by L.J. Shen
Nice. Predictable. Safe.
Just like his useless little daughters.
I made a U-turn and drove back to school, where I found Poppy at a marching band rehearsal with her lame-ass accordion, her Prada bag hanging lazily on the back of her chair while her back was to me. I fished out her house key, went downtown, made a copy, and returned just in time to slip it back in before she scooped up her bag and went for milkshakes with the band.
The following day I shadowed Lenora, making a note to see if anyone else was there. Poppy took every extracurricular activity available, including band, peer tutoring, English club, and hiking. (She was exactly the kind of teenybopper to make a big fucking deal out of everything she did, including walking.) Edgar Astalis was busting his ass at that art institution he’d co-founded, sunrise till sundown, and was nowhere in sight.
The black sheep, the sweet lamb, was all alone in the afternoons, waiting to be eaten by the wolf.
On the third day—today—I went for the kill. I knew Lenora’s routine by now, and I allowed her forty minutes of basking in her own ignorance while I sat in my banged-up truck, my army boots crossed at the ankles on the dashboard, as she went about her afternoon. I sketched a sculpture on my sketchpad in long, round strokes, a half-smoked joint hanging from the side of my mouth.
When the clock hit four and my alarm buzzed, I got out of the truck and made my way onto the Astalis property, unlocking the door and waltzing in like I owned the place. I strolled through the entrance, past the living room with the marble-on-crème accents and antique furniture, and toward the double glass doors. Sliding them open, I glanced down at the kidney-shaped pool, spotting Good Girl.
She was doing laps underwater, moving in small, graceful strokes. I moved to the edge of the pool, lighting up the rest of my half-joint and squatting down in my torn, black skinny jeans and frayed, black-turned-gray shirt my mother hated so much. I loathed being rich by proxy, but that was another story Lenora was never going to hear, because today was where our communication would end.
Next time I had to make a point, it would be with actions, not words.
Sending a cloud of smoke upward, I watched as Lenora’s head popped out of the water, appearing in front of me for the first time since I walked in.
She hadn’t taken a breath the entire time, I realized.
She was no longer that kid in the South of France who didn’t know how to swim. She’d learned.
And she was completely naked.
Her lashes were curtained with fat water drops that cascaded down her cheeks. She parked her elbows on the edge of the pool, checking the time on her Polar watch. That’s when she noticed in her periphery that something—someone—was blocking the sun. She squinted up, using one hand as a visor.
“What in the bloody hell are you doing here, Spencer?” She pulled backward from the impact, like my existence had exploded in her face.
“I’ve been asking myself the very same question, Astalis, since I saw your Good Gone Bland ass in my domain and figured you lost your way to the nearest faerie world you’re engrossed with.”
It was peculiar how, although we hadn’t officially been reintroduced since she came here, we still remembered each other in all the ways that mattered. I knew she read fantasy books and listened to The Smiths and The Cure and thought Simon Pegg was a comic genius. She knew I was the type of asshole to break into her house and demand shit, and that I’d been watching her.
This confirmed my initial suspicion. She had noticed me at school, just as I’d noticed her. Neither of us found it wise to acknowledge the other. Not in public.
I puffed on my joint, taking a seat on the diving board and slowly lifting her towel robe with the tip of my finger, like it disgusted me.
“Tsk-tsk.” I shook my head, watching the reflection of my evil smirk through her shiny, blue-green-gold-whatever-the-fuck-they-were, hypnotizing, Drusilla eyes. “Swimming naked? Good girls don’t give a shit about tan lines. It’s not like you’re going to get dicked in this school. That’s something I’m afraid I won’t permit.”
“That’s something I won’t be asking your permission for,” she deadpanned, pretending to yawn.
“Doesn’t work that way, Good Girl. When I say jump, they ask how high. And come tomorrow, everybody’s gonna know you’re damaged goods, so stock up on those batteries, because real dick is not in the cards for you.”
