by Bella King
I leaned in, growing curious about what he knew. He had a large pool of power and resources at his hands. One would only need to peer into his mind for a moment to gain value from him. “Go on,” I said, giving him a chance.
“Emily was pushed. Not only that, but she was led up to the ledge that she was pushed off of,” Trent stated confidently.
“By whom?”
“Whom?” Trent asked with a laugh. “I knew you were a rich girl. You can’t fool me,” he said, continuing to laugh and shake his head.
“That’s correct,” I said, frowning.
“That’s beside the point, rich girl. Your language is a dead giveaway. Try harder next time,” he said, smiling and shaking his head.
“Just answer my question,” I pleaded.
“Whom pushed her?” he asked, mocking the way I spoke, but doing so incorrectly.
I sighed. “Yes, who pushed her.”
“I’ll tell you, but I need something from you first,” he said, leaning back and crossing his arms.
“My backstory?” I inquired, ready to give it to him if that meant finding out what really happened to Emily.
He shook his head. “Nope, I’m afraid not. I need something else from you.”
“Well, I don’t have any money, like you think I do,” I said, frowning at him.
“Not that either, although I don’t believe you. I want a favor from you,” he said calmly.
“Nothing sexual,” I blurted. My mind immediately conjured up whatever twisted fantasy it could in a split second.
“If you would let me talk, I’ll tell you,” Trent said.
“Okay, talk,” I demanded.
He smiled. “Thank you. As I was saying, I need a small favor from you in exchange for this information. It’s not very advantageous for me to go around snitching on people for no reason. At least, not without some type of personal gain, it isn’t,” he said. “I have a delivery from outside of the school coming in. It’s sensitive stuff, so I don’t want anyone getting caught with it. I need you to get it for me.”
“Drugs?” I asked. I didn’t want to get caught with drugs again. It was a bad look.
“No,” he replied. “It’s not that. I’m not going to tell you what it is, only that you need to get it for me.”
“Why can’t you get it?” I asked, starting to grow suspicious.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea. I need a woman to do it,” he replied.
“Why?” I asked, trying to get to the bottom of this before agreeing to anything.
“You ask a lot of questions for someone who doesn’t have much to bargain with,” Trent said, sounding annoyed.
“I need to know what I’m doing before I get into it,” I replied, thinking back to how my father used me a drug mule without my knowledge. I wasn’t going to let innocence cloud my judgment again. I trusted nobody.
“Alright,” Trent said, folding his hands with his fingers interlaced. “The drop-off location is in the women’s bathroom, because my contact is also female, and the bathroom doesn’t have cameras.”
I squinted at him, searching for holes in his story, but I couldn’t find anything. It seemed basic enough. “How big is the package, and where do I need to take it?”
“It’s small enough to fit in a bookbag that I will provide for you. It’s identical to mine, so we can switch them in the hallway without arousing suspicion. Just set it down beside me when you see me, we’ll talk, then we pick up each other’s bags and leave. It’s easy if you know how to do it,” he explained.
I could tell he had experience with this. I nodded. “I’ll do it. This better not be a trick though,” I said, waving a finger at him.
“No way. I need that package,” he replied. “And, I have the information you want.”
He looked convincing enough, but I questioned myself for siding with the enemy just for the chance of knowing how Emily died. Would it make a difference anyway? She was already gone. Nothing I did would bring her back from the dead.
If I fucked this up, I could be going to jail for a long time. Everyone in Bayside Academy was on probation. That meant that even minor crimes would get us thrown in jail for much longer than are initial crimes had us in for. I had to think carefully before I made a major mistake.
But I wasn’t one to think too long about anything. I accepted Trent’s offer, praying that I was making the right choice. “When do I need to pick this thing up, and where?”
Trent smiled and began explaining the fine details of the pickup. We sat there was a while together, passing the time with over-detailed instructions and advice back and forth. Planning something with him was pleasant because he acted like he was on my side for once. It was a lot nicer than having him harass me.
The time passed quicker while I was talking with Trent. I refused to give him any personal information, but I did find him to be an impressive wealth of knowledge and stealth tactics. I was sure his advice would come in handy in the near future, and not just for the task he had assigned me. This was stuff that would benefit me for life.
“And that’s why you never make eye contact when you leave the airport,” Trent finished, leaning back and crossing his arms with a smug look on his face.
“Interesting,” I said, rubbing my chin.
Suddenly, the bell rang, signaling that classes were over. Finally! Trent and I could get the hell out of detention and head back to our rooms. Bayside Academy was a boarding school, so there was a separate building for each of the genders’ living spaces. We were all expected to be out of school no later than half an hour after the final bell rang. And stragglers would get detention the next day.
The door to the detention room opened with a loud squeal, and the woman who had checked me in made a motion for us to leave. Trent and I stood up, and I followed him out of the door to freedom. Well, as close to freedom as I could get when I was trapped at a boarding school for an entire year.
