by S Doyle
Or was the truth something a little darker?
As long as people still thought I had money, me being friends with the Havenots—the utterly disgusting term used to describe the kids who lived in the West End—was considered whimsical. A choice I had. To be friends with people from all economic classes.
The minute people learned the family money was gone, then hanging with the Havenots wasn’t an option. It’s where I would be placed. I would be a Havenot instead of choosing to hang with Havenots.
Maybe I was more my mother’s daughter than I realized because I wasn’t willing to give up that illusion. Not yet.
Oh and yes, there was a name for us, too. Snobs. Pretty unoriginal actually, but there it was. The school was mostly divided between Snobs and Havenots. I’m sure there were some who sat squarely in the middle, but not a significant majority. If you lived in Haddonfield, you were either rich or part of the low-income housing crowd.
I made my way to the back row where Janie and Reen sat whispering to each other.
“Hey, guys,” I announced and they both looked at me with gleeful smiles. “What’s up?”
“Rumor has it there is a new exchange student starting today,” Janie said. “He’s from London.”
Reen fanned herself. “You know what that means. Accent. You know how I love an accent!”
“Only because it comes attached to the Hemsworth brothers,” I pointed out. “Please don’t tell me you two are developing some elaborate picture of a hot guy with a British accent you haven’t even met yet.”
“Guilty.” Janie smiled.
“I just want to be prepared in case he turns out to be someone I might chose to conquer,” Reen said.
I laughed because it was absolutely the right word choice. Reen didn’t date guys. She conquered them. She was, in a word…sexy. Abandoned as a child, she had some type of mixed heritage that wasn’t easily defined, but it all worked for her. Thick, long, dark hair that naturally fell in waves down her back. Full pouty lips, large brown eyes. She’d worn a bra before any of us had because she needed one.
Reen was also on the cheerleading squad and what people didn’t realize, she kept two skirts in her locker at all times. One of regulation length, the other half an inch shorter. She would swap them out between classes and relished the attention she got when she walked down the hall in her micro skirt.
Reen wasn’t a slut. She just played one in high school purely to her own advantage. If guys wanted to buy her snacks from the vending machine or a soda here and there because they thought she might put out, that was their problem.
Which was really amazing considering she was friends with Janie, who was Reen’s opposite in every respect. Like me, Janie kept things pretty basic. However, instead of designer blouses and Doc Martens, she wore generic T-shirts, jeans that weren’t professionally torn, but actually worn through with age, and knock-off Keds.
Still, Janie was pretty in a soft way that you had to look very closely to see. Soft brown hair, soft hazel eyes. Small, thin, and almost completely unnoticeable until you got to know her. When you began to realize that her internal will was a force of nature.
Her stubbornness to make things right, a veritable superpower.
Yes, I was jealous of Reen’s natural sex appeal. I didn’t know a girl who wasn’t. But I was in awe of Janie’s quiet power.
“Okay class, let’s get settled so I can take attendance.”
I turned in my desk toward the front of the class at the request of the teacher. She was new and I didn’t recognize her. I wondered if it was possible she was replacing Miss Havisham.
Looking at Janie and Reen, I’m sure my expression was hopeful. “Hey, did Miss Havisham finally retire?”
“You wish,” Janie snorted. “No. Mr. Grant moved because his wife took a job in New York. That’s Ms. Hardgrove. Rumor is she’s only twenty-two and some of the seniors are already taking bets on who can get her into bed.”
Ms. Hardgrove was dressed primely and respectably. She had a nice face and calm manner. Which would serve her well amongst the entitled Snobs.
There was a knock on the classroom door then it opened. The school’s vice principal walked in with a student following behind.
Dressed in all black, tall and lanky with long dark hair and pale white skin, which looked even paler against his dark clothes, I presumed we were about to meet the new kid. He looked bored and unaffected as he stood in front of the class. But not as if he was trying to look that way so as not to reveal any nervousness.
No. He truly looked bored and unaffected.
“Class,” the VP announced. “This is Locke Holmes. Locke, the class. Say hello, everyone.”
“Hello, Locke,” we said in unison. His lips curled at the uniform sarcasm of our greeting.
“Hullo, class,” he said in return. Behind me I could hear Reen sigh.
“Accents,” she whispered into my ear, “are my jam.”
Hardgrove gestured for Locke to take a seat and he took the only empty one available, which was right in front of mine. I smiled politely as he walked toward me, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Just sat down, slumped down really, and said nothing.
Ms. Hardgrove smiled. “Welcome everyone to your first day of junior year. Let’s make it a good one.”
Or at least an interesting one, I thought.
What was that saying? Something about being careful what you wished for.
2
Lunchroom
Fitz
I looked across the crowded lunchroom to where Beth and her friends were laughing hysterically about…something. Her mouth was open as she laughed, and her eyes did that squinting thing whenever she smiled.
It couldn’t be me, could it?
Spanish. So that had been her excuse for why she’d been bussing tables. Except, I wasn’t sure I bought it. No doubt when I’d first seen her at The Club in the typical white shirt, black pants, black tie uniform typical of the wait staff, it had stunned me.
