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“I have something better planned,” he says with a grin.
The days are still short from winter, and it’s dark by the time we pull into the parkway. Emmett drives to one of the highest overlooks with all of Jameson sparkling underneath us. He leaves the car running as we climb out onto the hood of his car, pressing ourselves against the heat of the engine.
Looking down at Jameson from up here, you’d think it was like any other town. It looks completely normal. Beautiful even, with a sprinkle of white snow clinging to the rooftops of houses and buildings. The lingering Christmas lights draped across gutters and trees and the glowing warm lights shining through windows.
The scariest thing about Jameson is how untrusting it has made me of the world. If Jameson could look so normal and inviting from the outside, even though it’s malicious and cruel, I have to wonder if every town has the same underbelly without most people even realizing it. Maybe most of us just manage to skate by on the outskirts of it all enough not to realize.
“How are your college applications going?” He asks me, reaching for my hand as we turn from the town below to the stars overhead.
“Done!” I announce proudly. “Application fees paid. Essays written. Everything’s sent off, and Coach Granger has been getting a lot of feedback from scouts that have been visiting our track meets.”
“That’s my girl,” he hums. “You know, the good thing about being cut off from everything here is that we can go wherever we want. I can follow you to just about whatever school you decide to go.”
My heart swells with the promise of us being able to stay together, but a nagging feeling quickly steals it away. There are several schools on my list that would be hard for me to get to financially, and Emmett would find it nearly impossible to find his place in those cities where the job markets are so competitive.
“But what about what you want to do?” I ask. “Aren’t you going to apply anywhere? Even try to get in?”
“You know they won’t let me get in anywhere,” he replies grimly.
Emmett’s grades are perfect. Even if at one point he didn’t have to earn them. Teachers never give Elites bad grades. Their parents would make them pay if they did. Now he gets the opposite treatment. Teachers are waiting to give him bad grades, even if it’s not entirely deserved. It’s almost expected of them. But Emmett works twice as hard to make it nearly impossible for them to sabotage his GPA.
But it doesn’t matter. Lily once had everything going for her too, and the Elites still made sure she couldn’t get into any of the schools she wanted. Each and every one of them rescinded their interest. Around here, it’s not just about surviving this nightmarish high school. The damage they do goes well beyond that into the rest of our lives.
When he was Jameson’s golden boy, even after his father died, Emmett was set up to receive the same college education all the men in his family had. A private tutor from the Ivy League school of their choice would come around enough to justify the sense of them earning their degrees. But it was all a show. Jameson men didn’t have time for school after all. They were running a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Their degrees were bought and paid for, so they’d have something to brag about at business dinners and the golden ticket Ivy League degree that was expected of them to hang over the desk of their private study in the Jameson manor.
Now even if Emmett can get into some random school, he’ll have to figure out how to pay for it. And once he’s in, he’ll have to work for it the old-fashioned way. Like the rest of us.
“But surely there’s something you want to do,” I insist, not wanting to let him slip away into a sense of hopelessness in the face of all this. “This is a fresh new start for you, remember? You can do anything you want! You’re free!”
His eyes light up as he rolls over to me. “Exactly. And what I want is to follow you. You’re the one who will get a scholarship. Coach Granger won’t let the Elites fuck that up for you. I’ll go wherever you want to go, and then I’ll figure out what I’m going to do once we get there.”
I lean in to give him a big kiss, thinking I am one of the luckiest girls in the world. Most high school romances like ours are doomed once college rolls around. But Emmett and I just might have a shot at figuring all of this out.
“Well, wherever we go, I think it should be far away from here,” I suggest as I look back at the lit-up town below. “As far away as we can afford to go.”
“I like the sound of that,” he smiles wide. “But what about your mom and your step-dad?”
“They’ll deal with it,” I quip back. “I love them, but if they knew what I’ve really been through here, they’d never blame me for wanting to get the hell out.”
His face grows serious again. “Are you going to tell them?” he asks with a daunting tone. “We decided we would. Before Theo popped up again.”
After the Hendersons took everything from Emmett, we knew it wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ some new craziness would pop up, but when. To stay on top of things before the next disaster struck, we decided we needed to finally tell my mom the truth about Jameson. About Theo’s part in it all. About my part in it all. Something I should’ve done long ago, but I was too afraid. It seemed like a story too crazy to believe. Then, before I knew it, I was in over my head and it was too late to tell her anything. I don’t want to end up in that spot again.
I consider everything we’ve talked about carefully, biting my lip. “I guess I’ve put it off long enough,” I admit reluctantly. “I should go ahead and get it over with. You never know what could happen tomorrow. Everything could change again.”
“Want me to come with you?” he asks with assuring devotion.
I almost scream out that of course, I do. But as much as I want him there, it’s too complicated. Emmett’s role in everything that’s happened to me is too big of a thing to even try to explain to my mom. That’s the part I can’t bring myself to tell her the whole truth of. And I just can’t navigate that kind of lie with him sitting across from me.
“I better do it alone,” I sigh.
We drift back into admiring the starry sky above for a while until we finally decide it’s time to go. If I’m going to finally have this talk with my mom, I’m eager to get it over with. Once and for all. I peel myself up from the warm hood of his car and start psyching myself up for it. But as I slide back into the passenger’s seat, Emmett stops.
“Wait,” he says, leaning into the backseat. “I have something for you.” He pulls out a small wrapped box and hands it to me.
“You shouldn’t be buying me anything,” I scold him. “You have to save your money as much as you can.”
He cuts his eyes to the side, ignoring me, then watches eagerly as I open the present. Beneath the paper is a small, black velvet box. I open it up to see a necklace inside.
