I don’t hang around for an answer before going up to my room and slamming the door behind me.
My athletic bag gets tossed in the corner as I cross over to my desk by the window, booting up my computer. I change into sweatpants and a t-shirt.
The quiet hum of my custom built tower and the glow of my double monitors sets my mind at ease. Soccer is fun to obsess over and keeps me in killer shape, but this right here is my real ticket to leaving my parents before they can leave me in the dust like they seem hell-bent on achieving this year once Mom’s re-election campaign is over.
They’re throwing everything about our family away, including me.
Fuck ‘em. I don’t need them if they don’t want me. The trust fund granddad set up for me isn’t accessible until I turn twenty-one, so I have an insurance plan in the meantime.
I won’t rely on anyone. The only person I can trust to look out for number one is myself.
While the computer powers through the loading sequence at top speeds, I set my Coke down, open the desk drawer to retrieve my stash, then drop into the high-back orange and black gamer chair. The wooden box has a design on the lid of a trippy night sky burned into the grain that I thought was sick as hell when I was fifteen and a bit of a dweeb. Now I think it’s kind of lame. Whatever, it keeps my bud dank.
Mom got all pissy when she found my old stash jar. We live an hour from Denver for fuck’s sake, yet she still has a stick up her ass about smoking as if she wasn’t sneaking into granddad’s conservatory to get away from boring society parties doing the same thing when she was my age. I found her stale leftovers out there when I was exploring the estate during brunch years ago. I know what’s up.
Smirking, I hold up a rolled joint. “Hello, beautiful.”
The first puff after lighting up has me relaxing back in the chair, hooking an arm over the headrest as I hold the smoke in my lungs for a long beat before exhaling, sending it curling overhead. I take another hit and close my eyes, humming in relief. This is what I needed to unwind.
When my limbs tingle pleasantly and the edge of stress I carried throughout the day ebbs away, I get down to business. The joint dangles between my lips as my fingers fly across the keyboard. I run through my normal checks—bitcoin investments, skim a few Reddit threads, and a social media sweep for anything unsuspecting idiots dump online and later delete that I can save as receipts when I need to put them in their place.
An automated web crawler script I run when I’m not at the computer hasn’t turned up much today, so I also do a manual scan to hunt down anything the script missed.
The corner of my mouth lifts when I come across one of the Coyote Girls on the cheerleading squad. Kamile, I recall, picturing last weekend when she drunkenly explained she was kammy with a K as she straddled my lap, trying to get with me at a boat party on Silver Lake. In the Facebook photo, she’s posing with two teammates with a bright smile, but a telltale dusting of white powder by the corner of her nose means she’ll be deleting this within the hour once someone points it out.
It’s not powdered sugar.
Don’t people know by now? The internet is forever.
Screenshot.
I pull up the program I coded myself to keep track of the dirty little secrets I collect. Maybe the encrypted dossiers are serial killer levels of detailed, but I’m not the king of blackmail because I half-ass it with word-of-mouth rumors. That’s child’s play. No, I keep extensive proof to back it all up. Every skeleton in the closet, every corrupt truth, I keep it all.
With a few keystrokes, I’ve made a new file for Kamile, populating it with notes on her extracurriculars, her GPA, and the screenshot with the direct URL address. She can buy me out of using it against her, but it will cost a steep amount. Doesn’t mean I delete what I find. Knowledge is power and all that. Mine’s backed up twice and protected by my secure protocols to ensure I’m the one holding all the cards.
“Tsk, tsk, Kammy. The hard stuff isn’t worth it if it fucks with your future. Keep it herbal, girl. And this side of legal if you’re going to post evidence of being a bit of a bad girl.” As I’m doing a low-level search of the city for her name, a LinkedIn article pulls up for her mom, profiling the high-end rehab resort she heads in Ridgeview catering to celebrities and trust fund fuckups. A snort shakes my shoulders. “What will your mommy say?”
I knock back the last of my Coke and ash my joint in the empty can.
It’s fear of what I know that keeps people on my good side. Not just the students at school, but the teachers, too. Hell, I even have a profile on Holden Landry’s dad, Ridgeview’s chief of police, and the first entry I ever put in my black book of information.
This all started when I was turning seventeen. I wanted to figure out how I wound up with a slap on the wrist after getting arrested on serious assault charges with witnesses. When I uncovered the truth, I needed to know more, until it shaped me into who I am now—obsessed with collecting everyone’s secrets and lies. It’s almost a compulsion at this point, something I can’t turn off.
No one is real. No one is genuinely who they present themselves as. Everyone has something to hide.
The webs are spun all over this town, from my parents’ affairs and what they did to keep me out of trouble to the deeper corruptions infecting the picturesque town nestled in the Rockies.
For every truth, there are two lies. And I’m the keeper of it all.
Aren’t you proud of what you’ve turned me into, Mom and Dad?
I huff out a scratchy, deadpan laugh. A bitter aftertaste sits on my tongue at the thought. I take a deep puff on the joint to wash it away in a haze of tangy smoke.
What a twisted kingdom I’ve built for myself.
At my elbow, the phone screen lights up, the vibration buzzing against the desk. I let my attention flick to read the notification for a fraction of a second, more interested in finishing what I’m doing.
Reminder: Anger Management Appointment; Doctor Levitt - Tomorrow, 11am.
“Yeah, I fucking knew that,” I grumble.
The corners of my mouth tug down as I grab my phone, intent on flipping it over. I don’t need the reminder that I have court-mandated therapy—or why what happened was covered up, and I ended up with a shrink instead of in juvie for assault charges that magically disappeared. That magic being dirty hush money to grease the wheels and bribe the police chief. If I could get out of going, I would’ve figured out how to do that by now. Court-ordered makes it damn near impossible to escape. Faking it with Doctor Levitt gets me by.
Before I slam my phone face down on the desk, I get a new text. Assuming it’s my boy Devlin bitching about sitting alone in his big ass house in the mountains in a roundabout way without saying how lonely he is, I swipe it open without looking. I’ve already got the perfect GIF to send that will cheer the mopey bastard up before I invite myself over.
It’s not Devlin.
The tip of the joint burns down as I tap on the photo to see it full size.
My brows hike up in appreciation of the fine as fuck body this chick has. Damn, baby.
Her face is cropped, but I focus on the sexy little smile—pink glossy lips, fuck me—and take in the perfect tits practically spilling out of the little number she’s got on. What is that, a one-piece nightie? Who knows, but it has lace and highlights every one of her curves.