Rival (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 1) Page 11

  Then, a hush falls upon the room, its obviousness exacerbated by the echoing vastness in the uncrowded dining hall, conversations trailing to whispers, then echoes, then … stares.

  Clutching my tray with both hands, I move away from the serving station, a plate of steak with peppercorn sauce and broccoli steaming the underside of my chin.

  Piper, Willow, Violet, and Falyn pose at the dining hall’s entrance.

  I’m starting to differentiate them by hair color, since they stand in order of their ombre hues. Violet is on the left, with her ebony hair. Piper has the darkest brown, then Willow with auburn waves. Falyn, with her hip cocked at the end, is the most (bottle) blonde.

  After she finishes scanning the room, Piper’s stare knifes into mine.

  I pretend not to notice, though my teeth bite down hard as I find a vacant table and sit, grabbing the napkin from the place setting and unrolling it to get to the flatware.

  The sound of my fork and knife clanging together when they fall into my palm is the loudest in the room.

  Then, the scraping of my knife against the porcelain plate as I cut my steak.

  I’m honestly at a loss as to why I’ve attracted Piper’s animosity again. We seemed to have come to a silent truce of sorts during our lunch detentions with Dr. Luke, but I don’t think too hard on the reasons why I’m back on her hit list. What I’d like to do is eat my dinner, then escape to the frivolous protection of my bedroom.

  Two palms slam down on my table, rattling the place settings within their vicinity, as well as my heart. I startle, my knife and fork dropping from my hands.

  Piper stews above me, her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling with rage. She sneers. “Stay away from him.”

  I take a moment to finish chewing my mouthful, using it to regain calm and school my expression. I swallow, then buy time by lifting my water glass and sipping. “Who?”

  Piper’s eyes narrow. “You know who, possum.”

  “Well.” I set my water down, then smooth the napkin resting on my lap, emitting an assuredness my heart isn’t mimicking. “Considering you’ve made it impossible to make a ton of friends, never mind talk to guys, I’m not sure what—or who—you could be talking about.”

  “You bitch.”

  The insult hurtles around the room before smashing into my face, a hiss of massive proportions. The entire room, already quiet, falls into a thick silence.

  I’m confused. “Piper, I’ve never—”

  “Don’t lie, rodent, or I’ll have the whole school call you a rat instead of a possum,” Piper interjects.

  “You mean like the rats I found in my locker?” I ask, bolstered by her admission. “A little obvious, isn’t it, to threaten me again with vermin in public.”

  “I saw you!” she shouts, and frankly, it sounds unhinged.

  I search behind her for her friends. Surely, they want to drag Piper out of here and calm her down. Yet, none do. They watch the show, various expressions of concern, interest, and vindictiveness etched across their faces. Violet is the singular soul that seems reluctant to watch.

  I ask Piper slowly, “You saw me what?”

  “Showing your slutty tits off. Practically begging him to fuck you when you’re alone with him.”

  I laugh at the absurdity of the situation, but Piper takes it the wrong way.

  “Fuck you,” she hisses, her elbows shooting out like a praying mantis, her face darting close. “You don’t get to have him. You can cling to him all you want, plead with him to stick his dick in you, but he won’t. He’s as disgusted with you as I am.”

  I admit, the last part hurts, but I avoid the poison arrow to the heart. Piper’s accusation flashes me into to the warmth of Chase’s arms, the dappled sunlight beaming onto his skin as he smelled of lake water and mint, and his stare, for that one moment becoming a savior’s, flickering with warm emotion before he tamped it down.

  But that happened a week ago. Why is Piper bringing it up now and not the many times we’ve been in detention together since?

  Because now she has an audience, my suspicious head-voice whispers.

  “You’re threatening me for nothing,” I say. “I promise you, Chase would rather kick me off the dock than screw me.”

  Piper flinches at the use of his name, and all she can come up with is, “You’re lying.”

  “Oh my God, which is it, Piper? Am I so desperate for him that he can’t stand me, or are we screwing behind your back?”

  Piper’s face goes red.

