twenty-one
Rumor Has It…It’s the last day of school for seniors! Will any last-minute reveals about the elite come to light? Or have we heard the last of their juicy secrets?
Gloria Walton
I pull up to school and breathe a sigh of relief when I turn into the parking lot. It’s over. Everyone will come back to walk in the graduation ceremony in a few weeks, but today is the last day of classes for seniors. I made it, if just barely.
I hope somewhere, Dawson is proud of me. He’d hate to see how far I’ve fallen, hate to see what I do for a living. But maybe he’d be proud I survived, no matter how I did it. Maybe Dad would be if I wrote and told him. Maybe even my mother couldn’t help but be impressed. She may not have been perfect, but she taught me to do what it takes to survive, no matter the cost.
I cruise down the rows of cars in the student lot to the last one. After Colt ignored my texts all day yesterday, I couldn’t sleep last night, so I drove around looking for him. When I couldn’t find him, I finally admitted defeat and lay in bed replaying last year’s loss on a loop in my head. At least that time, I deserved to lose him.
Now I’m groggy and functioning on autopilot, my brain caught in an endless anxiety spiral. What if something happened to him again?
When I turn down the last row, my heart bursts into a flurry of wings inside my chest. Dixie stands in the middle of the road, her arms crossed, blocking my spot so I can’t turn in. Seeing her makes the fear ratchet up a dozen notches. Has Colt told anyone about us? Does his dad even know? If something happened, Mr. Darling would probably tell Dixie, not me.
The thought makes my heart tear in two. His family will probably always hate me.
I’m trembling so hard I can barely hold my foot down on the brake in time to stop. For one sickening moment, I picture what would happen if I didn’t. I picture her body sailing through the air in slow motion, like Myrtle’s in “The Great Gatsby.” I picture her spinning off into the sky like a butterfly caught on a sudden gust, disappearing into the blue.
Poof! Gone from our lives forever. I could live happily ever after with Colt, and she would never inject her toxic love into his veins again, never cloud his mind and isolate him and make him dependent on her like she did for so long.
But my foot sinks onto the pedal, and I jerk to a stop and pull the brake. I take a breath and throw open my door, stepping out of the car into the blanket of still, summer heat. No gusts of wind carry Dixie away. She’s planted there, so firmly in my way I think if I hit her, my car would wrap around her like she’s a tree instead of a human, and I’d end up in the hospital without a thing to my name. Not Colt, not my diploma, not even June Bug.
“Can I help you?” I hear my voice like it’s someone else’s, the biting tone familiar after so many years of using it as a weapon in someone else’s war.
“Yeah, you can leave Colt alone,” Dixie says. “You ruined my reputation, so you won that one. Take the win, Lo.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap.
“School’s over anyway, so I don’t need them,” she says, flicking her fingers toward the lot. “I just need Colt, and now I’ve got him, and I won’t let you ruin that too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re back together,” she says smugly, holding out her hand to display her engagement ring. “He doesn’t want to see you today—or ever. We’d appreciate if you’d keep your skanky claws to yourself and never speak to him again.”
“Liar,” I say flatly, though my tired body sways on its feet. It feels as foreign as my voice when I use the bitch queen tone the Dolces required. I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted in my life. It’s not just from missing one night of sleep. It’s from the worry, the panic, the desperation that chewed at every nerve in my body all night, the claws of anxiety that shredded my mind as I drove from one place to another, searching for him at his house, his grandfather’s, the ice cream place, the tattoo parlor, the warehouse where he organizes the fight club.
In a final fit of delusion, I drove to the places that meant something to us together—my work, Cotton Montgomery’s pool house, and the quarry sometime around dawn. Before coming here, I stood at the foot of the building where we hid on Halloween last fall, calling up to him like fucking Romeo, since the scaffolding was gone and I couldn’t climb onto the roof again.
But he was gone as completely as a ghost, as his sister, his brother.
The one place I didn’t check was Dixie’s.
Now it’s not just last night’s exhaustion that’s dragging my feet into the pavement like quicksand, the weight of my body too much for me to carry any longer. This whole terrible year crushes me, and on top of that, the years that came before it, every moment since we left Savannah adding to the smothering weight. The only bubbles in the molten lead that is slowly pressing me into the ground are the shimmering, spectral moments I spent with Colt, each one a gasp of air to a girl buried alive in front of everyone’s eyes.
I couldn’t draw enough air to scream, but he gave me enough to live.
I can feel the pavement cracking under my feet, giving way, the earth ready to swallow me alive, to give me the resting place I’ve craved for so long. I’m not scared anymore. It will be a relief. To lay my butterfly body down and let the dirt wrap around me like a cocoon, to know that no one can hurt me anymore. To know I don’t have to keep fighting for breath. I can just sleep.
