Good @ Games (Book Four, The Flirting Games Series)

by Wilkinson, Stella

  Good @ Games

  Book Four in The Flirting Games Series

  by

  Stella Wilkinson

  Books by Stella Wilkinson

  The Flirting Games

  More Flirting Games

  Further Flirting Games

  The Flirting Games Trilogy, Books 1 - 3

  Good @ Games

  Flirting with Friends

  Halloween Magic & Mayhem

  Werewolf Magic & Mayhem

  Solstice Magic & Mayhem

  Notice Me

  A Christmas Gift

  All Hallows EVE

  Romancing the Stove

  Bend it like a Bookworm

  If you would like to be informed immediately when future books by this author are released then please sign up to the mailing list at: http://eepurl.com/wEMmD

  Copyright Stella Wilkinson 2014

  Cover Art by Littera Book Designs

  All characters herein are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher or author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.

  Chapter One

  Jessica Chase sat in the Headmistress’s office and stared down at her feet. She was determined to be on her best behaviour and tried to look as unobjectionable as possible as the Headmistress reviewed her crimes from her last school.

  “This is quite the catalogue of unacceptable behaviour, Miss Chase.” The Headmistress frowned at her over her glasses.

  Jessica nodded, trying to look penitent.

  “There will certainly be no fighting allowed here, and if you are ever found to have a…” the Headmistress paused and looked at the list again – “a flick-knife on your person, you will be expelled immediately. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Mrs Frost.” Jessica said quietly. She had absolutely no intention of indulging in the kind of behaviour that had made her infamous in her last school. Getting kicked out had been a short sharp shock. She’d got away with so much that it never occurred to her that she might have overstepped the line one too many times. Even though the standards at her last school had been pretty low, she knew she had gone too far with the knife. She couldn’t even remember who she’d been trying to impress.

  No one wanted anything to do with her now. She’d had the worst summer ever at home as her parents became increasingly desperate, trying to find a new school that would take her that wasn’t even worse than the last one.

  In the end they went “private”. If the state wouldn’t give you a good education, you could at least buy one. But even in the private sector she was given the brush-off repeatedly. No one wanted a troublemaker at their school, especially one with very average grades. The only thing she excelled at was singing, and it had been that which had saved her from another sink school.

  She had managed to get a part-scholarship into Compass Court Boarding School on the backing of her singing teacher, who coached the choir there.

  Even with the part-scholarship, her parents were both pulling some extra hours at work to pay for the school fees, and Jessica felt the huge weight of responsibility not to let them down. She wondered again – how could she have been so stupid? Boarding school was the last thing in the world she wanted. But she didn’t have a choice. She wanted her parents to be proud of her again. Their looks of disappointment when she’d been expelled had been the lowest point in her life. But being dumped in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of stuck-up private school kids was going to be torture.

  “It doesn’t matter, Jessica,” she told herself firmly. “You’re not here to make friends or have fun. You’re here to get an education! No boys, no distractions, stay out of trouble and just study.” Jessica repeated her personal mantra silently in her head.

  The Headmistress held up another piece of paper as if it stank of rotten fish.

  “And your grades, Miss Chase, also leave a lot to be desired. You are rather behind our average in certain subjects. Here at Compass Court we always score very highly on the National League tables and I won’t have you dragging us down. In this school we have standards.” She sniffed as if to suggest that Jessica didn’t.

  “Silly cow,” Jessica thought. But she said, “I won’t let you down, I’ll work extremely hard to catch up.”

  The Headmistress suddenly sat down, took off her glasses and smiled, making her look much more human.

  “We don’t want you to fail, Jessica. We want to help you. Your singing instructor, Miss Bracken, speaks quite highly of your character. Sometimes people just go down the wrong path. I’ve been teaching for a long time and I’ve seen it all at one time or another.”

  She shuffled the papers on her desk again. “So, I’ve assigned you some student mentors. Eustace Reed will give you extra tuition in Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. Ellie Parkhurst will tutor you in History and Geography, and Benito Byron will give you extra music lessons.” The Head frowned, looking at the last name. “Byron? Why did I think that would be a good idea?” The older woman seemed to be talking to herself, and Jessica waited, feeling confused.

  “Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose. Byron is the best choice for music, though I’m not sure that putting the two of you together is particularly wise.” The Head looked back up at Jessica. “Young Mr Byron is a bit of a troublemaker, but he excels in music. You are aware, dear, that you have to achieve an A in music to keep your scholarship?”

  Jessica nodded, knowing that everything depended on her getting that A; otherwise it was back into the Comprehensive School system where no one wanted her, and all her parents’ hard work would have been for nothing.

  “So Benito Byron it is. Just try not to become too friendly, hmmm? I only have so much tolerance for trouble.” The Head gave Jessica a firm look. Then she smiled again and rang a bell on her desk.

