MrD: Did they?
BadApple: no
I get this creepy feeling, like I used to get when he’d text me and tell me he knew where I lived. Which is stupid, because it’s just Preston. This man has literally ejaculated on my cervix. But it feels different somehow, when he’s a faceless name on an app instead of the fastidious, elegant man who saved my life, cooked me dinner, and told me to find my sun. He feels like a stranger when he’s behind a screen.
MrD: What if I could get you cleared of all charges?
BadApple: yes plz
I add a smiley face to make myself feel better. I wish he’d just texted, like he usually does. Or shown up. I haven’t seen him in a while, not since we were told we’re cousins. I’d like to talk to him about the incident in the garage, see if there’s anything else he lied to me about. But mostly, I just miss him. I miss his safe, detached company, his clean apartment, the meals that started not when we took the first bite, but when our eyes took in the presentation on the plate.
And, as creepy as it is since I’m not one hundred percent sure we’re not related, I miss the scent of him. That sense is visceral but deep, filled with memories I didn’t know I was making. Just thinking about him, I can almost smell his shampoo in my hair, his skin when he held me pressed to his chest all night, his fancy sheets that held the scent our bodies made together.
MrD: How does teenage rebellion sound?
BadApple: familiar
MrD: As far as charges go, not too bad. Right?
BadApple: Thank uuuuu. Ur the best ever. C u soon?
MrD: We’ll see
BadApple: ???
MrD: Now that I’ve dealt with your discipline situation…
I close my eyes, dread building in my stomach. A door opens down the small hallway, and a girl I’ve never met steps out. She must be a freshman or transfer. I glance at the sign above the door. I’ve never been in that office—the school psychiatrist. I remember Royal telling me I needed help, and I shiver and pull my sleeves down over my hands.
“We’ll be right here if you need us,” says the school psychiatrist. “You don’t need an appointment, Amber. Just come on down any time you want to—you have something to communicate.”
The Amber chick stands stiffly outside her door. She catches me looking and stares back with a sullen expression.
“But that does require you to communicate something,” the shrink says gently.
Amber’s lips tighten, but she doesn’t speak.
The shrink sighs. “See you next week, then.”
As if she were just waiting for the gates to open, Amber charges down the hall and past me, past the front desk, and throws her shoulder into the door, bursting out into the school’s fancy foyer. There’s something familiar about her. At first I think she must be another transplant from FHS, and my mind immediately latches onto the text conversation I was just having. Maybe she’s my replacement.
But that’s stupid. Preston’s not going to find some other girl to fill my shoes. He gave me my scholarship back. Then again, he controls all the money in the Darling estate. I’m sure they could write off more than one scholarship as a charitable donation. I watch the girl, telling myself it’s just the poor kid in me sensing the poor kid in her. Poverty isn’t something that disappears the moment a guy slides a pair of Louboutins on your feet. Hell, I could win the lottery for real, and I wouldn’t be a rich girl overnight. I might have money, but I wouldn’t be rich.
But that girl is wearing name brand jeans and new sneakers and a WHPA hoodie, and I can’t tell for sure if she’s poor. Maybe she’s a fucked up rich girl. Poverty’s an aura, something that takes months or maybe years to shed. Sure, a total makeover goes a long way toward erasing the stink of it. I’m a new person now, a rich girl with straight hair and dark eyes and a Gucci bag, but sometimes, in the rare moment that I remember who I am and feel like myself, I feel how fake it all is. The girl is gone before I can tell if she’s a fake, if there was the right mix of desperation and defiance in her expression, the set of her chin, the challenge in her eyes when they met mine.
My phone buzzes in my hand, startling me. I look down at the screen.
MrD: …What are you going to do for me?
BadApple: r u serious? I told you, no more of that. U promised
MrD: I have no recollection of such a promise.
I want to scream and throw my phone. Didn’t he promise? Or is this another instance where I said something, and he didn’t respond, and I took it as an answer? I told him I wanted my scholarship back, but no more spying, no more bargains, no more games. Did he actually agree?
I can’t remember.
BadApple: wtf, preston. Ur being a dick. I’m not doing this shit 4 u anymore. U kno that.