Savage Royals (Boys of Oak Park Prep 1)

I turned my gaze back to the screen, clamping my hands over my stomach like I could somehow protect myself from all of this, like I could keep myself from flying to pieces.

There were more images. So many more.

I saw myself passed out in that same study room in Clarendon Hall, my tube top riding up as I sprawled across the couch like a broken doll. Boys I didn’t know were gathered around me, posing with me in obscene positions and laughing.

Every illicit or embarrassing thing I’d done all semester flowed across the screen, intermingled with images I knew weren’t of me—girls who’d been photoshopped to look like me, all caught in some filthy, disgusting act.

Dean Levy was off the stage now, and I heard raised, angry voices coming from somewhere near the back of the gymnasium as another video began to play.

The whoosh of waves came through the speakers, and I

knew, even before I saw the dark, grainy footage, what was coming.

Laughter sounded in the video, close to where the camera was being held, as my moonlit form stood in the ocean’s shallows and screamed into the night.

“You hear that, Jacqueline? Fuck youuuuu! Fuck the Hildebrands! Fuck all your—”

The screen went dark suddenly, like the power had been cut.

Silence filled the large room, and the weight of it was so much I thought I might collapse under the pressure.

What…?

Why?

Spurred by desperation, I spun around, searching the crowd for the any of the Princes. But none of them were there. Elijah’s and Cole’s parents gazed at me with open disdain, and when I caught sight of Jacqueline, of the raw fury on her face, my heart stopped.

No. No no no.

The framed certificate the dean had handed me slipped from my numb fingers, and then I was moving, stumbling down the steps, racing for the door at the back of the room. I shoved it open, careening down the hall toward the building’s exit, my breath coming in short gasps.

I burst out into the quiet night and walked quickly down the pathway toward the quad, my legs feeling like they might buckle at any moment as my stomach churned with nausea. I kept hearing the sounds from the video, which had played so loud it was like they’d pierced my brain.

The heavy breathing. The low moans and whimpers.

Those had been ours.

They’d been something precious and beautiful, something secret and fragile.

And now they were trash.

Before I’d even made it twenty yards, movement in front of me caught my eye, and I stopped.

On the pathway leading to the gymnasium stood all four of the Princes, shoulder to shoulder, locked into their perfect formation.

Bile rose up my throat as the awful suspicion in my mind turned into undeniable truth.

They had done this.

They had recorded every bit of that footage. They had orchestrated the dares, gotten me drunk and high, nudged me in the right direction, and then waited for me to give them what they wanted.

The night of the first Clarendon party, when Finn had taken me home and left the Aspirin and the note on my nightstand, I’d thought it meant I could trust them. But when I’d been passed out drunk, they’d used the chance to make me look like a slut.

And when all that wasn’t enough, they’d doctored the images of other girls to make them look like me, mixing them in with just enough real footage to sell all of it.

For the past three months, they’d pretended our war was over. But the whole time, they’d been carefully compiling a smear campaign against me. And now, somehow, they’d played it in front of half the school.

In front of my grandparents.