Whatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet #1)(14)

The weed is making you a paranoid shit.

I suck the joint one last time before passing it to Rachel, who hesitates before putting it between her lips. She takes one short drag and then coughs into her fist.

Nathan and two other guys give her a hard time. I don’t come to her defense—since she’s going to be in a sorority anyway. It’s not like she’s going to need to know how to smoke a joint.

“Your deal, Abbey,” Nathan tells me, stretching over the table to pass me the deck of cards. I begin to shuffle.

A girl clears her throat loudly, sort of adjacent to me. “Hi, um…” She taps Rachel’s shoulder. I’m not surprised. Rachel looks the most approachable.

Most of the guys are smoking and drinking, one even wears a gargoyle mask from a Halloween store, more stacked behind him on a leather chair. The other girls here have low-cut tank tops and nose piercings.

Rachel is the only one that looks like someone you’d take home to your parents. Though I’ve brought them all over to my house before. I don’t discriminate.

I barely make out the girl’s features among the smoke. All I can tell for certain: she’s wearing overalls, like the saggy kind you’d put on to paint a house.

I frown. She can’t live around here.

“Hi?” Rachel says uncertainly.

Not surprisingly, Nathan takes over, standing from his chair. “How’d you get in here?” He makes it seem like his party is invitation-only, when in fact most of Dalton Academy has been traipsing in and out all night.

“I…uh, the front door was open?”

“I mean the neighborhood. It’s gated,” he says.

The girl takes a step back, more towards me, but I stay still, as uncertain as her, as uncertain as everyone else. My eyelids are heavy, and it takes more control not to sink into my seat and just finish dealing slowly.

“The gate was open…someone was coming in, and I followed them through,” she explains. “I’m just trying to find someone. I know he lives in this neighborhood, and I thought you’d be able to point out his house—”

Nathan snorts, and two of my other friends start snickering. “Let me guess—you want to see Loren Hale.”

“Yeah,” she says softly.

I grimace and turn my head away from her. Fuck him, I think. Rich bastard. I swallow spite and something else—because if I look around, I see thousand-dollar paintings, an antique globe that probably costs a fortune; I see Rachel’s Cobalt diamond earrings, Henry’s Rolex watch—my Balmain designer jeans that purposely appear worn.

We’re all loaded.

Rich fucking kids. Fuck me.

I want to be alone right now.

But I want to be with people.

I don’t know what I want to be.

“So…” the girl says. “Can you help me?” I have to strain my ears to hear her quiet voice.

Help her. All I have to do is point at the house literally down the street. I know the one. I’ve been around it with my friends too much. But something keeps me quiet. Something keeps me tight-lipped and blank-faced.

“Are you a weirdo stalker?” Carly asks. She lets out a short laugh. “Like, are you going to bring him a locket of your hair?”

“Carly,” Rachel whispers and then ends up laughing with her.

The guys start in and laugh again.

They all stare at this girl. They all stare, and I keep my head down. I wish I had my hoodie. I wish I could just block everyone out for a second.

The cards slip from my hands, and I end up crouching to gather them, my reflexes fucking tortoise-slow from the weed.

“So you can’t help me then?” the girl asks one last time, sounding meeker than when she first arrived—which is hard considering how shy she seems.

“Are you dumb?” Nathan laughs.

My face heats beneath the table, grabbing a king of clubs. I wonder if I was paying enough attention, if I would’ve made the same comment, the same way. I hope not—but I’m not a good person either.

I’m just as foul, and I wonder if I’m the only one that knows how cruel we all are. How fucked up we all seem.

If I am—I must be doubly cursed or something.

She’s about to leave, but Nathan adds, “You want to play strip poker for the information?”

I glance back at the girl. Her lips part in hesitation, and she seems pallid and sweaty. I can barely make out the color of her hair. Light brown, I think, in a loose braid. These dorky black-rimmed glasses frame her small face, and she leans most of her weight on one foot—a nervous, slightly boyish posture that most cotillion, high society girls don’t grow up with around here. Their moms would shit a rock if they did.

And she keeps anxiously reaching for her shoulder, like she’s trying to grab a strap to a purse that’s not there. Jesus Christ, she looks really out of place.

The more she waits to speak, the more I think she’s considering playing strip poker with us.

And the joke would be on her. She’d get naked and Nathan would never give her the information. No one would, whether she won the right to it or not. They’d find that funny.

I collect the last of the cards and rise, my posture more assured than hers but I don’t look like I took years of ballet like Rachel or like I listened in cotillion. I’m definitely not what my parents wanted me to be.