by C. R. Jane
I shrug, unsure about any of it, but I can’t deny that having such gorgeous guys studying me does things to my confidence. No one’s ever looked at me this way before.
The cafeteria is packed today as we head over to the line to get our food. Chattering and laughter fills the room, and as always, most of the scholarship students sit gathered close, while the rest of the seats are occupied by the beautiful ones. There must be an unwritten rule that to be rich and have everything handed to you on a silver platter, means you also get to look spectacular.
“What are you getting today?” Mercy asks as she reaches for a bowl of mac and cheese.
I take the packed container titled, roast with mashed potatoes and peas. “Feel like something that reminds me of home.”
“I spoke to Mom last night and they’re going on a trip to Vegas, without me.” Mercy pouts. “I honestly feel like they’re happier with me gone from home.”
“They’re definitely missing you.”
“Yeah, all the way from Vegas,” she drones sarcastically.
We make our way to an empty spot at the end of a table and sit across from each other, placing our meals down. “Well, Dad did say I was grounded for life after he caught me with my neighbor. Maybe he meant it and that included me not going on family vacations.”
“Speaking of your neighbor, do you keep in touch with him?”
I take a mouthful of mashed potatoes, loving their creaminess. But it isn’t quite like Mom’s. It lacks whatever secret seasoning she puts in hers.
“Last I heard, Mom said he’s on the run from the cops. Something about drugs.”
Across the room, Alexander and his gang saunter into the room like popstars, students stepping out of their way. The table they select empties in seconds. Seems even amid their elite kind, they are at the top of the hierarchy. Finn heads to the food line, while the other three, slouch into their seats. Nyx is wearing headphones and bopping his head, Dante’s eyes are on me, and he winks. I drop my gaze at once, my heart jackhammering in my chest, every inch of me burning up. I remember his closeness back in class, his small touch that left me shuddering.
I chance a look back up, and it’s Alexander who’s looking at me now and the world falls away. His head lower, eyes cloaked, shadows mask his features. Why’s he looking at me like he might yell at me...or eat me?
“Hello?” Mercy clicks a finger in my face, and I refocus. “Did you even listen to what I just said?” She glances over her shoulder at them and sighs.
“Why don’t you just go over and kiss them already.”
“Are you crazy?” I shake my head and dig into my food.
“Don’t call me crazy.” Her voice grows serious, and I remember Alexander and his pack calling her that earlier.
“You’re right, I shouldn’t say that. Sorry.” I want to change the topic, not wanting to dwell on her hurt feelings. “So, your neighbor is wanted for doing drugs?”
She scoops a spoonful of mac and cheese into her mouth, chewing before she responds. “He’s innocent. He told me he’d gotten into some trouble with a gang and they were after him. I bet they framed him.”
I open my mouth to reply when a loud clunk sounds from across the room, echoing off the walls, and I flinch in my seat. Mercy and I both turn to find Alexander and Dante in a brawl, complete with punches and blocks like they’re UFC fighters and not teenage students. Someone’s nearby lunch is all over the floor and everyone is backing away from the duo.
I’m frozen in my seat, startled at the scene.
“Holy shit.” Mercy’s on her chair, staring out over the crowd who are cheering at the fight.
When the masses close in and block my view, I climb on my chair.
Dante delivers a hit right to Alexander’s face, who rocks backward, and rushes right back at him, furious and growling.
My pulse is racing at seeing them battle. I’ve seen my fair share of school fights, but this is different. They’re moving with such swiftness, almost floating on air. Fists swing, and they slam into each other, throwing each other off their feet, but each leap back up as if nothing can stop them. Their training shows here, but what in the world are they fighting about?
More students crowd closer with no sign of a teacher. Finn is at their table, unmoving and with four drink containers on his tray, untouched. Nyx shoves past the hoards and jumps in between his friends, shoving them aside.
“Enough,” he growls.
Alexander and Dante eye each other, and everyone falls silent as if this is just the beginning.
Dante unleashes a loud, forced laugh, and sticks his hand out. “No hard feelings?” he snarls.
Alexander’s upper lip curls upward, and the look on his face isn’t of someone who’s going to stop until he has the final hit. I can’t keep watching as it reminds me too much of the bullies at my old school, where they got off on being the toughest, never backing down. I don’t want to see that again. I’m starting fresh at this school, and this right here is a reason why I need to keep my distance from the pack.
Mercy looks at me and hops down from her chair as well.
A heartbeat later, Dante is tossed across the room, and slams into the wall, bringing down with him several chairs and what looks like pieces of the wall. He groans, laying there like a sack.
“Sweet Jesus!” I jump to my feet and step closer to help him, but he’s laughing and already staggering to his feet before I can get there.
He brushes down his shirt and glances over to me, then winks. “I’m fine, sugar.”
He turns and heads out of the room. I collapse back into my seat and Alexander storms across the room before heading after him, followed by Finn.
“What the hell was that?”
Mercy shovels more food into her mouth and shrugs. “Alexander’s a hot head and their gang leader. Dante’s his stepbrother and those two are always fighting. It’s normal.”