A car pulls up behind me, but they don’t honk. It’s some sophomore, unsure how to treat me after Colt claimed me so publicly, after I was the pariah for most of the year, after being queen for two years. A few people have started to turn our way, noting the chance for drama, weighing the urge to be on time with the desire to see a confrontation. The confrontation wins, and people start to gather, watching us from a distance.
“Leave him alone,” Dixie says again. “I’m not going to warn you again. I’ve already destroyed you, even if you don’t know it yet. So do yourself a favor and stop trying to steal my man before you ruin your life more than you already have.”
“I didn’t ruin my life,” I say quietly. “ You did.”
I don’t know why I even came to school today. I should have just slept for a thousand years. Now it’s too late. Even if I crawl back into my car, I’m too tired to drive home. I’m too tired to even fight for Colt.
That’s why I’m here. He’s my reason, the only reason I’ve had for so long I can’t remember another one. I wanted one more chance to talk to him, to explain myself, before school ends and he’s gone forever, taken on that gust of wind I prayed would snatch up Dixie. For him, I could drag myself to school after a night of panic that sapped every drop of energy from my collapsed veins, after years of being wound so tight I’m left brittle and fragile, ready to snap at any moment. Now I stand here, a butterfly wing with all the shine worn away, translucent and so depleted I can barely move, let alone fight.
Without him, I have no reason to.
“It’s simple, really,” Dixie says, her voice strong and calm, her face fresh and well rested. “I’ve always been smarter than you. I just had to find your weakness. At first, I thought it was your status, but you were never the real queen. The Dolces may have passed you off as royalty, but you were only a gold-plated imitation. Once I realized you didn’t care about that, I had to find what you do care about. It wasn’t that hard. And now I’ve set in motion your true demise. You may have won a few battles, but I won the war, and that’s all that matters.”
“What war?” I ask, rubbing my temples. I’m aware in some distant part of my brain that it’s a gesture I’ve picked up from Colt, but I’m too tired to find any humor in it.
Vaguely, I notice the crowd gathering in the rows of cars on either side of us, but I don’t look at them. I have no allies here. Even my sisters are strangers to me now.
“The war to determine the true queen,” Dixie says, pulling her phone from her pocket. “It’s bigger than Colt, of course. That was the last element of my three-prong approach. The first was to go into the strip club and get you fired. It wasn’t that hard. Apparently they have a strict policy about selling your body for money. Don’t take it personally, Lo. Prostitution is illegal, after all. They wouldn’t risk the whole operation being shut down just because one stripper is such a nympho she can’t keep from impaling herself on the first dick that comes into the room every night.”
“Liar,” I growl at her again, my heart hammering in my chest. I hear the gasps and giggles from the onlookers, but I don’t even spare them a glance. I don’t care that the whole school knows what I do. The only person I care about already knows.
“Am I?” Dixie asks, widening her eyes. “Mr. North didn’t seem to think so. I guess it’s my word against yours. Which one of us is known for years of integrity, and which is known to have been counterfeit since day one?”
“Why do you even care where I work?” I demand.
“Just in case Colt gets any ideas about going back there,” she says with a shrug. “He came over last night to apologize, and one thing led to another, and I won him back the way I always do. I’ll always forgive him, Gloria. I’ll take him back no matter what. I can’t live without him, and he knows that, so he will always come back.”
“If you can’t live without him, then why aren’t you dead?” I ask flatly. “He’s left you a hundred times. Why don’t you just die already?”
“Because he’s come back a hundred and one times,” she says, lifting her chin. “I’d do anything for him. Can you say the same? You said you’d never fight for a man. That if he wanted to, he would. That means you’ll never win. Because I will always fight for Colt.”
I grip my open door, my head pounding at her words.
“But this time he cheated, and even though he swore he’d never do it again, I can’t risk it,” she goes on. “He’s a weak man—all cheaters are. I’m strong, so I’m going to do everything in my power to help him keep his word. Everyone knows the best insurance is to remove the temptation. So I removed you.”
“What are you going to do, lock him in your basement?” I ask. “Attaching yourself to him like a leach for four years didn’t work. That’s what you’re forgetting, Dixie. He’s a person with free will. If he wants to find me, he will.”
“That’s why I’m giving you a chance to do the right thing,” she says. “I’m warning you one more time. Stay away from him. In a few months, we’ll be gone. He’ll follow me to college. Then you can have Faulkner to yourself.”
She pulls out her phone and thumbs it on.
“Oh, and one more thing. The final element of my plan to destroy you. I contacted Yale to let them know what kind of person you really are, beyond the sob story you no doubt used on your application. As if you’ve ever known a hardship beyond your pretty privilege failing to keep you on the throne.”
“What?” I whisper, horror sinking into my heart with a cold anguish. Yale was what kept me going for so long, the hope of getting out. Even when I’d lost Colt, when I thought he loved her and I would have to live with that loss forever, I always had hope because I had Yale.
