by Eden Beck
I push through the crowd of people and nearly knock over some lady’s drink when I bump into her arm. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Warren and Chase look over at me and as soon as they see my face and realize that I’m running out of the main hall; they both start to walk quickly toward me. Even Sterling is within sight, leaning up against the corner near the door and keeping an eye on me.
He is the first one to reach me when I get out into the hallway.
“What happened?” Sterling asks as he rushes up to me in the hallway where I stop to catch my breath. He looks angry—but not at me.
“Nothing,” I say just trying to avoid further drama and controversy. Chase and Warren arrive at my side just as I answer him.
But I can’t fake how I feel. I double over, my hands clutching at my knees as my breaths come out ragged and broken.
“What’s going on?” Warren asks in a panic.
“Nothing,” I say again, this time with more emphasis than before.
But then, as much as I want to just hold it all in—I can’t. The weight of everything comes crashing down on me. All of my hopes of getting into Brown, all of the shit that I’ve ignored about the past events. I start to feel so overwhelmed that I need to let it out.
I break down into tears. Not even the pretty kind, but the full-on sobbing, snot-filled kind. Sterling grabs me and pulls me against his chest to hold me tightly and I bury my face against him.
I can feel his heartbeat start to pound against my ear.
“What did my father do to you?” he asks. There’s a ferocity in his voice this time and I can hear him gritting his teeth and feel his clenched jaw against the top of my head as he rests his chin against me.
I blurt out everything all at once without even taking a breath between sentences. I tell them everything that he said about me, and about Sterling. By the time I have finished relaying all of the horrid details of my encounter with Sterling’s father, I am a complete and utter mess.
Sterling was right—we shouldn’t have even come here tonight.
It did more harm than good, I fear.
“I will never get into Brown now,” I cry. “My future is over. I’m going to be stuck in this shitty place forever.”
“No, you will not be stuck here in reform school forever,” Sterling says. The way he says it makes it sound less like an empty prediction and more like a comforting promise. “My father isn’t the only Brown member on the board. You don’t need him. We’ll just go around him.”
“Why can’t we all just go tell him that he’s wrong about Aubrey?” Chase asks naively. “Maybe if he hears it from all three of us—”
“No,” Sterling says as he lifts his chin up from against my head. “You don’t know my father. That’s definitely not a good idea.”
“Well, I think maybe it’s time you told us a little bit more about your dad then,” Warren says. “Because now, whatever chip it is that your father happens to be carrying around on his shoulder, it seems to be affecting Aubrey and her chances to get into a good school.”
For a moment, Sterling just stiffens within my grasp.
I feel his heartbeat quicken as he takes a moment to count his breaths, trying to keep them steady.
And then he nods.
Sterling ushers us further down the hall and out of earshot from anyone inside the gala. The four of us sit down in a corner at the very end of the hall beyond where the lights reach, and Sterling starts to talk in the shadows. Maybe it is the lack of light and the way that the shadow plays tricks on his face, but he looks both weary and jittery at the same time as he reluctantly begins to speak.
“The reason that I’ve been so jumpy and agitated lately is because of my father,” he says. “I mean, I think you all guessed that. You’ve always guessed that.”
His eyes look down at the ground instead of at any of us. “I’ve been trying to quit taking pills—”
“Wait, by pills … do you mean like drugs—like, drug drugs?” I interject. “Narcotics?”
I knew that Sterling has a drug problem, but I didn’t know much else about it. I naïvely thought it was something as simple as weed.
Even as I think it, I feel like such an idiot that I want to cry all over again. But I don’t. For Sterling.
I don’t want anything to stop him from telling us all the truth.
At last.
“Yeah,” Sterling says as he looks up at me sadly. “It’s not something I’m proud of. I was able to quit before, but with my dad around I just can’t help it. The moment I heard he was going to be here … I needed to have something to help me take the edge off. Even just knowing that he’s in the near vicinity makes all the past shit flood my mind until I can’t take it anymore. I need an escape from him.”
“What past shit?” Warren asks.
His voice sounds calm, but I can tell there’s something painful and serious beneath the surface.
Sterling’s voice hitches for just a second. When he continues, his eyes are fixed forward—staring into nothing.
Certainly not looking at any one of us.
“My father abused me for my entire life up until the day that I walked out the door to come here.”
He has to take a breath, a deep, shuddering breath that fills up the silence before he can continue again.
“He thought that sending me here was a punishment, but really anything that got me out of that house with him was a freedom from the atrocities that I suffered all those years. I think he thought that this place would somehow guilt me into wanting to stay in contact with him after I turned eighteen, but as soon as I got here, I cut off all communication with him. He threatened to cut off my funding and I told him to go ahead and do it. Then I could just leave here too and find my way in the world somewhere very, very far from him. So far, for whatever reason, he keeps footing the bill, and I keep my distance from him.”
“What kind of abuse?” Chase asks.
