Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
“Damn, Bellamy,” he said, giving me a quick once over. “This one’s hot.”
On an annoyed huff, I brushed past him then threw a middle finger over my shoulder, the steady click of my heels bouncing off the beat-up cars surrounding me as I stormed across the parking lot. On my list of recent bad decisions, this had quickly climbed to the top.
I rounded the corner of the bar, stopping at my car when the high-pitched shriek of Bellamy’s name echoed through the night. I glanced back just in time to catch a curvy blonde chuck something at him. Too bad she missed, I thought as I sank behind the wheel and cranked the engine. My headlights shined over the silhouettes in the back lot when I peeled off in a squeal of tires. At least, I’d never have to see that guy again. It wasn’t that I’d expected anything from a quick hookup—I wasn’t stupid, but was it too much to ask that a guy not make me that skank he cheats on his girlfriend with?
I maneuvered down the narrow roads, speeding over potholes while the events of the last few weeks played out in my head.
Kicked out of boarding school—sent to this shithole town to live with a father who was too busy with his business trips to even be bothered by my existence. The only communication I’d had with him since I'd arrived had been a series of emails—the latest of which came through earlier tonight—but I had been too busy getting suckered by Bellamy’s smile to read it.
When I pulled into the empty driveway, my stomach sank at the thought of walking into the dark, empty monstrosity and being all alone once again. That was the very thing that had driven me to that bar tonight and right into Bellamy’s eager arms. But I still didn’t feel any better, so I stalled, braving the email my father had sent as my car idled on the drive.
Drew,
Attached is your new school syllabus. You have orientation on Monday at p.m.. I’ve already spoken to Eddie, and he’s changed your shift.
William Morgan
CEO Darth Enterprises
Never mind that I’d received the same sign off as his secretary...or that he’d been oh so accommodating to have changed my schedule at the shitty drive-thru he’d secured me a job at. I clicked on the attachment and opened the syllabus with Dayton High typed in bold at the top. I blinked. No, this was a mistake. I was supposed to go to Barrington Prep. Not the public school. I'd been through the neighboring town of Dayton. Once. Last Easter, when I was here on break, a road had been closed and the diversion led straight through that shit hole. The place was awful. Street after street of run-down motels and pawn shops. Graffitied, boarded-up houses. The ones that weren’t boarded up looked like they needed to be condemned. And the high school? Olivia, one of the few girls here I knew, said Dayton was basically a prep school for prison. What the hell was my dad thinking? As the sense of horror crept over me, I imagined how smug my father would be if he could see me now, and I knew then that it definitely wasn’t a mistake. This was another one of his punishments.
2
Bellamy
Two days later
The halls of Dayton High slowly thinned out. The bang of lockers closing grew quiet.
I took the copies of the history exam I’d stolen earlier from Weaver’s class and tucked them into my back pocket before slamming my locker door. Kids paid me ten bucks a copy, and this was Dayton. Crap like this was the only way I survived.
I skirted through a group of students gathered outside the library, catching up with Hendrix and Wolf to head to our routine after-school activity—detention.
“Hey, Bell,” Hendrix nudged me. A shit-eating grin spread over his face, and Wolf shook his head. “Check this. Betty Newman—” his words fell short when Nikki strutted past in her cheerleading practice shorts and tank, glaring at me like she’d slit my jugular if she could. “Whoa…” Hendrix’s gaze followed her as she rounded the corner. “Pepperoni Nips is looking at you like she wants to hack off your dick and shove it up your asshole.”
Wolf chuckled. Nikki acted like a woman scorned, but we’d never dated. Never talked on the phone. It was a random, drunken hookup gone wrong. One I was still paying for.
“No shit,” I said. “She followed me out to Nash’s van last weekend when I was trying to hook up with some hot-ass girl. And she lost her shit.”
“Wait.” Hendrix elbowed me. “Who’d you hook up with?”
The hottest girl I’d ever laid eyes on in my life. A girl that still had me thinking of her two days later… “Some rich girl,” I said, leaning against the cinder block wall outside the lunchroom.