A kick to my back snapped me out of my mental fog. Richard Rodgers—Dickie to anyone who knew him—peppered the gesture by flicking the back of my head as he typhooned down the stairs to the waiting black Porsche pulling in front of the boarding school’s entryway.
“Mom!”
“Darling!” His socialite mother got out of the passenger door with open arms, wearing enough real fur to cover three polar bears. My classmate threw himself into her embrace. His father waited behind the wheel, smiling glumly, like a child during Sunday service. It was hard to believe Richard, whose claim to fame was farting the alphabet with his armpit, was worthy of this hot woman’s love. Dickie’s mother pulled away to take a better look at him, bracketing his face with her manicured hands. My heart lurched and jerked like a caught worm. It hurt to breathe.
Where the hell are you, Mom?
“You look so good, my love. I made you your favorite crumble pie,” Dickie’s mother cooed.
My stomach growled. They needed to get the hell out of here and stop blocking the driveway. Richard hopped into the car and screwed off.
She’d come. She said she would. She must.
Another hour passed. The wind picked up, the sky turning from gray to black. Mom was still nowhere in sight, and my already shaky confidence was crumbling like the stale pie the janitor had slipped into my room the day after Thanksgiving because he knew I was the only kid who stayed on school grounds.
Four hours and sixteen smacks on the back and “see ya next years” later, it was pitch black and freezing, the snow falling from the sky thick and fluffy, like cotton balls.
The chill didn’t register. Neither did the fact my holey loafers were soaking wet, or that the two tears that had slipped from my right eye had frozen midroll. The only thing that sank in was the fact that Mom had stood me up on Christmas and that—as per usual—I was alone.
Something soft and fuzzy landed on my head. Before I could turn around to see what it was, this boy I knew from the swim team, Riggs, plopped down on the stair next to me, mimicking my pathetic hunch.
“Sup, Ivanov?”
“None of your business,” I hissed, ripping the red velvet hat from my head and dumping it on the ground.
“That’s a big-ass attitude for someone who weighs forty pounds.” The good-looking bastard whistled, giving me a once-over.
I twisted his way, punching his arm hard.
“Aw. Shithead. What’d you do that for?”
“So you shut the hell up,” I growled. “Why else?”
What was he doing here, anyway?
“Die in hell,” Riggs Bates replied cheerfully, finding the situation infinitely amusing.
“Already am,” I replied. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
The Andrew Dexter Academy was a Catholic, all-boys institution right in the middle of rural Connecticut. It had been built in 1891 by a railroad financier. It was supposed to become the number one luxury hotel on the East Coast, but due to financial failures, the construction was boarded up for a few years, before a bunch of rich newcomers flocking from post–World War I Europe threw money at it, shoving a few priests, teachers, and their problematic offspring into the place. One of those priests was Andrew Dexter, and this was how the number one all-boys boarding school in the States had come to be.
There was no way of sugarcoating it—the Andrew Dexter Academy was a shithole. To get to the closest 7-Eleven, we had to walk ten miles each way. We were isolated from the world, and for good reason. This place housed some of the most notorious teenage douches in the country. Silver lining: in case of zombie apocalypse, we would have some buffer before the brain eaters came for us.
It was obvious my mother wasn’t coming. Even more so that I was going to spend this Christmas on my own, just like I had the previous one. Last time, the only person keeping me company had been the groundskeeper, who’d mostly checked in to see I didn’t off myself. I hadn’t. Instead, I’d read and printed out good college-application examples. The goal was to become a millionaire. If all the idiots around me and their parents were—why couldn’t I?
“What the hell are you doing here, anyway?” I wrapped my arms around my knees, glaring at Riggs.
He hitched one shoulder up. “Don’t have a family, remember?”
“Actually, I don’t remember.” I arched a brow. “Keeping tabs on your ass is not my favorite hobby.”
I barely ever spoke to Riggs, or anyone else at the school. Speaking to people led to being attached to them, and no part of me wanted to get attached. Humans were flaky.
“Yeah. My grandfather, who raised me, kicked the oxygen habit last Christmas.”
“Shit.” I wiggled my toes inside my loafers to try and get rid of the numbness. I was starting to feel the cold. “Well, I’m sure you can buy a new grandpa or something,” I volunteered. Word was that Riggs was swimming in it.