Chapter 27 #3
I slowly looked over at her, vision clearing ever so slightly as the tears that’d been pooling began to fall. She wasn’t even looking at me, still smirking superiorly at the doomed couple. She didn’t realize that while she slashed them to pieces, she’d also cut herself.
To stay on top, you’d do anything.
Even throw your best friend under the bus.
Right, Mads?
“Let her go, Connor,” Jade said to him, voice soothing. “I won’t tell the whole school you’re a cheater. We’ll win king and queen, and we’ll stay being the top of the Top Tier. That’s what you want, right? What you’ve always wanted?”
I watched Maisie stand still as Connor remained silent, not brushing off Jade’s attempt at hypnosis.
Maisie’s expression was almost scarily calm, and then I saw it.
It was a small fissure, a crack in her brow, but it sliced across her eyes as she stood waiting for the guy she liked to come say something. And he didn’t.
In that moment, I knew Connor and I were painfully similar. Both too conditioned to keep quiet, too afraid to rock the boat that Jade steered. Connor’s hands were in fists at his sides, quivering, holding himself still.
Maisie let out a small breath, just one.
Without another fighting word, she rounded the front of the car they’d stood in front of and climbed into the driver’s seat.
She started it up without looking over at any of us, nearly clipping the car behind her as she backed up before pulling out onto the road.
Jade patted Connor’s shoulder. “This is why you don’t keep secrets from me. They don’t end well. I have eyes everywhere.” She gave her hand a wave. “I don’t know why you thought I wouldn’t find out.”
“You’re a miserable person,” Connor told her in the strongest voice I’d ever heard him use.
His gaze flicked to me, and he pulled in a breath as if he were about to say something equally scathing, but paused.
He seemed to see the tear tracks on my cheeks, turning back to Jade.
“It’s ironic, you know. Voting Madison Most Likely to Peak in High School. More than ironic, it’s pathetic.”
Jade was unmoved. “I’ve warned you time and time again to fall in line.” She just tipped her head up to stare into his eyes. “We’ve come this far. We’re at the top. I’m not giving it up.”
“At this rate, you won’t have to.” Connor didn’t even blink. “You’ll fall before you have the chance.”
Connor stalked off then, his final line lingering in the air like the smoke of a bomb. The sick feeling didn’t leave with him, but stayed stirring in my stomach. The moment was over, and the players mostly gone, but the tension remained.
If I’d known they were going to hurt Noah before it happened, would I have done anything?
I hadn’t even stepped into protect Maisie when Jade was knocking her down.
I hadn’t defended Maisie. I hadn’t defended Connor.
I hadn’t even stood up for myself. When it came to Jade Dyer, I didn’t know how to do anything but fall in line.
Logan would be horrified. Disgusted. Embarrassed to be associated with someone like me.
Just like I was embarrassed to be associated with myself.
I couldn’t stop crying, thinking about Maisie’s crumpled face. The way she’d pulled away from Connor. She’d stood there, waiting for someone she trusted to come to her defense, but they hadn’t. Again. And even though I wanted to hate Connor for it, I mostly hated him for being too much like me.
A coward.
Jade turned to me, and if she noticed the tear tracks on my cheeks, she didn’t comment on them. In fact, it was like she wasn’t really seeing me, her eyes unfocused. She slid her phone into her pocket. “Ready to go to Ashton’s?”
She turned on her heel, completely turning her back on the way to the art museum, forgetting the entire purpose of us coming here. If I was a stronger person, I would’ve continued on without her. If I was a better person, I would’ve turned my back on her then and there.
But I wasn’t, and I couldn’t.
When I got into the passenger seat of Jade’s car, sealing myself in, I pulled my phone out. I used the edge of my thumb to swipe underneath my wet eyes.
how much longer til you’re done at work
He didn’t respond, which made sense, since he’d gone back to work. I regretted even texting him, because now he was worrying when he was at work. I swallowed the bile in the back of my throat.
everything’s okay, btw. just missing you
“Who are you texting?”
I blinked at Jade’s dull demand, and when I spoke, my voice was hoarse. “My mom. She’s wondering why I didn’t show.”
“You know.” Jade tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully. The drive to Ashton’s wasn’t far, but even five minutes in the enclosed car seemed suffocating. “You never asked me if my parents decided to move to New York.”
My lips parted, realizing it hadn’t come back up. After she’d come to my house crying, neither of us had mentioned it again. A thick weariness washed over me, and my eyes slipped closed. “I’m sorry.”
She tapped her fingers on the leather steering wheel again, rhythm steady, casual. Detached. “That’s it?”
I just sat in the passenger seat, waiting to be sucked down into it.
Exhausted. That was a good word for it. I felt mentally, physically, emotionally, thoroughly exhausted.
