Wicked Blue Bloods: A Highschool Bully Romance - Crestwood Academy Book 1

by Devyn Forrest

  Why did it feel like these boys ruled the school?

  The Franklins and the Winters (Kieran’s parents) were just about as rich as rich could be in the Crestwood world. Maybe money really did make the world go round at Crestwood. Millionaires—or, probably billionaires—had their say in what was what.

  Teony started the newspaper session with an analysis of last week’s paper, in which they had written up the graffiti story. I shifted uncomfortably while it was talked about. A girl who seemed friendly with Teony, Katlyn, had been the one to write it. She had interviewed the cops who had arrested Eric and I that night, something Teony called ‘inspired.’ As I scanned the paper, however, I couldn’t help but think the writing was lazy and lackluster.

  I knew I could do better.

  And for the first time in my entire life, I realized that doing work like this—for a paper-like Crestwood—could actually affect my career. It could put me in a position to become something or put me on the journalism map.

  As much as I hated to say it, Mom had been right about all of this. Even though I was the bane of most of Crestwood’s existence, I had to fight back and just not let them win.

  Art school at Yale or journalism at Columbia. The possibilities were endless.

  I grinned to myself as Teony assigned stories for the week, something about the upcoming chess tournament, the dance squad’s next festival in Los Angeles, and a write-up about a previous Crestwood student getting a role in a long-running television series. She had explained that the Crestwood Chronicle also did an expose portion that only the students could access, which revealed all the juicy nuggets and skeletons that ran rapid among Crestwood Academy.

  “I wonder if you’d like to just shadow this week, Kennedy, so you can get a feel for our tone and how we work here?” Teony asked as she chewed on the end of her pen.

  I shook my head firmly. “I want to get started as soon as possible.”

  Teony arched a brow and pointed the tip of her pen toward me. “I like that attitude.”

  Under his breath beside me, Caleb shot, “She’s always eager to please, our little Ridgewood.” He then snapped his head toward me, grinning. “Maybe Kennedy would like to do a write-up on what really got her into Crestwood. What a story, hmm? Destroying school grounds. And then walking through those same pearly gates, like nothing had happened...”

  “I got in because I’m fucking good.” I shot back, my eyes never wavering from his.

  At this, his crooked smile faltered slightly. He cut his lips toward my ear. My skin felt tight with heat and I shivered, feeling his lip slide up near my earlobe. It felt almost sexual, like he was going to slip his tongue across my ear, then bite down. I pictured myself crying out in pleasure as I imagined his massive hands, gripping my shoulders and banging me against the wall, but then he growled, “Get the fuck out of here with that cockiness, Ridgewood. You’ll always be trash to us.”

  Of course, if Teony had heard what he said, I’m sure she just ignored it. The hour was wrapping up, meaning it was nearly time for third period. I already felt like I had been at the school for more than a full day, rather than just two hours.

  As I cut toward the door, Teony hustled toward me, her grin becoming playful. It seemed she had hung up her ‘editor’ position, trading it in for a teenage girl.

  “Hey! Wait up.” She yelled after me.

  I paused, grimacing. Was it now Teony’s turn to show her true colors?

  “What is it?” I turned.

  “I heard what happened to you this morning. Hailey Blair. Jesus, that’s bad.”

  “Yeah, I guess? I can handle, though,” I replied and held my books close to my chest.

  “I mean, if you think four dead mice hanging in your locker is bad,” Teony shot out, her face shadowed.

  “Right. Well, I really should get to class,”

  “Wait.” Teony reached forward, touching my forearm. “This is pretty weird, but we’ve met before. Do you remember?”

  I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your mom—before she got the nursing gig. She was working her way through night school, and my mom was her professor. Sometimes, we would play together on the playground attached to the school.”

  I hung back for a moment, looking at her. A hundred strange images flashed through my mind. Mom went to night school for nursing when I was six or seven, during a time when she and Dad had talked about getting divorced. The money situation had become a strain. I remembered a lot from that time—the screaming, the smashing plates. And I remembered the long drive to the night school on the border of Crestwood and Ridgewood, where Mom would draw me out of the back seat and walk me to the playground. A little bespectacled lady with pink sweaters was the college babysitter.

