Wicked Lies by Mae Doyle
Chapter 22
The air was biting by the time we got back to campus. Kaleb was standing outside the main building, waiting on his, his arms crossed. “Took you guys long enough.” Even as he spoke to Brett and Jackie his eyes roamed over my body. It felt like he was checking me out, but I also had the feeling that he was making sure I was okay.
Ridiculous, I know.
“We’re here now.” Brett’s voice was a growl and I shivered, remembering what it felt like when he helped me across the creek and wrapped his arms around me. I’d gotten closer to him than I had in years, but I still felt like I didn’t know a lot about him anymore.
Not since everything fell apart when we were younger.
“Yeah, well, everyone’s waiting.” Without another word, Kaleb turned and opened the door to the main building for us. Brett walked in first, then Jackie put his hand on my lower back to guide me through. My feet wanted to stick to the floor and not walk, but I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other.
Jackie followed me, then Kaleb, who let the door slam shut behind him.
“You guys want to tell me what’s going on?” My voice sounded weak in the large empty lobby, and I grimaced, but they didn’t seem to notice.
“She knows what she has to do. Right, Rosita?” Jackie brushed some hair back from my cheek and I flinched at his touch. His fingers were icy cold against my hot cheeks. I knew what he wanted me to do, but it wasn’t the right thing for me.
“Sure.” The lie slipped out of my mouth easily but they all bought it and nodded, Brett once again leading the way to the cafeteria.
We’d missed dinner and my stomach rumbled as we walked through the double doors. Our entire class was inside, all seated at tables, but nobody was eating. The noise from them talking stopped as soon as Brett set foot into the room, and everyone turned as one to look at us.
“Rose here has something to say to all of you.” Brett’s booming voice whipped through the silence of the cafeteria.
I swallowed hard, still unsure of what to do or what I was supposed to say. Everyone here wanted me to quit, right? Before I said anything, I allowed my eyes to slide over everyone sitting in the room. My friends, Harper and Maggie, and their boyfriends, were sitting at a table close to us. Harper and Maggie were holding hands, and I noticed that they both looked pale.
Concerned. They look concerned.
“Tell them what we talked about.” Jackie’s breath was hot on my skin but I didn’t turn to look at him. I was done trying to do this by their rules.
“Hi.” Nobody moved, and I cleared my throat to try a little louder. “Hello, everyone. I’m Rose, but you all knew that.” The harpies were sitting in the back of the cafeteria at their main table. Amelia had a sickening grin on her face and was staring at me with one eyebrow raised.
“I think that you are all here because you expect some big announcement.” Nobody moved. Nobody responded. I knew what I had to do, even though I knew that it may very well kill me. “But what you don’t know is what I had to deal with to get here. To get to Taylor Prep. It’s been a pretty big deal for me to even set foot on this campus and think that I could graduate from here, especially since I started later than the rest of you.”
Silence. I swore you could have heard a pin drop. Nobody breathed. I glanced over at my friends, hoping to see a smile or something, but they sat stony-faced.
“So you’re all here to hear me say that I’ve quit, right? That you drove me out? That for whatever reason you decided that I didn’t belong here I would leave?”
It was a rhetorical question, but I still wasn’t surprised when Amelia spoke up. “That’s right, you dumb bitch! We can’t wait to see you go!” The rest of the harpies giggled a little and I heard the rogues behind me shift position, but they didn’t move.
I wasn’t sure why they were standing behind me. Whether it was to make me feel safe or to keep me from running, I didn’t think I’d ever get the answer. What mattered though was that they were in the cafeteria to hear what I had to say.
I needed everyone to hear what I had to say.
“But I’m not leaving. You all think that you can just drive me out, and you can try, but I won’t go. Nobody has told me what I did to you to make you so upset, so I can’t leave. If someone can come clean then we can talk, but I deserve to be here as much as the rest of you do. In fact, I think that I deserve it more in some ways.”
