by Gemma Weir
Checking my watch, I sigh. I need to get back to class. Not that my attendance really makes a difference. I miss so many of my own classes that no one cares anymore. Sliding my backpack on, I walk to the door, twisting the lock open and slowly turning the door handle until the door unlatches. The bell is due to ring any minute, but for now the halls should be empty and I probably don’t need to sneak around, but old habits die hard and I can’t get caught.
Pushing the door open an inch, I peer around the edge, scanning the hall for anyone watching. It’s empty, but I still wait another moment before I open it any further. Creating a gap just big enough to squeeze through, I immediately close the door behind me, spinning around and locking it with the key clutched tightly in my hand. I scan the hallway again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anyone, but it’s still empty. As I slide the key into the inside pocket of my blazer, I draw in a calming breath then I leave, my eyes firmly fixed on the floor, my all too familiar face hidden from view. Just another face in a crowd, no one important.
What the fuck is Carrigan Archibald doing sneaking out of the old photography darkroom? From my hidden spot beside a bank of lockers, I know she can’t see me, even though she’s scanning the hallway like she’s expecting someone to jump out and shout gotcha at her.
I smile to myself when she locks the door with a key, then slides it into her blazer. Of course she has a key. She’s the golden girl of St Augustus; the one everyone wants to be friends with because she’s going to be worth a fortune when she comes into her inheritance.
The thing that always baffles me about this place is that we’re all fucking rich. The fact that we can afford the fees here says our parents are loaded, so why worship the bitch just because she’s going to be mega wealthy?
“Old money is the only money worth mentioning.” I can practically hear the condescending tone my mom uses when she reminds me why we’re better than all the new money rich people. Who gives a fuck? We’re all spoilt brats, so who cares how we got our obscene trust funds.
I don’t move as she lowers her head, curling in on herself and then disappearing down the corridor. “What the fuck?” I murmur beneath my breath. The urge to follow her has me pushing off the wall and emerging out of my hiding place as I keep her in sight. Little Miss Perfect isn’t the type to skip class, but she sure as shit isn’t in French right now where we’re both supposed to be.
With her head lowered like that I can barely recognize her as the Carrigan who struts around the school like she owns the place and everyone in it.
“Mr. Lexington, where should you be right now?” Principal Irvine asks, her shrill voice instantly recognizable.
“Je suis supposé être en cours de Français, mais comme vous le savez déjà, je le parle couramment et pourrais probablement orienter l'enseignant sur la manière d'améliorer sa prononciation.” I reply back to her in flawless French.
Her scowl has me barely holding back a smirk. “I don’t speak French, Mr. Lexington. Perhaps you should get to your class and ask your teacher to critique your oral skills,” she says, one hand propped on her hip, the other pointing in the direction of my classroom.
With a sigh, I dip my chin and lazily prowl forward, hoping to waste enough time that the bell will have rung by the time I get there.
“I suggest you hurry, Mr. Lexington. I’ll be checking with Madame Febron to ensure you made it there and that you’re up to date with your classwork.”
“Of course, Principal Irvine,” I say, knowing we can both hear the mock deference in my voice.
I hate it when she calls me Mr. Lexington. I have a fucking name, yet there isn’t a single teacher in this school who will use it. We’re only ever addressed with our title and surname. I don’t know if it’s an ancient thing to remind everyone of their rank, or if it’s just because the faculty can’t be bothered to learn our first names. Maybe it’s just because in this world of wealth and power, your surname is the one that defines you: your family name, who you are, how much you’re worth. It’s all just elitist bullshit.
It only takes me a couple of minutes to get to my French classroom and I push open the door without a thought to Madame Febron and the class she’s teaching. Striding forward, I don’t offer her any explanation as to why I’m arriving moments before the bell rings. I just ignore her rapid-fire French tirade and make my way to my seat.
