by Lucy Auburn
While no one's looking, I shove my phone and a small black bag into my locker, then trail towards the door slowly. At the last minute, I grab Holly's shoulder and tell her, "I forgot something back in my locker—I'll meet you out there."
"You sure? The quarry is big. You might not be able to find us if you take too long."
"We have to warm up indoors anyway," I point out. "I won't be long. Just a minute or two."
"Got it. See you soon, Cooke."
It's hard not to wince at the sound of my false name in her mouth. Though it proves that Cole didn't tell her the truth about me, just like he said—or at least, if he told her, she's as good at lying as he is. Part of me twinges with guilt. Holly has been nothing but nice to me, bizarrely enough, despite the boy she's somehow in love with. If it weren't for her, I have the feeling he would be acting far, far worse.
I tell myself it's a harmless white lie. I haven't hurt her by giving a false last name, after all. But as I grab my stuff out of my locker, dawdling as long as possible, I know that's only half the truth.
Today, I'm going to cross a line.
Once I do, people like Holly Schneider and Sasha Wong will never want to associate with me again. It won't just be the Elites or mean girls like Georgia Johnson who will have reasons to hate me—it'll be all the others too, every single one of them, as soon as they find out what I've done.
But I'm not here for them. I'm here to get vengeance for the dead. The fire that burns inside me demands retribution, and if this soothes it in any way, then it's exactly what I've got to do.
The hallway between the girls' and boy's locker room is empty as I sneak out, the black bag in one hand, its contents a strange and heavy weight. I take a moment outside the boys' locker room just to make sure it's empty, then quickly sneak inside.
It's easy enough to find the right locker: 425. Cole has left the key in the lock, like all the other boys; we're the only ones here today, after all. Heart beating crazy fast, I glance over my shoulder, open the locker door, and pull out the contents of the bag. The acrylic cube inside is clear and teeming with revenge.
Carefully, but as quickly as possible, I dump what's inside the acrylic cube into the locker and shut the door. Then I hover in front of it, waiting for a moment to make sure it worked—it has. They won't be escaping.
As soon as he's done rock climbing, Cole Masterson is in for the surprise of his life.
I return the empty bag and cube to the backpack in my locker, then rush out of the locker room and around the corner, towards the indoor climbing wall.
My heart sinks when I see who's waiting for me.
"So, bitch." Georgia narrows her eyes in my direction. "What were you up to in there?"
"Nothing. I just left my phone behind."
"Stop lying." She prowls towards me, lips twisted in a sneer. "I saw you go into the boys' locker room. What were you up to, perv? Stealing Tanner's underwear? Sniffing his jock strap?"
"Boys don't wear jock straps to rock climb," I point out. "Get out of the way. I'm running late, and so are you."
I try to step around her, but she moves to the side to keep blocking my path. "He'll never want you, gutter trash."
"Yeah, I got that," I snap back, mentally adding on to the list of things I'm going to buy with her credit card. "Now get out of my way."
We lock eyes. Something in me burns to life, hungry and angry. I want to reach up, twist my fingers in her hair, and bash her head against the wall until she sees red.
I can't.
I won't.
I can't. I won't.
"Whatever, freak." Georgia moves aside, but not before knocking into my shoulder hard enough to bruise. "Go sniff someone else's boyfriend's underwear. Tanner is mine."
He won't be for long if I have anything to say about it. But I stuff my anger down, force myself to be the snake that hides itself beneath long stalks of grass, that strikes without being seen. What girls like Georgia want more than anything is for me to turn into what they think I am: savage, wild, uncouth and feral. If I punch her in the face, it'll only feel good for a moment. Then it'll be the worst mistake of my life.
I take one step down the hallway. Two, three. Eventually I'm at the end, the wide open indoor rock climbing space in front of me, colored handholds and footholds running up and down the walls, the floors padded with vinyl-covered mats. Holly waves to me; she's climbing the walls, Cole at the ground with rope around his waist, a pulley system helping him take her weight and keeping her from falling. He turns at her wave, narrows his eyes in my direction and smirks.
There's nothing he can do here right in front of her, I remind myself.
He's in for a hell of a surprise when he opens up his locker at the end of the day.
I feel Georgia leave the hallway behind me. She stomps off to join Piper in the corner. Already, there are pairs of boys on either side of them leering. It's no coincidence that their shorts are as short as they can go, or that they've picked the easy bouldering wall that can be climbed without a harness. They plan to pose on the walls and artfully fall to the mats in front of the boys, letting them "rescue" the girls and pick them up off the ground. I heard them chat all about it on the bus.
Tanner deserves better than a girl who's constantly thirsty for other guys' attention.
I shake that thought out of my head as I walk to the equipment table and check out what I'll need for the harder walls. What am I thinking? Georgia may be terrible, but she's what Tanner deserves. I'll take him from her, sure, but when I've chewed him up and spit him back out again she can have whatever remains.
With the help of one of the instructors, I strap on my harness, double-check the safety straps, and put a helmet on my head. Once I'm done, I ask the instructor if he's going to be my belayer.
"No, you'll be paired up with the last unpaired student... ah, here he is. Lukas, meet your partner."
