Boys And Their Toys: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Troubled Playthings 1)

Dad was with the guys at work in saying it was a safety issue for me to be out and about in something so conspicuous, especially where I worked. Mum just thought whatever I was selling myself for had to be pretty messed-up if I wasn’t getting a boyfriend out of the mix. I think she was picturing something out of one of those novels she liked to read, where I’d accepted a lavish car in exchange for offering my body for a one-night, no-holds-barred experience. Maybe agreed he could bring his friends along to share in the fun. The only male friend of his I knew of was Steven, and no car was going to convince me to let him anywhere near me. I didn’t think Lucas was likely to go for something like that either. Didn’t you have to be in your thirties at least and have suffered some horrible trauma to be into that sort of thing anyway?

Well, I supposed if he’d had a girlfriend die, that might be enough to do it.

It seemed like an eternity had passed since I’d learned the name of Jillian Montgomery by the time I was able to lock myself in my room with the excuse of homework, and start my session with the subject of What’s Up With Lucas Starling.

Searching for her full name just gave me her obituary, which confirmed she’d been a hockey player (the girls of her former team were mentioned as some of the bereaved) and also told me she’d died after a long illness, though the exact illness wasn’t mentioned. It seemed safe to assume something like cancer.

The obituary also referred to her a few times as just ‘Jill’, so I tried searching for ‘Jill Montgomery’ and once I narrowed it down with keywords for my state and city, I quickly found reports of her hockey games, which she seemed to have taken part in until about the age of thirteen. There were pictures of her team on the league website and in the newsletters they’d put online. They’d uploaded low-quality, grainy images, but once I spotted her face I could tell she’d been very pretty in real life. Gorgeous, and the star of her team as well. The newsletters were constantly talking about how she’d saved the day with some brilliant unexpected move.

I checked the photos for the boys’ teams active at the same time as Jillian, but I didn’t see Lucas anywhere there. I didn’t see any Lucy Starling in the girls’ teams, either. None of which meant anything when it came to Lucas knowing her. Hobart is basically a small town, and I’ve noticed that the popular kids from all the different schools seem to know one another. We’d be on a bus to some school sporting event or other special occasion and I’d be hearing all about the same kids I’ve heard about before from some other schools, who were always having much wilder adventures at parties or on the weekend than I’d actually believed possible for kids our age. In the last couple years of school when a lot of kids had moved on to exclusively year eleven and twelve colleges—that was Burgundy for me and my friends—I’d actually met some of those kids I’d heard so much about, and of course they’d immediately fitted themselves into the new popular hierarchy. So there was no question about Lucas knowing this girl if she was as popular as I expected she might have been.

But I probably wasn’t going to be able to learn much more about her by searching for her name on the Internet. The information that was out there would be in the heads of those other kids who had known her. If I wanted it, I had to be willing to ask someone. Lucas was an obvious choice, but I realised now even though he’d seemed to be telling me a lot about himself when we were there next to Jillian’s grave, he’d actually told me nothing. I didn’t know if asking him a straight question would get me anywhere, and I didn’t entirely want him to know that I was curious.

Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly have any other ‘contacts’ in the cool kid world who might be able to tell me what I wanted to know… except, maybe, for one person who had reached out to me before I’d ruined it all. I had no idea if she’d be willing to talk to me again.

I didn’t think I’d saved Ashleigh’s number from when she’d called my house, and I didn’t want to go asking my parents if they had her parents’ number, or they’d be constructing fiction in their heads about how I was friends with her as well now.

I was able to call Tamara, though.

“Hey, Tam, please tell me you know something about a dead girl named Jillian Montgomery, or else I’m going to have to talk to Ashleigh Tanner at school tomorrow.”

“Geez, I’m sorry, Callie,” said Tamara after a long silence. “I’ve got nothing. I honestly wish I could save you from this horrible fate.”

It was strange walking into school early the next morning, thinking it had been almost a whole day now since I’d seen Lucas.

I didn’t see him anywhere around the grounds, either, which was exactly what I’d hoped for, because I knew where Ashleigh was usually found before class. When I went over to the shaded seat she seemed to like, she was with her friend Petra, but I figured one other person to drive off was about as good as I was going to get it.

They just stopped talking when I stepped up to them, and stared at me. “Hey, Ashleigh,” I said, feet together and head down a little. I hated that she made me feel like a stupid little kid fronting up to the teacher. “Could I please talk to you in private for a moment?”

Petra raised her eyebrows at me.

“It’s just going to be about Lucas,” Ashleigh told her. “You might as well stay and hear it firsthand.”

“I’d rather we keep this between us,” I said. I was already blushing. I felt like there had to be some way she would be able to see the evidence of his mouth on me.

“It’ll be between us,” said Ashleigh, “but I am going to talk about it to Petra, and you might as well accept that if you still want to have this conversation.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone else, trust me,” Petra said, leaning back against the back of the seat like she was expecting to really enjoy what came next. “I know what it’s like when you’ve got Lucas messing with you, I wouldn’t want that spread all over the place either.”

“You dated Lucas?” I tried to keep my surprise somewhere it wouldn’t piss her off. Petra wasn’t exactly pretty—well, she had a nice face and a really nice smile, when she showed it, but she wasn’t the sort of pretty I expected someone like Lucas to go for. She was probably about as attractive as me, on the what-boys-like scale. She did have a kind of aura about her I definitely didn’t share, an attitude of everything being perfectly fine regardless of whatever was going on around her.

“Oh, you know,” Petra said. “We went out, but what does that really mean? He’s not exactly the boyfriend type.”

“Just so you don’t have to ask,” said Ashleigh, “I’ve never dated him. Neither of us wants to do that. He knows I wouldn’t let him get away with the shit he pulls, and I know I couldn’t keep him under control.”

I felt like they were enjoying this position of advising me as experts on Lucas Starling a little too much.

“What I want to ask about is actually a girl named Jillian Montgomery,” I said.

“Never heard of her,” Ashleigh said. “Do you think Lucas is going out with her?”

“She’s dead,” I said.

“Well,” Petra said, “whatever else he is, Lucas isn’t the type to go after dead girls.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s not personal, but I have to say I am so sick of getting that sort of joke when I ask around about this.”

“Then here’s my advice,” Ashleigh said. “Don’t waste your time trying to figure out what’s up with Lucas, who he’s with, what he wants from you. The only thing you need to know is, he’s a player. If you’re the game he