  I roll my eyes, but I’m shaking inside. “He broke my fall into the water. That’s it.”

  “Bullshit. You have an agenda involving your tongue and tits to take him from me.”

  I sigh in an effort to coax my heart to stop racing. I hate being the center of attention, but Piper’s forced my hand. I take comfort in the fact that nobody can see the erratic, untamed beats.

  Standing, I mutter, “You’re taking this too far. We can talk about it in our room, but—”

  “You’re no roommate of mine,” she snaps. “Tomorrow, I’m going to Headmaster Marron and reporting your ass.”

  On cue, Piper flutters her lashes, thickened with crocodile tears.

  Dread drips into the empty rumblings of my stomach. “Piper, stop. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “This has gone too far, Callie. Your repeated abuses have to stop!” Her desperate shriek reaches the ceiling.

  At this point, nobody’s eating. My appetite has disappeared, and part of me wishes I’d evaporate, too.

  I throw my hands up, matching my voice with hers. “Take what? I haven’t done anything to you!”

  “Oh, so you think hurling insults at me was nothing? Refusing to do your half of our history essay? Vowing to ruin my GPA and my life? What about vandalizing my bedroom? Smearing my lipstick all over our bathroom mirror? You’re fucking nuts, Callie! Fucking certified!”

  “What the f—?” I temper my voice before it turns into a banshee screech, because I’m not seeing Piper’s statements as accusations. I’m seeing them as…

  “Piper,” I say in an astonished whisper, “Are they doing this stuff to you, too? Are you getting roses?”

  For a brief second, Piper’s eyes snap to mine, but the movement is invisible to anyone else. A smile replaces any recognition, growing wider with malice the longer she stares. “Like I said, rat, you’re as dumb as the brain God sized you with. I wasn’t going to say anything, since I figure you’re acting out because of your mom’s murder—”

  The entire room gasps, and I feel blood leaving my face.

  “—but it’s gone too far. Fucking with my room, then trying to steal my boyfriend … you’re messed up, and you need help outside of this school.”

  “You’re not his girlfriend,” I blurt, instinctively surrendering to the constant unwelcome loop in my head. She’s not my girlfriend.

  My face rings with a slap, sending me stumbling. Students murmur, but no one stands up to do anything.

  I hold a hand to my cheek, as hot and stinging as my eyes. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Which part confuses you?” Piper mocks, but unlike me, appears to the entire dining hall as sleek, collected, and entitled. “My bedroom? My clothes? My boyfriend? Or your mom getting decapitated?”

  My mouth works. I’m bent over and clutching my cheek. “All but one,” I admit in a sickly whisper.

  “Uh-huh. You’re so done, Calla Lily.” Piper bends so she’s at my level and whispers so only I can hear, “I warned you. I’ve tried to tell you to stay away from him, from me, from all of us. This is my last attempt at being kind.”

  Her baseless threats, coupled with the torrential humiliation in front of the entire school, again—and the never-ending rage boiling at the tip of my heart from losing my mother, without choice, without a goodbye…

  Yeah, my flip-out is inevitable.

  I rear up on a roar, clipping Piper in the face with my elbow and sending her sprawling onto my table. The plate
falls to the floor and shatters. Blood bursts from Piper’s nose. She screams, and her friends come running.

  “You have no right!” I scream at her. “To bring up my mother, to threaten me, to think you can control what I—what all of us in this room do, like you’re some kind of false queen. And why? Because you think I’m after Chase? You’re desperate to ruin my life based on a pointless rumor! How savage are you to do that to a person you don’t even know?”

  Piper scrambles up on the table’s surface, clutching her nose. “It was a mistake to come here, Callie! I will ruin you!”

  “Hey!” an older male voice calls.

  Great. The delayed, biased Professor Dawson is here to save the day.

  “Girls! Haven’t I told you—”

  This time, I’m not waiting around to be framed.

  I sprint from the dining hall, Piper’s theatric wails and captive audience keeping well behind.

  20

  “Have you thought this all the way through, Calla?”

