Wicked Lies by Mae Doyle
Chapter 13
The next day passed without incident, too, and I was starting to let my guard down, at least until dinner. The chef had really outdone themselves with grilled trout, steamed kale, and an incredible granola for dessert. I dug right in, but Harper and Maggie pushed their plates away, looking worried.
“Rose, we need to talk to you.” Harper’s faced was strained and she chewed her lower lip while she waited for me to respond. I couldn’t answer, since my mouth was full of fish, so I just nodded. “Maggie and I found something in our bedrooms.” She lifted her hand up from her lap and held it out to me. Coiled on her palm was a leather braided bracelet.
I choked and reached for my water, downing half of it before I could breathe again. “You both had one of these?” My hand hovered near hers. I wanted to reach out and touch it, but I was almost afraid of it, like it were a snake or something else that could hurt me. Ridiculous. Closing my fingers around it, I lifted it by the bead and let it spin in the air between us.
Maggie nodded. “We both got the bracelets and letters that we needed to start wearing them. We, uh, haven’t, obviously, but I don’t know that we have much of a choice.” She looked terrified, but I scoffed, dropping the bracelet onto the table.
“Why don’t you think you have a choice?”
Harper swallowed hard. “They said that we had to, or we’d lose our scholarships.”
“That’s ridiculous. You and I both know that they can’t do that. What, do the rogues think that they run the school or something?” I popped another bite of flaky trout into my mouth and sighed. This place may have been a hellhole, but at least the food was heavenly. If nothing else, I wanted to stay just so I could keep eating what the chef came up with.
“Actually, Rose, we were called in to see Mr. Taylor after class today.” Maggie couldn’t meet my eyes, but Harper was staring at me, nodding. “He told us that the bracelet was a part of the dress code and we needed to wear it or we’d be in noncompliance and would have marks against us.”
“Marks? For a bracelet? They do see how the rogues and the harpies dress, right?” Glancing over at their table, I saw that they were all quiet, watching us. It was eerie, but even though I was a little scared of them, it didn’t detract from the fact that there were, undoubtedly, the most attractive people I’d ever met.
Maybe gorgeous people really did run the world.
“Yeah, and if we have too many marks we’d get expelled.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking fast. “How many marks will they give you for not wearing it? And how many does it take to get expelled? It really seems like the dress code doesn’t matter as much as maybe we think it does.”
Harper shook her head. “We would get the maximum number of marks on the first day that we’re not wearing the bracelets. He told us that he’d give us a pass for today since we didn’t understand the dress code change. I’m so sorry.” Her voice got quieter and quieter as she spoke, making it hard for me to hear her.
This was enough. Standing, I snatched the bracelet from the table and marched across the cafeteria to the rogues and the harpies. Brett, Jackie, and Kaleb were all sitting next to each other, watching me come towards them. Their faces were dark as they frowned at me. The harpies, on the other hand, didn’t look like they could contain their glee. They were grinning and Amelia even giggled as I stalked up to their table.
“What the hell is this about?” I slammed the bracelet down on the table in front of the boys. They all looked at it, slow smiles breaking out across their faces, then looked back up at me. “How did you make this happen? What kind of twisted control do you have here?”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Rosita.” Jackie reached out to finger the bracelet before picking it up and handing it back to me. Without thinking, I took it, my fingers burning at his touch. “Why do you think that we’re the ones in control?”
“Because you’re the only jackasses here who hate me this much.”
“We don’t hate you.” Kaleb leaned forward, catching my eye. I chewed my lower lip as I looked into his green eyes. I should hate them, all of them, but there was something about them that drew me to them. Something dangerous. Something I should avoid, but I wasn’t sure how.
“Then why do this?”
“Because you don’t belong. I don’t know how many times I need to explain that to you, Rosa.” Brett pointed back at my friends. “But you better get that bracelet back to your girls so they can put it on. You’d hate to accidentally take them down with you, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I waited a moment to let that sink in, but nobody at the table responded, so I marched back to my friends. “Put it on,” I told Harper, slamming the bracelet on the table. “I’m not having you guys get in trouble because you don’t want to hurt my feelings by wearing a bracelet.”
She hesitated but then slipped it on. Maggie put hers on too, an apologetic look on her face. “I’m sorry, Rose.” Maggie’s voice was small, but I smiled at her. There was no reason for my friends to feel so bad about what was going on. They shouldn’t be punished just for being friends with me. I opened my mouth to say something to them, but before I could, I heard footsteps behind me.
