“Cherri!” Colette screeched, and it scared everyone within ten feet of her. She went shoving through the crowd and walked boldly up to where Cherri was standing with Sicily just behind her. “Oh, I missed you! I have a Christmas gift for you, and look.” Colette shoved the box toward her. “Here’s some of your stuff from you-know-who. I want to know how you’re doing with everything. Can we go get dinner after school today? Avery can come too!”
My heart was at a total standstill, and the looks on Kyle’s, Nikita’s, and Jaxon’s faces suggested they felt the same. Colette was standing in front of Cherri with the box outstretched, smiling as if nothing was wrong, but Cherri was staring back like Colette was covered in horseshit.
“I’m going over there,” Jaxon huffed, already starting to move, but Nikita grabbed his arm. “What?”
“I know. I know you’re worried about her, but she has to do this on her own. Maybe once Cherri shoots her down, she can start to get over it.”
I’d rarely seen Jaxon without a cool, collected look on his face, but that statement brought a look of anguish to it. “It’s gonna kill her.”
“Yeah, but we’ll be there to catch her,” Nikita said, and we all just looked back at the scene.
“Are you gonna take this box or what, girl?” Colette asked with a cheery tone in her voice. “You have so much stuff!”
Cherri rolled her eyes, and I held my breath as she swung her hand out, uppercutting the box, sending it flying out of Colette’s hands. The contents of the box went flying everywhere, and the sound of the box clattering to the ground was the pin dropping in a room of total silence.
I wasn’t sure what I expected Colette to do, but when she just sputtered out a laugh and dropped to the ground to start picking things up, it truly sunk in how bad off she was. “You’re so clumsy. I’ll get it. Jeez, Cherri.”
Cherri just shook her head and stepped around Colette to continue down the hallway, and it was Kyle who decided to take the next swing. He stepped out from the rest of us and into Cherri’s path. She stopped, looked Kyle up and down with an unimpressed expression, and crossed her arms.
“Cherri, please. We just want to make sure you’re okay. We only did what we did because we love you. Please return my calls. We can talk about this.”
There was no response from Cherri as she took a few steps forward until she was face to face with Kyle. She stood there, sizing him up despite the fact that he was a good half-foot taller than her, and eventually, Kyle relented and stepped to the side, allowing her to pass. She didn’t even look in our direction as she passed the rest of us, but Sicily tossed us a quick, sympathetic gaze as he followed her.
When Cherri was finally out of sight, everyone looked at poor Colette on the ground, trying to collect all the pieces of the spilled box. Nikita released Jaxon, and he walked out to where she was and knelt down next to her with a hand on her back. She didn’t acknowledge his presence at first, but when Jaxon reached out to pick up some of the makeup containers, Colette slammed the box against the ground.
“No! Don’t touch anything!” she screeched. “I’ve got it!” Jaxon recoiled hard, his eyes widening. Then he stood up and slunk back to the rest of us. “I’ve got it,” Colette said, quietly and to herself. “I’m going to fix everything, okay? Everything’s gonna be fine.”
“Holy shit,” Kyle muttered to me.
“Yeah,” I whispered as my heart broke even more than it had already. “Things are worse than I thought.”
5
Nikita
Words couldn’t quite describe how much I wanted the day to be over already. It was stressful, trying to focus on school on top of everything that was going on with The Royal Court, and Cherri’s big reveal certainly wasn’t helping things. I’d gotten pretty lucky, if it could be called that, to share all of my morning classes with Colette, so I was able to keep an eye on her, but it was painful to watch. After her frustrating interaction with Cherri, she hadn’t said much. She only clung to the box of Cherri’s things and stared at whichever teacher was leading the class, though it was obvious she wasn’t listening. By the time I sat down across from Jaxon at The Royal Court’s typical lunch table, I was exhausted beyond measure.
“Okay, that should be the last one,” I said to Jaxon as I sent him the last of the four recordings of my morning lectures while we waited for everyone else to arrive. “You sure she’s gonna listen to them?”
Jaxon poked at the fries on his tray while he made sure all the recording would play properly. “No, but maybe I can play them when we’re driving to and from school or something. I don’t know. I’ll get the info into her somehow. Colette is going to snap out of this at some point, and she is going to flip her shit when she realizes how much she was slacking in her academics. It was brilliant to record the classes. I’m sure she’ll be grateful.”
“I also took pictures of the notes. All things considered, I’m glad the teachers are still operating like Connor and Nathan have control. Otherwise, my phone would have ended up in that little lockbox thingy.”
“No kidding. It was nice getting preferential treatment before, but with all this shit, we’re really gonna need it,” Jaxon replied.
Jaxon definitely wasn’t wrong about how much we were going to need that special treatment. There were about five months of school left, and all of us were graduating, apart from Brayden. It wasn’t like there was ever a good time for all this shit to go down, but there was certainly a worst possible time, and we were in it.
Over the next ten minutes, everyone slowly arrived at the table. Nathan and Kyle arrived at about the same time, both with about the same level of exhaustion on their faces as I felt. Colette, who’d gone right to the bathroom and begged me to leave her alone after their last class, showed up a little after that and immediately sat down next to Jaxon, dropped her head against his shoulder, and was asleep not long after that.
Avery and Alistair were next to arrive, though they came in much later. It was likely because Alistair was damn near pulling Avery to keep her moving while also balancing both of their lunch trays on one arm. He put their trays down before helping Avery to sit down at the bench, and then he sat down next to her and gently rubbed her back.
“Baby, how about some of your salad? Just a little? I have an orange soda you can have if you eat a little,” Alistair coaxed under the watchful gaze of everyone, even Colette, who had stirred once they sat down.
Avery’s normally exuberant cocoa skin was a few shades paler, and though she didn’t look as malnourished as Colette did, she was much thinner than she was before all of this put her under so much stress. She had only managed to pull her hair back into a messy bun, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Avery didn’t really need makeup since she was one of those annoyingly natural beauties, but she never left the house without a full face. Still, beautiful though she was, she almost looked sickly without a layer of artistry on. To say I felt bad for her would be an understatement.
Fortunately, in the wake of Alistair’s bargaining, which was so practiced that it made me uncomfortable, Avery finally lifted her fork and stabbed it into her salad. It was almost as if that was what everyone else needed to see before they would start eating. Once she put the first forkful of salad in her mouth, everyone else dug into their plates. It did little to brighten the mood, though. As I ate, I noted that Avery scanned the lunchroom for Cherri every few minutes, only to be distracted in some way or another by Alistair.