Dixie snorts.
“You are,” Dolly insists. “You don’t care what anyone thinks of you. I know how much shit you get for that. The mayor is my father. Believe me, I know how much pressure there is to be what they want. And you.” She turns to me. “You made me see that being a Darling Doll is no better than a Darling Dog. It’s all just bullshit to feed their egos, do their bidding, and support the hierarchy. I owe you for that, Crystal. I was so deep in it I don’t think I ever would have seen that if you hadn’t stumbled your drunk ass out onto Devlin’s balcony after that party.”
“You love him,” I say softly, remembering what she said to me that night.
“I don’t know how I feel anymore,” she says. “It’s complicated. Your brothers… It’s like I was trapped in this tiny closet of a world, and I’d been breathing the same air for so long I didn’t know the oxygen was gone from the room. I was suffocating until they opened the door. There’s so much more out there than Willow Heights. So much more than Faulkner, Arkansas. Maybe I don’t want to be the mayor’s daughter and a pawn in Old Man Darlings’ game all my life.”
“What are you going to do?” Dixie asks, her eyes wide. “Where will you go?”
“I don’t know,” Dolly says. “Somewhere else. No one in this town is free. Not if you show up on Daddy Darling’s radar.”
“You’re running away?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not dumb. I’m going to graduate first. But then I’m out of here.”
I think about her going off on her own, about how people outside this town will see her. Hell, how I saw her until I talked to her. Now that I know her… I have no doubt she’s going to handle it just fine.
“You’re a senior?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “Like Devlin.”
Right. Devlin’s not going to be here for the next two years of high school. The thought is strangely forlorn, like thinking of a football field after the lights go off and the stands sit empty. Like an empty throne in an abandoned castle.
My brothers can take that throne next year. It’ll be easy with the leader of the Darling boys gone.
But that dream is hollow now. There’s no longer four Dolce brothers. What does a metaphorical throne matter when the person who belongs on it is a ghost?
twenty-one
Crystal
Someone bumps against the bathroom door, startling me enough to scare away the tears before they arrive. Dolly steps away from the door, and a group of girls I recognize as Darling Dolls enters the bathroom in a cloud of perfume and giggles. As soon as they see us, the temperature around us drops. Their smiles turn to scowls, and they glare at us with open hostility.
“From the queen Darling Doll to sleeping with the dogs,” Carmen says, crossing her arms and smirking at Dolly. “Or are you a dog, too?”
“You can’t go from Doll to Dog,” says a girl named Becca. She casts a disdainful look at me and Dixie. “Or the other way.”
“Not interested,” I say, turning to the mirror to check my makeup like I can’t be bothered with her.
Carmen snorts. “Oh, please. We all know you let the Darlings run a train on you in the bathroom the other day. But if you think getting all three at once makes you special, don’t even.”
Dixie’s face reddens, and she drops her gaze when I try to meet her eyes in the mirror. Well, that rumor escalated quickly.
“Good to know,” I say. “So I guess all of you have been there, done that.”
“We can have them any time we want,” says a blonde girl with hours’ worth of contouring trying to hide the fact that she has a horse face. “We’re the Dolls, and I’m head cheerleader.”
“So you’ve all let the Darlings run a train on you, and I’m the slut,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“No, you’re adog,” Becca says. “Don’t forget your place in this school.”
“Yeah,” the Head Bitch says. “If they took turns all at once, that just means they’re getting it over with quicker so they can go back to treating you like the dog you are. They just give you one taste so you’ll beg like a dog for the rest of the year. How pathetic are you? You must have no class whatsoever to let them treat you like that.”
I shrug. “Says a bunch of girls who let them collar you with a necklace and order you to do their bidding. I still don’t see any difference between Dolls and the Dog. Think about it. Dolly has. I won’t hold this against you if you want to come over to the other side.”
“The difference is you’re a dirty animal,” Carmen says, her eyes flashing with anger. “You’re a lap dog to them, and we’re their queens. They respect us as equals. You’re lower than the dirt on the bottom of their shoes.”
I snort and look around their group as if searching for someone. “Didn’t you used to have a friend named Lacey? Where is she now? I notice she doesn’t sit with you since she ate dog food off the floor. You think the same thing can’t happen to you? They can take everything from you with a snap of their fingers. And you know why? Because you let them. You play into the charade.”