Twisting around in my seat, I saw Kelly walking towards us, her nose wrinkled, carrying something in her hands. She lifted it over my head before I could stop her and then dropped it onto my trout. A plate, loaded with shit, splattered onto my food, everything sliding off of the side of the plate towards me.
I shrieked, standing up as quickly as possible, and twisted something in my hip. Crying out, I fell, grabbing onto my chair for support as the full scent of my new dinner hit me. My stomach twisted and contracted, and I tried to breathe through my nose, not wanting to be sick.
Don’t throw up, don’t throw up.
Maggie and Harper were by my side in an instant, lifting me to my feet while laughter broke out around us. Kelly stood behind me, her arms crossed, a satisfied grin on her face.
“What was that for?!” I stood, gasping through the pain, as my hips twisted and my body straightened out. Maggie and Harper wanted to support me, but I pulled away from them, closing the gap to Kelly. “What kind of twisted joke is that?”
She laughed, then turned, flipping her hair in my face. “You don’t tell someone like Amelia to eat shit and then get away with it, you fucking loser.” She strolled over to Amelia, who hugged her, staring at me over Kelly’s shoulder.
So, it was like that, was it?
I was still hungry, but there wasn’t any way that I could sit down and eat. “I still have some contraband candy in my room, you guys.” Without looking to see if they were going to follow me, I walked out of the cafeteria. Every step sent shooting pain up into my back, but I held my face as stoic as possible. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me squirm.
* * *
“Are you sure that you had more candy? I swear that I left some under here the last time we all got together.” Harper peeked under my mattress for a third time, even though I told her I’d left it in my closet. Maggie dug through my desk, and I pulled my trunk out from under my hanging clothes, reaching for the lock to see if I’d left it all locked up, but the lock was gone.
“It’s gone.” I had a huge lock on my trunk to make sure that nobody got into my chocolate stash and that they stayed away from my diary. Panic gripped my heart and I felt my palms get sweaty as I flipped the lid of the trunk open. At first glance, it didn’t look like anything was missing, but I lifted the blanket I had on top and everything was gone.
All of my chocolate. My diary. The song writing book that I’d been filling out as I got new ideas for pieces that I could write. “No.” I whispered the word but both Maggie and Harper heard me.
“What is it?” Maggie reached me first, leaning over me to see into the trunk. “What was in there?”
“Everything.” Even though I could tell that it was empty, I swept my hands through the trunk, feeling into the corners. Nothing. Panicked, I pulled the trunk out and looked behind it, crawling all of the way into my closet and throwing out my shoes. Even as I did it, I knew that it was fruitless.
Someone had broken into my room and gotten into my trunk. They took everything. Everything. But how in the world did they know that that’s where I kept my secret stuff? I eyed my two friends and immediately pushed the thought out of my mind. They loved me and I honestly believed that they wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.
But all of the other students? It could be any of them.
“Did you guys ever tell anyone about the trunk?” Maggie and Harper shook their heads, their eyes wide. “Okay, but then how did they know?”
“You ever let anyone else in here?” Harper wrinkled her nose, obviously thinking about the fact that I didn’t have any other friends to invite into my space.
“Not a chance.”
“You think it was just luck? I have a trunk, too, so many they were just breaking into any trunks that they could find, and they happened to be in your room.” I looked at Maggie while she talked and her voice trailed off. She knew as well as I did that that wasn’t what happened.
“They’re watching me.” Even though I had no idea how, I knew with certainty that someone had broken into my room and was probably watching my every move. What was it that Kaleb had said? Oh, that I didn’t need to watch out for something, but for someone. The thought gave me chills.
“You guys want to go somewhere else for a bit?” I slammed the trunk lid shut and pushed it into the closet, ignoring the deep grooves that it scratched into the floor. Not my problem. I didn’t care one bit about Taylor Prep or its stupid floors right now.
“Let’s go to my room.” Harper’s was the farthest away from here, and since she looked a little spooked, she probably wanted to hide in her own space. “Maggie lives next to Amelia, anyway, and I doubt that any of us want to run into her.”
Oh, I’d like to run into her. I’d like to run into her with a Mack truck. Somehow the rogues and the harpies had managed to turn everyone in the school on me, but I still had a pretty good feeling that it was one of them who was behind all of this.
