Walking over to the sink, I drop my bag on the floor and stare at my face in the mirror. My nose and eyes are red, the tell-tale sign of my ultimate weakness. My hair is windswept from running down the hall, so my ears are exposed, showing off the little hoop earrings Georgia had insisted I wear. The uniform is still straight and pressed, and looking at myself, I can barely recognize the person staring back.
This isn’t the girl from the Cliffs, with her dark eye makeup and ratty jeans. This isn’t the person who walked through the docks with a fuck-you shield wrapped around her. This isn’t even the person I was a couple days ago, elbowing Doug and escaping the consequences.
Who are you? I mentally ask. Who is this person who looks like a schoolgirl and acts like a mental patient? This isn’t me. It’s jarring and disorienting, like at some point I’ve been knocked unconscious, and this whole experience is some very vivid dream playing out in my head.
Though, were that the case, my brain certainly wouldn’t put that asshole here.
Seeing him in the doorway had been startling. And not just his presence, his appearance as well. The two other times I’d seen him, he’d been dressed so casually, like any other high school shitheel. But today he looked like the other boys, dressed in his uniform coat with his red and black tie slightly askew. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. He looked both out of place and perfectly at ease.
I should have known he’d be a student here. Why wouldn’t he be? Only rich kids migrate to the Briar Cliffs in the summer, and this place is full of them.
It was bad enough seeing him, but then he had to make an utter ass out of himself as he made his entrance. Seriously, what an egotistical jack-off. Not just abusive, but an idiot as well. All easy smiles and swagger, the kind of guy who thinks he’s untouchable. Clearly, no respect for boundaries, the way he was touching everyone and everything. He even mouthed off to the teacher, who looks scary as hell.
I take a deep breath and take the earrings out. This won’t do—playing at being like any of the other girls here. I don’t want to be like them. Look at Georgia, so trusting and optimistic. If that’s ‘normal’, then I don’t want it.
Grabbing a paper towel, I run it under the sink water. I’ve just wiped off my face when the bathroom door opens. A gorgeous girl from Dr. Ross’s class walks in. She’s tall and thin, with perfect hair and a calculating expression on her face.
“Oh,” she says. “There you are. How the hell did you get all the way to the tech hall?”
I blink. “Me?”
She rolls her eyes and approaches the sink, checking herself out in the mirror. “Aren’t you the one who just ran like a bat out of hell from class?”
I lean back against the sink. “Yeah, that’d be me.” I give her a sidelong look. “On a scale of one to ten, how crazy did I look?”
“That’s relative.” She digs through her backpack and pulls out a makeup bag, unzips it and with sharp, glossy nails, extracts her lip gloss. “I’m Afton, by the way. And let me tell you, everyone here may look all nice and put together, but that’s what money is for—to cover everything in a shiny wrapper, bow and all, so it looks fully functional. The matching uniforms don’t hurt, either.” She swipes on a thick coat of pale red. “But crazy, along with dark secrets and deviant behavior, is pretty standard around here, and the first day at Preston isn’t easy. I think you’re fine.”
I exhale, feeling slightly better, although I’m still not sure why this girl is talking to me. “Well, at least I fit in,” I laugh sarcastically. “What an impression to make, huh?”
“So, what’d he do?” she asks, snapping back on the cap. She drops it in the bag and pulls out a hairbrush.
“Who?”
“Sebastian,” she clarifies. “He messed with you?”
Sebastian. Wilcox. A name to match the face. The anger wells up in me again when I bite out, “He was messing with my hair.” And then I have to pause, because that sounds… totally fucking pathetic. Who wigs out like that just because someone touched their hair? Afton flicks her gaze to me and I can see the doubt there. “Look, I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I just… I really don’t like people touching me.”
I prepare for the inevitable. Questions. Skepticism. That look that says I’m a huge drama queen for having the gall to value my personal space to the degree of having random classroom outbursts.
But she just says, “Fair enough,” and runs the brush through her hair, creating perfectly shiny waves. Who is this girl? “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it. He’s not a bad guy.”
I snort. “That hasn’t been my experience with him.”
“You know Bass?” she asks, finally turning to me, eyebrows drawn. “What, from before?”
I pause, considering her. “You got any eyeliner in that thing?” I point to her makeup bag, and she looks surprised, but pushes it down the counter.
I choose her darkest liner and lean in close to the mirror to apply it. “We crossed paths last summer. He got in a fight with this guy at a party, and when I tried to break it up, he punched me.” I can see in the reflection that her gaze darts to my jaw, despite the fact I haven’t mentioned where he punched me. “It was a whole thing.”
She asks, “Like, an accident?” and I pause, nostrils flaring.
“Sure,” I say, moving to my other eye. “An accident—like a drunk driver hitting a car of random people is an accident.” I smudge the liner a bit before putting it back in her bag, sliding it down the counter to her. “Thanks,” I say, feeling a little more like myself.
Afton assesses herself one last time, then places her brush in her bag and slowly zips it up. She turns away from the mirror and looks at me. “Sebastian Wilcox is a hotheaded, temperamental, impulsive, sweet-talking charmer.”
I don’t know about charm, but, “Sounds about right.”
“But, he’s not a bad guy. His older brother, Heston? He’s a bad guy. Some of the other people around here? Total shitheads. But Bass isn’t one of them.”