Boys Club by Selena

fourteen

Harper Apple

The next day is Friday, and I have next to nothing for Mr. D. I feel weird messaging him, wondering if I stood beside him and talked to him just last night, if he’s going to say something that gives away that he already knows I didn’t follow the boys to the Swans meeting.

Instead, he just reiterates that if I don’t give him anything by the time school starts, my scholarship won’t be waiting. Some other poor sap will attempt the feat of getting to know the Dolce boys and their secrets. I wonder how many have come before me, or if I’m the first. Then I picture Blue getting the messages, how much she needs a break like I got. She’d take it in a heartbeat, just like I did. Anyone would. I’ve been given a gift, and I fucked it all up.

But I didn’t go through all this shit just to end up right back where I started. If I lose my scholarship and go back to Faulkner, it’ll all be for nothing. All the work, selling my integrity one dirty message at a time, the battle of getting to know Royal that’s like swimming upstream until I think I can’t take another stroke without fucking perishing… It’ll all be wasted.

Which is why Sunday has me parked in the lot of the Hockington Hotel like the stalker Royal says I am. He wouldn’t answer when I asked if he was fucking Gloria, and she changed the subject when I brought up their meetings. But that’s not my only concern. Sure, I’d like to know if he’s exposed me to anything, but I’ve halfway rationalized my way out of that like a dumb bitch who’s too far gone to admit the truth. He’s already fucked Gloria, and she’s not interested in anyone else, so if she had any diseases, they would have shown up on his test. And he’s not my boyfriend. He can stick his dick wherever it will fit, as long as he’s not risking my health in the process.

But most of all, I’m desperate. I need the family secrets, need the skeletons in their closet to start talking. If I can’t get something on the Swans before school starts, at least I can get something on Royal, something that will buy me another week with Mr. D. If I can get a secret juicy enough to take down the Dolces, maybe that’ll buy me the rest of the year at Willow Heights. If not, at least it will give Mr. D hope that I’m not worthless, that he can trust me to infiltrate the Midnight Swans if I just have a little more time.

Mom sold the truck and went on a binge over New Year’s, which means I had to pull some strings to get here. I wasn’t about to stake out the hotel in a car Royal’s seen, so Blue’s was out of the question. Which left me peeling off yet another twenty from my stash that seems to shrink instead of growing each week, and I borrowed Mr. Hertz’s latest junker for the task.

I shift in the seat, remembering the first time I tried spying on the Dolces, when I realized I suck at this. I’m too impatient to sit here for hours while nothing happens.

But something will happen, I remind myself. Royal made it very clear that I’m not allowed to bother him on Sundays, and Dixie told me why. Royal and Gloria will show up at some point.

Are they getting a shipment of drugs and selling it out of here? Making bad porn? Is he pimping her out?

Or maybe they’re just fucking, and you’re fucking stupid, a little voice in my head says. Am I so desperate to believe I matter to him that I’ve deluded myself into believing a straightforward affair is some big a criminal scheme? If anything, Lo has more claim to him than I do. She’s fiercely loyal and protective of him. Anyone with a brain can see she loves him. Plus, she’s his original Dolce girl. She’s been his girl for over a year. I’m the mistress.

What right do I have to come down here acting like the wronged woman?

I’m going crazy with boredom from sitting in the car so long, and I’m so irritated with myself that I’m about to leave when I see a black Range Rover turn into the lot. I fight the urge to sit up straight and gawk.

Well, holy fucking shit. Dixie was right.

I lean the seat back until I can barely see out the window, waiting for the car to park. Royal climbs out the driver’s side, and Gloria climbs down from the passenger seat, a duffle over her shoulder. My mind races through the possibilities. Drugs? Money? Camera equipment?

Royal is wearing dress pants, a button shirt, and a tie, like he’s going to school but without his blazer. He looks… Like Royal. Pissed, tense, and unhappy. His jaw is set, and he barely glances at Gloria, though she’s talking and gesturing as they walk toward the hotel. She’s wearing jeans and a hoodie, but she’s in full makeup and as gorgeous as usual. Even moreso, since she looks totally chill, unlike at school, when she’s always putting up the bitch front.

