by Nicole Fox
She presses her back against the tree, even though there’s nowhere for her to go.
I’ve had her in this position before. Years ago.
But this is different. Much, much different.
Penny swallows, her pale throat bobbing. “I didn’t break any rules. I didn’t do anything. Please just let me go.”
I shake my head. “Not a fucking chance. Actions have consequences, Penny.”
Her lip is trembling now. “You’re the one who came and found me. I didn’t do anything.”
She presses a hand to my chest to push me back.
Bad move.
I wrap my hand around her wrist. In an instant, her arm is pinned above her head and our bodies are pressed together.
Her breath catches. I don’t miss the way she leans towards me, rather than away.
Some habits are hard to break.
We haven’t been this close in a long time, but her body remembers.
God knows mine does, too.
Shoving my face right in hers, I hiss, “For two years, I’ve been content to leave you alone. As long as you did the same for me. But you violated that truce. So I’m done keeping my distance. I’m going to be a part of your life again, Penny. But not in a good way. Not in a nice way. I’m going to make you hurt. Make you suffer. And I won’t quit until I’ve ruined you completely.”
Silence. The longest silence of her life, I’m sure.
I don’t blink. Don’t look away.
I want her to see how much I mean what I’m saying.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers in a tight, choked voice. “What did I do?”
I sigh. My answer is a single word: “Haley.”
Caleb had come to me a few weeks ago when Penny’s campaign of bullying against Haley was at its worst. He wanted me to try and do something to help her.
“You know Penny,” he said. “Tell her to back off.”
I used to know Penny. I sure as fuck don’t anymore. I shut that door and locked it a long time ago.
I told him he was on his own.
But tonight, I’ve changed my mind. Caleb is my brother-in-arms, and Haley is his woman. That means protecting her is my responsibility, too.
That’s why I’m here.
To tell Penny to stay in her fucking lane.
Or else I’ll be forced to intervene in more damaging ways.
Penny’s jaw shifts to one side and she clicks her teeth in annoyance. Her breath huffs out, making her chest heave.
When she speaks again, she uses her usual sassy bitch tone. Her Queen Bee voice.
“Why do you care about her? I thought she belonged to Caleb. Is he sharing? Based on the stupid grin he has been wearing and your perpetual frown, I’d guess not. Then again, you’ve never really been one for smiles.”
She’s trying to assert control of the situation.
But she’s not in charge here. I’m not one of the stupid bimbos she calls friends.
I’m the one calling the shots now.
I ignore her question, mostly because I know it will bother her.
“When shit hit the fan between us, I told you to stay out of my life. Haley’s part of my life.” Her eyes narrow, but I continue. “Leave her the fuck alone.”
I let go of her arm, and Penny spins away from me, brushing her hands down the front of her jeans as though she can erase the memory of our bodies touching.
When she stands tall again, her legs are spread and her arms are crossed, making her cleavage even more noticeable.
But I refuse to be distracted. I keep my eyes locked on hers.
“Is that why I don’t hear any rumors about who you’re with, Noah? Because you’re slumming?”
Her voice sounds desperate, nasally and a bit higher pitched. The same way mothers have a telephone voice, Penny seems to have an I’m being a bitch voice.
“I knew you Golden Boys did everything together, but I didn’t know you did everyone together, too.”
“No one gives a shit what kind of rumors you try to make up, Penny. Trying harder will only make things worse for you.”
Her eyes go molten. “I think you care a lot what people think.”
We are only a few feet apart, the dark of the forest pressing in on all sides, making the distance feel simultaneously shorter and longer.
It feels like we are in a black hole, separate from the rest of the universe, being sucked towards one another.
And, fuck, it pisses me off.
I’ve spent two years purging my life of this bitch and all it takes is one conversation for all that work to be undone.
But what I want from Penny now is different from what I once wanted.
Now, I want to make her suffer.
To make her miserable.
To make her pay.
I want to make her feel the way I feel every time I see her swaying down the hallway, sneering and rude.
The time has come to do unto others as has been done unto me. It may not be the golden rule exactly, but it’s this Golden Boy’s rule.
“You’re right about that, Penny,” I say lightly. “I do care. About you especially.” I lower my chin and move towards her, biting my lower lip. “You have no idea how much I care.”
The cold mask slips. Her eyes are wide, long lashes batting against her flushed cheeks.
“You do?” she asks, confused.
Penny is used to being admired and worshipped. Men bend over backwards for her because she has a body that fits just right in your hands and a mouth that promises unspeakable things without ever saying a word.
So, of course, she thinks I still care about her.
She doesn’t know any different.
But, oh, how she’s about to learn.
“I care that you’re happy,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Especially since you shouldn’t be.”
Her face falls.
“You don’t deserve the grace I’ve extended the last two years by ignoring you,” I spit. “All the pain you’ve caused other people, you deserve to have handed back to you ten-fold.”
“I haven’t done anything,” she stammers. “Noah, you know I didn’t do—”
I wave a hand to dismiss her. “I’ll see you around. That’s a promise.” Then I turn and leave.
