Dulce

“Kind of. It was odd.”

“Scott has a thing for the wounded ones.” Casey laughs, but nobody else does. When he realizes his joke falls flat, he sighs. “I didn’t mean it like it sounds. He hates seeing the underdog getting torn apart by the elitist assholes here because they broke some infringement they didn’t know anything about.”

“Like being too pretty?” Sarah adds. “Cassandra likes to be the center of attention. If Cain and Abe are not gravitating around her, she doesn’t exist.”

“Every time I’ve seen them, they’ve been with other women. She can’t care that much.”

“They are not keepers, though. They are just girls that put out. And as far as she’s concerned, Cain and Abe just need to sow their oats or some bullshit. When they are ready to settle down, she’ll step up to the plate and take her crown as their queen.”

I stare at her, not surprised but feeling sick over it all. I’ve never felt more like a kid playing grown-up than I do right now. I know all too well how dark and bleak these years can be. It’s so easy for the older generation to write shit off as inconsequential because of a person’s age, but these are the years that shape the rest of our lives.

The girls here are learning their worth and are doing it by measuring themselves against a megalomaniac in pink and two narcissistic assholes.

I have a feeling I know where this story is going, and I already hate it.

“There is a spot where we all go swimming. There is a cliff face we dive from, kind of like a rite of passage, but you have to be careful because one side is quite shallow and littered with rocks.”

I swallow.

“It’s not a secret. You can ask anyone here and they’ll tell you which side to avoid,” Casey says, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“So, what happened?”

“One day, Louise didn’t sit at our table,” Scott adds, his voice tight.

“She’d been invited to join the elite, and once she was in their orbit, she never came back. She didn’t talk to us anymore, didn’t acknowledge our existence. We’d been replaced. It was shitty, but I got it. Sometimes it’s easier to be friends with someone you dislike than be their enemy.”

“We never thought much more about it. Life goes on, you know.” Casey picks up where Scott leaves off until Sarah elbows him.

“What?”

“Sensitive much? Jesus, you’re a neanderthal.” Sarah turns to me.

“It was a regular Wednesday. We were in the cafeteria when news came in that a body had been fished from the lake.”

“Louise.” I surmise.

She nods.

“Some said she was lured there and pushed. Some said she was out getting wasted with the elite and she fell, so they bailed on her. Most people thought she’d jumped.”

“What was the final consensus?”

“It was ruled an accident,” Sarah says, but I can tell by her voice that she doesn’t believe it.

“What do you think happened?”

She runs her hand through her hair and sighs. “I don’t know. She was quiet when she sat with us. She liked Scott, but she didn’t really talk to Casey and me. I get it, we’re a lot to deal with, but I guess I’m saying I knew nothing about her or what made her tick. Could she have jumped? Of course, but…”

“But Louise couldn’t drive, and the bluffs are a fifty-minute car ride away.”

Meaning someone drove her there.

And someone left her behind.