Fade Out (The Morganville Vampires #7)(6)

And football.

Every few steps, there’s another poster glorifying the Braxton Bobcats. Booster signups for new members apparently started this week, and a signup sheet is stationed at every turn. Vanessa has talked non-stop about us joining—the reason why she’s been racking her brain for a raffle ticket idea. She even got those sample tickets printed to show her commitment. If she can’t be a cheerleader, she said to me during our first encounter, then she’ll be the next best thing.

I noticed, in my short time here, that she doesn’t so much as talk about supporting the team as a whole, as she does about some player named Gavin. Why she insists on eating lunch in the cafeteria—where he eats. She’s never come across as shy to me, just the opposite. But when it comes to matters of the heart, I know just how awkward it can be. How much you want the other person to notice you without having to be the one to put it all out there.

My stomach lurches as I push my room door open, memories of my one brief attempt at a relationship invading my thoughts. So much wasted effort for nothing. I won’t be getting mixed up with another selfish, conceited jock, that’s for damn sure.

Besides, after the disaster that was Stephan, my father vetoed all jocks from my most eligible bachelors’ list. He doesn’t know the whole truth, only that I was “involved” with someone he considers beneath my status. And he blames me for allowing a “fling” to get so out of hand I’d turn to drugs.

God, if he only knew.

Shaking off my unsettling thoughts, I close the door and toss my tote on the floor.

“Good!” Vanessa hops off her bed and bounds right for me. “I so did not want to go by myself. Haley isn’t feeling well, so she’s not going tonight.” She grips my shoulders and pushes me toward the closet.

“Whoa…what?” I dig my heels in, stopping myself right before the open closet door. Outfits are strewn around, littering the floor, like they exploded from the closet. “Where?”

She sighs. As if it’s so tiring that I’m utterly clueless. I can’t help but agree with her sentiment. “The bonfire, A. It’s the big send off before the Bobcats go fight our nemesis tomorrow.”

I will never get used to this we’re-all-about-our-football-team school mentality. Oh, well, regardless, this is my new home for now. I better learn to embrace it.

With that decided, I hesitantly allow Vee to dress me in clothes my stepmother would have a stroke over. But hey, this was my parents’ choice. Dartmouth has its flaws, too, but those are overlooked because of the prestige. Now, I’m a Bobcat, Becca. Embrace it.





* * *



The crackle of a roaring fire and beat of deep, bass-filled music pricks my senses, heightening my anxiety, as Vee and I shuffle across the loose beach sand.

This bonfire party is close to the North Carolina shoreline, just a few miles away from campus—and I have to admit, I’m kind of disappointed it’s nighttime. I haven’t been to the beach in ages. Even though Stoney Creek is located near the Florida coast, we never took group fieldtrips anywhere. It was more of a lock-yourself-away-from-the-world-until-you-feel-safe-to-reemerge type deal.

And although my parents own a beach house along the coast of St. Augustine (hence why I was admitted to Stoney in the first place; their little secret place to stash the child who shall not be named, banned from Dartmouth of the elite), I spent far too many tiring days of study at school to visit much.

Now, with the cool night air whipping at my cheeks, destroying the painstakingly grueling hairstyle Vee attempted, having tamed my rebel curls, a surge of homesickness rushes over me with each crash of the waves, amplifying the effect.

Regardless of my discomfort, I love the ocean.

Like, not the way someone says, “Oh, I love the ocean!” This is a serious obsession. I have collected a ridiculous number of killer whale stuffies and shells and anything else ocean-y I could get my hands on since I was a kid. It was always my secret dream to run away from all the pressures of living up to my family’s name to simply buy a cottage on the beach, where I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

I haven’t thought about that fantasy in a long time, though. It was quashed right alongside all the other desires I had before college, when the realization really sunk in that my life was already planned out—my father relaying how after I graduate, we’ll have my match decided and an engagement announcement.

I did appreciate his attempt to make it seem like I was going to be a part of this decision. He said, “we’ll have…” But I knew even then that was just a formality. I may get some say, but ultimately, it will be from a preselected lineup of his approval.

A little piece of me—scratch that, most of me—died that day. Any hopes I had for college—being on my own for the first time, experiencing new, exciting things, freedom—all blown to hell in one single, family brunch.

And I know, it’s not the 1800s; I’m a woman of the twenty-first century who has rights and doesn’t have to bend to my father’s will. Yet, knowing this doesn’t mean one can affect that change. Old money doesn’t work like that. I’m a debutante. A debutante. The word just sounds archaic.

Before my junior year of college, I had a “coming out” ball. I was presented, like an auction prize, to eligible men of equal status and old money to start something akin to a bidding war. Wining and dining my father, making professional propositions, talking about a merger between families like it’s a business deal.