Stuck With The Four Hotties

The drive home is peaceful, just winding roads and hillside and sunshine. The ocean sparkles on our left as we take the coastal route back to Cruz Bay and Charlie’s tiny rental house on the edge of the exclusive Grenadine Heights neighborhood.

Miranda and I don’t talk much, not until we’re nearly home.

“What happened?” she asks, and I raise an eyebrow, glancing over at her briefly before I look back at the road. I might be an overly cautious driver, but better than a reckless one, right?

“Happened?” I ask, and she sighs, leaning back in her seat with her white- blond hair whipping all over the place. She’s got big, shiny silver shades on, and she lifts them to glare at me with her icy blue eyes.

“Yes, happened. Between you and Tristan. You disappeared upstairs, and we couldn’t find you.”

My cheeks flush with heat, and I know what she’s thinking. Of course she’d assume we were having sex. But with Tristan, sex is normal. Easy. It’s a way for him to express emotion without actually having to come to terms with any of it. No, that’s not what we did.

“We played Twister, and then kissed, and cuddled.” Miranda laughs, but only for a second. Then she realizes I’m serious and gapes at me, her lips shiny with pink gloss. Bits of her hair get stuck in it as we take the exit into Cruz Bay.

“You cuddled?” she asks, and I nod. She makes this half-whine, half-groan sound. “You’re totally picking him, aren’t you?”

“I’m not picking anyone just yet,” I murmur as we slow down and it gets a little easier to chat without all that wind in our faces. “I slept with your brother, but you’re worried about a game of Twister?”

“Uh, duh. Sex is … just sex. But someone you can hang all afternoon with and not realize how much time has passed? Someone you can have a good time with? Someone you can-gag me with a spoon-snuggle? That’s real stuff right there.”

I don’t respond, pulling into the driveway and mulling that information over in my mind.

It’s not until I climb out that I realize there’s a cream-colored Cadillac parked on the street.

Jennifer is here.

“Mommy troubles?” Miranda asks, as I purse my lips and nod, grabbing my bags from the back of the convertible and heading inside. It’s so bright and sunny out that I have to squint when I step into the living room, Miranda on my heels.

As soon as I see what’s waiting for, I come to a complete halt, and my best friend-turned crush-turned best friend again bumps into my back.

“What the-” she starts, and then stops as she looks between me, and the teenaged girl that looks just like me sitting on the couch between Jennifer and Charlie. He’s got tears in his eyes as he looks up at me, and Jennifer … she’s got a big, round belly, and a smile.

“Marnye,” she says, rising to her feet with considerable effort. She groans and has to put a hand out to steady herself. Dad is up in an instant to support her, looking a little wobbly himself. I feel this sick, dark shadow inside of me that whispers about how much worse he looks from when I last saw him, how much weight he’s lost. Shit. Jennifer waves him off and then there’s this awkward moment of quiet where we just stare at each other. “Marnye, I’d like you to meet your younger sister, Isabella Carmichael.”

My heart turns to ice, plummets into my stomach, and breaks into a million little pieces.

My brown eyes lock on Isabella’s, and the way she smiles at me … reminds me of something. It takes me a second to register what, exactly, that is, but as soon as I do, I feel cold on the inside.

Her smile … it reminds me of the filthy rich girls I already know and hate.

Fan-freaking-tastic

.

To Be Continued …

Choose between the rich boys.

I’d rather face the Harpies than make that choice.

How can my four years at Burberry Prep really be coming to an end?

No, Tristan, Zayd, Creed, Zack, and Windsor are everything to me right now.

My strength, my passion, my heart, my empathy, my joy.

Love is a cruel master, but I have no one to blame for this but myself.

***

We fell in love with the charity case.

Idols of the school, the kings of the campus, and we’re nothing without her.

Marnye Elizabeth Reed.

This girl has twisted our world upside down, but the Infinity Club is about to knock us all on our asses.

Big money, political ties, family bonds, obligations: shit is going down at the academy.

The rest of our lives, the rest of her life … it all comes down

to this one, final moment.

My graduation gown-and my heart-are in tatters.

I can barely breathe as the uniformed officer nearest me grabs my elbow. “Miss?” he asks, and I blink stupidly in his direction, still reeling from the

shock. He … he went to get the car, I tell myself, hands shaking. I reach up with one and grab my cap off my head, the red and black Burberry Prep tassel smearing blood across the back of my hand.

