Cruel Legacy (Cruel 3)

I straightened in bed at that name. “The girl who killed herself?”

Penn startled. He sat up, too. “How did you hear that?”

“Lewis told me. Well, actually, Addie told me that if I didn’t know about Hanna, then I didn’t really know the crew. And Lewis said that you were all friends, and then, when she went to rehab, she killed herself. It was one of the reasons Lewis and Addie broke up and Addie left the group.”

Penn was silent. It stretched until it was taut. As if, at any second, it would snap.

“That’s what he said?” Penn finally asked.

I swallowed and nodded. “I’m guessing…that’s not the whole answer?”

“Well, it’s the answer we all agreed on all those years ago.”

“What…what does that mean?”

Penn looked down and then back up at me. Resignation on his face. As if he’d had a ten-ton brick on his shoulder and he was finally going to lift it. “So…you weren’t the first bet we ever made. For a long time, we all made them just for kicks. We bet on everything. It was childish and stupid, but it was practically intrinsic to how the crew functioned.

“Then our junior year, a new girl showed up to our school. Her name was Hanna. She was new money and had clearly been top dog at her last school in, like, Indiana or something. That clearly did not translate to the Upper East Side, as you are well aware.”

“I was a loner, but yes, I know the sentiment. Nothing translates here.”

“She was a fish out of water. A pariah. Katherine joked one day and said that she could make her one of the most popular girls in school. I bet her on it. She said it was too easy. So, I said I bet I could get her to sleep with me.”

I frowned, reflexively backing away from this version of Penn. The one who had hurt me so completely with such a similar bet.

“Anyway, it isn’t really the bet that mattered. I won. We made Hanna one of us. I slept with her. Katherine had been right. It had all been too easy. It was wrong on so many levels.” He shook his head, as if trapped in the whirlwind of that time all those years ago. “After that, we all dropped her like it was nothing. We ostracized her. It went around school that she was a whore and gave it up easy, that her young, innocent vibe was just an act, that she was a drug addict. The world is a cruel place. But we made cruel acceptable.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “She probably felt so alone.”

“Yeah. It was awful, Natalie. It’s something I deeply regret. And it got worse.”

“Worse? Worse than sleeping with her and bullying her?”

He frowned. “I wasn’t a good person. I never claimed to be. But it was Hanna that opened my eyes. I wish I could take it back.”

“So, what happened?”

“Well, she came back to me and begged to make it stop, to take her back.” He couldn’t even meet my eyes. The sorrow and turmoil was all over his face. “I wasn’t exactly kind in my response. She went to Lewis that night. They slept together, and as you can imagine, that just made it worse.”

“Christ, Penn.”

“I know. Katherine got tired of the whole thing after that. She never liked when the attention was on anyone but herself. And she pretended to want to befriend her again…and then planted drugs on her.”

My gasp was audible. “Seriously?”

“We’d all dabbled. Hanna had with us, too, when she was on the inside. But…she wasn’t a drug addict. And I didn’t find out about what Katherine had done with the drugs until after Hanna’s parents found out and sent her to rehab.”

“Oh god. Where she killed herself? “Because you’d all tortured her.”

He bobbed his head. “It was a horrible day. I’m not proud of what happened. In fact, it’s my deepest regret. After that, Addie couldn’t take it. Not because Lewis had cheated. They did that to each other all the time. But it was part of what had driven Hanna over the edge. Addie blamed us. Rightly so. And left. But we all agreed not to speak of it again. We had a story for what had happened, and we stuck by it. Our crew shrank and tightened after that. We had too many secrets by then.”

I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say after all. This had all happened a dozen years ago or more. They’d been young and stupid.

Cruel boys and girls cementing their cruel legacy in blood.

Hanna had been the unfortunate victim in all of this. She’d paid the ultimate price for the heinous crime of wanting to belong. I knew it well enough. The way that Katherine could deceive. Lewis could charm. Penn could seduce. They were all fucked up in their own ways. Party to their own manipulations and machinations. Destruction trailing in their wake.