To be a complete punk about it, though…I saw her first.
I’ve researched her. I chanted her full name inside my head—Elodie Francine Jemimah Stillwater—until it felt like a mantra, a pebble worn smooth by constant rubbing, and now she feels like she’s mine. I do not share my toys well with others.
We have our rules for a reason, naturally. Riot House wouldn’t exist without some kind of code or system by which its inhabitants were required to operate. There may only three of us here, but each of our personalities are such that we’d all wind up dead if we didn’t honor a line drawn in the sand from time to time.
Pax grunts, screwing up his Subway wrapper and lobbing it at the trash can on the other side of my bedroom. He shouldn’t even be in here while I’m trying to work, but trying to keep Pax out of anywhere is like trying to stop water leaking from a holey bucket. You learn to give up pretty quickly. Pax is quiet for a while. This means he’s thinking deeply about something. I manage to cram in three hundred words before he eventually says, “How about…a trade?”
I stop typing.
Turn around in my chair.
There’s a worrying look on Pax’s face.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Explain.” From time to time, he’s been known to be a little tricksy. Not as tricksy as me, but it’s wise to be on guard.
He pouts, staring up at the ceiling. He’s being far too nonchalant right now. He wants something big. Bigger than Elodie, which means he’s about to try and pass whatever this is off as a fair exchange. “The boat,” he says airily. “You have it while it’s still in Corsica. Trade me the boat over spring break and I won’t lay a finger on the girl.”
Hah. He talks about ‘The Contessa’ like it’s a fucking schooner, not a forty-foot long, seven-bedroomed luxury super yacht. She’s my father’s pride and joy. If I let Pax stay there unsupervised during the spring break, the damn thing’ll probably end up at the bottom of the Mediterranean. My father would tar and feather me, then disinherit me.
“A week,” I counter.
Pax folds his arms across his chest, the casual, carefree expression he was just sporting vanishing as he settles in for negotiations. “Two weeks, man. The whole break. I’m not flying across the world for one fucking week.”
“Ten days. Final offer.”
“No deal. I guess you’re gonna have to stand down.”
He could make me stand down. If he wanted to, he could involve Dash, and the two of them could vote that I stay away from Elodie until the end of fucking time. House rules. We try to avoid forcing each other to do anything most of the time, it only winds up with someone getting hurt, but it wouldn’t be an unprecedented move. Pax really must like the look of Elodie, which makes me want her even more.
She already is mine, though, and this claim he’s trying to make on her is boiling my fucking blood. “Ten days, Pax. Go see your Mom in Prague afterward.”
He looks horrified. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“All right. Fine. You get the boat. Two weeks in June. But I so much as hear you’ve been making Molotov cocktails again and I’ll call in the fucking gendarmerie.”
If anything, this only seems to make the smile on the piece of shit’s face spread even wider. God, what the fuck am I doing? This is going to be an unmitigated disaster. I can already feel it in my bones. “Stop crowing. I can hear the laughter bouncing around the inside of your thick skull from here,” I grumble, spinning back around to face my desk. I won’t be able to write anymore. I know I won’t. I’m relieved that ownership of Elodie Stillwater has been cleared up, but there’s a rank taste in my mouth that I can’t shake now.
I made a copy of her file with all her personal contact information a week after I took the photo. I considered calling her before she even arrived, just so I could hear her voice and stop driving myself mad with wondering what she would sound like. I’d managed to show a little restraint, though. But I couldn’t stop myself from texting after our English class. I’d wanted to rile her up. To watch her reaction from afar. Annoyingly, she’d barely reacted at all. She’d been confused at first, because she didn’t know the number, I’m assuming, but then her face had gone blank.
No fear. No anger. No irritation. The only emotion I saw cross her face, from my casual lean against the wall fifteen feet away, was a brief flicker of amusement, at which point she’d tucked her phone back into her pocket and jogged up the steps towards the biology labs without a backward glance.
“Why are you so dead set on this girl, anyway?” Pax asks, making a hell of a noise as he purposefully fires the lid on a can of pringles across the room, jams his hand inside, pulls out a stack of chips and stuffs them into his mouth.
I tap out a sentence, focusing on my laptop screen. “She’s nothing. She’s unimportant.”
“Bullshit, Jacobi. You haven’t shown the slightest bit of interest in a girl since Mara and you know it.”
BANG!
I think I just shattered my laptop’s screen.
I shouldn’t have slammed it closed so hard, but then again Pax shouldn’t have just uttered that name within my earshot. He knows better than that. Closing my eyes, I inhale a shaky, uneven breath, trying to level out the rage spiking in my bloodstream. “I’m glad we ironed out a deal with The Contessa,” I grit out through my teeth. “You gotta get the fuck out of my room, though, dude. I’m serious. I gotta get this paper done. I need to clear my head, and I can’t do that with you bringing that shit up, yeah?”
I wait for Pax to argue. Arguing is second nature to him; he grew up in a house full of lawyers. For better or for worse, he chooses to keep a civil tongue in his head instead. “All right, man. No drama. I’m gonna head down to Cosgroves’ and grab some beers. You want something?”
I clench my jaw so hard that it cracks when I force my mouth open to speak. “Not beer. A forty of Jack,” I tell him.
“Whew. Going big on a school night. My favorite kind of Jacobi.” He leaves, humming a raucous song under his breath, and I sit very still, with an image of Elodie Stillwater blazing in my mind.
Why am I so dead set on her?
Because she’s innocent, and I’m not.
Because she’s wholesome, and I’m not.
Because she’s untainted, and I’m not.
And, most importantly of all, because she’ll be so pretty when I make her cry.
5
ELODIE
“We should have met yesterday, Ms. Stillwater, but I’ve found that giving a student a day or two to settle in can be helpful. I knew Carina would do a good job of showing you around. She’s a good girl. A good friend, if you’re in the market for one. I apologize for putting you all the way up there on the fourth floor, but four-sixteen was our only available room. I hope you’re comfortable enough. Please pass on our apologies to your father. Colonel Stillwater was very clear that he wanted you situated on the second floor, but there’s nothing we can do right now. Maybe next semester—”
“Really, Principal Harcourt, it’s not a problem. I don’t mind being on the fourth floor.” Yes, it’s a pain in the ass having to hike all the way up those stairs, but apart from being in such close proximity to Damiana and the blistering cold in my room it doesn’t really make much of a difference where I sleep in this godforsaken place. It’s all the same to me.