They walk up to the front of the hotel, lingering by one of the columns before the entrance, where cars can pull in and park for a minute if they need to unload. Gloria leans against the pillar, propping one foot up behind her. Royal pulls something out of his pocket and lights up. He offers the joint to Gloria, who glances around, looking more nervous now. She turns her back to the lot, Royal blocking her from view from the other direction, so she can take a few tokes.

Big deal, the prissy little mean girl smokes pot. After seeing her throw down in the hall with me and then street race, I’m zero percent surprised.

My former irritation ramps up again.

Then Gloria gives Royal a little wave and heads inside with the duffel while he waits. I chew on a hangnail, my heart thudding as I wait for his connection to show up. After a few minutes, he checks his phone, then slips it back into his pocket and turns toward the back of the lot. A well-dressed lady walks over from that direction. She stops to talk to him for a minute, and I’m about to slide back down in the seat, thinking she’s just asking directions, so she’ll have an excuse to talk to a guy who looks like Royal. But then she bats his arm in a weirdly flirtatious way, ducking her head and laughing at something he’s saying.

He lights the joint back up, cocking a brow and holding it out to her. She waves it away, covering her heart like she’s scandalized. Royal steps forward, puts an arm around her back, and bends her backwards like…

Fuuuuuck.

When Dixie said he dated older girls, I thought she meant that—older girls. Not older women. This lady must be twice his age at least.

Royal kisses her full on the mouth, and I try not to be sick.

It’s not because she’s a lot older. Whatever floats your boat. My mother has been telling me that grown men will want to fuck me since before I got my first period. Hell, I offered to fuck Mr. D, and I’ve given Behr plenty of blowjobs. Age is a number.

But seeing Royal kiss someone else gives me a physical reaction I am not prepared for. Seeing her then step back and cough out the smoke he breathed into her mouth, the exact way he did to me when he kissed me outside his house the first day I tried stalking him, makes me just about lose my shit. I’m tempted to march right over to them and give them both a piece of my mind.

Instead, I lay back on the seat and squeeze my eyes closed and remind myself to breathe, that he’s not mine and never pretended to be. If my fool heart forgot that, that’s on me, not him.

I sit up just in time to see them disappear inside the sliding glass doors of the hotel, Royal’s hand at the small of her back.

I sit there for a while, gathering my thoughts. Okay, so Royal fucks older women. Or maybe she’s selling him pot, what the hell do I know. Either way, it’s not some big scandal. A little scandal, maybe, if everyone at school knew what his ‘older girls’ really looked like. But nothing Mr. D can use.

After about thirty minutes, I’ve chilled out enough to get out of the car and walk in. I’m not going to learn anything sitting in my car watching. I already know that. I know the Dolce secrets are buried too deep to see through a window or even digging through their desks. To get down in deep, I have to let him pull me under the surface. I have to be willing to take the risk, to know I might drown.

When I walk through the door, the first thing I see is the desk off to my right. Behind the desk, her hair pulled back in a businesslike bun, wearing a hotel uniform, is Gloria Walton.

Her face goes chalk white when she sees me. I’m just as surprised, but I stroll over like I wasn’t expecting anything else. I lean my elbow on the counter and look her over. “Hey, Lo.”

“Harper,” she says, gulping and searching the room with her eyes, like she’s looking for an exit. “W-what are you doing here?”

I cock a brow. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.” She smooths her hands over her dark green polo shirt with the hotel logo on the breast.

“Why?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.

“Because,” she says, lifting her chin and pinching her lips together. “It looks good on college applications.”

“Or… Maybe because you’re not exactly who everyone thinks you are?”

“I’m exactly who everyone thinks I am,” she says. “I’m Gloria Walton.”

“But are you Gloria Walton, rich girl? Or Gloria Walton, scholarship student like me?”