She’d been lifting a tub of dirty plates that had clearly been too heavy for her to carry. She’d nearly dropped them all as she pushed through the kitchen door.
I remember craning my neck to see beyond the kitchen door, wondering if she’d actually managed it. Only to see her being shouted at by another bus boy. In Spanish. He’d been loud and angry enough that I’d felt the urge to get up and…help her?
That couldn’t have been right.
Then a manager had stepped in to break it up and I’d taken my seat without another thought about it.
How the hell was she going to fit in another class? There were only so many hours in a day. It’s not like she could take two languages at the same time. But if she took her free period and somehow moved that…
“You need to get over it.”
I glanced up and saw Ed, who was sitting across from me at the lunch table, frowning. It was just past one in the afternoon and I’d already finished the lunch our maid had packed for me hours ago. Now I was eating really bad school pizza, but there were no other options.
Only seniors were allowed to go off campus for lunch.
“What?” I asked, playing dumb.
“You’re obsessing and you know it. So Beth’s taking another language course? That has absolutely nothing to do with you.”
Ed Rochester was one of my best friends, yet he was utterly ignorant of the turmoil that lived inside of me. Beth taking another language course, which could possibly put her GPA over 4.0, had absolutely everything to do with me.
Second best was simply not an option for me. Second best to Beth Bennet? Not happening.
“What if her GPA goes above a 4.0? I don’t know if I can get there,” I said. “I have zero room left in my schedule.”
“Oh God,” Heath, another member of my inner circle, moaned, sliding on the bench next to me with his own tray of crappy pizza. “Please tell me you’re not going to spend another year whining about Beth’s grade point average.”
I cuff
ed him on the back of the head. “You’ve got nerve. You complain about everything.”
“Yes,” Heath agreed. “Like this fucking shitty food. I swear to God this pizza has been sitting in the freezer since last year. But that’s the thing about me. I’m an equal opportunity whiner, while as you get singularly focused. It’s boring.”
“Sorry if my goal of earning Top Academic, thereby securing my admittance to an Ivy League college of my choice, is boring to you, Health.”
He sniffed. “You could bomb and you’re still going to get into Princeton, and you know it. While us Havenots have to count on scholarships. So please take your concern over getting into a good school and…shove it.”
“Stop calling yourself a Havenot, I hate that fucking name,” I said. “And you already have a scholarship waiting for you, so spare me.”
Although when it came to Heath Cliff, Havenot was technically true. Heath literally had nothing. He’d been raised by his junkie mother until she died of an overdose when he was ten. Then he spent some time in Thornfield Home, a foster home for kids that had been located on the edge of town until it was shut down a few years ago.
Something my mother made happen after a government study determined that foster kids were more apt to thrive when placed with individual families. Now he was living with the Earnshaws, an older wealthy couple, who my mother had reached out to to consider fostering.
Heath didn’t live in the West End of town anymore, however, he still referred to him as part of the Havenot crowd.
While Ed and I both came from money. Ergo, we were the Snobs. Another name I detested.
Labels, in general, were not my thing.
Still, it had been my mother who had helped to write and pass legislation that set up government grants for college scholarships for children whose parents were victims of the opioid crisis.
Heath had already qualified academically. While he never put in the work to compete for Top Academic, he always tested off the charts.
All he had to do was pick a state school where he wanted to go.
For that matter, so did I. Everyone assumed that I was going to be Princeton, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps. Not when they were as large as hers. Not when I knew what her future might hold.
“Everybody needs to stop with the Princeton shit,” I said firmly. “It’s like a given I’m going to go there when that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m exploring all my options.”
Ed raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You’re going to tell your mother no?”
“Mom doesn’t care where I go. She just wants me and Gigi to be happy.”
“Exactly. She’s like the world’s best mother. Which is why you would never do anything to disappoint her. Which is why you’re going to Princeton,” Ed said. “Sorry, I won’t be joining you, but I’ve already downloaded my application to Stanford.”
Stanford, which was on the other side of the country. As far away as Ed could manage.
“Hoping if you’re all the way in California, you can finally shake off Bee?” Heath asked with a half laugh.
Ed, however, wasn’t laughing. “Shut your mouth, Heath. Or I’ll shut it for you.”
Bee, Ed’s sort of girlfriend, sort of ex-girlfriend, was always a sensitive topic. Heath should have known better than to bring her up. Bee had also been a resident at Thornfield Home, until being placed with the Etheredges. I’d always thought Heath was protective of Bee, more so than the other kids he’d been with at Thornfield. But when word got out about what she’d done this summer, it was like he couldn’t care less about her anymore.
Still, I was curious about her situation.
“Is she coming back to school this year?”
Ed shook his head tightly. “No. Mrs. Etheredge doesn’t think she’s ready to handle school. She’s going to continue to homeschool her.”
I winced. Not ready was code for still not mentally fit. It was pretty much the worst kept secret in school that Bee had attempted suicide this summer after Ed had tried to break up with her. That she still hadn’t recovered enough to come back either meant she was too embarrassed or too unstable. I hoped for the former, but I was guessing it was the latter.