Mouth dry, I stare up into the blue eyes of an impossibly handsome rich European boy.
"Hey Brenna," he says, a little smile playing on his lips. "Fancy seeing you here. Care to join me over on the far wall?"
He points to the highest, hardest wall in the room.
One glance over at Cole reveals what I suspected: he's watching us and smirking, because he folded Lukas into whatever it is he's planning today.
And if I try to stop it, he'll expose me in front of the whole school, quite possibly even get me expelled for enrolling under a false identity.
So I grit my teeth, grimace back at Lukas—a smile is impossible right now—and meet him for what he's worth.
"Sounds great to me. Whoever makes it to the top first wins."
Chapter 20
Despite my bravado, I'm sweating bullets as the instructor guides Lukas through the basic steps of taking my weight in case I fall from a high point of the wall. The whole system is mostly automatic—he doesn't have to do much but stand there with his end of the belay—but my mind is telling me all the awful things he could do to sabotage me if he wanted to.
Cut the rope. Let me fall. Claim it was an accident.
But the Elites won't really go that far to hurt me—will they? After all, everything they did to Silas was purely online. They never actually crossed the line into hurting him.
As far as I know.
"Alright, you're good to go. I'll be over there if you need anything."
The instructor paces away to a folding chair at one end of the room and settles in, staring down at his phone screen. He looks completely relaxed and uncaring—as if nothing bad has ever happened here before.
It's just the indoor warm-up. How hard can it be?
"So, Brenna." Lukas pulls up on the slack until the rope is gently taut against me. "Do you trust me?"
"Not as far as I can throw you. Can I try throwing you though, just to see? Off the edge of the quarry, maybe."
He laughs, the sound cordial and genteel, his blue blood shining through. "C'mon now, we're just having a bit of fun."
> "It doesn't feel like fun to me," I mutter.
"Wanna raise the stakes, then?"
No. But I can't resist the challenge in his eyes. Whatever he sees me as, however much he looks down on me, I want to prove him wrong. I want to prove all of them wrong. It's like a sickness—and it's going to get me killed.
But there's one thing I can't do. "If you want to bet money, I don't have that. So you can forget about it."
"Oh, I don't need money," he says casually, because of course he doesn't. "But there is something I want from you."
I swallow, heart in my throat, as he leans in so close that I can smell his hair: coconut and vanilla, some kind of conditioner that must keep it soft, because it looks like you could sink into it and fall asleep.
It's a moment before I regain the brain cells to say, "What's that?"
"I want to know the truth." Lukas cocks his head to one side. "Cole said I should ask you for it, but that it'd be hard to get it from you."
"So if I lose..."
"You have to tell me whatever this truth Cole is referring to is. Or he'll tell me if I ask."
There's no way I'm risking so much for nothing. "What do I get if I win?"
"Me."
I blink up at him. "You..."
"On your side. Against Cole." He raises his pale brows at me. "That is what you're up to, right? You declared war on him the moment you crossed him."
"That's..." I feel like I've crossed over into an episode of The Twilight Zone. "I helped a girl get her purse out of a tree."
"No, you stood up and didn't flinch. Cole isn't used to that. I'd like to see how far it can go."
He doesn't say I'd like to see you win, I notice. Lukas has his own games to play. But I can't turn down the offer he's giving me, no matter how insincere.
"Game on."
I stick my hand out for him to shake, and he looks down at me bemusedly. "Americans. We should seal it with a kiss."
"Fat cha—"
But he doesn't swoop down to press his lips against my mouth. He takes my hand in his soft fingers, bends elegantly at the waist, and plants an absurd kiss against the back of my hand.
Shivers run up and down my spine.
The press of his skin on mine is electric.
His mouth comes so close to touch the snake bite scar that it pulses with an echo of pain.
"There."
He draws back from me. The spot where his mouth just touched me is on fire. Anger courses through me, hot and uneven. Warm, embarrassing desire to be touched everywhere by his soft, gentle hands flushes my body. It's massively unfair; he shouldn't have done it without warning. A boy like him doesn't have the right to do that to a girl like me.
The first thing I'll tell him after I win this bet is never to touch me again.
"Let's do this thing."
Lukas moves towards the wall with me and stays a few feet back, like the instructor told him to. I can feel his eyes on my back as I approach the wall. I stare at it from a distance, studying the gaps in the holds further up. They're abundant and close together down low, but zig zag awkwardly further up, all the way until they reach a little ledge that marks the end of this particular challenge. I'll have to be strategic if I want to win.
It's easy enough to get up the first five feet or so. I can feel the rope tighten as I go further up, and when I look down Lukas is there, his blue eyes steady, no hint of deception in their depths.
Do you trust me.
I'd have to be a fool to trust him.
I trust my feet and hands. I trust a strength honed by summer days near the river, climbing trees, swimming against the current, chasing my brother through the shallows of the riverbank, laughing when Maggie put mud in his hair. Lukas DuPont can pull the rug out from under me, but I won't fall down if I'm holding on with my own strength.