“Fancy.” She slow-clapped, whistling sarcastically. “Top of the food chain now, right, Spence?”
She used the nickname I hated so much. She’d heard about me at school, knew about my legion of followers. Good.
I cocked my head. So what if she pretended not to give a shit about how popular I was? “Careful. You’re not even on the vegan menu, Lenora.”
“Bite me anyway.”
“Only to draw blood, baby.”
“Dying in your hands would still beat talking to you, Spencer.”
Lenora leaned forward, trying to snatch the robe from my finger, but I was too fast. I threw it behind my back and stood up, finishing my blunt and throwing it into her pool. She smelled of chlorine and cotton. Virginal, pure, and not loaded with teenage hormones and expensive perfume. I was sure Edgar Astalis, who owned half the galleries in London, Milan, and Paris, had a pool boy coming at least twice a week. Maybe the pool boy could give Good Girl the Vitamin D she wasn’t going to get at school.
“What do you want?” she snarled, her lips thinning even more than their usual lackluster shape.
Really, Lenora wasn’t anywhere near the realms of gorgeous. Take Daria, my neighbor, for example. She was a classic, beauty-pageant hottie. Or Luna, my childhood friend, who was mouthwateringly stunning. Lenora was merely pleasant to the eye—and even that, only from certain angles. Right now her eyeliner ran down her cheeks, making her look like It the clown.
I smiled. “To catch up, silly billy. How art thou? Still collecting garbage?”
“Assemblage.” She braced the edge of the pool, her skin turning whiter around the edges. A gust of wind breezed through the backyard, and the blond hair on her arms prickled. She was uncomfortable.
So was fucking I.
“I’m making art out of old, unwanted things. The only difference between you and me is that you use exclusively stone and marble, the things your heart is made of.”
“And that I’m good.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, smacking my lips together.
“Excuse me?” Her cheeks pinked, matching her already-red ears.
It was the first time I’d seen Lenora Astalis blushing since she came to Todos Santos, and even this wasn’t from embarrassment, but anger. Maybe she had changed, but not enough to give me a decent fight.
“You using garbage is not the only thing different about us. I’m also talented, and you’re…” I gathered the ash from my joint and poured it onto her towel. “A prissy nepotist who looks like Bellatrix Lestrange.”
“Screw you,” she hissed.
“Hard pass. I like my lays pretty.”
“And airheads,” she snapped.
“Yes, you are.” I shook my head. “But you still don’t stand a fucking chance with me.”
It was a low blow, and I’d promised Knight I was going to keep it clean, but something about the situation made me want to go the extra mile. Her defiance, no doubt.
I walked over to one of their many knitted, turquoise loungers, lying down with my hands tucked under my head, staring back at the sun.
“Dayum. Getting windy out here, huh?”
She was stuck in this pool until I decided to leave, or else I’d see her naked, and I was fully planning to outstay my welcome. I thought I heard her teeth chattering, but she didn’t cower or complain.
“Get to the point, Spencer, before I call the police.” She swam to the other side of the pool so she could get a better angle of me. Splashes of water washed over the gray stone edges of the pool.
“Please do. My family owns this entire town, including the
boys in blue. In fact, I’m pretty sure your father is going to have a heart attack if you drag him onto my father’s shit list. Your uncle, too. How is Harry Fairhurst doing, anyway? Still sucking up to my parents so they’ll buy his below-average paintings?”
I wasn’t exaggerating. My father, Baron “Vicious” Spencer, was the biggest asshole alive to anyone but my mother and me. He owned the mall in this town and ran an investments firm that turned a profit larger than the budget of an average-sized European country each quarter, so he was richer than God. He also employed a vast army of people from the neighboring towns, donated to local charities, and sent ludicrously generous gift cards to the law enforcers of our town each Christmas. There was no way the police were going to touch him or me.
Even Lenora’s father, Edgar, and her uncle, Harry, were under my father’s thumb. But unlike her, I had no plans to use my family’s connections to get what I wanted.
