Devil May Care (Boys of Preston Prep 1)

Jesus.Christ.Superstar.

I walk toward the main high school building, feeling a million years older than I had that night. It was then that the shiny façade of this place was ripped away. I could never again look at it, or the students, the same way again. Not the historic architecture—arched windows, original leaded, wavy glass. The thick, carved doors, the floors; hardwood in the west wing but stone in the older, east wing. Portraits of the headmasters line the walls. The third one down has a familiar name. Hamilton.

As in Hamilton Bates’ great-grandfather.

I glide through the throng of students like a salmon swimming upstream. It’s bumpy and full of resistance. Despite the code of silence, the word “freak” is muttered it at least twice. I don’t even try to put faces to the jabs anymore. What’s the point? I just keep walking and take a breath when I get to my locker.

The first person I told about Sky was our nanny, Debbie. She’s always been the rational one in our home. Our parents are smart, educated, and successful. Both Ivy League. Both lawyers. Both with hearts of gold. Both...how do I describe Mark and Becca Adams? Oh, right, they’re idiots. Freedom of expression, personal conduct, individuality...that’s the most important thing to them, not security or stability or safety. Not the thing kids want and need. Debbie stalked Sky’s social media and found DMs between her and another girl where she bragged about what she’d done the night before. Mom was horrified that Sky’s privacy had been invaded. Debbie tried to explain that fifteen-year-olds don’t get privacy. The fight was huge, but ultimately Mom had to admit something was wrong. The gossip mill was churning and close to out of control.

Sky needed help, and they had to actually step up for once and be the adults in the room. The school board, my parents, and the other parents came to an agreement. Skylar would go to a residential treatment program. The Devils and anyone else at the party would not be punished, but a zero-tolerance policy was enacted. No gossip, no texts, no bullying, no whispers, nothing was ever to be discussed about that night.

To their credit and my complete surprise, everyone held up their end of the bargain. No police. No gossip. The rumor mill stopped completely. To the extreme. I don’t know who made the call, although I have my suspicions, but if the students were going to pretend Sky Adams didn’t exist? Then none of the Adamses existed. Particularly me.

After that meeting I became a ghost in my own school, as if I’d done something wrong by protecting my sister, by revealing that these heartless assholes couldn’t be bothered to protect a fellow classmate, even if her blood isn’t the right color. Truthfully, there’s something worse than being openly bullied.

It’s just being outright cancelled.

I rummage around for the books I need for my next class, knowing that they can pretend I don’t exist,

that that night didn’t exist, but me? I don’t have that luxury.

I remember it every time I walk down the hall. Every time I see their fancy cars and expensive shoes. Every time I see those goddamned letterman jackets. I know it when I see their smug faces—his face in particular. I remember Sky’s mascara, running in sad lines down her cheekbones even though she swears she wanted it. I remember knowing that was a lie and I remember just how badly I wanted the steering wheel I’d been strangling to be someone’s throat. I remember how I felt standing in that hallway, like a live grenade had just gone off in my chest.

I told him I would make him pay, but I haven’t. How do you even begin to make these guys pay? They have everything. Money, power, entitlement…

It’s the Devil’s fault she was there that night. He’s the leader. He has, as he brags about ad nauseum, power. At best, he let Xavier invite her, play with her, make her feel special, and then leave her to the wolves.

And, at worst... well.

Hamilton isn’t just some random guy who sat by and watched, he’s my biggest rival. We’ve spent the last four years vying for valedictorian and are in competition for captain of the swim team. Yeah, me, the kid without a ‘pedigree’, has been holding her own against the prince of the school. He can’t truly ignore me because I’m the thorn in his side. The risk to his coronation. The Michael to his Lucifer.

So that’s it. That’s how I make him pay.

By being better.

Like every other morning, I glance at the tiny mirror affixed to the inside of my locker. I look beneath the mask at my dark hair and blue eyes and repeat an affirmation.

“You’re better than him. Smarter. Faster. Stronger. Don’t play his games. Make him play yours.”

I smile and replace the mask, prepared for another day of battle.

I moved to the dorms the day after Skylar left for the residential program in Texas. Did it seem counterintuitive to move to the place I was being frozen out of? Yes. But being at home was worse. I couldn’t face my parents.

Mark and Becca…I do love them. They took me in when I was three, rescuing me from a truly shitty situation of neglect and addiction. It’s strange, because I know that living with them meant I had guaranteed shelter, top-notch academics, and opportunities I never would have had with my birth mother. But it takes more than money and good intentions to make a good parent.

As much as I hate the Devils’ obsession with lineage, sometimes there is this nagging worry that people like Hamilton may have a point. Take my older brother Brayden, for example. He was adopted first—as a baby. He never knew anything else, just the life Mark and Becca gave him; wealth, opportunity, entitlement. He was even a Devil himself, star JV quarterback. His birth mother was, as I understand it, a thirty-something from Biloxi with a transient housekeeping job and an intense addiction to a little drug called Whatchya Got. My parents, high off of a lifelong bender of righteousness and delusion, wholeheartedly believe in open adoptions and encourage us all to make a connection with our birth family.

So Brayden did.

He met his mom. And I’m not entirely sure what went down or why, but here are the facts: Despite a long history of academic and athletic excellence, his grades began to slip. The boy who used to be one of the most promising Devils only just barely met the credit requirements to graduate. Now he’s working part time at a mechanic garage, cleaning bathrooms and floors, hoping for an apprenticeship.

Then you’ve got Sky, two years younger than me. She was one when Mom and Dad brought her home, cute and smiley despite the cigarette burn marks on her arms. Even as a baby, I think she knew the best way to survive was to pretend everything was fine. She followed all of us around all the time. Our smiles made her smile. Our happiness made her happy, like an adorable little emotional sponge. It was cute, back then, before I realized what it said about where she came from, what had happened to her. It was cute before I realized how easily she would be manipulated, taken advantage of.

The twins were merely infants when my mom brought them home. A boy and a girl. That was the year things changed for the rest of us. There was no more pretending outside the home we were true Adamses. Their skin color told the truth. We loved them, of course. I still fondly remember sitting in their nursery, in the months after they moved in, wishing one of them would wake up and fuss so I could hold and soothe them—my very own baby brother and sister.

But outside the walls of our eclectic home, people weren’t as understanding. Our classmates knew we weren’t like them, with all their long family trees that dated back to the Mayflower. Sure, the Adams family did, but in the eyes of our peers we weren’t really Adamses. We didn’t count. We were charity cases. Rejects. Discarded and abandoned.

Mom and Dad told us not to believe it, but come on, right? At a certain age, all of us begin getting it. Brayden did. And then eventually, I did, too. The playdates stopped. Friendships grew cold. Why do they think Sky needed so much approval? Why do they think Michaela schemes and sneaks? Why do they think Micha feeds the world little bits of himself in the tiniest increments? Why do they think I don’t want to come home?