“Did they decide to move to New York?” Even as I asked it, remembering the first time it’d ever come up, I wondered: was it a lie?
Was it something she’d made up to get me to step down from co-captain?
Or was I just looking for flaws in Jade now because I’d uncovered so much else?
Jade’s car began humming as a call came through, and when I looked at the dash screen, I saw Ashton’s name. She pressed a button on her steering wheel, connecting the call. “Hey, we’re almost there.”
“Could you take any longer?” Ashton’s arrogant voice cut through the speakers, the pulse of music in the background. “Lacey’s here already.”
“Could you be more annoying?” Jade threw back, scowling. She glanced over at me. “I said I wanted to do my thing tonight.”
“Too bad I don’t care.”
His response had been so quick, so juvenile, that Jade only rolled her eyes. “Fine. We’re almost there. Don’t let her leave.”
“Duh.” The one word twisted disdainfully, and then the phone beeped with the ended call.
The silence was thick, but only for a moment. “Lacey?” I echoed, half afraid to ask. “What’s going on with Lacey?”
“Ashton has something to talk to her about.”
I waited, but she didn’t go on. “With you?”
Jade pulled into Ashton’s full driveway, finding a parking space that’d been left open near the front. Perfectly reserved for the Top Tier. “I always get the front row seat.”
The realization was another weight on my shoulders. They were going to do something to her. That was why Ashton was impatient—because he’d been waiting for Jade to arrive to get started. “Jade,” I whispered, brow crumpling.
Her eyes traced me in the dim lighting, and she reached out, smoothing her hands down my hair like she always did. The action was not lulling, nor comforting, nor soothing. It took everything in me not to jerk away from her touch.
“Why do we have to do this?”
“This?”
“This.” I scanned the face of my best friend, trying to find a glimmer of the girl I knew in her dark eyes. “Connor, Maisie, whatever’s going on inside. Why can’t we just have fun in high school and leave everyone be?”
“I am having fun.” Jade pushed my hair over my shoulder, fingers trailing along the skin of my neck before pulling back. She had to see the tears in my eyes, but she didn’t care. Then again, sitting in the passenger seat, I wasn’t sure she ever did. “Aren’t you?”
And then she hopped out of the car.
I sat in the darkness of Jade’s car for a long, long time, unmoving.
Even from here, I could hear the slam of the music in the walls of Ashton’s house, and knew that it was probably filled with people inside, if the driveway was any indication.
People smiling, laughing, having fun, oblivious to the cheer co-captain having an existential crisis in an SUV outside.
But somewhere in there was Lacey, about to be cornered by Ashton and Jade for who knew why. She was unsuspecting, with no one to warn her. No one but me.
My phone began vibrating in my grip, and I looked down at the caller ID.
“Madison,” Logan said when the call connected, tone stressed. “I texted, but you weren’t answering. Is everything okay—”
“If someone you weren’t close with was going to have something happen to them, what would you do?” I asked, staring at Ashton’s three-story house with a sense of dread.
“Madison.” The urgency in Logan’s voice renewed. “Are you at the party?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the address?”
“You can’t come here.” Because everything would surely fall apart then. “If you knew something was going to happen to someone, what would you do?”
I knew what Logan was about to say. He’d stop it.
He wouldn’t let anyone be picked on, no matter if they were his best friend or his enemy.
He’d throw himself in front of the fire if it meant shielding someone else.
That was Logan. Kindhearted. Steady. Brave in all the ways I wasn’t. Everything I wanted to be.
There was a pause, and I could almost hear him breathing on the other end.
Then, finally—quietly: “Don’t ask me that.
” The words sounded like they hurt. Like he hated saying them.
I closed my eyes, letting the weight of his voice settle over me.
Inexplicably, the urge to cry rose again, burning the back of my throat. “What I’d do doesn’t matter.”
At first, I thought that was his way of deflecting another serious question.
“Don’t ask yourself what you should do,” Logan went on in a murmur, and it was like his words slipped underneath my skin and straight to my heart. “Ask yourself what you can live with.”
Ask yourself what you can live with. Could I live with knowing that Ashton and Jade were teaming up against Lacey, and doing nothing to stop it? Could I live with letting another person be hurt by the Top Tier? Could I live with myself if I sat by?
I opened my eyes, and strangely, Ashton’s house almost seemed brighter. “I’m glad you were dared to tour Brentwood,” I told him, reaching to unclasp my seatbelt. “I’m glad I met you, Logan.”
“Text me the address,” Logan insisted, urgency suddenly renewed. “I’ll come get you—”
“I can handle it.” I popped open the passenger door and climbed out, knees shaking when I stood on the grass. The music was stronger now, but so was the newfound sense of resolve. Ask yourself what you can live with. I swallowed hard, starting toward the house. “What are you doing tomorrow?”