Warren shoots Chase a murderous glance, but I can see where Chase is going with it. We need to know what kind of man we’re dealing with. Really know.
“Let’s just say that I had my fair share of black eyes in grade school, and not from the playground bully,” Sterling answers. “When I got older, he got smarter. I still had bruises, but they were the kind you couldn’t see in a uniform.”
“How can they let a man like that be on the review board?” I ask. “Surely being an abuser is a disqualifying thing.”
“You would think so,” Warren mumbles.
“No one knows,” Sterling says. “My father is very good at being two people; the person he is with me, and the one he is to everyone else.”
He fidgets with the cuff of his sleeve and it’s painfully obvious how uncomfortable this conversation is for him. The following silence stretches out so long that eventually, there’s no point in any of us breaking it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The four of us sit together, leaning up against the corner wall in a huddled heap of bodies for a long time. Sterling has his arms still wrapped around me and Warren and Chase are pressed up against either side of me as I lean back against Sterling’s chest. It’s been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but it seems the ride isn’t quite over yet.
“I think that the three of us should come to an agreement,” Warren says, breaking the silence at long last. “This is a bullshit world we live in. After hearing what Sterling said, if Brown is where Aubrey wants to go; then the three of us should work together to take care of her and protect her. I don’t want her there alone or anywhere near your dad, Sterling. No offense.”
Sterling lets out a strangled half laugh. “None taken.”
“Hold up,” I say, sitting forward suddenly. “Take care of me? What does that mean? You guys do know that I can take care of myself, right?”
“Oh, trust me,” Chase says with a chuckle. “We know that. We’ve seen you in action.”
“I think what Warren is trying to say,” Sterling interjects. “Is t
hat all three of us have developed feelings for you and that none of us wants to see you get hurt.”
Feelings? I can feel my heart start to race until I can practically hear my heartbeat bouncing off my eardrums. For some reason, I am surprised at how easily he just said that. So surprised that I don’t want to get my hopes up only to be disappointed by having misunderstood him.
“What kind of feelings?” I ask as my heart speeds further out of control. “Like pity or something?”
“No, not pity,” Warren says as he reaches over to hold my hand. He hesitates for a moment longer than Sterling did. “Just … the kind that means we don’t want to see you go off to that school alone.”
“Or any school alone,” Chase says, his eyes alight. “And I’m not afraid to put a word to it, even if Warren is.”
Suddenly he’s up on his knees, his hands cradling my face in his. “I love you, Aubrey. We all do. So fucking much.”
I’d wanted that to be the word that was said. I’d wanted it but didn’t let myself hope for it.
How crazy it is to think that we all hated each other not too long ago. Hated.
Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe we just hated the fact that there was something drawing us all to each other that none of us understood.
Not that I do now.
What I do know, however, is that nothing can ruin this moment right now, not even Sterling’s father.
“What are you doing?” Bridget shrieks as she stomps down the hall toward us with her heels clicking against the ground as if they are going to crack the floor wide open. “What in the hell is this?”
I was wrong.
There was one thing—one person—who could ruin it.
She stops right in front of us and glares at each of us, first each one of the boys in turn, and then lastly at me. The glare she gives me is the most vile.
“Oh, give it a rest already, Bridget,” Sterling says to her without even bothering to let her get him riled up. “Not everything has to be turned into some huge drama-filled catastrophe just to get attention for yourself.”
That succeeds in enraging her even more.
“All of you?” she shouts with her mouth hanging open.
I guess it’s pretty obvious seeing as how the four of us have our arms and legs and hands intertwined together. Maybe we could have all gotten up real fast and tried to step away from each other and pretend that we all just happened to be here at the same time by accident … but at this point I think that we’re all just pretty sick of dealing with drama.
And from the look on Warren’s face, on all their faces, I’m not the only one who’s gotten tired of hiding.
“All three of you are into Aubrey? You have got to be kidding me,” she says. She stops her scowling and scolding just long enough to make a kind of disapproving snort.
“Do you realize how pathetic it is for even one of you to want to date this girl? Talk about slumming it. She’s broke, her parents have disowned her, and she has a well-established reputation for being the reform school slut. Seriously, you could not have sunk any lower if you tried,” she says with an arrogant tilt of her chin, so she’s practically staring down her nose at us. “But for all three of you to be okay with not only sharing the same girl, which is disturbing enough as it is—but sharing this girl. God, even I am embarrassed for you.”
She turns her look solely on Warren next.
“Mom and dad are going to absolutely freak when they hear about this.” Bridget has a conniving smirk and squinted eyes that make it look as if she is thinking of some way to bribe her brother into doing everything that she wants in order to buy her silence and keep this a secret from their parents. She intends to use this to hang over his head, much like I’ve been hanging her secret over hers.
And just as she did to me.
“Tell them whatever you want to,” Warren says without so much as a moment of hesitation. “I don’t give a shit what you tell them. I don’t care if they know. Do you really want to stay tied to the leash that our parents keep us on forever, Bridget? Don’t you want to make your own life?”
