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I take a deep breath and nod. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

We step into the building and cut through the morning crush down the corridor to the emergency stairwell. Checking the coast is clear, Abigail beckons me inside and we take the stairs up to the second floor. It’s quiet up here, like we knew it would be. Abigail moves ahead of me toward the mezzanine, pulling off her backpack. She digs out a stack of flyers.

“No going back,” she says, handing me half the pile.

“No going back.”

Together, we move to the balcony. It overlooks the entire main corridor, the students below oblivious to the two of us above them.

“Ready.” Abigail lifts her hands over the balcony and I do the same. “Three, two, one.”

We both throw the flyers into the air, watching as they drift down to the ground floor.

“Quick, come on.” She grabs my arm and pulls me back toward the stairwell. We slip inside and race down.

“Oh my God. I can’t believe we did that.”

“Now the real fun starts.” We burst through the door in a fit of giggles, joining the stream of bodies.

It starts as a rumble. People grabbing the flyers and gasping, whispering to their friends, laughing and muttering their disgust.

“Holy shit, did you see this?” Someone shoves a flyer at us and I take it, feigning shock as I study the collage of black and white stills of Darcie and a man twice her age in various states of undress.

“Darcie Porter likes daddy dick,” someone bellows, and the corridor explodes with laughter.

But it all dies down the second she and her friends step into the building.

“What’s going on?” Her voice rings out over the chaos as she snatches one of the flyers out of someone’s hand. “What is— No. No,” she cries, her expression wide with dismay.

“Oh my God, Darcie, is that Mr. Nelson?”

“N-no. It’s not what it looks like. Someone must have photoshopped them. It’s not… I’m…”

“Ew, gross. Isn’t he like, forty something?”

Darcie rushes past us, storming straight into the girls’ toilets.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” Tally steps up to us and smirks. “Tell me that didn’t feel good,” she says.

“Maybe. Just a little.”

“Admit it, Liv. You liked it.”

“I…”

A trickle of awareness goes through me and I glance down the hall to find my brother, Elliot, Theo, and Reese watching. Oak grins with pride while Elliot gives me a sharp nod. But I can’t place the emotion in Reese’s eyes.

Or maybe I don’t want to.

“Yeah,” I finish, holding his gaze. “I liked it.”

Far more than I probably should.

24

REESE

“Oakley Beckworth and Reese Whitfield, Mr. Porter would like to see you in his office immediately,” Mrs. Pearce says, reading from the note one of the lower school runners just delivered.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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