Chapter 27 #2
I drew in a hiccupping breath, the backs of my eyes beginning to sting.
A wetness slipped down my cheeks before I even noticed I was crying.
I pressed my palm flat against the cool bathroom door, as if I could steady myself through the metal.
Beyond that thin barrier was the rest of the school, a hallway full of people who’d look to me as one of the faces of the Top Tier.
The Top Tier who was nothing what it pretended to be.
That night, I lay on my bed, curled up with my Barbie goose squished to my chest. I held my phone propped against one of my pillows, using my thumb to scroll through my message thread with Logan from earlier.
you’re working tonight?
Logan
Yeah. You’re going to that art thing for your mom, right?
undecided. I could always just come sit with you
Logan
You promised your mom, didn’t you?
I want her to like me, not think I’m stealing you away from time with her
how about I stop by the art show and then come to expresso’s? that way I can see both of you?
Logan
What about your friend’s party?
I have to get back to work, but text me if you end up going to the party, ok?
I stared at his last message. I still hadn’t sent a reply back, mostly because almost immediately after he’d sent that text, a new one had buzzed in my phone.
Jade
I’m picking you up at seven-thirty.
No question. No room for me to say no. Before, I’d never have dreamed of telling Jade no.
Now, though, after our confrontation in the bathroom, the last thing I wanted to do was go to a party with her.
Well, really, the last thing I wanted to do was party with anyone from the Top Tier.
The only thing I really wanted to do was be with Logan.
Unease gnawed at my stomach. Was it time to come clean about him? If I no longer believed in the Top Tier, and my friendship with Jade was on the rocks, what was the point in keeping him a secret? What was the point in any of it?
But was it truly so easy to turn my back on everything I’d ever known? Even if the Top Tier was no longer what I’d always thought it was, could I really renounce it in such a public way?
And the way I was overthinking it all… was that Peak in High School behavior?
I wanted nothing more than to just go to Expresso’s and spend the evening watching Logan close up.
I also wanted to apologize. After finding out that the Top Tier was involved with the bribery plot last year, I’d been thinking over and over how to make it right.
First, I needed to apologize to Logan for not believing him at first, and then I needed to apologize to Noah.
Except Noah needed a whole lot more than an apology.
A sharp car horn startled me from my circling thoughts, and I pulled myself up from my bed to peek out my window. Sure enough, Jade’s silver SUV with a pink stripe on its door sat in my driveway. It was seven-twenty-eight.
I let out a quiet breath, pulling my phone out to text Logan.
I’m going to the party, I guess. I’ll text you if anything crazy happens.
I gave the goose a kiss before going out into the kitchen to grab my house keys. I left my varsity jacket hanging on the kitchen chair, feeling dirty at the thought of wearing it. So, instead, I went out in just my sweater, wanting nothing more than to just crawl back underneath my covers.
Jade wrinkled her nose at me when I opened the passenger door. “You’re wearing that?”
I hadn’t changed from the outfit I wore to school, which was just jeans and a pink sweater. Not quite party material, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I fell into the passenger seat. “Yeah.” I stretched the seatbelt across my torso. “We need to stop by Centre Inspire.”
“Why?”
Irritation prickled within me. “Because we just do.”
“Well, Ashton’s waiting—”
“Why do you have to fight me on everything?” I demanded, shocked—and slightly proud—that I’d snapped at her twice in one day.
Jade huffed, slouching lower in her seat. “Someone’s in a mood.”
In a mood. In a mood. As if she couldn’t fathom why. As if our argument in the bathroom earlier hadn’t even happened.
The parking situation at Centre Inspire was garbage, as Jade was happy to point out, and she had to park two blocks away.
It was Family Night for the gallery, which meant parents and grandparents were all here tonight to look at their child’s artwork.
At least it was toward the end of the night, so most people were walking past us and away from the gallery.
I was surprised Jade climbed out of her car to walk in with me, for how lame she seemed to think it was.
She was quiet as we walked toward the gallery, though, typing in a text bubble on her phone.
I felt emotionally drained, exhausted from trying to guess what she was thinking all the time. I didn’t look over at her; I didn’t care to see the look in her eye. So I focused straight ahead.
