Chapter 11
11
T he rest of my Saturday was spent reading, then rereading the mysterious diary. Learning all about the previous tenant of my dorm room, Abigail Monstera, and her experiences with the Devil’s Backbone Society. All the horrible things she’d witnessed, and then the things that happened to her…until it cut off abruptly some six months after she started keeping the record.
I fell asleep plagued by curiosity about what’d happened to her, sick with anxiety that this society was very much a real thing at Nevaeh and Heath was a part of it.
It irritated me to no end that Heath was wearing me down. My anger at his lies was already cooling, and he had a good point that I didn’t care what Nate thought. But knowing he was mixed up in this Devil’s Backbone Society had my nerves frayed. How shit was my judge of character?
Waking up Sunday morning, I knew I needed to do my research to find out more about Abigail and the DBS. For all I knew, she’d just gotten bored keeping a diary or she’d gotten expelled from the school or…any number of other innocent reasons why she’d left it the way she did. She’d even written she might leave… Hell, I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t writing some weird kind of fiction. But I definitely wanted to know more.
As I did most mornings, I grabbed my toiletries basket, a towel, and made my way down the hall to the communal bathroom. I was up early so had the whole place to myself and took advantage of the opportunity to wash my hair while no one was rushing me.
Once done, I roughly dried my hair, then wrapped myself in my towel to head back to my room. I’d tried taking clean clothes into the bathroom with me a couple of times but somehow they always got wet and literally everyone else on the floor just did the dash in a towel, so I’d adapted.
Stepping back inside my room, though, I instantly regretted my choice.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I demanded, glaring death at my intruder and clutching my towel tighter.
Nate’s eyes narrowed in a menacing glare as he rose from my desk chair where he’d apparently made himself right at home. My class notes were open on the desk like he’d been looking through them, and I frantically glanced around to see if I’d left the diary out. I didn’t see it, though. Wait, I’d tucked it under bed last night before I fell asleep. Thank fuck.
“A guy can’t visit his new stepsister?” he sneered, full of hatred for my mere presence in his life. “You’ve been at my college for a whole week now, Layne, and you’ve yet to say hello? I’m offended.”
I scoffed. “If I were trying to offend you, Essex,” I replied, taking his obvious cue in using surnames rather than first. De-personalizing the man in front of me. “Then I’d put in a little more effort than simply ignoring your existence.”
His lips tightened in obvious anger. “You’re not ignoring my friends, though, are you? First you fuck Heathcliff for six grand, which admittedly was just a business transaction, but then I hear you’ve been fooling around with both Royce and Carter? How hard up for money are you, Layne? Doesn’t my dad give you enough of an allowance to quit your whoring ways? Stay the fuck away from them.”
My jaw dropped in shock, but I quickly recovered with a wave of nearly blinding rage at this entitled son of a bitch.
“Jealous, Nate? Is your fragile ego bruised because you’re being ignored? Aw…baby…don’t be like that,” I gave an exaggerated pout as I moved closer to him, tucking my towel tighter around me. His eyes widened with obvious confusion as I batted my lashes in the most sultry way I could manage. “If you wanted me to touch your dick, you just had to ask nicely.”
Before he could move away in suspicion at my whiplash change of personality, I dropped my fist low and slammed it into his groin as hard as I could from the short distance. It landed as intended, causing him to give a strangled noise as he doubled over in pain, his face turning purple.
“That one was for free, brother , since you could never afford me. Now get the fuck out of my room and don’t come back again.” I gave his shoulder a condescending pat since he was still doubled over, then gave him a firm shove out into the corridor.
He stumbled, noises like choked curses escaping his enraged face, but I slammed the door and locked it before he could cause a scene. No, thank you.
For a moment I stood frozen, one hand against the door and the other holding my towel, but Nate didn’t come back. After a short while, I pressed my ear to the door and tried to hear if he was still out there, but it was total silence. Had he accepted defeat and left?
Unable to control my own curiosity, I opened the door a crack to peek out. Sure enough, the hallway was deserted as though I’d imagined the whole toxic interaction.
Weird.
Closing the door once more, I drew a deep breath. The sudden rush of adrenaline had my hands shaking, so I needed to get a grip. By the time I finished getting dressed and brushed the tangles from my hair, I was mostly calm…if still irate at Nate’s accusations.
Now I was supposedly fooling around with Carter too? Presumably this was an assumption drawn entirely from that short interaction when he peeled me off Jade. Damn, I really did get around in this fictional world everyone seemed to live in.
With a sigh, I dropped to my knees to fish out the diary from under my bed…but it wasn’t there.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, frowning as I got low enough to see, then used my phone flashlight to light up the space. The empty space.
A chill flashed through me, but I immediately tried to reason with my own logic. Maybe I’d left it in my bed? Or on my desk? Or…somewhere else. Maybe I didn’t put it under the bed, after all?
Ten minutes later, I’d ripped my room to shreds and confirmed once and for all…the diary was gone.
With shaking hands, I found my phone and scrolled through my mom’s messages to find where she sent me Nate’s contact card. I’d never bothered to save it because I never wanted to make nice, but this…this required immediate attention.
