**Officially published as Clique Bait with HarperTeen!**
Payment is usually a part of a basic transaction. You give and then you take. But, at Arlington Preparatory, people take at their leisure. They take their entertainment in the form of humiliat...
It's easier to pretend you're ignoring me, rather than admitting that I hurt you. I'm sorry for leaving you, but I'll hang out with you on Monday, seriously, like old times. And Sophie's relative is opening a club tonight, do you want to come? I can make it up to you.
I promise.
Love, Mon.
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I hadn't even noticed my feet, clad in awkwardly balanced Louis Vuitton ankle boots, carry me around the side of the cylindrical stone column and onto the edge of the perfectly manicured lawn. I also didn't notice the hateful glare which burned its way into William Bishop's horrified one, or the way my lips parted into an expression of both shock and hurt, revolted by the scene before me.
The raw, undisturbed statement of betrayal hung stale in the air, and my brain struggled to comprehend it, willing everything I heard to be false. All I saw was red, tinging my vision in a deep color of crimson.
I wanted to lunge at him and grab his crisply ironed collar while I demanded him to explain everything. More than anything, I wanted to lose my cool. To lose control, and stop trying to string together the pieces of me that were breaking with each second that my eyes bored into his.
But I'd be giving him what he wanted. Not William. Jack.
I pried my scowl from Will and placed it on the boy beside him instead.
"What the fuck?"
Jack looked amused. Of course he did. All of us belonged to him in some way. This was his game after all.
"I told you this was a favor, Chloe. I'm letting you know who's really there for you. William Bishop is not," he said, his eyes softening in a way that I once may have thought as sympathetic. But I knew better now. I knew how easy it was to feign feelings.
I bunched my fists together at my sides, trying to stop my body from its instinctive urge to burst into hot, furious tears, or to resort to physical rage.
William, opposite me, looked even more pissed off than I did. I recognized the look on his face, it was the same one he'd worn as he punched Francis across the jaw. I took a step back. I was scared he was going to attack him, and to be honest, I wouldn't have stopped him. I hated Jack. And in that moment, I hated William too. God, I couldn't even look at him. My mind flashed with every intimate moment we'd spent behind closed doors.
I took another step back. They were twisted. Both of them.
My heart was breaking, shattering and splintering from the chunks they'd already been pulverized to with the death of my best friend.
I turned around and walked as fast as I could.
Hot tears fell thickly down my cheeks, and once I started walking my pace turned into a quick strut in the opposite direction, and I couldn't stop. My steps slammed against the paved path circling to the parking lot, taking me as far away as I possibly could be from them.