Step brother?
Everyone in the cafeteria returns to their meals, their chatter louder.
“What do they fight about?” I ask.
“Heard a rumor Dante stole his girlfriend.”
I stiffen, suddenly feeling a ping of fire in my chest. “Alexander has a girlfriend?” He told me he didn’t.
“Ex. They split up. You see the guys share girlfriends, everyone knows this, but Dante did something bad to mess up their relationship and ever since those two have been at each others’ throats.”
“Wait, what? They share a girlfriend between the two of them?”
Mercy lifted her chin. “Between the four of them sometimes.”
“Hell. What girl would ever agree to that?”
Mercy raises one of her brows, staring at me with sarcasm written all over her face. “So, you’d say no to those four gods if they all wanted to shower you with kisses and their bodies?”
“Well, when you put it that way.” I laugh. “But still, I’ve never had a steady boyfriend for longer than a month. Imagine four.”
“I bet you’re imagining it though.” Her lips pull into a filthy smirk. “All of them naked and all over you.”
“Stop! I’m eating.” But it’s too late because the image is in my head, and I’m blushing.
Mercy is giggling to herself.
A loud whistle rings through the room, and we both shudder in our seats, before turning toward the culprit. “What now?”
Nyx.
He’s standing on the table, his fingers in his mouth before unleashing another ear-piercing whistle.
He’s got everyone’s attention as he stands tall in his tailored school pants, his black shirt half untucked, and his collar upright around his nape. All I can stare at are his eyes though, so blue they’re like the clearest sea.
He rakes a hand through his hair, and I find myself checking out the muscles in his bicep, and how the fabric of his shirt strains as he moves.
“Party tonight out at Devil’s Playground. You know who’s allowed to come,” he says casting a look at the bea
utiful non-scholarship tables...and then me. “Drinks and music obviously. No teachers. Kicks off at eleven.” He leaps down and strolls across the cafeteria, smug and proud of himself while everyone returns to their meals, their chatter louder still.
I don’t understand these guys. His friends just about killed each other, and he’s planning a party?
As he strolls past us, he offers me the brightest smirk. “See you there.” Then he’s gone.
I turn to my friend. “What’s the Devil’s Playground?”
“It’s the Grovethon Wilds near our school. I’ll tell you more about it when we get to your room to start planning for this party.”
I ignore her crazy idea that we’re going to a party and stare at the door where all four guys just left. The bell rings and everyone is heading back to class. We dump our trash in the bins and join the hoard, but my mind is racing with Alexander and Dante’s fight, how the four of them share one girlfriend. Why would they do that?
As we push forward down the hall with the masses, a bony fist connects with my shoulder blade, and I lurch forward, cringing.
I spin and find Clarissa there, her nose wrinkled with hatred. “Looking forward to barbecuing you on the fire if you dare to show up at that party.”
I’m lost for words and wrack my brain for a comeback at her threat, but Mercy is at my side, standing tall, and I’m so proud of her. Students rush past us.
“The joke’s on you. We won’t be going anywhere near the fire.” She grips her hips, and I cringe at her comeback, while Clarissa’s brow furrows with trying to make sense of my friend’s response.
“You’re crazy you know that.” She glares at Mercy.
My friend shrugs and replies, “I know. Isn’t it great?”
Clarissa huffs and storms past me, knocking her shoulder into mine once again, and I stumble to catch my balance.
“She’s such a bitch. But girl you just froze there,” Mercy murmurs.
I push down the embarrassment swallowing me, hating that familiar feeling of being less… so much less important than Clarissa and having my new friend see me this way. “She caught me off guard,” I mutter.
Mercy throws an arm around my shoulders and draws me closer. “Don’t worry, we’re BFFs. Always got your back. It’s the two of us now.”
And as lame as her response to Clarissa was, I adore it. I used to hate when Alexia cornered me at my old school. She’d curse me, hit me, and no one ever came to my rescue. Ever. No one told her to stop. I’d been alone, and I loathed going to school. Hated every freaking day because I always looked over my shoulder, cross checked in any hallway to avoid her.
I lean against Mercy and whisper, “Thanks.”
Chapter 10
"Mercy, we’re not going to that party," I say, crossing my arms in front of me staunchly as soon as we get to my room.
She laughs at me.
"Are you kidding me? I haven't been allowed to go to these parties since I came here. You’re an automatic in, and I'm totally riding your coattails to this party. It's your obligation as my best friend to do this for me," she says as I sigh, but I can feel myself melting at her use of the term "best friend."
What can I say? I mustn’t have been loved enough as a child.
"What makes you think we’ll even be allowed to go? His invitation was obviously intended for them and the other non-scholarship students."
She laughs at me again. It’s becoming an annoying habit. "Do I need to rehash what just happened in class for you again?” She clears her throat. “She mine. You no touch. You stay away,” she says in a deep caveman voice, trying to imitate the guys.
I blush, shaking my head. Meanwhile the whole time I’m hoping what she just said is true. But it can’t be true, right?
