I stared at Goldie as she huffed and turned away from me to follow Claire. I didn’t even know that they were friends. When did they have the time to get to know each other? Before, it was always Claire and Sarah joined at the hips, but now she’d replaced her with Goldie or maybe Sarah hadn’t made it back to school yet, and Claire was using Goldie as a stop gap?
I shook my head. How could I be thinking about Claire’s friends when they should be the last thing on my mind?
One thing had suddenly become crystal clear: we hadn’t turned Claire into a monster, we’d turned her into a raging fucking demon. One that had to be put down. Fuck if Trent had heard what Claire had just said,, he would have gone fucking insane. In hindsight, it was a good thing that he wasn’t here.
I still couldn’t get my head around it. I found myself unable to move, as if I was in quicksand and had to be pulled out.
My brain focused on that night when we found Vicki terrified and almost speechless. I felt bad for thinking back then that Vicki had made up a story about someone being in her room to get closer to Trent, and I. There was no evidence that anyone had been in her room, and it was almost natural to think the worst of people at that point. A part of me thought that she did it out of loneliness. No one wanted to be her friend in the academy, so she’d latched onto Trent and I.
Now, I knew that it wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Claire’s dad was a business tycoon, she had money, and her daddy sent it to his princess whenever she clicked her fingers. She used to do it regularly whenever there was something that she wanted before, when she was ours. Now, that we’d left her, her thoughts had twisted, and she’d decided to get back at us and make us hers again. This thing was all fucked up, and for once I couldn’t think of how to fix it. Mainly because I knew that Trent, and I were to blame; we’d turned into shit, and there was nothing anyone could do to get rid of the fucking stench.
Chapter Two
Before the holidays, Trent became obsessed with Vicki. As for me, I didn’t know how I felt about anything at the best of times. Sometimes, I thought I had the potential to be the next Picasso, or even Gordon Ramsey, but my concentration wouldn’t allow me to boil an egg, much less prepare a gourmet meal for paying customers. It seemed to get worse as I got older and became mixed with emotions I didn’t understand, until it became as clear as day, that I had enough anger inside me that if I didn’t sort it out that it was going to lead to an explosion.
That’s part of the reason why I decided to visit my dad at the prison. I wanted to know if this anger that was growing inside of me would die if I forgave him. I hoped it would keep me from going down this destructive path I was on, and for once get myself on the straight and narrow.
Forgiving my dad, and getting myself in a good place, seemed to be something that I could only achieve when I was away from this sadistic place, though. I started to feel like the old me as soon as I got back. All I’d done since I got back was drink, have sex, and barely study. I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol while I was away from here, but the moment I set foot back here I started drinking like a fish. I told Trent that I was studying just so that I could get some peace, get away from the sex and the booze. Maybe even him.
I couldn’t wait to get to the university and out of this place. I wanted to feel like I was achieving something for once in my life.
Anyway, the only thing that comes out of Trent’s mouth these days is the name, Vicki. It’s as if he can’t eat, drink or sleep without talking to her, and most of all without fucking her.
The day just fucking dragged on, and my encounter with Claire kept running through my mind; Claire decided that the only way to get close to Trent and I was to murder Vicki.
What the fuck?
I’d been to one too many funerals in my time, but I didn’t know what to do with this piece of information. Did I find a way to talk to a private investigator to figure out where Vicki’s stepdad was and to tell him to back off? Or did I go to the police, tell them what Claire had told me earlier? I knew they would question her, and all she would have to do is just fucking deny it.
Or I could do something as dark as what Claire had done, find someone to take Vicki’s stepdad to the cops.
Now that was an option, the best one of the three.
Why the fuck did her stepdad want Vicki dead, anyway?
That made no fucking sense. He’d killed her mom as far as I knew, and now he was on the run after taking all her money. What benefit did he get from getting rid of Vicki? She had no money at the academy because everything was paid for apart from personal items. I assumed that Hawk gave her an allowance to buy those, and on the weekends, she never ventured out or had anything like food delivered, not like the other kids here. No, he had nothing to gain by killing her as far as I knew. None of this made fucking sense.
I needed to get it out of Claire and to find out if it was one big lie so, she could get her way. If she’d wanted to confuse me and piss me off, then her plan had worked!
I spotted her later in the afternoon and stalked towards her, the need to get this over with overwhelming me.
“Claire, you and me in the suite, now!” I pulled her arm as she stood by her locker with Goldie at her side. I couldn’t believe that the two of them were besties now. Especially, because it was Claire’s idea to get rid of Goldie when it came to the process of deciding who to take to the gym that night. We knew that Claire was jealous, and we didn’t want our favorite girl getting annoyed, but that was four months ago, and it seemed that a lot had changed since then.
“No!” She screamed out while pulling back her arm.
Goldie stood up straighter, bristling with defiance as she glared at me, , “Claire doesn’t want to talk to you. I don’t know what happened earlier, but you’ve really upset her.”
What?
I shook my head as the eyes of the Academy were on me, waiting for my next move. Maybe one of the hyenas would want me to call them in to help drag Claire to my suite? I couldn’t drag her there, though, even if I wanted to, and there were too many eyes, and ears in the hallway. If Claire did come with me right now, she could later claim that I did something to her and she had all these witnesses to prove the state of mind I was currently in.
Fuck!
Anything was possible at the moment.
I couldn’t deal with the consequences of dragging her to my suite, so I decided to go look for Hawk. He would know what to do. I’d go talk to him, and maybe we could figure out this shit together. Anything had to be better than figuring it out alone. Trent liked to think that we were big men, that we had all the answers, especially me for some reason. But I’m eighteen and come from one of the most dysfunctional families in the world. there was no way that I had all the answers, and as much as I tried to pretend that I knew what I was doing, most of the time, I didn’t. If I showed signs to Trent that there was any weakness on my part, well, I didn’t want to know what would happen to him. Maybe I’d been to too many funerals but Trent had seen the lifeless body of Stephanie hanging from her chandeliers, and as much as he made out that her death didn’t affect him, I saw a darkness awaken in him that day. One that I know that I can control to a certain degree, but it haunts him, just as much as the fire did when he saw Dad trying to burn us all alive.