Parked next to me is a sleek black Porsche, and on the other side is a red Maserati. I sigh. Almost a year since I’ve been a student here, yet nothing has changed.
I sweep my eyes over the grounds ahead of me. Welcome to Camden Prep, otherwise known as my own personal hell, a prestigious private school in the middle of Sugarwood, Tennessee, which happens to be one of the richest small towns in the US, home to senators, country music stars, and professional athletes.
Bah. Whatever. I hate this place.
Slinging my backpack over my arm, I sprint through the parking lot, carefully evading the cars, recalling a freshman guy who accidentally scratched another car once, and one of the Shark’s, no less. Later, they cornered him in the bathroom and made him lick their shoes. The best advice for anyone who isn’t a Shark is to stay away from them. Don’t look. Don’t touch. Pretend they don’t exist. Those guidelines got me through my freshman and sophomore years. Junior year—well, we won’t even go there, but now that it’s my last year, I’ll be living by those rules again.
Tension and apprehension make my heart race more and more the closer I get to the double doors of that ivy-covered main entrance bookended by two castle-style gray turrets. The final bell for classes hasn’t rung yet, and I have exactly five minutes to get to my locker and get to class. Arriving late was my plan because a girl like me has to have a fucking plan.
As I jog, I tug at my new school uniform, a mid-thigh red and gold plaid skirt, something the administration instituted to blur the lines between the haves and the have-nots. As if. Everyone already knows who the rich kids are and who are the ones like me. Just look in the freaking parking lot. “I love you, Louise,” I mutter. “All these jerks have is something their parents bought them.”
I stop at the door, inhaling a deep breath. You’d expect a regular glass door for a school, but this isn’t an ordinary place. The door here is made from heavy, beveled glass, the kind you see in old houses. Freshman year, I thought it was beautiful with the red dragon carefully etched into the upper section, but now—ha. Dread, thick and ugly, sucks at me, sliding over me like mud even though I gave myself a hundred pep talks on the twenty-minute drive in from the Sisters of Charity in downtown Nashville.
“Steel yourself,” I whisper. “Beyond these doors lie hellhounds and vampires.” I smirk. If only they really were. I’d pull out a stake and end them like Buffy.
Sadly, they are only human, and I cannot stab them.
I pat down my newly dyed dark hair, shoulder-length with the front sides longer than the back, a far cry from my long blonde locks from last year. Cutting and dying my hair was therapy. I did it for me, to show these assholes I’m not going to be that nice little scholarship girl anymore. Screw that. I gather my mental strength, pulling from my past. I’ve sat in homeless shelters. I’ve watched Mama shoot needles in her arms, in between her toes, wherever she could to get that high. I’ve watched her suck down a bottle of vodka for breakfast.
These rich kids are toddlers compared to me.
So why am I shaking all over?
No fear, a small voice says.
I swing the doors open to a rush of cool air and brightly lit hallways. The outside may look as if you’ve been tossed back a few centuries, but the inside is plush and luxurious, decorated like a millionaire’s mansion instead of a school.
Smells like money, I think as I stand for a second and take it all in. It’s still gorgeous—can’t deny that. Warm taupe walls. White wainscoting. Crown molding. Leather chairs. And that’s just the entrance area. I walk in farther, my steps hesitant. Majestic portraits hang on the wall, former headmasters alongside framed photos of alumni, small smiling faces captured in senior photos. The guys have suits on, the girls in black dresses. By the end of this year, my picture will be encased in a collage and placed with my classmates. A small huff of laughter spills out of me, bordering on hysteria, and I push it back down.
Students milling around—girls in pleated skirts and white button-downs like mine, guys in khakis and white shirts with red and gold ties—swivel their heads to see who’s coming in on the first day of classes.
Eyes flare.
Gasps are emitted.
Fighting nervousness, I inhale a cleansing breath, part of me already regretting this decision, urging me to turn around and run like hell, but I hang tough, fighting nausea. I swallow down my emotions, carefully shuffling them away, locking them up in a chest. I picture a chain and padlock on those memories from last year. I take that horror and toss it into a stormy ocean. There, junior year. Go and die.
With a cold expression on my face, one I’ve been practicing for a week, my eyes rove over the students, not lingering too long on faces.
That’s right, Ava Harris, the snitch/bitch who went to the police after the party, is back.
And I’m not going anywhere.
All I need is this final year, and I might be able to swing a full ride at a state school or even get a scholarship to Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt. My body quivers in yearning. Me at a prestigious university. Me going to class with people who don’t know me. Me having something that is mine. Me making my own road, and it’s shiny and flat and so damn smooth…
My legs work before my brain does, and as I start down the hall, the crowd parts, more students seeing me and pausing, eyes widening.
The air around me practically bristles with tension.
If I were a wicked witch, I’d cackle right now.
My fists clench, barely hanging on to my resolve.
You’re better than any of them.
But inside, my words of encouragement feel hollow.
Piper rushes up and throws her arms around me. “She’s back! My main girl is back! OMG, I HAVE MISSED YOU SO MUCH!”
Seeing her exuberant, welcoming face is exactly what I needed. Pretty with long strawberry blonde hair pulled back with two butterfly clips, she’s been my friend since we had a chorus class together freshman year. She can’t carry a tune, but I love to sing. I had a solo at every single concert at Camden BTN. Before That Night.
Piper is still talking, rambling about what I’ve been doing this summer. Working, I tell her, and she tells me how she went out to Yellowstone with her parents on an awful month-long road trip with her two younger brothers in an RV. I nod and smile in all the right places, and she seems to think I’m okay. Good.
She shoves at her neon pink cat-eye glasses and smiles as she squeezes my hand. “I’m so glad to see you. Also, my parents are insisting you come to dinner soon. It’s been a while.”
Indeed.
“Are you, you know, okay?” she says.
Before I can answer, someone jostles into us, moving away quickly, but not before I hear snitch from his lips.
My purse falls down with the force of his shoulder.
And so it begins.
Helping me get my bag, she turns her head and snaps at the retreating back of the person who bumped into me. “Watch it!” Then, “Jockass!”
Rising up, I crane my neck to see who it was. Red hair, football player: Brandon Wilkes. I barely know him.
She blows at the bangs in her face, schooling her features back into a sweet expression even though her eyes are darting around at everyone as if daring them to say one word against me. “Anyway, I’m glad you came back. We haven’t gotten to talk much, and that is your fault, which is fine. I gave you space like you asked.”