Page 38 of Darkest Obsession

“Oh fuck, you’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve had some experience with blackmail.”

Has she? Who would ever want to blackmail Clover Robinson.

“I see.”

“Keep your head up. It’s probably someone you know,” Clover says mysteriously. It’s not bad advice, but no one I know has even heard about Amelia.

“Thanks.”

“See you around, Thomas.”

“Yeah. Bye.”

Why the fuck don’t I beg her to stay? Once she leaves, I flop down in the seat and bury my head in my hands. I’ve gone and fucked it with her. Now the emails are getting worse and whoever’s sending them wants more from me than I’m willing to give. I’m so fucked that I might have to go to Violet for help. The last thing I want is to bring my sister into this.

Chapter Seventeen

Clover

It’s funny this happens the day I talk to Thomas about blackmail, right? I open the door to my bedroom and for once, Molly’s in there.

“Oh hey,” she says, barely looking up from her video game. I don’t know how she has so much time to play video games. She’s seriously always online. Only a few weeks into the semester and I’m already drowning in homework, dance practice and avoiding every single guy on the rowing team. I only have time to feel like shit about my dumb decisions and do homework. Why did I act like someone I wasn’t? Why did I get into such a mess with Jude or Kit? I’ve always had to act like someone I wasn’t.

I drop my stuff on my bed, trying not to think about the kiss. His lips were so soft. And mine feel like tires, all rubbery and raw. Why did Thomas kiss me? He hates me. We both hate each other. Now I have to think about the kiss and finish the Ethics project. Was this just his shitty way of tricking me into doing his homework? No. Thomas isn’t like that. He might be annoying, but he studies and he always knows the answers to our teacher’s questions. Most of the other intense athletes at this school aren’t half as smart.

Too bad he uses his intelligence for pure evil. As I climb onto my bed and drag my laptop onto my lap, Molly closes her book. She’s reading The Bell Jar for an English class and she sighs once she closes the book.

“Boys. They fuck you up,” she says.

Like all the British people here, Molly has a cute accent. Her voice is soft and everyone here says she sounds “Northern”, but I don’t really know what that means. Her swearing sounds hilarious, but there’s nothing funny about the expression on her face. Molly’s into the school play — it’s a highly problematic all white production of Once On This Island this semester — but the guys into the school play aren’t exactly fuck boys. Which one of these twisted sonnet writing fools messed with my roommate?

“What happened?”

Molly pushes her glasses up her nose and turns to face me, burying her cheeks into her palms.

“Martha made me look like a complete idiot in front of Kit Barclay. I wanted to ask him… Oh, never mind. I feel like a twat.”

“You’re not a… twat.”

Molly snickers. “That word sounds weird in your accent.”

At least I made her laugh.

“Thanks.”

“We were walking together from Chemistry and I was talking to him about the problems when she wanted to pass with her slut gang.”

By her ‘slut gang’, I think Molly means Juno and Rebecca, other girls on the tennis team. Very popular girls. I don’t like that she calls them a slut gang, but she’s probably just emotional over what happened.

Molly continues, “She shoved me and everything went flying. I bruised my knee at the bottom of the stairs. Kit laughed at me. I tried to stand up for myself and Juno did this…”

Molly lifts the sleeve of her shirt and I wince when I see the wound Juno left behind. She burned Molly with a cigarette and the burn mark looks incredibly painful.

“Did you go to the health center for that?”