“You were saying?” I prompt sweetly.
His eyes zero in on my boobs, and the disgusting lust in them almost makes me gag.
“I’ll pay you twenty bucks to let me fondle them,” he salivates.
“My rate is too expensive for you, sweetie,” I grind out. “You couldn’t even afford me.”
With a twist of my heel, I walk away. It’s lunch period, and many students are gathering in the cafeteria. That’s where the Elites will be. I know if I show up, relatively unfazed, I’ll have one notch up on them. They may think it’s humiliating to walk in front of my peers, but if I do it with enough of a fuck you attitude, perhaps it’ll come off differently.
At least I hope.
The cafeteria at WJ Prep is ridiculous. There are several buffet options available and one grill station that produces hamburgers, hot dogs and even fucking steaks on demand. The meals are all inclusive in the tuition fee – when I looked over their menu, I noticed they even have a sushi chef come in twice a month, and their in-house pastry chef provides at least five different desserts. They boast vegan, gluten-free, lactose-free and sugar-free options for the girls who like to calorie count or who’ve adopted a serious allergen diet as a “lifestyle choice”.
There’s a minor disturbance when I walk in, but the cafeteria quickly resumes normal activity as I walk around and select my food. I’m starving, unsurprisingly. I need to eat a minimum requirement of calories in order to maintain my figure, and I’ve forgone breakfast because I didn’t want Brendan to see the marks.
Okay, I think as nobody is throwing things at me. This is fine.
The Elites occupy the center table. I can see them laughing and enjoying themselves. Their artfully styled hair, perfect teeth, immaculate uniforms – it’s like they were born to be the center of attention. Either that or made to be. My mind casts back to Lily’s comment – trained. Trained probably since birth to be in the spotlight, to gather attention effortlessly and to find ways to keep the spotlight on them at all costs.
I select mashed potatoes, green beans and two salmon fillets, grab two cookies and wade through the sea of tables to get to theirs. They see me coming, and Bernadette and I make eye contact. But it’s like she sees through me – I’m beneath her, I realize, to even acknowledge. Suddenly, Vivian stands up and slides around to where Emmett sits, curling her body around his.
“Hey, baby,” she says into his ear. Her eyes meet mine in show of dominance.
It’s laughable, how she thinks I want him. I smile sweetly at her – he’s all hers.
Yet, some part of me notices that Emmett, while he still lets her cling to him, doesn’t react in any way. He’s deep in conversation with Vincent when I arrive.
“Is this seat taken?” I ask, pointing to the empty one next to Bernadette.
Her eyes find the seat, then flick up to mine. She cocks her head. “Obviously.”
“Well, I can’t stay,” I say, “ So I’ll get right to it. Where’s my fucking phone?”
“Don’t have it,” Trey says, shrugging nonchalantly. He’s seated next to Bernadette, who is rolling her eyes. “Don’t know where it is.”
“Unlawful possession of pornography of a minor, tsk, tsk,” I say sweetly, loudly, placing my tray at the edge of their table. “What will the authorities say?”
Trey laughs.“Oh, you think we’d be as stupid as to download your nudes onto our phones?”
“What are you, stupid and a whore?” Bernadette sniggers.
Trey holds a french fry between his fingers, twirling it like a pencil. “We didn’t upload the photos from our phones. You did.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Try proving that,” Bernadette says haughtily. “It’s all from your phone.”
I want to punch her. They made it look like I committed social suicide. Though we all know who was responsible, there’s no way to prove that I didn’t upload the photo myself. Or printed the hundreds of thousands of printouts.
“What you guys are doing is harassment,” I point out. I jerk my fingers to my neck, and then pull up my sleeves, exposing the angry bruises. “And you think that they don’t have camera footage of you dragging me into a room against my will?”
Trey’s smile is almost pitying. “And who’s going to go look at it?”
“The police.”
I was hoping that the mention of the police would cause them to pause. But Bernadette’s pealing laughter upsets me. Clearly, I had said the wrong thing.
“You think you can go to the police?” Trey says in between barks of laughter. His face turns red from the effort. “Oh my god, that’s rich.”