by Elle East
“And maybe a snack!” I called over, my voice slightly shaking.
I needed to stall him.
“Yeah? What did you want?” he called back.
I kept one eye on the kitchen in case he peeked around the corner.
“Whatever you have. Something crunchy.”
He laughed. “Ok, that’s very specific. I’ll see what I can do.”
I was so full of adrenaline, fear and excitement. I was about to find out what they were hiding. With shaking fingers I quickly brought up his call log. I took out my own phone and snapped photos. I was moving as quickly as I could but it felt like I was moving through quicksand.
In the other room I could hear Grayson humming to himself and pouring some type of snack into a bowl. He would be back any second.
I went into his texts and opened the first one and took pictures, then I did the same thing to the next couple most recent contacts. I heard the whish of him popping off the bottle-caps from the beers and knew I had seconds left. I quickly exited the texting app, locked the phone and placed it back down exactly where he left it. I silently dived back over to my seat—just as he came around the corner.
I tried to look like my heart wasn’t racing and I had just been sitting there calmly the whole time. He held out one of the beers to me and I reached out to take it—that was when I saw how badly my hand was shaking. I grabbed the beer quickly before he also noticed and started drinking.
“Thirsty?” he asked jokingly.
“Yep.”
When I went to put it down on the table, I almost tipped it over with my fumbling hands.
“You ok?” Grayson asked again. “You’ve been weird today.”
“I’m not weird,” I said. “Thanks for the snacks.”
I tried to go back to drawing, but all I wanted to do was race off and examine the photos. I hadn’t had time to actually look at what was on Grayson’s phone, all I had time for was to take a couple desperate photos—that I prayed had something useful on them.
After a couple minutes that seemed to stretch on for hours, I finally said, “You know what? I’m actually not feeling that great, maybe that’s why you think I’m off. I’m going to head out.”
“That sucks, I’ll walk you out.”
“Don’t worry about it!”
I grabbed my backpack and made sure to walk instead of run towards the elevator.
“Hope you feel better!” Grayson called.
“Me too!” I called back before the doors closed and I was alone.
I didn’t dare open my phone until I was safely back in my dorm. It was torture not looking, but I didn’t want to risk anything.
I slammed the wooden door shut behind me and ripped my phone from my pocket. I punched in my unlock code like the devil was chasing me.
The phone log didn’t tell me much except that he got a lot of calls, and a significant portion of them were from numbers not listed as contacts in his phone. I pulled up the text photos next. The first one was from some girl sending him photos of herself barely dressed. I recognized the girl from my Math class. I quickly flicked past that one.
When I read the next one I realized that I had done it. I knew what they were hiding.
They were drug dealers.
The next couple pages of texts were clearly drug deals.
So that was it. That was what the Kings’ were hiding. I had achieved my mission, what I was sent to Crestmoore to do. So why wasn’t I more excited?
I felt almost… disappointed? Was that the right word for what I was feeling? I realized that I had actually been enjoying hanging out with my old friends again. Maybe subconsciously I had been putting off discovering their secret. Maybe I was starting to feel guilty about turning them in. Despite everything they’d done to me, we had still been best friends at one point and the last couple weeks it had felt like we were again.
I went to lie down on my bed. I felt drained and sad and exhilarated, all at the same time. I had accomplished what I’d been sent there to do and could finally save my mom. I missed her like crazy and wanted to get her out, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty about the Kings’. The reason they’d given me for their behavior was incredibly dumb, but also made sense in a twisted way.
Maybe I didn’t have enough evidence yet? I thought about it and the more I did the more I realized that what I had against them was very little to actually convict someone. I only had a couple blurry pictures of texts that I could have easily faked that seemed to show that the Kings’ were drug dealers, but it wasn’t 100% clear.
I needed more evidence I reasoned. If I went to the detective now, it could blow the whole case. If the evidence wasn’t good enough, the Kings’ would then know that they were being watched and would be much better at covering their tracks.
That was it. I needed more evidence before I told the cops. Satisfied with my decision, I got up to take a shower. But I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that told me maybe I was just stalling because I didn’t want to turn them in.
I couldn’t sleep that night, I was too stressed out, so when the beginning light of dawn slowly broke I was still awake. I felt claustrophobic inside my room and decided to go for a walk to watch the sunrise, hoping that the cool air could clear my head and calm my nerves.
It was early, so I didn’t need to stick to my normal secluded route through the woods—and now that the Kings were protecting me I didn’t really need to worry about avoiding the other students anyway. I went walking along the shore. Crestmoore island didn’t have a shoreline that invited you into the cold water with sandy beaches, it was all rocks.
As I walked, I spotted something on the water. Squinting, I couldn’t really tell what it was, it looked like a weirdly proportioned large bird. I kept watching it as I walked and it slowly became clearer. It was someone rowing a single scull boat parallel to the shore. I walked along while watching them. Their methodical movements were relaxing in a hypnotic way.