“Noah!”
My name on her lips is still enough to make me stop in my tracks.
But it isn’t enough to change my mind.
Penny has had her fun.
Now, it’s time for me to have mine.
Chapter 3: Penny
What the actual fuck just happened?
Two years.
Two entire years since Noah Boone has so much as breathed in my direction, and now he storms back into my life, pins me against a tree, and makes threats?
This has got to be a fever dream. Lord knows he still features in them from time to time no matter how hard I fight my subconscious on the matter.
Though, usually, he’s younger in my dreams. So am I.
The way we were back when things were different.
In those dreams, we’re in seventh or eighth grade. I still have braces, and he wears a smile, and it’s always innocent. Just sitting together and talking. And laughing.
I shake my head in a desperate attempt to clear it. Now is not the time for this.
I left the main party because I needed a minute. A minute to slouch against a tree, stop sucking in my stomach, and, honestly, fix the permanent wedgie my silk thong causes.
Did Noah see me do that?
My face burns with the possibility, but it doesn’t matter. If Noah’s threat is to be taken seriously, he’s going to do a lot worse than tell people he saw me pull my panties out of my ass.
He’s played it cool the last few years, but I know what Noah and the Golden Boys are capable of.
Everybody does.
If you cross them, you die.
I kick the cup Noah slapped out of my hands into the bush. I told Anika to bring trash bags, but s
he spent the afternoon getting a spray tan no one would be able to see in the dark woods and forgot to do it. Classic.
Noah walked off in the opposite direction of the party, but I still catch myself looking for him as I pick my way back through the maze of branches and human bodies.
A couple that clearly started beneath a tree to the right of the path have gyrated their way off the blanket they laid out to the center of the path. I actually have to kick the guy in the ribs to get him to move.
He curses in frustration before he looks up at my face. I don’t know him, but he clearly knows me.
“Sorry,” he mutters, wrapping his hands around the girl’s back and sliding her back into the scarce coverage of the bush. Her shirt is gone and, even in the dark, I can see that her nipples are harder than diamonds.
It’s warm for January, but it’s not that warm.
“Put a fucking shirt on.” I cover the girl’s chest from my line of sight with my hand as I pass.
Yes, I’m being harsh, but I’m also giving her some good advice. Any guy who actually cared about her would not have her half-naked in the woods for the rest of the school to see. No dick is worth that.
I pass twenty feet from where the rest of the Golden Boys are sitting around a dying fire.
Finn and Lily are whispering to one another while Viktor tries to get the group going in a slurred drinking song.
Then, I see Caleb and his girlfriend.
I remember my mom pushing me to date him our first year at Ravenlake. “He’s a quarterback,” she’d said to me, raising her perfectly manicured blonde eyebrows at me like I was crazy. “You have to go out with him.”
It didn’t matter to my mom that I had no interest in Caleb.
Just like it hadn’t mattered to her that she had no interest in my birth dad.
His bank account and social status were what mattered. That’s the only stuff that ever matters to her.
“Penny!” Anika waves her arm in the air, flagging me down. “Where have you been? Come drink with us!”
Anika was on the hunt for some poor male to feel her up in the trees when I left, but now she has secured a sacrifice.
He’s an underclassmen with spotty facial hair and eager hands. Jordan or George or something like that—I can’t quite remember.
Whatever his name, he keeps an arm wrapped awkwardly around Anika like he’s afraid she might slip away.
“Actually, I think I might go.”
Anika gawks at me. “What? Why? We haven’t even lit the official bonfire yet.”
My mom’s ever-present lectures ring in my head like they always do. One of her favorites: Stay in the public eye. If you disappear, you’re as good as dead.
Unconsciously, I rub a tiny scar on my cheek. She slapped me one time when I came home from a party early with a stomach bug. She had a ring on, too, so it cut my face open.
But did she apologize? No.
Actually, make that hell no.
Instead, she applied some more foundation and sent me right back to the party. I’m not raising a loser, she’d hissed to me. Get your act together.
The lesson stuck.
So I can’t just waltz away from the party tonight.
But I also can’t stay.
Because, after seeing Noah, I can’t stomach a few more hours of pretending.
Pretending I’m happy.
Pretending I have it all together.
Pretending I’m not the broken daughter of a broken woman.
If you can’t have it, pretend it’s beneath you. Another lesson from Momma.
“Who gives a shit about a pile of burning sticks?” I ask Anika with a sharp laugh. “Cavemen invented fire, like, thousands of years ago. I doubt anything groundbreaking in that department will happen here tonight.”
Anika seems confused by my response, especially after how hard I rode her for paying more attention to her outfit than party prep.
But she begins to laugh along with me, anyway. Her barely legal date joins in, too.
“Maybe we can start a separate party?” Anika suggests.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Pen, it could be fun. VIP only.” She bumps her suitor’s hip with her own. “We can round up the best guests. Meet back at your house? Your mom is always game for houseguests. She even lets us drink, which is ridiculously cool.”
