Chapter 3 #2
With the amount of makeup and plastic surgery openly on display here, age is almost impossible to guess, and I have to learn quickly how to distinguish the grades from each other by the uniforms the other students are wearing.
Blending in is already difficult, thanks to my scholarship status and obvious pedigree deficiency, but sitting with students who aren’t also juniors will only be another misstep, I’m sure.
My stomach rumbles loudly at all the delicious smells coming from the array of food on offer, and I fill my plate to the brim once again. The long table is bustling and overflowing with students, screwing up my careful seat choice plan, and I’m forced to take the first empty space I can find.
The senior girl to my left gives me a hard look and turns her back on me, but the boy on my right leers at me and tries to peer down my shirt.
He’s a pimply-faced freshman, and his tie is loosened in an obvious rebellion against the uniform code.
I want to laugh in his pathetically childish face, but instead I elbow him, hard, to get him away from me before I start in on my food.
Blocking out the whispers and snide comments from them all is easy, and the food is as good as it smells, so I’m not even hating the experience anymore when the mood abruptly shifts.
One moment the room is raucous and deafening, and the next, it’s practically silent, barely a whisper.
I look up from my plate to find the older Beaumont boy standing in front of a group of freshmen kids seated at the end of the table, not too far away from me.
With the same viciously arrogant look on his face that he had back in the administration office, he’s practically preening at the terrified air preceding him.
Four other students flank him, one of whom is carrying his food tray, and they’re all smirking.
“Move.”
The freshmen look at each other, then one of them, a guy I haven't seen before, says, “We haven't finished our food yet.”
The entire room stops breathing.
You could hear a pin drop; even the kitchen staff are silent.
I glance over to the teachers at the end of the long table, but their heads are all ducked as though their food has suddenly become intensely interesting, and they’re eating like their lives depend on it, disregarding the blatant conflict unfolding.
This place gets weirder by the second.
“Get. Up,” he says again, but the freshman only stares back at him blankly.
The move could be arrogance or bravery, but the sour-milk color of his skin betrays him. He’s a deer caught in the headlights and completely unable to move. Whatever civility he thought he was offering by pointing out the obvious, he’s clearly regretting it now.
The older Beaumont takes a step forward, his smirk widening when the entire table flinches back at his approach.
“There’s always one little sheep who can’t figure out how to stay with the herd, but I’m feeling generous enough to explain it to you.
I'm a Beaumont, the heir, in fact, and my family is old money. Ancient. So fucking decrepit it will never run dry. I wipe my ass with more money than your pathetic little family has ever made. I have the connections to not only ruin your life, but to end it. If I tell you to move, you move”
All the freshmen stand at once and move. The guy who spoke grabs his tray and manages to take one step away before Beaumont slaps it away and covers him in his lunch. The freshmen hisses as the hot soup splashes on his face and down his uniform.
“There is a clear hierarchy in this school, and you are at the bottom. Don't fucking forget it.”
No one moves to help the freshmen, not even the gutless bunch of friends he spoke on behalf of, and when they all just hightail it out of the hall, angry tears well up in his eyes before he storms out after them.
There’s another beat of stunned silence before the kitchen staff start motioning for the kids in the line to move along, ignoring the custodian hurrying out to clean up the mess without a word spoken to the asshole responsible for making it.
He just lounges in his seat like a king presiding over his court, and his groupies all fall over themselves to please him.
Fucking rich kids.
I focus on my food again, except now I can hear the groupies talking because they're sitting so close to me.
“How are the twins settling in to their new dorms? I'm thinking about fucking your brother, by the way. I like the scowl on his face. It'll be like fucking an angry, miniature you.”
“You're such a slut, Harlow. Make sure he pays you well.”
The girl just laughs, as though she enjoys this pompous dick speaking about her like she's nothing.
“Maybe I'll do him right after I do you, just to see who fucks better.”
The group laughs again and they start a terrible game of comparing their conquests loudly and in detail. I chew faster to get out of the room. I don't want to attract their attention, but I can’t help listening to them.
“I want to fuck Morrison, just to say I've had him. Joey, can you get your sister to get me in with him? I've heard she's the gatekeeper to all three of those boys.”
Joey, who is the older Beaumont sibling, scoffs, his tray of food sitting in front of him untouched.
“She's a little cunt, just like Mom was.
You have no chance there; I've always assumed she's fucking them all.
I'm expecting her to get knocked up by Ash and them to have a three-headed incestuous baby. Father would be so proud.”
They cackle again and I get up with my tray, too sickened by them to keep eating.
What a great guy to have as a brother. I mean, the twins didn't exactly seem like upstanding human beings, but it sounds like hell to be stuck with a sibling who speaks like that about them both, and to do it in such a public way? Gross.