  And yeah, sure. There had been someone there — a girl around my age.

  Teony.

  My eyes bulged out as I looked at her there in the Crestwood Academy hallway, seeing within her still that funny, adventurous girl I had met on the monkey bars. Back then, we were only just getting our sense of what was and wasn’t Ridgewood versus Crestwood—which meant we hadn’t really treated each other any differently or acknowledged the divide. We were just two small kids, busting up our knees and needing band-aids while playing on the monkey bars.

  I hadn’t seen her since all of that changed.

  “Wow,” I muttered, giving her a once over. “How did you remember...”

  “Something about your name rang a bell and I asked my mom,” Teony answered, giving me a small nudge with her shoulder.

  “That’s a good memory you have. You should be a journalist,” I said, giving her my first genuine smile of the day.

  “So you do remember,” Teony breathed. Again, her hand wrapped tight around my arm as she tugged me toward her, out of the stream of students. “Listen, when we both get a chance, we should get together so I can get you up to speed about who is who.”

  “Sure, I guess. Is it really necessary, though?” I asked, feeling like she was a bit dramatic.

  “It’s really not a joke, Kennedy,” Teony protested. “Hailey Blair’s already targeted you. I probably should have warned you about it before it happened, but I didn’t know she would strike the minute you got here.”

  “Don’t you think talking to me out here in the open like this might make them hate you, too?” I asked, scanning the hallway.

  Teony shrugged. Her eyes glittered with what I thought was genuine unhappiness. “Actually, I wouldn’t call myself the most popular of the Crestwood Academias. My parents are professors, which is kind of low in terms of the Crestwood hierarchy ladder. The fact that they teach people from Ridgewood is— I don’t know. Looked down on.”

  I gaped at her. Still, I felt like I was standing on a trap door that was about to give. Teony whipped her perfect, jet-black hair behind her and said, “Meet up with me at lunch. I’ll introduce you to the crew.” With that, she sprung toward wherever her third-period class was.

  I wondered if she knew she had suddenly become my first and last hope at happiness.

  Chapter Nine

  The lunchroom looked like something out of an English castle. I had seen it when Mrs. Crooks had taken me on tour the previous week, but nothing could have prepared me to see it during its operating hours. It was three levels tall, open-air, with enormous windows that overlooked the cliffs and the Pacific ocean. Long, thin, fit-for-kings shiny tables that stretched across the cafeteria, with another enormous one at the far end, filled to the brim with banquet food—food that had absolutely zero relation to the plastic grilled cheese sandwiches at Ridgewood High.

  I sauntered into the cafeteria, still carrying everything with me since I didn’t feel up to visiting the dead critters in my locker. All eyes popped to me as people began to whisper. In response, I scanned them all like I was studying them right back.

  I reminded myself that I had gotten into this damn school from talent, rather than blood or a fat fucking trust fund.


  And I didn’t need it.

  In the far end of the cafeteria, furthest from the banquet table, Hailey Blair swept up from her seat, drawing her perfect blonde locks over her right shoulder. She continued a conversation with her posse, a group of four perfectly manicured girls who looked at Hailey like the sun shined out of her ass. Of course, with the headmaster as your grandfather, I suppose you needed a posse. You demanded that kind of attention.

  I walked along the side of the cafeteria, near the windows. I looked out the window and watched the sea crash against the cliff’s edges, splashing white froth across the red and yellow rock. Back in Ridgewood, our view out of the cafeteria had been the old car factory, which had closed down in 1977 but still reeked of old oil.

  I reached the table of food and collected a plate. Chicken breasts, salmon, vats of potatoes and green vegetables, mashed squash, homemade bread—everything glowed like a painting beneath the sunlight that swept in from outside.

