As I lean forward to deepen a patch of magenta, a hand slaps my arse and I jump halfway to the ceiling, giving a shriek.
“Christ, girl,” my best friend Clare says, convulsing with laughter. “You sound like a smoke alarm.”
Clare is another reason I’m grateful to be at Tiaki. We met on my first day and instantly clicked. She’s outrageous in all the ways I’m subdued and vice versa.
We’re planning on rooming together if I can make the impossible happen and win that scholarship. Her preferred university is right next door to Matthewson Art College, and our financial means are about the same. If we both hustle, we’ll scrape enough to meet our basic needs.
When I raise my wet paint brush in retaliation, she backs away, laughing. “Don’t do it!”
I take another step, then lower it, shaking my head. “How’m I meant to be the next Picasso when people rudely interrupt me?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Wasn’t he a dirty old man? Doesn’t sound like something you’d want to be and…” She tilts her phone towards me so I can see the time. Fifteen minutes till the end of lunch break.
“Oh, shit.” I turn and head for the sink to wash out my brushes. “Just give me a minute. Is there anything decent left to eat?”
I usually grab a hot meal from the tuck shop, but the options vary from ‘delicious’ to ‘is this even food?’ Running this late, I’m guessing it’ll be the latter.
“Got you this,” she says, digging into her bag and pulling out a sandwich and apple combo. “Trust me. It’s better than whatever spices they put into the mac and cheese.”
I happily accept it, taking a bite while still cleaning the last brush with my other hand. “I’ll shout you the next one.”
“If you ever make it to the shop before closing.” She tilts her head to the side, squinting at the swirling mass of colours on my canvas. “Looking good?”
Her confusion makes me laugh. “Don’t worry. It’s not even finished yet, so no one’s expected to know what it is.”
“Thank goodness.” She nudges me with her elbow as I finish packing the supplies away. “Guess who got dumped in front of everyone about”—she makes an elaborate show of checking her phone for the time again—“ten minutes ago.”
“Mr Devon. His wife finally decided halitosis doesn’t need to be a lifelong sentence.”
“Eh,” she says, sounding like a game show buzzer. “Wrong. Try again.”
“Eliza dumped the cutie from her economics class.”
“Petronella. And no. They’re still very much together.”
“Warren from biology—”
“Goddamn, but you’re bad at this,” she says, giving an elaborate roll of her eyes. “Wilder Parry is newly single and very much in need of comfort. Dahlia finally found the guts to dump his cheating arse.”
“Mm-hm. And would this comfort involve kneeling and maybe a bit of full frontal nudity?”
“If that gets me on his radar, sure.”
“His radar.” I give a distinctly unladylike snort. “Is that what he’s calling it these days?”
Clare bursts into giggles, his newly single status enough to make her delirious with the possibilities. She’s never made a secret of the gigantic crush she has on Wilder, and I’m not about to rain on her parade.
Dating a royal is what half the girls at Tiaki Academy live for. The other half of us—those not crazy enough to believe they have a shot—live for the resulting gossip.
They’re notgenuineroyals, of course, just a nickname. Of the five percent, these are the students who rose to be cream of the crop.
“There’s going to be a party,” she confides, bubbling. “AtZane Beaumont’shouse.”
The two things I know about Zane, apart from him being another premium piece of eye candy—a blue-eyed blond in contrast to Wilder’s dark charm—is that he broke a sink while fucking Susie McLaren in the girl’s bathroom, and… “Isn’t he on house arrest?”
“Yeah. Apparently, he torched a derelict building and forgot to check if there were people inside.”
My mouth drops open. “Hekilledpeople?”
