“I had fun. Let’s do this again.”
George nods. We descend the bleachers and start to cross the field, when suddenly her face goes pales and she runs off ahead of me. I call out, but she’s already pushing her way through the crowds heading back inside. She’s so short I lose sight of her in moments.
What’s up with her? For the briefest moment, I thought I might have made a friend. But it seems that not even George the class freak wants to be seen with Mackenzie Malloy.
14
Mackenzie
“In the week you’ve been at that school, you’ve managed to break a teen actor’s nose, fall for the British rock god, get on the bad side of the head jock, discover some secret childhood friend you don’t remember, piss off the head bitchandmake friends with the school freak?” Antony’s laugh bubbles up inside him. “So much for keeping a low profile.”
I moan into the receiver. He’s right, damn him. Being a student at Stonehurst is everything like one of those teen films I studied, and yet, all my studying didn’t prepare me for shit. Every day I walk down that hall between throngs of friends laughing and hugging each other, every time Noah’s eyes stare daggers into my back or Eli tries to talk to me or Gabriel flashes me that megawatt smile, I get this desperate churn in the pit of my stomach. I’ve lived alone for so long I had no idea how much I longed for friendship, for connection. I teased myself with daydreams of what I can never have. Cleo’s words haunt me, running over and over in my head.
You don’t belong.
No shit, Sherlock. It’s senior year, the last year of high school, and I never got to have a normal life with friends and parties and drama. What I wouldn’t give to worry about grades and apply to colleges and think about normal teenage things. I never had a first kiss, or got dressed up with my girlfriends for a school dance, or cheered from the stands at a school sports event. Instead, the only memories I take with me into adulthood are blood and loneliness and betrayal.
At least I’ll have my fucking house.
Every brick. Every tile. Every triple-glazed window and gaudy column and faux Roman statue. It’s mine, and I’d fight any asshole who stands in the way of making Malloy Manor my own.
Queen Boudica leaps onto my lap, batting at my phone. I’m lying on the chaise lounge in the ballroom – one of my favorite rooms in the house and one where the French doors face the back garden, so the press at the gate can’t see inside. I pull one of her toys from between the cushions and toss it across the room. She skids on the marble floor, tiny black limbs flailing everywhere as she tries to beat the fuzzy mouse into submission.
“Gabriel keeps asking me to hang out with him,” I tell Antony.
“So do it. Go ‘hang out,’ which you need to learn is teenager talk for ‘fucking each other’s brains out.’ I won’t stop you. I think you should have some fun, Claws. It’s your senior year. You’re almost all grown up—”
“Don’t be a dick.”
Antony chuckles. “I know, you’ve been grown up since you were born. All I’m saying is, if you want to jump up and down on that posh prick’s cock, it’s not going to screw up our plan. The world already knows Mackenzie Malloy is back. It might even work in our favor, give the press a new story to chew on.”
I rub my temple.What if it does, though?There’s so much at stake, and not just for me. This is Antony’s life, too. Queen Boudica drops the mouse onto my chest, and I toss it for her again. As she claws her way around the bottom of the curtains, I notice a shape moving along the top of the garden wall. “Shit.”
“What?”
“Some bastard paparazzi has climbed the wall.” I can see him precariously perched on the narrow ledge, using wire clippers to cut away the barbed wire coiled around the top. Bastard. He’s the first one of those slimy snails to try to climb the wall – so far the rest of them had settled for peering through the gates and snapping photographs of me as I entered school. Stonehurst employs a security team to keep them away from students, but they still hang around. This cheeky shit is trying to get the scoop on me, and for that, he willpay.
“I’ll send someone to sort it out—”
“No. I’ll take care of it. I have to go.” I drop my phone on the sofa and back away from the windows. It’s too late to turn out the ballroom lights – he’s seen me lying around in booty shorts and my Octavia’s Ruin shirt, tossing fuzzy mice for my cat.Page ten, have I got a scoop for you.
I won’t have him out there, staring at me, pollutingmyhouse. I don’t like being watched. It reminds me too much of… other things. Times in the past when eyes have followed me with ill intent. I’m not supposed to feel unsafe here. This is my house, my castle. How dare he sit on the parapets like he’s earned the right to my presence?
My jaw clenching with determination, I storm up the staircase to the third floor. I hardly ever come up here – it houses the master suite and a strange turret thing with a hot tub and a small balcony and windows overlooking the hills and sprawling city below.
I turned the circuit breakers off in this section of the house years ago to save on power bills, so I creep across the room in the dark to the bar area, where crates of wine had been piled in the small walk-in. My parents – rich assholes that they were – kept barely any actual food in the house, but the four wine cellars (WTF) are stocked to last at least three apocalypses (what’s the plural of apocalypse? Apocalyii? I guess there doesn't need to be a plural as there’s only going to be one…)
Anyway… I stacked the bottles by the window months ago for… just this reason. I yank a couple of bottles out of a crate, fling open the window, and toss them at the pap.
“Fuck!”
He leaps off the wall just as one of the bottles smashes into the stone right where he’d been sitting. The second bottle flies wide, sailing over the wall and smashing on the other side. Great, now the guy’s stuck on this side of the wall. He steps forward into the square of light cast from the ballroom windows, and I gasp as I recognize him.
It’s Eli.
“I’m covered in sticky wine now,” he shouts up at me.
In response, I lean out the window and flip him the finger.
