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ME: Great. meet you in the quad?
LEAH: yep. See you soon
I slipped into a fresh pair of jeans—the same ones with the hole in the knee Jacqueline had hated so much—and a tank top, then dried my long hair with a towel and twisted it into a messy bun before heading out.
Leah had been my lifesaver, the one buoy I could cling to in this sea of bullshit. We sat together in chemistry, and she’d eaten lunch with me a few days too. Not in the dining hall, of course, but out on the quad somewhere. Thank God the school was in California, not somewhere colder. I actually didn’t hate sitting outside, although my stomach clenched unpleasantly every time I stepped into Astor Hall to pick up my food, to the point where it was usually hard to eat it afterwards.
“Ready?” Leah called as soon as she caught sight of me waiting on the green lawn of the quad. She was coming from her dorm, which was too close to the Princes’ for me to like going near it. According to her, they were all housed on the top floor of the far north building, Clarendon Hall.
“Yeah. You?”
“Sooo ready. I need some serious retail therapy after this week. These classes are killing me.”
“Same.” Among other things.
There was a student lot behind the smaller class and admin buildings on the far east side of the campus. It was big and almost always full, and it had a small section of covered parking spots at one end.
We settled into the car my grandmother had had dropped off. It was a light pink, shiny Bentley Mulsanne, and even though it was brand new, the color made it seem dated somehow—almost like it was her idea of what the cool girls would’ve driven in the 1950s.
Several kids had mocked me for it… and honestly, I could kind of see why. The thing was a fucking eyesore.
I hated pink—especially that bubblegum pink, Pepto Bismol color that made my car stand out like a sore thumb in a lot full of deep red, sleek black, and metallic gray. Everything about it was too much. The money my grandparents had spent on it could’ve easily paid my rent back home for several years. But I drove it anyway, too unnerved to ask them to return it for something more practical.
Roseland was about thirty minutes away, and we drove with the windows down, letting the ocean air dance in our hair. When we pulled up in a trendy looking part of town, Leah hopped out and just about fell over laughing at my parking job. I slid out of the seat, stepping up to the curb and surveying my extremely crooked car.
Okay, definitely not my best work.
I’d learned to drive our old pickup just so I could run errands for my dad and have a way to get to and from work. Once it broke down, I never had the chance to practice on anything else. Thank God I already had my license.
“Hey, at least we’re alive,” I pointed out as we headed toward a row of luxury boutiques.
“Barely. You cut that guy off like he was one of The Princes and you were out for blood. You can’t murder anyone with that car, you know that, right?”
“Why not?” I tossed my hair and sniffed, doing my best impression of a stuck up princess. “My family can afford it.”
Leah’s eyes went wide before she burst out laughing, and I grinned.
“You sound just like one of those stuck up jerks.” She giggled again, cocking her head at me. “I swear, you’re losing your mind.”
“Yeah.” I grimaced, the lightness of my mood fading. Fuck. I shouldn’t have even joked about the Princes. Now they were in my head again, the last place I wanted any of them to be.
I shook off my worries about what new horrors they’d unleash on Monday as Leah led me into small shop. The clothes inside were understated but fashionable, expensive and luxurious but not gaudy. We browsed for a little while until Leah convinced me to try a few things on. That led to a few more things, and before I knew it, we’d both amassed a decent-sized pile of clothes.
We laughed and talked as we tried things on and showed them off for each other. I learned Leah was an only child and had been in Roseland for only the past three years. Her parents were wealthy by almost anyone’s standards, but in the hierarchy of über-wealthy families in this town, they were practically peasants.
“That’s so fucking weird,” I said, tugging a soft blue t-shirt over my head. It fit like air and hugged my light curves in all the right places.
“Eh. It is what it is.” Her voice floated over from the dressing room next to mine. “I’m used to it by now. And the upside is, it doesn’t come with so much fucking pressure. You’ll find out. I’m sure your grandparents will be on you soon about the family legacy and all that.”
“Yeah… they kind of already have been.”
“See?” Her laugh trilled in the air. “As long as I don’t fuck up my life too bad, my parents don’t really care what I do.”
I guess that’s how Dad was. Except he probably wouldn’t have cared even if I did fuck up my life, unless it somehow affected his.
But it wasn’t necessarily like my grandparents cared more about me than my dad had—or that any of them cared about me much at all.
I had worried during the first few days of school what I’d tell Jacqueline if she called to check up on me, debating whether it was worth mentioning the hell the Princes were putting me through. But I shouldn’t have stressed about it. My grandma had never called. The only communication from her had been a one-sentence text letting me know the car had been delivered.
