by Callie Rose
She shook her head. “To be honest, I don’t have that far to fall. I’m low enough on the totem pole to be unimportant to them. I doubt any of them even know I’m alive, honestly. I just barely made it into this school, and I’m definitely not royalty.” At my confused look, she waved her hands. “The whole thing is set up like a tier. The ones with the most money and social status control those below them, and they control the ones below them, and on and on and on. I’m so far down the system, the Princes won’t care.”
“But you’re not trash.”
She shot me a rueful look. “No. Just trash adjacent.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. I was feeling a little lightheaded by now, and I wasn’t sure if it was low blood sugar or the insane story Leah had just told me. How the hell could four guys have so much sway in this place? They couldn’t be much older than I was, sixteen or seventeen at most. How could they have both students and teachers running scared from them?
But when I thought about that moment in the cafeteria—the confidence, languid power, and sheer, twisted charisma that’d radiated from each of them—I could begin to understand. There was something about those four boys. Something that drew me in even as it repulsed me, made me want to exist in their orbit even though I hated everything they stood for.
Evil shouldn’t be allowed to exist in such pretty packages. It made it hard to see the devils underneath.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
Leah’s voice broke through my thoughts, and I realized I’d stopped walking. I blew out a deep breath, puffing my cheeks.
“Yeah. I’m fine. They kicked me out of the dining hall, and I never got lunch. I think I’m just hungry.”
Sympathy twisted her delicate features. “Yeah, I heard about that. I think everyone’s heard about it by now. Oh, here!” She swung her backpack around to her front and dug around inside it before coming up with a wrapped granola bar. “My mom’s such a worrier, she demands I keep something to eat with me at all times. I’d give her shit for it… but it actually comes in handy pretty often.”
She handed it to me, and I took it gratefully. I was assuming all three meals of the day were served in the dining hall, which meant I’d probably be skipping dinner too. I couldn’t avoid it forever, but I didn’t have another fight in me today.
We veered around the side of Hammond hall, heading toward the Wastelands—or the haven, as I’d begun thinking of it. It might’ve felt unfortunate at first to be stuck in a dorm so far away from everyone else, but considering I was now a social pariah, maybe it was for the best. There’d be less chance of running into any of the Princes over here.
“What’s the blond one’s name?” I asked, hating myself for even being curious. But it’s better to know your enemies, right?
Leah’s gaze shot to me before she answered. “That’s Finn. He’s captain of the football team. He’s a major player. I’d warn you to stay away from him if he comes flirting, but…” Her freckled nose scrunched up. “I guess that won’t really be a problem.”
A weird feeling of regret settled in my stomach at her words, and I did my best to shove it down. Would I really have been interested in Finn if he hadn’t joined in with his friends in tormenting me? If he hadn’t shown his true colors to be a bright shade of “rich prick”?
Yes.
…Fuck.
Well, that would be a secret I’d take to the damn grave. If I let him know I’d been interested in any way, I was sure he’d find a way to use that to torture me too.
Better to just keep a distance from all of them.
“Mason’s sort of the leader of the Princes, although it’s not like the other three do what he says or anything. None of them take orders from anybody. Elijah’s family is the richest—I swear to God, they own half of Roseland. And Cole is…” Leah paused, blushing. “Well, I mean, he’s obviously hot as hell, but he’s kind of fucking scary too. I think he fights guys for fun. He shows up to class with bruises on his face and knuckles a lot. And he’s got a shitload of tattoos. Pretty much everywhere on his upper body that’s covered up by the uniform has ink on it.”
Damn. That is fucking hot.
I’d always had a thing for inked bad boys, but as I was quickly discovering, the reality of them was a little different from the fantasy. Cole was insanely gorgeous, his allure somehow enhanced by the blankness behind his eyes rather than diminished by it. But a thrill of fear shivered through me at the thought of him. He wasn’t just playing at being a psychopath—there was a very good chance he was one.
“Great.” I chucked the granola bar wrapper in a trashcan outside my building, feeling a little better physically at least. “And these are the guys who’ve decided to make my life miserable.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” She genuinely did look apologetic. “Seriously, Talia. If you can think of anything you might’ve done to piss them off, try to fix it. It may be too late, but you really don’t want to stay on their bad side if you can help it.”
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
I already knew there wasn’t, though. I could count on three fingers the number of encounters I’d had with any of them before the dining hall incident, and none of them had included anything bad enough to make them come after me like this. Unless they counted accidentally interrupting a conversation, or having a hard time not staring.
But neither of those things were really that bad, were they?
Tugging the key card from my bag, I turned toward the dorm’s entrance before Leah stopped me.
“Hey! Why don’t we go shopping next weekend? It’ll help take your mind off things.” Then she slapped her hand over her mouth, eyes opening wide. “Err… sorry. I didn’t ask if you had any money to go. That’s rude.”
Idaho trash.
Poor.
Doesn’t belong here.
The names the Princes has called me, the words I’d heard whispered in the hallways all day, bounced around in my head. Even Leah believed them, even if she was being nice about it, rather than cruel.