Of course, she didn’t know that about me.
She didn’t know much of anything about me—other than the one crucial thing I wished we could both fucking forget.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your little power trip, but could you spit out why you’re here and get it over with before I catch pneumonia?” she demanded in her posh, English accent, slamming her palm onto the patio.
I let out a dark chuckle, still staring at the sun and ignoring the burn. I wished that giant fireball were as good at burning memories as it was burning retinas.
“I thought the English prided themselves on having good manners.”
“I thought the Americans were straight shooters,” she quipped.
“We are.”
“If you want to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I was all three.
I almost let a genuine smile grace my lips. Almost. Then I remembered who she was. What she knew.
“About that incident you witnessed…”
“Loosen your knickers, Vaughn. You’ve got them in a twist.” She had the nerve to cut me off mid-speech, her wet mouth moving fast. “I’ve never shared your secret and never will. It’s not my style, my business, or my information to tell. Believe it or not, my not moving to California when my dad and Poppy did had nothing to do with you. I love Carlisle Prep. It’s the best arts school in Europe. I wasn’t scared of you. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve never met before, and I know nothing about you, other than the obvious information that’s freely volunteered at All Saints High.”
She waited for the question. Normally, I wouldn’t entertain this kind of behavior. But she amused me. Circus monkey—as I’ve said before.
“Which is?” I leaned forward.
“That you’re a miserable, sadistic arse who enjoys using girls and bullying people.”
If she waited for a reaction to my reputation, she was sorely disappointed. I leaned forward, propping my elbows on my knees, narrowing my eyes at her face.
“Why should I believe you?”
She plastered her palm against the ledge of the pool and pulled herself up in one go, rising from the water until she stood in front of me.
No bikini top.
No bottoms.
No nothing.
Good Girl was completely naked, wet and bold, and perhaps she wasn’t so mediocre in that particular moment.
Let’s just say if there ever was a mood in which I’d let her suck my cock and massage my balls, I was experiencing it now.
Her tits were small, but round and perky, her nipples pointy, pink, and begging to be sucked. She had a curvy body, although she did a damn good job hiding all that silky, smooth flesh under the black fishnets and leather pants, and her pussy had a dusting of fair hair. Not a lot, but enough to show me she was a real, virginal blonde—not waxed, bleached, and groomed to death, waiting to give some douchebag the full Pornhub experience of a closely shaved cunt.
There was also a tattoo on her inner thigh, but I couldn’t get a good look at what it said, and gawking was letting her win.
Returning my eyes to her face, I decided maybe it wasn’t so bland after all. Everything about her was small—nose, lips, freckles, ears—but her eyes were huge and aqua. The mass of inky, long hair with the egg-yolk roots did nothing to hide the fact that she was who she was.
Pure, pathetic, and partially insane.
I stood tall, lifting my chin, knowing full fucking well my dick wasn’t going to swell in my pants unless I wanted it to. That was one of the best things about my screwed-up condition. I was able to fully control my libido, and I was hard on demand—my demand. Most teenage dicks were traitors, and they got my friends into a lot of shit that had nothing to do with anal. Not mine. Mine listened. And right now, I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of knowing I wanted to fuck her smart mouth.
We were toe-to-toe. I was a head and a half taller, but somehow, with her chin tilted up in a dead stare and noticeably disobedient posture, she didn’t feel so small against me.
She wasn’t the same shivering girl who’d pretended to be asleep and begged with her entire, silent body for me not to cut her throat that night.
Similar, but different.
Innocent, but no longer submissive.
“You should believe me,” she announced, “because in order to destroy you, I need to acknowledge you first. See, in order to ruin a person’s life, you need to hate them. Be jealous of them. Feel some type of passionate response toward them. You stir nothing in me, Vaughn Spencer. Not even disgust. Not even pity, though I really should pity you. You’re the gum stuck to the bottom of my boots. You are a fleeting moment no one remembers—unremarkable, unnecessary, and utterly forgettable. You are the guy I once believed could kill me, so because of you—yes, because of you—I started on the road toward who I am today. Invincible. You can’t scare me anymore, Spencer. I am unbreakable. Try me.”
