by L. A. Sable
“They don’t.”
“Then how can what happens on it matter so much?”
Charlie stares at me with an expression completely devoid of levity. Whatever emotion swirls in her baby blue eyes is something darker and wiser way beyond its years. “If you think that the faculty here have any power over what happens to us then you’d better set yourself straight. And quick. The Diamonds are the sons and daughters of billionaires, politicians, diplomats and anyone else who really makes the decisions that run this world. The rest of us are just cogs in their machine.”
Something about the way she says it makes her words a warning. But as I continue to watch her, Charlie’s face returns to its placidly cheerful expression, as if we were just talking about the weather and not the tyranny of the super-rich.
“How do you even know about all of this?”
“All new students get assigned a mentor over the summer to help get them oriented. You must not have gotten one since you registered so close to the start of term. But the most important thing to know is that everything at Black Lake comes back to the Inner Circle. You have to download it.”
I pull out my phone, an old model that crashes whenever I look at it funny. “I don’t even have Snapchat. I’m not going to use this.”
“As if you have a choice,” Charlie scoffs. She pulls her phone back out of my face and uses both hands to type out a message. “I can tell you’re the type who likes to make things harder for yourself, but just trust me. You’ll be glad that you did. Give me your number. You need an invite to download the app so I’ll send you one.”
It’s hard to imagine how lost I would be if Charlie hadn’t shown up when she did. Our meeting definitely feels a bit like fate. I rattle off my number (a 718 area code that I’ll give up on the day that I die) and watch as her fingers move almost too quickly to follow. A dull ping hits my phone immediately after she taps the send button.
As the little icon spins to denote that the app is downloading, I feel apprehension rising inside me. The last thing I want to do is get myself involved in the juvenile power plays happening between the people here. P.S. 119 had its share of drama, but I did a pretty good job at avoiding the worst of it. I’ve always been a social chameleon, able to navigate the different groups and social structures without getting bogged down by it. That’s one of the few perks of being mostly invisible.
“Just remember that the vote is literally the most important thing that will happen this semester. Everything you do can affect your score.” Her face is suddenly serious, all levity gone from her voice. “And someone is always watching.”
I have no idea how to respond to that comforting thought.
Noise and chatter suddenly surrounds us. I hadn’t noticed that the assembly ended and people are filing out through the large double doors in the back of the auditorium. Charlie nudges me up and we join the slow-moving crowd. Classes don’t start until tomorrow so we’ve been released to find our dorm rooms and get settled in.
It’s impossible not to notice the stares as we jostle toward the door. Everyone who passes gives me a once-over — some gazes are neutral, and others aren’t. No one has a smile on their face. Even Charlie is quiet, as if she knows it’s not a good idea to draw attention to herself.
My phone remains out in my hand and I glance down to see that the app is still downloading. Part of me wishes that I could just delete it and forget everything that Charlie said, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m in a whole new world now and I have to do whatever it takes to keep my head above the shark-infested water.
The sick feeling in my stomach hasn’t gone away, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen to me.
Chapter 4
All the dorms at Black Lake are singles, because of course they are. Nobody can expect these trust fund babies to tolerate something as low-rent as a roommate. Mine is on the Pavilion, a gorgeous expanse of grassy courtyard with tall trees and flowers growing around the edges. Two long, single-floor buildings line it on either side, made of immaculately kept brick and stone.
For a moment, I feel like I’ve stepped back into time and I’m walking through some enchanted colonial village. Part of me almost expects to see women in split-front dresses churning butter or men chopping wood.
The campus of Black Lake is beautiful, despite the ugliness that hides underneath.
A handful of other people are milling around the courtyard but none of them pay any attention to me. Charlie has a room in the Turret, which is on the other side of campus, and we agreed to meet for lunch later.
It’s nice to know that I won’t have to be that kid on the first day of school awkwardly holding a lunch tray in my hands and surveying hostile territory. Trying to figure out who to sit with at lunch on the first day of school has always been a particularly fraught moment for. When I started at P.S. 119, all my friends from elementary school had been assigned to a different lunch period so I spent the first week of school skipping lunch and hanging out in the library until I found someone to sit with.
You will never catch me sitting alone in a cafeteria. The anxiety alone might kill me.
I pull the ornate key out of my pocket that was given to me before the assembly, fingering the smooth loops of metal. This thing costs a hundred and fifty bucks to replace if the tiny print stamped on the metal tag attached to the ring is accurate.
When I push open the door, I’m met with a room that is sunshiny bright and tastefully decorated. A loft bed sits on a slightly raised platform and dominates one wall with a secretary desk tucked underneath it. On the other side of the room is a large fireplace filled with real wood and a rocking chair in front of it. A door just behind it must lead to the bathroom that I’ll share with whoever is in the room next door. I squint against the bright light coming from a large window that faces the dense thicket of maple trees surrounding the campus and obscures the wrought-iron fence separating us from the real world. In the distance I can see the sharp curves of Bear Mountain punctuate the horizon like an exclamation point.
This one room is almost as big as our entire apartment back in New York, and with much nicer furniture.