  Ahmar’s calming voice flows through my phone and into my ear as I continue tossing clothes onto my bed. I throw a look to my bedroom door, assuring myself that I indeed shut and locked it.

  “I don’t belong here,” I say, getting back to adding to the pile on my bed by rifling through my dresser drawers. “There are things going on that I … that I have trouble putting into words.”

  “New schools are like that, kiddo.” Ahmar’s voice takes on a fatherly tone. “It’s hell fitting in, but you don’t get education like this anywhere else. Briarcliff is the school your dreams are made of. Your momma always wanted you to go to college, and this is your golden ticket. If you throw it away based on a fight with your roommate, I promise you, you’ll look back and regret it.”

  “It wasn’t just an argument. It was…” I pause and stare at one of my bare walls, my folded T-shirts dropping from my arms. How can I define the clash as just “girls being girls”?

  The malice. The vapid hatred. The physical assault, of which I reciprocated ten-fold.

  Yeah, Ahmar would be so pissed I used force and focus on how I overreacted and possibly broke a girl’s nose over a slap and accusation of stealing her boyfriend.

  God, just thinking about it that way makes me lose respect for myself, never mind what Ahmar would think.

  “Trust me on this, Ahmar. I don’t belong. These students are unlike any other humans I’ve ever encountered.”

  Ahmar laughs. “You’re talking like you’re on some sort of safari.”

  “Maybe I am,” I say. A jungle with nothing but poisonous predators waiting for their chance to bite my head off.

  “Okay, say I indulge you for a moment,” Ahmar says. “What are you going to do once you leave? Where will you go? You no longer live downtown. I hate to say it, but you can’t go back to your old school. Not after…”

  Ahmar lets the rest of his sentence go unsaid, but the missing words ring their wicked truth in my head.

  I was close to expulsion once. I can’t experience the threat of it again.

  “Easy.” I add a positive punch to my explanation, though none of it registers in my gut. “I’ll go back to Dad and Lynda’s. If I show up on their doorstep, they’ll have to take me back.”

  “Kiddo.” The pity in Ahmar’s voice hardens my jaw. “You’re not something they’ve tossed aside.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I gear up for an argument, somehow craving it, regardless of how misguided it is. “Where are their phone calls? Or text messages? Or any sort of communication to see how I’m doing? You call me, Ahmar. They don’t—they have a family to start, and I’m the dead weight.”

  The poor joke falls flat on both our ears.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I say. “All I’m saying is … they can’t send me here and think I’ll be happy. Not with the elitist favoritism that goes on. These kids even have the headmaster in their pockets. I’d rather deal with Dad’s cool dismissal.”

  Ahmar sighs. “It’s your choice. Lord knows I can’t stop you. But take the night and think about this, okay? This is a big decision you’re making—possibly life-changing. And I think you’ve had enough of those. Maybe, you can see the time away from your stepdad as a good thing. It allows for you and him to start fresh—”

  “Dad and Lynda put me here because they didn’t want to deal with a problem child.” I stop with my one-handed folding, deciding to put Ahmar on speaker instead. Once I press the button, I place the phone on my pillow, so it doesn’t get lost in the detritus on my bed. “Hey, Ahmar?”

  “Yeah, hun?”

  “What would you think of … I mean, if Dad and Lynda are furious I’ve left Briarcliff and refuse to let me stay with them … um, can I stay with you?”

  There’s a long pause. Too long and deafening in its answer.

  “Calla, I would, honey, but … I’m in a one-bedroom.” He laughs in an attempt to lighten the denial. “I can barely fit myself in here. And I’m messy as fuck. This isn’t the proper housing for a seventeen-year-old—”

  “I get it,” I cut in, unfolding a long-sleeved shirt with a sharp flick, then refolding it again for no reason. “You don’t have to explain. It was too much to ask.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. I fought for you, honey. But it wasn’t in the cards for us. I’m so sorry.”

  Again, with the pity. I reach for my phone. “I gotta go. Thank you for the talk.”