  As I stepped toward the salmon, someone crossed over to the other side of the banquet table, matching my strides. I tried not to notice, hoping that it was just a coincidence. But as I paused between the chicken and salmon, the tall, hunk of a creature across from me paused, as well.

  It was clear whoever he was; he was mirroring me.

  Finally, I brought my eyes up to find Kieran Winters himself. His dark blue eyes were brooding, like a never-ending storm turned through his brain. His dark hair was tousled, wild and the smirk that was splayed across his full lips was borderline evil— the stuff of handsome movie villains. My heart pattered in my chest and moved to my throat in one swift thump.

  One of his large hands—probably the one that had smashed Ridgewood’s Michael in the head—reached for the serving fork above the salmon.

  “Girls at Crestwood aren’t really into their food,” his voice was nothing but a deep husky whisper. “Nice to see that someone eats, although—” I watched as he swept his eyes up and down my body. “I would be careful. It can be so easy to overeat. Especially when it’s so clear, your Mom can’t keep her refrigerator stocked at home.”

  I gaped at him. There was so little anyone at Crestwood could possibly know about me or my mother. Yet they leaped to their own conclusions and took every chance to belittle me in as many ways possible.

  “Fuck you, asshole. Tell me, Kieran.” I said, closing the space between us.

  His dark blue eyes flashed toward me, curious about what would happen next.

  “When you smashed Michael’s head in last year in Ridgewood, did you feel anything? Did it make you feel like man, maybe make up for Dad’s inadequacies?”

  Kieran’s face turned stoic, almost icy. Then his words came out in an angry sneer. “You’re nothing but Ridgewood scum. Better eat up, Kennedy Harper. Put some meat on those bones. When you do, Hailey Blair will have a field day. I can’t wait to watch her pick you apart.”

  “Oh. Is that the girl you said you’re not fucking anymore?” I demanded, remembering their little spat that morning, along with the posting on the Crestwood online forum. “Or is she just a prop for you? I would have thought you could act alone.”

  “Would you like to know, Ridgewood,” Kieran said it as if I wasn’t even worth his time. His eyes cast down on me as if he already grew tired of our little conversation and then I watched him walk off for his table. He made his way toward his friends—Caleb and Dante—and remained standing as he ate, his face like a wall of stone.

  I’d never had such a target on my back.

  I walked around them, my eyes scanning the room for any sign of Teony. Finally, a hand popped up from the opposite end of the lunchroom, with Teony’s shining face attached to it. Again, I had a flashing memory of that same Teony, which seemed like such a long time ago, calling out to me to join her on the swing set.

  Weird how time flew by and you forgot little memories like that.

  I ambled toward her with a still-empty plate. Teony sat with three other girls and two guys. They all looked at me with feigned welcoming expressions. I’m sure mine looked probably pretty similar.

  “Guys, this is Kennedy Harper. The new girl,” Teony announced, saying it in a sing-song voice. “This is Evelyn Turner, Jaden Fuller, Amy Sandlewood—and Josh Miller and Walter Peterson.” Then, she whispered, “Hailey has taken it upon herself to make her life a living hell.”

  Evelyn scrunched her nose. “Hailey is such a bitch.”

  “Shhh.” This was Jaden, who seemed jittery. “You know she’ll come after you next.” Her eyes turned to me. “She targeted a girl last year from out of town. A rich town north of Los Angeles. Like, the girl had more money than God, even, and Hailey picked her apart. She had to change schools.”

  “Fuck,” Josh grumbled. He brought a French fry toward his mouth and chewed slowly, his face contemplative.

  “Josh had a thing with her,” Jaden explained, looking over at Hailey’s table. “Which meant he got plenty of the flack.”

  “It was fucking hell,” Josh affirmed. “She slashed the tires on my car.”

  “What?” I was shocked, my voice a near-shriek. “That’s like... so, so illegal...”

  Josh shrugged. “She’s the headmaster’s granddaughter. If she gets something in her head, she just does it and she knows she can get away with any of it. They just pay the cops to shut the hell up around here.”

  “Disgusting,” Teony whispered.