Ignoring the looks and whispers, I leave the dining hall to walk to my next class.
By the time classes have finished and I’ve eaten dinner, I drag myself back to my perfectly tiny room, only to realize the next round of hellfire this school is about to unleash on me.
It’s not until I’m wrestling the heeled black leather Mary Jane’s from my aching feet that it hits me; the girls’ dorms don't have individual private bathrooms, only a giant communal one.
I could cry.
It’s worse than being in the group home, because while it’s true that there was only one bathroom in that place, no one ever made me wait for a shower. Honestly, I was getting back there in the early morning hours, most days, so there wasn’t exactly a line anyway.
There are more than a hundred girls on this floor alone.
I could lay on my bed and throw a tantrum about it, but that would only make matters worse, so I scramble to put a bag of supplies together before practically running to the showers.
By some miracle, I manage to get in and out of the shower before any of the other girls come into the bathroom, and I tuck my bag under my arm as I walk back to my room.
I'm dressed in old boxer shorts and a band tee that I love so much, I’ve worn the life out of it and it’s faded almost beyond recognition.
Every girl in my dorm stops and watches me walk past.
I don't get what their problem is with me. Surely, being on a scholarship doesn't mean I'm the enemy, and yet I haven't had a single student so much as try and talk nicely to me. It's exhausting.
As I open my door, I hear Avery's voice, and I pause for a second.
“Fucking pathetic.”
I whip my head around to stare at her. She’s leaning against her own door frame across the hall from my room.
I can see her room is at least four times bigger than mine and furnished luxuriously.
I can't help but feel jealous, even as her eyes are fixed on my shirt. I glance down, but nothing jumps out at me, other than how old it is. I mean, there aren’t any holes or stains in it, does she not have any clothes she loves too much to let go?
Or does she have something against band tees?
Fuck it, it’s probably just that I’m wearing it in the first place.
Her words are like ice. “If you think that will get his attention, you're even more of a stupid Mounty slut than I thought.”
My brows pinch together because she’s lost me entirely. “Whose attention? These are my pajamas. I’m not exactly heading out to a club.”
She stares at me for a second before smirking. She is strikingly beautiful, but with her lips twisted into a sneer, I think she looks older than seventeen.
“You're totally clueless. Even better.”
I see a flash and blink owlishly. She's taken a photo of me on her phone and then retreated into her room, locking the door behind her.
These rich kids are going to do me in.
After I'm safely behind my own locked door, I collapse onto my bed and groan. I had better end up with an amazing career for putting up with this school.
I check my phone and see that Matteo has texted me again.
Are you raising hell yet?
I bite my lip. I've always been academically driven and always the top of my classes, so it’s not my grades he’s referring to.
My high school experience so far has been different thanks to his presence in my life, but I had a reputation for being a bitch in middle school.
Not that I was a bully, I just had a lot of anger because of my home life.
My mom was addicted to drugs and, because of that, neglected me.
It's hard to admit that out loud. It makes me feel like she must not have loved me very much if she was willing to spend all our food money on heroin, coke, meth, pills, or whatever she could get her hands on.
I didn't ever want to admit how much easier my life had become after she died.
I must be the worst child in the world to think that, and yet it's true.
In foster care, I never had to worry whether there was going to be food on the table at night.
Granted, the food was shit and never quite enough.
My mom told me that my dad had been sent to prison in a different state for drug trafficking, which meant I had basically been left to raise myself.
I think I've done a great job of not turning into a hopeless asshole, and someday I will be a doctor or an engineer or in some other career that pays ridiculous money. Then I'll never have to worry about food ever again.
So, I was known for having a smart mouth and being angry all the time. It worked out in my favor with Matteo.
I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
I smirk as I hit send. Matteo sent the same message to me the day after he moved out of the group care home.
Back then, I had wished so hard that I could move out of there with him.
He was like a security blanket to me in that place.
Something safe to go home to. It made me feel wanted in a dark, twisted way.
I’d never felt that before.
Now, it makes me feel trapped, suffocated, and petrified of what he’s planning for me next. He told me outright when I accepted this scholarship that I’d end up back there with him, that I wasn't allowed to grow apart from him.
Come home then, kid. I'll take good care of you.
Rubbing my thumb over the screen, a lump forms at the back of my throat for that little girl who would’ve felt so reassured by these words, back before I knew what I know now. I wish life was still that simple. I wish he hadn’t become a monster.
I have to make a life for myself. We can’t all be the Jackal.
The Jackal. His name on the streets. I know he’s involved in all sorts of trouble, but I try not to think too hard about it.
This Jackal just wants his Wolf safe and by his side. Don’t forget that while you’re at this big posh school.
A shudder runs down my spine. Why does that always sound more like a threat than a promise?