Barely by Madison Faye

“You’resure you’re okay?”

I blink, looking up from my study notes across the table at Waverly.

“Huh?

“Look,” she sighs. “I don’t want to be a nag, you just seem… you know, off? You have for a few weeks now, and I’m just worried about you. I’m not trying to pry, I just—”

“Okay,” I swallow, sighing. “Okay, I’m going to tell you.”

She frowns. “Brynn, I’m seriously not trying to—”

“No, no it’s fine,” I sigh, pushing a strand of hair out of my face. “You’re going to hear about it soon anyways,” I mumble.

No, I’m not telling her about Colton. I mean, not right now at least. With as crazy about him as I am, and as wild as it is, and as much as I want to scream it from the roof of Winchester, I know what the stakes are. I know even if Waverly would, of course, keep it a secret, it’s just one more possible way for it to leak, even accidentally. And the story of us leaking could destroy everything. His career, for one, not to mention making life hell for me for the rest of senior year.

So, no, I can’t tell her. Yet. I will, someday, but it’s not today. But I know I can get some of the weight off my chest, and if anyone will be able to not judge about all the shit with my dad, it’s Waverly.

And so, I tell her.

I tell her about the fraud, and the fleeing the country, and Geraldine disappearing, and that the government might be taking basically everything we own. I leave out Colton, and all the stuff with Lorenzo, but when I’m done, I’m near tears, and Waverly’s running around the table to grab me into a hug.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Brynn,” she gasps, holding me tight as I sniff away tears. “Holy fuck, that’s a lot! You should have told me!”

“I know,” I mumble quietly. “I just…” I shake my head.

I was just too caught up in falling head over heels for our gorgeous, hunky principal.

“I was just trying to process it all. And I guess I thought if I didn’t talk about it, it would just… I don’t know.”

She smiles wryly. “Go away?”

I nod, and she smiles again as she hugs me close.

“Yeah, been there.”

I snort. “Right.”

“I’m serious!”

I smile at my friend. “Waverly, all due respect, you’re breaking state records in swim, your mom just got a sweet new job, you got to move into a really nice single room in the dorms, and you’re all glowy all the time, which makes me pretty sure there’s a guy you’re not telling me about.”

She blushes scarlet, and I grin.

Knew it.

Waverly has been all glowy recently, I just haven’t given her a hard time about it because I know she’ll tell me when she’s ready. But it’s been going on for weeks now, and now I’m just really freaking curious about who this mystery boy is that has her all peppy and smiling all the time.

“It’s no one,” she blurts out. “It must be the chlorine.”

I snort, rolling my eyes. “Right. I’m sure.”

She bites her lip, eying me. “Look, it’s, uh…” she shrugs. “It’s complicated?”

“More complicated than Ramona Weiss dating her stepbrother?”

Waverly giggles, and I grin.

“I mean, you want to talk scandals…”

“Yeah, but that’s just a scandal because people are ridiculous and gossipy. They’re not related, and they had that whole history before his dad married her mom. And besides, Jamison and Ramona are—”

“Fucking adorable, I know,” I groan. And it’s true. Despite being one of the “big events” of the school year so far, most people have stopped really giving a shit about Ramona and Jamison. Because at the end of the day, they’re just two people in love, and they’re stupid-cute about it.

Waverly sighs. “Anyways, yes, it’s more complicated than that.”

My brows arch. “Go on.”

She laughs. “Nope. Later. Maybe.” She smirks. “Maybe I’ll tell you when you tell me about whatever secret you’re keeping.”

Doubt it.

“We’ll see,” I say quietly. She smiles, giving me another squeeze before she sits in the chair next to me.

“I’m sorry about your dad, and your stepmom.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly.

“Look, no one here is going to—”

“Probably half the students at Winchester have parents who bought into my dad’s bullshit, Waverly,” I mumble. “Trust me, when it comes out, they’re going to care.”

She smiles wryly, squeezing my hand. “I’m here, you know. So is Sasha.”

I snort. “I thought Sasha was holed up with Charlie getting laid eight ways to Sunday all week.”

