by Lane Hart
There’s some type of seismic activity taking place underneath the school’s foundation. Hell must be freezing over or something because Maddie looks…happy. She’s never happy or smiling, always glowering.
“What are you up to?” I finally ask.
“You and I need to have a talk,” she says.
“You and…you want to talk to Aric?” Blake questions, sounding just as surprised as I am.
Without breaking my gaze to respond to him directly, she asks, “Mind running off your minions for a few minutes? We have some private business to discuss.”
“No, we don’t,” I reply without hesitation. Who the fuck does she think she is, coming in here, sitting on our table, demanding shit of me? “Why don’t you find your way on over to the rejects table with Hannah like a good little bitch and sit your ass down where it belongs?” I ask.
“Aric,” Blake warns me when I try to run her off. Not that it works. She doesn’t move an inch.
Finally turning her upper body around enough to look at my best friend, she asks, “Mommy get a new ride, Blake? A spiffy new SUV?”
“Yeah,” he responds with an audible gulp and his brow furrowing. “Why?”
“No reason,” Maddie responds with a shrug of her shoulders. “Just saw her sitting in it at the grocery store yesterday. Looked like it had a roomy interior. Very roomy.” Her dark, army green eyes peek at me from underneath her long lashes for a second before returning to him.
Son of a bitch!
She knows! She must have seen us.
Goddammit! Collette and I should’ve known better. Just because no one we know shops in the rundown, poor part of town, doesn’t mean no one would see us. I should’ve turned her down, but she was hot and horny and her husband, Blake’s dad, was actually home for once, so we couldn’t fuck in their house.
“Ah, well, I could probably borrow it if you want to hang out,” Blake tells her, completely misunderstanding her point for bringing up his mom’s vehicle.
Maddie taps her index finger to her delectable lips as if considering his offer and then says, “Let me think about that. No. I don’t date rich boys. But I do need to pass on an important message to Aric. Right now. Unless he would rather me share it with the entire school?”
“Give me a minute,” I turn to the guys and tell them while my forehead breaks out in a nervous sweat. “I’ll meet you outside in a few.”
“Later fellas,” Maddie says with a flutter of her fingers.
“Are you serious?” Blake asks me.
“Go,” I tell him and look to Royal to help me out.
“Come on, man,” Royal says to Blake when he gets to his feet. “Nothing she has to say is worth hearing anyway.”
Finally, Blake stands up and walks off, casting one last look over his shoulder before he and Royal push open the double doors that lead outside.
“Talk fast,” I tell her, crossing my arms over my chest and acting as unaffected as possible by what she’s about to say.
Sliding Blake’s tray out of the way, Maddie spins around so that her feet are now planted in Blake’s empty seat next to me.
Jesus.
“I can see up your skirt,” I tell her when I do a double take at her red, satin panties that match her bra.
“So?” she asks without flinching, gripping the edge of the table on either side of her.
“So, why don’t you spread your legs a little wider and I’ll eat you for lunch,” I say while staring at her pussy.
With an exasperated huff, she crosses her legs at the knee. “Is that better? Can your tiny little jock brain focus on the words coming out of my mouth instead of my cunt now? It’s sort of important, and I’m facing you because I’m pretty sure you don’t want anyone reading my lips.”
“Now I’m just thinking of what I can put between your lips to shut you up,” I tell her honestly. “Less than a year to go before I win our bet and get to unload in your mouth every fucking day.”
“Oh, please. Keep your dirty dick in your pants, you nasty motherfucker.”
And there it is.
“What do you want?” I ask through gritted teeth.
Picking up her cell phone and thumbing through it, she says, “You mean what do I want from you to keep my mouth shut about these photos and video of you and Blake’s mother?”
I snatch the device right out of her hand to see for myself.
And there I am, kissing Collette in public like an idiot while her hand cups my cock like she owns it.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“They’re all saved to the cloud, so don’t even bother trying to delete them,” Maddie says when she jerks the phone away from me.
“So? What’s it going to take to keep you quiet?” I ask because no one can find out about this, especially not Blake. If she wants my Lambo right now, she can fucking have it. Not that I’ll offer it up for the chopping block…
Tossing her phone into her lap, she shakes her foot in the air next to me. “I’m thinking…a hundred bucks.”
“Fine,” I reply in surprise as I start to pull out my wallet since I expected her to want thousands.
“A week,” she adds, making me freeze. “For the rest of the school year.”
I’m not great at math or any subject, which Maddie never fails to point out, but I think that comes to about four-thousand dollars. Still, it’s nothing to me.
“Okay. I can do a hundred a week,” I agree.
“Annnnd…” she drawls, making me groan.
“And what?” I snap.
Touching the toe of her dirty shoe to my elbow where I’ve rolled up the sleeves of my crisp, clean button down, she leans forward to whisper softly, “I want you to be my bitch.”
My first thought is perverted, of course, like she wants to tie me down in her bed and fuck my brains out. Not even that will break me, though.
