At lunch, I contemplate my next move as I walk in alone. I hear a few murmurs as I make my way through the café, but not like when I walk in the halls with Gloria. Apparently the fuss is about Dawson, which makes sense. Even though he graduated last spring, a suicide is way more dramatic than a girl whoisn’tdead. The flowers around the locker he used last year are proof enough, as are the only three girls still in the food line, who are sighing about how sad it is.
“It’s just such a tragedy when someone loses a life,” says the hot blonde freshman. “Especially when it could have been prevented.”
“You read that on a poster outside the counselor’s office?” I mutter, rolling my eyes.
She looks over her shoulder at me and scoffs. She’s wearing some kind of pink tulle skirt that reaches midcalf, like an overly long tutu, and a pair of baby pink Doc Martens with daisies on them. The infantilized style is a far cry from Gloria’sMean Girlssquad, and I’m reminded again how very young the freshman class is.
She lowers her voice to her friend. “I never met him, but I saw him play every Friday, and I feel like I knew him.”
“I know,” gushes her pimply friend, casting a nervous glance at me and moving forward along the line to put distance between us. “He was a hero. I hope they put up a statue of him outside the school.”
“It’s too soon,” says the blonde with a little sniffle. “It would be too painful to see him every day and know he’s never coming back.”
I stifle a snort. Nothing like a rich kid dying to have everyone else acting like their world is fucking ending, even if they’d never met the guy. I was in sixth grade when the first kid in one of my classes died by suicide, and it’s hardly rare at FHS. I know the histrionics it brings out in the drama queens, who want to act like they knew the person even if they were total assholes to the victim while they were alive. I wonder if some fake-ass bitches did that shit when I disappeared last year, and it makes my skin crawl.
“I just feel so bad for his sisters,” the bigger friend whispers as they exit the line. “Do you think they found him?”
“Can you imagine finding him there, just…Hanging?” the blonde asks, her eyes round.
Suddenly, I don’t feel like eating.
“I can’t believe Gloria’s back at school,” says the acne prone one.
“Yeah,” says the blonde. “When Sully was in trouble, I stayed home with him for, like, two weeks to make sure he was okay. And he wasn’t…unalive.”
They walk away talking, and it takes me a minute to remember where I’ve heard that name. Then my stomach sinks. Fuck. The too-pretty-for-her-own-good blonde freshman is little Magnolia Darling.
I shouldn’t care. It has nothing to do with me. And yet, I feel some weird connection with the Darlings now, even if I don’t want to be part of their drama. I keep telling myself I’m not related, but I feel a kinship, anyway.
Even before Preston, I was tied to them. From the moment I engaged with the Dolces, I was pulled into their family. Hell, even before that, when Mr. D contacted me. Despite their families being enemies, they’re two opposing threads, inextricably twisted around each other, passing through the eye of one needle. The deeper I got with the Dolces, the deeper I was woven into the Darling story, too, whether or not I knew it.
I took the scholarship from Mr. D. I already knew Colt as Dynamo from the fight scene, so I became friends with him. I pulled Lindsey out of her house and got her to safety. I fucked Royal on Preston’s bed and helped destroy his house, never knowing he was my benefactor. I got my ass dumped by the mighty Royal Dolce for putting my foot down when they threatened to go after Magnolia.
And it’s a good fucking thing I did, or the Dolces would have succeeded in killing me that night in the swamp. If Preston hadn’t been tracking their cars and come out there and found me…
I shake the thought away, trying to clear my head to get through this lunch without spiraling back into my nightmare. Coming here is the best thing I could have done. I can already tell. I was aimless, lost in some dark swamp of nightmares for the past six months, unable to leave even when my body was pulled free and carried out. My soul never really left that night, though.
I’m not sure it ever will. But being back in this world sets everything in front of me in an immediate way. Physically, I’m here instead of home, where I can too easily sink into bed and wallow in despair. Everything is crucial, keeping me from going back into my shell, locking myself in my head. There are other people with their own traumas and dramas, people I have to interact with. Every moment I have to be sharp, to make decisions based on new information I only gained the second before.
As I step off the line and turn to face the café full of the new and the familiar, I have another decision to make. There’s Dixie’s table of gossip girls, where I see her, Quinn, Susanna, and Josie. Those are the student council girls, the career path girls. I should sit there. That’s what I want—to get out of this town, to go to college. Maybe I wasn’t the ‘stay home and bake on a Friday night’ kind of girl last year, but maybe now I am. Maybe I’m done with all drama, Dolce and Darling both.
But then a whistle cuts through the noise in the café, and I look up and see DeShaun Rose mid-wave. Before he can summon me, though, Duke elbows him in the arm and shakes his head. Duke Dolce, who sang “Folsom Prison” while he waded through the swamp toward me after telling me he was coming back with friends. Duke Dolce, who told me the other night that we could still be friends. Duke Dolce, who I saw talking to Magnolia Darling just this morning.
My blood runs cold, and I grip my plate. I may not be gathering information for Mr. D anymore, but my work here is not done.
thirty-four
Harper Apple
Each table in the café fits eight chairs. Last year, the Dolce boys sat at one table with their closest friends and Lo. Another table was pushed over against it for the overflow of “lesser” friends and Dolce girls. Royal had the middle seat, with his back to the wall near the door, so he could look out over the café like it was his kingdom. The spot across from him was always empty, so no one would block his view.
This year, Duke and Baron sit at the center. DeShaun and Cotton sit to their left. To their right, I spot a vaguely familiar boy from last year’s “lesser” table who must be Gideon, because Everleigh is busy swooning over him. Gloria and Eleanor round out the table. There’s no empty seat. At the one pushed up to theirs, where the tables meet, a sullen, dark-haired boy sits next to Gloria. I peg him as Rylan, her boyfriend. The rest of the table is filled with pretty girls I assume are this year’s Dolce girls.
There are no empty seats, but I’m not going to let that stop me. They can squeeze in one more. They never pack the tables with extra chairs like the rest of the students. Keeping the tables to eight makes their company all the more coveted and elite.
As I approach, I take in the group, but my gaze lasers in on the Dolce boys. Duke watches me with a wary expression while Baron just stares in his intense, unnerving way. I circle the table so I’m standing behind the reigning kings.
“Get me a chair,” I say.