  I sat at the table with them, blinking down at my bare plate. Just as Kieran had said, the girls were hardly eating. Jaden picked at some broccoli, while Teony tore at a piece of bread. Amy and Evelyn were exchanging notes on an upcoming test, sipping green juices.

  Again, I looked at the massive table, enough food to feed a good portion of starving Ridgewood.

  “What do they do with all that food?” I asked.

  Teony looked at me, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, no one eats here,” I said.

  “The boys do,” Teony shrugged.

  “Sure. But there’s enough food up there to feed, like, a small village.”

  “That’s a bit of an over-exaggeration, isn’t it, little Kennedy?” Walter shot out as he watched my expression.

  “Not sure what they do,” Evelyn said, drawing her eyes from her paper. “Never really thought about it, to be honest.”

  Of course. Of course, the elite didn’t have to think about where their food was coming from. I reached for a piece of gum from my pocket and slipped the sugary slab on my tongue. This would have to do for now.

  “What do you guys think I should do about all the... dead mice in my locker?” I asked then.

  “Hmmm. You might have to tell a janitor,” Teony suggested. “Don’t bring it up to the headmaster or the school staff. It’s Hailey, so.”

  “Right.”

  At the end of lunch I felt a little more prepared. They had filled me in on the basics of the hierarchy of the school. Kieran, Caleb and Dante ran the school halls. They were the blue bloods of Crestwood, regardless of Hailey’s status. Hailey and her posse were next in line and followed mostly what the boys ordered. If and when anyone didn’t follow suit there was hell to pay. Teony explained that they would force some of the kids into tasks that they would have to complete. If they were successful, they would be left alone for the year. If not, they would be tormented for a semester or two depending on the student’s crime.

  Everyone at the table said one thing that fell in line with each other. “Never trust a blue blood even when they seem nice or try to befriend you. They will fuck you over and you won’t even realize it.”

  CLASS AT CRESTWOOD ended just after four, a full hour after Ridgewood High. I collapsed on my bus seat, drawing my backpack across my lap. I wanted to pour my face into it and sob until I didn’t feel anything else. But more and more Ridgewood residents hobbled onto the bus after their long shifts at various Crestwood mansions. Their skin was sallow; their legs seemed like they were made of lead. They looked exhausted.
r />   I couldn’t feel bad for myself. I was attending Crestwood and I certainly didn’t have it half as bad as the people of Ridgewood. At least I had a fighting chance.

  And one day, I would be rid of them forever and completely abolish the divide between Ridgewood and Crestwood. One could only dream.

  Back home, Mom had prepared our version of a feast—mozzarella sticks, pizza, onion rings, and cupcakes. She spread everything out on our breakfast nook table (the only dining area we had) and said, “Ta-da!” like a magician.

  My legs quaked with hunger. “You don’t know how much I needed this.” I fell into her outstretched arms and hugged her tight, inhaling the scent of her perfume. It was a rare thing to smell. She normally sweated it off as she marched the halls of the hospital.

  It reminded me of being a little girl, wrapping myself around her. She was my rock.

  “How was your first day?” she asked. She tugged an onion ring from the stack and bit into it.

  “It was good,” I said, hoping that my eyes didn’t give away how horrible it had really been. “I mean, it will take some getting used to. But I really like the Crestwood Chronicle. This girl, Teony—she says she’s going to assign me a few articles to get started.”

  “That’s incredible,” Mom said. “A journalist AND an artist. The future is bright.”

  I stabbed my teeth into a piece of pizza. The cheese scalded my tongue and oozed toward my chin. I chuckled, wondering if I had completely lost all ability to eat, now that Crestwood had told me just how ‘evil’ it was to want nourishment.

  Ugh. Whatever. It was only day one.

  Things had to get better.

  Right?

  Chapter Ten

  The next few days seemed to mirror the first.

  The issue of the mice in my locker was something I didn’t figure out till Wednesday. Not wanting to make a scene, I met Eric after school for our weekly trash clean-up and asked him to come inside with me.