by L. A. Sable
He chuckles. “Sometimes I wonder.”
When I turn my head to say something else, he moves at the same time. Our faces are close enough together that I feel the heat of his sharp exhale trip across my skin. Another inch and our lips would be close enough to brush in a kiss.
The door slams open and the last voice that I want to hear cascades over us.
“Well, isn’t this a cozy scene?”
Chloe stands in the open doorway, Kai just behind her with two bottles of soda in his hand. Mr. Cardill springs back as if he’s been burned and comes to his feet behind me.
“Can I help you, Ms. Devlin?”
The smirk on her face is enough to send a chill down my spine. “I’m here for office hours.”
“I don’t hold office hours on the weekends, no teacher at this school does.”
“Oh, my mistake. Maybe I just got confused about what other reason you’d have to be alone in your classroom with a student.”
“I’m scraping the desks for detention, not that it’s any of your business.” I grab my scraper and get to my feet. “And I just finished.”
Sweeping past her, I grab Kai’s arm and propel us both out into the hallway. I don’t stop until we’re far enough away to be out of earshot. “What the hell, Kai? What are you doing with Chloe?”
“Don’t blame that on me.” He holds up the bottles in a placating gesture. “Half of the machines were empty, so I had to go to the other side of campus. I got waylaid by Chloe and when I let slip that we were in detention together, she insisted that she was headed this way.”
“I’m supposed to believe that was just a coincidence.”
“It was.” He leans back against the paneled wall, but his serious expression doesn’t match the relaxed posture. “What was that we walked in on, anyway?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t look like nothing.”
“Well, it was. Liam was just showing me a better way to clean off the desk.”
Kai’s eyes narrow. “Liam?”
“I mean…Mr. Cardill.”
“Look—” Kai cuts himself off and sighs. “I’ve already told you, the truth doesn’t matter at Black Lake. Reality is what everyone has decided it is.” He hands me the soda and turns away, but not before I catch the expression of hurt on his face. “You just need to be careful.”
“I got that. But seriously, there’s nothing going on.”
Even though that’s strictly the truth, it tastes like a lie on my tongue. Although nothing did happen between me and Mr. Cardill, I can’t help but feel like the potential had been there. A few more minutes and I don’t know what might have occurred. There’s something between us, even if Mr. Cardill is too moral to ever actually talk about it.
“Yeah, I believe you.”
“How many more classrooms do we have left to do?” I ask, hefting the metal scraper like a sword. “I’m kind of a master at slaying wads of gum.”
“I think we’re done, actually.” He takes the scraper out of my hands and gestures down the hallway with it. “I’ll check these back in with facilities and you can enjoy what’s left of the weekend.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.”
Except he doesn’t make any move to leave and neither do I. Both of us just sort of stand there in an awkward silence. Finally, he breaks it. “Any plans for fall break?”
I’d almost forgotten that we have a break coming up in a week. It will be the first time that I’ve had a chance to leave campus since school started.
“Just heading home. Well, not home. Connecticut. Asher will be there, but hopefully the long weekend will be relatively uneventful.”
“Wait. Asher didn’t tell you?”
“Asher and I don’t talk. Ever. Tell me what?”
“He invited a bunch of us to come stay over fall break, some sort of male bonding shit or something.”
Of course, Asher hadn’t told me anything about it. Why would he? “I didn’t know. Who else will be there?”
“Just Lukas and Jayden, I think, besides me. It shouldn’t be too bad.”
That’s easy for him to say, I’d seen what they’re all capable of together. At least, Trish will be there to keep the worse of the heat off me. “Sounds like a grand old time.”
“I guess I’ll see you next weekend, then.” He backs slowly down the hallway. “Take it easy, Lily.”
It’s only once he’s turned the corner of the hallway and disappeared that I realize it’s the first time he’s ever called me by my real name.
Chapter 14
It takes some effort, but I finally manage to convince Charlie she should come home with me for fall break. Her reluctance is borne more of a desire to avoid anything that might affect her in the ranking, but I astutely point out that spending the weekend with four of the hottest guys in our class certainly won’t hurt. The presence of Trish and Carter should keep their worst impulses at bay.
There’s no sign of Asher or the other guys as we wait for the town car that Trish sent for us to arrive. I didn’t ask her how he was planning to get to the house because I didn’t want there to be any suggestion that we should share transportation.
Charlie gets more and more excited as we get closer to the mansion, as if she can’t stop it even though she wants to. And when the house finally comes into view, her expression probably mirrors the one I wore when I first caught sight of this place because it seems like so much more than any one person or family should have sole access to.
“Wow,” is all she can say when we get up to enter the house and her wide gaze takes in the two-story foyer.
“Baby girl!” Trish comes rushing down the stairs and wraps me in a tight hug. She acts like I’ve been away to war and not a few weeks at boarding school. “I missed you so much.”
Not so much that you couldn’t enroll me in the nearest public school. I think the words, but don’t say them because now isn’t the time to start a fight. “I missed you too, Trish. This is Charlie.”
“It’s nice to meet you Mrs. Bellamy,” Charlie says with a small smile.