The silence that, just a few minutes before, had been so overbearing and oppressive that it made my head hurt, erupted. Students started talking and shouting over each other, all of them fighting to get attention. I was glad that I had gotten everything out that I meant to, because there was no way I was going to be able to get them to calm down now.
Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say anymore. Now they just had to try to work among themselves to figure out what they needed to do about me.
I threw a wink to Harper and Maggie, who both looked less like they were going to throw up, and turned around, a triumphant smile on my face. My smile faded right off of my face as soon as I saw the looks that Brett, Kaleb, and Jackie were giving me.
“You three have something that you want to say?” I popped out one hip and threw my hand onto it, trying to look confident. Inside, though, I felt like I could throw up, but there was no way that I was going to let them know that.
All three of them seemed to be trying to think of what to say. Finally, Kaleb spoke, adjusting his glasses before he looked at me. “You just fucked up, you know that?”
My stomach dropped, which is not something that I expected. I was supposed to be feeling on top of the world right now, but the looks on their faces told me that I had just messed up. Big time.
“I didn’t, though. I won. I’m still here, and now everyone knows that I’m not making any plans to leave anytime soon.” I squinted at Kaleb, trying to see if he understood what I was saying, but he just looked at me with a fearful look on his face that I didn’t like.
I’d never seen the rogues look scared, and I was getting a little worried. They were supposed to be the big bad group of Taylor Prep, but what if there was something even worse than them around? The thought hadn’t crossed my mind but now I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to shake it.
Brett rolled his eyes. “You didn’t win, Rose. All you did was draw more attention to yourself.”
“More attention?” My voice was increasing in pitch, but I couldn’t help myself. “More attention? You do realize that almost this entire grade has made it their business to make me the center of attention this semester, right? That I’ve been under attack from all sides almost since the school year began? I hardly think that telling the students that I’m planning on staying is going to make that much of a difference.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Brett’s dark eyes were swirling with shadows.
“It isn’t that you drew more attention from the students,” Jackie explained, putting a hand on Brett’s shoulder to try to calm him a little while we spoke. “It’s that you drew more attention from the people who want you out so badly.”
Now we were getting somewhere. This was the first that I had heard of other people wanting me out of Taylor Prep, and I needed the three of them to give me more information. “Care to expand? Because it sounds to me like there are some more people I need to go talk to. Make sure that we’re all on the same page.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Brett’s eyes were wide. “You can’t just explain that you want to stay and then expect that everything will be fine.”
“That’s exactly what I’m planning to do.” A fire rose in my chest and threatened to consume me. I had to focus to keep from burning up under their gazes. The three of them were focused completely on me and it was disconcerting. “Tell me who I need to talk to, and I’ll do that.”
A laugh escaped Kaleb and he shook his head. “You’re crazy, Rose. Seriously. You’ve been told to leave, and you need to do that.”
“So this has happened before?” Hope flared in me. It was a small flame of it, to be sure, but the fact that maybe someone else had dealt with this in the past made me think that perhaps there was a way to get out of this. A way to ensure that I could stay at Taylor Prep without having to leave – without having to sacrifice my future.
And, possibly, without having to withstand bullying every single day.
“It’s not that easy.” Jackie’s voice was the most calm of the three. “Rosita, you can’t just override something like that.”
“And yet, I am.” I glared at the three of them. “Besides, when did you guys start to give a crap about me? If I remember correctly, you’re working with the harpies.”
The three guys glanced over my shoulder to where the harpies were still laughing and enjoying themselves. I couldn’t bear to look, knowing that I would see all of the students talking about me.
Well, almost all of the students.
An arm looped through my left arm while a hand took my right. I wasn’t surprised to see Harper and Maggie on either side of them. Woods and Everett had disappeared, but they gave me encouraging smiles.
“We’re going to walk you to your room.” Maggie pulled on my arm. “You shouldn’t be here right now.”
I wasn’t done talking to the rogues, but the way my friends faces looked told me that I needed to wrap it up. “Just a minute,” I told her, pulling back a bit to hold my ground, but she shook her head.
“No, Rose. Now.”