“And by that I assume you think that you’re going to forge some new path here with this vagabond hooker?”
“Careful,” Sterling snarls at her.
“Or what?” Bridget spits back at him. “What are you going to do Sterling? I’ll tell you what you’re going to do—absolutely nothing. And do you know why? Because I’m going to turn you all in for breaking the rules and I’ll make sure that all three of you get expelled. Good luck getting into a good college again after getting kicked out of reform school. That sets the bar pretty damn low.”
“What rules have we broken?” Chase asks. “There’s literally nothing that you can turn us in for. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Oh please, there’s at least a half dozen offenses that I could report each of you for and you know it.”
Bridget laughs and I brace myself for what she’ll say next. But then I remember that I still hold the cards with Bridget. I still have her secret as leverage.
“Bridget, please,” I say, levelling her with a careful glare. “How about we all just let each other be. Surely you have better things to do here at the gala tonight than to harass the four of us.”
She looks at me for a minute and I think that I can actually see her biting the inside of her lip to keep herself from saying something else. Then, much to my surprise, she spins around on her heels and stomps away.
“Do you think she’s really going to report us?” Chase asks. “I mean, there’s a whole ton of shit that we’ve all done that could get us expelled, I’m just not sure how much of it she can actually prove.”
“I don’t think that she will,” I say, my gaze still staring after her retreating back.
“Well then you have a lot more faith in my sister than I do,” Warren says with a sigh. “I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“Yeah, but she wouldn’t do anything against you, would she?” Sterling asks. “You guys are close and despite how she might act sometimes, I know she idolizes you.”
“Like I said, I wouldn’t put anything past my sister. The months that she was away visiting our grandparents were the most peaceful months that I think I’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister … but I’ll be the first to admit she’s a lot to handle. I’ve known her literally forever and even I’m never quite sure what she’s going to do next.”
He stops and shakes his head, letting out a huff. “So much for someone who says he values honesty above all else.”
I can’t tell him why I don’t think that Bridget will report them without telling them about the leverage that I have on her. And if I tell them about that leverage, then Bridget’s secret will be blown wide open, freeing her to create as much havoc on all of us as she wants.
So, as much as I feel super guilty about keeping it a secret from him—especially now that he just monologued about how important honesty is to him—I can’t tell him.
“Come on,” Warren says as he starts to get up off of the ground and offers me a hand. “Let’s go back into the hall.”
“Why would we want to go back in there?” I ask. I was hoping that we could just leave now, maybe all head back to one of the dorms together and change out of these stupid gala clothes and into something more comfortable. It’s probably still snowing outside, and we could make hot cocoa and talk about literally anything other than what happened here tonight.
I especially have no desire to see or talk to Sterling’s dad anymore. At some point, if I do get back into Brown, which is highly unlikely to happen after the vibe that I got from Sterling’s dad tonight, I will probably eventually have to deal with that man again. But for now, I’d rather not think about it or him at all.
“You can’t let them think that they’ve won,” Warren says with his hand still outstretched toward me.
“Who?”
“Everyone that tries to knock you down. You have to let them know that you’re
not afraid of them. No one has any power over you unless you let them.”
I turn my head to look at Sterling and his face looks resolute, right along with Warren and Chase. I suppose that if he can muster up enough courage to go back into the main hall where his dad and all the other review board members are probably still drinking and laughing, then I can too.
“Okay,” I say as I reach up to take Warren’s hand. “Let’s go finish this evening together then.”
When we walk back into the main hall, there are even more guests here now than there were before. We weave through the crowd together, the four of us side-by-side. None of it feels quite as intimidating now that we’re sticking close beside each other and that there really isn’t any need to hide it anymore, especially not since Bridget already knows.
And since I already know what everyone here already thinks of me, thanks to Sterling’s father’s little outburst.
I’m pretty sure that simply dating each other isn’t actually breaking any rules. Like Chase said, there are a lot of rules that we actually have broken—Sterling’s drug use is definitely one of the big ones. It’s possible she might try to report some of those things, but I really don’t think it’s likely that she’ll cross her brother.
Despite anything she might say, I know their bond runs deep.
Or at the very least, I’m really counting on the fact that it does.
Sterling’s drug use is a whole other issue though, and if we make it through tonight in one piece and get to press the reset button for tomorrow; it’s something that’s got to be dealt with.
I’m under no illusions that I can fix him, but maybe, just maybe, I can encourage him to seek out the help of someone who can.
“Let’s go up here,” Chase says as he points to the few stairs on the side of the hall that leads up to the small stage at the back of the hall. There’s a small red curtain by the stairs that’s halfway open, but still drawn just enough to cover a bunch of equipment and electrical panels on the side of the stage. This place is used when they do award ceremonies and shows and stuff too, not just the annual fancy gala event, but it’s usually mostly hidden by some well-placed potted plants.