Which meant I saw them before Jade did. In that split, horrifying second, I wished I could stop time. I wished I could grab Jade by the shoulders and spin her around, keep her from looking up from her phone, and keep the world from falling apart.
But I couldn’t. And when Jade lifted her head, her gaze latched onto the couple kissing three cars down. Like me, she saw the boy’s hands trace the girl’s face, and she saw the girl with her hands on his waist, the two locked in a sweet, tentative embrace. Jade saw it all.
Maisie and Connor, leaning against her coupe. Kissing.
My feet were cemented to the sidewalk, my stomach doing a slow somersault as my brain tried to compute what I was seeing.
Jade’s sharp intake of breath beside me was the only sound that broke through the buzzing in my ears. I was only distantly aware of her lifting her phone. “Wow,” she said. “Just… wow.”
Connor and Maisie sprang apart, Jade’s voice like a bucket of water extinguishing the flame between them.
Maisie’s face was flushed, eyes wide behind her glasses, and Connor instinctively shifted, trying to block her from view—like that would somehow hide her from Jade.
Like trying to call a timeout when the play had already fallen apart.
I stood frozen just behind Jade’s shoulder as she started sauntering closer, her voice syrupy-sweet and lethal all at once as she continued to film the scene. “I might not be able to get your friend to post about it, but I don’t need Babble to call Connor a cheater.”
Jade jumped straight into that narrative quicker than I thought she would’ve. I would’ve expected more blazing anger, more immediate betrayal—not her instantly jumping into damage control. Manipulation. As if she’d been quietly preparing for it all along.
I sucked in a deep breath, lips parting, but no words coming out.
“Connor goes from dating you to kissing a girl like me—what would everyone think?” Maisie asked Jade, but the uncertainty in her gaze gave her away. Her eyes flickered. “If he chose me over you, who’s the real loser?”
No, Maisie, I wanted to say, to beg. Don’t provoke her. Don’t say anything. Just duck your head and give in.
“I hold his reputation in the palm of my hand, and he knows it,” Jade said sweetly, tilting her head at her faux boyfriend. “Don’t you, Connor?”
He said nothing. I watched it all unfold like I wasn’t in it—like I was a character in someone else’s story, powerless and fading into the background. I heard Maisie’s voice falter, saw the fear flicker in her eyes, and still… I didn’t speak. I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
Because this was what Jade did. She spoke softly, but struck hard.
She took the vulnerable things about people and held them over their heads, not only just for her own advantage, but for fun.
The gleam in her eye now hinted at nothing but dark glee as she rattled off all of Connor’s dark secrets, lips curving around them like they were little treasures.
Say something, my mind begged. Do something. Don’t just stand there.
And this was why I held Logan close to the chest. Because I was nothing more than a coward.
“Maybe the embarrassing part comes when everyone sees how once upon a time, the math book-loving geek desperately wanted to be popular, but couldn’t hack it.” Jade’s voice was merciless.
Connor reached for Maisie’s wrist, but she didn’t back down.
“Or maybe people will see how threatened you are by me. You, Top Tier cheerleader Jade Dyer, threatened by a math book-loving geek. That’s why you stole my best friend.
Why you helped Madison skew my squad audition.
That’s why you put me on the Most Likely To list.”
Maisie began to grow wavy, as if I was looking at her underwater.
She was holding her own so fiercely against Jade, standing up for herself, calling her out.
For one of the first times in my life, I actually saw Jade falter.
Her shoulders pulled back in surprise, and her gaze actually dropped away to the ground.
Only for a second, though, because then she looked back at Maisie, her ferocity renewed.
And again, I just stood there and watched.
I watched as Jade twisted the knife into Maisie deep, telling her that Connor was the one to pick out Maisie’s label.
I watched as Maisie’s expression went from stony and determined to shocked. And hurt.
You can’t do the right thing, my thoughts murmured. You’ve been faking it well with Logan this whole time. But you can’t even stand up for what’s right. You’re pathetic.
I bit down on my lower lip, hard enough for there to be a burst of pain. If Logan saw me now—if he saw the way I kept my head down while someone I once loved like a sister was ripped apart—he wouldn’t just be disappointed. He’d be disgusted.
“It’s not something you’d understand,” Jade said, looking at Maisie down her nose. “But to stay on top, you’d do anything. Even throw your best friend under the bus. Right, Mads?”