Red Alert/Red Notice (The "Super Jerk" Prequel)

2 - Have You Heard the News?

^^Chapter title credit: Song by Talk Talk.^^

{Raina}

He's staring at me again. I can feel it. Now that Ellen — or El, what she insisted I call her from the beginning — my roommate and so far my only friend, has pointed it out, it's hard to not notice.

"You know he's a Cromwell, right?" she says when we move up further in line, out of his line of sight.

"A what?" That doesn't even sound vaguely familiar.

"A Cromwell," El says, emphasizing it even more. "His dad owns, like, half of Ithaca."

"So he's rich, then?" He hadn't acted like he came from money, when we'd met.

"Of course." El gives me her classic inner-city-girl eye roll. No wonder, because she's from Manhattan, and her parents together own more than a hundred properties all over the city. They're like modern-day Astors or something. "Duh. Why else do you think he's even here?"

"Scholarship?" I shrug. That's how I got here, anyway. Even though it's not what I tell anyone, when they're telling me all about how wealthy their parents are.

"Listen, Rains, Cromwells don't come here on scholarship, okay? His daddy probably bought him a spot." She casts a somewhat envious look his way, even though we're almost to the front of the line.

"Yeah, probably," I say, but it just drives home the point that this really is a school for the rich. I was accepted only because I had stellar grades, test scores, aced the entrance exam, and I was a first-generation student. Not to mention I had to scrape together my own money even to apply, not a cheap fee.

"I don't mean to be so bitchy about it," El says through a sigh, something she does so I won't be able to tell if she's lying or not. Usually, I see right through it. "You're just a—"

"You can say it, El. I'm an anomaly." If anyone knew, it'd make me stick out like a sore thumb. I wasn't from New England, but a small town outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The town wasn't poor, but my family was, living on what my mom and I made since my dad was arrested and sent to prison my sophomore year of high school.

"No, Rains, you're just special." She shakes my arm. "A brilliant mind trapped in the flatlands of the Midwest."

"I don't know how, but you somehow made it sound worse." I pick up two trays, handing one to her.

She sighs again. "Hey, I'm happy for you. I can only wish that a Cromwell would stare at me."

≈

The guys are gone by the time we get our food and find a spot to sit. I try not to dwell on the fact that I'd probably only met Geoff by chance, and the fact that he'd been staring at me also another mere coincidence. Unwanted attention from guys was a norm in my life, starting with Dad, who'd been touching me inappropriately since I was eight. Then there was a string of bad relationships in junior high and high school, compounded by the fact that my dad erased anything those boys ever did.

That wasn't helped along at all by the fact that the guys got scared off when they tried to get intimate. Once they lifted up my shirt, they were usually gone pretty quick. Because, as carefully as I'd tried to hide it, they always found my torso spotted with cigarette burns one way or another. Dad's punishment, for trying to give any part of myself to anyone but him. A threatening voice in my ear, a searing pain against my skin, a hand plunging into my shirt and pinching me, sometimes so hard I found bruises.

I don't tell anyone, obviously. That's why I get dressed in the bathroom, so I don't have to explain it all to El. I haven't told anyone, not even Mom, why I was so scared of Dad. She found out he'd been sleeping with another woman, and kicked him out. I was relieved, but couldn't even get up the courage then.