Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Indi
It starts when I hear the first giggle. I glance over my shoulder and stare at the pair of girls walking behind me. They make brief eye contact before staring down at their phones again.
Weirdos.
The giggles persist as I get to the ground floor. Here, several kids have stopped in their tracks—in the middle of the hall or beside their lockers—phones out and heads bent.
Guess something just went viral.
I’m suddenly glad I’m not on Lavish Prep’s universal mailing list.
My phone vibrates with a new message.
I resist the urge to read it. Instead, I take my time shoving all my things back in my locker. I’m in two minds about whether I want to dare head into the cafeteria, or just hit up one of the vending machines in the hall and go have lunch somewhere quiet.
Like my car.
“Don’t look.”
I stop in my tracks, and turn my head a little to the side. “At what?” I ask.
“At your phone.” Addison materializes in front of me with a scowl on her face. “It’ll die down. It always does.”
Now I’m burning to know. I reach into my pocket, but Addison snags my wrist and jerks my hand out again. “Don’t do it.”
“What’s going on?”
“Someone took a video of you and Briar.”
My heart stops beating. A cold, dreadful certainty fills me like cement.
“Of us in the woods?” I manage in a too-tight voice.
“The woods?” Addison waves away the suggestion with an annoyed flick of her hand. “You on your knees,” she snaps. Then she lifts her chin, moves in beside me, and urges me forward with an arm around my waist. She snaps a large, pink bubble of gum and then throws a finger to the girls who were giggling behind me.
“Fuck them all,” she states in a loud voice.
In the overwhelming relief flooding me, I let Addy sweep me down the hall. I even manage a sickly smile, purely because the horrifying thought that Briar’s assault had been videotaped and aired to Gen Pop had almost given me a heart attack.
If Briar was pissed about me trying to tell a teacher this morning about what had happened…I can only imagine his fury if it was broadcast to the entire school.
I don’t think I’d survive the fallout.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Addy says.
“Yeah. Let’s.”
We each grab a plate of roast turkey sandwiches and French fries and take a seat close to the windows. Chuckles and the word virgin puppy follow me, but Addison makes as if she doesn’t notice.
I don’t get it. What makes me so interesting to Briar? I mean, I’m a nobody. He’s obviously a somebody—by the time we get to our seats and I hazard a glance around, I see his Majesty taking a seat in the middle of the goddamn cafeteria.
Two benches have been pushed together to accommodate his subjects, who are all currently transfixed by whatever tall tales he’s lathering them with. Surprisingly, there aren’t any girls at his tables, just a bunch of jocks and wannabes.
Leaning on my elbow, I point at Briar’s table. “Him?”
Addy glances at Briar’s table and then back at me so fast I’m surprised she doesn’t get whiplash.
“Yeah?” she asks warily.
“You’re going to tell me what his story is. Now.”
Addy shifts as if the question makes her uncomfortable, and then gives a half-hearted shrug. “He’s bad news, Indi. Just forget?—”
“Bad news how?”
Addy purses her lips around her energy drink’s straw.
“Like, he may look like a fucking god, but he’s the spawn of Satan.” Addy lifts a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Prince Briar destroys everything he touches.”
I lean away from her. “Personal experience?”
Addy sniffs, throws a glare in Briar’s direction, and then turns her back to their bench. “He dated my friend, Jessica.”
I point at her energy drink, and she hesitates before handing it over. I take a sip, grimacing at how sweet it is, as she carries on talking.
“They’d been going out a few months already. Jess said he wanted to get serious, you know—sex?—but she wanted to take it slow.”
My eyes go to Briar. He looks serious as anything, eyebrows drawn together and staring at his cellphone as his subjects make high fives and give each other fist bumps around him.
“Guys do that,” I say dryly, thinking back to every single relationship I’ve ever had. It didn’t matter how many times you said ‘no’, or how creative you got in telling them, they’d keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
I was tempted more than once to lose my virginity just to get it over with. I mean, sex has to be fucking amazing if guys are so hard up about getting laid all the time, right? Obviously I’m missing out. But it was never the right time, the right place, the right guy.
Story of my life.
Damn, but she wasn’t kidding about Briar looking like a God. The day turned out warm, so he’s only wearing his school shirt and a slightly loosened tie. He has his sleeves rolled up to the middle of his lower arms, setting off his dark tan. As I watch, he rakes the fingers of one hand irritably through his long, sandy-blond hair, mussing it up even further.
He should be gloating about the prank he pulled. The one currently circulating through the entire school’s mobiles. Instead, he looks frustrated.
What could possibly piss off someone like Briar? I mean, does he not have enough rooms in his massive house? Because he’s got to be super-wealthy to dare be so fucking arrogant. Maybe there aren’t enough horses in his car’s engine? Or is it because he’s finally realized he’s an asshole and no one will ever love him?
