Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways #1)(31)

Riggs cackled. “Was too. Arsène and I went camping in the woods when no one was looking. We made a fire and s’mores and, fine, caused a small, mostly accidental fire.”

“That was you?” My eyes bulged out of their sockets. There’d been a whole health-and-safety day after that, and we’d all gotten collectively grounded for a weekend.

Riggs beamed proudly, puffing his chest. “A gentleman doesn’t burn and tell.”

“You just did.”

“Yeah. We totally started that fire. But the s’mores were worth it, dude. Fluffy and sweet.” He gave his fingers a kiss.

“So where’s Arsène now?” I looked around, as if he were going to materialize from behind the pine trees. I didn’t really know Arsène Corbin, but I’d heard he was crazy smart and that his family owned a shitload of fancy-ass neighborhoods in Manhattan.

“Upstairs, making mac ’n’ cheese with bacon bits and some ramen in the kitchenette. He sent me to fetch this.” Riggs reached into the gap between his zipped jacket and neck, pulling out a flask. “From Headmaster Plath’s office. Then I saw your sorry ass on the stairway and figured I’d let you know we’re here.”

“Arsène doesn’t have a family either?” A knot of hope settled in my throat. It felt good, knowing I wasn’t the only one. And bad, too, because apparently grown-ups were just trash.

“Oh, he has a family. He just hates them. Got some major beef with his stepsister or something.”

“Cool.”

“Not for him.”

“He could always ignore her and kick back in his room.”

“Eh, I don’t think it’s that simple.” Riggs tilted the flask in my direction, offering me a sip. My eyes traveled from the silver vessel to his face.

“Plath’ll kill us,” I said pithily. I knew Conrad Roth threw a lot of money at this institute to ensure I’d never get kicked out of the haunted redbrick mansion. This was where all the kids who hit their teachers, gambled away their families’ estates, or got into drugs were sent. Now we were all Headmaster Plath’s problem, not that of the people who’d sent us here.

“Not if we kill ourselves first. Which, for the record, I think we might, between Arsène’s cooking, the amount of alcohol I managed to get my hands on, and the fires we start. Are you coming or what?” Riggs stood up, his floppy golden hair falling across his eyes.

It was the first time I saw Riggs Bates as the awesome human being he saw himself as and not as some rich prick who thought he was better than everyone else.

I threw another hesitant look at the empty road.

“Don’t, Ivanov. People are overrated. Parents, especially.”

“She said she’d come.”

“And I said I didn’t eat Dickie’s homemade lasagna last week. Yet there I was, shitting pasta sheets and eggplant in the communal bathroom two hours later.”

I palmed my knees and pushed myself up, following Riggs’s example.

“C’mon.” He clapped my back. “There’s something liberating about realizing you don’t need them. The people who made you.”

Maybe it had snowed and she’d gotten stuck somewhere without reception.

Maybe the preholiday traffic had made her late.

Maybe she was involved in a horrific car crash.

Whatever it was, one thing was for sure.

She didn’t come.



Arsène’s mac ’n’ cheese was atrocious. Lumpy and unevenly cooked, with balls of orange powder everywhere. His ramen made you wish you were drinking bleach instead, and I hadn’t even known screwing up ramen was possible. Yet here we were, eating stale instant ramen swimming in what looked suspiciously like piss from Styrofoam cups. Riggs mixed whatever was in the flask with Tropicana, which gave it the diluted yet sharp taste of dish soap. This had to be the lowlight of my life. If God did exist, I was going to sue.

The three of us were sitting on Arsène’s bed. It was a bunk. We sat on the bottom part, using his roommate Simon’s top mattress to prop our legs.

“Love what you did with the place.” Riggs motioned with his wooden chopsticks around the room. Arsène had an entire wall on which he’d graffitied a thousand times in neat, black, and bold handwriting:

I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston.

“Who’s Gracelynn Langston?” I swallowed a lump of mac ’n’ cheese without tasting it.

“Arsène’s evil stepsister,” Riggs supplied, slurping a noodle into his mouth. I was still trying to work the chopsticks. There were a ton of things rich kids knew how to do and I didn’t. Using chopsticks was one of them.

Arsène flashed me a deadly look, his brown eyes scanning me head to toe. I could tell he wasn’t sold on me. Riggs was a go-with-the-flow type of guy, but Arsène didn’t seem hot on extending his social circle, which currently only included Riggs.

“You sure about this, dude?” Arsène asked Riggs. “We don’t know anything about him.”

“That’s not true. We know he’s dirt poor and is a good swimmer.” Riggs laughed, but somehow, I couldn’t be offended by anything this guy said. There was no malice in him, something I couldn’t say about Arsène.