All eyes are on me as I march between the rows of desks, but I don’t care. Watson Hilborn, one of my closest friends, lifts his eyebrows at me, a smirk curling at the corners of his mouth as he watches me approach our desks at the back of the room. Before I sit, I spy Carrigan fucking Archibald sat in her seat in the middle of the room, her laptop out on her desk, a page full of notes open on her screen.
How the fuck did she have time to get to class, set up her laptop and take notes before I got here? She can’t have been more than two minutes ahead of me. Tilting my head to the side I consider her for a minute. She looks as perfect and unruffled as always; nothing like the nervous girl I saw sneaking out of the dark room.
“Monsieur Lexington, please take your seat,” Madame Febron purrs in her seductive French accent. If she didn’t look like a fucking rottweiler, I’d probably have fucked her already just for that voice.
Lazily blinking, I turn my bored gaze on her and sigh so hard even I can hear the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ in the sound.
Taking the final steps to my desk, I slump down into my seat, propping my feet up on the table before leaning my head back and closing my eyes. In any other school I’d probably be kicked out of the class, given a detention and maybe even suspended, but at St Augustus, money is power and my family have plenty of money.
No matter how influential Principal Irvine might think she is, she’s dirt on the shoe of the families of the kids who attend this school. We’re the upper class, the rich and richer. This entire place only exists because of the tuition fees our families pay and the donations they make when we graduate. Irvine might think she’s in charge, but she’s nothing more than a puppet and we all know it.
Watson kicks my leg and I crack my eyes open and turn my head to look at him. “What’s going on? You never come to French,” he says amused.
Closing my eyes again, I slouch down a little further in my seat. “Irvine caught me.”
“Dude,” Watson chuckles, the sound low and infectious.
“It’s not like she can actually do anything to me, but I don’t want to deal with my dad today if she calls him, so I might as well take a nap until the bell goes.” I say, deciding not to tell him about seeing Carrigan sneaking around.
The sound of Madame Febron’s melodic voice, combined with the heat pumping from the duct over my head, has me actually drifting in and out of sleep until the bell chimes and forces me awake again.
It takes me a minute to move, my limbs heavy with the sleep that was calling me. “Fuck, I need a nap,” I say, stretching my arms up and over my head.
“Go grab Arabella and have her suck you off. A bj’s as good as a nap,” Watson says, his aristocratic face lit up with amusement. Watson Hilborn the second, is the son of a British earl who defected to America, invested his families millions in tech and turned them into billions. His father and mine are business associates and Watson and I have been friends since we met in kindergarten.
Our senior class totals less than one hundred students, yet this place is so exclusive that there’s a waiting list of over a thousand kids all clambering to be here. St Augustus doesn’t offer scholarships, and the tuition is so exorbitant that only the truly rich can afford to attend. In theory all of us are equal; but being rich doesn’t make us all the same. Even the wealthiest new money is looked down on by old money. Where you come from, who your family is, and how far back you can track your lineage, all factor in on where you are on the status totem pole and being a Lexington sits me firmly at the top.
Watson and I, along with more than half the students in our senior class attended The Haversham Sc
hool, an equally exclusive private elementary school. The rest of our peers went to other prestigious schools. Then there are some like Carrigan Archibald who were home schooled with private tutors until they arrived at St Augustus three years ago.
I follow Watson out of the classroom, offering Madame Febron a smirk as I pass her, and move into the now bustling hallway. From the corner of my eye, I spot Carrigan as she saunters toward the senior lockers, her shoulders pulled back, her head held high, and a group of two girls and a guy circling around her like she really is the queen she pretends to already be.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was a different person to the one I saw creep from the old darkroom. That Carrigan was trying to be invisible, scurrying along with her head down, her body curled in on itself to make her look smaller. What the fuck was she doing? Carrigan and I aren’t friends, she’s the typical good girl. Perfect grades, perfect behavior, perfect life. Everyone knows she has to be that way to inherit the billions that are coming her way, but that doesn’t make her any more tolerable.