Your friends are supposed to be the people you confide in, the people you tell everything to. Anika and Jennifer should be those people for me.
But they’re too busy cashing in all the social currency I provide to give a single fuck about my personal life.
The only person who knew what it was really like to live with Momma is long gone. And he’s not coming back… ever.
I’m on my own.
I should never forget that.
“As if I’d trust you with the guest list,” I snap. “You couldn’t even manage the most basic shit today.”
Hurt flashes across Anika’s face.
I hate seeing that so fucking much. I hate hurting her. Why am I like this? Why am I doing this?
Anika stammers out an apology. “I’m sorry. I know I was kind of… scattered today, but let me make it up to you. You go home, and I’ll take care of everything.”
“Anika, no.”
“I have leftover alcohol in the back of my Jeep, and Jennifer has those Bluetooth speakers in her trunk from the party last weekend. It will be perfect.”
I sigh, losing patience. “I’m just going to go home.”
“You can’t sit home by yourself tonight.” Anika leans forward, her voice lowered. “This party is where everyone’s reminded that the status quo is still the status quo, remember? That’s what you said today. If you leave, people may think you’re slipping. Especially after that Haley girl hit you last month. You have to stay here and—”
Momma’s voice is still going in my head, drowning out Anika’s.
You have to stand up taller, Penny.
Put on some blush, you look anemic.
I thought yoga bodies were supposed to be toned. What’s this hanging over the sides of your jeans?
I think you’ve eaten enough, don’t you?
You have to—
You have to—
You have to—
“I don’t have to stay here and do anything!”
The words come out in a shout, grabbing the attention of a few people nearby.
I lower my voice and dismiss Anika with a wave of my hand.
“I’m not sure how much clearer I can make it: I don’t want to be here anymore, and I don’t want you following me home like a lost puppy. Stay here, grope your sophomore hook up, and leave me the fuck alone.”
Anika’s eyes well with tears, but I turn and stomp away before she can start to cry.
Not because I care whether I’ve made her cry, but because I feel my chest constricting in the familiar way it always does before I have a panic attack.
“Not here, not here,” I mutter under my breath as I try to regulate my breathing.
Stop being so dramatic, Penelope, Momma always says, looming over me like the Grim Reaper. Really, you can’t take any criticism.
A montage plays in my mind as I scratch and claw at my throat, trying desperately to breathe.
I’m eleven, dancing on pointe across the living room in my leotard and tights while Momma watches on, a smile plastered on my face.
As soon as the music cuts, I fall sideways and clutch at my bruised, bleeding toes.
The world is starting to darken at the edges. I still can’t breathe. It’s a full-blown panic attack now.
But the memories keep on coming.
I’m thirteen, being fitted for my first pageant dress. The gown is pale pink and gorgeous, flowing in layers of tulle and lace from the trumpet flare at my knees to the floor.
Except, my mom tells the seamstress to take it in another inch.
“She’ll lose it by the time of the pageant,” Mo
mma says.
She’s right.
After the laxatives, diet pills, and starvation, my waist shrinks an inch and a half.
When I take third place in the pageant, she blames the weight loss. “You’re too skinny. You look like a sack of bones up there.”
“Get out of my head!” I press my fists into my temples, tempted to yank fistfuls of hair out of my head in hopes some memories will come with them.
Anika isn’t my mom.
Anika was pressuring me to throw a party, not skip a meal.
She won’t punish me for yelling at her or chase me through the house, screaming insults through my closed bedroom door.
So, why do I hear footsteps moving behind me?
Why do I feel a tingle on the back of my neck like someone is chasing me?
Is it Noah?
I shake my head. I’m alone, in the woods. I’m safe. Everything is fine.
Stop being so dramatic. Get up. Now.
It’s Momma’s voice that sends me spiraling, but it’s also Momma’s voice that keeps me moving.
Because if I stop for even a minute, the demons I’m running from will catch up.
I don’t know what they’ll do to me when they find me.
So I get up. And I move, even though I still feel like I’m drowning.
The makeshift parking lot isn’t far ahead. My car will be there. I’ll be safe in my car.
I’m almost there.
One step at a time.
One breath at a time.
Finally, after stumbling my way through the dark woods, I see a glint of moonlight off a car hood up ahead.
I’ve made it.
I pull my keys out of my back pocket and begin hitting the unlock button, looking for the flash of my car’s headlights. They light up, illuminating the trees for a moment.
And something else.
A shadow perched on my hood.
I freeze a few feet from my car, halfway between the dirt lot and the mouth of the woods.
My voice sounds tiny and afraid when it comes out.
“Noah?”
Chapter 4: Noah
I don’t see any lights on as I gaze through the eight-foot high windows that make up most of the first-floor of my house, so I assume my mom is asleep.
But as soon as I push open one of the double front doors, I smell the alcohol.
A trail of wadded-up tissues lead me through the white-tile entryway and into the sunken living room. I can see where my mom haphazardly kicked off her heels in front of the liquor cabinet.
