'd erected around his heart, and he wasn't sure how to get back what was missing if he wasn't even sure what he was looking for in the first place.
Chapter Fifteen
2004
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Nick was glad to be starting high school. It was the first step to freedom and to becoming a real man. No more of the kid stuff—he was tired of endless rounds of Call of Duty and NBA Live with his friends, and lounging around the parks like losers because none of their parents were around to take them anywhere. He was looking forward to the girls and the partying and, eventually, the cars.
He tugged at his cutaway jacket, which he usually left open even though the dress code stated you were supposed to have all three buttons done up. The boys' Hollybrook uniform consisted of the jacket, black pants, and a knotted red tie, which was supposed to be fastened with a Windsor knot. Nick rarely wore his and usually left the throat of his shirt open with the tie shoved into his pocket where it dangled like the tongue of a snake.
The girls wore cropped versions of the boys' jackets and black knee socks with their black skirts. Some of the girls liked to roll up the waistbands until the hems were just shy of indecent, seeing how long they could get away with it until some spoilsport teacher strolled up to them with a ruler.
Nick watched Amanda Strife, a blonde sophomore, have exactly that happen to her as he walked up the grass to the main part of campus. The teacher in question was saying something about “conduct” and “decorum” while Amanda sullenly pulled down her skirt.
“You know what they say,” Jake said, following his gaze. “The shorter the skirt, the less it hurts.”
“The less what hurts?” Nick asked absently, turning away.
“You know, like the first time. When you fuck them. Because the
y aren't virgins. Easy pussy.”
“Get the fuck off me, man.” Jake had slung his arm around Nick's shoulders and he quickly extricated himself from the embrace. “Whatever. It's just sex.”
“Spoken like someone who's never had any.”
That happened to be true, but he didn't need fucking Jake blurting that out to the school, in front of their friends. A few of the guys snickered, but a look from Nick shut them up fast. “And what are you? The pussy connoisseur? You've never had a girlfriend. You wouldn't know a pussy from your ass.”
Dave Byron, a junior who'd started hanging around, laughed. “Nice one, Beaucroft.”
“Fuck you, Nick,” said Jake, blushing angrily. “At least I know what pussy looks like.”
“Oh? What did you do? Scope a look at your mom's when I was done with her?”
“No,” said Jake. “It was your sister, Jay, and let me tell you, man, it was so fucking ti—ow.”
Nick lowered his fist, while Jake clutched his arm and howled. “Jeez, stop moaning. You sound like you're auditioning for porn. Anyone do anything interesting this weekend?”
“Went to Game Stop,” Alonzo Madeira offered. “Bought a new copy of GTA.”
“I haven't played that one yet,” said Nick. “I'm getting pretty tired of my PlayStation.”
“I did Clara Roberts,” Ian Danes offered crudely. “Only, you know, she's not exactly interesting. At least, what comes out of her mouth isn't interesting. What goes into it maybe—”
“I hate to break it to you, man,” said Dave, “but nobody here thinks your dick is interesting. And Clara Roberts is played out. She's like the Vanilla Ice of people you can have sex with.”
“What about Amanda?” said Jake, still rubbing his arm. “Nick and I saw her getting yelled at by a teacher again for having her ass hanging out of her skirt. She's hot.”
“Amanda is hot,” Alonzo agreed. “But you couldn't, like, take her out anywhere except maybe to the movies. She's kind of slutty. My parents would kill me if I brought home a girl like that.”
“Unlike the Lacoste Mafia over there,” said Dave, nodding at the group of senior girls. Nick glanced over and saw Jay with them, lounging against the fountain. “Those are the kind of girls you bring home to your parents. My mom would probably cream herself if I went out with Clary Claybourne. But just try going out with one of them and not ending up with your dick locked in a purse.”
“Not Angela,” said Alonzo, with a smirk. “She'd bedazzle her name all over your cock.”
“Jordan and Jay are the only girls in that group who don't scare me,” said Dave. “But Jordan's high maintenance and Jay doesn't date anyone. What's with that?” he asked Nick, who shrugged.
Jake, sensing an opening, said, “I hear it's because she—”
“Man,” said Nick. “I am warning you. You're about to start your first day from a hospital bed.”
“Fucking weak,” Jake muttered. “I'm so tired of you punching my lights out over your sister.”
“Well, maybe if you stopped running your mouth.”
“Is Justine Varens really your sister?” asked Dave. “You two don't look anything alike. I thought she was mixed and you're whiter than my granny's old church bonnet.”
“She's my stepsister,” said Nick. “Her mom's married to my dad. She's some washed up actress.”
“Nick doesn't let anyone talk about his sister,” said Jake. “I think he wants to keep her for himself.”
“Oh yeah?” said Nick. “You're just lucky you don't have a sister, Jake. If she looked anything like you, she'd probably get sent to the dog pound every time she left the house. Hell, I'd drive her there myself and I bet you she'd still try to gobble down my cock, just like half the other girls in this school.”
“Uh oh,” said Dave.
Nick glanced over and blushed. The seniors had gotten up and were heading to class and from the look on Jay's face, she had definitely heard the last part of his outburst.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“God,” said Jake. “That's a look. Look like you're in the doghouse now, my man.”
“I'm always in the doghouse,” said Nick. “Tell me what else is new.”