I took a step back, still holding her gaze. I knew I would throttle her if I stayed close. Not because I didn’t believe she didn’t care about me, but because I did.
Lenora Astalis really didn’t give a fuck.
She knew I was in her school, and didn’t steal one glance at me.
She didn’t talk about me.
Think about me.
Chase after me.
And that was…new.
People cared—whether they wanted to give me head, be my girlfriend, my friend, my lab partner, associate, peer, or pet. Whatever they wanted to be to me, they always tried to make it happen. They regarded me with unwavering fascination. And me? I fed the legend. I didn’t eat, sleep, or talk much publicly. The only human thing I did in front of an audience was let girls suck my dick at parties. Even that was me proving a point to myself, more than anyone else.
I smirked, grabbing her jaw and jerking her to my body. She thought I’d retreated, when really, I just wanted another good look at that sweet ass before making it mine.
“You know, Good Girl, we’re going to see a lot of each other the next few years.”
“Years?” She let out an agitated laugh, not bothering to fold her arms and hide her tits from me. Which didn’t exactly work in my favor. I had full control of my cock, true, but the bastard didn’t deserve to be teased.
“Hold off making the friendship bracelets, Spencer. I’ve no intention of staying here. I’m moving back to England next year.”
“So am I,” I said evenly.
This had been the plan from the beginning. Get back to England once I graduated and do what I needed to do before opening a studio somewhere in Europe. A fresh start.
“You’re moving to England?” She blinked, deciphering the meaning of this. I wanted to dip a hand between her thighs and see what the news did to her.
“Carlisle Prep,” I snarled. “They have a pre-college internship program.”
“I know. I’m applying there, too.” She sucked in a breath, panic finally trickling into her system.
Finally. My blood warmed at the sight of her face draining of color. Watching h
er react to me was like feeling the first rays of sun after a long winter.
The internship was a six-month program, working alongside Edgar Astalis and Harry Fairhurst, on a piece of your choice. Astalis was dragging his haughty ass back from Cali exactly for that purpose. He loved Carlisle like it was his fucking baby.
You’ll wish you’d kept an eye on your actual baby like you do your prep school, asshole.
She wanted the internship at Carlisle Prep just as much as I did, but for very different reasons. She wanted it because she was born for it—a student at Carlisle since the age of six and bearer of her father’s legacy. Besides, the intern would get to exhibit their piece at Tate Modern at the end of the six-month term. It offered the kind of prestige that could buy your way to artistic stardom. And I wanted it because…
Because I wanted to feel the taste of blood on my tongue.
There were only two spots available per year, and rumor had it one was already going to Rafferty Pope, a genius, soon-to-be-alumni of Carlisle Prep who could paint an entire city landscape from memory. I’d heard Edgar was rocking the LAX-Heathrow route six to eight times a year to check up on his interns, not to mention disappearing in Europe for the summer.
“Putting the cart before the horse, I see.” I took a rolling paper from my back pocket and poured crumbled weed into it, ignoring her nudity like it bored me. “Your chances of beating me at anything are tragically slim. Hope for your sake that you’re applying to other places.”
“I’m not,” she informed me, her voice flat.
“Well, fuck if it’s not going to suck when Daddy tells you you’re not good enough,” I chirped, tapping her nose with my unlit, rolled joint.
“Says you.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Yes. The guy who deserves the internship. However, winner gets to choose an assistant from the applicants’ list. Which means…” I looked up from the joint, rubbing my thumb along my bottom lip. “You could be my bitch for those six months. I like the sound of that, Lenora. Your neck would look pretty with a leash.”
“I’m not the one who’s going to be a prisoner if you come there,” she said softly. “Carlisle is my playground, remember?”