Chapter 4
Blue sheets, black sheets, blue sheets, black sheets. I counted the alternating beds until I arrived at mine. The rooms at Bayside Academy were like long military barracks with rows of nearly identical beds. Each room housed over fifty women, and there was nearly no care given to privacy. Even the bathrooms didn’t stall doors, which was why most people used the toilet in the school instead of the dormitory.
Personally, I didn’t mind using the doorless bathroom stalls because very few other women used them. I had privacy because nobody was in the bathroom half the time. Sometimes you would get unlucky, but that wasn’t the norm.
I arrived at my bed, throwing down my bookbag onto the neatly made blue sheets before plopping myself down beside it. Today had been long, but I couldn’t say that it wasn’t interesting. After nearly going braindead from boredom, I had found a surprising amount of joy from talking with Trent, even though I still didn’t like him.
He wanted me to pick up his package tomorrow, which was good because if it was much later, I would have already forgotten the details. I had a notoriously bad memory and didn’t enjoy following instructions. Trent would be lucky if I did this right the first time.
Emily’s old bed wasn’t in the same room as mine, but I had heard that someone else was now occupying it. I wondered if she knew that the previous owner had died. Now, I wondered who the previous owner of mine had been.
I was sure that the actual mortality rate at Bayside wasn’t that high, but it had to be higher than a regular school. Students were fighting all the time, which occasionally resulted in serious injury. The administration would let fights break out so that they could put the trouble students in solitary or cart them off to jail if it was serious enough. There wasn’t much interest shown in rehabilitation, but that didn’t surprise me.
“Yo,” a butch woman said, grabbing my attention. I looked up to see her walking up to me. I had never seen her before, but she had definitely scoped me out for some reason.
“What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound relaxed. I was anything
but relaxed. I could stay calm at a school where confrontations and fights were just another normal day.
“Are you Samantha?” she asked, holding one hand behind her back. She could have anything back there.
“Who’s asking?” I asked. I could feel my heartbeat speeding up in my chest.
“None of your business, princess,” the woman said. “Are you Samantha or not?”
“Yes,” I answered, intimidated by her aggressive demeanor. It was possible that she had come to attack me, but I had no idea why. If she had a knife behind her back, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all.
“This came for you,” she said, taking a rectangular package from behind her back and tossing it into my lap before walking away.
I was in shock, but also relieved that she hadn’t come to kill me. Who the hell would be sending me a package anyway? I thought that nothing was supposed to come in or go out of the school without serious vetting by the administration. Weird.
I picked the package up from my lap and examined it, twisting it around in my hand. It was roughly the size and shape of a brick, but lighter. It was wrapped in what appeared to be black plastic, like a garbage bag, and secured with so much clear tape that I would probably need a knife to open it. The problem was, we weren’t allowed to have knives here.
I looked around myself for something to use. The easiest thing to do would be to cut through the black plastic and try to avoid the tape as much as I could. I was a little afraid that I would trigger a homemade bomb or something, but my curiosity quickly got the better of me, as it usually did.
I didn’t have anything practical to cut the plastic with, but the metal corner of the bedframe looked like a good place to start. I leaned over to it, toppling my body over into a prone position, then began rubbing the plastic on the edge of the frame. It tore easily, giving me further confirmation that it was indeed a trash bag.
I turned it over once I had torn through a reasonable portion of it to check out the contents. I gasped audibly at what I saw. Through several layers of shredded plastic, I saw what looked to be a stack of dollar bills.
It wasn’t a small stack either. I began to claw around the plastic with my fingers, trying to get a better look at what was inside. I thumbed through the notes, checking the denominations. There were ones, fives, tens, and twenties in there, each secured with their own rubber band. Who on earth had sent these to me?
I looked around me to see if anyone had noticed. Nobody was looking, but I thought it best to finish exploring this package in the only place that I could get any privacy. It was time to take a shower. I grabbed a towel from a box under my bed and wrapped up the money in it, hurrying to the shower room.
I didn’t see hide of hair of the butch girl who had given me the package, and I didn’t recall ever seeing her around the school. Did she even go here? I had so many questions, but I was also excited. I couldn’t wait to count how much money I had gotten.
I felt like a kid on Christmas with this much cash in my hand. It wasn’t like I had never seen large amounts of money before, but that was the past. For the last six months, I had nothing at all, and bayside left me with not a single dollar to my name. It was nice to see cold, hard cash again.
I slipped through the shower room door and dashed to a stall. I slammed the door shut, unwrapping my package eagerly and throwing the towel over the side of the stall. I eyed the cash greedily, pulling at the tape that surrounded it to free it from its wrapping.
The money sprung out with a few hard pulls, and a piece of white paper drifted to the ground, landing on the wet floor. I bent over and peeled it off the moist tile, turning it over to see the message written in blue ink on the other side.
I recognized the handwriting immediately. It was from my father.
I quickly read through it, amazed that he had managed to get this to me.
