The End Defines the Beginning : A Boarding School Coming of Age (Harlow Academy Series Book 1)

by Sarah Appleby

  Georgia was one of them. Emily saw her game face and wasn’t fooled by her chilled out words. She would soon be in competition mode.

  They both sat down on the side of the court to change into their pre-approved sneakers that wouldn’t leave skid marks not the floor.

  “So, how are things with Pierce,” Georgia asked, “You haven’t really been talking about him this week. I would have thought you two would be super glued together after that dance.”

  Emily hadn’t wanted to mention the “slow things down” discussion to Georgia. Somehow, after building up the whole idea that they might start going together, coupled with the fact that they did it, really made Emily close up. She tried to keep humiliation at bay with the flimsy words that Pierce left her with, “I still like you.”

  This was not to mention that fact that they had hardly texted and hadn’t seen each other since cycle club. Emily had tried to throw out a few bait texts. One of them mentioned the Assembly coming up where an Olympian rower would give them a motivational speech and the other was to ask if he had a recommendation for cycling shoes. Lame attempts. Both responses were curt and didn’t lure him in to any conversation.

  “Well, I think it’s all moving a bit fast,” Emily said, “We saw each other at cycle club on Sunday and had lunch but, you know, it’s only my first year here so I’m trying not to get too attached.”

  She lied, trying to play it cool. In truth, she probably would have walked to the altar tomorrow if he asked.

  “Oh, do you like someone else? What about that Xander guy?”

  Emily’s face went crooked.

  “Xander? What? No we’re just friends. Why do you ask…?”

  “I mean, I don’t see why else you wouldn’t crack on with Pierce. But Xander seems to like you so I’ve wondered if maybe, you know… you have some of the same feelings…” she tied back her hair, “But anyway, it’s hard to want to go out with another prep when a hot upper is after you.”

  Emily felt disheartened but tried not to show it. She wasn’t so sure he was after her anymore.

  The pair stood up and took turns with three serves each, warming up before they would try to volley.

  Georgia ran to grab a ball that rolled toward the back of the court.

  “What about you anyway,” said Emily, “Have you seen Spencer after the dance? I didn’t see you at the dance at all.”

  “Ugh, yeah. I haven’t wanted to talk about it. I was hanging out with lower girls… Had a couple swigs of something one of the girls smuggled in in a flask. Don’t tell anyone but I just felt horrible the whole night it totally made me feel sick. Spencer and I walked in together, got the picture done first thing and I never saw him again after that. But that was pretty much my plan all along.”

  Georgia’s confidence never ceased to amaze Emily. It was effortless.

  “You don’t even feel in the least bit guilty for not even dancing with him?”

  “Why should I,” said Georgia cool as could be, “He just wanted to go with someone hotter than him. He got that. He got to tell his buddies he was going with a girl out of his league and I get to piss off my parents once I send those photos. Seems like a fair deal to me.”

  Emily wondered if it was the money. Was it the money that made Georgia so assured? Was it her parents showering her with attention? Maybe being an only child gave her the advantage? Maybe all people from the South were composed and assertive?

  All Emily knew was that neither she, nor any of the girls she knew from back home, were as mature and determined as Georgia. Emily wished she could be so ready to take on the world and everything in it.

  She wished she didn’t second guess every word she said, every move she made. She wished she could be popular without trying, like her incredible, beautiful and magnetic roommate who had boys eating out of the palm of her hand, not worried about losing them because there was a line she would never get through.

  Emily’s wishes were nothing but that. For now, her efforts had made her a few nice friends, had scored her a hot date with an older guy and had allowed her to pretend to belong.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  IT HAD BEEN more than a week of eavesdropping and determined snooping on Pierce and Xander came up empty handed. He had tried to eavesdrop on conversations around the dorm, tried to be nonchalant and get one one of Pierce’s friends to make some a dig on his character but… absolutely nothing.

  Pierce seemed untouchable.

  He had to talk to Randy again. He wondered if Randy had heard more than the word “poke.” Maybe Randy had more to tell. Xander knew that with his literal ways, he could get Randy to spill all. If there were any contents to spill.

  But why did Xander need this information? He needed a backstory. Randy might wonder why Xander was so curious about Pierce’s comments. It’s just every day stupid guy talk. Why should it fascinate him? What would he tell Randy if he asked?

  Xander struggled to come up with something that wasn’t a lie but wasn’t the truth either. He didn’t want to say that he liked Emily and wanted to be her knight in shining armor. He didn’t want to let on that he was trying to get anyone in trouble. Would Randy sense it and then not tell Xander anything more?

  After an agonizing hour, Xander settled on telling Randy that he was doing a paper for prep health on attitudes toward sex on campus. Every prep had to take health class all three trimesters and Randy knew that sex ed was a part of the class. He’d buy that.

  Xander went to Randy’s room and knocked on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Randy was alone in the room, sitting at his desk in a swivel chair. He had been doing some homework on his laptop. Even though it was the evening, Randy still wore his button-down shirt and tie.

  “Hey man, is Pete here?”