The thing is, I don’t believe Carrigan is anything like the pretty little Stepford wannabe she pretends to be. I’ve seen the calculating gleam in her eye. I recognize it from the look I’ve seen a thousand times on the faces of the women my dad fucks, then eventually fucks off. They all want what they can get, they all want the money, and that’s how Carrigan Archibald looks when no one is watching.
“Bro,” Watson says. “I’ll meet you at math. Missy’s just texted me a picture of her pussy and now my balls are aching. I gotta go find her,” he says with a wink.
Nodding, I slap him on the shoulder a moment, before he takes off in a sprint in the opposite direction.
I don’t rush to my next class. Just because I have to attend doesn’t mean I have to be enthusiastic about it. For the next hour I sit and half listen to our teacher attempt to explain quadratic equations, but my mind’s still on Carrigan and the way she moved and walked. Something about her behavior earlier is bugging me and I don’t know why.
She and I aren’t friends. We’re both from old money families and as such we’re forced to move in the same social circles. But where she spends her weekends at society parties being touted about like a sideshow at the circus, I’m in the back room with a stolen bottle of thirty-year-old scotch, fucking whichever not-quite-as-rich-as-us girl is offering her pussy to me over a priceless grand piano.
People assume that it’s only poor women that are gold diggers and some of them are, but the rich always want to be richer and for most trust fund girls they get there by marrying someone richer than they are.
Money is a vicious circle, a fucked up merry-go-round that never stops and you can never get off.
My family thinks my future’s set in stone just like Carrigan’s is. As the only child of Richard Lexington and Barbara Lexington-Ford, my dad intends for me to take over the family business. Until their divorce that’s what my mother expected of me too. Now she’d rather I spend my life being rich and spending dad’s money just to spite him. That’s probably why I haven’t seen or spoken to her in nearly two years.
The truth is, I don’t really care what I end up doing, as long as they don’t expect me to marry one of the girls they keep parading in front of me in the hope that I’ll be engaged before the end of fucking high school.
Carrigan fucking Archibald is number one on my dad’s fantasy daughter-in-law wish list. I see the way his eyes light up when he mentions her, or the company she’s expected to inherit. He couldn’t give a fuck about Carrigan, but in this archaic Richie Rich world we live in, whoever she marries will get control of the businesses by default, because even in the twenty-first century it wouldn’t be right to allow a woman to be in charge of a multi-billion pound company.
Sometimes I almost feel sorry for Carrigan. When her great-grandfather made her the soul recipient of his fortune, he placed a target on her back and a noose around her neck. At fourteen years old he planned the rest of her life and she either has to comply or lose a fortune.
I’m not sure anyone actually knows what happens if she fails to meet the terms of the will, because for her and her family, failure is simply not an option.
All of this makes her skulking around school and hiding in the dark room even more intriguing. For the first time ever, she’s managed to peak my interest. Because why would the ultimate good girl be doing something so out of character?
By the time the final bell rings I’m more than ready to go home, but instead of escaping with the rest of the students, I have detention for skipping English. Sometimes I think about just telling the teachers why I miss so many classes, then I think about the repercussions that would have on my entire family if I did.
I waste time, packing my laptop into my backpack, only leaving the classroom once everyone else has gone and the hallway is half empty, the other students all heading for the parking lot.
Detention is taken in the library and I’m a regular attendee, thanks to Mr. Harper’s refusal to turn a blind eye to the classes I miss. I don’t mind the hour’s solitude and quiet, and my parents are happy to let me serve the punishment, but only if I attend on my own, away from any other students. So, every time I get given detention it’s in the small private study area at the back of the library away from prying eyes.
Sometimes I wonder if all the teachers already know about what Carrigan and I do to maintain her perfect grades, but if they do, why am I the only one forced to suffer the consequences? My parents know I take Carrigan’s classes and tests and they fully support it, even going so far as to engage me private tutors for all of our subjects, to make sure I can take over for my twin at a moment’s notice.
