by Elle East
Their conversation was boring. I liked hair and makeup and clothes as much as the next girl, but I didn’t like it that much. My friends back home and I would talk about that stuff a bit but mostly we would talk about other things. I just wanted lunch to be over so I could run back to my real friends and take an ibuprofen for the tension headache I now had.
But as I sat there something slowly started to dawn on me. I had made no progress in my mission to get dirt on the Kings, I had almost given that up as impossible, but I realized that maybe this could be my way in. Who was closer to the Kings than the Queens?
As I sat and listened to their boring, superficial chatter I realized that if I could “befriend” these girls I could possibly get invited to events that the Kings were at. Also, these girls knew them and if we got close enough, maybe they would give me information on Archer, Brett and Grayson.
I knew they were up to something, but maybe while they were using me, I could try to use them too. I realized, not without a little disappointment, that if I wanted to get close to the Kings, I guess I would have to get close to the Queens.
Chapter 12
After what felt like an eternity lunch was finally over and I practically ran out of the dining hall. Next I had History and luckily I had no Queens in that class, but I did have Grayson who gave me a searing look when he walked into the room just second before the class started—which was his usual timing. His eyes were dark and his cheekbones were even more pronounced as he glared at me as he passed by. I tried not to think about it but just focus on the lesson.
I didn’t look back the entire class and the second it was done I raced out of the room. I didn’t want to see Grayson’s tattooed fingers clenched into fists or the anger flashing like lightening on his face.
Next I had Biology and luckily Cecily was in that class, unluckily Jayla and Archer were there too. Cecily gave me a “WTF?”-look when I walked in and sat down next to her. We didn’t have time to talk before Jayla walked in and sat down on the other side of me.
All throughout the class I could feel the anger radiating off Archer like a furnace from the back of the room and I refused to look back there. Just like lunch, class dragged on until it was finally over and Cecily and I raced outside. We ran until we found a semi-private alcove and she dragged me in.
“What was that?!” she whispered loudly. “Everyone, and I mean everyone, is talking about you sitting with the Queens at lunch. I’ve never seen any non-Royalty sit with them before and neither have any of the other scholarship students. Why did they ask you to sit with them? And what did you even talk about?! The way the Kings stormed out… this is huge news. Everyone is wondering about you now.”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what they are up to and I hate it! I wanted to be with you guys so badly, but I couldn’t leave.”
“Yeah,” Cecily agreed. “There’s no way you could have turned down their invitation, that would have humiliated Victoria and your life would become even more of a living hell than it already is.”
“It sucked so much and I hope it never happens again,” I said before remembering my plan.
I regretfully realized that I needed them to ask me to sit with them again but couldn’t tell Cecily and that made me feel even more isolated. I would start having to lie to my friends and it made me feel guilty. Can you truly be friends if you’re hiding something so huge about yourself?
Cecily nodded sympathetically, and I felt even more ashamed.
“I really hope so… buuuut if it does happen again please tell me EVERYTHING they say. Deal?” Cecily said.
I laughed. “Deal.”
“I’m just so curious about them. Their customs, their culture, how they interact when they are in their primary peer group…” Cecily continued on as we left the alcove and started walking to class.
I agreed with Cecily in that the Royalty was an interesting tradition and I would be curious about it too if I wasn’t so stressed out by what I needed to accomplish while I was at this school. From far away the Kings and the Queens seemed like beautiful animals that when kept safely behind glass were fascinating to look at, but up close, when there was nothing to protect you, they suddenly seemed terrifying. Sitting at the head table was like walking into the lion’s den and I knew I was defenseless.
I had Art next and Cecily walked me most of the way before leaving to go to her class. When I walked in I saw Grace sitting at one of the six-person tables at the front. She waved me over and I turned and walked to her dejectedly—though when she was looking my way I gave her a happy fake smile.
When I sat down Grace continued the conversation we were all having at lunch. I wasn’t interested in anything she was saying but nodded and pretended and asked follow-up questions. As much as I didn’t want to, I would make these girls think I liked them… and then they were going to tell me all the Kings’ secrets.
The weekend came like a breath of fresh air. I went walking in the woods, did a lot of studying and went to the scholarship students’ Saturday night “Moviefest”—as they dubbed it. It was so much fun. I brought cookies that I had stolen from the dining hall and played board games with Manuel, Beth and Vijay. Vijay and I were so close at the end of the game, but he ended up winning by one point and I pretended to flip the table in anger. Everyone laughed, and it was nice that these kids got my humor.
On Sunday, Cecily, Ava and I studied together in Ava’s room. The girls said they didn’t want to come up to mine, even though it was the biggest, because it was spooky. They told me a bit more about Jenny. They said she was a very quiet girl, and she lived in my room because that was the only one available when she came at the beginning of last year.
“She was here less than a year?” I asked, startled.
Cecily nodded. The three of us sat cross-legged on Ava’s couches with our computers in our laps.
