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“I couldn’t get away. Diner related emergency.” I caught Lilly’s eye, and a slight smirk played on her lips. Ignoring her, I slipped out of Scarlett’s hold and focused my attention on her.
“Sucks. You missed one hell of a party. I got completely trashed.”
“You were a mess,” Lilly scolded.
“Give it a rest,Mom. I was having fun. Try it sometime, you might like it.”
“Come on, guys, classes are calling,” I said in an attempt to ease the tension that had descended over us. But given that we walked into school in silence, I figured it was going to take a lot more to smooth the cracks appearing in Lilly and Scarlett’s friendship.
The second I stepped into the hallway, I knew.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
The whole hallway fell silent, and the walls closed in around me. It was like that first week all over again, only worse. Because somewhere along the line, I’d found my place amongst my classmates in Credence High. But now, they stared at me like the lines had been redrawn, like I was the outsider again… the fraud.
I felt the weight of Lilly’s arm looped through mine as it hung limply at my sides. “Ignore them,” she whispered as Scarlett flanked my other side and then urged me forward.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Scarlett sneered at a group of girls who snickered behind their textbooks as we walked by.
But when we rounded the corner, her question was answered. Images of me littered the hallway. Pinned to the locker, hanging from the ceiling, scattered on the floor. My face stared back at me. Only it wasn’t my face, it was the face of Becca from a different time. My old life back in Montecito.
“Holy fuck.” Scarlett whistled between her teeth as she ripped off a handful of photos from her locker. “What is this shit?”
Lilly bent down and scooped up a photo, looking at me as I stared at the scene in front of me. “Becca, what is this?”
“I—”
I saw her.
Kendall.
Standing with her arms crossed over her chest, icy glare trained right on me. She didn’t speak. She didn’t step forward to claim victory. She just watched. Watched her final ace play out.
“Becca.” Lilly spoke again, tensing beside me when her eyes landed on Kendall. “Oh, that bitch.”
Forcing myself to move, I turned and went to my locker. My body moved on autopilot because I wasn’t present, not really. All I knew was that I couldn’t give in. Not now. Not after everything.
Raised voices started behind me, but I shut them out, opening my locker. My eyes landed on a single photo pinned to the back wall. The fight left my body like a final breath leaving someone on the cusp of death. Kendall had warned me—time and time again, she’d told me not to play with fire—but I didn’t heed her warnings because she couldn’t know.
She couldn’t.
Could she?
Acid burned up my throat like the tears pooling behind my eyes.
“Becca, what’s that?”
I snatched the photo out of my locker, turned, and ran.
Away from Kendall.
Away from my friends.
Away from a past that had finally caught up with me.
* * *