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Jay couldn't believe it was her last year of high school. It felt as if she were hurtling through a tunnel at full speed. Sometimes, it felt like just yesterday when she was living in that little one bedroom in the Tenderloin, working on her homework at that cracked vanity table in the old and filthy room that smelled like girl sweat and mildew.
She found herself thinking of those shadowy figures from her past—Honey, Kristine, Amy, Leah. They had disappeared from her life like curls of smoke, and sometimes she found herself missing them, and feeling foolish for it. They had probably forgotten even her name.
I've come a long way, she reminded herself. But still . . . she never really felt like she deserved it. Any of it. No matter how hard she tried.
And she did try to deserve it. She tried to work hard and be kind—even to people who annoyed her, like Angela Diamante and her constant cattiness, or Jordan Cahalan and her whole outdated Valley Girl persona that Jay still couldn't figure out was authentic or ironic, or Derek, the weird sophomore who followed her from class to class and tried to show her his Magic the Gathering fan art, one of which, she couldn't help but notice extremely uncomfortably, seemed to resemble her.
She remembered birthdays and was a good listener, and every time someone said, “Jay, you're so nice!” it helped fill that empty, sinking void inside her soul that said, no, Jay, you aren't enough and you never will be. Yes, she tried so hard, and worked even harder, but it still wasn't quite enough.
She never felt like she deserved it.
College will be better, she reminded herself, trying to be positive. Once she got in, she would know that she had gotten in based on her own individual merit. There was a difference between being singled out and being chosen.
She also liked her schedule this year. She'd gotten every class she wanted: Advanced Composition, Spanish VI with the immersive language lab, Algebra II, Civics, and Modern Dance. Seniors were allowed a free period for a Physical Education course of their choosing and Jay loved having Dance to look forward to at the end of the day. On Wednesdays, after school, she read to the kids from Hollybrook Elementary in the school library.
The only thing Jay didn't like about her year was Nick.
He'd been such a weirdly intense little kid and then, once he'd entered middle school, he'd become moody and sullen. Over the summer, he seemed to have undergone another shift: now he was crude and crass, with enough popped collars and baggy jeans in his wardrobe to outfit an entire army of fuck boys. When he wasn't swimming or listening to loud music, he seemed to be breaking hearts.
There was a girl Jay didn't know waiting for her by her locker, but she recognized her face and knew she was a freshman. She was also—Jay cringed inwardly—crying.
“Please talk to your brother for me,” she begged. “We went out last weekend and I don't know what I did, but it's like he hates me now, and he won't even talk to me or even look at me, and I just really want to know—what I did wrong.”
I'm going to kill him. “I'm sorry,” Jay said gently. “He really doesn't listen to me.”
“He said I had too much experience,” the girl wept, and Jay's mood darkened further. I'm going to kill him slowly. Oblivious, the girl sniffed and looked up at her with large dark eyes. “What does that even mean, too much experience? I've only dated one other guy. I'm not some dumb slut.”
The ease of the word in the other girl's mouth made some of Jay's pity die away. “I'm sorry,” she said again, a little less gently. “Um, Nadine, is it? Do you want a tissue? I have one in my bag.”
“It's Natasha. Natasha Wright. And no, I don't want a tissue! You've been no help at all!”
Jay watched, stunned, as the girl disappeared into the girls' restroom, letting the door slam shut with a bang behind her. A
cluster of girls looked at it, and then at Jay, before they fell to whispering.
“Wow.” Jordan folded her arms, leaning one shoulder against the wall of lockers. “What was that train wreck?”
“One of my brother's victims,” Jay said grimly. “He's been super gross lately.”
“Freshmen boys are always super gross,” said Jordan. “I wouldn't touch one if you paid me. Are you ready for Dance? I'm honestly super shocked that Martin Trell is such a good dancer. With those big glasses, he looks like such a dork, but oh my God, those hips. I hope I get him as my partner.”
Jay followed Jordan as she rambled on, swinging her change of clothes at her side, and happened to glance over to the Arts and Humanities building where Nick and his merry band of losers liked to hold court and pretend to be little lords. As usual, the demon prince was flouting uniform rules with his open jacket and missing tie, knowing no one would call him in.
He had the nerve to wink at her. I bet he was the one who sent Natasha to me.
Glaring stonily, she drew her fingers over her neck and saw a couple of his friends nudge him. Just before she turned away, she saw him blow her a kiss.
“I'm going to kill my brother,” she said, to no one in particular.
“You're a Beaucroft,” said Jordan. “You don't need to get your fingers dirty. Hire someone to take him out.”
“Don't tempt me.”
She put thoughts of Nick and that crying girl out of her head, losing herself to dance, but as soon as it was over, her concerns reasserted themselves. Yelena's old Gremlin had finally broken down and she'd scaled back on hours due to personal reasons, so Nick now carpooled to and from school every day with Jay. He was usually pretty good about being on time, even though h complained about her Wednesday volunteer hours in a way that made her want to slap him, but somehow, Nick found a way to make his compliance irritating, too.
As she walked out from the dance room, she saw Nick waiting for her with another girl with him. She immediately got up, fleeing before Jay could even get a good look at her face, but she recognized that long, silky waterfall of black hair and her eyes narrowed furiously.
Quid Pro Quo: A dark stepbrother romance Page 16