Chapter 30 #4
“What else is there?” Jade propped her hand on her hip. “You agreed to flirt with her until she fell for you. What else is there to know?”
Silence answered from Logan’s end. In it, I could hear the hum of his car. “Let me tell her,” he repeated.
Jade grinned. “Well, sweet Logan, it’s actually too late—”
Cutting her off, I lifted my hand up and, with all the force I could muster, slammed Jade’s phone into the tiled bathroom floor. The shattering sound mixed with Jade and Riley’s gasps, and for good measure, I stomped the tip of my heel into the middle of the screen, effectively killing the device.
“You,” Jade gasped, gaping. “You—you little—”
I surged forward, grabbing her dainty shoulders in a harsh grip and slamming her into the hard bathroom wall. If I had pushed her two inches to the left, her back would’ve shattered the mirror. Jade’s eyes bugged wide at the sudden violence, her ringlets bouncing.
“What did you do?” I demanded, voice low and barely contained. “What did you threaten him with?”
“Oh my gosh, Madison!” Riley smacked at my shoulders with her weak grip. “Let go, you psycho!”
Jade, though, fought to remain calm. “Oh, please. Why do you think I—”
“Because I know you, Jade Dyer. You’re manipulative, and cruel, and can’t live without twisting things in your favor.” I dug my nails into her skin. “In the beginning, you encouraged me to date him.”
“I didn’t have enough proof. Not then. I needed more.”
“Proof?”
“To bury you.”
She spoke so simplistically. It blew my mind. “You set me up—for what?”
Jade didn’t even blink. Didn’t flinch at my grip, or my words as I hurled them like glass shards. Her expression stayed cold, lifeless, a mask that made me want to scream. “I was supposed to be captain,” she said, flat and final.
For a second, the words didn’t compute. I couldn’t see how two and two connected, until it finally hit me.
I couldn’t fight the urge to laugh as it bubbled up this time, breathy and disbelieving.
“Captain,” I muttered, struggling to speak evenly.
“Not co-captain. All this—” An incredulous chuckle cut through my words. “All this over a stupid label?”
Jade didn’t blink.
In fact, it was all over a stupid label. The Most Likely To label—Peak in High School. The cheer captain label. Both of us, so deeply unsettled with the tag we’d been given that we decided to fight it.
Only instead of trying to be better, Jade had spiraled. Instead of accepting her label, making the most of it, she schemed on my downfall. All those times she accused me of plotting against her had been a projection of what she’d been doing to me.
“This was your plan this whole time.” I lightened up a bit on my grip, leaning back. “To catch me with Logan and expose it. So—what? You had me followed to get the proof you needed?” My eyes cut to Riley. “Aren’t you a good little stalker?”
Riley just smiled. “Thanks.”
“You could’ve been good,” Jade said. “You could’ve rejected him and stepped down as co-captain. I gave you a choice.”
“I am not your puppet!” I let go of her and took a step back. Riley jerked away as I neared her, as if afraid I’d target her next. “My arms do not have strings you can just tug for your amusement.”
Jade frowned. “What happened to following me ’til the end?”
“What happened to you? Why do you have to go so far with everything? Why can’t you just—just stop?”
“I have to be on top. No matter who has to fall.”
“Even me? Your best friend since the fifth grade?”
There was no emotion in her eyes. No guilt, no remorse, no regret. “Even you.”
I could see in the unflinching set of Jade’s mouth, the hollow stare that once held secrets and sleepovers and inside jokes only we knew, that she meant it.
All of it was gone, replaced by this stranger in front of me who wore my best friend’s face.
A shiver rattled through me. Whatever tether had bound us together all these years had been cut clean through—and Jade was the one holding the scissors.
I glanced over at Riley, who had her phone out—I was surprised she hadn’t pulled it earlier.
The second she saw me notice her phone, though, Riley clutched it to her chest, as if afraid I’d snatch it from her grip and smash it, too.