My sister is smart, but she has almost nightly social obligations that mean she doesn’t always have the time to study or write assignments and that where I come in. I’m the spare, the child that’s not really needed, but is always there to step in if required, and now it’s easier to force me to take her place than it is for her to do it herself.
I hate them for it. I hate my sister for morphing our relationship into something abusive and toxic and I hate my parents for not only allowing her to do it, but for supporting her and treating me like nothing more than a useful facsimile of the child they actually want.
I nod quickly to the librarian and she nods back, her expression never altering from the stone-faced grimace she’s worn every day since the first time I set foot in the school’s library. Heading for the study room, I twist the dial by the door, moving the sign that obscures the small glass window and changes the sign from ‘Available’ to ‘In Use’ then drop my backpack to the floor and lower myself into the wooden chair.
Sighing wearily, I lean down and rest my head on the table. I’m tired, both physically and mentally. I’m sick of this constant drone of life where no one knows I even exist. I’m sick of only being a Carrigan look-a-like with no identity of my own.
My hour’s detention passes quicker than I’d like. I don’t want to be here, but I want go home even less. Picking up my backpack, I stand up and slide my arms through the straps, then turn the dial to mark the room as ‘Available’ before I silently exit and make my way to the front of the school.
Our shiny black town car is waiting at the curb when I step outside and I pad toward it, sliding into the seat when Greg, my driver, opens the door for me.
“How was your day, Miss Tallulah?” Greg asks, his Boston accent thick and comfortingly familiar. Greg has been one of our family’s drivers for years. He was here before the will, before the money changed us all and he’s one of the only people who actually gives a crap about me.
“Same old, same old,” I say, not giving him any real details. Greg might be a lovely guy who genuinely cares for me, but I still can’t actually tell him anything real, anything that could be leaked to the press or used to blackmail us.
“Are you going home, or are you joining Miss Carrigan and your parents at the Woodsonvilles?” He asks, already
knowing what my answer will be.
“Home please,” I say, leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes.
I must fall asleep, because when I blink open my eyes, the rear door is open, and Greg is softly shaking my arm. “We’re home, Miss Tallulah,” he says, a wry smile on his lips.
Blinking rapidly, I rub at my gritty eyes and push myself upright, grabbing my bag and shuffling to the edge of the seat as Greg takes a step back, waiting at the door as I climb out. “Thank you,” I say, reaching out to touch his arm lightly as I move past him and up the front steps to our house.
The door swings open as I get there and Mrs. Humphries greets me, smiling tightly. “Miss Tallulah, welcome home. Can I take your backpack?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Humphries, but I’ll take it straight up to my bedroom,” I tell her, giving her the same answer I give her every day. Mrs. Humphries is our housekeeper and chef. Prior to the inheritance bomb being dropped we had a cleaning service come in three times a week and a meal service deliver food, but the moment Carrigan was named in that will my parents employed Mrs. Humphries and a full-time maid. Because you’re not a real rich person unless you have live-in staff.
“Miss Tallulah?” Mrs. Humphries calls.
“Yes, Mrs. Humphries?” I dutifully reply.
“Your parents and Miss Carrigan are engaged at dinner with the Woodsonvilles. Would you like to eat in the dining room, or would you prefer something brought up to your room?” She asks, with professional politeness.
“If you’ve already cooked, then I’ll take it in my room. If not, then please don’t trouble yourself cooking just for me, I can make myself a sandwich later,” I assure her.
“I prepared some soup at lunchtime, I could heat some of that for you?” she says, a little of the frostiness leaving her voice.
“That would be wonderful, thank you,” I say, offering her a genuine smile.
She nods, then turns and walks in the direction of the kitchen and I quickly dart upstairs to the sanctuary of my bedroom.
