“Jax might’ve sent in the fake tip about you, but I doubt he’s the one who runs the app,” Erin said. Her nose wrinkled. “Everyone actually thought it was me for a while. But I think they eventually realized I’m not that sort of person.”
“I’m guessing they thought it was you because you’re into all the software development stuff?”
She nodded. “Yeah. But that’s so stupid. I mean, most of the kids here are rich, so they could easily afford to hire a developer to make and manage the app for them.”
“So it could be pretty much anyone at this school?”
“Yes. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s Cerina Vincent behind it all. She’s the daughter of those hardcore PTO people I told you about earlier,” Erin said. She paused and lowered her voice. “That’s Cerina with a C, by the way, but I can think of another word starting with C that suits her a lot better.”
“I take it she’s a piece of work?”
Erin grimaced. “The absolute worst. She heads up the Bitch Trifecta.”
“Thewhat?”
“That’s what I call her and her friends,” she said. “Remember Mean Girls? How there’s those three horrible girls who run the school?”
I nodded. “I love that movie.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not so nice to actually live it. Trust me,” Erin said. “Anyway, Cerina is the Queen Bee around here. Hold on, I’ll show you.”
She turned her phone screen to face me again. An Instagram profile was on the screen, showing a grid of photos featuring a beautiful blonde girl.
“So, this is Cerina,” Erin said. “She comes from one of the richest families in town, and she never lets anyone forget it.” She rolled her eyes and tapped on the screen a few times before showing me another cute blonde girl. “This is Harlow Latham. I call her Budget Cerina because she’s basically a try-hard version of her. She wants to be the Queen Bee so bad, but she’s not as rich or pretty as Cerina, so she’ll probably always be second to her. That makes her kind of dangerous, though, because she’d take Cerina down in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. So Cerina keeps her super-close, even though they secretly hate each other.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Then there’s Bobbi Kesinovic,” Erin went on, showing me a photo of a petite brunette with stunning gray eyes. “She’s pretty bad, but I guess she’s not as much of a snake as the other two. She’s probably the stupidest person on the face of the planet, though. Like, I’m genuinely shocked she even remembers how to breathe.”
“Right.” I squinted at a photo of the three girls standing together at the beach. Something about Cerina seemed awfully familiar. A second later, I realized why. She was the girl I saw in Jax’s car the other day.
“Is Cerina dating Jax?” I asked.
Erin shook her head. “No. Not really, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
She lowered her voice again. “This is actually really embarrassing for her, considering how she’s meant to be the Queen Bee and all. Basically, she’s been friends with Jax since they were kids, and she’s always had a huge crush on him. It’s a hopeless crush, though. He’s not interested in her at all. But like every other douchebag guy out there, he’s okay with exploiting her feelings.”
“How so?”
“Every so often, she goes to him and says she’s horny and wants to be friends with benefits. She acts like she’s totally chill and doesn’t have feelings for him anymore. So he agrees and they hook up for a while. But then she gets mad when he doesn’t magically catch feelings for her, and she throws a tantrum and stops talking to him for a while. Rinse and repeat. It’s happened four times so far.”
“Oh.” My brows rose. “You’re right, that’s pretty embarrassing for a so-called Queen Bee.”
“Totally. It’s kind of pathetic when you think about it. Like, sure, Jax is a dick for hooking up with her, but to be fair, she’s the one who tells him she only wants to be friends with benefits when we all know she still has a huge crush on him.”
“That’s pretty funny coming fromyou, Erin,” an icy voice said from somewhere behind us. We whirled around to see Cerina Vincent standing in the hall, flanked by Harlow and Bobbi. “Didn’t you have a pathetic little crush on Jax for two straight years?”
Erin’s face blanched. “Cerina. I… I was just…”
That was all she could choke out before Cerina went on, face twisted into a sneer. “We all remember how you asked him to the Valentine’s Day dance two years ago with that stupid fucking flash mob thing, and we all remember him saying no,” she said in a syrupy-sweet voice. “Oh, and wedefinitelyall remember how you ran home crying afterwards.”
I narrowed my eyes, instantly feeling the need to defend Erin. I knew she was a good person because she’d been nothing but civil to me since we met, even when she thought I was a psychotic fiend who went around trying to kill my fellow students. Also, once she learned the truth about that, she jumped to my defense right away, posting the link to the real movie on the Dirt app in order to clear my name.
I folded my arms and stared right at Cerina. “You mean like how you ran home crying the other day after Jax rejected you in the driveway?” I said. “After you got down on your knees for him?”
Bobbi briefly snickered at that, but she quickly covered it with a cough and rearranged her facial expression to a glare.