“Yeah,” I answer.
“Not for a hundred!” He laughs.
“Three hundred,” I say back to him seriously, holding it up in front of his face.
His eyes grow wide and his mouth falls open. “Yeah, you bet. I’ll do that!”
The next moment he’s peeling his clothes off and racing out of the door of the penthouse. I walk through the crowd over to the balcony with Dana in tow, and a couple of minutes later, the crazy boy is standing outside of the hotel in his boxers, waving both arms wildly up at me.
I wave the wad of cash back at him and yell at him to come up, though I’m pretty sure he can’t hear me from this height. He runs back into the hotel, and a few minutes later, he’s standing in front of Dana and I, panting and out of breath.
Dana scowls and shakes her head. “Okay, you know what, you made your point. You’re powerful. I get it. Just … please reign it back in, okay?”
I laugh and a girl next to me grabs my arm. “Give me something to do! I want to do something too!”
“Yeah? Shave your head bald and I’ll give you five hundred euros,” I tell her, and she squeals and runs to the bathroom.
Oh shit, I didn’t think she’d actually do it.
Dana grabs my arm. “What are you doing? What are you trying to prove?”
The girl comes back from the bathroom with shaving cream on the side of her face, a bald head, and a hand full of her newly shaved long blonde hair. Her eyes are glazed in a way that tells me she’s going to regret that decision in the morning. Even drunk me knows that.
Dana rolls her eyes and folds her arms across her chest again, looking extremely irritated. I don’t care. All I can feel is the power I have to do whatever I want, and it’s intoxicating.
This must be how Victoria feels. Or felt, before I ruined her.
I give the bald girl five hundred euros. Dana shakes her head at me, and another girl pushes her way through other people to get to me. “Me too! Give me something to do! I’ll do it!”
Dana holds her hand up. “No! Enough already!”
The girl pushes herself between Dana and me. “Come on! Pay me! I’ll do anything!”
I lift a brow. “Anything huh?”
The girl nods excitedly. “Yeah, the wilder and crazier, the better! That’s how I am! Bring it! What’s the craziest thing you can come up with?”
I tilt my head thoughtfully and then look over the side of the balcony. There’s a big swimming pool just underneath us, several floors down. “Five hundred bucks if you jump off of this balcony into the swimming pool.”
Dana freaks out. “No, Teddy no. That’s like … five or six floors! She can’t do that. Just stop this already. Okay? Stop it!”
“It’s not a fair dare, she won’t do it,” I lean closer to Dana and yell to her over the music and the noise of the party. “Stop worrying so much. I’m only kidding!”
“Well you might be kidding, but I’m not. Give me that five hundred and I’ll do it,” the girl tells me. I shake my head. She reaches for the wad of cash in my hand. “Come on! Pay me! I’ll do it!”
This must be what I looked like to Astor before I got my inheritance. Desperate. It’s not a good look.
Dana grabs the girl’s wrist. “No. Now stop this. That’s much too dangerous.”
I look at the girl and I can see that she wants to do it. I laugh and peel off five hundred euros.
“You want the money? Here’s the money. You don’t have to jump off of the balcony. Just take the money.”
The girl takes it and clenches it in her fist. “Oh no, it’s a dare. I’m doing it!”
Before Dana or I can grab her, she launches herself off of the balcony and scr
eams all the way down. I blanch and rush to push myself up against the edge of the balcony, Dana horrified by my side.