And weren’t they right, in a way?
I was poor. Had been my whole life. I didn’t belong here. Every bit of money that’d been spent on my tuition, every bit of privilege I had at the moment, was a gift from grandparents who felt like strangers.
But they were wrong about one thing.
I wasn’t fucking trash.
Huffing a weak laugh, I patted the side of my backpack where’d I’d stuffed my little wallet with the shiny black card Jacqueline had given me.
“I just got a platinum credit card, so… I’m good.”
Leah’s lips pursed into an O. “Damn! All right then, girl, we’re definitely taking that thing out for a test drive. Here, let me give you my number.”
We exchanged numbers at the door before I watched her bounce away. She really was glass-half-full about everything—something that probably should have irritated me but didn’t. I liked her optimistic attitude. It made me feel a little less pessimistic about life at the moment.
Besides, she was pretty much my only friend in the whole school at the moment.
Once she was out of sight, I trudged up the stairs to my dorm room. It only took me about twenty minutes to unpack everything, and when I was done, the closet still looked woefully bare. It actually made me a little excited about shopping with Leah. I hadn’t enjoyed clothes shopping in forever, since it usually meant agonizing over every decision, weighing whether whatever I wanted to buy was worth more than food or other household necessities—and more often than not, returning half of what I’d bought a week later.
So maybe it would be fun to go shopping with someone else’s money, to buy whatever I wanted knowing it wasn’t a trade-off for something I needed.
I dumped my textbooks on the desk in my bedroom and put the picture of my mom off to one side before I glanced out of the window. The Princes strolled across the lawn toward their dorm in the distance, moving with such confident purpose that people simply melted out of the way for
them. They were like sharks, I realized, cutting through the water with a feral grace, threatening to rip the limbs off anyone who got in their way.
Unable to help myself, I leaned closer to the window, resting my hands on the sill and peering through the glass. It was hard to believe they were real, and I found my gaze tracking them as if I might catch their forms wavering, see them vanish like mirages.
All four of them were astonishingly beautiful and equally terrifying. I watched as they talked intensely, their expressions tight as if they were in deep conversation.
Did it have to do with the argument in the stairwell? What the hell had that been about, anyway?
I almost wished I’d slipped through the door earlier so I could’ve heard more of what they were arguing about. If Mason was going to assume I’d eavesdropped anyway, it would’ve been nice to get a clearer picture of what had pissed him off.
Elijah, with his dark bronze hair and regal features, glanced up at my dorm. I froze, my breath seizing in my throat. They were a good distance away, separated by a wide expanse of lawn. But I swore he could see me. His gaze lingered on my window for several more heartbeats before he turned and continued his conversation.
I let the air leave my lungs in a whoosh before I yanked out my desk chair and plopped into it.
Come on, Talia. Be smart.
These guys all affected me way too much for my own sanity. Part of it was the dangerous attraction I had to them that made my heart beat faster. The other part was the roiling disgust at their behavior, their status, their way of life.
Shaking my head firmly, I opened my chemistry textbook, deciding to tackle my worst subject first. If I threw myself into the massive pile of homework I’d been given, maybe it would take my mind off the Princes and the rest of the insanity that was Oak Park Prep for a little while.
After all, today was just my first day.
I still had to survive two more years in this place.
Chapter 6
The next week came and went in a stressed-out blur. Back at Sand Valley, I’d always gotten decent grades. They weren’t the best, not straight A’s or anything, but the lowest I’d received was a C—and that was between working two jobs and taking care of Dad.
If I’d expected Oak Park to be easier without all of the extra stress of running a household and working nights and weekends, I was dead wrong.
The courses weren’t on the same level.
At all.
Oak Park set a bar and set it high. The instructions were sink or swim, and every teacher shoved my ass off a pier then sat back and watched to see how it would go. They seemed only half interested in me—just enough not to piss my grandparents off if I said anything, but not enough to actually help me with anything for more than five minutes at a time.
It was frustrating as fuck, and part of me wondered why such a prestigious, expensive school didn’t do a little more handholding to assist their students. Then it occurred to me that maybe the wealthy families who sent their kids here wanted them to be put through the ringer. Maybe they considered it preparation for the cutthroat real world they’d be entering eventually.
And if being put through hell was the whole point of life at Oak Park, then I should be fucking valedictorian by the time I graduated.
As bad as the first day had been, every day after was even worse.
The Princes had painted a giant bullseye on my back, and their minions all over the school scurried to carry out their command. Everyone, from fucking freshmen to seniors, screwed with me as much as possible. A few people—who were probably “trash adjacent” themselves, like Leah was—were decent to me, but even if they weren’t joining in the bullying, they were helpless to stop it. And a good portion of the student body did join in, treating me like shit and pulling awful “pranks” on me.
On Tuesday, they stuffed my locker with old food. I stopped by to swap out books after third period, and the stench wafting out hit me so hard I gagged. My eyes watered, and it took everything in me not to throw up in the middle of the hallway while the clusters of kids gathered around me laughed.
My grandmother had a car delivered to campus for me on Wednesday, and by that afternoon, it was covered in graffiti.