“Call me Trish, everybody does. I’m just so glad my girl is making friends.” Trish turns and wraps her other arm around Charlie so we’re all squashed together. “Let me give you guys a tour. I’ve had the west wing completely redone.”
At the mention of redoing the house, I lean back to look at Trish. It’s striking how much more she looks like an uptown socialite than the last time that I saw her. Her signature blonde hair has even lighter streaks and is caught up at the nape of her neck in an intricate style. There’s a string of pearls around her neck and even her makeup is different. The cherry red lips and smoky eye have been replaced with neutral tones and what looks like a round of Botox, judging from the smoothed lines on her forehead.
“Maybe we should tour later,” I say as I heft my travel bag over my shoulder. “I think we should go get settled first. C’mon Charlie.”
When Trish finally lets go, I slip past her with Charlie in tow. I love my mother, but her as the housewife of a billionaire is something I’m still getting used to and I can’t fight the suspicion that it’s not an entirely positive change.
“Oh, okay.” Trish calls as we hit the stairs. “The boys are outside by the pool and I’ve ordered some snacks for them. You should come and swim, it’s gorgeous out.”
I freeze with my foot halfway up the step and turn back. “Asher is already here?”
“He and his friends arrived a few hours ago.”
“Isn’t a little late in the year for swimming.”
“The pool is heated. Go get changed and I’ll meet you guys out there.”
Grabbing Charlie’s hand, I hurry up the rest of the stairs. “Okay, thanks Trish.”
When we reach the Butterfly Room, I pull Charlie inside and slam the door shut behind us. “Okay, what’s the plan?”
But Charlie isn’t even looking at me, just doing a slow circle as she surveys the room. “This place is huge.”
I realize that I’m being something of a jerk, maybe she would have liked to take a tour. “Yeah, huge is a word for it. Our old apartment was about the size of this one room.”
“But you haven’t even moved in.”
The room is as lovely as it was when I first got here, but now there are boxes and containers stacked along one wall that represent the remnants of my life in New York. I hadn’t had the strength to unpack all of it over the summer because it felt like admitting that there would be no going back to my old life. “That’s just some of my old junk. Pictures, journals, that kind of thing.”
“Journals? I didn’t know you keep a journal.”
“I don’t anymore, but I used to write in one practically every day.” Which reminds me that I need to talk to Trish about getting a lock put on my door, the last thing I want is Asher rifling through my personal belongings. “You should see the hair I was rocking in my 6th grade yearbook. That was back when Trish had herself convinced she could be a hairstylist on the side and gave me a bowl cut.”
“Oh my God, you have to show me.”
I rifle through the boxes until I’ve found the right one and triumphantly hold up the yearbook for Charlie to see. “Somehow, it’s worse than you’re imagining it.”
She opens up the yearbook and rifles through the alphabetical pages of photos until she gets to mine. “You’re right. This haircut is terrible.”
“Put that up on the Inner Circle and I’ll be Proli for sure.”
“I’m not so sure about that. Between that video with Asher and your new friendship with Kai, I think you might actually be in the clear.”
“What about you?” I ask, sitting down at the dressing table.
“I’m taking the more academic route, tutoring people who need extra help and volunteering for committees. Did I tell you I’m giving a speech for convocation at the end of the month?”
“No.” Apparently, there’s a lot she’s been doing that I don’t know about. But to be fair, I’ve been more wrapped up in my own insanity than is really fair. I haven’t exactly been the most attentive friend. “What’s convocation?”
“It’s like back to school night at a regular school. They invite all the parents to visit for the day and listen to a bunch of student presentations and speeches. It’s lame. But if I do well, it will make me look good for the voting.”
“As long as we’re both safe, that’s what matters.”
Her mouth tips up ever so slightly in the corner. “That’s my thought.”
“Although, I have yet to even figure out what happens to Prolis. It’s not as if they kick you out of school.”
“Nobody really knows what it means to be at the bottom, except for the people who are there.” Charlie sets the yearbook down on the bed and peeks into the box it came from. She pulls out an old faded teddy bear and tosses it at me. “Being Proli is like an invisible tax that gets assessed on everything. Kind of like how poor people pay more for furniture because they have rent-to-own instead of buying it outright or how fresh fruit costs more in the ghetto than it does in the suburbs because there’s no economy of scale. Whatever they go through is invisible, but serious.”
I blink, wondering if all of what she just said was in English. “I still don’t get it.”
“I don’t have a perfect example because I have no idea what it actually means to be a Proli and I hope I never find out. But everything is just harder than it should be. And once you’re in that hole, it’s nearly impossible to crawl back out of it. Trust me, whatever the reality is, you don’t want it.”
“The whole thing is just sad. So everything is going to change for a handful of people as soon as the vote is taken?”
Charlie’s expression is grim. “I don’t know who was a Proli last year because people don’t talk about it. It’s like being untouchable. You can ask around if you want, but I wouldn’t advise it. You’d just be making yourself a target. Whoever was Proli last year will be desperate to avoid the same fate again.”