Dear Samantha,
I hope you’re doing well at Bayside Academy. I hear it’s a tough school, but I believe in you. Please don’t go down the same road I went. Crime doesn’t pay in the end, but this time, it does. Enjoy this money responsibly.
Love,
Dad.
My heart thumped in my chest as I read and reread the message. My face was flushed, and I felt tears coming to my eyes.
Come on now, Samantha. He told you to be strong, and you’re going to cry?
I wiped a tear from my hot face and read the note again. It hadn’t been that long since I had seen my father, but it felt like a lifetime. I hadn’t been allowed to speak to him after he was sentenced, but he swore he would let me know that he was okay. I guess this was his way of doing that.
I sniffed, trying to keep the ugly crying from happening, but it was no use. All the stress, anxiety, and sorrow that had pressed its weight against me was coming out, flowing out of my body in a river of tears. I was glad I was in the shower and not back in the barracks where someone would see me.
I placed the money down at the far side of the shower, making sure that it was covered with the plastic wrapping so that it wouldn’t get wet from the faint sprinkle of the water as it bounced off my skin. I placed the note beneath the stack and began to undress.
I pulled off my clothes and placed them over the plastic wrapping, returning to the center of the shower to turn the water on. I jumped when I turned it on, as it was quite cold. For some reason, the water here took ages to get warm, so I had gotten used to taking cold showers to save time. I didn’t like hanging out for ten minutes just so the shower water would warm up.
I grabbed a generic bar of shared soap and rinsed it under the water before using it. I hated that we didn’t get our own soap, but perhaps this money would change that for me. I already knew that there were black markets around here. I just had to find the right person to introduce me to them.
Trent. He would know all about them. The only issue was that he would also know that I had money now, not that he didn’t already believe that before. I suppose it might not hurt to ask him. If I didn’t let on how much it was, I could get away with it.
I scrubbed my skin quickly and rinsed off, trying to hit all the essential areas of my body quickly before turning off the water. It was too cold to stay in for very long. I liked to keep my shower under a minute these days. Bayside had changed me, in some ways for the better. I would be a lot tougher coming out of here if I survived.
I turned off the water and grabbed my towel, patting my body dry and wrapping up my wet hair. My hair was shoulder length and sandy blonde, but it dried quickly because it wasn’t very thick. I always wished I had thicker hair, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I was gifted with a pleasant face and a passionate drive in life, so I couldn’t complain too much. I never had much trouble making friends or going places in life. Bayside may have hit me hard at first, but I wouldn’t let it get the better of me. Besides, I now had one of the most important tools that a person can have – money.
I grabbed my old clothes and put them back on, realizing that I hadn’t brought fresh ones to change into. It didn’t matter that much. I could change into my pajamas when I returned to the room.
Despite not having been especially active today, I was acutely tired after everything that had gone on. Fortunately, there was an assigned bedtime at the school, in which lights had to be turned off, and students had to be in their beds. I wouldn’t be kept up by other girls talking and arguing amongst themselves.
I returned to my bed, taking care to keep the money that I had received hidden under my bed without looking too suspicious while putting it under there. Everything I did from now on had to be sneaky. Tomorrow, I would be transporting a package for Trent and talking to him about the black markets at Bayside. Tonight, I was hiding money from the prying eyes of other students. I now knew what it felt like to be a criminal.
Crime doesn’t pay, but this time, perhaps it would. Thanks, dad.
Chapter 5
Thank god we didn’t have trumpets to wake us up in th
e morning. Some students set alarms, but most of them just waited to be woken up by the other students who were scrambling to get ready for classes. Once people started to wake up and move around, it was impossible to stay asleep.
My eyes popped open before most others. It had taken me a while to start sleeping through the night because of how paranoid I was, and even now, I found it difficult to sleep after the first person woke up. I wasn’t the kind of girl to let my guard down because I knew I wasn’t nearly as much of a fighter as some of the others here. I wouldn’t last in a physical confrontation and I knew it.
I snatched my bookbag from under my bed and stuffed the cash inside of it, also taking the bag that Trent had given me to transport the package he wanted inside of. Having two bags would only be awkward if I carried them both with me. My plan was to keep the extra one inside of my bag until I needed to swap it with Trent. That way, I wouldn’t look suspicious carrying two bags around the school with me.
I brought all the cash, as stupid as that may have been because I didn’t want anyone to look through my stuff and find it. It was unlikely, but not impossible. Occasionally, the administration did bed checks and would uncover contraband in the room. I couldn’t risk getting caught with this kind of money.
I stuff it toward the bottom of my bag and placed a few things over it. Nobody would see it even if I opened up the bag in class to remove my books. It was safe for now, but I needed to find a better hiding spot. Perhaps there was somewhere around the school that would work. I could spend some time searching today after I did the task that Trent had assigned to me.
I quickly got dressed and slung my bag over my shoulder, hurrying out of the dormitory before most of the other students did. Trent had told me that the package would be dropped off overnight, so I wanted to grab it before anyone occupied the bathrooms in the morning.