“She’s in shock.” Someone else is talking, but I’m not sure who. All I can think is: will he live? I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to that question, but I don’t want to believe it. I can’t. I just can’t. Hands haul me to my feet, and I can hear voices talking around me, but all I care about is getting to the hospital.

“… just her, I’m afraid, but we’ll take good care of her,” the officer says, and then I’m shuffling over to a police cruiser. I shake my head to clear it and look back at the boys, the ones who are still by my side. Someone … seems to be missing, but then I remind myself again that he just went to get the car.

I’m sorry, I’m sure I make no sense. I just … I’m in shock right now.

“Where are we going?” I ask as the officer opens the back door for me. “We can get you to the hospital with the sirens,” the man says, and I nod

because that makes sense, even to my addled brain.

“We’ll be right behind you,” one of the guys holding onto me says, his grip tight but firm. “Right behind you.”

I’ve just taken the very last lick of my revenge, put the final nail in the coffin. I’ve made peace with the decision of which boy I should choose, and yet, I’ve never been so miserable. I’ve never hurt so much. How could this happen to me? It’s so much worse than what I suffered during first year. So, so, so much worse.

A cosmic joke.

A middle finger from the universe.

“You’ll be right behind me …” I breathe, and then I slip into the backseat of the cruiser. The red and blue of the sirens flickers across the faces of the crowd, including the boys I just left behind. I wish one of them were in here with me.

We take off down the road as I reach into my pocket for my phone. The thing is, there’s a hole in my pocket and my damn cell is missing. Of course it is.

Fuck.

The nearest hospital is … God, it’s like an hour from here, isn’t it? I almost throw up, leaning over and putting my head between my knees until I get control of my breathing. I’ll wait awhile, and then I’ll ask the officer to call the hospital for me.

Leaning my head against the cool glass of the window, I close my eyes against the trees as they whir by in a blur. The shock must really be getting to me because, I swear, I lose time there for a moment. When I open my eyes and sit up, I realize that we’re heading in the wrong direction.

“Isn’t the hospital due west from here?” I ask, looking around and realizing that we’re closer to the casino than we are the hospital. What the hell? The sirens aren’t on anymore either, which is weird.© NôvelDrama.Org - All rights reserved.

“We’ll get you there, don’t worry,” the officer in the passenger seat says, but he doesn’t turn around to look at me. The longer we drive, the more concerned I get.

And then we pull into the casino parking lot, and my heart starts to beat so fast I feel like I might pass out.

“What are we doing here?” I choke out, looking around as we pull into the gravel parking lot, and the officers climb out. They don’t answer me as they

open the back door, and then I’m dragged forcefully from the back seat and thrown unceremoniously to the gravel.

My hands skid across it, tiny rocks embedding themselves into my flesh as I look over my shoulder just in time to see the officers climb back in their car and take off.

They’ve left me here, at an abandoned casino in the middle of a Native American reservation. It’s bordered by national and state parks on all sides, just trees and nothing else for miles. I push up to my knees just as I hear the scuffle of feet on gravel, turning to look in the direction of the sound.

And there she is, Harper du Pont with John Hannibal and Gregory Van Horn on either side of her.

“Hello, Marnye Reed,” she says, her lips curving up into a smile. John has a baseball bat, and Greg is holding a coil of rope.

This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.

I scramble to get to my feet, backing up as Harper strides forward like she owns the place.

“Infinity Club rules,” she says, smiling. “Your friends did a nice job of making sure we couldn’t hire out your punishment. Marnye Elizabeth Reed can only suffer at the hands of a student …” She trails off with a sigh, tossing some of her bloodred extensions over one shoulder. “And so suffer at the hands of a student, she shall.” Harper gestures at me with her chin, and Greg and John take off toward me.

I surprise them by running straight at and between them, taking off for the casino with my torn, black graduation gown billowing behind me. My wrist throbs from when I fell off the dais during the ceremony, and there’s blood dripping from my palm, both from the parking lot gravel, and from when I caught it on the edge of Ms. Felton’s chair.

There is no way in hell I’m letting the Infinity Club win, not when I’m so close. So freaking close.

I take off around the corner, and up the steps, through the back door … Only to run into the rest of the Bluebloods.

And when I say Bluebloods, I mean the original Bluebloods, the ones from my list.

“Marnye,” Tristan says, turning around to look at me. He smiles, and my heart turns to ice and shatters in my chest.

I refuse to believe it. I refuse.

He looks me dead in the eye and says just one word. “Run.”

I don’t hesitate for even half a second before I do. You think you know how this story ends.

You

don’t.

You don’t know anything just yet.