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She frowns. “I mean, girl, you were gone. Out of it. I don’t think he had time to do that, and I was right outside the door. I’d have heard something because we could hardly hold you up. I figure you must have gotten up in the night and taken your clothes off and you just can’t recall it.”
I frown. Maybe, but it seems a stretch. Then again, if she says he didn’t have time to strip me naked… Not that there would take much stripping. A dress and a thong? It wouldn’t take a lot to get those off me, would it?
It’s a relief to hear her version of events, though. I’d been painting a far worse picture in my mind about what had happened. Still, I don’t understand how I got so drunk.
“Did I drink a lot?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “Babe, I can’t tell you. I was dancing, you were sipping away at your champagne, and then you were dancing and I was drinking, then we were all dancing.” She laughs. “You’re okay now, though. Bien está lo que bien acaba, as my mom likes to say.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“What begins well, ends well. Like the Shakespeare quote, I think. You need to stop worrying.”
Deciding that she is right, and I’ve driven myself half mad with my worries, I smile at Camile and change the topic. “So, it’s wild around here, huh? Is it like that every single night?”
She laughs. “Not every night. Some nights you go to the bar and there’s hardly anyone there. Other nights, it’s busy. Friday is always packed, though, and it’s way crazier than last night.”
Crazier than last night has me envisioning the final days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The door opens with a bang against the wall, and Verity and her little clique of hangers-on strut in. Her gaze sweeps the room, and when it lands on me, they turn to two chips of ice in her face.
“She won’t like the attention you got last night.” Camile shakes her head and looks down at her workbook.
“You said Dom wasn’t hanging around me in that way, and he’s the only thing she cares about.”
“He was still focused on you,” she whispers. “If you ask me, it’s creepy.”
“Creepy how?”
I try not to look toward Verity as she walks by. She takes a detour right past me.
“You look pale,” she says with a sickly-sweet smile. “Aww, hungover?”
I frown at her. “A little.”
She shrugs. “Maybe you ought to stay home and leave the partying to the grownups.”
Verity turns her back on me and walks to her desk where she takes her seat, but I can feel her gaze burning a hole in the side of my face once she’s settled.
“You were saying about Dom?” I say to Camile. “You think he’s got an issue with me?”
I already know he has, but I want to see what it looks like from an outsider’s point of view.
“Yes. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but he’s too intense around you. It’s like he’s focused on you but with anger, or even hate. I don’t say that lightly. I’m good at reading people. Be careful around him.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. He’s a deeply fucked up person. He and Kirill give me the chills. Valentino seems nice, though.”
“Tino?” She rolls her eyes. “He has the charm, I’ll give him that, but nice? Ask yourself this. If you see a shark and it seems friendly, but it hangs around with all the other sharks in the ocean, it’s still a predator, right?”
I consider her words. “I guess…”
“I’m just saying be careful is all. None of them are remotely trustworthy in my opinion. It is why I keep my head down and try to stay under the radar until I’m out of here.”
Two students I’ve not seen before walk into the room. They’re striking girls, one with long red hair and one with a short black bob. Verity mutters, “Trash,” under her breath, and she somehow makes it loud enough to carry around the room.
“What gives?” I ask Camile.
“They’re here on a scholarship. We hardly have any people here who don’t pay, but they have to take so many, or they’ll be investigated. As you can imagine with the kind of parents sending their kids here, anyone from outside our world isn’t treated too well.”