My battered suitcases are stacked just inside of the door. I momentarily feel bad for not being able to tip whatever worker had to truck all of our bags out here. Vehicles, aside from golf carts, aren’t allowed on the winding trails that cover the grounds so the baggage was likely carried here by hand.
I nearly jump out of my skin as someone speaks from behind me, my door still wide open to the courtyard.
“Are you heading for lunch…”
The voice trails off as I turn to face a guy that I could almost convince myself is a Greek god who just rode down to earth from Mount Olympus. A halo of light bathes him in a golden glow, gleaming off of dark red hair and making his silver eyes glint like cut diamonds. He’s hot in a way that is a little unreal.
This guy isn’t wearing a uniform. Low-slung jeans hang just below the cut of his hips, the sharp line of his lower abdominal muscle clearly visible through the tight t-shirt that he wears. When his arms cross over his chest, the muscles of his biceps bulge in sharp curves that shine in the light as if he’s oiled himself down.
And it’s only after several minutes pass that I realize I’m staring at him with my mouth hanging slightly open. Real cool.
When he smiles, it’s like clouds parting after the storm to reveal a glorious sun. “You’re not Maisie Howard.”
My voice catches in my throat but I manage to speak without choking on the words. “No. I’m Lily. Lily Murphy.”
The red-headed Adonis looks around the room with his eyebrows raised in mild curiosity. “I could have sworn Maisie had this room last year.”
“Maybe she did,” I respond, swallowing past the lump in my throat. It’s hard to think past the fact that one of the most gorgeous guys that I’ve ever seen is standing casually in the doorway of my room like it’s the most normal thing in the world
. “I’m new this year.”
Auburn eyebrows shoot up into the slightly lighter swoop of hair across his forehead. “Murphy, you said. As in the Massachusetts Murphys?”
“More like the Bronx Murphys, made up entirely of my mom and me.”
“Interesting.” He shrugs as if none of that really matters to him anyway, slouching against the door like he’s posing for a camera. “Well you scored one of the best rooms on campus, so kudos for that. Everybody wants to be on the Pavilion. You’re at the center of everything.”
“Is your room here, too?” I try to sound casual, but even I can hear the hopeful tone in my voice. As if this guy will have anything to do with me after this awkward conversation is over. He only started talking to me because he thought that I was somebody else. “On the Pavilion, I mean. Not in the school, obviously you’re a student here.”
And now I’m rambling. Great.
“Five doors down,” he says with a wink that sends a thrill shooting down my spine. “We’re practically neighbors. Maybe I’ll stop by next time I need to borrow some sugar.”
A furious blush suffuses my cheeks, making my face feel like it’s on fire. He definitely put an emphasis on the word sugar that makes it take on a whole other meaning. Is he flirting with me? That can’t possibly be what’s happening here.
It’s not like I’ve never dated before. But every boyfriend I’ve ever had started as a friend and then we sort of fell into a relationship that felt pretty comfortable from start to inevitable finish. The sparks flying, romance novel stuff where the girl is swept off her feet by the handsome stranger isn’t something that I’ve ever experienced. I always thought if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
“What’s your name?” I ask, realizing that he never told me. Maybe he just assumes I’ll recognize him. The way that Charlie poured over the Inner Circle app, she probably has the pictures of everyone in our class already memorized.
“Kai,” he murmurs, glancing behind him as if expecting someone else to come along at any moment. But when he returns his gaze to me, it almost seems like he’s hyper-focused. “Kai Greenfield-Walton, if you like to be specific.”
I can’t help the little spark of amazement, even though I know that this school is full of the offspring of the super-rich. “As in Henry Greenfield-Walton, the tech billionaire?”
“That’s my dad. I guess you’ve heard of him?” He says it like a question but there’s a slight lilt to his voice, because everyone has heard of Henry Greenfield-Walton. The man single-handedly revolutionized personal computing when he created an operating system that can run on literally any device. But Kai doesn’t sound full-of-himself at the mention of his dad, in fact his tone is more exasperated. “It’s pretty big shoes to fill.”
“So you’re not interested in going into the whole tech thing?”
“You ask that like I have a choice.” His expressive lips twist in a way that makes him look much more human and a little less like a Greek statue at the Louvre. “If you think my dad’s paying all this money to send me to Black Lake so I can end up painting landscapes of the Italian countryside, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Even as I wonder how I ended up in this sort of conversation with a gorgeous stranger, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. And I never thought that the son of a billionaire could be relatable. “Is that what you want to do, paint?”
He shrugs, muscled shoulders moving in a graceful motion like the curve of an ocean wave. “I have no idea what I really want to do. Point is, I’m probably never going to get the chance to find out.”
“That’s too bad.”
“You’re really easy to talk to.” Kai says, but then he seems to realize that this is a much heavier conversation than he should have with someone he just met. “Nice to meet you, Lily from the Bronx. I’ll be seeing you around.”
He says it like it’s a foregone conclusion and I try to slow the skipping beat of my heart. I’m still reeling over the fact that a guy like this is even talking to me, much less acting like he’s looking forward to seeing me again. “Catch you later.”
