Bloody Princess by Helen Scott
14
Lyric
"We have a project together; you don't have to get all pissy with him," I say as I push to my feet and stalk toward the most heinous one of them all.
Jude's hair has a slight curl to it, and it just makes me angrier since Lyssa had wavy hair as well, though she straightened hers every day. He practically snarls at me as he says, "I can be pissy with whoever I want, princess. You don't run shit here. In fact, you don't even mean shit here. You'll just be another hole that gets stuffed before we all move on."
"Why the hell would I want to get fucked by my sister's best friends?" I demand, desperately trying to ignore the fact that he might be right.
"Sweetheart, if you're walking around dressed like that, it's not just us you're asking to fuck you. It's everyone."
"I'm in a sweater and a pair of shorts. What are you, a fucking Victorian? Are you scared because you might see my ankles?"
Red climbs Jude's face as I yell at him, and I know one day, the two of us are going to come to blows. I just hope it's in my basement when we do.
Apparently, Keats is bored with us yelling at each other because he says, "She's telling the truth. We have a project and were assigned to each other as partners. The professor refused to change it. I asked. I'll come and grab some dinner in a minute."
"In the hallway. Now." Jude growls before stalking past Keats.
As they exit, Keats pulls the door closed, and it clicks shut. Jude's muffled voice sounds through the wall, even though they've moved away from the actual door, and I have to fight the urge to scream in frustration. If I were at home, it wouldn't be a big deal. The staff are used to my outbursts. But I'm in a guy’s bedroom in a frat house on campus. They are most definitely not used to my temper.
When Keats doesn't immediately return, I'm torn on whether to go and listen to their muffled voices as they argue or snoop through Keats' stuff. I doubt he's going to have a note saying I, Keats Kingsley, drugged Alyssa Sterling, lying around somewhere, and especially not somewhere obvious. So snooping is probably going to take multiple tries.
If I map out the room and try to do one quarter at a time, that might work. I start in the quarter I'm in with his desk. Even if I only get through his desk before he comes back, that's something I can check off the list of places to search in his room. I ease the drawer next to me open, hoping it doesn't squeak or something while I do, and rifle through the items in there. Mostly pens, pads of unused paper, a few joints, change, a lighter, and a mouse for his computer. His other drawers are almost identical. Why buy so many notebooks if you're not going to use them? And what's with the joints in each drawer? It's like the guy is worried having one weed stash isn't enough, so he's spread it all out.
It doesn't even smell like good shit, either. There's a skunky edge to it that makes it seem cheap, which surprises me, coming from a Kingsley. My father always says if they could plate everything in gold, that's how Richard Kingsley would like it. I imagine, if he's okay with Keats smoking pot, then he'd want him to get the best of the best—the kind of stuff that Snoop Dogg would smoke.
In the second drawer down on the right, I find some photos. It's the four of them, the Boys of Ascendance Bay, out on the bay itself on a small yacht. Well, maybe small is relative. They are all in swim trunks and sporting deep suntans, beers in their hands as they salute the camera and whoever is taking the photo. As I flip through a couple more, Alyssa is there as well, and I realize she must have been the one taking the photos before. She looks happy and carefree, windswept and sun-kissed. They all do.
In one photo Jude's arm is around Lyssa's waist, and he's hugging her tightly as he looks down at her with an expression I've never seen on his face before. He looks happy. Hopeful, even. It makes me pause on the photo.
I can't help but wonder how long this was taken before it all went to shit. My heart gives a lonesome beat in my chest, and I have to stuff the reaction down. Now is not the time to get emotional.
I close the drawer and move on to the bottom one, which is full of the most random items possible. There are some file folders, but they're bent and torn or stained. There's a signed baseball in a box that means absolutely nothing to me, and clearly can't mean much to Keats if it's just stuffed in here. There are also a few pairs of panties and an assortment of crusty looking socks that I wouldn't touch even if you paid me to, along with handcuffs, fuzzy and not, and a paddle, though that could be for frat stuff, not necessarily kinky stuff. The entire collection of items is strange.
