The booming of the thunder outside makes me jump for the millionth time today. It’s been storming outside all day long without letting up.
I flip my phone up and down in my hands, wondering if it’s worth it to even try to call her. My sister.
The phone goes straight to voicemail as it always does. And her voicemail is still full.
“Why?” I ask out loud.
Why couldn’t I have a normal college life like every other person? Maybe this is life’s shit way of saying I don’t belong here. I should listen.
The next name I press in my contact’s list is my mother’s.
She answers the phone with a sleepy, “Hey, Mera.” Shit, I forgot it’s super early in the morning in Kardenia.
“Mother, I want to come home.”
She sighs. “You ignore our calls all week and suddenly decide that you want to come home?”
“I’m sorry. Everything just overwhelmed me. Just please, let me come home.”
There’s a pause and she says, “Of course. Okay, in the morning we’ll talk about everything. Can you give me at least four more hours of sleep before you call again?”
“Sorry,” I say quickly and hang up, hoping that she’ll get back to sleep and wake up in a decent mood. I lock my phone, lying back in bed with it on my chest, when I hear the sound of sharp rapping on the door.
Frowning, I stare at the door. Everyone left for the playoff game thirty minutes ago if they wanted to get good seats in time.
If Callan and his team win tonight, they only need one more win to move on to the second round.
So who could be knocking on my door?
I turn the lock, unlocking it and pull it open to find the last person I thought I’d see. Her angled eyes don’t look at me with hatred this time.
“Hi, Kori? If you’re looking for Brandie–”
“No. I’m looking for you. Can I come inside?” she glances behind me and I suddenly feel self conscious about the mess on my side of the room. Now she’s going to hate me and think I’m a complete pig. Or a spoiled princess who doesn’t like to clean up after herself.
“Sure,” I reply, moving aside for her.
She sits gently on the edge of Brandie’s bed and stares at me.
Her gaze is slightly unnerving so I glance around. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She tilts her head down for a second and sighs. “I have to apologize for something. I should have told you sooner. I let my hatred for him get in the way of being a decent human being.”
I sit at the edge of my bed, watching her as she moves a strand of her hair away from her face.
“Callan came and talked to everyone the night you were at the police station. He asked all of us if anyone heard you snoring the night Heath disappeared. At first I was going to deny it again.”
Deny it again? So she did hear me snore! Someone heard me. I do have an alibi.
“I heard you snoring on the way to my room that night. He paid special attention to the girls who room around you on this floor. He reminded me that you’re innocent in all of this. Even for becoming friends with Heath Goldsworthy. I just wanted to let you know before I go to the police and tell them so they can stop bothering you with their questioning.”
My heart swells at the thought of Callan coming through for me again. “I can’t thank you enough.”
A small smile forms on her face and she nods. “Well, my girlfriend is saving me a spot at the game so I better get going.”
She stands up to leave, when a thought pops into my head. This is the moment to ask since I never got the opportunity to ask around on my own.
“Why do you hate Heath so much?”
Kori turns back, only inches away from opening the door and sits back down.
“Last year, Nadine and I came out of the closet. For years, she had guys falling over her, asking her out on dates, asking her father’s permission to date her, but she refused all advances. We secretly dated all throughout high school with no problems. The minute we were out, guys were furious. So furious that…” she trails off and gets a far away look in her eyes.
She glances down at her hands. “One night, we were roofied at a party. It was late, there weren’t as many people around. It had to have only been seconds that we set our drinks down for. My body was stiff. I couldn’t move. I was only able to watch as a group of guys picked us up and put us in their cars. Drove us to the forest surrounding the lake, where no one could hear.”
My heart sinks as I already know what’s coming. I cover my mouth at the horror they must have felt.
She wipes the edge of her eyes and inhales deeply. “They made me watch as they did it. Each one of those bastards. My poor Nadine. But then, by some miracle. Someone came. Heath happened upon us somehow. There weren’t any other cars nearby so he must have been wandering around.”
Oh fuck, Heath. Please don’t tell me…
“He took one look. They told him to mind his own business, and he kept walking. Wouldn’t you hate him too if the same had happened to you?”
I nod, feeling sick to my stomach. How could Heath walk away like that? Is this the mistake he vaguely told me about?
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur, folding my hands together.
She finally looks at me again with teary eyes. “Nadine hasn’t been the same since. I don’t know if she’ll ever come back to college for class, but she never misses a basketball game. She says it makes her feel alive again. Her professors have been letting her do all her work online at the request of Mr. Silverstone. ”
With a frown, I ask, “Mr. Silverstone? As in Kane’s dad Mr. Silverstone?”
She raises an eyebrow and slowly says, “Yes. Nadine Silverstone.”
My jaw drops to the floor. “You and Kane are close I’ve heard and he’s never once talked about her?”
“In passing, just not her name,” I respond, trying to process things in my head.
If someone didn’t stop someone from raping my sister, I’d be pissed off. Did Kane kill Heath?
She stands up for the second time tonight. “I’ll talk to you more sometime soon, Mera. You aren’t as bad as I thought you were.”
I smile automatically as she leaves. My mind is far, far away though. What if Kane did it?
