by Elle East
“Of course!” Victoria laughed.
I started getting nervous, something wasn’t right.
“You’re going to do great,” Grace said from somewhere behind me, but I couldn’t quite figure out where she was.
“Oh thank you,” I said.
“You’re going to kill them!” Jayla said enthusiastically.
“Thanks, Jayla, you doofus.” I laughed uproariously at my joke.
“Time to put your uniform on,” Victoria said as she helped me stand up and we walked over to where the uniform was hanging on a clothes hanger.
“What was in those shots?” I asked. “They were super strong.”
“Just vodka, peach juice and grenadine. Don’t worry, it’s probably just nerves. It’ll go away once you’re on the field performing for everyone.”
“I guess,” I mumbled thickly. “I do feel prettyyyy good right about now.”
“Here,” she said as she helped me out of my clothes.
My head was swimming, and I wasn’t really aware of what was happening until I realized that I was dressed in my uniform.
“Ok, lets go!” Victoria called through the fog.
We walked out of the dorm and across the grass of the soccer field. The cool air helped clear my head, and I felt a bit better. I shook it off as we walked. I looked into the stands and was surprised to see how many students had turned out to see the try outs. The Queens had told me that cheerleading was a big thing at the school so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised. The shots had me feeling good and relaxed so the audience didn’t bother me much.
The soccer field had a unique design. There were stone bleachers in a crescent shape that followed the curve of the hill they were buried in and behind them, at the top of the hill, overseeing the island, was the school building which mirrored the same curve. It was a similar shape as the steps at the front of the building. The bleachers were huge and could hold a couple thousand people—but there weren’t that many on this day, there were probably about five hundred students bundled in fall coats and scarves in the Crestmoore colors.
We walked across the field and took a seat in the front row. As I sat down, I almost slipped off and I laughed.
“You’re up next, Maddy,” Victoria told me.
“Ready!” I said enthusiastically.
“Great! Go!” I heard her say, and I took off.
I ran head first out on to the field before turning around. I stared up at all the students spread out before me. They swam and blurred in front of my eyes.
I needed to start my cheer! I realized. I moved my hands into position and then started laughing when I realized that I had pom-poms in my hands and hadn’t even noticed.
I was wayyyy too drunk.
“Go on, Maddy!” Victoria called over encouragingly.
I got back into my start position and started the silly cheer the Queens had taught me. I was not a natural dancer by any means but the routine was simple enough.
“Go, Eagles, go!” I yelled with a smile on my face.
There was no music, only the ever present sound of the wind and the waves. My voice sounded small and out of place. I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, but I kept going. I raised my voice louder so that it sounded more confident in the silence. I turned around and flipped up my skirt cheekily for a second, one of the moves we had practiced in the Queens’ Study, to show off the opaque black tights that were part of the uniform.
“Fly, Eagles, fly into victory!” I cheered.
Through the fog in my brain I felt that something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I moved into the last part of the routine which was the arm flapping to pretend that I was an eagle.
That was when I realized that the whole crowd was laughing at me.
I stopped and slowly lowered my arms. My exaggerated smile slowly faded from my face.
One voice that I didn’t recognize floated across the field to me, “It’s the Falcons, you idiot!” And the crowd laughed even harder.
I was so confused and just stood there for… I wasn’t sure how long. Eventually Victoria and the other Queens swam into my field of view.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Victoria was smiling at me without any trace of the fake kindness and warmth that I had gotten used to. Her eyes were cold and calculating and she looked terrifying.
“There’s no cheerleading team at this school,” she said in an ice cold voice.
“What?” I didn’t understand.
“Do you really think that a school with such high academic standards would waste its time with cheerleading?”
I shook my head. Through my cloudy brain I was starting to realize what was happening. This was Victoria’s plan? To get me drunk and make me do a dumb cheer in front of the school? Who cares? That seemed like so much work for not enough pay off.
“Also,” she added. “You’re not wearing any panties.”
“Huh?” I looked down and then my heart slowly dropped.
I wasn’t wearing tights either; I was staring at my bare legs. I had just flashed hundreds of students.
Victoria narrowed her eyes. “You’re an idiot, Madeline Baker. As if we’d ever be friends with someone like you. We are Queens while you are a gutter trash, scholarship student who doesn’t deserve to be here.”
I felt her words sink in to my alcohol-soaked brain. Part of their humiliation had been that for the last couple weeks the rest of the student body knew that the Queens were only pretending to be my friends and I looked like I was too naïve to see it. The rest of the school was laughing behind my back. Then the Queens had made this stupid, gullible girl do a ridiculous cheer for the wrong sports team, for a cheerleading squad that didn’t even exist, and flash everyone. They had wanted to show everyone how dumb I was.
“We aren’t your friends and you are a fucking moron for ever thinking that we were. You should probably just kill yourself now, save us the trouble.” With those final words Victoria turned and walked off the field.
The other Queens all gave me cold, mocking smiles before following her.
