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In a way, I was theirs, even though I’d never wanted to be.
To remind myself of who I was—of who I wanted to be—I threw myself back into dance on Monday.
I kept expecting Adena or someone else to invade my little sanctuary on the second floor of the gymnasium. All the Princes knew I came up here to practice during class. Hell, Finn had spent almost half the previous year hanging out with me in this little room. It was one of the few memories I allowed myself to keep, to leave untarnished by the bullshit that had followed.
The small dance studio had been our neutral ground, our Switzerland, and there was some part of me that still believed everything that’d happened in this room had been real. As if, like in a true demilitarized zone, Finn and I had both shed our weapons and armor before we stepped through the door.
As if the person I’d gotten to know inside these four walls actually existed.
Somewhere.
I shoved thoughts of Finn aside, refusing to let my gaze track to the spot near the door where he used to sit, and sank into a low plié. It would take a bit of time to get my body back into the swing of things, but nowhere near as long as it’d taken last fall. I had trained hard all last year, and although three months off was a long time—in dance terms, anyway—I was determined to reach and surpass my old level quickly.
This was the real reason I was here. To pursue the life I wanted.
Bringing down the Princes will just be a “side benefit”.
The girl in the mirror grinned evilly at me as she rose up onto the balls of her feet.
I spent the rest of the period going through drills and stretches, reawakening muscles in my body that’d started to lose tone. It felt good to be in this familiar room, with the abandoned mats and heavy bags piled in the corner, and f
or that single hour, I let myself focus on something besides my revenge.
The rest of the day passed without incident, but Tuesday and Wednesday were awful. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was related in any way to the party after the football game, and the anger on the Princes’ faces that night. A couple of times, Oliver stepped to my defense when people called me names or threw shit at me in the halls, though I couldn’t help but notice he only did it when it was underclassmen or people so low on the hierarchy they were basically invisible.
I couldn’t really blame him. I hadn’t asked him to stick up for me, and he was one of the only people in school who did. At least he was doing something, even if what he did made no difference at all.
On Thursday, Adena stole all my books and notebooks from my locker and burned them in a dumpster near the adjunct buildings. Every note I’d taken for half my classes was lost, and I had a sudden flare of panic that she’d burned my little black journal—but I never kept that in my locker. It stayed in my backpack, kept with me at all times.
I had to go to the registrar’s office and beg for replacement books, which I got after paying a hefty fine and enduring a lecture from the woman behind the counter. And when I went to go put the new textbooks in my locker, I found that it’d been broken into again. Someone had scratched disgusting messages all over the inside of the door and walls, and the outside was decorated with just one word.
Trash.
So fucking original.
I hated that it still got to me. The things they’d written in my locker were just words—they couldn’t actually hurt me. Couldn’t leap off the scratched paint and attack me.
But not all wounds were physical. My dad had taught me that lesson many times over before he died. And as much as I wanted to ignore them, the hissed names and scrawled notes calling me everything from a worthless slut to a thief to a disease-riddle piece of trash did hurt.
So I gathered the hurt low in my belly and let it marinate until it turned into anger. Then I unleashed that anger like bolts of lightning, an electric charge that practically jumped out of my body, making my hair stand on end from the force of it.
After Adena burned my books, I stole Finn’s homework and threw it in the Olympic-sized pool in the gym building. After two boys threw water balloons full of paint at me, I poured printer ink down the back of Finn’s neck.
But I couldn’t keep up with everything. And there were pranks I couldn’t even think about pulling without an accomplice, which I didn’t have. I was falling behind, and by the end of the week, I was an exhausted, strung out mess.
On Thursday, I sat in the little dance studio, stretching for a final few minutes before I had to face the world again, when my gaze fell on the heavy bags in the corner. On the chains that pooled around them like sleeping snakes.
Oh, fuck yes.
I’d been playing defense, responding to what the Princes threw at me and trying to match or top it. But maybe it was time I played a little offense. I still didn’t have enough dirt on them to use any of it yet—I didn’t want to show that hand until I knew I would win with it. But there were other ways to get to them.
All last semester, when the five of us had gone somewhere, it’d always been in Mason’s car—the dark red convertible that must’ve cost his parents a fortune.
Adrenaline surged through my veins, waking me up, making me feel more alive, as I rolled over one of the large bags and unclipped the chain that’d been used to hang it from the ceiling. The metal links were thick; the chain was at least five feet long and heavy as fuck. I ran downstairs to the locker room to change early, then headed back up to the studio and emptied out my backpack. When I left the building, I carried a stack of books in my arms, and the thick chain rested heavily in my bag.
The remainder of the day was a blur, and in the evening, I waited impatiently for the sun to set.
Then I waited some more.