“I’m Aric fucking Prince, captain of the football team, starting QB, and royalty in this town. I’m nobody’s bitch.”
“Then I guess I’ll just go tell Blake you’re bumping uglies with his mom and get it over with now,” Maddie declares as she hops down on my side of the cafeteria table.
Reaching out an arm to stop her, I grab the first thing I can reach – the knot of her shirt, right above her bare stomach.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” she hisses, so I immediately let her go and raise my hands in surrender.
“Fine. Just don’t. Don’t tell him. Please?”
Jesus. I’m fucking begging this white trash nobody, and I never beg for anything.
When she doesn’t respond, I add, “I’ll do whatever you want, but you can’t tell him.”
“So, you’ll be my bitch? Jump when I say jump? Do what I say without argument?”
“Yes,” I grit out roughly because I’m not used to taking anyone’s orders. It won’t be easy. But what choice do I have?
“Give me your phone,” Maddie says, holding out her palm to me.
I pull the device from the front pocket of my navy-blue uniform slacks and hand it over.
Her own phone dings with a new message a second later.
“There. I have your number and you have mine. I’ll text you my address, and I expect you to come over after school.”
“Can’t. I have football practice,” I remind her.
“Then come over after practice. And no complaining or refusing. You do what I want, when I want it.”
“Sounds kinky,” I mutter.
“You wish,” she scoffs.
Yeah, I sort of do because I have no idea what else she’ll want from me. Which reminds me. “You can’t tell anyone about this part of our deal either. You know, that you’re blackmailing me? Especially not Blake.”
“Why not him especially?” she asks.
“No reason.”
“He thinks he wants me,” she says on a sigh with a roll of her dark green eyes.
I don’t respond, refusing to break his confidence on this when what I’m doing with
Collette behind his back is already so fucking bad.
“Trust me, he doesn’t.” With that, Maddie struts off like she just landed her own personal genie. In a way, I guess she has.
And instead of focusing on how screwed I am, I can’t stop thinking about her sexy, red panties covering her pretty, red cunt.
Chapter 3
Maddie
Holy shit.
It worked.
I’ve successfully blackmailed the school’s most popular jackass.
From day one of my sophomore year, I knew that presentation was the key to success in a place like this. I could never let them see me upset, or the vultures would descend and rip me apart.
So, I went the route of being a cold bitch who doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks of me. And I don’t. Mostly. All I want is to get a top rate education so that maybe I can afford to go to a college in town. My tuition at Mercy is free and includes breakfast and lunch. I don’t have to buy clothes or stress over what to wear five days a week thanks to the dress code that I somewhat abide by. And the school is just a ten-minute bus ride into town from our trailer.
Still, despite all of my bravado, I never would’ve had the balls to walk right up to the Royals’ table, sit down and start making demands without the blackmail photos and video. Do I feel bad for screwing over Aric? Hell no. He did this all to himself. It’s his fault for getting caught doing something so stupid.
Although, having him agree to our deal and actually have him go through with it are two different things. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see if he shows up to my place after practice today or not.
It all depends on how badly he doesn’t want his best friend to find out his dirty little secret. And I can’t wait to add a few more chapters to my current work in progress…
“You’re so brave for walking up and talking to the Royals like that. I envy you,” Hannah says when I sit down at what’s become our table at the back of the cafeteria with my tray of food. The girl looked so pathetic sitting all alone after the fallout with Royal this past spring, so I started sitting with her. It’s not like I have anything to lose when it comes to the social hierarchy in the school because I’m already at the bottom of the food chain.
“Eh, they’re just a bunch of spoiled mama’s boys,” I say with a grin before I start scarfing down my fries and burger almost simultaneously. Some girls may eat all cute and delicate like, but those girls have never been truly hungry. Sure, a few may be anorexic, starving themselves to lose three pounds or whatever, but they can eat whenever they so choose.
One summer when I was eight and Matt had just been born, I went four days with nothing but sink water and whatever I could find in our neighbor’s trash cans. It was all I knew to do after I spent our last seven dollars on a can of baby formula for him. Watered down, I made his bottles last a week until my dad stopped by and gave me a rare twenty to last me until school went back. This was all before I knew there were government welfare programs to help starving kids like us. Even if I had known, it wasn’t like I could just hop on a bus, stroll up to the front desk and ask them to help me without them investigating our home and taking my brother from me.
I loved him too much to let that happen, so I went without to make sure he got fed even when my mother didn’t come home for days while she was chasing another high. I had to get up to feed him throughout the night and sometimes skip school to stay home with him.
“How was your summer?” I ask Hannah after I put away every crumb of food on my tray.
“Boring. I stayed at my parents’ beach house alone for most of it, just to get out of town.”
I can tell by her tone that nearly three months of solitude at the beach is apparently not a fun thing for rich people. Again, these people have never lived in the chaos that is my life. One day and they would never complain about anything ever again.
“Any hot lifeguards?” I ask since it seems like a safe topic across all income levels.
“A few,” Hannah says with a grin.
“Nice!”