“But everybody has to know how the vote went last year.”
“That doesn’t mean they’ll talk about it. Trust me, you don’t want to be asking those sorts of questions.”
I throw my hands up in the air. Just listening to an explanation of how this ridiculous system works makes me frustrated. “God, I hate Black Lake Prep.”
“You shouldn’t be worried.” Charlie leans back on the bed with a sigh. “The way things are going, you’re more likely to end up Diamond than Proli.”
“Oh, please.”
“Anything’s possible at this point.”
It’s impossible to imagine, that my star could rise that high despite the best efforts of people like Asher and Chloe. As much as I tell myself that I don’t care, nobody wants to be on the bottom. Especially when their low status will be rubbed in their face at every possible opportunity. That’s what makes a system like this so insidious. You feel compelled to follow the rules even when you can see clearly how destructive they are.
But if the bullying that I’ve put up with since coming to Black Lake is just a small taste of what it means to be Proli, I don’t know if I can handle worse.
I glance out the window. My room faces the pool. I see Asher and the rest of the guys lounging around the side. None of them are in the water, but judging from the way their bodies glisten in the sunlight, they were swimming just a few minutes ago.
Charlie comes up behind me.
“What were you saying about a plan?”
I open my mouth and then close it again, unsure of what to say. Asher and I haven’t spoken since that night at the lake, but he also hasn’t pulled any more shit. Kai has positioned himself as my unlikely ally, but I’m still not convinced that I can trust him at all. With Jayden, there’s no telling what’s hiding under that smooth and suave exterior. And Lukas acts like he’s independent of all of it, except he’s dating the biggest bitch to ever walk the halls of Black Lake Prep.
“Let’s go swimming.”
The boys are back in the pool by the time we get down there, playing some game where they make what looks like pretty serious attempts to drown each other.
“Ladies.” Jayden levers himself out of the water when he sees us coming down the wooden steps from the sundeck. Liquid sluices off of his chiseled abs and highlights the burnished copper sheen of his skin. The guy is gorgeous, but he definitely knows it. “Now we can get the party started.”
“Oh, shove it up your ass.” Kai swims to the edge, but doesn’t get out. “They didn’t come here for you.”
“They’re not here for anybody,” Asher says. When I turn to look, he’s treading water with just his legs so it looks like he’s almost perfectly still. His gaze is sharp as emeralds as he gives me a once-over and looks away. “Leave them alone.”
It isn’t exactly a cutting remark, but I don’t like the look in his eyes. It’s as if something is simmering right beneath the surface, just waiting for the right moment to boil over. And I have no idea what’s going to happen when it does, save that you can cut the tension in him with a knife.
“You getting in?” Charlie asks as she unwinds the robe we’d found in the bathroom and then shivers when a blast of cool air hits her skin. “It has to be warmer in there than it is out here.”
Judging from the wispy curls of steam rising off of the surface of the pool, I’d guess that’s true. “You go ahead. I’m going to put on some sunscreen.”
“I’ll get your back.” Jayden grabs the bottle before I can reach it and holds it out with a shake of his hand.
“And if I say no, you’re just going to let me burn.”
“Something like that.”
With a sigh, I walk to the nearest deckchair and sit on the end of it, facing away from him. “Get on with it, then.”
I hear the light splash as Charlie slips into the pool. From the sounds she’s making, the water is much warmer than the surrounding air. She’s talking to Kai and for a moment I can almost convince myself that e
verything is normal. I’m not surrounded by ruthless social climbers who are trapped with me in a lopsided reality.
Lukas has climbed out of the pool and relaxes in a lounger on the other side with a book open in his lap. He looks like he’s not paying attention to any of this, but I have a feeling that’s not at all the case.
“So, it seems we have a bit of a competition on our hands,” he murmurs just loud enough for me to hear as he squirts a glob of the sunscreen lotion into his hand.
I turn my head to look at him over my shoulder, taking in the insouciant grin that twists his sculpted lips. “What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No. It’s really not. Stop being cryptic.”
“Guys are like dominoes. You knock down one and the rest fall like good little soldiers. We don’t know what we want until we see somebody else with it.” His voice lowers further in a conspiratorial whisper, the dark tone floating over me in a way that makes me suppress a shiver. “You don’t think it’s strange that Kai brings you to a party and that same night Asher decides it’s time to act on all the sexual tension he likes to pretend is hatred?”
When I shiver again, it’s not from the cold. “And that’s enough to get your attention?”
“You’ve always had my attention.” His hands slide over my back with more pressure than is necessary just to spread the sunscreen, fingers kneading into the tense muscle and massaging away the knot between my shoulder blades. “But now seems like a good time to make my intentions abundantly clear.”
I pull away to turn and glare at him. “All of you have been complete asses to me since I got here. Why would I want anything to do with you?”
Jayden almost looks hurt and I have to remind myself that he gets paid well to pretend to be feeling emotions that aren’t actually real. “Maybe I didn’t stand up for you in the beginning when I could have, but I didn’t even know you then. You can’t hold that against me forever. I’m not a bad guy, really.”