Our friend Sasha has been with the same guy—Charlie—since they were really young. He goes to another private boarding school in Connecticut, but whenever he visits, Sasha fully utilizes having a single room to basically disappear for the week. Which is fine, even if honestly, Charlie seems like kind of a tool.

Waverly makes a face. “I haven’t talked to her, and please do not say anything, but…” she shrugs. “I’m not sure everything is sunshiny in paradise.”

“Shit, really?”

She nods.

“What makes you think that?”

Waverly grins. “Her room has been quiet.”

I laugh. Waverly’s room is across the hall from Sasha’s. Charlie’s already visited once since she moved into the dorms, and Waverly basically spent the week in my room on the other side of the building to get away from the constant and loud sex sounds.

“It’s quiet?”

“Yeah, and I even saw Sasha going to class, which is usually not even close to a thing when Charlie’s visiting.”

“Hope they’re okay.”

Waverly grins mischievously. “I mean, do you?”

I laugh. We’re on the same page about Charlie being kind of a dud for our bubbly, cool friend.

“Aright, I gotta get to training.”

I frown. “Now? We don’t have swim practice today?”

I mean, granted, Waverly is the golden goddess of the swim team, and may very well swim in the Olympics someday, but still.

She blushes as she quickly scoops up her stuff.

“Yeah, it’s… last minute stuff. Camden wants me to work on my hundred-meter breaststroke.”

I arch a brow. “Oh Camden, is it?”

She blushes fiercely.

“Not ‘Coach Kirby’?”

“We’ve just been working together a lot, that’s all. For training.”

I grin, eyeing her. “Sure, for training. Is he showing you the best way to breaststroke?”

Her blush turns downright scarlet, and I laugh. I love how flustered she gets sometimes. I mean, you’d almost think from her reaction that there was something going on with her and our coach, but I’m positive there isn’t. Not with “always driven, always training, dedication is everything and I don’t have time for boys” Waverly Owens. The blush is, I’m sure, mostly just because Coach Kirby is freaking gorgeous. I mean there’s not a girl on the team who wouldn’t want a one-on-one lesson on “breast stroking.”

“Oh, go swim, dork. Then maybe you can take out your hormones of being wet and half naked in a pool with Coach Kirby on this new mystery guy of yours.”

She blushes again, nodding quickly.

“See you later?”

I nod. “Yep.”

She scampers off, and I shake my head, going back to the studying. But after another half an hour, I’m burnt out anyways. I pack my stuff up and head out of the library, crossing campus in the direction of the Principal’s manor, my heart beating faster with every step. I’ve become a pro at this the last few days. There’s a hedge and iron fence around Colton’s back garden, and a path that leads behind that to some faculty parking lot. But the path itself is heavily wooded with weeping willow trees, and I’ve learned pretty fast that you can duck under the branches and sneak to the back fence, and if someone’s left the gate open—like Colton always does—you can slip right in without a single person seeing you.

My pulse skips as I grin to myself, hugging my hoodie tighter against the autumn wind as I half skip towards his place.

“Ms. Henley?”

I whirl, the scream catching on my throat and my face going white before my eyes focus on who I’m actually looking at.

A woman. Not Lorenzo or any of his goons. She looks to be in her mid-twenties, and pretty if not severe looking in a sharp business suit and her dark hair pulled back almost painfully.

“I’m so sorry,” she smiles wryly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Do I know you?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m afraid you don’t.” She frowns, looking down at a pile of manila file envelopes in her hands. “Ms. Henley, I work with your father at his organization.”

My mouth dries, my lips tightening.

“I see.”

“Oh, no. No, I…” she frowns again, stammering. “Can I call you Brynn?”

“Who are you?”

“Sorry,” she stammers. “My name is Olivia Simpter.”

“And you work with my dad?”

“I did.”

She frowns. “Brynn, it’s been brought to my attention—well, to a few of us who worked at the…” her frown deepens. “Well, the fraud, it appears.”

“What has?”

“That you’re holding back on talking to the authorities or giving any testimony against your father.”

I eye her. “He’s my dad.”

“I realize that, and I know that makes this so much harder, but…” she shakes her head. “You need to hear this.”