  Her assistant peeped in the door. “Ah, Harriet, call Eustace to my office, would you?” She turned back to Jessica. “Your bags have already been taken up to your room. You’re very lucky we could find you a place, since term is already two weeks in, but we always get one or two who find that boarding school wasn’t what they thought it would be. Everyone adjusts in the end if they just give it time, but you always get the odd one that won’t stop crying until you call their mother.” The Head rolled her eyes. “The parents are often worse than the children. Anyway, I digress. Eustace Reed will show you around; he’s a bright boy, make him your new best friend, learn from his example. Right then. Good luck, Miss Chase, and let’s hope I don’t see you again for a good long time, alright?” The Head reached out and shook Jessica’s hand before making a flapping motion towards the door.

  “Well, she was a fruit loop if ever I met one,” Jessica muttered to herself. She sat on the bench outside the office to wait for Eustace Reed. She could already tell he was going to be a total spod. She sighed. The Head was right though; she needed to make Eustace Reed her new best friend. After all, they were going to be spending a lot of time together by the sounds of it, and she clearly needed his help. How hard could it be to win over one little dork?

  She frowned at the fact she was now in Year Five, which made no sense to her. In her experience Year Five meant nine-year-olds, but in Compass Court it started at Year One, the first-years, who were eleven and twelve. Which meant that at nearly sixteen, Jessica was suddenly in Year Five instead of Year Elev
en like she expected to be. She shrugged; just another annoying difference about being in a private school.

  Students filed past the bench, some giving Jessica a smile, some just looking with curiosity, but most pretty much ignored her.

  She watched a boy about her own age come down the corridor and smiled to herself. So there was talent to be found in Compass Court. The boy was totally rocking Geek Chic. He had on the ubiquitous black-framed glasses and an uber-smart school uniform. His tie was straight and his shirt was ironed, and he actually had three pens in his top pocket. All he needed was a calculator and he’d be the quintessential geek. He wasn’t tall, but his features were gorgeous, Jessica decided. His hair was brown and swept back in the kind of waves movie stars wished they had. It looked like Superman’s hair, when he was just being Clark Kent, rather than when he had it slicked back with a ton of gunk and was wearing the stupid tights number.

  Jessica sighed. Yeah, he was definitely a Clark Kent, hiding a superbod under the ironed outfit. Why couldn’t she have someone like that to teach her instead of the school spod?

  “Jessica Chase?” Clark Kent had stopped in front of her.

  “No way!” Jessica blurted. She flushed – what a dumb thing to say. “Oh, yes, that’s me. I just… You don’t look like a Eustace.” Even dumber.

  The boy looked confused. “I am Eustace. Eustace Reed. You are the one who needs a tutor, aren’t you?”

  Jessica smiled, trying to start over, and jumped to her feet. “Yes, sorry; it’s just been a bit of a mind suck today, too much happening at once. Pleased to meet you.”

  Eustace smiled back and formally shook her hand. Jessica hoped her palms weren’t sweaty. So even the clever ones were cute here? She guessed that’s what good breeding could buy you, and made a bet with herself that they all ate salad at every meal and wouldn’t step foot inside the kind of fast food places she totally loved.

  Eustace was saying something about the timetable, but Jessica found she was zoning on his pearly whites instead. He had really nice teeth. She pinched her own arm, hard, to try to focus. She was not here to even think about boys. This particular boy had a lot to teach her and she had to pay attention.

  “So basically,” he was saying as she tuned back in, “we’ll meet during prep time on Mondays and Wednesdays, and we both have the same free period on Thursday mornings too – if you feel you need it?”

  Jessica nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll need it. I didn’t do a lot of my homework last year.” Or any year before that, she silently added. She decided not to say that she had never really bothered with homework; she didn’t want to come across like the total dropout she now felt she was. “I have quite a bit to catch up on. My last school was really lame.” She felt no guilt throwing the blame their way; after all, they hadn’t exactly helped her.

  “Great.” Eustace actually looked thrilled to be tutoring her.

  “So what do you get out of this? Do the school pay you or something?” Jessica asked as she picked up her heavy school bag.

  “Of course not.” Eustace looked amused. “I get extra marks in my own classes for doing tutoring, and it goes on my University application. It makes me look good.”

  Jessica wanted to say he looked good already, but held her tongue.

  Eustace plucked her bag off her shoulder, and they had a brief tussle as Jessica wondered why he was taking her stuff, before realising he was being gentlemanly and actually offering to carry it for her. She released it in surprise.

  “Uh, thanks.”

  She was surprised again when he blushed.

  “So, where are we going?” she asked, following him through the busy entrance hall, up a flight of stairs and then along a corridor.

  “You’re in South Tower, aren’t you?” He looked at a piece of paper. “Room six?”

  Jessica shrugged. She remembered South Tower, but not the room number.

  “Yeah, you’re with Bianca. Good luck with that!” He said it with a slightly bitter tone.

  “She an ex of yours?” Jessica asked with a smirk.

  “As if!” Eustace almost stopped in astonishment at the remark. He collected himself quickly. “You’ll understand when you meet her. I’m not exactly her type.” His mouth twisted into a self-deprecating smile. “She wouldn’t look twice at someone like me.”