She reaches across the desk and grabs my forearm, her long, iridescent fake nails biting into my skin. “You cannot tell anyone,” she hisses. “I’ll be ruined. And not just me. My sisters. My brother—well, he’ll probably be okay, he’s a guy. They always bounce back. But do you know what this would do to my reputation?”

“Yes,” I say, detaching her hand from my arm and leveling her with my fiercest gaze. “I know exactly what it’s like to be a scholarship student at Willow Heights. You made sure of that from day one.”

“Listen, I said I was sorry,” she says. “And I really am. You know I meant it.”

“Or maybe you just mean it because you got caught.”

“No,” she says, holding up a hand. “I like you, Harper. I was a bitch, but I’ve tried to make it up to you. I invited you to the mall, and the game, and the New Year’s party. Not just to make up for that, but because I like hanging out with you. We text all the time. We’re friends now. Right?”

She searches my eyes, and I cross my arms and stare her down. “Are we? I don’t know what to think right now. I’m not sure I know you at all.”

“Look, I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. What do you want? I’m seventeen.”

“I’m seventeen, too.”

She crosses her arms, mirroring my pose, like we’re in a standoff. “You’re not perfect, either.”

“No,” I say. “I’m a slut, a whore, trash, garbage… What else did you call me? A cockroach, maybe? It’s so hard to keep up with all the insults.”

“I thought we were past all that,” she says, looking truly wounded by my words, as if they didn’t come out of her mouth first. But see, that’s the thing about words. They don’t break bones like sticks and stones. They cut your soul to shreds, make you believe you’re not worthy. Wounds from fists heal. Words, they linger far longer than bruises or even a tooth knocked loose.

And even though she’s right, and I actually consider her a friend, at the first sign of betrayal, it all comes flooding back. She treated me like shit for months, and all along, she was no better than me. She was a scholarship student, too. But she never let me forget it for a minute.

“What is Royal doing with that woman?” I ask.

She gulps. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.”

A man in a suit comes in and checks in. Before he leaves, he looks me up and down like he might order me off a menu. When he’s gone, Gloria leans over the counter and lowers her voice to a whisper. “Royal’s not your boyfriend, Harper. He said you knew that.”

“That doesn’t mean what he’s doing doesn’t affect me,” I say. “I should be able to make informed decisions about my health and the rest of my life, and that’s exactly what sleeping with someone is, if they’re not being safe with their other partners. If they’re doing what I think they’re doing…”

She looks like a kicked puppy. “It’s not what you think.”

“They’re not fucking?”

“Look, I can’t talk to you about this right now,” she says, glancing at a car pulling up outside the doors. “I’m working.”

“I’ll wait.”

She looks like she might argue, then presses her lips together and nods. “My break’s in an hour.”

“I’ll be right over here,” I say, pointing to a plush chair in the lobby. I take a seat and pick up a travel magazine, flipping through it without really seeing the pages. The man in the suit comes back and leers at my legs for a while. I ignore him. When he leaves, another guy comes into the lobby and sits in the next chair. He clears his throat a few times, like he’s trying to get my attention. After that, a guy who just left his family in the pool room asks if I’m busy later this evening.

Why does everyone think I’m a whore?

By the time Gloria comes around the desk and motions for me to follow her, I’m about to go off on one of them. I’m not even wearing slutty clothes.

“Let’s go out back,” she says. “I’m going to need a cigarette for this.”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I say, following her out a back door to a narrow set of concrete steps with a metal railing.

“It’s the south, honey,” Gloria says, fishing a pack of Parliaments from her purse. “Everybody smokes. But people think it’s nasty, so I don’t go around broadcasting it.”

“So, what’s up?” I ask.

“First off, what I’m about to tell you is top secret information,” she says. “No one can ever know I told you, and you can never repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone.”

“O-kay.”

“And second, if I tell you this, you can never tell anyone I work here, or that I’m not rich, or that I’m on… Scholarship.” She whispers the last word, though there’s no one to hear us but a dumpster.

“Deal.”

“And last, you can’t tell anyone I smoke. Only poor, trashy people are supposed to smoke.”