I didn’t know the school had crew boats, that probably meant we had a rowing team. The more I learned about the school, the more I realized I didn’t really know much about it. I had been too busy hiding from everyone bullying me that I hadn’t gotten much of a chance to see what the school had to offer.
The sun was rising over the ocean, creating soft pastel colored clouds. With the added light I could see more of the rower than just their silhouette and realized that it was Archer. I watched as he rowed with perfect timing, his strokes powerful and fluid. I didn’t know much about rowing but I could tell that he was good. His boat glided across the water as smoothly as a skate blade across ice.
I was mesmerized. I knew he was a talented athlete from watching him on the football field—even though, like rowing, I didn’t know a lot about football—but something about the way he controlled his body, and by extension the boat, was so impressive to watch.
Archer was rowing on a path that would lead him into shore. I looked over and he was headed for a dock that was next to a boathouse—different than the boathouse they had trapped me in. I walked over to meet him.
I got there before him. I stood on the long dock in the early morning light; the waves lapped gently beneath me and my thick hair moved in the wind. Archer noticed me, but his movements never stumbled. He rowed the boat in next to the dock and effortlessly jumped out to catch it.
He hoisted the boat above his head like it weighed nothing. Cold ocean water dripped down the sides but didn’t touch him. He was wearing stylish sweat pants that hung low on his waist and a sweater that pulled up when he swung the boat above his head, exposing the delicious “V” cut of his stomach muscles.
“Hey, you’re up early, Sunny,” he said casually, but my heart stopped.
I had almost completely forgotten, but him saying it brought the memories back in a flood. The guys used to call me “Sunny” when we were kids because sunflowers were my favorite and I had said that if I could be anything in the world, I would be a sunflower. Archer had said he’d
be a beetle so that we could hang out together forever, so I had called him Bug. I couldn’t believe that I’d almost forgotten—or that he’d remembered.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Archer nodded as he passed me. The boat was well above my head; I didn’t even have to duck.
“Me either. I have trouble sleeping sometimes and when I do I come out here to row. It helps take my mind off things.”
“What do you have to be worried about?” I asked.
Archer had more money and opportunities than almost anyone at the school—or the world for that matter. Sure, he had a terrible father and that couldn’t be easy but it’s not like he had to see him very often, he could just travel to another country and avoid him completely.
“Are you serious?” he turned back to look at me incredulously and I suddenly felt a bit ashamed for assuming. “My life is incredibly complicated. My dad puts an insane amount of pressure on me to get perfect marks, build business connections, and be the best athlete at the school. I have my life all figured out for me and if I screw up even one little thing everything will come crashing down and then they’ll be hell to pay. You have no idea what kind of lives we lead. You just think we’re all rich assholes who can’t possibly have any problems because we have money, but you never really understood this world. You couldn’t even imagine the pressure we are all under.”
Archer put the boat away by hanging it on hooks attached to the boathouse. He threw it down a little harder than he meant to. I could tell that he was pretty pissed with me. I was about to apologize when I stopped myself. Why was I feeling bad about not knowing anything about his life? He hadn’t told me about it, so why shouldn’t I assume that it all came so easy to him? That was the image that he portrayed to the rest of the school—the cocky, rich kid who had everything and anyone.
I was so sick of this bullshit. I stormed off the dock and right by him.
“Maddy!” he called, but I didn’t stop until I felt a hand grab my upper arm and turn me around.
I ripped my arm from his grasp and glared at him. He seemed a bit surprised at the intensity in my eyes but then recovered and matched it. We stared at each other hard for a couple seconds.
“How would I ever know what your life is like, Bug?” I spat out his nickname like a swearword and I could see a barely perceptible wince on his cold face. “It’s not like you’ve ever shared that with me. You’ve told me nothing about your life—also, you know nothing about mine either so don’t act like I’m such a terrible person for not knowing. Did you know my mom is in jail? Did you find that out in your snooping?” Archer looked surprised, but I kept going. “Did you know that she’s innocent and only there because of my stepfather? I was dirt poor and my life was really hard but at least I had her—and now I have nothing.”
Tears were threatening to spill from my eyes, but I held them back. I was so mad that everything was just spilling out of my mouth and I couldn’t stop it.
His full lips opened and closed a couple times.
“I had no idea,” he finally managed to say.
“No, you didn’t did you, because you never asked. You don’t know anything about my life either so get off your high horse.”
I turned around and stormed away from him. He didn’t follow me and I didn’t know if I was happy about that or secretly disappointed. My emotions when it came to Archer were all mixed up and extremely confusing. I couldn’t stand him, but I still wanted to be around him, but when I was I wanted him gone and when he was gone I wanted him back.
Chapter 30
Grayson put in a call and by the time the guys came out of their rooms the food was ready to eat. We sat down, all four of us. It was like a weird, super dysfunctional family sitting down to a meal. The guys all had beers, and I took one too, I felt like I needed something to cut the tension I was feeling.
