These Games We Play

Chapter Nine: First days

Jameson was gone in a blink. He disappeared into a crowd of burgundy blazers and shiny hair, and I was left still buckled into my seat. I picked up the letter and my notebook and shoved them both inside my bag.

“It’s just a school,” Oren told me. “They’re just kids.”

Rich kids. Kids whose baseline for normal was probably “just” being the child of a brain surgeon or hotshot lawyer. When they thought about college, they were probably talking about Harvard or Yale. And there I was, wearing a pleated plaid skirt and a burgundy blazer, complete with a navy crest embossed with Latin words I didn’t know how to read. I think I’ve said this about a million times in the past few days, but I was fucked.

I grabbed my new phone and looked to see a message from Lia and Cam. The pair of them waiting outside. I forced my hand to the door. It wasn’t Oren’s job to coddle me. It was his job to protect me—and not from the stares I fully expected the moment I stepped out of this car.

“Do I meet you back here at the end of the day?” I asked.

“I’ll be here.” I waited a beat, in case Oren had any other instructions, and then I opened the door.

“Thanks for the ride.”

☆☆☆☆

Nobody was staring at me. Nobody was whispering. In fact, as I walked toward the twin archways marking the entrance to the main building, I got the distinct feeling that the lack of response was deliberate. Not-staring. Not-talking. Just the lightest of glances, every few steps. Whenever I looked at anyone, they looked away. I told myself that they were probably trying not to make a big deal of my arrival, that this was what discretion looked like—but it still felt like I’d wandered into a ballroom where everyone else was dancing a complicated waltz, twisting, spinning around me like I wasn’t even there.

I finally spotted Lia and Cam and the pair of them rushed over to me and pulled me in close.

“Was that Jameson Hawthorne getting out the car I saw before,” Lia asked linking her arms with me as we kept walking.

“Yes, it was don’t make a big deal out of it. We’re working together. Strickley business.” I told the two girls.

“Bullshit, the three of us are talking about this later okay. Just not right now since I’m not exactly sure these people will take kindly to you getting close with Jameson.” Cam smiled at me as if she trying to insinuate something was going on.

“Jamie and I aren’t getting close.” I tell them, “We are just trying to solve the mystery of why I got the inheritance.”

“You already have nicknames for each other.” Lia added as we closed the distance to the archways. The people around us still ignoring anything we do. “Eva should I be planning a spring wedding.”

“You shouldn’t be planning anything but how we are going to not want to kill ourselves by the end of the day.” I watched as more people kept sending us glances.

“Were you always this morbid or has the billion-dollar fortune gone to your head?” Cam asks as we walk under the archways into the school.

“Always this morbid.” I say as a girl with long black hair bucked the trend of ignoring me like a Thoroughbred shaking off an inferior rider. She watched me intently, and one by one, the girls around her did the same. When I reached them, the black-haired girl stepped away from the group —toward my friends and I.

“I’m Thea,” she said, smiling. “You must be Evangeline.” Her voice was perfectly pleasant—borderline musical, like a siren who knew with the least bit of effort she could sing sailors into the sea.