“We were at Briar’s birthday party…”
I look away reluctantly from Briar, fixing my attention back to Addy. From the tone of her voice, she doesn’t want to be having this conversation. She starts fidgeting with the straw wrapper, and I hand her back her can.
“What happened?”
“Everyone was drunk.” Her eyes dart up to mine. “A lot of them were doped up too.” Then she sighs and tugs at her straw. “I left at like one in the morning or something. Only Briar and his crew and a few of the cheerleaders were still around.”
Addy gets a faraway look in her eyes and nods. “Dylan gave me a lift home.”
“And Jess?”
“She stayed. I didn’t want her to, tried to talk her out of it, but she was so drunk she wouldn’t listen to me.”
Addy grows quiet, and it takes everything I have not to press her to continue. After a few seconds and another sip from her can, she goes on in a low, barely audible voice.
“She called me in tears just before noon the next day.”
My breath stalls as my gaze darts back to Briar. He’s not looking at his phone anymore—he’s looking straight at me. My skin flashes ice-cold, but as much as I know I have to look away, I can’t.
“Said something had happened. That I had to come get her.”
Even across the cafeteria, the weight of Briar’s gaze pins me to the spot. I lick my suddenly dry lips, and he tilts his head just a little to the side, as if fascinated by this. He smiles at me, and those words he spoke in our Psych class come back to me like the whisper of a nightmare.
Everyone bows to the prince.
“When I got to the house, she was on the sidewalk. Barely coherent. She insisted I drive her home, and that’s all I could get out of her.”
“So you don’t know what happened?” I ask, my ears starting to buzz the longer Briar stares at me. The guy to his left starts talking to him, but he doesn’t bother breaking eye contact with me.
“There were rumors, of course.” Addy reaches the end of her drink, and the rattle of her straw finally allows me to tear my eyes away from Briar.
“But I mean, you must have asked. Didn’t she say?” I lean a little closer. Addy’s eyes are too bright, as if she’s holding back tears. “Addy?” I lay a hand on her arm, and she flinches before jerking away from my touch. “What is it?”
“All we have are rumors,” she says woodenly, shaking her can as if wondering why it was empty.
When she looks at me, my stomach twists with dread. “Why?” I breathe. “Did she leave town or something?”
Addy shakes her head, her mouth a tight, trembling line. “Jess killed herself.”
I zone out during Environmental Sciences as I try to piece together Addy’s cryptic conversation.
There was a party.
Everyone got drunk.
Addy left.
The next day—but only at noon—her friend calls her to get her.
She’s hysterical.
That night, she commits suicide.
Round and round my thoughts go. Where they’ll stop, nobody knows.
When the bell rings signaling home time, I notice for the first time that the level of giggling and hushed whispers in the class has grown. I turn to look to the side, and feel something shift in my hair.
I sigh, reach up, and cringe inwardly when I touch a cold spitball lodged in my hair.
One of many, it turns out. I stay behind, picking the offending gobs from my hair, staring at everyone who walks past in an effort to narrow down my suspects.
And then one of Briar’s friends, dark hair and dark eyes, the one who’d been sitting beside him at lunch, saunters past wearing a big, fake grin.
When I scowl at him, he begins tonguing his cheek in imitation of an obviously squint girl giving a sideways blowjob.
I throw him the finger, but that just makes him and everyone around him burst out laughing. By the time I get all the spitballs from my hair, all I want to do is go home and crash.
I drag myself to my junker and sit in the driver’s seat, counting up all my fuck-ups for the day. A sharp rap to my window startles me out of the exhaustive list.
Addy’s standing by my window, head cocked as if impatient for me to roll down the window.
“Hi,” I say sheepishly, giving her a weak smile.
She leans her elbows on the window ledge. “Tomorrow will be better.”
I squint up at her. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Her smile is a touch nostalgic. “Because I was once the new girl. I know how much it sucks. It helps having someone on your side.”
“Jessica?” I venture, my mouth pulling to the side.
Addy nods, and gives me a sad smile. Then she reaches into the car and squeezes my shoulder. “But I also know it gets better.”
When I look up at her, her smile is warm and friendly. “Just take it one day at a time, and you’ll do fine.”
I have an overwhelming urge to tell her about the woods, but I can already feel she wants to change the subject away from Jess. This is the worst time to mention anything about what happened between me and Briar.
Instead of making an ass of myself and getting Addy all worked up, I could try being her friend.
So I smile at her, and I let her think that her words are all the encouragement I need to make it through the day.
I guess she’s right, in a way. I’ll just take it one day at a time. When I close my eyes at night, I’ll be cleaning the slate.
Tomorrow will be a new day, right, Mom?