It was the evening after I had yelled at Archer by the water. We hadn’t addressed it at all and he was acting like it had never happened. I wasn’t sure if he had told the other two, but if he had, then they were all acting like nothing had changed which was what I wanted. I wanted to put that embarrassing outburst behind me.
“If you fail they are going to kick you out of school,” Archer was saying to Grayson about his latest failed test.
“My family will just give a big donation and then the school will pass me. That’s how it works,” Grayson said dismissively.
“That’s going to piss off your family,” Archer said.
“What are they going to do? Disown me?” Grayson laughed before stopping suddenly.
I noticed Brett’s lips pressed together in a hard line before his face went back to its normal neutral scowl. I furrowed my brow at his reaction, mentally filing it away to examine later.
“Speaking of family, why’s your mom in jail, Maddy?” Grayson asked.
My head shot up, mouth full of taco. I looked over at Archer. “You told them?!”
Archer shrugged calmly. “Of course I told them.”
I swallowed what was in my mouth and placed the rest on my plate.
“I’m going to go,” I said and stood up.
“Don’t be like that,” Archer said. “You knew I was going to tell them.”
“Well, I had hoped that you wouldn’t.”
“We aren’t here to make fun of you, Maddy,” Brett said, and it was one of the first things he had said all night and it caught me off guard. “We are genuinely curious and we want to help if we can.”
I scoffed. “Really?” I asked in disbelief. “You guys want to help me?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?” Archer asked.
I threw up my hands in exasperation. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’ve treated me like actual trash ever since I came to Crestmoore. You’ve gotten the other kids to bully me so badly that I hated being here. You didn’t even acknowledge that we’d been friends until a couple weeks ago. And you didn’t stop the Queens from humiliating me. You seem to have had a complete change of heart and are now trying to be my friends again but I have to be suspicious because this all seems like a trick. Those are just a few of the reasons why it’s so hard to believe that you’d want to help me.”
I finished my monolog and stared at them, panting slightly. I had finally addressed the elephant in the room and it was now on the table.
They looked at me for a long moment before Archer finally said, “We understand why you wouldn’t trust us but we want you to. We want to help. You used to be very special to us and we want to get to know you as you are now, the person you’ve grown up to be. We want to know about your life. We did all of those things not because we wanted to but because we had to. You were a charity case—”
“—scholarship student,” I cut in.
“—scholarship student, and we are Kings. If we had been friends with you as soon as you arrived here, Victoria would have ruined our lives. She could have gotten us kicked out of the Royalty. That’s just how it works,” Archer finished.
“I don’t buy that excuse,” I said and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “What’s so great about being a King that you’d be willing to give up who you really are just to be one?”
“Being a member of the Royalty opens up any door after high school that you want. You can get into any college, and in the business world saying you were a King means something—you’ll be able to get any job. It’s like being in a very exclusive fraternity.”
“If that’s all true then why risk hanging out with me now? I’m still a scholarship student and you’re all still Kings.”
“Well, when you spiked our shampoo, we realized that this girl doesn’t play around,” Grayson laughed. “It was safer for us to try to get along with you rather than be your enemy.”
I gave him a withering look. He looked a bit ashamed and finally said the truth instead of some dumb joke, “Because we missed you. We want to hang out with you again. And we have leverage over Victoria now so she can’t threaten us anymore.”
I thought over everything they’d said.
“And the Queens?” I asked. “Do I still have to worry about them?”
“Oh, they still hate you,” Grayson said.
“Great,” I mumbled.
“But they’ve left you alone and will continue to leave you alone,” Brett added. “We told them to. You’re safe.”
I still didn’t trust them but wanted to believe everything they were saying. It didn’t make it right, how they had treated me, how they treated the other students—especially the scholarship ones—but if what they said was true, at least it made a bit of sense, even if it was insane.
“Sit.” Archer motioned to my seat. “Finish your meal. We want to hear about your mom.”
“If you’re willing to tell us,” Brett added in a low voice.
I sat down without really meaning to yet. Whenever I was around them, my body wanted to do exactly what they told me to, even if my brain didn’t agree. I looked around, they all looked so sincere it actually made me want to open up to them. I was pretty sure I would regret it, but at that moment I decided to tell them.
“My mom was arrested because my stepdad was selling drugs and she got implicated somehow—but I know she’s innocent, I know that with 100% certainty. My mom was too sick with cancer to do anything like they are accusing her of doing. My stepfather is a terrible person, but one of the reasons he was dealing was so that he could pay for her cancer treatments, which were crazy expensive because we didn’t have insurance.”
They all looked confused at that, especially Brett.
“But Brett paid for your mom’s cancer treatments…” Grayson said with a frown.
“What?” I asked, completely confused.
I looked at Brett questioningly.
“Yeah, he paid for all your mom’s treatments. He gave your stepdad…” Archer trailed off as realization hit all of us at the same time.
My mouth dropped open in shock as I continued looking at Brett.
“Your mom was so sick that I had my people deal with your stepfather instead,” Brett said quietly.