“In that case, gimme one, would you?”

She hands me a cigarette. “Swear you won’t tell anyone anything I’m about to tell you.”

“I swear,” I say, guilt gnawing at my ribs. I hate lying to her and being a bitch to her, but I’ve come too far to walk away now. I can feel it, like I’m standing on the ledge of the bridge, about to let go. This is what I came for, and I know I’m going to tell Mr. D or there would be no point in getting the information to begin with.

She sits down on the step and pats the spot beside her. I sit with my back to the railing and reach for the lighter.

“Okay, so, do you know what people call the Hockington?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve lived here all my life.”

“Okay, okay,” she says, nodding and lighting up. Her hand is shaking, and it takes her three tries to get her cigarette lit. Like, what the fuck is she about to tell me? Is this really it? The thing that’s going to get me even with Mr. D? I can feel the excitement inside me like an egg about to hatch some darkling little monster.

“Look, I know what it’s known for,” I say. “And if I hadn’t, I would after spending the last hour in the lobby. What I don’t understand is why Royal is hiring prostitutes. He obviously can get it for free. Is he, like, a serial killer who murders them because no one notices when they disappear?”

“He’s not hiring escorts.”

I drag on the cigarette, waiting while she looks at me expectantly, like I’m supposed to get something out of that.

“Then what?” I ask.

She sighs. “So, about once a month he comes here with a lady, an older lady like you saw today, like, not old, but older. I tried to warn you. I told you he doesn’t date high school girls.”

“Are you sure they’re not, like, relatives or something?” I know it’s stupid. I saw him kiss that woman. Part of my brain just can’t accept it, though. He’s a fucking god. He could get anyone.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “He takes them out and wine-dine-sixty-nines them.”

I shake my head. “No. You’re wrong. Royal doesn’t do that.”

“Okaaay,” she says, puffing nervously on her cigarette. “I didn’t mean it literally. I was trying to say this in a nice way, but maybe there’s no nice way to say it. I’m sorry. I know you really don’t want to know that. But it’s true. I’m the only one who knows, and you can’t tell him I told you or he will actually, literally, murder me.”

I shake my head, wanting to stand up and walk away, to unhear what she’s telling me. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Jesus H,” she snaps. “I thought you were smart. I’m saying he’s the escort, Harper. Royal turns tricks.”

We sit there in silence for a full minute because my brain refuses to comprehend what she just said to me.

“That’s not possible,” I say, my voice sounding naïve to my own ears. I keep seeing that drawer in his desk, the one I pulled out when I was over there. The one full of cash and betting slips… And hotel receipts. What is he doing with all that money?

I shake my head again, filling my lungs with the bitter rush of nicotine to distract myself. “It doesn’t make sense. Why? Is he poor like you?”

“Thanks,” Gloria says, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t understand. You’re his friend. You didn’t ask?”

“Have you tried asking Royal a question?”

I close my eyes for a second, as if I can erase the knowledge as easily as I can block out the late afternoon sun. “We should tell his dad.”

She grabs my arm, her nails biting into my skin. “You can’t tell anyone. You swore.”

“But he needs help,” I say. “Or… An intervention? And it’s his dad. Yeah, he’s a total creep, but most men are. And he cares about his kids. He’d want to know. Maybe he can help him.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” she says again. “They’ll know I told you. And especially, you can’t say anything to Royal or his dad. You promised. You know what they do to people who cross them. You can’t do that to me. Please, Harp.”

She sounds so desperate my heart aches for her. “Why can’t we tell his dad?”

She sighs, looking wearied, and slumps back against the wall. “Who do you think pays for the hotel room?”

I stare at her. “His dad knows?”

“I told you everything I know, Harper.”

My thoughts are firing too fast. All I want to do is move, jog to the Slaughter Pen and smash someone’s face in until I forget what she said. Is that why he fights? To forget this? Or is this just another self-destructive thing he does, the same as the fights or the way he plays football like he’s trying to break his neck.