Those hints he gave me about him seeing something. Have I been talking to Heath’s killer all along? Does Callan know what Heath did? How could I have ignored Callan who told me himself that Kane was bad news?
I lie down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. That basketball game needs to hurry up and end. Not that I want it to go badly, but keeping this to myself is weighing on me.
I don’t know how long I lay like that when I hear the door knob turn. That’s right, I forgot to lock it after her.
“Kori? Did you forget something?” I turn my head to look and sit up quick when I see orange hair underneath a hood. Only one person I know has hair like this.
“What the hell do you want?” I snap. Ginger does nothing but antagonize me. And try to steal Callan away.
She moves the hood off of her head, taking a few steps forward, and stopping right by my bed. Way too close for my liking.
“Why couldn’t you be satisfied with Heath?” she asks quietly.
“Does it really matter? Callan didn’t want you even before he was interested in me. You two went to high school together, remember?”
She shakes her head several times. “No,” she says in a low tone. “I was so close to being with him. So fucking close. By the time we graduated from high school he was warming up to me. Despite the fact that his brother whispered in his ear from time to time and told him not to stick his dick in crazy. Me? Crazy? But his brother isn’t around to whisper anymore.” A sinister smile spreads across her face.
I reach forward ever so slightly toward my phone. “What do you want, Ginger?”
“I want to get rid of Callan’s distraction,” she states cheerily.
Fuck this. I turn to my phone, pushin
g my body forward as I reach and successfully grab it in a flash. I’m just about to hit the recent calls and call the first person listed when she starts cackling and I register the shadow too late as something crashes into me and everything goes black.
I come awake to feeling a finger in my mouth. Why is there a finger there? I tilt my head up to look and immediately come face to face with Ginger’s crazy eyes. Something slides down my throat and I gasp.
“What the fuck did you do?” I scream. Going to touch my throat, when I realize something doesn’t feel right. My arms hurt like hell.
Why are we in the bathroom? Why am I in the tub?
And then, I stare down and scream because the water isn’t clear, it’s red. This weird feeling, I know it now. The slow leakage of all of the blood in my body.
I find the source of my pain to be two long openings, one on each arm. My blood is pouring out into the water and I’m completely naked.
Shivering, I glance at her. She’s holding a razor blade in one gloved hand and a pocketknife in the other. “I was tempted to cut you more, one on each leg too, but then I realized if I did that, I wouldn’t get to talk to you some more before you die.”
Die.
There’s that word. That word that I wanted to come true during Thanksgiving break. But now? I don’t want this.
“You move to get out of that tub, and I’ll stab you in your eyeball,” she says, holding her pocket knife up to eye level.
What should I do?
“Did you kill Heath and masquerade as me?” I ask quietly.
She laughs. “You’re talking about that picture right? That’s priceless. Someone out there really hates you and Heath. Maybe even more than I do. No, I didn’t. I had nothing to do with that. If I wanted to kill him I would’ve done it years ago after the very first time Heath stood between the love of my life and I.”
“Psycho,” I bite out.
She grins. “It’s just a happy coincidence that he’s dead. And now, when you die, Callan will need me. He’ll look for comfort and my arms will be wide open.”
How fucking delusional can you be?
Ginger needs to…
I blink slowly as my head starts to feel heavy.
“Oh the pill is starting to work. Pretty soon you won’t be able to move and you’ll only be able to sit and watch yourself die.” She laughs loudly. “Brilliant plan right?”
Fuck. I should’ve gone to the basketball game.
Suddenly, I hear a sound that makes my heart beat faster.
The creaking of the door opening. Please let it be one of my friends. Anyone. She reaches forward to cover my mouth but I bite her fingers and she shrieks.
“The bathroom,” I scream, “I’m in the bathroom.”
Seconds later, the bathroom door flies open and I gasp when I see Callan’s face. His eyes are confused at first. They don’t stay confused for long. “Callan,” I whisper, feeling tears well up in my eyes.
He’s dressed in his game uniform. It’s completely soaked along with his hair. The rain is still streaming down his face from his hair.
His eyes are absolutely murderous as he yanks Ginger by her shirt and throws her against the wall. I glance up at them to find him lifting her by throat off the ground. “I told you to stay away from her.” He pulls her head back and jams it back into the wall. “But you don’t. And you do this? To my princess?”
“Don’t kill her, Callan,” I whisper, feeling really drowsy.
“Why the fuck shouldn’t I?” he yells, glancing from her to me. “Look at you, princess. If I hadn’t gotten here.” He slams a fist on the other side of her head and yells, “Fuck! I’m wasting time.”
The hand around her throat tightens and she gasps, “But I love you, Callan. I did this for us.”
“I don’t love you,” he says in a low tone. He holds her there for a while, and the moment her head lulls forward, he lets go. Her body sinks to the floor and he moves toward me with a dark expression.
Both hands dunk into the crimson-tinged water, going around my legs and my back. He pulls me up and holds me close to his chest in his arms.
“Sorry about your uniform,” I mumble, blinking slowly.
The rush of cold air as I get out of the tub feels too sensitive to the cuts in my arms.