“She was bullied really badly, worse than any of us,” Ava said. “We aren’t really sure why though, because she wasn’t any different from the rest of us, but we think it was because they sensed that she was the weakest or something. When she started here, she barely said a word, even to us. She would kind of rush passed us down the stairs if she saw anyone. We barely saw her in the dining hall so we weren’t sure how she was getting food, but when we did see her there, she would sit with us because that’s the only place she could sit. From the little we found out about her she seemed sweet but she quickly retreated back into her shell when the bullying kicked up in intensity. We tried to help but there’s only so much you can do.”
I let that sink in for a moment. I felt bad for Jenny; I knew better than anyone what it was like to be the target of the school’s animosity.
“We invited her to Moviefest and she came a couple of times. It was nice having her there, she didn’t say a lot but we all stick together so it felt kind of weird when she wasn’t there,” Cecily added.
“And you said that Victoria ended up killing her?” I remembered what they had told me on my first day in the dining room.
Cecily shook her head. “That’s just a rumor. The Royalty do little of their bullying directly, they don’t want to get their hands dirty. They mostly direct the rest of the school and the other students carry out their bidding. The rumor is that Victoria killed her but there’s literally no proof and if there was she would be in jail right now.”
“She doesn’t seem capable of that,” I said, and when Ava and Cecily both gave me a critical look I added, “I mean I’m sure she’s an awful person but I can’t imagine she’s capable of murder—she’s just a high school student after all.”
There was a long silent pause during which I started getting uncomfortable. Ava and Cecily were giving me searching looks, but I didn’t meet their gaze.
Finally, Cecily said, “We wanted to warn you to be careful.”
“The Queens are interested in you for some reason but no one knows why,” Ava added.
“They are being nice right now, but we aren’t sure it’s ge
nuine,” Cecily said.
“Probably isn’t,” said Ava.
“What is this? An intervention?” I laughed but their faces stayed serious.
“We just wanted to warn you. We aren’t sure what’s going on but we know they can’t be trusted,” said Ava.
“Please, just promise us you’ll be careful,” Cecily added.
“I promise, guys! I know that they aren’t being nice to me and asking me to sit at their table because they think I’m awesome and want to be my friend. I know they are up to something and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but I don’t have a choice. Just like you said, I can’t say no to them.”
They both nodded reluctantly.
I wished that I could have told them the real reason why I needed the Queens. Every time I lied by omission I felt the chasm between us grow larger. It felt like crap.
We spent the rest of the afternoon studying quietly before heading down for an uneventful dinner. Meals in the dining hall on the weekends were much more informal than during the week. Monday to Friday the meal times were strict but on the weekends everyone ate whenever they wanted, which was nice because whatever time you went it was usually half empty. In the dining hall no one really messed with the scholarship students on the weekend, it was like bullying was the other students’ job and even they needed to take a break from it and reset for the week.
I called it an early night. I got ready for bed in my large, luxuriously decorated bathroom with my toiletries that came from the dollar store. I changed out of the fancy Crestmoore “casual” slacks and polo shirt that we were allowed to wear on the weekends and into my cheap tights and baggy punk band t-shirt. I slipped under the covers, which I’m sure cost hundreds of dollars and had a thread-count of at least ten million. I reached over to turn off the light and then put my earplugs in.
I lay in the darkened room for a while, thinking. The moon came in through the upper windows and made shafts of light that reached the floor in rectangles. Even though it was already Fall and chilly, I enjoyed having the smaller windows open so that the ocean breeze blew through my large room and left the smell of salt in the air.
I took stock of what had happened to me so far during my time at Crestmoore. All the other students hated my guts, besides the scholarship students—and apparently the Queens. The Kings despised me and didn’t want me there so they were probably the main reason I was getting bullied so much worse than the other charity cases. I did not have any incriminating information on the Kings yet, but I had one possible lead, the Queens, who for some reason had taken an interest in me—probably for nefarious reasons. I was pretty sure they were building up to something bad, but in the meantime I could try to use them.
I was really starting to enjoy hanging out with my real friends, the scholarship students. I felt like I had known them longer than the three weeks I’d been at the school.
Lastly, despite the brutal academic competition, I was doing well in all my courses and was pretty sure I would graduate if I kept it up.
I had been so busy that I hadn’t had time to really think about what happened between me, Brett, Archer and Grayson. Maybe I had not given myself time to think about it on purpose. When the detective approached me with the deal, I was in survival mode; I wasn’t thinking about anything other than saving my mom and avoiding ending up in an orphanage, but I realized after I got here that if the guys had been the same people that I knew when we were kids then I wouldn’t have been able to turn them in. I guess they did me a favor by being assholes, I thought bitterly.
But despite how they were treating me, a part of me still felt guilty—and that pissed me off. They didn’t care about me anymore. I was just another poor charity case to them now. As painful as it was to think about, our friendship was truly dead. I winced. And as if my relationship with the Kings—I couldn’t help but roll my eyes whenever anyone called them that, it sounded so overdramatic and pretentious—wasn’t bad enough there was another issue that I wasn’t giving myself any time to think about, and that was how attracted I was to them.