“I’m going to ask Logan,” I said, my breath trembling. “And I’ll believe him over you. So you might as well tell me the truth now. What did you threaten him with?”
For a second, Jade looked like she might lie—eyes flickering, lips pressing into a smirk.
Then she tilted her head. “I just gave him a choice, that’s all.
Help me test you… or I tell everyone he and his buddy tried to bribe Brentwood into throwing last season’s game.
Our county takes cheating super seriously, you know.
When the guy from Jackson Schools try to pay off Haven, they had their whole football program cut for a year.
Scouts still won’t go to their games. Serious stuff. ” She shrugged, nonchalant.
Her words twisted the truth into something venomous, the same rumor Ashton and Kyle once used to corner Logan. It was the same thing they’d done freshman year to Hudson Bishop—they beat him up and then pointed the finger at him. My stomach turned, heat building in my chest. “With what proof?”
“I’d show you, but you went Wreck-It-Ralph on my phone.” She released a soft sigh. “It’s not like I forced him to sell his soul, Mads. Just to date you.”
But for Logan, those two might as well have been the same thing. Logan wasn’t like the Top Tier, who did crappy things without blinking twice. Something like this would’ve torn Logan apart, and the fact that Noah was also caught in the crossfire made it even worse.
My eyes dropped to the shattered glass, jagged and glinting. A perfect reflection of what Jade had done to everything else. “You’re pathetic.” The two words escaped me on their own. Then softer, heavier— “And exhausting.”
“I’m pathetic? You really don’t get it, do you?” Jade’s voice softened into something almost pitying. “That stupid little label—‘Most Likely to Peak in High School.’ You hated it so much, wanted so badly to prove it wrong, that you were willing to use anyone to rewrite your story. Even Logan.”
Her words slid under my skin like ice. I wanted to argue—to tell her she was wrong—but my throat was thick. “I like Logan—”
“Do you?” Jade quickly amended, “Or I should say, did you? Maybe you do now. Maybe you fell for him while he was playing pretend for me. And hey, maybe he fell for you while he was on his assignment. But if that’s the case, aren’t you at all curious why he didn’t tell you the truth?”
I closed my eyes, strangely knowing it was time to leave the bathroom. In fact, I should’ve walked out five minutes ago. “I’m not doing this,” I told her, gathering the skirt of my dress in a tight fist.
Except Jade called after me when I stepped away. “Logan didn’t tell you because he couldn’t trust you, Mads. He couldn’t trust you not to pick me over him, like you always do. You didn’t believe him about Noah’s leg, right? That’s why you asked me, right? Because you didn’t believe your boyfriend.”
I stared at the closed bathroom door, at the flipped deadbolt.
I needed to continue toward it, to unlock the door.
My legs, though, suddenly felt like lead.
The image entered my mind without much effort—Logan, gasping for air in the alleyway, panic swallowing him whole over the idea of hurting Noah.
And, I realized now, at the idea of hurting me. I just hate waiting for the other shoe to drop. That wasn’t about Jade finding out about us—it’d been about me finding out about what he’d done.
“While he struggled with his moral compass, you played girlfriend because it made you feel better about yourself.” Jade’s heels clicked as she came up behind me.
“You might like him, but you know what you like the most about him? You loved what he proved about you. Most Likely to Peak in High School. Without him, you’re exactly what everyone always said you’d be. ”
My lips were parted, and I tugged in breath after strangled breath, but my world still tipped as if I was oxygen starved. It felt like I’d just done five cartwheels in a row at cheer practice, and everything was still spinning. Even my stomach.
Jade laid a hand on my shoulder, but where my grip on her had been hard, hers was soft.
Tender as she turned me around, making me face her once and her beautifully painted makeup more.
“You can tell yourself Logan cares now—and hey, like I said, maybe he does—but you’ll always wonder, won’t you?
If it’s real.” Jade smoothed her hand down my hair, as delicate as a mother’s touch.