  Xander knew full well that they wouldn’t be able to have an actual conversation if Randy’s roommate Pete was about to walk in. In Wainwright, boys had actual shared rooms, with two beds, two dressers and two desks in them. Unlike some other dorms where each student had their own room, only sharing a door, Wainwright was not ideal for privacy. If Pete was around, he would be within ten feet of Xander and Randy’s conversation.

  “I don’t know where Pete is. He said he would be back in an hour.”

  “Oh no, I just wanted to chat to you actually.”

  “Why did you ask if Pete was here if you want to speak with me,?”

  “Well,” Xander considered a lie, but figured that might lead to more questions and he only had an hour, “I want to talk to you alone. Sort of a strange subject matter, I’d rather keep private.”

  Randy looked at Xander, unemotionally.

  Satisfied with the response he said, “What would you like to talk about?”

  Xander tried to act naturally, but it was a hard segue.

  “Well… do you remember Sunday… you mentioned that Pierce said he wanted to ‘poke’ Emily?”

  “Yes,” Randy said, turning around in his chair toward his computer, “I have it here. Would you like to see?”

  Xander furrowed his brow.

  “What do you mean? Would I like to see?”

  “He wrote it in an email to Grayson. I have it here…” he said, typing away at the keys and swiping his mouse around like a madman.

  “Uh… Randy, why do you have Pierce’s emails on your computer?”

  “I hack. I hack everyone’s things.”

  “Wow, dude…”

  Xander was shocked. He had always felt uncomfortable around Randy. His direct ways were almost intimidating and awkward. Now things went from uncomfortable to criminal real fast. He hadn’t had Randy down for crazy.

  “My mom said I shouldn’t tell people about it.”

  His mom knew about this? What kind of family were they?

  “Why did you tell me? I mean, if you’re supposed to keep it secret?”

  Randy turned around and looked Xander in the eyes, something he rarely did, “I don’t seem to be very good at lying. Y
ou asked me. I am telling you. This is why I don’t like talking to people. It seems to lead me to getting in trouble. I like talking to Emily, though. She seems okay with everything I say. I haven’t seen her do the upset face once.”

  “Yeah, Emily’s really great,” Xander said, as Randy continued to search his files, “What’s the ‘upset face’?”

  “It’s the face that my therapist showed me is the one people make when I say something they don’t like. Here,” he said, grabbing a small deck of cards from his desk drawer, “They’re called emotion cards. I’m working on it because my mom is really worried about me being away from home. She said if I master the cards it will help.”

  Xander shrugged and flipped through the cards of people with different emotional faces: sad, angry, upset, embarrassed and so on were written on the back. Almost like the times table flashcards Xander had used in elementary school.

  Randy typed away again and then called Xander over to his computer screen.

  “This is the email,” said Randy.

  Xander read:

  Hey man- everything is set up and I can’t wait to poke the prep. You done on your end?

  Xander struggled to contain his rage. “Poke the prep” was so out of line. He didn’t even call her by name.

  “Yes, they spoke about it, too… In the bathrooms very late at night. But I have no evidence of the conversation.”

  “Right, of course… So, what do you think ‘everything is set up’ means?”

  “Well I am not good at inferring. This is why hacking has become a very powerful social tool for me.”

  “Riiiight…” said Xander slowly, trying to keep to the task at hand and not think of the millions of other emails and more that this guy might have on his hard drives.

  “So,” Xander continued, “Did you manage to figure out the meaning of that? The ‘everything is set up’ part?”

  Randy tapped crazily at the keys again.

  “I think so. There was another email that mentioned nanny cams. I looked it up and because no one here has an actual nanny. It appears to mean spy cam.”

  He pounded away some more at the keys.

  Suddenly, a video of Emily and Pierce in Emily’s bedroom came on screen.

  “I am pretty sure they were talking about setting up this…” said Randy, pointing to the screen.

  It was like looking at a horror movie. Xander didn’t want to watch but he couldn’t turn away. He felt like he was peeking through slotted fingers. There was Emily. ALL of Emily. And way more of Pierce than he would ever want to see.

  “Yeah. I think you’re right,” said Xander as naturally as he could.

  Randy swiveled around and looked over Xander’s shoulder. As he struggled to make eye contact, he always seemed to stare over people’s left shoulder.

  “Why do you want to know all of this?”

  Xander struggled to say anything at all. In the corner of his eye, he could still see the video playing and he knew what was about to happen. He didn’t need to watch it. He could infer. But without burning the images into his mind, Xander thought he might leave that room and find it all unbelievable, like some horrible dream.

  “I, uh… just doing a report for prep health. On attitudes toward sex.”

  “Hm… I haven’t been given that assignment.”

  “Oh…”

  Xander suddenly felt a strange and unusual bond with Randy. He doubted Randy felt it too but Xander knew that they both liked Emily and they both now possessed the ability to help her.

  “Randy, I lied. I’m not doing a report.”

  “Ok. So why did you ask about this?”

  “I can’t tell you everything Randy, but I think that Pierce is using Emily.”

  “Using?” Randy couldn’t understand.