After all, it had been Bee’s crazy obsession with Ed that had made him want to break up with her in the first place.
Now he was stuck, and everyone knew why.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he barked at me.
“I’m not,” I insisted.
“You are. You’re looking at me like I’m the guy who’s never going to get laid again because I did it one time and my girlfriend fucking freaked out.”
Heath laughed darkly. “Ed, that’s the way everyone in this school looks at you now.”
“Screw you both,” he said, standing and walking off.
“Hey, watch it.”
In his snit and sudden departure, Ed hadn’t seen another member of our class walking between the tables with a tray, who he’d almost bumped into.
I looked up and frowned at the newcomer.
“Wick,” I nodded politely.
Wick, short for Wickham, was a teammate, not to mention the son of one of my mom’s oldest friends. Tall, blond, way too pretty for a guy in my opinion, but the girls seemed to like him. We’d basically grown up together and probably should have been best friends. I suppose we had been when we were younger. But it turned out he was a douchebag asshole, and I wasn’t.
We had long since gone our separate ways.
“Fitz,” he answered with just about the same amount of disdain.
Because that’s how it was between us. He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. And we were both perfectly happy with that. Fortunately for me, Wick played defense so even while we were on the same team, we practiced separately unless we were scrimmaging.
“See you at practice,” I said cordially.
“Yep,” he sneered. He started to walk away, then stopped. “Oh hey. Saw Gigi this morning. When did she grow up?”
I didn’t like the tone in his voice. Like maybe there was a hint of something suggestive in it. My sister had not grown up. Not like that.
“She hasn’t. She’s still just a kid.”
Wick shrugged. “Didn’t look that way to me. Better watch out for her. Wouldn’t want her to hit any lists.”
I frowned. “What list?”
“Just a rumor really,” he said. “Something about a list of incoming hot freshman girls.”
“If such a list existed and I found my sister’s name on it…”
I didn’t bother to finish the threat. Wick, asshole though he was, knew my position in this town and in this school. My sister would never be somebody to be targeted by a bunch of horny juniors looking to score.
He walked off and I was happy to see him go. Now I could go back to focusing my energy on what really mattered. How Beth was going to manage another language course in her schedule.
Heath gestured with this chin to where I was looking. “Looks like they’re adopting the new guy as their pet.”
I’d been focused on Beth, so I hadn’t immediately understood what Heath was talking about. Then I watched as Reen called out to Locke, who was looking around for a place to sit. He hesitated for a second then eventually succumbed to her summons.
Most guys did when it came to Reen.
“You met him yet?” Heath asked me.
“He was in my Geometry class. Seemed completely uninterested, but when Masters called on him to answer a question he rattled it off easily enough.”
“Well, if Reen has taken an interest in him, somebody should warn him before she digs her claws in and does the whole Black Widow routine with this dick and his heart.”
Reen broke hearts and crushed desperate expectations for fun. Yet almost every guy in this school still couldn’t help but line up for the experience. Locke would figure it out or he wouldn’t.
He wasn’t my concern.
Beth, and her new enhanced schedul
e, was.
Beth
“So, Locke,” Reen asked him as she bent over the lunch table giving him a prime view of her C-cup supported breasts no doubt. “How has your first day been going so far?”
I tried not to roll my eyes. Really, she could be so obvious sometimes.
“S’alright,” he answered with a casual shrug. “Wouldn’t necessarily say I’m chuffed…sorry…happy to be here, but I’m making do.”
“Why are you here?” I asked him. “In America that is.”
“My brother is a professor. He’s doing a stint at U of Penn and thought it would be a good opportunity for me to experience your culture. You know, how you like things supersized and whatnot.”
Reen gave a sultry smile. “You’re right. I do like things supersized.”
“I think he’s talking about sodas and fries,” Janie said quietly. Of course I knew it was a dig at Reen’s audacity.
Reen pouted, playing along. “Oh. That’s not what I was talking about.”
Locke looked at Reen obviously trying to assess if she was serious. I watched him gulp, which led me to conclude he’d determined she was. That Reen made the new guy nervous wasn’t a surprise. She made lots of boys nervous. It was just surprising, given Locke’s general attitude of ennui, he was the type to be rattled.
I looked at my friend, eyes wide. “Can we give him some time to get acclimated before you eat him?”
Locke gave me a small smile. “If I am eaten alive, at least I can say my first day hasn’t been entirely uneventful.”
“Definitely not uneventful,” Reen crooned. Then as if she’d decided she was done with her vamp persona, she bit into her pizza with a groan. “I know it’s gross pizza, but I do love cheese.”
“So what are the entertainments available to the teens of Haddonfield?” Locke asked clearly not interested in the food on his tray.
“Your usual,” I offered. “Drinking in the woods, doing drugs in the woods, having sex in the woods. Then waiting until someone’s parents go out of town so we can crash a private party and cause as much property damage as possible until the cops show up.”