I stood there. The weight of her words keeping me stuck in place. I could see the students in the bleachers slowly start trickling out, heading back to the school or to their dorms. I saw a large figure was walking over to me. I could barely see him through my spinning vision.
“I told you so,” I heard Brett’s hard voice say.
I couldn’t stand upright any longer. I fell backwards, and the world went black.
Chapter 20
After waking up in the nurse’s office, and being told I had alcohol poisoning, they gave me detention and sent me back to class.
With the Queens no longer pretending to be nice to me, my life at Crestmoore became a living hell again—not that it was great before that. The bullying ramped up in intensity and I didn’t have the scholarship students anymore for support. They were sympathetic about what had happened, but I could tell they didn’t trust me anymore and kept their distance. I was truly alone now.
Garbage started being piled in front of my door again. One day as I walked to my locker between classes to get my notes I smelled something burning and dread formed in the pit of my stomach. I rushed over and sure enough it was coming from my locker. I threw it open and without thinking stuck my foot in to stomp on the flames. Small pieces of burning paper fluttered around me as I put the fire out.
When I was done I stepped back to look at the damage. The contents of my locker were still smoldering. I could see that my notes were ruined but more important to me was my sketchbook that was still smoking with half the cover burned away. It was ruined. I slammed my locker shut.
There were several students standing around watching me and snickering. I wanted to go push them over, call them names, grab their bags and throw them down the hall—but I knew I couldn’t. It was then that I saw the three guys standing at the end of the hallway, shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at me. They looked like an intimidat
ing, rich, sexy wall. I knew they had done this. I was so pissed, but I spun on my heel and walked the opposite way. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing how much their prank had affected me.
In Biology it was the part of the semester where we had to dissect frogs. A lot of the students were complaining and didn’t want to do it. I didn’t really want to cut up a dead animal either, but I was just going to get it done and move on. We had to go up one-by-one to the lab table at the side of the room to pick up our frogs. I picked up my covered tray and brought it back to my seat at the front of the room on the opposite side of the other scholarship students.
“If anyone is feeling squeamish or nauseous, please raise your hand to let me know,” the teacher said before telling us to take off the lids.
I took it off and my eyes went wide. Instead of a frog there was a dead mammal on my tray. As I stared at it I saw the snout and the tail and realized it was a piglet, probably in the fetal stage. I didn’t know what to do. I looked around the room, several students were looking at me and eagerly waiting to see what I’d do. In the back of the classroom Jayla was giggling with her hand on her mouth, Archer was sitting next to her and staring at me.
They all wanted to see how I’d react. They wanted me to freak out; they wanted me to cry, to run out of the room, but I would not give them the satisfaction. In light of this new wave of intense bullying I decided that I would react with calm and poise—that was how I would win. I would not let them see that they were getting to me.
I calmly stood up, picked up my tray and walked to the front of the class. Our teacher was about to start the lesson.
“What is it, Miss Baker?”
I placed my tray down on his desk. I could tell that he was annoyed at my interruption but when his eyes went down to the tray they bulged.
“Someone put a pig on my tray instead of a frog,” I explained in the most neutral voice I could manage.
He seemed a bit flustered. “I don’t know how that’s possible… but the supply company does provide fetal pigs as one of the dissection options, there must have been a mistake with this one. I still don’t understand though, I ordered only frogs.”
I didn’t want to tell him that it wasn’t the company’s fault and it probably wasn’t his either—unless one of the Royalty had paid him to switch it and he was just a fantastic actor.
“Go grab another tray. Miss Clemens got a note from her doctor and so she isn’t in class today, you may have her frog.”
I went back over to the lab table and picked up the last remaining tray and carried it to my desk. The teacher started the lecture. I picked up the lid; it was a frog this time. The rest of the class was uneventful.
During lunch at the beginning of the next week, I was doing my usual routine of grabbing food and sneaking it out of the dining hall so I could eat it alone in one of the stairwells, when a student I didn’t recognize came along and purposely bumped into me. The tomato soup she was carrying spilled all down the front of my uniform, completely soaking it.
“I’m so sorry!” she said with a smile that said she knew exactly what she was doing and that she wasn’t sorry in the slightest.
The dining hall erupted in laughter, I should have been used to it by then but it was hard to get used to the sounds of hundreds of people laughing at you. I stormed out and headed back to the Bell Tower to change.
When I got to my room, I angrily threw the garbage bags to the side and went in. I stripped off my tomato-covered clothes, tossing them in the hamper, and pulled on a fresh uniform.
Oh no, what’s this? I thought in horror as I stared in the mirror. Someone had come in to my room and cut boob holes out of my shirt, you could see my black bra. I pulled my blazer over to cover it and was horrified to see that boob holes had been cut out of it as well.
“Oh no!” I moaned.
These clothes were incredibly expensive. There was no way I could afford to buy more. With dread I realized that I would have to ask the detective to spend more money on me.
I pulled out the rest of my shirts but I already knew what I would find. They had all been cut. I pulled out my cardigans and my jackets but it was the same thing. I felt defeated.