  “Like, he is pretending to want to marry her but he just wants to have sex with her and then never speak to her again. Like he is lying to her.”

  Randy looked down to the floor, concentrating.

  He looked up, for the first time Xander saw a glint of emotion in his face.

  “Can we help her,” he asked.

  Xander reflected.

  “Well, thanks to this stuff you’ve captured we can. But we’re going to have to be clever. I mean, Emily, Pierce… even you could get into serious trouble if we don’t handle this with finesse.”

  Randy tried to understand. Xander got up and put his hand on Randy’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, bud. Leave it to me. I’ll let you know how you can help if you can. But whatever you do… don’t tell anyone about all this hacking stuff. Your mom is definitely right on this one.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  XANDER NEEDED SOME space, some quiet, some serious calm. The perfect place to do that was the Music Building. Like all buildings and facilities on Harlow campus, it was beyond magnificent. The Hall consisted of thirty odd soundproof practice rooms, rehearsal rooms, recording studios... Xander especially loved the vast three story high performance room, surrounded on three sides by glass, overlooking trees and greenery. It was one building he loved best.

  He had always wanted to be a musician but his parents had made him play the violin which wasn’t exactly the rock instrument he was hoping to craft for the jam band he intended to play in. Even if they had chosen the piano, he could have made something of it but the violin, it wasn’t his thing.

  When his parents told him he was going to Harlow, Xander kicked up a fuss solely with the purpose of trading a deferential attitude for guitar lessons.

  He spent a lot of time in the soundproof music rooms. He had always wanted to bring Emily here to just have a quiet moment and tune out the total nonsense of Harlow. Sometimes he found Harlow so pretentious and snobby. When he was in these small, unassuming soundproof rooms it was the only place where nothing else mattered and he could block it all out. He imagined his first kiss would be in these rooms. And it would be with Emily.

  Xander had brought his guitar but hadn’t even taken it out of its case. He was not prepared for this. He had just wanted to catch Pierce out as a bad mouthed guy who disrespected women behind their backs. He had wanted to out his true, nasty, egotistical nature, not find out that he had had sex with his best friend. That he had recorded it.

  He had no idea how to piece his thoughts together. It was all too much for a fourteen-year-old who frankly, might have seemed to have traveled the world, but was actually an extremely sheltered person.

  For starters, he was still a virgin himself and having lived in Singapore, there was no trace of porn going around amongst the pubescent guys like him. So many things were serious offenses in Singapore and even weird things, like bringing chewing gum in from his trips back to the States, got Xander seriously worried about putting a foot wrong. They caned people there, so he thought he would wait until he was married to see boobs for the first time.

  Innocent and naïve would have appropriately described him. Conundrum had done wonders for pushing variety into his life. It was such a relief doing the work with Emily. She was like him. He knew she hadn’t “been there and done that” like so many other people their age.

  He could still see her cute face in his mind, making disgusted and embarrassed faces whenever they would uncover something to do with sex. He had Singapore to thank for his innocence and Emily had God. She said she was an atheist, but he knew better. Harlow and Conundrum provided them both a baptism of fire.

  Now this. Horrible on so many levels. It broke his brain and pulled him apart. It was beyond wrong that Pierce took and owned this footage without Emily’s consent. On an emotional level, Xander didn’t know if Emily wanted to be with Pierce, if she had been coerced… it hurt to think of her being with someone else like that. On a physical level, well, that was supposed to be him being with her for the first time.

  Most of all, she didn’t deserve to have to go through the agony of realizing she’d been used. It would be humiliating. And there was no choice but for Xander to deliver that ne
ws.

  He worried that she could not face being friends with him after hearing the news. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye and it would change everything between them. Maybe she would feel angry that he had seen her body on a video. Maybe she wouldn’t even believe him.

  But he knew that, even though it was possible to lose her, he had to tell her. Xander couldn’t risk Pierce and Emily staying together and him doing that again. And who knew if he had done it to other girls along the way. It certainly sounded as though he had a thick plot going with Grayson.

  He wished he could make Randy tell her. It was a possibility. He would be able to do it and Emily wouldn’t be able to fight with him, or be angry with him, or anything emotional because he wouldn’t get it and she would know better.

  Xander had to stop himself from running away from it. He couldn’t be a wimp. Anyway, Randy would probably somehow mention that Xander now knew.

  Xander shook his floppy hair around and threw his head dramatically into his hands. He let out a long, low groan. A scream built up inside. No one would hear him. Instead he took deep yoga breaths, like he had seen his mom do many times, and kept his head buried. He closed his eyes and stared into black. He wanted to stay in a sensory deprived cocoon where all this wasn’t happening.

  Sound and sight may have been impaired, but he suddenly noticed that his hands, cupped around his nose, smelled like salsa. He sat up and gave a little laugh. Emily had told him he smelled like salsa so many times. She said she liked it but it always made her hungry.

  She had always seemed so honest with him; she looked out for him. She would tell him if he had spinach in his teeth. She would tell him if there was toilet paper on his shoe.

  He had to do this for her. And he had to do it sooner rather than later.