“In case you don’t believe me about Colt, here’s all the proof you need,” Dixie says, turning her phone so I can see the screen. It’s a picture of her and Colt in bed together. His arm pillows her head; his eyes are half open and unfocused; a lazy, drugged smile stretches across his face. She’s cuddled up to his familiar body, smiling up into the camera.
“So you drugged him again?” I ask, but my voice is a croak that lacks any conviction. “That’s how you got him to agree to take you back?”
“I didn’t do anything,” she says with a smug smile, pocketing her phone. “He took them all on his own—the same way he always has when he’s with you. The difference is, he still wanted me when he was sober. He never wanted you unless he was fucked up. So if he can’t make up his mind when he’s on the pills, then he never made up his mind to be with you.”
She raises her chin in a self-righteous pose that makes the fury pounding through my veins erupt like the volcano that’s been simmering under the surface for so long.
“Get out of my way,” I grit out through clenched teeth.
“Not until you agree to leave him alone,” she says, crossing her arms again.
The crowd is murmuring, but I don’t bother reading them. I don’t care. I’m so fucking tired of them, of her, of this same damn fight. I’ve already lost, but she won’t stop kicking me in the teeth every time I claw back an inch of the ground she’s taken. And now, there’s no more ground to gain.
It’s all gone. The losses crash into me, hammering inside my chest, twisting the bars of the cage on my heart, tearing them open.
My father. My brother. My sisters. My mother.
My friends. My job. My future.
Royal. Rylan. Colt.
I throw myself into my seat and slam the door as if I can escape them. For so long, words were my weapons when I had nothing else, but now even words have deserted me. They are Dixie’s weapon, not mine. I am defenseless. The thoughts, memories, images drop in crushing blows, an anvil to my raw, animal heart, now torn open and exposed. Everything she’s taken, everything they’ve all taken, every loss was a boot stomping the fragile butterfly inside me. I built a cocoon around the only thing I had left, a heart that was chaotic and wild, a heart that seethed and raged. And now the butterfly is gone, and the cage that protected my heart, that protected them from my heart, is open.
There is no high road anymore. My mother paved the way, but I’ve gone so far off course there’s no way back. The diamond walls around my heart, the cage, the cocoon, are tumbling down, leaving me vulnerable and defenseless. The deadly weapons that once spilled from my mouth have been stripped away. All that’s left is a scream.
The scream that erupts out of me isn’t human or even animal. It’s the scream of a woman possessed, the demon Colt always said I was. And maybe he’s right, because I feel the gear shift in my hand, and the pedals under my feet, and the surge of power in the engine. I hear the roar of the car joining mine, lifting my voice, the voice I kept quiet so long I thought it would be a ragged whisper. But it’s not. It’s primal and raw and fueled with rage that erupts from my mouth, spewing lava and fire like a mythical beast, not a phoenix but a dragon rising into the sky, raining fire on the school that watched me burn on a pyre for years and called it a throne.
For one eternal moment, all I see is that fire, a red, blind wall of the most breathtaking destruction. I’m free, soaring into the sky in victory, an explosive force of unspeakable power and terrible vengeance.
Then I feel the heavy, visceral thud that slams me back to earth.
I sit there for one stunned second, listening to the shrieks outside the car. My breath is too hot in my mouth, a rasp searing my scorched throat, tinged with the taste of smoke, as if I really were a dragon for one moment.
I don’t move. Not when someone pulls Dixie off the hood of my car. Not when I hear sirens. I stare at the dent in the smooth, shimmering green surface of June Bug’s hood, and I feel nothing. No one comes to the car and drags me out and beats me into the ground like they did Colt last year. They shy back from the car like it’s Christine, like I might target them next. Only when the blue lights flash in the rearview does someone approach the car.
Officer Gunn takes my arm and helps me out. I see Harper standing there, and I toss her my keys. She catches them, her lips moving, but I don’t hear her. Everything sounds muffled, as if I’m underwater. The policeman leads me to his car. He’s talking, but I don’t answer. My throat is cauterized. He puts hand on top of my head and guides me into the back seat. I stare through the screen while he and his partner talk to other people. Dixie is being loaded into an ambulance.
It leaves. And then we do.
And then Officer Gunn looks at me in the rearview. “Why’d you do it?”
I know what to say. The Dolces taught me that. How to deny blame. Like Royal, it wasn’t really me, I was out of my mind with grief, I wasn’t there at all. Like Duke, it was the drugs that made me do it, the demon, peer pressure. Like Baron, I had to protect those I love, and I needed to show them what happens when they don’t obey, to spell it out because they didn’t listen to the warning, and there must be consequences. You’d do the same to protect your family, wouldn’t you, Officer? You understand, don’t you? You see we’re all innocent here.
But when I open my mouth, the truth spills from my lips.
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice between being the villain, the victor, or the victim. But sometimes you do.”
He studies me in the mirror a long moment before turning his attention back to the road. “I been there a time or two myself,” he says. “I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say that.”