Or at least, I’d thought it had.
I hadn’t heard from any of them since my father’s arrest.
Checks on social media told me they were still following me, still my “friends” as far as Facebook’s algorithm was concerned. But none of them had called to see how I was doing. None of my texts or voicemails had been responded to. I’d given up after the first couple of days of radio silence, knowing what the quiet meant—that until my father was out of jail, my mother and I might as well not even exist to the Baltimore elite.
In some ways, I would’ve been more terrified to be going back to Highland Park today, knowing the kinds of whispers and stares that would be waiting for me in the pristine halls.
But going to a new school, a public school in a neighborhood I barely knew, was terrifying in its own way.
My heart thudded in my chest the entire drive there as I meandered down the cracked and dirty streets. Students trekked the sidewalks, laughing, joking around.
As I watched them, my thoughts went to the boys I’d seen across the street on my first day—and most days since. They didn’t all live in the same house, I’d discovered, but they were almost always together. I’d started thinking of them as a unit, as if they were brothers or something. They clearly weren’t, judging by the vast differences in their appearances, but there was something about the way they interacted that made it clear their bond was as close as blood.
Did they go to this school too? Would we be classmates?
Did it even matter if we were?
Slateview High was aptly named. Its grey facade was broken only with mossy cracks and the smudge of graffiti paint. Someone had long ago given up on trying to clean it up; faded scribblings were covered over with newer, fresher paint.
Highland Park Prep didn’t have a graffiti problem. The colorful scrawls were foreign to me, as were the shabby cars filling the uneven parking lot in the front of the school. Dented Mustangs and rickety station wagons were a common choice here, it seemed. I became uncomfortably aware that the one car Mom had managed to keep stood out, and not in a good way. It was our cheapest and oldest car, nothing at all compared to the newer vehicles that had filled our garages back at home, but it still looked way too fancy to blend in here.
That was apparent immediately when I stepped out of it. I straightened my clothes and swung my backpack over my shoulder. The car I’d parked beside had a girl sitting on the back end, her feet propped on the bumper. A guy stood with her, settled between her legs with his hands resting on the swell of her ass. They both had their gazes trained on me, sneers on their lips.
“Hey, new girl.” The boy narrowed his eyes. “You got something to say, staring so hard?”
Shaking my head, I looked away quickly. “No. Sorry.”
I didn’t want attention drawn to me. I just wanted to fade into the background and blend in. But I could already tell that wasn’t going to happen. Even though no school uniform was required at Slateview, my clothes alone singled me out as an outsider. Everyone here had some kind of edge to them. Hair dyed bright. Piercings. Clothes with rips, too much skin showing to be considered within dress code. I was dressed… normally. At least, what I’d thought was normal.
I could tell I stuck out as I walked from the parking lot to the front entrance of the school. People wouldn’t stop staring at me. Even those that looked like teachers on their way to their classes before the bell rang gave me lingering, quizzical looks.
As I stepped inside the building, I was hit with the cacophony of students talking, yelling, shoving their way through the crowd, and the scent of what was very distinctly cigarette smoke—and maybe another kind of smoke too.
The hall was so packed that I hoped I could slip through the mass of bodies unnoticed, but my heart jumped into my throat when someone yelled loudly, their voice cutting over the cacophony around us.
“Hey! Fancy girl! The fuck you doing here?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t even look back. My face flamed as I pushed harder through the crowd, ignoring the new voices that joined the first.
I didn’t
need to question who “fancy girl” was, and as the day wore on, I realized that it was more than just my appearance and my obvious disconnect from the other students’ social status that people had a problem with.
My class schedule resembled the one I’d had at Highland Park Prep—if only barely. Slateview didn’t offer honors classes, let alone advanced placement classes, classes that I’d been in good standing in every year I’d attended Highland Park.
My first class of the day was geometry. There were at least thirty kids packed into the dingy room, and the teacher, Mrs. Wright, held me up at the front when I entered so she could introduce me. Her voice was bored and exhausted, like she was already tired of being here.
“Let’s give a warm welcome to Cordelia van Rensselaer,” she droned. “Cordelia—”
A girl in the front scoffed, interrupting her.
“Yeah. We all know who she is.” She flipped her long, box-dye-red hair over her shoulder. Her makeup was heavy, and her blue eyes piercing. “Little Miss Rich Bitch. You here because your daddy lost all your money? Poor little fuckin’ rich girl. Better tell your dad not to drop the soap.”
I swallowed, staring at her. How did she know who my father was?
Mrs. Wright sighed heavily and nudged my shoulder.
“There’s a seat in the third row. Go on.”