“We have to do something,” I say, my knee bouncing a hundred miles an hour.

She shakes her head, her expression miserable. “I’m Royal’s friend. I love him. Not the way you do, the way I used to. Maybe even deeper, though. I’d help him if I knew how or thought he wanted my help. But when I’ve asked, or hinted, he just shuts down.”

“So, you don’t do anything.”

She swallows hard, her eyes shiny with tears. “I don’t know what to do, Harper. He hates himself, and I’m scared to do anything that might make it worse. All I know how to do is be here for him. So, when he walks out after his date tonight, I’ll sit out here with him, and we’ll share a smoke, and I’ll just accept him, all of him, because that’s the only way I know how to love him.”

She’s crying now, wiping her tears so fiercely I’m surprised she doesn’t take out an eye with her pointy, iridescent nails.

I don’t know what to say, what to do, either. I can’t say anything to him, and not just because he’d know Gloria told me. I wouldn’t do that to her, but I also wouldn’t do that to him. He doesn’t want anyone to know, and not because it’s some big illegal operation that could bring down the Dolce empire. Although, it is illegal, and it might be able to bring down his family, if his dad knows and doesn’t stop him… Or makes him do it.

I try to imagine anyone making Royal do anything. He has no respect for anyone, for teachers or the law, and certainly not for his dad. When I saw them together, he talked to him like everyone else, like he was a piece of shit. He told me he wished he’d never met his dad. This would explain why.

“Please don’t say anything,” Gloria says. “Imagine how you’d feel if he’d just found out you did this on the side.”

It’s not hard to imagine. I heard stories about girls at the trailer park, about friends of my mom’s. Hell, for all I know, she’s taken money a time or two. She’s for sure traded a night of drugs for a night in her room, if not so formally as all this. But we’re poor. I expect my mother to get wasted and hook up with whatever rando handed her a bottle of whiskey or pills. Desperate people do desperate things, and even if she’s only desperate for a break from reality, to feel good again for a night, I get it.

This is how rich people do it. Somehow, it’s almost worse. Or maybe it’s just shocking because he has no reason. I don’t get why a boy like Royal does this, a boy who has everything—more money than I could dream of, a drawer full of cash just sitting there like it’s junk mail, a car that’s the envy of the school, a face that could make the most beautiful girl on earth weak, and a body that could bring her to her knees. The only thing he doesn’t have is his sister, and this for damn sure isn’t bringing her back.

Still. I can imagine how that makes it worse, more shameful for him. He has everything, and yet, he sells his body to strangers. Why? Is it some kind of penance for something he blames himself for, maybe fighting the Darlings and losing his sister over it? Some fucked up sexual thing that has to do with his kidnapping? Is he acting out some kidnapping fantasy with these women?

Whatever the case, I can imagine how ashamed I’d feel, even though everyone expects me to be a whore. No one would be surprised. And yet, if I had to look Royal in the eye and tell him I couldn’t date because on weekends, I got paid to have sex with older men, I’d fucking die.

“You better go,” Gloria says, sniffing up her runny nose with one big, long, unladylike snort. “The last thing he needs right now is to see you and know that you know.”

I nod, standing and dusting off the seat of my jeans. It kills me that I have to leave her to comfort him, to see him at his most vulnerable, even if they don’t acknowledge why. It should be me sitting here with him in silence, sharing a cigarette.

But if I stayed, it would make it worse. He’d be so ashamed that I knew. And more than that, he’d know that I can never see him the same. In turn, he’d never see me the same, never look at me without knowing that I know this shameful secret about him. Is that why he stopped fucking Gloria? Because how could he still want someone and fuck them with that shame hanging over his head?

God, it’s all so fucked up. Like Gloria said, when there’s nothing else to do, you just give someone what they need without making them ask, without judging, without making it worse or adding to their shame. So I thank her, and tell her she’s a good friend, and I walk away. Sometimes, that’s the kindest thing you can do. Sometimes, respecting someone’s right to their secrets, their human dignity, is more important than seeking revenge for when they didn’t respect yours.