  “Someone like you? What’s wrong with you?” Nothing at all as far as Jessica could see.

  He blushed again. “Well, you know. A nerd.”

  Jessica raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment. She wanted to mull that one over. Was the Geek Chic not a studied look? Was he just… a geek? The girls in this school had to be all kinds of stupid if that’s what they thought!

  “So this girl, she’s pretty stuck up?” Jessica tried not to sound nervous.

  Eustace laughed. “You could say that. She thinks the world owes her a favour, and in our year she’s Queen Bee.”

  “Bee or just B-word?” Jessica joked.

  “Both.” Eustace said, leading her up the stairs and along a corridor before cautiously opening a wooden door with a plaque that read South Tower.

  He ushered her into a large comfortable room with sofas set around coffee tables and one or two more formal table-and-chair groups.

  About ten kids of various ages were sat around the room, some studying but most chatting with their feet up on the coffee tables. All eyes seemed to turn on them, and conversation practically stopped as everyone seemed to be questioning their presence.

  Eustace stood for a moment, looking round the room, then smiled with clear relief as he spotted someone. Jessica followed him to a table where a girl sat alone reading.

  “Hi, Amy.”

  The girl looked up in surprise. “Hi.”

  Eustace shifted from foot to foot. “This is Jessica. She’s in your room, just got here today.”

  Amy put her book down and gave Jessica a big smile. “Hey! G’day. I wondered when you’d get here.”

  Jessica smiled back. At least there would be one friendly face in her room. This clearly wasn’t the girl Eustace had tried to warn her about.

  “Hi. You’re Australian?” Jessica attempted to place the accent in the girl’s voice.

  “Yeah, and before you say it, we rule at cricket.” Amy and Eustace both laughed.

  Jessica just nodded, not really getting the joke.

  “Thanks, Eustace, I can take it from here.” Amy closed her book and stood up.

  Eustace handed Jessica her bag. “I’ll see you Wednesday night for prep. Meet in the library?”

  Jessica had a slight panic and fought the urge to ask him to stay with her. “Sure, as long as I can find it.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. See you Wednesday.” And with a small wave he left.

  “He’s in East Tower,” Amy told Jessica, clearly reading the look on her face. “We don’t go into each other’s Common Rooms that much.”

  “Um, okay.” Jessica looked around, realising that the room she was standing in must be the South Tower Common Room.

  “Come and meet Bianca and Prish. They’ll be up in our room. Then you can unpack and tell us every tiny detail about yourself.”

  Jessica took a deep breath. Every tiny detail? Not a chance. But at least she would see the gorgeous geek again soon, she thought, and then rolled her eyes to the ceiling. So much for her “no boys, no distractions, just study!” mantra.

  Chapter Two

  Flora Kincaid knew that she was supposed to be blissfully happy this year, but she wasn’t.

  At the end of the last school year her future had seemed so full of promise. She was staying at Compass Court Boarding School, which she loved. She had a fabulous best friend, Ellie Parkhurst, and a brand new boyfriend!

  She had spent most of the previous year obsessing about a seriously hot guy in Year Six called Gabriel Brenner. But he had made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in her. After totally humiliating herself over him, Flora had started to realise tha
t maybe he wasn’t the one for her. But at the end-of-year dance, Ellie had set her up with a blind date, who turned out to be none other than Gabriel’s younger brother, Michael Brenner.

  At the time Michael had seemed to embody everything Flora thought she wanted: he was a total ringer for his handsome older brother, but without the cynical world-weary edge that Gabriel seemed to carry. Michael was her own age and had seemed just perfect for her. So what had changed?

  When she came back to Compass Court to start the Autumn Term in Year Five, she and Michael had become an instant couple. He was new to the school and didn’t really know anyone except her anyway. He had spent most of his education at an all-boys grammar school close to his parents’ home, but had decided to come to Compass Court for the last three years of his schooling. It was unfortunate for him that Gabriel had been given a place at the London Acting Academy and had left Compass Court at the same time that Michael had started there. So he had naturally clung to Flora at first to show him around the school.

  Flora chewed the end of her pencil. The trouble was, she mused, that Michael was just too handsome for his own good. Just like Gabriel, he had striking pale blond hair, perfect bone structure and a great physique. It hadn’t taken him more than a couple of weeks to become extremely popular, especially with the girls. While Gabriel had seemed comfortable with his looks, Michael was kind of letting the attention go to his head.

  They were now three weeks into the start of term and already Michael was making excuses about being busy.

  Flora was in West Tower House and Michael was in North Tower House, just as his brother had been, and so they didn’t hang out in the same Common Room. But they had met most evenings in the games room or the library. Suddenly Michael was staying in North Tower to study. If he wanted to study, then couldn’t he come to the library?

  Flora spat out a piece of her pencil in disgust, which she had chewed right down to the lead. Oh well, it was better than biting her nails.