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In the distance, a bell rings and I put a hand on Billy’s chest and imbue my voice with regret. His eyes pop open and confusion creases his brow.
“I don’t want to make you late.” I glance at my watch meaningfully.
“That was just the warning bell, we’ve got time. If you want that schedule, it’ll cost you.” His smile is smarmy, his voice heavy with entitlement as he grabs my wrist and tugs me forward to close the space between us.
His eyes drift closed, and I let him draw me closer while I keep my eyes on the piece of paper he’s holding as ransom. He should have been holding it out of my reach.
I snatch the paper from his distracted, slack grasp and yank my wr
ist free.
“What the fuck?” he snaps, shoving away from me with a huff of disgruntled annoyance.
“I’ll just take this and skip the kiss,” I say with a tight smile.
“Aren’t you even going to say thank you?” he asks, peevish resignation in his voice.
Even though I didn’t engage them when he got in, I hit the switch on the door locks for the sound effect. “Thank you,” I deadpan, and eye him impatiently.
His expression crumbles and he pouts. That little kid has more backbone than him. “Aww, come on, Regan. At least let me see your titties.”
I level him with a disgusted glare. “Get out of my car before you piss me off and force me to tell Tyson about this.”
He pales and draws away. “For fuck’s sake, I was just kidding.”
With a churlish flash of his middle finger, he climbs out of my car.
Tyson’s pain in the ass obsession with scaring my dates has finally paid off. Even though he’s four years younger than me, he’s bigger than most of the boys my age and the last boy who tried to coax a kiss out of me on our doorstep got a black eye for his trouble.
My grandfather bought my story about throwing the stool in fright because I thought I saw a mouse. But he was still docking my pay to cover the cost of repairing it. Tracking this kid down and holding him accountable for the trouble he caused was an all- consuming compulsion when I woke up this morning.
So, I called Billy under the guise of returning a book that a kid wearing their school uniform left in the bakery.
As soon as I said kid, he laughed and said “What the fuck is Stone Rivers doing in Rivers Wilde? Isn’t your family like... his family’s enemy or some shit?”
I’d been stunned silent. That little boy is Stone Rivers? But...how could the son of one of the richest and most powerful families in the entire state of Texas be beaten up, bloody nosed and have no one to turn to?
Gripped by a burning curiosity, I threw caution into the wind and told Billy I’d meet him if he could get me his schedule. In his eagerness to agree, he didn’t even ask why I needed it.
My gut knots as I recall that his father, Jason Rivers died recently and that Hayes, his older brother, was sent to Europe to live with an aunt. That explains his tears. But it doesn’t explain the busted lip.
I scan his schedule. He has study hall in the library next. I hurry from my car, find the library on the campus map and walk over to wait. I perch on a bench outside of a building with the words Rivers Hall etched into the marble. I take in the perfectly manicured grassy quadrangle that is flanked by four brick buildings with a gothic façade. Their piss-poor security aside, Blackwell is one of the most elite boarding schools in the country. Only the brightest students gain admission.
The school boasts two former presidents, a Vice President and a slew of ambassadors, CEOs, United States Senators, and visionary inventors as alumni.
That Stone is here at the tender age of ten means he’s something more than bright. Another bell rings, and the doors of the classrooms that line the corridor arc open in near perfect unison and liberate streams of teenagers. They fill the quiet with a cacophony of shouts, laughs, and curses.
The library is set apart from the rest of the campus and I have a good view of the students as they make their way into the big grass covered quadrangle. Nerves assail me as I start searching the crowd for my quarry. The throng clears without any sign of the tiny human who should stick out like a sore thumb.
And then, I hear it. That raucous, collective laugher that, when made by a group of unsupervised teenage boys, is a universal signal that they’re up to no good.
I head toward the sound, filled with an inexplicable certainty that those laughs are the reason Stone hasn’t made it here yet.
I round the corner of a building and find myself in a service alley that’s lined with garbage dumpsters. All the way at the end of it, four boys stand in a huddle with their backs to me.
One of them is holding Stone up against a wall, his spindly legs dangling, while the other three seem to be trying to undress him.
He doesn’t make a sound or move. His eyes are closed, his expression devoid of emotion. Like he’s playing dead.