“Did you get invited to Sophie’s party this weekend?” she asks.
“Ha! No. Not that I would want to go even if I could,” I say since seeing kids my age who can’t legally drink yet getting wasted isn’t my idea of a good time. Not when I used to find my mother and father face down in their own puke after some particularly fun nights.
I was actually glad when they stopped coming home because I was tired of cleaning up their messes.
“I would give anything to be invited to parties again and to stop having my locker painted with obscenities.”
“Oh, fuck these losers,” I tell her. “In a year, we’ll be out of this place and will never have to see any of them again.”
“I really hope I get the art scholarship to Madison.”
“You will,” I assure her because her paintings are truly incredible. Not that I’m an art aficionado, obviously, but they’re pretty landscapes and images of un-posed people.
If anyone wants to get the hell out of Mercy Academy more than me, it’s Hannah.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I would’ve done what she did or not, but it wasn’t like she was in the wrong.
Last spring, there was a retake of the SATs, and Hannah overheard this skinny, dorky guy checking in using the name Royal Fitzpatrick. Since we go to school with Royal, and Hannah’s had to put up with the jerk for her entire life, she knew the boy signing in was not, in fact, Royal.
So, she spoke up and told the proctor after the test, showing him Facebook photos of the real Royal, and they promptly wiped his new score and last one just in case he cheated in the fall too. The board also informed the admin at Mercy, who suspended him for a month and refused to let him participate in any extracurricular activities for a year, including football, and told his father, who allegedly beat the shit out of him for embarrassing the family name in such a spectacular fashion. Royal finished the rest of his junior year from home, and no one saw him until the end of summer break.
Some rumors are that he was sent to a military-style boot camp. Others are that he was shipped off for some intense tutoring. And there were even a few whispers that contend he spent the time in some private hospital facility on the west coast either to recover from the injuries his father gave him or because he tried to kill himself.
Whatever happened to him, he came back to school this year looking like he’s ready to hurt people and make them suffer. His number one target? Poor Hannah, who now lives in high school purgatory with me just for being honest to a fault.
I get where she was coming from. Hannah, like myself, works her ass off to get the best grades and test scores. It’s not fair for rich pricks like Royal to get ahead in life by paying someone to do the hard work for him to secure his future at an Ivy League school.
That’s why I can’t stand Aric and his buddies, Blake and Royal. They never have to put in an actual effort at…anything while I struggle to provide three meals to my siblings most days.
It’s high time that karma is finally kicking their spoiled asses around a little.
Chapter 4
Aric
“Hey, man, what did Maddie want?” Blake asks as soon as he walks into the field house locker room after school. I know he’s been itching to ask since lunch, but we don’t have any afternoon periods together since he takes advanced math and shit while I’m still in the remedial, junior level classes. It’s not like I paid any attention to what my teachers were saying today either. No, I was anticipating Blake’s questions and trying to figure out what the fuck to say to him. I didn’t come up with anything good then and still haven’t.
I try my best to think like a girl, and fast, even though I don’t have conversations with many women, just my mom and sister. Finally, it hits me.
“Oh, Maddie was asking for my sister’s number.”
“Your sister? Caroline?” Blake repeats, jaw dropping. “Why? Is she a lesbian or some shit?”
“How the hell w
ould I know?” I reply. “But I’m pretty sure that Maddie just wants to ask Caroline about Hawthorne. I bet she wants to know poor people shit, like if they have scholarships or whatever.”
“Oh,” Blake mutters while chewing on his bottom lip, thinking over my response and hopefully believing it. “You think Maddie’s going to Hawthorne? I could definitely get into Hawthorne.”
“Dude, maybe it’s time for you to pick a new obsession,” I tell him. “Would you seriously follow her to college just to try and fuck her?”
“Hell yes.”
“You’re insane,” I tell him with a shake of my head. Even though his quest to get in Maddie’s panties isn’t even half as fucked up as what I’ve been doing behind his back with his mom.
Despite the guilt, I love being with Collette even though I know I shouldn’t, mostly since she’s married, not because she’s thirty-six and I’m eighteen. That’s right, Blake’s dad knocked her up when she was still in high school and he was in college. She graduated but never attended college, moved out of her parent’s house and into a home with his dad. She never got to experience any wild crazy twenties, which is why I think she started hitting on me. Collette has told me more than once that Blake’s dad only married her because he knocked her up, and now they pretty much hate each other but stay together for Blake’s sake.
But no matter how much I’ve enjoyed screwing around with Collette, we have to stop before someone else catches us. It’s bad enough that Maddie knows and is blackmailing me. Next time, it could be one of my parents or their friends who figure out what we’re up to.
I’m exhausted after football practice, but my day isn’t over just yet.
Before I can go back to my house and crash, I have to go be Maddie’s bitch. This should be loads of fun.
I follow my phone’s GPS turn by turn directions to the address she texted me earlier along with “I’m watching you” spelled out in finger pointing and wide eyed emojis. When I finally arrive at my destination – Godwin’s Trailer Park – I want to immediately turn around.