They were all incredibly handsome guys, sure, but I had seen hot guys before—I maybe even had one interested in me right now, Dean—but the way my body reacted to their presence was intense. It felt so primal but also familiar. I couldn’t explain it and I didn’t like to think about it because it made my pulse race.
Even though I tried to push the intrusive thoughts away, sudden flashes of Grayson’s long fingers covered in art tapping impatiently on the desk made their way into my brain and I wished those skilled fingers would play me instead. Or images of Brett’s huge biceps flex as he moved or picked something up and I’d imagine my hand wrapped around those muscles, just barely getting halfway around. Or the way Archer bit his full lower lip and smirked when someone would say something he found funny. I wanted it to be my teeth biting his lip.
I was disgusted with myself for how hot and bothered they made me. They had been nothing but cruel and awful to me. They hated me. They wanted to torture me. But yet I still couldn’t stop myself from imagining their bodies pressed against mine. Their arms wrapped possessively around my waist. Their demanding lips on my neck.
“Ugh!” I sighed and rolled over.
No wonder I hadn’t allowed myself to think about it. It was so pathetic of me. I always thought of myself as a strong person, not some weak-kneed heroine in some romance novel. Besides, my story already had a possible love interest. I couldn’t tell if Dean was 100% into me, but I suspected he might be. We had been emailing daily, and they were often the best part of my day and when the bullying got really bad his emails kept me going. I didn’t tell him what Crestmoore was really like; I kept it positive and vague.
He was fun to talk to, kind of serious but also with a touch of sarcasm. I hadn’t asked if he had a girlfriend yet because I was all the way in another state and working with his dad, not really the best circumstances to start a relationship under. Also, I had never actually had a real relationship before. I had briefly dated guys, sure, but I hadn’t wanted to get serious with anyone before because I had never felt that spark. Given the circumstances, it scared me that I was pretty sure I was feeling that spark with Dean.
“Ugh!” I rolled over again.
As if my life wasn’t complicated enough without all these guys.
I shook my head and willed myself to go to sleep. No more thinking about boys tonight. I reached over to touch the cool metal of the Eiffel Tower.
“Goodnight, Mom,” I whispered and then tried to get some sleep.
Chapter 13
“Maddy!” Victoria called to me as I walked in the dining hall.
“Oh no, not again,” I whispered before remembering that I wanted to sit with them.
I walked past the charity table and saw all the scholarship students each give me either a wary look or sympathetic one. I walked up to the head table and if looks could kill the ones that the Kings all shot at me would have left me dead several times over. I gulped before steeling myself and taking a seat in between Jayla and Claudia.
“I don’t know what you are playing at, Victoria, bringing a charity case to sit at the head table again but you don’t want to start this war with us,” Archer threatened in a quiet voice and I shivered from the intensity.
“What war?” Victoria asked innocently. “I like Maddy, she’s got balls and I admire that. The other scholarship students either ran screaming from the school or had nervous breakdowns and were so scared they would shake whenever you walked by. But Maddy can take it and I like that. She’s my friend now so deal the fuck with it and grow up. If you don’t like it, you can sit somewhere else.”
In the painful silence that followed I could feel the battle between them as if they were screaming at each other. Sweat started to bead on my forehead I was so uncomfortable. An eternity later Archer slammed his hands on the table making all the Queens, and me, jump—except for Victoria. She didn’t flinch even the slightest.
Arche
r was about to say something but it seemed like he couldn’t find the words and instead growled in disgust before standing up. Grayson and Brett stood up too. The three of them loomed large and menacing over the table. Even though Victoria was only half their size, she seemed to stand her ground, even from a sitting position.
“You don’t want to do this with us, Victoria,” Archer finally said.
Victoria just smiled back serenely.
He turned away in disgust and stalked down the aisle towards the exit.
Brett gave Victoria one final glare that looked terrifying on his devastatingly chiseled face, then followed after Archer. Grayson was last and said to Victoria, “You fucked up, Your Highness.”
“I don’t think I did,” she said calmly in her sweet, innocent voice.
Grayson opened his mouth to say something else, the fury on his face plainly obvious, but after staring at Victoria for a couple more seconds he closed it. He spun around and followed after the other Kings.
I could see most of the students' heads turn to follow the Kings then they looked back up at the head table. My cheeks were already flushed, but I sunk lower in my chair under the scrutiny of the entire student body. Victoria seemed unaffected and picked up her fork to happily continue eating her salad as if nothing had happened. The other Queens followed her lead and started eating again too. Slowly their superficial conversation started up again.
A waiter approached me and asked to take my order. I hadn’t had time to even look at the menu since I sat down.
“Uhh… this, please,” I pointed to something random on the menu.
My heart was still beating quickly after the confrontation that had just taken place. I didn’t think I could ever get used to seeing the Kings that angry. They were terrifying. They seemed so well-bred that they could cut you to pieces with words that sounded polite but were actually devastating—but they were also built like beasts and I had no doubt they could take almost anyone in a fight. There was a reason why they were Kings.