I slide the drawer closed as I hear Keats' voice get louder and angrier than I've ever heard it before. "You're acting like Lyssa was our enemy, when she wasn't. She was our friend. Treating her sister like shit means you may as well be treating her like shit. Little L's going to come and have dinner, and then we'll do what we need to for the group project. I may not give a shit about school, but I'm not going to ruin it for her." The words almost make me laugh. Neither of us give a shit, and both of us will probably pass because of who we are and how much money we have.
The door swings open forcefully a second later, knocking against the stopper and making the whole thing shake. Keats is standing there looking like an avenging god or something. "We're going downstairs to dinner." Jude's footsteps stomp off down the hall and, I assume, downstairs.
"We are, are we?" I ask as I raise an eyebrow at him and cross my arms over my chest.
He can't help but glance down and break eye contact with me, which I count as a win. Instead of antagonizing him, though, I find myself saying, "I could eat." I push to my feet and follow him from the room.
We head downstairs, past the front door and toward where the kegs were for the party, but we bypass that kitchen which, though big, doesn't look like it's used very often. I wonder if it's just for parties, so they don’t mess up the real kitchen. On the other side of the kitchen, there are a few steps that lead down into a lower level. Voices murmur, and as we descend, people's feet come into view a moment before I see the whole area.
It's a big, open room lined with long tables and chairs. On one side is a series of small windows that are over head height but provide some nice natural light, while on the other side is a huge buffet of food. Dish after dish is on display, and as one gets low, I see a guy coming out of a swing door that must lead to the real kitchen and replace it. How much food do these guys go through if this is just one normal meal?
As we walk in, a hush descends and tension fills the air. I clear my throat, and Keats seems to notice for the first time that every eyeball in the room is looking at us.
"She's having dinner with us, so behave. She's a lady." His voice is all boomy and authoritative. The last part, calling me a lady, seems like code for something. Maybe it's his way of telling them hands off. I don't really care either way. He turns and guides me to the buffet, handing me a white china plate. "Load up. Whatever you want, however much you want."
He takes a plate for himself and does exactly that, going from dish to dish and scooping some of the contents onto his plate. It makes the mac and cheese I had earlier look pretty sad. I grab a slice of some kind of steak and some mashed potatoes and green beans. When I see the lasagna, I can't help myself and scoop some of that onto my plate as well while we work our way down the table. I snag a couple slices of garlic bread and a brownie from the dessert area before following Keats to a couple open chairs.
"Damn!" one of the guys says as I put my plate down. "Most girls are too nervous around us to eat like that."
"I'm not most girls," I reply as I settle myself and dive into my feast. It's not that the cafeteria food is bad, it's quite good, but I haven't had steak since I came to Welhurst. I'm not about to pass that up. I'm a carnivore all the way.
Another guy from further down the table snorts and says, "Keep eating like that and you'll be covered in marker at your first line-up."
I glance down the table at the guy who just spoke. Swallowing my food and batting my eyes at him, I ask, "What's a line-up?" I know he's not talking about the police kind, right?
Someone from the other side of the table says, "She's so fucking innocent! Doesn't even know what a line-up is!"
“I’m a freshman. What did you expect?” I sass.
The guy sitting next to me draws my attention as he explains, "Line-up is when some of the sororities on campus line their pledges up and point out things they want them to try and fix about their bodies."
"Harsh," I say before shoveling another forkful of mashed potatoes in my mouth.
"Yeah, it can be pretty brutal. They will circle things with sharpies and—"
"Enough. She's not interested in any of that shit are you?" Keats demands as he gives me a knowing look.
"Are you asking if I'm rushing?" I clarify.
"You're not. Are you?" He sounds genuinely shocked at the idea I might join a sorority. I know I'm not the most girly girl, at least when I get to dress myself and don't need to seduce someone, but still. "Alyssa didn’t want to."
"I'm not Lyssa," I snap.
"That much is fucking obvious," Jude's voice comes from the other end of the table.
I hadn't even seen him when we walked in, but then again, I was distracted by all the yummy smells. To prevent myself from snapping at him as well, I take a bite of garlic bread.
