I hear a titter of laughter in response from Rachel Ann sitting next to her.
If I’ve any doubt its me they’re discussing, Cassandra turns and glares at me.
Ignoring her, I stare at the Wilton Wildcats emblem painted high on the wall. Wilton Academy, the private high school I’ve attended the last four years, has been my kingdom, and I its reigning queen. I had it all, status, popularity, wealth. I suppose I coasted along on that. Life’s always been easy for me. Well, until four months ago when my stepfather ruined everything. Now my life has been turned upside down, and I’m not sure how to handle it. I went from having it all, to having nothing. No car. No college. No future. No family. No home.
I stare unseeing at the chair in front of me as the row behind mine stands and files out to the side aisle.
When they move away I glance back and focus in on the girl two rows behind me now staring back at me with no one between us. Her row has just filed back to their seats.
Mary Elizabeth, my former BFF. She lives on the same street as me and we grew up together. We were as close as sisters until I dropped her for the more popular girls at Wilton. Mary Elizabeth was not cute enough or popular enough for them, so they insisted I choose—them or her. I chose wrong. I picked the popular clique, the ones who have now dropped me like I’ve got herpes, the ones who are right now in the row in front of me snickering.
Mary Elizabeth doesn’t look at me with disdain, even after how horribly I treated her. No, she just looks at me with pity now, and I don’t know which is worse.
I wish I could talk to her, tell her how sorry I am, but I think it may be too late to make amends.
Mary Elizabeth is quiet, smart, a bookworm who’s never been smug about her parents wealth. She never cared that she wasn’t in the ‘in crowd’, not like I did. For me, high school has always been the end-all, but I think Mary Elizabeth has always wisely known that it’s just a wayside stop on the way to bigger and better things in her future.
I smile at her, wishing she’d smile in return. Instead, she whispers, “What happens when people don’t think you’re “all that” anymore?”
Like I said, she’s smart, and she’s seen right through me again.
I stand with the rest of my row and follow them out. When it’s my turn, I walk across the stage and shake hands with our gym teacher, who’s filling in for the principal, and take the rolled up piece of copy paper that’s meant to be a prop for our diploma.
I hear snickers move through the crowd of my classmates, and turn to see them laughing at me. I lift my chin, swearing I will not cry in front of everyone.
I return to my seat. Now that everyone’s walked across the stage, kids are getting antsy and begin quietly talking about all the after parties that will be taking place graduation night. There was a time when I would have been the ‘it’ guest, on the top of everyone’s invite list. Now no one even looks at me, let alone invites me. Other than to make fun of me, its as if I don’t exist anymore.
Some students begin talking about what colleges they’ll be attending in the fall. Just another reminder of all I’ve lost. It’s a place I won’t be attending.
My life has become hell, and the worst is yet to come. Soon my mother will be leaving me.
“Where’s your Porsche, Kami? Oh, right. They repossessed it,” Cassandra teases me.
My life is officially screwed. I’m on autopilot now, with thoughts of nothing past getting through this day. I just want to go home, lock myself in my room, put my headphones on and listen to music…and pretend it’s the past…back before my stepfather stole all our money and our friends’ money too; back before we lost everything; back before this nightmare began.
Thirty minutes later I climb from the Uber, and head into the front door of our soon-to-be ex-home. The emptiness of the huge rooms is depressing, heaping more on my already downtrodden emotions. I’m halfway to the staircase, thinking of nothing but collapsing on my bed in fatigue when I hear my mother call out.
“Kami, I’m in the kitchen. Could you come here for a minute please?”
I trudge in that direction, wondering if there are any snacks in the house. Maybe a pint of Rocky Road will make me feel better. I push open the swinging door and stop short, staring at the man seated at the table with my mother.
Santos.
He’s tall, dark and handsome, just like the cliché. My eyes skate over him, from the strong jaw and intimidating scowl to the wide muscular shoulders, I miss nothing. His brutal good looks are stunning, as is his penetrating stare, the one that’s always seemed like he could see right into my soul. Like the time when I was nine and he was fourteen and I’d climbed up the huge Magnolia tree in the backyard and gotten stuck.
Eight years ago…
I cling to the limb, suddenly frozen with fear, unable to move as a panic attack sweeps over me and I wonder why I ever climbed the stupid tree in the first place. Oh, right—to spy on our gardener’s cute son.
Santos is raking leaves while his father trims bushes.
A light rain starts up and I know I have to call out for help, as humiliating as that will be. When I finally get the courage to do so, Santos drops his rake and approaches the trunk of the tree, looking up at me.
“You okay, shortcake?” His nickname for me has always irritated me, as I’m sure he’s aware.
I glance down, feeling dizzy. “I…I can’t get down.”
“Just back up.”
“I can’t.”
A bolt of lighting flashes on the distant horizon, and he glances over his shoulder. “Better hurry, Kami. Can’t be up in a tree with lightning around.”
“Can you g-get my mother, p-please?” I stutter.
He sighs, and the next thing I know he scrambles up to me with the ease of a monkey. I feel his palm on my back.
“Let go, shortcake. I’ve got you.”
“I can’t.” I cling tighter.
“Look at me,” he says, and I finally meet his eyes. “You can do this.”
Somehow the steady confidence he exudes makes me believe him. Slowly I let go, and he wraps an arm around my waist and hauls me down.
He was my real-life hero that day.
I crushed on him hard after that, until the awful afternoon his father collapsed in our yard, and Santos ran to him, cradling his head and screaming for someone to call 911.
To me, Santos was always the forbidden fruit—a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks with a chip on his shoulder. He went on to play the starring role in all my teenage fantasies. But I always knew he was off limits.
While I had social status, he was going nowhere. My mother would have died if she’d thought I’d harbored any feelings for him.
Now I feel like the tables have turned. I think perhaps his future is brighter than mine at this point.
I stare at the man in my kitchen, sitting at our table, curiously glaring at me like I’m solely responsible for all his bad luck.
He’s nothing like the boy I remember.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
CHAPTER FOUR
Saint—
My eyes sweep over Kami. This is not the little girl I remember. She’s beautiful, with a knockout body and the face of an angel. Her hair is a silky blonde that I long to run my fingers through and her eyes are the color of golden honey. And with long legs like her mother’s, she’s definitely outgrown the name shortcake.