  “You sure you don’t want to keep chatting? What about this friend of yours, Ivy? What’s she think of you leaving?”

  “She’s—it’s complicated,” I say, because I haven’t told her yet.

  “Promise me you’ll take the night. Don’t be calling a car at midnight and travel with a stranger.”

  That brings a smile to my face. “I won’t. Briarcliff has personal drivers.”

  “Jesus. And you want to leave that place? I love you, kiddo. Stay safe. And strong.”

  “Yeah,” I say, but trail off.

  Ahmar hangs up, and I’m left alone with my thoughts. Piper hasn’t come home yet, even though it’s been four hours. She’s probably bunking with one of her friends, lest Crazy Callie do something vicious to her vulnerable person.

  What the hell was that dining hall confrontation about? Earlier this week, we joined forces on the creepy historical project, and I’d believed we’d tolerate each other from there. We had to live together. We could ignore one another just fine once I purchased my own coffee.

  Why does Piper hate me so much?

  And to accuse me of trying to be with Chase…

  She has it so wrong.

  I don’t know this guy, yet I’m drawn in, despite my current problems always circling back to Chase. My dreams contain him. I remember the feel of his muscles and skin like they’re my own. And I’ve merely touched him once.

  But, you’ve touched him.

  Oh, yeah? I sneer to my subconscious. Now watch me leave him.

  I’m going to escape this place, whether or not Ahmar approves, but I refuse to call it running away.

  It’s inevitable: Piper will take her fabricated story and real bruises to the headmaster.

  Now my packing is spurred by anger. I reach deeper into the mountain of clothes on my bed, and latch onto something sharp. Cursing, I pull my hand back, gripping the object despite the trail of blood traveling down my palm.

  It’s the inked-dipped rose, the one I’d hidden in my nightstand, but was unearthed when I emptied my drawers. One of its thorns nicked the pad of my thumb.

  My lips peel back. I break the stem in half, black petals ripping free with my sharp twist.

  In doing so, I curse Chase, Piper, and each of their friends, wishing them all the bad luck a dying, poisoned rose can give.

  21

  The sun’s rays stream through the single window in my room, and I sit up blearily, rubbing my face awake.

  I must’ve fallen asleep on the heap of clothing on my bed, which surprises me, since the last thing I remember is deleting a
ll my research on Rose Briar.

  Piper can suck it. There’s no way I’m gifting her with the information I found before I leave campus. She can start the project from scratch for all I care.

  But something seems off. I woke up with an abrupt start, and not with my usual cat-like stretch and slow-blink habit.

  Rapid knocking sounds at the front door, and it’s sharp and impatient.

  I mutter a curse, then peel out of bed. I’m still in my school uniform, with my wrinkled white shirt unbuttoned and plaid skirt askew.

  My door unlocks with a sharp click, and I plod into the central room, hazily registering that Piper’s room is unoccupied. Her bed’s made, and there’s no air of perfume from any recent departure, so I suppose she didn’t come home.

  Good.

  Maybe that’s why I slept like a baby—there was no one to storm through the apartment and take her unfair intimidation tactics onto domestic territory.

  “Callie?” a muffled voice asks through the door. “Are you there? Please say you’re there. Please.”

  “Ivy?” I call, moving faster to the front door. “What’s wrong?” Ivy doesn’t normally sound so high-pitched and desperate.

  I’m hoping it’s not to convince me to stay. I sent her a text last night, promising I’d call her today and explain, but that I was done with this school and the snakes it nurtures inside it.

  “Oh, thank God,” she says, then flies into my apartment and glances around with skittish awareness. “They’re not here yet.”

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  That gives me pause. “Um. What?”

  Ivy spins to face me. Splotches of color rise high in her cheeks, and her eyes are abnormally wide. And wet.

  “Ivy, are you crying?”

  She sniffs, then pulls out a tissue from her bag and dabs at her eyes. “Have you not heard? Is your phone not blowing up?”

  “I mean, it could be.” I gesture vaguely to my room. “I’ve been busy packing, and your knocking woke me up. I haven’t checked my phone yet.”