My silence seems to give him some kind of blanket permission to continue, "Let her rush. Let her pledge. She might learn a lesson or two that she needs to. Might get her off her high horse."
He thinks rushing a sorority is going to change me that much? The guy doesn't know a damn thing about me. No one can touch what Sampson has put me through or the tasks my father has assigned me. A sorority might be challenging, but only because it would be different. I'll still meet those challenges head on. My last name might be Sterling, but I'm made of titanium. They can't fucking break me.
"Just ignore him. He's being an ass," Keats says loudly enough that it's obvious there's some bad blood between him and Jude right now, which just adds to the tension in the room. It doesn't escape my notice that the conversation slowly dies out after that, and the brothers start peeling off a couple at a time, until Jude himself leaves. Once he's gone, the conversation is hesitant but eventually starts back up. The damage has been done, though, and Keats and I are sitting alone. All the brothers who had been next to us have gone, and I don't blame them.
"You okay?" I ask quietly. I don't know why I give a shit, but for some reason, I don't like the idea of Jude coming down on Keats because of me. The guy can handle himself, I know that, but it's like a rock in my shoe. I just need to get it out.
"Yeah. Listen," he starts, then pauses as he finishes his mouthful of brownie.
I still have my lasagna to get through before I have my brownie.
His voice is low, his tone hushed, as though he doesn't want anyone else to hear what he's about to say. "Don't rush. Greek life isn't what you think and sororities are vicious places. It's why Lyssa wasn't interested in joining. She didn't want to be around a bunch of bitchy girls who tear down the new members and are obsessed with their image and reputation."
I sigh and finish off my garlic bread before replying. "I know you're trying to help, and I appreciate that, I truly do, but the only sorority I'm interested in joining is the one my mom was a member of. I just want to walk where she walked, see things that she saw, feel...connected to her in some way. It sounds dumb, but that's why I want to join Pi Ep. I don't really care about sisterhood or any of that. I just want to follow in her footsteps." I can’t look at him while I speak, and when I finally do look at him again, I see the shock and awkwardness on his face. He hadn't expected me to open up like that, and now he didn't know how to react. To be fair, I hadn't expected that either, but it won’t hurt anything for him to know a little of the truth, and that is exactly what I told him.
"I get that. I just want you to know it's going to be harder than you expect."
I nod and take a bite of the brownie, needing something sweet in my life at that second, something that I can attribute the feeling in my chest to. He doesn’t know that Sampson had done worse on a weekly basis when I was growing up. The more my body had changed, the more he thought he and my father could take advantage of it, especially if he "helped shape me into the best woman I could be," which meant restricted diets, counting calories, and macros. Even now, in my head I’m tallying what I estimate each dish to be valued at with the different calories and macros. I have to actively fight against it, which is harder than I’d expected. Plus, Sampson had given me personalized workouts to keep my stomach tight while I built up the muscles in my ass to make it rounder and firmer. I can crack a fucking walnut with my thighs if I want to because of what he put me through.
He couldn't do shit about my boobs, but mother nature had that well in hand anyway, and he didn't have to try. I know if I'd stayed small, he probably would have talked my father into getting me implants. Hell, when I’d broken my nose training, he’d tried to talk my dad into a nose job, saying half the work was already done. I was evaluated, scrutinized, poked, prodded, wrapped, stretched—everything he could think of to give me that hourglass figure. I had most of it naturally, but he’d ensured that it was accentuated to its fullest. If the Pi Ep ladies want me to lose weight, they'll have to find it first. Sure, I’m not bodybuilder skinny, but there aren’t a lot of places for me to lose anything.
They can do their worst and it will still be an easy A compared to my life growing up. None of them know anything about that, though, and they never will. That's just between me, Sampson, and my father. Oh, and the devil, if he exists because that's the only reason I can think of for them to put me through that. I may only have scraps of my humanity left, scraps of my soul, but what's left knows they are as wicked as they come. They will be punished one day. I can only hope that I'll be there to see it and maybe get to land a punch or two—show them exactly what they taught me. Right now, though, I just have to figure out how to get out of this frat house before I lost my temper.