He sets me on the bed. “It’s halftime and the only thing I could think about was seeing you. I ran here to see you for a moment, hoping it’d get me back in the game. I’m glad I came.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Let me call for help. Keep those pretty eyes on me, princess.”
Moving to the side of my bed, he searches my only remaining night stand. “Where’s your phone?”
“Ginger had it,” I manage to slur out.
He rushes to the bathroom and I stare up at the ceiling, trying and fighting to stay awake.
A few minutes later, he comes back stomping around and looking everywhere. “Fuck! Your phone isn’t with her. She doesn’t have her phone on her either. I left my phone with my shit inside the locker room.”
The despair in my chest crests and I feel my heart sink. Walking over to the vanity chair, he pulls it away from the vanity and pushes it underneath the bathroom door knob.
“Listen to me,” he says, “I’m going to get help. Someone has to be around here somewhere. I’ll be back once I’ve called for help.”
“You’re leaving?” I ask weakly.
He bends down, touching my cheek, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Without another word, he runs out. I try to think of something, anything, to help me stay awake. My arms feel like they’re throbbing, but it’s dulled by this drowsiness I can’t overcome.
The minutes seem to drag on alone. But then I hear something faintly. Footsteps. Callan’s back!
Wait, the footsteps echoing sound more frequent than just one person walking down the hall. He brought someone to help?
I watch the doorway, looking into the darkness of the hallway and breathing easier now that help is coming.
But it isn’t Callan’s face I see. It’s Brandie and Jamie who come in, followed by their boyfriends, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I don't know how or why they’re here, or even how Callan missed them but they look shocked when they notice the condition I’m in.
“What happened?” Brandie says rushing over.
Jamie gasps. “We left the game early because they started losing without Callan. Who did this to you?”
“Ginger. Just call for help, please.” Everything is starting to get hazier.
Brandie pulls her phone out and I hear the sounds of the buttons dialing. The phone goes to her ear as she looks at Jamie. I stare at her confused when she doesn’t say anything into the phone. She pulls the phone off of her ear and shrugs. “Sorry, but it looks like no one’s coming to help you, Mera.”
I stare hard at them. At all of them. From Brandie’s smiling face to Jamie’s blank expression to Brett and Emerson’s smirks.
No way.
The air inside the room starts to suffocate me all at once and I gasp wanting to touch my throat, but it’s completely impossible to. I can’t move a muscle.
“I trusted you,” I rasp.
“Oh that bubbly personality of mine worked, see I told you guys it would!” she says with a happy clap turning to them. “All I had to do was beg Collette to let me room with you. She was more than happy about that.”
“Don’t act so happy. I told you sticking Ginger on her was a good idea and that worked out well too.”
“Poor Ginger,” Brandie says with a sigh. “Poor, dumb, Ginger. Callan came and interrupted her job, didn’t he? Is she dead in the bathroom? Well, good thing he did since now you get to learn what happened to Heath before you die.”
All the moisture in my throat dries as tears start to pour down my face. “No.”
The evil coming off of them in waves is smothering me.
“Callan. Where’s Callan?” I ask.
They shrug and Brandie comments, “None of us saw him. Mus
t have run off campus for help since we didn’t see him on the way here from the gym. It’ll be a while before he gets back. By that time, you’ll be dead.”
I breathe a little better knowing that he’s out there and he’s okay. It doesn’t stop the sick feeling in my gut from being betrayed and crushed by people I thought were my friends.
“Did you like those little notes of mine?” Brandie asks with a wink. “I can’t take all the credit though. Jamie did come up with quite a few. I wrote them super fast in case you decided to check them against my own writing. Oh and did you love the petition? That was Jamie’s idea. We found out Kane’s account is an admin one and happened to figure out the answer to his security question. From there it was easy to get into the other accounts.”
Jamie stares at my arms, “Brandie, we’re saying all of this while her towels are still wrapped around her arms.”
“Oh, right,” Brandie says, pulling the towels off of my arms. I have no control over them so they fall right onto the bed, soiling the blanket again.
I glance behind them at Brett and Emerson for the first time to find them staring at me with a weird gleam in their eyes. If I wasn’t paralyzed, I’d shiver under their watchful gazes.
“What happened to Heath?” I finally ask. The question that’s been tormenting me every day for months.
She smiles. “That doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Heath’s body will never be found. That’s his ultimate punishment. We had fun though when I donned that copycat wig and stole your precious hoodie.”
“Not him dying,” I slur. “You robbed him of his fucking life.”
“And he deserved it,” she says with a shrug, looking back at the three of them.
“Brett and Emerson here aren’t our boyfriends by the way. We put on a pretty good act, huh? See, Heath ruined their lives last year. Brett and Emerson were just trying to have some fun in the woods late at night at a party.”
My blood runs cold as that starts to sound way too familiar.
“This girl had been teasing them, you see. So they and their buddies decided to teach her a lesson. Well her and her friend.”
“You two raped Nadine.”
“Heath got us kicked off the team the next day, right when a NFL scout was going to be at our game. Coach only let us come back when Heath disappeared,” Brett adds.
The Princess and the Bully (Goldsworthy University Book 1) Page 28
