Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Lesley meets me in the hall. She’s wearing her customary glare and has a clipboard with a running tally of the shipment clutched to her chest. “Everything’s accounted for. How’s the girl?”
“She’s joining tomorrow.”
She snorts once. “Are you going to put her through the gauntlet?”
I shake my head. The gauntlet is the traditional hazing ritual—it involves taking the boat out alone and at night around the entire length of the island and is more unpleasant than anything else.
“No, that one’s going through something special. Spread the word. Tomorrow night, everyone stays clear of the basement.”
Her eyebrows raise in alarm. “You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
“I don’t lie to my people,” I say and head toward the stairs. “Break out a couple bottles. Everyone did good tonight.”
I feel Lesley’s eyes on my back as I climb toward my room, a smile on my lips.
Am I going to hurt little Kaye Drake?
Yes, I am most definitely going to make the girl bleed, but if all goes well, I think she’ll like it.
Chapter 3
Kaye
Dry palm fronds crunch underfoot as I walk along the gravel path toward Calico House.
It’s ten until midnight. Campus is deserted—there’s a bonfire down on the beach and the fruits of the Calico shipment are being passed around the revelers. I heard a few teachers were going to show up, but I figured that was probably just a stupid rumor. Although it wouldn’t shock me.
Life on Saint Parras is strange.
On the one hand, it’s a typical college. There are dorms, dining halls, a student center, a rec center, soccer fields, tennis courts, everything you’d expect at a normal college. I go to class, sit in the library, write papers, take tests, and eat lunch under a shady palm tree while people-watching the other students wander along the winding paths.
But beneath the surface, there are secrets. The Calico Club isn’t the only student society, and the rumors about these groups are ugly. Hazing, sex, drugs, and worse. And even beyond the societies, there’s the general culture of the island—it’s common for people to lie on the beach between class, for guys to show up to class in a wet suit still drenched from surfing, for girls to wander around in only flip-flops, shorts, and a bikini top. There are beach parties most nights, and the only place off limits is the central interior of the island, a mostly untamed jungle wilderness shrouded in mystique.
It’s like a college mixed with an island resort, and I’m having trouble separating the hedonistic lifestyle of partying on the beach all day and night and the need to write papers and pass tests.
None of that matters right now. I push my worries and uncertainties aside as I put one foot in front of the other. I hurry up toward Calico House, my heart racing, not sure what to expect but determined not to turn around. I’ve come this far and it’s time to take it all the way.
The lights glow dimly from the windows but nobody’s around. I’m nervous as I climb up the main steps and I halfway expect that girl from before, the one with the angry glare and the tea, to show up and tell me to leave. Instead, before I can knock, the door opens.
And Emilio stares out at me.
He’s wearing jeans and a tight black t-shirt. My eyes glance down each arm, staring at the black tattoos etched into his skin: traditional hearts, skulls, pirate swords, a ship on his forearm, other nautical symbols and occult images. I meet his gaze and he’s smiling like he didn’t expect me to show but he’s happy that I did.
“Are you ready?” he asks simply by way of greeting.
I steel myself and nod once.
I’m not ready at all. Being near this man is a heady mixture of emotions. He’s attractive, incredibly attractive, and I wonder if that’s what drew my sister to him in the first place. But as much as I was to run my fingers down his cut muscles, I also want to stab him in the eye with a sharp knife just to see him bleed. I hate him as much as I’m drawn to him, and I won’t forget that he’s intimately involved in Lucy’s disappearance.
The feeling of his hand on my thigh from the night before still lingers in my mind. It was like being caressed by a cadaver, like dead, rotten flesh reached up from freshly tilled grave soil to grab my body, but I stayed still, I didn’t move, I let him touch me how he wanted. If I let him know how much I despise him, how badly I want to join his club just so I can burn it down from the inside, then he’ll never let me in.
As it stands, I don’t think he knows who I am, but he’ll figure it out sooner or later.