He didn’t answer, which only pissed me off more. After redialing five times, and being sent to voicemail five times, my phone dinged with a text message.
Nathaniel Essex: Who the fuck is this?
My eye twitched. I was so infuriated. I tried calling again, but he declined.
Drawing a deep breath I typed out my reply.
Ashley: Your conscience, dickwad.
Almost immediately, my phone rang with an incoming call from him.
“I don’t have a conscience, Layne.”
I rubbed my eyes to keep from rolling them so hard, they’d likely fall out of my head. “No shit. I need you to return what you stole, Nate.”
A short pause met my request, then he made a thoughtful hum. “As fun as it would be to mess with you, Layne, I don’t have the time or patience.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I snapped. “Give the diary back, Essex, or I’ll?—”
“You’ll what , Layne? Hmm? You’ll punch me in the dick again?” He sounded big mad at that, and my lips twitched with satisfaction.
Stifling a laugh, I sat heavily on the edge of my bed. “Once is enough. I’ll just tell Max what an entitled, rude, antagonistic piece of shit you are. Maybe I’ll tell him all about how you keyed my car then tried to set me up to sleep with Heath? He seems like a reasonable guy, your dad. I bet he’d look into those accusations. Then what, Nate? You don’t seem like the sort who has his own stream of income…what happens when Daddy cuts you off, I wonder?”
Another pause. Then a grunt of what seemed like surprise. “You’re a real piece of work, Layne.”
“The feeling is mutual, Essex. Now give me back the diary you stole.”
He exhaled sharply. “I didn’t take anything from your room, so don’t worry. Your dirty little secrets that you confess to your diary are safe wherever you left the damn thing.”
Before I could snap back that I didn’t believe him, he ended the call.
“Mother fucker !” I screamed, just barely resisting the urge to throw my phone at the wall. I really couldn’t afford to buy a new one just to vent my anger.
Chewing the edge of my lip, I looked around my room once more. Had he taken it? My head said yes, unequivocally yes. But there was something different about his voice after I threatened to tattle on him to Max. He wasn’t fucking around anymore. Would he call my bluff over something like this?
My gut said no. Which left me with the question of where the diary was. I’d upended my room; it was definitely gone. So if Nate hadn’t taken it…who had? And when?
With that uncomfortable feeling sitting on my shoulders, I grabbed my bag and headed out to the Nevaeh campus library. Maybe I didn’t have the diary itself anymore, but I’d read it more than once. I had enough of the information stored in my brain to do some research, starting with Abigail herself and then I’d dive into the DBS itself.
Thankfully, being early on a Sunday, the library wasn’t crowded, and I made myself comfortable at one of the study desks near the yearbooks to pull out my laptop. The internet in the library was a shitload quicker than in the dorms and I was quietly scared of another Nate run-in if I stayed in my room. Besides, I was in the right place if Google let me down.
Biting my lip, I typed in Abigail’s name. Then hesitated a moment before hitting enter.
My stomach sank as the search results popped up. First on the list…her obituary.
“Fuck…” I breathed, a strange level of grief washing though me. After reading her diary all weekend, really immersing myself inside her head, I felt like I knew her. And now she was dead.
Sniffing back the tears threatening to fall, I forced myself to read through the paltry handful of local news articles touching on the tragic death of a Nevaeh University student. It’d happened during spring break while most of the school was deserted. One of the cleaning staff had found Abigail’s body floating in Lake Placid and her death was ruled as suicide.
Bullshit. Abigail was not suicidal.
Oh man. She’d gotten killed by the Devil’s Backbone Society. I could just sense it in my gut. After everything she wrote, all her fears…
I swallowed hard, my mind whirling. The one shred of hope I clung to was the possibility Abigail’s diary was entirely fictional. Maybe she’d been suffering a mental condition and hallucinating? That could explain her death by suicide in the end…
“Are you okay?” someone asked, making me startle and look up from the screen I’d been laser focused on.
“Heath. What…what are you doing here?” I frowned, glancing around. Had I somehow summoned him by researching Abigail’s death? He was in the Devil’s Backbone Society, after all. That much had been clear in the woods during the lake party.
He placed a coffee down on the table and I gave it a slow blink. Again, it was my order.
“I accidentally ordered one of these and it’s way too sweet. How do you drink that shit?” His eyes sparkled with amusement; his lips tilted in an easy smile. It was a sexy look on him, and it only served to remind me of Nate’s visit to my room. How he’d warned me to leave his friends alone. “Anyway, I figured you could use some caffeine to get through whatever put that frown on your face. See ya.”
Heath started to walk away, his own laptop bag over his shoulder, and I made a snap decision. “Wait,” I blurted out. “I worked out how you can make it up to me.”
He spun back to face me, one brow arched. “Oh?”
I nodded quickly. “Yep. Congratulations, Heathcliff, you just became my boyfriend.” Because not only would it infuriate Nate, it would possibly offer me some insight into the Devil’s Backbone Society.
Heath’s eyes widened. “Um…”
“In name only, of course, I’m not actually interested in dating you.” Liar, liar, pants on fire .
His lips curled into a grin. “Fake dating? I love that trope. Count me in.”