"I’ve never really been to a party before. And I have a feeling that the parties here are a little bit different than the ones back home where my classmates used to get trashed at.”
"Well, of course they're going to be different. Obviously, your classmates didn't have the bazillion dollars in their bank accounts and unlimited access to all of Mommy and Daddy's resources. Oh, and the parties here are at the Devil’s Playground, so of course there's that as well."
"Ok, explain to me about the Devil's Playground. You said you would tell me in here.”
Her eyes take on that wide, almost manic look that she gets whenever she starts talking about something that she is truly passionate about.
“The devil's playground. I've done so much reading about it! It’s basically a graveyard for mythical creatures. Leprechauns, fairies, ghouls, etc…"
I sigh. "Mercy, please tell me you don't really believe in that stuff."
"Tell you I don't believe it?” she replies indignantly. “Are you kidding me? I know some of the stuff that I say is a little out there, but I know this is real. You’ll see when we get there, there's definitely something way off about those woods. And people have sightings of ghosts there all the time."
"Okay, ghosts! Doesn’t that imply that regular people have died there? Not paranormal creatures?" I walk to my closet and start looking through it, trying to see if there is anything in there that would be adequate for a party. A party with Them.
She decides to join me in the closet. "My dear girl, we have so much to open up your eyes to. Obviously paranormal creatures are going to have ghosts as well. They all die at some point...even the ones that are supposed to be able to live forever."
I look at her incredulously, shaking my head. "Okay, I'll bite. Tell me about the ghosts.”
Apparently, that was the opening she had been waiting for. She walks over to my bed and hops onto it, making herself comfortable, and pulling a pillow close to her chest as she stares up at the ceiling as if in thought.
"Well, there was Sonja Henderson. She was a student in the class ahead of us. She disappeared the first fall I arrived. Apparently, she was out with her boyfriend Dave, and then all of a sudden, she was gone. He ran back to the school screaming about seeing a ghost with red eyes. The school searched for her for weeks. They even brought in the authorities, which they never do. But no one could find her."
A shiver of unease races down my body. I push it away. Things happen to people all the time. It doesn’t mean that it was caused because of fairytale creatures.
"And then five years ago there was a scholarship student who was in the forest collecting rock samples for her biology class. She was never seen again after that. And when they went to look for her, all they found were her clothes, which looked like they had been shredded with claws."
I look back at her, my mouth open. I mean I was too level-headed to believe her stories, but still...they were kind of freaky. "Are you sure that these aren’t just legends. Things started by administration to make sure we don't venture too far into the forest?"
She smirks as she can hear the slight quiver in my voice. She was obviously succeeding in scaring me a bit, and she leans in to look at me, happy to have an audience.
“There's more. At night you can hear things coming from the forest. Strange noises that almost sound like a pack of demented wolves. Sometimes there's actually screams that you can hear, and everyone knows to stay away from the forest on Halloween."
I drop the dress on the floor that I'd just picked out. "All right, that's it. We're not going." She jumps off the bed frantically. “What are you talking about?"
"You just told me this forest was haunted and that students have died. Now you want to go to the party, with Them. With our luck we’re going to be stuffed in a carnivorous tree or something and left for dead."
She rolls her eyes. "Stuffed into a carnivorous tree? Surely you know they would be more creative than that." She looks at me calculatingly. “Don’t you want to see them? Don’t you want to make sure some other girl isn’t getting her claws in them?"
I glance at the ceiling in a “have mercy on my soul” kind of way. "For the last time, there's nothing going on with me and them. Look at them, look a
t me. It's never gonna happen."
"Girl, we need to work on your confidence," says Mercy, now back on my bed, flipping through a magazine. "I've already told you that you look just like them, better in fact."
She looks at me suspiciously all of a sudden. “Are you sure you don't have anything to tell me?" I wrinkle my nose at her, and she gives me a grin.
I pick up the dress I dropped off the floor and come to sit by her. "I was bullied at my old school,” I begin softly. “A lot. They told me I was nothing, less than nothing in fact. There was a group of girls that made it their mission to make my life miserable. I was invisible except for the bullying. They called me ghost girl because they knew no one really saw me." I struggle to hold back the tears that are threatening to fall. I had always tried to act really brave about all of that, but I knew it was something that would affect me for a very long time.
Mercy puts her arm around me. She then looks me over with a strange expression on her face. “That’s really strange," she murmurs.
"Strange?" I ask incredulously and a bit hurt.
"Yes, the fact that no one saw you there. I feel like everyone sees you here. I can’t imagine that there was anyone at your last school that was prettier than the people here. And you definitely stand out here."
"That's just how it was," I say as she hops off the bed and claps her hands together. "Well we're gonna work on you getting over the past. There might be monsters like Clarissa here, but at least you aren’t a ghost girl."
I laugh at the way she says “ghost girl” even though the reality of being one was not fun.
Mercy looks at the clock on the wall. "Eeek, please start getting ready."
I look at the time, it wasn’t going to be 11 for at least five hours. "Um, Mercy. We have the whole evening to get ready."
