Chapter 9 #2
“Sorry, can’t be late for chemistry!” I say cheerfully. Throwing the strap of my bag over my shoulder, I head for the door. “Give the powers that be my regards. Kisses!”
High school.
At first glance, it wasn’t at all what I imagined.
But, then again, attending a fancy ass private school in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when Tillie dropped the news on me.
“What exactly are they preparing you for, the priesthood?” I’d said to Eden the night of the Bell Game, when I first laid eyes on the gothic monstrosity otherwise known as Grady Preparatory Academy.
“No, idiot. College.”
Okay, so he didn’t actually call me an idiot, but I know he was thinking it. His exasperated sigh and melodramatic eye roll said as much.
Still…going on three weeks in, and I’ve yet to be fully convinced that this isn’t all a front for more nefarious dabblings.
Tucked deep in the woods along the edge of town with its sprawling castle-like exterior, Grady Prep isn’t giving collegiate so much as it’s giving I vant to suck your blood.
With its mottled brick siding and jutting spires stabbing the sky; ominous archways and narrow cathedral windows…
if it’s not the priesthood they’re secretly readying us for, it can be only one other thing: vampirism.
Immortality or celibacy….
Oh, how will I ever choose!
Someone bumps into my shoulder, causing me to stumble forward, shoes skidding and squeaking over the glossy wood floors. “Watch it, loser,” some guy I’ve never even seen before says.
I grit my teeth, fingers clenching the straps of my backpack as I right my balance.
He smirks when he passes, knowing full-well he ran into me, before turning away and strutting off into a classroom.
Okay, so Grady Prep might look fancier than your average high school—implying a sense of decorum and maturity behind its iron doors.
And evil plots! Can’t forget that—but when you get past the tan-burgundy-navy-white palate making up our uniforms, past the dark ornate wood paneling and spiral staircases and maze of corridors and ever-present smell of wood polish, leather, and moth balls…
It’s still very much a typical high school. Right down to the jocks who knock my books from my arms, and the hoity-toity girls who curl their lips at me and make snide comments under their breath.
Heck, just thinking about it warms my fragile little heart with sentiments of, I belong! I fit in! This shit be awesome.
Sure, it would’ve been a lot cooler if I got to be the one throwing a football at some loser’s head, or flipping my hair back with a scoff—As if!
—as all my friends spoon-fed me praises and talked shit about me behind my back.
But I’m not at all surprised by the way things turned out.
Some people are just not cut out for popularity, and I so happen to be one of them.
Just ask those at Ashwood. Be it an asylum or some lavish prep school smack-dab in the middle of rural Pennsylvania, it’s all the same. The adults hate me. My peers ridicule me.
Gotta love the consistency though.
What they don’t know, though, is I’m not easy pickins’. No siree. I’ve been studying. For years. Taking notes, watching movies… Asking questions upon questions.
Some patients and orderlies resisted my inquiries, but most didn’t. They wouldn’t dare try to brush me off. Because under all that hate and ridicule lies something far more vulnerable. Something that ultimately puts me on top and gets me what I want, even if they won’t admit it out loud.
Fear.
So, I don’t let the name-calling get to me.
I don’t let the scornful looks sent my way hurt my fragile affection-deprived heart.
I know it comes from a place deeper than they can even fathom, and I’ve long given up on the futile endeavor to learn why humanity has such a penchant for contradiction. Especially when it comes to fear.
There’s a serial killer in the house? Okay, let’s go upstairs.
See that dark, creepy alleyway over there? Let’s go check it out.
Oh, your pulse is racing? Your hands are sweating?
Psh. That’s not your body warning you of danger. It’s probably just gas or something. You’re fine…
I swear, some people wouldn’t know what fear is until it slaps them fully across the face.
(Hello! Hi! It’s me! I am slap, but you may call me Aston.)
Now that the day’s over, I unwrap a cherry-flavored Blow Pop, shoving the sucker in my mouth.
Apparently eating in class is a big no-no, gum included.
Something I discovered my first day, when Headmaster Locke caught me blowing bubbles in the library during my free period, and promptly made me spit it out.
Which of course drew the attention of everybody in my vicinity, one in particular I was hoping to just casually observe from my little stake-out spot between the stacks.
Way to make me look like a total stalker, asshole.
Now, digging out my Walkman—another stupidly forbidden thing during school hours—I re-hook the retro cassette player on the belt-loop of my khakis, slide the bulky headphones back up over my head, and hit Play.