Idaho Trash.
White trash.
Whore.
Pathetic.
I spent the evening in the student lot with a bucket of water and a rag, scrubbing it clean so I wouldn’t have to stare at the words anymore. Instead of helping, students gathered to watch, recording me on their phones, whispering, and laughing.
The worst part was that each time one of these fucking pranks was pulled, one or more of the Princes was always there to see it. They watched my humiliation quietly, their expressions ranging from languid amusement to cruel satisfaction to—in Cole’s case—something like apathy.
It made my stomach drop every time I caught their gazes in the crowd. I didn’t want them to see me as defenseless and weak. And for some reason, it hurt the worst to be brought low in front of them, as if some part of me didn’t want them to think badly of me. I wanted Finn to look at me again the way he had that first day in class.
I shouldn’t care what they thought. They’d made their feelings about me perfectly clear. They hated me, and I hated them right back.
If only my damn hormones understood that.
On Friday, I slammed into my dorm at the end of the day, surprising one of my dorm-mates in the common area downstairs. Her face froze in shock as she stared at me. Maggie was sweet and shy, one of the few people at Oak Park who didn’t treat me like I was garbage… even if I currently was covered in it.
Her white-blonde curls were swept out of her face as she raised a hand and covered her nose and mouth. “Oh God, Talia. You smell like—”
“Shit,” I gritted out. “I know. I’m going to take a shower now.”
I couldn’t think of anything more humiliating then walking out of Johnson Hall at the end of the day and having a trash can upended over my head. Whoever had done it had been fast. I’d never seen them coming and had only glimpsed two students running away while the rest pointed and catcalled. Worst of all, Mason had stood there, leaning against the side of the building with his hands shoved in his pockets as he’d smiled at me. It wasn’t even a sneer, just a smile. A true smile. Like he’d never seen anything that made him happier in his whole life.
“Trash covered in trash. I think that’s irony,” he’d mused softly, his green eyes glittering like jewels.
The shock ricocheting through me had kept me from reacting, and I still wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not. A mix of rage and humiliation had flooded me, and I’d wanted to slam my fist into Mason’s face as much as I’d wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. In the end, I’d just stared at him for several long seconds, hands clenching and unclenching, while he smiled serenely at me.
Then I’d turned and walked away.
Live to fight another day, Talia. Be smart.
If Leah was right—and I had no reason to doubt she was anymore—then if I started some shit back, odds were good the school admins would take the Princes’ side, and I’d be the one who’d get blamed for it all. I could end up getting expelled or suspended, and I was determined not to let that happen.
As my dorm room door closed behind me, I peeled off my sticky clothes and threw them in the trash. There was no point trying to save them. My locker still smelled like ass, and I’d been trying to clean it out all week—at least the clothes were disposable.
When I looked into the bathroom mirror, I found bits of food trapped in my hair. I yanked out what I could, wincing at the pain in my scalp. A piece of gum had ended up trapped in the ends of my brunette strands, and I carefully picked at it, throwing the little pink chunks in the trash. The heavy stench of garbage still clung to my body, and I breathed through my mouth as I worked.
The water in the shower seared my skin, but I didn’t care; I scrubbed as hard as I could, turning my whole body pink.
The combination of a loofa and half a bottle of almond-vanilla body wash, shampoo and conditioner made me feel a little better.
Shit, I need to get out of this hellhole.
I’d had more than I could take for the week, and I was dying to get off campus. I texted Leah and smiled when she replied right away.
LEAH: Hell yeah girl! TGIF. Get me the fuck outta here
ME: Great. meet you in the quad?
LEAH: yep. See you soon
I slipped into a fresh pair of jeans—the same ones with the hole in the knee Jacqueline had hated so much—and a tank top, then dried my long hair with a towel and twisted it into a messy bun before heading out.
Leah had been my lifesaver, the one buoy I could cling to in this sea of bullshit. We sat together in chemistry, and she’d eaten lunch with me a few days too. Not in the dining hall, of course, but out on the quad somewhere. Thank God the school was in California, not somewhere colder. I actually didn’t hate sitting outside, although my stomach clenched unpleasantly every time I stepped into Astor Hall to pick up my food, to the point where it was usually hard to eat it afterwards.
“Ready?” Leah called as soon as she caught sight of me waiting on the green lawn of the quad. She was coming from her dorm, which was too close to the Princes’ for me to like going near it. According to her, they were all housed on the top floor of the far north building, Clarendon Hall.
“Yeah. You?”
“Sooo ready. I need some serious retail therapy after this week. These classes are killing me.”
“Same.” Among other things.
There was a student lot behind the smaller class and admin buildings on the far east side of the campus. It was big and almost always full, and it had a small section of covered parking spots at one end.
We settled into the car my grandmother had had dropped off. It was a light pink, shiny Bentley Mulsanne, and even though it was brand new, the color made it seem dated somehow—almost like it was her idea of what the cool girls would’ve driven in the 1950s.
Several kids had mocked me for it… and honestly, I could kind of see why. The thing was a fucking eyesore.
