“Whoa!” I smirk, too traumatized and desperate to feed into her misguided anger right now. “Do I loo
k like someone who is ruining lives? Or isn’t it more accurate that my life is being ruined right alongside yours?”
My eyes cut over, watching her shake her head and scrub her hands furiously, muttering under her breath. I decide to try again, more gently this time as I reach out to place my hand to her shoulder.
“Come on, Lily. You know I’m on your side here…” the words purse my lips as I remember how she had very recently not been on my side, but I try to push down my bitterness. “We’re all just doing the best we can in this Elites hellhole.”
“They’ve ruined my life,” she sobs, blackening the same spots under her eyes she had just cleaned up. “Every college I had lined up for piano scholarships has rescinded their interest. I know those Elite assholes did this as punishment because I was nice to you.”
“I’m so sorry, Lily,” I blurt out, not even fully grasping the magnitude of the situation before the words spill out. I just want to say something…anything as fast as I can to comfort her.
I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising that people of their financial and social standing would have the power to sway such prestigious institutions. But it angers me the same way the cops and teachers around here do. Certain things should be above social sway. A girl’s entire education shouldn’t hinge on whether or not she’s in some rich teens’ good graces.
“I can’t believe they’d stoop so low,” I add, brushing my hand on her arm as she cries over the bathroom sink. “I mean…I guess I can. They’re monsters. But still….fuck.”
She doesn’t answer. I can see the lump in her throat and the tightness of her chest, and I know exactly how she feels. The Elites are especially skilled at reducing people to their lowest low. Taking away the things that matter most to them.
Or hitting your most sensitive nerves…as they are currently doing with my dad.
“My parents insist they can just send me to a West Coast school…somewhere far away. A place they maybe won’t be able to have an impact on,” she continues through her tears, her voice rasps in a way that only comes after several straight days of crying. “But I had my heart set on Julliard. Now that’s completely ruined.”
She slams a paper towel into the sink, but it catches in the air and lands with a disappointing lightness.
We’re silent for a few moments as I think over all of the new developments. I want to tell Lily what they’ve done to me. How they’re forcing me to help them negotiate some mysterious thing with my dad. But somehow, it doesn’t seem like it will help either of us right now. I worry it will only upset her even more. Though I do wonder if she may know something that could help me understand exactly what it is I’ve signed up for…even if I didn’t have much of a choice.
“Listen to your parents,” I encourage her softly. “The West Coast will be wonderful. You’ll be far away from all of this bullshit. I mean, just look at everything they’ve put you and your family through. Aren’t you ready to get away from it all?”
“Yeah and go running off to the other side of the country like a cowering dog,” she scoffs. “It’s exactly what they want.”
“Don’t think of it like that…”
“I wish you had never stepped in that day!” she snaps suddenly, turning her anger to me.
I recoil, thinking back on that day in the hall when they were covering her in trash. Her only offense was that she tried to help me. An unforgivable sin in their minds…which makes more sense now that I know they have some sort of vendetta against my father.
“I had to, Lily,” I defend, knowing it’s probably no use. “I couldn’t just stand back and watch them treat you that way any more than you could stand by and let them harass me without at least explaining who they were.”
I shiver at the memory of realizing Emmett was at WJ Prep…and that he was with the gang of offenders. That brief moment when I didn’t fully know what was going on. When I thought I was just lucky enough to end up at the same school as my biggest crush. The guy I thought I had met purely by accident, but now I know it was all set up.
“Well, we both should have kept to ourselves!” she shouts, crying harder and snapping me abruptly from those memories of Emmett.
“But I can’t imagine how I would have got through any of this without you,” I argue back, the idea of it causing my bottom lip to quiver.
Lily was the only thing keeping me sane at times. In fact, her shutting me out during my exile was what pushed me over the edge. That was what made it so unbearable.
“It wasn’t worth losing my dreams over,” she answers with a low groan, her face stilled with seething anger.
“Lily…there’s so much I want to tell you,” I hesitate, my hand frozen in midair. “You have no idea what’s going on. It’s so much worse than I thought.”
“I don’t care what’s going on with you, Ophelia! That’s what got me into this position in the first place!” she turns her shoulder to me, trying to be strong and cold. The way she wishes she would have been from the beginning.
“But don’t you see this is what they want!?” I persist. “If we let them isolate us and pull us apart then we don’t stand a chance. We have to stick together. I know what they did to you was terrible…but it’s not my fault.”
She whips back around, her eyes big and wild with anger. “The Elites were bored and done with me before you showed up. Now I’m one of their main targets again and have been ever since your first day. How is it not your fault!?”
“Because you know I would have stopped them if I could have. Just like I’m sure you would stop them from everything they’re doing to me if you could. But even if we can’t stop them…maybe we can at least help each other cope with their wrath…” my voice trails off, breaking. More than anything, I just need someone to talk to, and I wish she would listen.
“There’s nothing to cope with anymore,” she says softly, her head shaking. “I’m being ran off to the other side of the country, and everything I’ve been dreaming of since I was a little girl has been taken away from me. I don’t care anymore. I just hope they’re done with me and talking to you will ruin any chance of that.”