What Blow Pops and music ever did to offend the overseers of academia, the world may never know.
Cranking up the volume, I promptly tune out the world, and strut for the front of the school, sucking on my lollipop, bopping my head to my favorite Heart song—“Crazy On You”—blaring in my ears.
Navy lockers line the walls on either side of me, only intermittently broken up by posters advertising the Homecoming dance and Halloween carnival happening later this month.
Today marks the start of my third week here since I started school, and I still can’t get enough.
The smells.
The sights.
The lip-curls.
Holding books in my arms like a regular old scholar!
My eyes drift toward the groups of guys huddled by the water fountain. Jocks. Football players. Cheerleaders hanging off their arms and everything.
And then there’s him.
The quarterback.
He doesn’t have a cheerleader though. No, he has a chess player instead. A total nerd who managed to wiggle his way through the ranks, all the way to the top, all because he’s sucking the dick of the King of the school himself.
Vale Riviera.
I smirk as the name rolls around my head.
Rivierrrra.
I won’t lie—it’s got a nice ring to it.
Aston Riviera.
“Hey, Myers! Nice blowie,” someone yells out, loud enough to be heard through the music. My eyes meet the laughing blue gaze of Vale’s best friend. The guy who showed Eden and I the way out of the cornfield the night of the Bell Game after Vale had stormed off.
Big, pretty, blond, and not very smart. Casey Shrute.
I catch Vale just as he shoots his friend a weird look, almost like he’s reluctantly amused, but also irritated. It’s the only other look I’ve seen him wear other than abject boredom.
With my thumb, I lower the volume on my Walkman just in time to hear Casey say, “Sorry, I meant Blow Pop. My bad.”
Barely paying him any notice, I tug the lollipop from my mouth, and meet Vale’s dark, hardened gaze as I give a nice salacious lick of the bulbous candy. I punctuate it with a wink.
His eyes widen ever so slightly, before what little light in them exists seems to be snuffed out, taking any softness to his chiseled, perfect features with it.
Too late, babycakes. I saw that. I twist my lips together to hold back a smile.
“God, get a clue, would you?” a voice sneers.
I roll my eyes.
Alicia Devereau.
Thinks she’s hot shit because she’s captain of the cheerleading squad and her daddy’s head of the school board.
I snap my teeth at her before facing forward once more and popping the lolly back into my mouth. Bitch. If anyone needs to get a clue, it’s her. It’s the twenty-first century—there are tutorials for how to extract a stick from one’s ass.
Not to mention the whole Heathers rip-off situation going on with her and the other Alicias. Something I’d be absolutely gushing over, if it weren’t for the unavoidable fact that I’m nothing but a Martha Dumptruck in their eyes.
Definitely not the role I would’ve chosen for myself…
But it could be worse, I suppose.
She could’ve adopted me as her Gay Best Friend?.
Mentally finger-flicking my festering resentment to somewhere in the next millennium, I crank the music back up, and continue on my merry way.
The song’s just ending, fading before it switches over to another, so I can just make out the words trailing behind me.
“...did he even look in a mirror when he got dressed today?”
My steps stutter to a deadly stop. Oh, no, he didn’t.
Turning on my heel, I whip the sucker from my mouth and blindly hit Stop on the Walkman, so that when I land a seething, slitted glare on Vale’s nerdy little so-called boyfriend, and say loudly, “Excuse me?” I can hear the way the hall plummets into silence.
Between the various clubs and practices that await these overachieving brown-nosers, you wouldn’t even know that classes have let out for the day. That’s how many students still linger, and who are fortunate enough to witness this little spectacle.
Seth juts his chin up, and I don’t miss the way he subtly inches closer to Vale.
It makes my blood boil. Whether it’s a futile, pathetic attempt to mark his territory, or he’s just looking for protection, I can’t say.
Though, a small part of me does hope it’s the former, because if it is…
that means he has something to be insecure about.
And he’d only be insecure if he saw me as a threat to his relationship.
Now, why oh why would he feel that way, unless…
I shift my gaze to Mr. Tall, Dark, and Terrifyingly Handsome looming over him with his arms crossed, currently watching me with a look I can’t decipher.
At first, it looks a lot like that ever-present boredom I’ve come to associate with him.
That stone cold apathy that, as a child, was oddly endearing.
But at nineteen, having clearly not outgrown it, combined with his devilishly good looks…