He blinks away his confusion. “Yeah? What is it?”
But before I can find the words, that same snide voice rings out, louder than it needs to be, loud enough to draw every eye and every ear. “You get away with a lot of shit because we like your brother, but not every invitation for him includes a plus-one or, worse, plus-two.”
“Toni,” I whisper, and I know instinctively I don’t have time. Stumbling past him, I shake out my hair, preparing for the inevitable confrontation. Before I do, though, I stop and look behind me.
Pierce stares at me with a strange sort of awe. It’s powerful and awful, all at once. I grab his shirt, tugging him in, and press one last kiss to his jaw before whispering, “Sucks that we’ll never have that Harvard-Yale rivalry tension.” Then before I can register if he gets the hint, I take off, darting through the trees, adjusting the borrowed corset and trying not to think about his hands on my skin or his nose at my ear or the way he sputtered into my curls every time they got into his mouth. I put away my devastation about the Finish for now, refusing to mourn something that, unlike my initial acceptance, was never quite mine anyway.
CHAPTER 3
RETURNING TO THE CLEARING, I cut through the crowd, shoving past the crew team at the edge, until I’m back at the car. Pen is still in the backseat, but she’s hanging out the window, her lips twisted downward into a frowning pout.
Charles is standing, one hand outstretched toward Esme and the other out toward Toni, like he’s prepared to shove them apart.
“Calm down, Esme, it’s not that serious,” Charles insists.
“What makes you think that there are no rules,” Esme spits, ignoring him, eyes only for Toni, “that I’ll let you get away this time? You made it clear whose side you’re on. You and your poor townie trash friend aren’t wanted here.”
There’s a remarkable silence as I realize that that’s me. I’m the poor townie trash.
Esme has always been a wordsmith. Each one cuts deeper, a jab directly at my Suburbia bruise meant to gut a bitch, and I feel gutted.
“That’s… that’s enough,” Toni says, but she’s crumbling like wet paper under the weight of Esme’s fury. Her gaze darts around, searching for a life preserver, and when it catches on me, she swallows.
Esme follows her gaze and finally deigns to address me directly. “Bringing this girl, who can barely afford a pack of gum let alone Edgewater’s tuition, like it’s a redemption tour. I did you a favor, Adina Walker,” she hisses. “You wouldn’t have been able to afford Yale without selling your fucking kidney.”
“You should be a little less worried about what I can afford and more about when the Feds are finally going to show up to your house. Your parents aren’t built for jail. Might cry if they break a nail,” I retort. I learned to spit venom from the best.
Esme’s mouth puckers, and I can hear her breath hitch in the back of her throat, once, then twice. I meet her eye, waiting patiently as she sputters. Esme’s acrylics look like claws, just like they did on that March day, but I don’t back down.
“Careful, Esme. I kicked your ass once,” I say quietly.
Shame spreads liquid red under her creamy foundation and she sneers.
“Esme, enough, save it,” Hawthorne says, grabbing her hand.
Esme stares, breathing heavily through her nose, but doesn’t move. Hawthorne squeezes once, and then shockingly Esme turns on her heel and storms away, tugging Hawthorne and her other lackeys after her.
Toni looks shocked. Charles is staring after Esme like he’s never seen her before, like he doesn’t want to be seen with her.
Almost against my will, my shoulders curl in on themselves, and I take a step back, as if Esme is still there, like we’re sharing the same breath still. So much for my last chance.
“Well,” Charles says, clearing his throat. “This isn’t dinner theater, assholes!”
The surrounding crowd shatters with his bark, and then the air is filled with gossip.
“Can we go home?” I ask, voice aching with my plea as I reach for Toni.
Toni starts to nod frantically, and then she stops midbreath. I look back and freeze.
“Impressive takedown,” Pierce says. Awe remains in his eyes, the same look he gave me after we stopped hooking up and I took off.
“It was very dramatic,” the figure to Pierce’s left says. I know him as well as anyone can know a Remington.
Graham Remington is Pierce’s one year older, much more disappointing, brother.
We all knew by grade seven that Graham wasn’t going to be the bright Remington heir, though I assume that his parents knew from birth, since they named him Graham instead of giving him the spot in the Pierce line of succession. Where Pierce is fair, tall, and beautiful, Graham is weathered, short, and regular. He isn’t ugly by any means, but decidedly just cute. What really solidified it, though, was that he “settled” for Yale.
“Was it?” I challenge. “Esme is a bully.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re the little defender that could,” Graham says, his eyes veined with redness—he’s so high. “God, Esme looked like she was going to either claw your eyes out or shit herself. No in between.”
Graham toasts his liquor bottle to me, and my lips curl back against my will.
“You handled her remarkably,” Pierce says, meditative.
“She thinks that her money and status make her untouchable,” I say quietly.
Pierce hums once more. “Do you agree?”
He asks it casually, but suddenly it feels important. Like there’s another question underneath, a question I thought I had no chance of being asked after how this night has gone. I know the answer I want to give, but I can’t let my eagerness ruin it now.
“In a way. Life is a competition. You win or you lose in every situation you face, right? In that situation, with Esme, like your brother said: I won. But that’s almost never the case. Not with people like Esme. We’re not on the same playing field.”
When he looks at me again, his gaze is just that bit sharper, that bit more meaningful, and then he says, “We could be.”
My breath catches in my chest.
The Finish.
“Four, don’t,” Graham warns. “Adina—Adina, isn’t it? She’s a good girl.”
I was a good girl. Except for one moment. Now I’m a desperate girl.
“Maybe good girls should get to win sometimes too,” I say.
Graham snaps, with more authority than I thought he could possess, “What are you even doing, Four? She doesn’t have what it takes.”
I don’t know what happens in the Finish. The only girls who have ever gone were girls like Esme. Girls who have more than me, but less than what being associated with a Remington could get them, because there are levels to this sort of thing. Access and wealth.
What I do know is this: Girls who win go to school, with all the resources the Remingtons can provide, and do the impossible. One girl became a House rep, another a Fortune 500 CFO, another the provost at Duke. Each of them went on to be someone.
I want to be someone. I don’t just want to go to Yale, I want to dominate it. I could take it further. Be greater than them.