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Gloria shook her head. “Go,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I’ll meet you at our spot after school tomorrow.”
I wanted to argue, but her mom was yelling at Amber to leave, and I didn’t want her making my sister cry. I maneuvered my arm over Everleigh and grabbed Gloria’s face between my hands while Everleigh gripped my side. I kissed Gloria once, hard, on the mouth. “I’ll wait for you.”
I didn’t know, when I made that promise, how long I’d be waiting.
She nodded, her eyes unblinking and shocked. “Me too,” she mumbled.
Everleigh was still hanging on me, even when I kissed her sister. I pried her loose and pushed her back into Gloria’s arms.
“I love you,” I said, already stepping away.
Amber was crying, so I ran back and pulled her out the door. She was my sister, and it was my job to take care of her when my parents weren’t around, even if I’d rather be with my girlfriend. I wasn’t the kind of guy who abandoned his sister for a girl.
Not yet, anyway.
I didn’t know what was going on, why the feds were all over my girlfriend’s house. I didn’t know what was about to happen, that her family’s ruin would be mine too. I didn’t know then that I could ever hate Gloria Beauregard. But I’d know soon enough.
one
Now
Rumor Has It… Two of Faulkner’s reigning Kings will be back to rule the halls of Willow Heights this year. What lucky girls will they choose as their Queens?
Gloria Walton
My face is fixed in a placid smile as I climb into the back seat of the H2 the morning of my first day of senior year. I think of Jackie Kennedy climbing into the motorcade and later scrambling over the trunk of the car. The horror and incomprehensible pain she was in, so much that she forgot to smile and wave, forgot the whole world would watch her undignified dive, her undisguised anguish.
And then I push away the dark thoughts and picture her eternal smile as she stood with her sons at the funeral. Whenever I falter, I look at my phone’s lock screen to remind myself.
This is poise. This is grace. This was the face of America.
I am the face of Willow Heights.
I scoot to the middle seat. My sisters climb in on either side of me.
“Let’s talk about how this year is going to go,” Baron says when Duke starts driving. I was their brother’s consort for the past two years, and I built my entire survival strategy around appeasing their family. So here I am, playing Russian roulette with a pair of psychopaths for one more year. Now that their brother and our brother graduated, the whole dynamic will shift.
My sisters glance nervously at each other. I can’t tell if they’re scared or excited.
“Are you asking us out?” Everleigh asks.
Duke laughs. “Nah, you can fuck around this year.”
“What?” Eleanor whispers. “You’re cutting us out?”
“No, no,” Baron says. “Nobody’s being cut out. You can date the other guys on the team. Just you two. Lo, you’ll be on call for us.”
“Heard.”
He glances in the rearview mirror, so briefly my sisters don’t catch it. But I do. I’m always on guard, always alert for danger. The moment I let my guard down, he could rip all this away, leave me with nothing to show for all I’ve endured the past two years.
Once upon a time, they turned me into a weak, groveling, pathetic mess. Then Mom slapped my tear-stained cheeks and told me to get myself together, that being a victim is a choice. If I didn’t give them the power to make me into one, then I didn’t have to be one.
So I walked into school with my head held high the next day, as serene as Jackie. I made a choice that day. I will never let them beat me or make me crawl in the dirt like Colt Darling.
He’s a victim. I am a victor.
As Duke’s H2 roars toward school, a bubble of incinerating rage swells in my chest like a scream, but I keep my face forward, my smile painted into place on the outside of my shell. I’ve perfected my flawless veneer so well they don’t notice that the butterfly inside her cocoon is withered and dying, as ugly as a hissing cockroach.