The further up I get, the shallower and farther apart the holds become. I have to cram my fingers into them and pull myself up with my arms fully extended. I'm wearing my thickest, toughest-soled shoes, but more than once I lose my footing and have to readjust.
"You can always give in," Lukas calls up as I nearly slip. "Whatever this thing is Cole hinted at, it can't be that bad."
"I'm not saying 'uncle.'"
"Why would you say that? None of your relatives are here."
I ignore his perplexed, overly British and French ignorance. There's a task at hand to concentrate on, and my arms are getting tired. I have a choice now: I can go up the wall fast and hope I don't slip, or go slowly and hope my arms don't fail me from pure exhaustion.
Fast is the choice I make.
Picking out a path, I propel my body up. Once. Twice. A pause, a deep breath, then a third time.
I'm almost there. I've reached the point of the wall where there's a chimney—a wall opposite, Sasha told me, where you have to spread your legs and arms out to either side to get up. It's a narrower space, and the only way up the ledge is to leap towards it halfway and climb the rest of the way on the opposite wall.
This is going to take all my strength.
I wedge my toes into the footholds. Grab tight with my hands. Stretch as far as I can. And then, when the moment is right, and I feel like I can do it, I look up and prepare to jump.
I make just one mistake.
For a brief moment I look down.
Lukas is there, staring up at me, his blue eyes steady, hands on the rope and belay system. He doesn't look like he intends to drop me one bit–the rope is tight, his eyes watching closely. A deep, illicit thrill goes through me at the realization that he's been staring at me and only me this whole time.
Standing just beside him is Cole.
With an arrogant smirk on his mouth.
I turn away as the fire of my anger roars to life inside me, demanding fuel, uncaring whether or not it eats me up alive. My arms were already trembling from exertion, but now they're full-on shaking with exhaustion.
Wanting to show that arrogant, prideful, hateful boy just exactly what I'm made of, I look confidently up towards my goal and leap all at once.
Muscles flexing. Fingers grabbing. Toes scrambling.
For a moment I have it. I feel victory within reach. I hold myself up with my own strength, all alone in the world, needing no one but me.
Then I slip.
And fall.
Chapter 21
A moment suspended in the air, heart in my throat.
Then the rope goes tight and my harness catches me. I grab on to the rope, swaying near the climbing wall.
Failure rushes through me, hot and shameful. Tears prick at my eyes. I came so close only to fall. But at least the harness caught me—no harm, no foul.
"Too bad," Lukas calls up. "I'll lower you down now."
He gives the rope slack a few inches at a time, lowering me through the air. The ground is still quite a bit away from me, so I try to pull myself together before I reach the floor.
I don't get the chance.
As another few inches of slack go through the line, suddenly the speed I'm approaching the mats increases. I hear a commotion from below, and am craning my head around to see what's going on when all at once the rope flies away from my harness.
I'm falling again.
This time, with no belay to catch me.
Seconds. It takes seconds for me to go from hanging safely in the air to falling through it. I land back-first, the air going out of my lungs, dazed and confused.
In Lukas DuPont's arms.
He's caught me with seemingly little effort, taking me in his arms, supporting my back and knees. His muscles are flexed beneath me, the heat of his body against mine. I'm suddenly aware of the fact that my chest is pressed against him, that his fingers are digging into the warmth of my thighs. Heat flashes through me, low and forbidden, along with relief that I didn't hit my head.
In a moment he's knelt and laid me on the mats, staring down at me with concern in his blue eyes.
"You okay?"
I open my
mouth to answer, but before I can I become aware of the crowd gathering around us. Cole. Holly. Georgia and Piper. They're all staring at me, murmuring to each other. Something is going on.
Then the instructor shoves his way forward. "I need to check her for injuries." He gets down next to me, pushing Lukas aside, and feels up and down my arms and legs. "Any pain here? Here?"
I answer no again and again. I can't help noticing that Lukas is staying close by, hovering practically right over me. "Something happened to the equipment," he says, a worried, frantic expression on his face. "I had her, and then she was just—falling. I can't explain it."
I can. One glance over Lukas's shoulder and I spy Georgia standing behind him, smirking, one hand on her hip, the other holding a short length of webbing. A glance down at my harness reveals that the carabiner has come undone from the harness and is somewhere halfway across the room, attached to the rope Lukas was using to lower me down—until the weakened spot came undone.
Somehow she got hold of the harness while I wasn't looking, probably when I was fretting about Lukas being my partner, and she cut it just enough that it would snap in half while holding my weight.
Needless to say, I won't be climbing the quarry outdoors. Based on the thunderous look on Mrs. Reynolds' face, I don't think any of us will be.
"She's okay," the instructor announces, helping me to my feet. "I'm not sure what happened, but we should be able to get back to it after a thorough safety check—"
"No needs." Mrs. Reynolds' voice is ice cold. "There will be no more climbing today, and we'll be reevaluating our continuing relationship with this facility."
The instructor approaches her to have a conversation, leaving me alone with my classmate, my hip smarting where Lukas caught me, a low ache starting in my back. The temptation to call Georgia out right here, right now is overwhelming—she could've killed me. But based on the smirk on Cole's face, I know what will happen if I do: he'll expose me in front of the whole school.