Kai kicks off of the door until his impressive height is fully apparent. He’s at least 6’4” and has a body that looks like it’s been put to work. The muscles of his back flex as he walks away, hands shoved into his pockets. I can’t help but wonder how often he hits the gym. Or what those muscles would feel like if they were flexing underneath my fingers.
Snap out of it, Lily. This guy is a hundred miles out of your league.
Then, to my never-ending surprise, he turns back to face me with a sheepish expression on his face. “You know what, to hell with Maisie. Are you headed over to the dining hall for lunch later? I can meet you there.”
And now I feel like I’m about to combust into ash. My face is flaming and I know that the blush probably suffuses every inch of skin on my body. “Ummm…”
He waits for a beat, then laughs when it becomes obvious that nothing else is going to come out of my mouth. His hand lifts and briefly touches my chin, that barely discernible stroke of his skin on my mine is like a bolt of electricity. “You’re cute, new girl. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll meet you over there.”
Before I can say another word, he’s already walking away. I watch him go until he disappears down the hill that leads to the cluster of buildings at the center of campus.
What. The. Hell?
I mean it’s not exactly a date, but a super hot guy just invited me to lunch and I’m not even sure how to feel about it. I came to this place assuming that I would be pretty much invisible, so I’m not ready to be any kind of spotlight. And one look at Kai Greenfield-Walton is all it takes to know that he’s one of the elite at Black Lake Prep, or whatever they call the cool kids here — Diamonds, is what Charlie had said.
And he wants to have lunch with me. I am so not ready for this.
For a minute, I consider texting Charlie to get her opinion. Even though we just met, I have a feeling that she’ll be my closest female friend here and she seems like somebody who’s always ready for a serious round of girl-talk.
But I decide not to bother her, we did just meet an hour ago after all. How is it going to look if my first text to her is: OMG I think a guy likes me? I would look like an even bigger idiot than I already do.
And maybe I’m reading way too much into this. Kai called me cute, yes. But cute isn’t the same thing as hot or sexy. For all I know, he’s just a friendly guy who makes a point of being nice to everyone. Maybe he’s angling for class president or trolling for votes on the Inner Circle. I shouldn’t read too much into one invitation to lunch.
With my luck, Kai already has a girlfriend. Or maybe he’s gay.
Letting that thought take the wind out of my sails before I do anything else to embarrass myself, I focus on putting my clothes away. I need to take the entire twenty minutes between now and when I head to the dining hall so that the frantic rate of my heart can slow down and the blush fades from my cheeks.
I pull the neatly folded bundles of shimmery silks and smooth cottons out of my bag and lay them on the top of the desk. Almost everything still has tags attached that click against each other as I stack each item. This is the most new clothing that I’ve ever had at one time, Trish really went overboard with the shopping trip. She bought as much for herself as she did for me, but I think she’s hoping to take my mind off how much I don’t want to be here.
According to the rulebook that I’d spent the drive from Greenwich reading, students are required to wear their uniforms throughout the school day and until curfew, which is 9 pm during the week for third years. Street clothes are allowed on the weekends and during any school holidays if students are still on campus. Technically, classes haven’t started but the rules are supposed to be in force as of today. Kai is risking a demerit before classes even start by parading around in those mouthwateringly tight jeans and t-shirt.
The phone in my pocket pings with a strange sound. I pull it
out and see an unfamiliar notification on the screen. When I swipe my finger up to unlock it, I realize that the Inner Circle app has finished downloading. I haven’t taken any time yet to explore its features. Social media isn’t my thing at the best of times but something about the Inner Circle really rubs me the wrong way. From what Charlie said, the students at Black Lake aren’t using it for anything good.
When I open the app, the first page that appears is my profile. A picture that I sent to the school weeks ago for my student ID is already loaded at the top of the screen with my name and school year underneath it. There’s something very Big Brother about the whole thing which just makes me like it even less. If this app isn’t officially affiliated with the school, then how did my information end up here so quickly and who put it there?
Something tells me I don’t want to know the answer to that question.
The interface is relatively simplistic, with icons along the side that represent different functions. There’s a section for groups but the only one I’m part of is for the third year class as a whole. I also see a class roster and a forum that apparently allows any student to post things that the whole school can see.
And finally, there’s a section for private messages. To my surprise, the little mailbox icon has a tiny number one in the corner of it. Who would be messaging me already? I assume that it’s just the welcome message that you always get when you sign up for a new service, but my mind still sings with sudden apprehension as I press down with my thumb to open the mailbox.
To: Lily Murphy (third-year)
From: Anonymous
You can’t trust anybody at Black Lake Prep. Everyone lies. Being here can have deadly consequences. Get out while you still can.
Signed,
A concerned citizen
My first thought is that the message has to be from Charlie, trying to be funny. But the timestamp in the corner was from a week ago and I only met her this morning. That doesn’t mean this isn’t someone’s idea of a sick joke. I can’t put it past Asher the Asshole to send an anonymous warning as a ploy to scare me away. I’d give him an A for effort, but a D- for execution.
