With that, she straightens and swishes off, snapping her fingers for her minion to follow. The other sisters and their servants fall in behind her, the six of them trailing over to the tables where the Dolce brothers sit with three other guys and three girls. The Waltons sit, and the three nervous girls set their plates down in front of them and scurry away.
“What the fuck was all that about?” I ask.
“You really don’t want to get on their bad side,” Quinn says, wiping her palms on her thighs.
“You’re friends with them?” I ask Dixie.
She shifts around, looking uncomfortable. “Not friends, exactly. We have a symbiotic relationship.”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“What?” she asks. “What can I say, I’m a nosy bitch, and I like gossip.”
Susanna takes over, grinning as she recounts the story. “One day last year, she was moaning about how she’d never hear all the gossip because we’re not exactly popular. But then she decided she’d become popular, not so she could hear all the gossip, but by relaying all the gossip she did hear.”
“It just kinda snowballed from there,” Dixie says. “People started coming to me for gossip, or to tell me gossip. I’m not really popular, but I don’t care anymore. It’s not like I’m famous, but everyone from Willow Heights reads the blog and knows me. And no one messes with me the way they did before that, calling me fat and stuff.”
“Because you can destroy them,” Susanna pronounces with a triumphant smile.
I watch the three girls who were trailing the Waltons scurry back from the food line and set plates in front of the Dolce boys.
“They have servants?” I ask.
Dixie nods. “Sort of. The Dolces pick freshmen or newbies and make them carry their plates and clean up after them—and their flavors of the week.”
“So fucked up,” I say, shaking my head.
“At least it doesn’t last long,” Dixie says, giving Quinn a sympathetic smile. “When the Darlings ran this place, you could be their whipping boy for a whole year. The Dolces have a much shorter attention span. No one holds their interest for more than a week or two at a time. The Walton girls are just enjoying the perks while they have them.”
I turn to Quinn. “You were their slave?”
“For a couple weeks,” she says, her face reddening. “You probably will be, too. New girl and all.”
I turn to look at the table where the three boys and their entourage sit. A jolt goes through me when I find Royal staring straight at me. I quickly turn away, shaken by the funny flutter of my pulse.
“Don’t count on it,” I mutter.
“I heard Mr. Dolce pays pretty much everyone’s salary at this school,” Quinn says. “Some people say he gets his money fromthe mafia.” She whispers the last word like she thinks the mob might overhear and come whack her.
“I heard they just let people think that, like the Waltons,” Susanna says. “They want people to be scared of them, but just because they’re Italian doesn’t mean they’re mobsters. Jenna said when she was sleeping with Duke, she asked him, and he said they weren’t.”
“Either way,” Quinn says. “He’s still super rich and besties with the mayor.”
“I can attest to that,” Dixie says. “The mayor is my step-uncle, and they’re always golfing together, going to the country club, all that.” She keeps on about her uncle, but my mind is stuck on the name of a man influential enough to make a snooty school add an extra scholarship a month into the school year. A man whose last name starts with a D.
But if Mr. Dolce is Mr. D, and he’s the man who brought me here, I can’t help but wonder. Why? And why me?
*
What We Hear
Go ask your mother,
Can’t you see I’m busy?
Somebody has to earn the money around here,
And you know your mother isn’t going to earn a dime.