Her voice was equally gentle. “Or if it’s just another game I let you win. ”
Her final sentence was like a bucket of ice water on a sleeping figure.
My vision blurred—not with tears at first, but with the sheer force of everything crashing down at once.
My chest squeezed so tight I couldn’t breathe, like Jade had reached inside and wrung my lungs dry.
Every word replayed on a loop, echoing louder and louder.
My relationship. My choices. My life. None of it mine. All of it a game to Jade.
I wanted to scream that she was wrong, but the memories slammed against me like waves, dragging me under.
The nights I’d swallowed my doubts because I was too afraid of the label.
The way I clung to Logan like he was a lifeboat, never stopping to wonder if he was drowning under the weight of me.
The times I’d let Jade steer, let her cut others down, let her cut me down, because it was easier to follow than fight.
“You say you’re not my puppet,” she went on, twisting the knife further.
“But you’ve never made a single choice without me, Mads.
Not with cheer. Not with Maisie. Not even with Logan.
You didn’t want him until I told you that you needed him to be the next It Couple.
And then you didn’t want him until the Most Likely Tos. ”
Every word out of her mouth made my skin crawl. She’d orchestrated me needing Logan, and then me wanting him. I’d been playing checkers all along when Jade had been playing chess.
“And last night, helping Connor win back Maisie?” Jade gave a soft tsk. “Did that make you feel good? You held my arm, Madison. Connor made the choice of standing up in front of the entire school, but you just held my arm. Do you think the bare minimum makes you brave?”
The bare minimum. The cowardly move of simply holding her back.
And even then, it’d been a challenge for me to agree to Connor’s request at first. The tears that pooled in my eyes blurred Jade’s visage, and her blonde hair and gold dress all misted into nothing but radiance.
She attacked without mercy, just as a queen would.
It hurt to even draw in a simple breath.
“You couldn’t do more than that. And that’s why you’ll peak in high school. Because without me—or whoever comes after me—you’re nothing. You’ll never know who you are until someone else tells you.”
I’d been holding a breath to keep a sob from escaping. I couldn’t even look at her anymore. Shame and horror made my head heavy.
You’re nothing. You’ll never know who you are until someone tells you.
Each of the words embedded themselves inside me and exploded, their shrapnel slicing deep.
All those years I stood next to Jade, laughing at things that weren’t funny, ignoring people she’d broken.
Pretending I didn’t know better, when maybe I did—maybe I’d just gotten really good at pretending.
Every sneer I’d passed along. Every whispered secret I’d kept.
Every plan I’d silently agreed to—no matter how much I’d told myself it didn’t matter—had brought me here.
Completely and utterly unraveling underneath a stupid tiara.
And Logan… Logan was caught in the middle of my mess.
Not just a casualty of Jade’s cruelty, but a casualty of my own silence and selfishness.
I’d been pulling away from her, okay with the thought of letting her go, because I had Logan.
I had someone else I could grab onto, someone else who made me feel good about myself.
I could still see Logan hesitating the day I proposed exposure therapy, his eyes bouncing back and forth. It’s… not a good idea, Madison. Logan, someone whose life motto was I can handle it. And I’d just added to the weight he had to carry.
I just hurt him. Like I did with everyone. All because I was too selfish to look closer.
“It’ll be lonely,” I found myself saying, but my voice was strange. The words were empty and hollow, like Jade had reached inside and scooped every ounce of life out. “At the top with no one to share it with.”
I could see Riley over Jade’s shoulder, and could see the way her anxious gaze flicked to Jade.
She was waiting for Jade to say I have Riley.
I knew it. The Queen Bee, though, barely batted an eye.
“We’ll see,” Jade murmured. She reached out and ripped the plastic crown from my head, tugging a few strands of my hair along with it. I didn’t even flinch. “Won’t we?”
And then Jade snapped my homecoming queen crown in half.