“Ms. Simpter, I’m very aware of what my father did—”

“No, you aren’t,” she says quietly. “Not even half of it.”

I swallow. “What?”

“Defrauding his investors? That was just the tip of the iceberg. I think he planned to keep it going for as long as he could, but realized the authorities were on to him for… well, other things.”

A cold shiver teases through me.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you maybe want to go somewhere and—”

“I don’t know you, Ms. Simpter. Right here is fine.”

She smiles. “Of course.”

“So? What else do you think he—”

“You can call me Olivia, Brynn. And I don’t ‘think’ anything.” She bites her lip before she sighs. “It might be best for you to see for yourself.”

She nods at one of the campus benches near us on the walkways, and I nod as I follow her over and sit. Olivia hands the stack of files over to me and when I take them, I shiver. I open the top one, and I’m ready to ask her again who the hell she is and why she’s here at my school to talk about my dad, when suddenly, my heart stops.

Oh God.

The paper is titled “Project Gemstone,” and when my eyes scan lower, my heart starts to sink. It’s a mining corporation that my father apparently owns somewhere in West Africa near the Congo, and as I start to read, my stomach starts to turn. Phrases like “acceptable mortality rate” and “disciplinary motivational techniques” jump off the page. I turn it, and instantly, my hand flies to my mouth, tears in my eyes and a choking cry on my lips.

Pictures. It’s pictures of what can only be descried as hell. Horrible little shanty huts with starving looking children and their parents looking even hungrier—most missing limbs. And there on the dirty work overalls and on the walls of some of the buildings is the same logo from the top of the “Project Gemstone” sheet and the name “Congo-Atlantic Mining Corporation.” My eyes scan lower to a row of numbers—statistics—and when I realize what they are, the tears start to flow.

They’re death tolls.

“What—” I choke, shaking my head, and Olivia puts her hand on my arm. “Acceptable mortality rate!?” I hiss. “This says fifty-percent of the workforce died.”

She nods, her face white. “I’m so sorry, Brynn. But this is just one of these, well, the ‘types’ of operations your father was running.”

“And you worked with him?”

She shakes her head. “Not on this shit, no. I’m an analyst. None of us who are now digging this stuff out new about it. It was all coded and hidden as bylines in other corporate spending.”

I feel cold, numb. And slowly, I look up at her.

“And there’s more?”

She nods quietly. “Brynn, there’s…”

“Tell me,” I whisper.

“There’s a lot more.”

Oh, and there is. File after file, my heart starts to break, until I’m just crying as I read about the monster that my father really is. Chemical plants hidden on wilderness protection land in India where the entire workforce and surrounding population all got lung cancer from lack of any sort of control on chemical fumes. Poaching operations in Africa and China. I glance at one page until I realize it’s about trafficking women—young, young women—for sex in Eastern Europe, and I look away before I throw up.

“My father…” I whisper, shaking my head as I push the files back into her hands. “My father is a monster.”

Olivia swallows, her hand moving back to my arm. “I’m so sorry to be the one to show you all of this, honey,” she says quietly. “But you needed to see it. All of us in the analytics department who discovered this thought you should. We can go to the authorities with it, but the contracts and non-disclosures we all signed could tie this up for years. Your dad could even spin it long enough for his lawyers and his fixers to bury everything.”

I swallow. “So, you want me to bring it to the authorities.”

She nods slowly. “I know it’s a lot… God, Brynn, I know it’s so much, but I honestly don’t know if any of this will see the light of day otherwise.”

“Olivia—”

“Just think about it? Okay?” She looks at me plaintively. “Please, Brynn. Just consider it.”

I nod slowly, numbly, and she stands and takes the files from me.

“I’m going to put these somewhere where your father can’t touch them. But it’s your testimony that could make or break this. I’m sorry, Brynn.”

I nod, not able to even do much more than glance up at her as she smiles sadly.

“I’ll be in touch soon, okay?”

“Yeah… yeah,” I say quietly. She gives me one last small smile before she turns and walks away into the night, leaving me spiraling and grasping for a lifeline. But then, I stand, I turn, and I start to run for the only lifeline I know.