I didn’t know what I to do. I had to leave for class and Crestmoore had very strict uniform requirements. If you weren’t wearing your uniform that was an automatic detention. I also hated knowing that someone had been in my room, though I shouldn’t have been surprised, ever since I came home to find Brett on my bed I knew that the Royalty could get access to my room. They had probably paid off the janitors for a master key or something.
I picked myself up. This wasn’t what would undo me. I had been through things at this school which were way worse than this. All I could do was put on my street clothes, head to class, and deal with this after. I put on a white t-shirt and a black hoodie I had brought from home over my tartan skirt.
As I walked into History, the teacher’s eyes immediately narrowed on me.
“Miss Baker, you do know our uniform policy do you not?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.
“Detention,” she said simply, before turning back to the book she was reading before class started.
I knew it was no use to argue. I had no proof of who had messed with my clothes so it would be my word against no one and I knew from experience that the teachers were not inclined to take my side. I accepted the detention and took a seat on the far side of the room. In the back of the class I heard Grayson snickering, and it made my blood boil. I hated him. I hated all of them.
At the end of the day I headed to detention, which was held in a classroom on the main floor. As I walked in I saw Grayson draped over a seat in the back. His long legs were spread wide, and he was slouched over, looking effortlessly casual and cocky as always. I rolled my eyes and groaned, as if detention couldn’t get any worse. He smirked at me and motioned to a seat next to him.
Yeah right, I thought and pointedly took a seat at the front of the class.
The teacher hadn’t come yet and there were no other students. I didn’t want to be alone with Grayson; I didn’t trust him—and I especially didn’t want to be in the same room as him when he started talking.
“I can’t believe little Miss Goody Two-Shoes got detention. What did you do? Forget to bring the teacher an apple?”
“You know exactly why I’m here,” I shot back.
“No, what happened?” he asked sincerely.
I rolled my eyes. “You know that holes were cut in all the boobs of my shirts.”
Grayson snorted, and I wanted to kick myself. He had just wanted to make me say it.
“You’re exasperating, you know that?” I said angrily.
“Yeah, I know,” he drawled. “There’s one way to shut me up though. A way that you’re already familiar with.” His voice became dark and purring.
I flushed unexpectedly. I knew he was talking about our kiss.
“That was a dare, I did it against my will. There’s no way in hell I’d ever kiss you if it was my own choice.”
“That’s not how your lips felt when they were moving against mine, when you were leaning into me. Was that also part of the dare? It felt like that was exactly where you wanted to be, exactly what you wanted to be doing. Your body can’t lie.”
It was starting to feel hard to breathe. I refused to look back at him and kept staring forward. I didn’t want him to see how much his words were effecting me.
“You’re delusional,” I finally spat out.
“I don’t think so, Lips.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“But it suits you… because I can’t stop thinking about them.”
Just then, the teacher walked into the room.
Chapter 21
That night I collapsed into my bed. It had been an absolutely exhausting day, and I was too tired to even bother changing or brushing my teeth. I remember that the last time I had been so utterly exhausted was when my mom got offered
a job to paint an apartment for fifteen hundred dollars, but we only had one night to do it.
We had never painted in our lives but we jumped at the chance because it was good money. It was hard work, and we had no idea what we were doing but it was still fun because my mom made everything fun. We ordered pizza, something we never did, and ate it surrounded by the smell of paint. We had gotten home just after dawn and I had collapsed in my bed, just like I was doing now.
The memory made me smile. I turned over to look at the Eiffel Tower statue to say goodnight to my mom, like I did every night.
It was gone.
I shot up and started looking all around the nightstand. Maybe it had fallen? As I looked, I had a sinking feeling. Someone had been in my room earlier to mess with my clothes and they could have very easily taken it as they were leaving. I held out hope as I searched inside my drawers, but I knew I would not find it.
I was furious. Everything that had been done to me so far was too much and this was just the cherry on top. That statue was the only thing I had of my mother. I had told no one about it so how would they know to steal that specifically? I guess I didn’t have a lot of personal decorations and that was right next to my bed so it was easy to guess that it was important to me.
I was so mad that I picked up my phone and texted Victoria.
Maddy: WHERE IS MY EIFFEL TOWER??
She didn’t answer, and I wasn’t surprised. Right after I sent it I knew I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t let them see how much they got to me, it only gave them ammunition. Now she knew how important that statue was to me, she knew they had gotten under my skin. Also, it wasn’t like she was ever going to text back apologizing and telling me where it was.
I groaned and fell backwards onto my bed.
I wasn’t being smart about this at all. I had given them all the power. I had come to this school to spy on the Kings, but instead I had spent my time pretending to be best friends with four evil girls.
My plan to infiltrate the Queens was probably the worst plan in the history of the world. I knew nothing more about the Kings than when I came here—besides the fact that they were assholes and how good a couple of them could kiss. That hadn’t been my best plan. I groaned again.
