“But we should’ve known,” Adam said. “We know these people better than you. We grew up with them. You’ve only been here a week.”
I shrugged listlessly. “It’s really not your fault. It’s mine. I should’ve trusted my gut and said no.”
“We should leave,” Trina said, whipping her head around to look behind us. “They might try to follow us out.”
“Let’s go to Café Seven,” Adam suggested.
I shook my head. “I just want to go home.”
“Trust me, Laney. Café Seven will make you feel better. They do the best comfort food and hot chocolate in the whole world, and it’s an old hole in the wall, so no one from RFA would ever dream of setting foot in it.”
“Please let us take you,” Trina added. “We can’t just let you go home and wallow.”
I sniffed and wiped my face again. “All right,” I said meekly. “But only for half an hour, okay?”
Our limousine was still parked outside, but Adam sent the driver home with a large tip and ordered an Uber instead. It was better for us to not attract attention right now, he said, and I agreed. After such a mortifying prank had been pulled on me, right in front of everyone, the last thing I wanted to do was cruise around Royal Falls in an ostentatious white party limo.
The Uber dropped us off in a dim alley that extended from the middle of the town’s main avenue. Halfway down the alley was a wrought iron lamppost, casting a soft orange glow over a chalkboard café sign. Café Seven.
The interior was just as Adam described. A quiet, wood-paneled hole in the wall. No one our age to be seen.
Comfortable-looking booths lined the edges of the café, the seats made of dark red diamond-patterned fabric with buttons at each point of the pattern. The vintage lamps throughout the place threw a rosy glow over the space, making everything feel warm and dreamlike.
“See?” Trina said. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”
I nodded and slid into the closest booth. Trina followed me while Adam went to order for us up at the counter. I sat in silence until he returned with a tray holding three steaming mugs of hot chocolate.
“I still can’t believe that happened,” I finally whispered a moment later, wrapping my hands around my mug.
“Neither can I,” Adam said. “I really didn’t think they’d do something this awful. And off-campus, too. They normally keep it all at RFA.”
“Yeah. But hey, at least the elephants will get all that money,” Trina said drily.
I looked at her, brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“The charity galas Talia and her friends throw every year are real, so the animal sanctuary will actually receive the three hundred thousand they raised tonight,” she explained. “Only the lottery thing was a lie.”
“Well, that’s kind of comforting, I guess,” I mumbled. I rubbed my eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I just feel so stupid for falling for it.”
“Me too,” Adam said. “Hunter ditched Talia pretty brutally, so when she said she hated him, I believed her. But I guess she thought she could get back into his good books—and his bed—if she set this up.”
“Yup, that’s gotta be it. What a pathetic, malicious little snake,” Trina said. Her eyes narrowed. “All of those assholes who were laughing at you are the same. Evil little reptiles.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a heavy sigh. “They’re just so stereotypical,” I said. “You know those eighties movies you see with the stuck-up rich kids mocking the poor kids? It’s exactly like that.”
“I know. It’s horrible. And it doesn’t even make sense,” Adam said, shaking his head. “Like, sure, you weren’t lucky enough to be born into a rich family… but so what? It doesn’t make you gross or trashy. In fact, they’re the trashy ones for even saying that shit.”
“Yeah, I know. The stuff they say is just ridiculous,” I said, lifting my chin as heat crept up my neck. I was past the shocked stage now, and anger was setting in. “Like the whole virgin chant. It’s so childish. Even if I was actually a virgin, who the hell cares? It’s no one’s business.”
Trina’s brows shot up. “You’re not?” she asked, leaning forward.
“Not what?” I said. I was so mad at the asshole RFA students that I was already losing track of our conversation.
“A virgin.”
My shoulders slumped. “No,” I muttered, wishing I hadn’t said anything.
“Why do you look so surprised to hear that?” Adam said, jostling her shoulder. “She’s eighteen. Most people lose it when they’re sixteen or seventeen, don’t they?”